1.
Minot, North Dakota
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Minot is a city in and the county seat of Ward County, North Dakota, United States, in the states north-central region. It is most widely known for the Air Force base located approximately 15 miles north of the city, founded in 1886 during the construction of the Great Northern Railway, Minot is also known as Magic City, commemorating its remarkable growth in size over a short time. It was the end of the line, so whenever a train came into the town and the stop was announced, the conductor would call out Minot. The town site was chosen by the railroad to be placed on the land of then-homesteader Erik Ramstad, Ramstad was convinced to relinquish his claim, and became one of the city leaders. The town was named after Henry D. Minot, a railroad investor and its Arikara name is niwaharít sahaáhkat, its Hidatsa name is dibiarugareesh. The city was incorporated on June 28,1887, the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad later built a line from Valley City up to Canada, while initially their plan was to cross the Souris River at Burlington, local interests and arguments convinced them otherwise, landholders along the new route donated the right-of-way. Minot and its area were wide open throughout 1905-20. Population grew rapidly due to construction and availability of unclaimed land. The hotbed of bootlegging, prostitution, and opium dens that sprang up in the Downtown area soon led people to give Minot the nickname Little Chicago. The Smugglers used a network of tunnels to transport and conceal the illicit cargo entering from Canada. In 1969, a flood on the Souris River devastated the city. Afterward, the Army Corps of Engineers straightened the path of the river through the city, on January 18,2002, a severe train derailment west of the city sent a gigantic cloud of anhydrous ammonia toward Minot, and Burlington. One man died and many of Minots citizens were sickened and severely injured by the noxious gas, in early 2006, court cases were heard in Minneapolis, Minnesota, against Canadian Pacific Railway, the owner of the derailed train. The anhydrous ammonia spill was the largest such spill in U. S. history, the 2011 Souris River flood caused extensive damage throughout the Souris River Valley. On June 21,2011, KXMC-TV reported that a flood of historic proportions was imminent in the Souris River Valley, largely due to large dam releases upstream. On June 26, flooding exceeded previous records when the river crested at 1,561.72 feet above sea level and it is estimated that 20 percent of Minot sustained damage from the flood. This figure includes over 4,100 homes which were affected,2,376 extensively damaged
2.
Temperance movement in the United States
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The Temperance movement in the United States was a movement to curb the consumption of alcohol. It had a influence on American politics and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, various factors contributed to an epidemic of alcoholism that went hand-in-hand with spousal abuse, family neglect, popular pressure for cheap and plentiful alcohol led to relaxed ordinances on alcohol sales. Apparently influenced by Dr. Rushs Inquiry, about 200 farmers in a Connecticut community formed an association in 1789 to ban the making of whiskey. Similar associations were formed in Virginia in 1800, and New York State in 1808, over the next decade, other temperance organizations were formed in eight states, some being statewide organizations. The young movement advocated temperance or levelness rather than abstinence, many leaders of the movement expanded their activities and took positions on observance of the Sabbath and other moral issues, and by the early 1820s political in-fighting had stalled the movement. Some leaders persevered in pressing their cause forward, americans such as Lyman Beecher, who was a Connecticut minister, had started to lecture his fellow citizens against all use of liquor in 1825. The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826 and benefited from a renewed interest in religion, within 12 years it claimed more than 8,000 local groups and over 1,500,000 members. By 1839,18 temperance journals were being published, simultaneously, some Protestant and Catholic church leaders were beginning to promote temperance. Radicals and prohibitionists dominated many of the largest temperance organizations after the 1830s, the Civil War dealt the movement a crippling blow. Both sides in the war made alcohol sales a part of the war effort by taxing brewers and distillers to finance much of the conflict, the issue of slavery crowded out temperance and temperance groups petered out until they found new life in the 1870s. Temperance birthed an entire genre of theatre and this was first seen in 1895, as The Forgers, a dramatic poem written by John Blake White, premiered at the Charleston Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina. The next significant temperance drama to debut was titled Fifteen Years of a Drunkards Life, as the movement began to grow and prosper, these dramas became more popular among the general public. The Drunkard by W. H. Smith premiered in 1841 in Boston, barnums American Museum on lower Broadway. The play was popular and is often credited with the entrance of the temperance narrative into mainstream American theatre. It continued to be a staple of New Yorks theatre scene all the way until 1875, Temperance drama continued to grow as a genre of theatre, fostered by the advent of the railroad as a form of transportation. This enabled theatre companies to be more mobile, traveling from city to city. Temperance drama would even reach as far as the West Coast, the image titled The Drunkards Progress shown in the top of the article, gives us a representation of the temperance movement
3.
Industrial Workers of the World
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The Industrial Workers of the World, members of which are commonly termed Wobblies, is an international labor union that was founded in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois in the United States of America. The union combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a union whose members are further organized within the industry of their employment. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as industrial unionism. At their peak in August 1917, IWW membership was more than 150,000, Membership declined dramatically in the 1920s due to several factors. Membership also declined due to government crackdowns on radical, anarchist and socialist groups during the First Red Scare after WWI. The most decisive factor in the decline in IWW membership and influence, however, was a 1924 schism in the organization, from which the IWW never fully recovered. The IWW promotes the concept of One Big Union, and contends that all workers should be united as a class to supplant capitalism. They are known for the Wobbly Shop model of democracy, in which workers elect their managers. IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, in 2012, the IWW moved its General Headquarters offices to 2036 West Montrose, Chicago. The origin of the nickname Wobblies is uncertain, the convention, which took place on June 24,1905, was referred to as the Industrial Congress or the Industrial Union Convention—it would later be known as the First Annual Convention of the IWW. In its time, it was considered one of the most important events in the history of industrial unionism. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the people and the few. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the class have interests in common with their employers. Instead of the motto, A fair days wage for a fair days work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword. It is the mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old
4.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
5.
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
6.
Emma Goldman
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Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America. Born in Kovno, Russian Empire to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885, attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, womens rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist, Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892 and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years followed, for inciting to riot. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth, in 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to induce persons not to register for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia, in 1923, she published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14,1940, aged 70, during her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking rebel woman by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward womens suffrage, after decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status by a revival of interest in her life in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest. Emma Goldmans Orthodox Jewish family lived in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, Goldmans mother Taube Bienowitch had been married before, to a man with whom she had two daughters—Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. When her first husband died of tuberculosis, Taube was devastated, Goldman later wrote, Whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had been married at the age of fifteen. Taubes second marriage was arranged by her family and, as Goldman puts it and her second husband, Abraham Goldman, invested Taubes inheritance in a business that quickly failed. The ensuing hardship combined with the distance of husband and wife to make the household a tense place for the children. When Taube became pregnant, Abraham hoped desperately for a son and they eventually had three sons, but their first child was Emma. Emma Goldman was born on June 27,1869 and her father used violence to punish his children, beating them when they disobeyed him. He used a whip on Emma, the most rebellious of them and her mother provided scarce comfort, rarely calling on Abraham to tone down his beatings
7.
Hollywood
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Hollywood is an ethnically diverse, densely populated neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its studios, and its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the industry. Hollywood was a community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, in 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished, the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley, known as the Father of Hollywood, along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood. The man got out of the wagon and bowed, the Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, I holly-wood, meaning hauling wood. H. J. Whitley had an epiphany and decided to name his new town Hollywood, Holly would represent England and wood would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had already started over 100 towns across the western United States, Whitley arranged to buy the 500-acre E. C. Hurd ranch and disclosed to him his plans for the land. They agreed on a price and Hurd agreed to sell at a later date, before Whitley got off the ground with Hollywood, plans for the new town had spread to General Harrison Gray Otis, Hurds wife, eastern adjacent ranch co-owner Daeida Wilcox, and others. Daeida Wilcox may have learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and she recommended the same name to her husband, Harvey. In August 1887, Wilcox filed with the Los Angeles County Recorders office a deed and parcel map of property he had sold named Hollywood, Wilcox wanted to be the first to record it on a deed. The early real-estate boom busted that year, yet Hollywood began its slow growth. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent, the old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood. The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley who was a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard, having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitleys company developed and sold one of the residential areas
8.
John Steinbeck
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John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbecks masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies, the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called a giant of American letters. His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature, most of Steinbecks work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists, Steinbeck was born on February 27,1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent, johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbecks paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still named Großsteinbeck and his father, John Ernst Steinbeck, served as Monterey County treasurer. Johns mother, Olive Hamilton, a school teacher, shared Steinbecks passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic, Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, no more than a frontier settlement, set in some of the worlds most fertile land. He spent his summers working on ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, while working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned, Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English Literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving, without a degree, in 1925. He travelled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write, when he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, the elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbecks novel Cannery Row, in 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts, usually quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency
9.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
10.
Minnesota
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Minnesota is a state in the midwestern and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U. S. state on May 11,1858, the state has a large number of lakes, and is known by the slogan Land of 10,000 Lakes. Its official motto is LÉtoile du Nord, Minnesota is the 12th largest in area and the 21st most populous of the U. S. Minnesota is known for its progressive political orientation and its high rate of civic participation and voter turnout. Until European settlement, Minnesota was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwe/Anishinaabe, in recent decades, immigration from Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Latin America has broadened its historic demographic and cultural composition. Minnesotas standard of living index is among the highest in the United States, Native Americans demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mnisota. Many places in the state have similar names, such as Minnehaha Falls, Minneiska, Minneota, Minnetonka, Minnetrista, and Minneapolis, a combination of mni and polis, Minnesota is the second northernmost U. S. state. Its isolated Northwest Angle in Lake of the Woods county is the part of the 48 contiguous states lying north of the 49th parallel. The state is part of the U. S. region known as the Upper Midwest and it shares a Lake Superior water border with Michigan and a land and water border with Wisconsin to the east. Iowa is to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota are to the west, with 86,943 square miles, or approximately 2.25 percent of the United States, Minnesota is the 12th-largest state. Minnesota has some of the Earths oldest rocks, gneisses that are about 3.6 billion years old. About 2.7 billion years ago, basaltic lava poured out of cracks in the floor of the primordial ocean, the roots of these volcanic mountains and the action of Precambrian seas formed the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. Following a period of volcanism 1, in more recent times, massive ice sheets at least one kilometer thick ravaged the landscape of the state and sculpted its terrain. The Wisconsin glaciation left 12,000 years ago and these glaciers covered all of Minnesota except the far southeast, an area characterized by steep hills and streams that cut into the bedrock. This area is known as the Driftless Zone for its absence of glacial drift, much of the remainder of the state outside the northeast has 50 feet or more of glacial till left behind as the last glaciers retreated. Gigantic Lake Agassiz formed in the northwest 13,000 years ago and its bed created the fertile Red River valley, and its outflow, glacial River Warren, carved the valley of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi downstream from Fort Snelling. Minnesota is geologically quiet today, it experiences earthquakes infrequently, the states high point is Eagle Mountain at 2,301 feet, which is only 13 miles away from the low of 601 feet at the shore of Lake Superior. Notwithstanding dramatic local differences in elevation, much of the state is a rolling peneplain. Two major drainage divides meet in Minnesotas northeast in rural Hibbing, forming a triple watershed, precipitation can follow the Mississippi River south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saint Lawrence Seaway east to the Atlantic Ocean, or the Hudson Bay watershed to the Arctic Ocean
