1.
Whitby, Ontario
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Whitby is a town in Durham Region. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Ajax and west of Oshawa, on the shore of Lake Ontario. It is approximately 20 km east of the Toronto borough of Scarborough, Whitby Township was named after the seaport town of Whitby, Yorkshire, England. In addition to Whitby, Yorkshire, the Town of Whitby is also twinned with Longueuil, Quebec and Feldkirch. The original name of Whitby is Danish, dating from about 867 AD when the Danes invaded Britain and it is a contraction of Whitteby, meaning White Village. The allusion may be to the lighthouse on the pier at Whitby, Yorkshire. Although settlement dates back to 1800, it was not until 1836 that a business centre was established by Whitbys founder Peter Perry. Whitbys chief asset was its natural harbour on Lake Ontario. In the 1840s a road was built from Whitby Harbour to Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, to bring trade and settlement through the harbour to and from the rich hinterland to the north. The Town of Whitby was chosen as the seat of government for the newly formed County of Ontario in 1852, the remainder of Whitby Township remained a separate municipality, although the eastern half surrounding Oshawa was incorporated as the new Township of East Whitby in 1857. In the 1870s a railway, the Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway, was constructed from Whitby harbour to Port Perry, Whitby is also the site of Trafalgar Castle School, a private girls school founded in 1874. The school celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1999, during the Second World War, Whitby was the location of Camp X, a secret spy training facility established by Sir William Stephenson, the Man Called Intrepid. Although the buildings have since demolished, a monument was unveiled on the site of Camp X in 1984 by Ontarios Lieutenant Governor John Black Aird. Following the War, Soviet dissenter Igor Gouzenko was taken to the facility with his wife to live in secretive protective custody after fleeing Ottawa, in 1968, the Town of Whitby and Township of Whitby amalgamated to form the current municipality. Planning for the construction of a town hall intended to centralize municipal staff working in satellite offices began in 1970 under mayor Des Newman, construction began on the Raymond Moriyama designed building in 1975 and was opened by Mayor Jim Gartshore on January 8,1977. Municipal boundaries were not changed during the 1974 formation of Durham Region, today, Whitby is the seat of government in Durham Region. It is commonly considered part of the Greater Toronto Area, although statistically it belongs to the greater Oshawa Metropolitan Area and they are both in the eastern part of the Golden Horseshoe region. Whitby borders Ajax to the west, Pickering to the north, like much of Durham Region, demographics in Whitby are characterized mainly by rapid population growth
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
4.
Buffalo, New York
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Buffalo is a city in western New York state and the county seat of Erie County, on the eastern shores of Lake Erie at the head of the Niagara River. As of 2014, Buffalo is New York states 2nd-most populous city after New York City, the metropolitan area has a population of 1.13 million. After an economic downturn in the half of the 20th century, Buffalos economy has transitioned to sectors that include financial services, technology, biomedical engineering. Residents of Buffalo are called Buffalonians, the citys nicknames include The Queen City, The Nickel City and The City of Good Neighbors. The city of Buffalo received its name from a creek called Buffalo Creek. British military engineer Captain John Montresor made reference to Buffalo Creek in his journal of 1764, there are several theories regarding how Buffalo Creek received its name. In 1804, as principal agent opening the area for the Holland Land Company, Joseph Ellicott, designed a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown like bicycle spokes similar to the street system he used in the nations capital. Although Ellicott named the settlement New Amsterdam, the name did not catch on, during the War of 1812, on December 30,1813, Buffalo was burned by British forces. The George Coit House 1818 and Samuel Schenck House 1823 are currently the oldest houses within the limits of the City of Buffalo, on October 26,1825, the Erie Canal was completed with Buffalo a port-of-call for settlers heading westward. At the time, the population was about 2,400, the Erie Canal brought about a surge in population and commerce, which led Buffalo to incorporate as a city in 1832. In 1845, construction began on the Macedonia Baptist Church, an important meeting place for the abolitionist movement, Buffalo was a terminus point of the Underground Railroad with many fugitive slaves crossing the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario in search of freedom. During the 1840s, Buffalos port continued to develop, both passenger and commercial traffic expanded with some 93,000 passengers heading west from the port of Buffalo. Grain and commercial goods shipments led to repeated expansion of the harbor, in 1843, the worlds first steam-powered grain elevator was constructed by local merchant Joseph Dart and engineer Robert Dunbar. Darts Elevator enabled faster unloading of lake freighters along with the transshipment of grain in bulk from barges, canal boats, by 1850, the citys population was 81,000. At the dawn of the 20th century, local mills were among the first to benefit from hydroelectric power generated by the Niagara River, the city got the nickname City of Light at this time due to the widespread electric lighting. It was also part of the revolution, hosting the brass era car builders Pierce Arrow. President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6,1901, McKinley died in the city eight days later and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at the Wilcox Mansion as the 26th President of the United States. The Great Depression of 1929–39 saw severe unemployment, especially working class men
5.
Tony Pastor
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Tony Pastor was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. He was sometimes referred to as the Father of Vaudeville, after his Spanish father came to New York and met his future wife Cornelia Buckley, from New Haven, Connecticut, they lived in Manhattan. Their third child, and first son, Antonio Pastor, was born in Manhattan on May 28,1832, at his parents residence at 400 Greenwich Street and his father was a Spanish immigrant who supported his family as a barber and part-time musician. Pastor embarked on a business career at a very young age. During the next few years he worked in minstrel shows, the circus business, Pastor published songsters, books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music was intended to be bawdy, though Pastor was popular with the nearly all-male variety theater audiences, he knew that his ticket sales would double if he attracted a female audience. Soon he began to produce variety shows, presenting an evening of fun that was a distinct alternative to the bawdy shows of the time. In 1865 Pastor opened Tony Pastors Opera House on the Bowery in partnership with minstrel show performer, Sam Sharpley, the same year he organized traveling minstrel troupes who toured the country annually between April and October. With shows that appealed to women and children as well as the male audience, his theater. In 1874, Pastor moved his company a few blocks to take over Michael Bennett Leavitts former theater at 585 Broadway. The theater district was moving uptown to Union Square, however and he alternated his theaters presentations between operettas and family-oriented variety shows, creating what became known as vaudeville. Harry S. Sanderson was his business manager from 1878 until 1908, the business records from this period are available to researchers. The song Put On Your Sunday Clothes includes the line, Well join the Astors at Tony Pastors and it also references seeing the shows at Delmonicos, which suggests that the character does not really know about upper class social life in New York. Tony Pastor died in Elmhurst, New York on August 26,1908 and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, in Brooklyn. He was 71, and though greatly mourned at his death as one of the last gentlemen of the early vaudeville halls, Pastor had remained a local showman in an epoch that increasingly came to be dominated by regional and national chains. Fighting against the monopolies for the rights of individual local showmen was an undertaking that marked the last years of his life, earning him the nickname of Little Man Tony. According to the humor of the time, Pastor wrote several songs that negatively portrayed ethnic stereotypes, such as The Contrabands Adventures, after the slave is set free by Union soldiers, he attends an anti-slavery meeting where the abolitionists try to scrub off his dark pigment
6.
Augustin Daly
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John Augustin Daly was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America and he exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and he formed a permanent company in New York and opened Dalys Theatre in New York in 1879 and a second one in London in 1893. Augustin Daly was born in Plymouth, North Carolina of Captain Denis Daly a sea-captain and ship owner and he was educated at Norfolk, Virginia, and in the public schools of New York City. He was dramatic critic for several New York papers from 1859, in 1869 he became the manager of the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 24th St. and in 1873 the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 28th. In 1879 he built and opened Dalys Theatre at Broadway and 30th Street in New York and he took his entire company on tour, visiting England, Germany and France, and some of the best actors on the American stage have owed their training and first successes to him. Dalys willingness to, as he put it, stoop to the curb and bestow upon the low and his play Leah the Forsaken, adapted from the Deborah of Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, was a star vehicle for Margaret Mather. His Shakespeare productions were often criticized by George Bernard Shaw. Shaw took Daly severely to task for cutting Shakespeares plays and for presenting them in unorthodox ways, several of Shaws criticisms of Dalys Shakespeare productions were reprinted in the anthology Shaw on Shakespeare. Daly was a great book-lover, and his library was dispersed by auction after his death. Besides plays, original and adapted, he wrote Woffington, a Tribute to the Actress, dora Knowlton Ranous, a onetime actress in the Daly company, published a 1910 memoir of her experiences entitled Diary of a Daly Débutante. Under the Gaslight is an example of Dalys mixture of realism and melodrama, seen in the authenticity of his depiction of real locations and in his use of social commentary. The play introduced the device of the villain tying someone to railroad tracks, although in a reversal of the usual roles it was the hero who was tied up. In the book Vagrant Memories, the author, William Winter recalls how Daly came up with the device and he says, He once told me under what circumstances he hit upon this device. I was near my door, he said, and I rushed into the house, threw myself into a chair, grasping my injured foot with both hands, for the pain was great, and exclaiming, over and over again, and it beats hot-irons all to pieces. I wasnt even thinking of the hurt, I had the thought of having my hero tied on a railroad track and rescued by his sweetheart, just in the nick of time, before the swift passage of an express train across a dark stage. A Flash of Lightning, like Under the Gaslight, is melodrama, with water and fire spectacles providing action scenes. Divorce and Pique, both adaptations of British novels, demonstrate Dalys attempts to create social comedy, although the plays remain somewhat melodramatic
7.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
8.
Folly Theatre
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This article is about the former theatre in London, named, for a time, the Charing Cross Theatre. For the nearby music hall of the same name see Charing Cross Music Hall. For theatre of the name in Kansas City see Folly Theater The Folly Theatre was a London theatre of the late 19th century, in William IV Street, near Charing Cross. It was converted from the house of an order, and became a small theatre, with a capacity of 900 seated. The theatre specialised in presenting music hall, burlesque and opera bouffe, the Beefsteak Club had quarters above the theatre. The theatre was demolished in 1895, possibly due to disturbance caused to the neighbouring Charing Cross Hospital, the building opened as the Lowther Rooms in 1840. It was the residence of the Fathers of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri from 1848–56 and was used for lectures, here, in 1850, John Henry Newman delivered his Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, after his conversion to Catholicism. On the departure of the order, which moved to the Brompton Oratory, the hall became Woodins Polygraphic Hall in 1855. The theatre opened on 19 June 1869 with W. S. Gilberts burlesque of Norma, called The Pretty Druidess, on the bill, and in 1870 it held Gilbert and Frederic Clays The Gentleman in Black. In 1872, it hosted J. S. Clarkes revival of Sheridans The Rivals, the name Charing Cross Music Hall was also adopted in the late 1880s by the brothers Carlo and Giovanni Gatti for their Gattis-Under-the-Arches Music hall. This became the Hungerford Music Hall in 1883, later returning to the former name, the first piece was a successful burlesque of Blue Beard. In 1877, Up the River, or the Strict Kew-Tea, Farnie and Robert Reece played at the theatre as did a Farnie and Reece adaptation of Offenbach called The Creole. Florence St. John got her start in the piece on tour, Farnie and Reeces burlesque Stars and Garters then played. Reeces successful burlesque, Carmen, or Sold for a Song, T. W. Robertons Dublin Bay played here in 1880. The theatre was described in Dickens Dictionary of London as A little bandbox of a place, very prettily fitted up, on 7 November 1879, John Lawrence Toole took over the management, with a stock company. Presentations included farces, burlesques and travesties of popular plays, beginning with H. J. Byrons A Fool, Tooles only son, Frank, died on 7 December 1879 following an earlier football injury from which he never fully recovered. Toole was both a comedian and a friend of Charles Dickens. In 1882, after rebuilding, Toole re-opened the theatre as Tooles Theatre
9.
Thomas F. Grady
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Thomas Francis Grady was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He attended St. James Parochial School from 1857 to 1863, De La Salle Institute from 1863 to 1867, then he worked for D. Appleton & Co. was Recording Clerk in the County Clerks office in 1874, and began to study law. Then he worked in the Corporation Counsels office, collecting evidence relative to the fraudulent claims of the Tweed era and he graduated from the New York University School of Law in 1877, was admitted to the bar, and practiced in New York City. In politics he always was a Tammany Hall man and he was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1877,1878 and 1879, and a member of the New York State Senate in 1882 and 1883. In 1883, State Senator Grady and Governor Grover Cleveland became political enemies, Grady was a delegate to the 1884 Democratic National Convention and worked hard against Clevelands nomination for U. S. President. During the following campaign, Grady supported Benjamin F. Butler. In 1887, he married actress Flo Irwin, and they later divorced. Grady was again a member of the State Senate in 1889, and he was the Democratic minority leader from 1899 to 1910. The Democrats were in the majority in 1911, and Grady expected to be chosen President pro tempore, due to his illness, Grady did not take his seat in the 135th New York State Legislature. He died on February 3,1912, at his home at 151 East 30th Street, in Manhattan, of diabetes, and was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Queens
10.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
11.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
12.
Thomas Edison
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Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as Americas greatest inventor. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Edison was an inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France. Edisons inventions contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications and these included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of generation and distribution to homes, businesses. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York, Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott. His father, the son of a Loyalist refugee, had moved as a boy with the family from Nova Scotia, settling in southwestern Ontario, in a known as Shewsbury, later Vienna. Samuel Jr. eventually fled Ontario because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 and his father, Samuel Sr. had earlier fought in the War of 1812 as captain of the First Middlesex Regiment. By contrast, Samuel Jr. s struggle found him on the losing side, once across the border, he found his way to Milan, Ohio. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey and his mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R. G, parkers School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age, the cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, Edisons family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined. Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit and he briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford, Ontario railway at age 16. He was held responsible for a near collision and he also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments on the train until he left the job. Edison obtained the right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald
13.
Kinetoscope
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The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device, a prototype for the Kinetoscope was shown to a convention of the National Federation of Womens Clubs on May 20,1891. The first public demonstration of the Kinetoscope was held at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts, in 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone, which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph. Film projection, which Edison initially disdained as financially nonviable, soon superseded the Kinetoscopes individual exhibition model, many of the projection systems developed by Edisons firm in later years would use the Kinetoscope name. An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. The Edison facility was very close by, and the lecture was attended by both Edison and his companys official photographer, William Dickson. No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a claim, known as a caveat. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear. It is clear that it was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system, in March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- and scopos. Edison assigned Dickson, one of his most talented employees, to the job of making the Kinetoscope a reality, the Edison laboratory, though, worked as a collaborative organization. Laboratory assistants were assigned to work on many projects while Edison supervised and involved himself, Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first. An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, when tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1/8 of an inch in width, the coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent. The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on film in the United States, may have been shot at this time, known as Monkeyshines. 1, it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue-in-cheek display of physical dexterity, attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs. The project would soon head off in more directions, largely impelled by a trip of Edisons to Europe. The first motion system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique. Reynauds system did not use film, but images painted on gelatine frames. At the Exposition Universelle, Edison would have both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz
14.
The Kiss (1896 film)
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The Kiss is an 1896 film, and was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. Around 18 seconds long, it depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the scene of the stage musical The Widow Jones. The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison, at the time, Edison was working at the Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1999, the short was deemed significant by the United States Library of Congress. The film contained the very first kiss on film, with a close-up of a nuzzling couple followed by a short peck on the lips, the film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown. The Edison catalogue advertised it this way, They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, perhaps in defiance and to spice up a film, this was followed by many kiss imitators, including The Kiss in the Tunnel and The Kiss. The Kiss was projected in West End Park, Ottawa, on July 21,1896, however, the competing Lumière Brothers Cinematograph had already exhibited different films in Montreal on June 27,1896. The Kiss at the Internet Movie Database The Kiss, Library of Congress Biography of May Irwin, with a video of The Kiss
15.
George M. Cohan
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George Michael Cohan, known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents, beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway, The Yankee Doodle Boy, as a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s, known in the decade before World War I as the man who owned Broadway, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy, a statue of Cohan in Times Square in New York City commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been born on the Fourth of July. Georges parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance, Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans. In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Pecks Bad Boy and then joined the family act and he and his sister made their Broadway debut in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous speech, My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you. The family generally gave a performance at the hall there each summer. Cohans memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, as Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, in 1934, he told a reporter, Ive knocked around everywhere, but theres no place like North Brookfield. Cohan began writing original skits and songs for the act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governors Son and his first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes Give My Regards to Broadway and The Yankee Doodle Boy
16.
RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the initials of the labels former parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. It is the second oldest recording company in US history, after sister label Columbia Records, RCAs Canadian unit is Sonys oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression, kelly, Enrique Iglesias, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Giorgio Moroder, Jennifer Hudson, DAngelo, Pink, Tinashe, G-Eazy, Pitbull, Zayn and Wizkid. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor but retained use of the Victor Records name on their labels until the beginning of 1946 when the labels were finally switched over to RCA Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper His Masters Voice trademark, in Shanghai, China, in 1931, RCA Victors British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board, in September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm records sold to the public, calling them Program Transcriptions. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a commercial failure, during the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the dime store labels. The first was the short-lived Timely Tunes label in 1931 sold at Montgomery Ward, in 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8-inch record with a blue label. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10-inch label, another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced. The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels and Bluebird Records still survives eight decades after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued, RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward label during the 1930s. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for independent record labels, RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Readers Digest Association. RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings in the UK, RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the RCA and HMV labels in North America. During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed, the Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary. From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period
17.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
18.
Adolph Zukor
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Adolph Zukor was an American film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures. Zukor was born to a Jewish family in Ricse, Hungary, which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1889, at the age of 16, he promised Mella Baumoel, a girl almost 4 years older, that he would send for her one day and they would be married, he emigrated to the United States. Mella arrived in the U. S. too late to wed him, they never spoke again, like most immigrants, he began modestly. When he first landed in New York, he stayed with his family, a friend got him a job as an apprentice at a furrier. Zukor stayed there for two years, when he left to become a contract worker, sewing fur pieces and selling them himself, he was nineteen years old and an accomplished designer. He was young and adventuresome, and the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago drew him to the Midwest, there he started a fur business. In the second season of operation, Zukors Novelty Fur Company expanded to 25 men, historian Neal Gabler wrote, one of the stubborn fallacies of movie history is that the men who created the film industry were all impoverished young vulgarians. Zukor clearly didnt fit this profile, by 1903, he already looked and lived like a wealthy young burgher, and he certainly earned the income of one. He had an apartment at 111th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York Citys wealthy German-Jewish section. In 1918, he moved to New City, Rockland County, New York, Abraham had already built a sizable house, a nine-hole golf course and a swimming pool on this property. Two years later, Zukor bought an additional 500 acres, built a house, guest house, movie theater, locker room, greenhouses, garages, staff quarters. Tillinghast to build an 18-hole championship golf course, today, Zukors estate is the private country club Paramount Country Club. He became involved in the picture industry when in 1903 his cousin. Mitchell Mark needed investors to expand his chain of theaters that began in Buffalo. The arcade salon, the Automatic Vaudeville Company on 14th Street in New York City was to feature Thomas Edisons marvels, phonographs, electric lights, Zukor not only gave Goldstein the money but insisted on forming a partnership to open another one. Another partner in the venture was Marcus Loew, the following year he obtained the financial backing of the Frohman brothers, the powerful New York City theatre impresarios. Their primary goal was to bring noted stage actors to the screen and he purchased an armory on 26th Street in Manhattan and converted it into Chelsea Studios, a movie studio that is still used today
19.
Famous Players Film Company
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The Famous Players Film Company or Celebrated Players was a film company. It was founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor in partnership with the Jadeja Motion Pictures and Frohman brothers, discussions to form the company were held at The Lambs, the famous theater club where Charles and Daniel Frohman were members. The company advertised Famous Players in Famous Plays and its first release was the French film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth starring Sarah Bernhardt and Lou Tellegen. Its first actual production was The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Edwin S. Porter and starring James ONeill, the company established a studio on 26th Street in New York City that today is Chelsea Studios. The company produced both short and feature-length productions, in 1915 the company established Famous Players Fiction Studios at 5300 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, along with the widely famous Jadeja Studios, one of the oldest studios in Hollywood. The studio later became Clune Studio, then California Studio, then Gross-Krasne, the new studios first film starred Mary Pickford. Raleigh Studios is known for being the site of Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, in 1916, the company merged with the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company to form Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which later became Paramount Pictures. Famous Players theatres Famous Players-Lasky List of Paramount Pictures films
20.
Thousand Islands
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The Thousand Islands constitute an archipelago of 1,864 islands that straddles the Canada–US border in the Saint Lawrence River as it emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario. They stretch for about 50 miles downstream from Kingston, Ontario, the Canadian islands are in the province of Ontario and the U. S. islands in the state of New York. The islands range in size from over 40 square miles to smaller islands occupied by a single residence, or uninhabited outcroppings of rocks. To count as one of the Thousand Islands, emergent land within the channel must have at least one square foot of land above water level year-round. The Thousand Islands archipelago is located at the outlet of Lake Ontario at the head of the Saint Lawrence River, geologically, the islands are located where a branch of the Canadian Shield runs south across the river to join with the Adirondacks. The Thousand Islands-Frontenac Arch region was designated a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2002, the waterfront is served by New York State Routes 12 and 37 and by the Thousand Islands Parkway in Ontario. Ontario also has the Waterfront Trail alongside the Parkway for cyclists who wish to see the area in an alternative way. Large freighters frequently ply the Saint Lawrence Seaway, but the area has so many shoals, in places, a vessel less than 25 feet offshore can find itself in over 200 feet of water. Conversely, rocks and shoals less than two feet underwater can be found in the center of channels 90 feet deep. Due to the number of rocks and shoals just above or below the waters surface, navigation at night can be dangerous. Before the advent of the mussel, visibility of only 10 to 15 feet was usual. Water clarity improved markedly in the mid-1990s with the arrival of zebra mussels, the water is so clear in some areas that a rocky bottom can be observed in 80 feet of water. The area has several shipwrecks, and although most of them are over 100 feet underwater, some are a mere 15 feet down, the largest island in the group, Wolfe Island, is located entirely in Ontario. Other large islands in the archipelago include New Yorks Grindstone Island and Wellesley Island, adjacent to Wolfe Island but part of New York is Carleton Island, the site of a ruined fort, Fort Haldimand, built in 1779 by the British during the American Revolutionary War. The island was captured by three American soldiers during the War of 1812 and remains part of the United States today, deer Island, about two miles north of Alexandria Bay, is owned by the secret society of Skull and Bones. A pair of islands southwest of Grenadier Island are collectively called Zavikon Island. A popular but incorrect tale is that the island is in Canada, while the smaller one is in the United States. Zavikon Island is entirely located in the Canadian territory and belongs to the Leeds, longue Vue Island is the only artificial island in the region
21.
Merritt Island, Florida
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Merritt Island is a census-designated place in Brevard County, Florida, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 34,743 and it is part of the Palm Bay – Melbourne – Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The name Merritt Island also refers to the extent of the former island, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and NASAs John F. Kennedy Space Center are located on the northern part of Merritt Island. The southern area is residential, with centralized light commercial. The island does not belong to any official city, the central part of Merritt Island, previously known as Merritt City, is home to the majority of the population and includes the local high school, library, and shopping district. Merritt Island owes its name to the king of Spain, the entire island was part of a land grant given by the king to a nobleman named Merritt. In 1605, Spanish explorer Alvaro Mexia visited while on a mission to the local tribes living in the Indian River area. He called the tribe the Ulumay. Merritt Island is the prominent island on a map he drew of the area, a copy of which is in the archives at the Library of Congress. In April 1788, French botanist André Michaux traveled in Merritt Island and he spent five days looking for plants. He wrote a letter on April 24,1788 from St Augustine and he reported discovering the flag or bigflower paw-paw, Asimina obovata. In 1837, Fort Ann was constructed on the east coast of Merritt Island, Merritt Islands recent history dates back to the mid-19th century and centers on the growth of citrus, stressing the cultivation of pineapples and oranges. The Indian River oranges and grapefruit come from this sandy area, the islands population grew in the 1950s and 1960s as the Space Race began and nearby NASA expanded. Construction of a canal to the Intracoastal Waterway from the Atlantic Ocean cut off the northern half of the island for many years. To this day, the portion of the island remains slightly less developed. The small towns on the island vanished with the coming of the Space Age, in 1988, citizens defeated a proposed incorporation into a city, 77% opposed to 23% in favor. Sea Ray operated a factory on Merritt Island from 1978 to 2012, at one time it employed 1200 people. It closed the plant in 2013, according to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 47.2 square miles, of which 17.5 square miles is land and 29.7 square miles, or 62. 88%, is water
22.
Clayton, New York
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Clayton is a town in Jefferson County, New York, USA. The population was 5,153 at the 2010 census, the town is named after John M. Clayton, a federal political leader from Delaware. The Town of Clayton contains a village named Clayton, both town and village are northwest of Watertown. The Village of Clayton, nearby Cape Vincent, NY, and Alexandria Bay, the area was first settled around 1801. The town was formed parts of the Town of Orleans. The town was named after statesman John M. Clayton, the Village of Clayton became the main railroad terminus for the Thousand Islands resort region, during its heyday at the turn of the twentieth century. The Town of Clayton offered several hotels to visitors, some grand, in 1872, the community of Clayton voted to set itself apart from the town by incorporating as a village. Fairview Manor, Swarthout Site-A04507.000038, and Grindstone Island Upper Schoolhouse are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 104.0 square miles. The town is situated on the St. Lawrence River near Lake Ontario, across the river lies Ontario, Canada. The northern border of the town is the Canada–US border running through the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River. The town includes one of the larger Thousand Islands, Grindstone Island, along with smaller islands, such as Bluff Island, Grenell Island, Maple Island, Picton Island, and Round Island. A ferry once connected Clayton with Gananoque in Ontario, but was discontinued due to the construction of the Thousand Islands Bridge ten miles down-river and this bridge now carries Interstate 81 to Canada. New York State Route 12E, which follows the bank of the St. Lawrence River. New York State Route 180 crosses the southeast corner of Clayton, as of the census of 2000, there were 4,817 people,1,914 households, and 1,335 families residing in the town. The population density was 58.3 people per square mile, there were 3,337 housing units at an average density of 40.4 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 97. 24% White,0. 93% Black or African American,0. 35% Native American,0. 23% Asian,0. 10% Pacific Islander,0. 48% from other races, and 0. 66% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1. 58% of the population,25. 1% of all households were made up of individuals and 13. 0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older
23.
St. Louis
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St. Louis is an independent city and major U. S. port in the state of Missouri, built along the western bank of the Mississippi River, on the border with Illinois. Prior to European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture. The city of St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, in 1764, following Frances defeat in the Seven Years War, the area was ceded to Spain and retroceded back to France in 1800. In 1803, the United States acquired the territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, during the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River. In the 1870 Census, St. Louis was ranked as the 4th-largest city in the United States and it separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Summer Olympics, the economy of metro St. Louis relies on service, manufacturing, trade, transportation of goods, and tourism. This city has become known for its growing medical, pharmaceutical. St. Louis has 2 professional sports teams, the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball, the city is commonly identified with the 630-foot tall Gateway Arch in Downtown St. Louis. The area that would become St. Louis was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture and their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds, active from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the Mound City and these mounds were mostly demolished during the citys development. Historic Native American tribes in the area included the Siouan-speaking Osage people, whose territory extended west, European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane. The earliest European settlements in the area were built in Illinois Country on the east side of the Mississippi River during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, migrants from the French villages on the opposite side of the Mississippi River founded Ste. In early 1764, after France lost the 7 Years War, Pierre Laclède, the early French families built the citys economy on the fur trade with the Osage, as well as with more distant tribes along the Missouri River. The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe, French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city. In 1780 during the American Revolutionary War, St. Louis was attacked by British forces, mostly Native American allies, the founding of St. Louis began in 1763. Pierre Laclede led an expedition to set up a fur-trading post farther up the Mississippi River, before then, Laclede had been a very successful merchant. For this reason, he and his trading partner Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent were offered monopolies for six years of the fur trading in that area
24.
IMDb
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In 1998 it became a subsidiary of Amazon Inc, who were then able to use it as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. As of January 2017, IMDb has approximately 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities in its database, the site enables registered users to submit new material and edits to existing entries. Although all data is checked before going live, the system has open to abuse. The site also featured message boards which stimulate regular debates and dialogue among authenticated users, IMDb shutdown the message boards permanently on February 20,2017. Anyone with a connection can read the movie and talent pages of IMDb. A registration process is however, to contribute info to the site. A registered user chooses a name for themselves, and is given a profile page. These badges range from total contributions made, to independent categories such as photos, trivia, bios, if a registered user or visitor happens to be in the entertainment industry, and has an IMDb page, that user/visitor can add photos to that page by enrolling in IMDbPRO. Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and this fee enrolls them in a membership called IMDbPro. PRO can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the fee, which is $19.99 USD per month, or if paid annually, $149.99, which comes to approximately $12.50 per month USD. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. Enrolling in PRO for industry personnel, enables those members the ability to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as the ability to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as a user, and contribute to the site as well as enjoy its content, however those users enrolled in PRO have greater access and privileges. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled Those Eyes, others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an Actors List, while Dave Knight began a Directors List, and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the Actress List. Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, the goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible. By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17,1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, at the time, it was known as the rec. arts. movies movie database
25.
Internet Broadway Database
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The Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It was conceived and created by Karen Hauser in 1996 and is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, the website also has a corresponding app for both the IOS and Android. This comprehensive history of Broadway provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre in the 18th century up to today, details include cast and creative lists for opening night and current day, song lists, awards and other interesting facts about every Broadway production. Other features of IBDB include an archive of photos from past and present Broadway productions, headshots, links to cast recordings on iTunes or Amazon, gross. Its mission was to be an interactive, user-friendly, searchable database for League members, journalists, researchers, the League recently added Broadway Touring shows to the database for ease of tracking shows that play in theatres across the country. It is managed by Karen Hauser, Michael Abourizk, and Mark Smith of the Broadway League, Internet Theatre Database – ITDb Internet Movie Database – IMDb Internet Book Database – IBookDb Lortel Archives – IOBDb The Broadway League Official website Broadway League website
26.
Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
27.
MusicBrainz
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MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open data music database that is similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the placed on the Compact Disc Database. MusicBrainz has expanded its goals to reach beyond a compact disc metadata storehouse to become an open online database for music. MusicBrainz captures information about artists, their works, and the relationships between them. Recorded works entries capture at a minimum the album title, track titles, and these entries are maintained by volunteer editors who follow community written style guidelines. Recorded works can also store information about the date and country. As of 26 July 2016, MusicBrainz contained information about roughly 1.1 million artists,1.6 million releases, end-users can use software that communicates with MusicBrainz to add metadata tags to their digital media files, such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC. As with other contributions, the MusicBrainz community is in charge for maintaining and reviewing the data, besides collecting metadata about music, MusicBrainz also allows looking up recordings by their acoustic fingerprint. A separate application, such as MusicBrainz Picard, must be used for this, in 2000, MusicBrainz started using Relatables patented TRM for acoustic fingerprint matching. This feature attracted many users and allowed the database to grow quickly, however, by 2005 TRM was showing scalability issues as the number of tracks in the database had reached into the millions. This issue was resolved in May 2006 when MusicBrainz partnered with MusicIP, tRMs were phased out and replaced by MusicDNS in November 2008. In October 2009 MusicIP was acquired by AmpliFIND, some time after the acquisition, the MusicDNS service began having intermittent problems. Since the future of the free service was uncertain, a replacement for it was sought. The Chromaprint acoustic fingerprinting algorithm, the basis for AcoustID identification service, was started in February 2010 by a long-time MusicBrainz contributor Lukáš Lalinský, while AcoustID and Chromaprint are not officially MusicBrainz projects, they are closely tied with each other and both are open source. Chromaprint works by analyzing the first two minutes of a track, detecting the strength in each of 12 pitch classes, storing these 8 times per second, additional post-processing is then applied to compress this fingerprint while retaining patterns. The AcoustID search server then searches from the database of fingerprints by similarity, since 2003, MusicBrainzs core data are in the public domain, and additional content, including moderation data, is placed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 license. The relational database management system is PostgreSQL, the server software is covered by the GNU General Public License. The MusicBrainz client software library, libmusicbrainz, is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, in December 2004, the MusicBrainz project was turned over to the MetaBrainz Foundation, a non-profit group, by its creator Robert Kaye
28.
Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
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