1.
Shiprock
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Shiprock is a monadnock rising nearly 1,583 feet above the high-desert plain of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, New Mexico, United States. Its peak elevation is 7,177 feet above sea level and it lies about 10.75 miles southwest of the town of Shiprock, which is named for the peak. Governed by the Navajo Nation, the formation is in the Four Corners region and plays a significant role in Navajo religion, myth, and tradition. It is located in the center of the occupied by the Ancient Pueblo People. Shiprock is a point of interest for rock climbers and photographers and has featured in several film productions. It is the most prominent landmark in northwestern New Mexico, the Navajo name for the peak, Tsé Bitʼaʼí, rock with wings or winged rock, refers to the legend of the great bird that brought the Navajo from the north to their present lands. The name Shiprock or Shiprock Peak or Ship Rock derives from the resemblance to an enormous 19th-century clipper ship. Americans first called the peak The Needle, a given to the topmost pinnacle by Captain J. F. McComb in 1860. United States Geological Survey maps indicate that the name Ship Rock dates from the 1870s, Shiprock is composed of fractured volcanic breccia and black dikes of igneous rock called minette. It is the remnant of the throat of a volcano. The rock probably was originally formed 2, 500–3,000 feet below the Earths surface, wall-like sheets of minette, known as dikes, radiate away from the central formation. Radiometric age determinations of the minette establish that these volcanic rocks solidified about 27 million years ago, Shiprock is in the northeastern part of the Navajo Volcanic Field—a field that includes intrusions and flows of minette and other unusual igneous rocks that formed about 25 million years ago. Agathla in Monument Valley is another prominent volcanic neck in this volcanic field, Shiprock and the surrounding land have religious and historical significance to the Navajo people. It is mentioned in many of their myths and legends, foremost is the peaks role as the agent that brought the Navajo to the southwest. According to one legend, after being transported from another place, one day, the peak was struck by lightning, obliterating the trail and leaving only a sheer cliff, and stranding the women and children on top to starve. The presence of people on the peak is forbidden for fear they might stir up the chį́įdii, Navajo legend puts the peak in a larger geographic context. Shiprock is said to be either a medicine pouch or a bow carried by the Goods of Value Mountain, the Chuska Mountains comprise the body, Chuska Peak is the head, the Carrizo Mountains are the legs, and Beautiful Mountain is the feet. Navajo legend has it that Bird Monsters nested on the peak, after Monster Slayer, elder of the Warrior Twins, destroyed Déélééd at Red Mesa, he killed two adult Bird Monsters at Shiprock and changed two young ones into an eagle and an owl
2.
Wissahickon Creek
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Wissahickon Creek is a tributary of the Schuylkill River in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, Pennsylvania in the United States. Wissahickon Creek rises in Montgomery County, runs approximately 23 miles passing through and its watershed covers about 64 square miles. Much of the creek now runs through or next to parkland, the beauty of this area attracted the attention of literary personages like Edgar Allan Poe and John Greenleaf Whittier. The gorge area is now part of the Fairmount Park system in Philadelphia, the name of the creek comes from the Lenape word wiessahitkonk, for catfish creek or stream of yellowish color. Whitpaine was a land owner in the days of William Penn. Industry sprang up along the Wissahickon not long after European settlement, a few of the dams built for the mills remain visible today. Though at first fairly tame, in its last 7 miles and its dramatic geography and dense forest attract thousands of walkers, riders, and bikers. The most popular trail for exploring the lower Wissahickon valley is Forbidden Drive and it received its familiar name in the 1920s when automobiles were first banned from the road. Bicyclists and equestrians may use Forbidden Drive without a permit, other trails in the area are more restricted, with some prohibiting cyclists or equestrians, and the others requiring a permit for bicyclists and equestrians. All users of the park are asked to stay on marked trails to protect against erosion, a paved path on the west bank connects the junction of Forbidden Drive and Lincoln Drive south to Ridge Avenue at the confluence of the Wissahickon and Schuylkill River. Forbidden Drive is also accessible at its midpoint at the Valley Green Inn, Valley Green Road can be reached from Springfield Avenue in Chestnut Hill, two blocks west of St. Martins Lane and the St. Martins railroad station on the Chestnut Hill West Line. Just above Valley Green, Wises Mill Road meets Forbidden Drive and he will thus strike the Wissahiccon, at one of its best reaches. Forbidden Drive ends at Northwestern Avenue after crossing Bells Mill Road, a number of trails climb out of the valley from Forbidden Drive to the upper trails which run along the precipitous walls of the valley. Many of these trails have been marked with colored blazes. The green blazed trail has been designated a multi-use trail approved for mountain bikers with permits, the blue blazed trail has been designated a hiking trail only. All trails in the Andorra Natural Area are prohibited to all bicycles, Devils Pool is an attraction best reached from Valley Green by crossing the stream and taking the footpath on the eastern bank, going downstream to the mouth of the Cresheim Creek. As the ravine widens into the Cresheim, the waters gather in a basin surrounded on either side by rocky outcroppings before flowing into the Wissahickon Creek, legend has it that the Native American Lenape tribes used this as a spiritual area. Although it is not legal due to levels of pollutants, Devils pool has become a popular area to swim, lounge
3.
Philadelphia
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In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia was one of the capitals in the Revolutionary War. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became an industrial center. It became a destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration. The areas many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational, with a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the center of activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States. The 67 National Historic Landmarks in the city helped account for the $10 billion generated by tourism, Philadelphia is the only World Heritage City in the United States. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon, the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are also called Delaware Indians and their territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people occasionally fought the Lenape, surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and United States independence pushed them further west, in the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the US state of Oklahoma, with communities living also in Wisconsin, Ontario. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony, in 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their defeat of the English colony of Maryland
4.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Biology
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Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, identification and taxonomy. Modern biology is a vast and eclectic field, composed of branches and subdisciplines. However, despite the broad scope of biology, there are certain unifying concepts within it that consolidate it into single, coherent field. In general, biology recognizes the cell as the unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity. It is also understood today that all organisms survive by consuming and transforming energy and by regulating their internal environment to maintain a stable, the term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, life and the suffix -λογία, -logia, study of. The Latin-language form of the term first appeared in 1736 when Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus used biologi in his Bibliotheca botanica, the first German use, Biologie, was in a 1771 translation of Linnaeus work. In 1797, Theodor Georg August Roose used the term in the preface of a book, karl Friedrich Burdach used the term in 1800 in a more restricted sense of the study of human beings from a morphological, physiological and psychological perspective. The science that concerns itself with these objects we will indicate by the biology or the doctrine of life. Although modern biology is a recent development, sciences related to. Natural philosophy was studied as early as the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, however, the origins of modern biology and its approach to the study of nature are most often traced back to ancient Greece. While the formal study of medicine back to Hippocrates, it was Aristotle who contributed most extensively to the development of biology. Especially important are his History of Animals and other works where he showed naturalist leanings, and later more empirical works that focused on biological causation and the diversity of life. Aristotles successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany that survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to the plant sciences, even into the Middle Ages. Scholars of the medieval Islamic world who wrote on biology included al-Jahiz, Al-Dīnawarī, who wrote on botany, biology began to quickly develop and grow with Anton van Leeuwenhoeks dramatic improvement of the microscope. It was then that scholars discovered spermatozoa, bacteria, infusoria, investigations by Jan Swammerdam led to new interest in entomology and helped to develop the basic techniques of microscopic dissection and staining. Advances in microscopy also had a impact on biological thinking. In the early 19th century, a number of biologists pointed to the importance of the cell. Thanks to the work of Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow, however, meanwhile, taxonomy and classification became the focus of natural historians
7.
Geology
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Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
8.
United States Secretary of the Interior
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The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the U. S. Department of the Interior. The Secretary also serves on and appoints the private citizens on the National Park Foundation board, the Secretary is a member of the Presidents Cabinet. The U. S. Department of the Interior should not be confused with the Ministries of the Interior as used in other countries. Ministries of the Interior in these other countries correspond primarily to the Department of Homeland Security in the U. S, Cabinet and secondarily to the Department of Justice. On December 13,2016, President-elect Donald Trump picked Ryan Zinke for the position of Interior Secretary, the most recent to die was William P. Clark, Jr. on August 10,2013. List of Secretaries of the Interior List of Secretaries of the Interior The Department of Everything Else, Highlights of Interior History
9.
Stewart Udall
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Stewart Lee Udall was an American politician and later, a federal government official. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy, born January 31,1920, in Saint Johns, Arizona, to Louisa Lee Udall and Levi Stewart Udall. He had five siblings, Inez, Elma, Morris, Eloise, as a young boy Stewart worked on the family farm in St. Johns. Stewart was remembered by his mother as a child with tremendous energy, Stewart Udall attended the University of Arizona for two years until World War II. He returned to the University of Arizona in 1946, where he attended law school, in 1947, Udall, along with his brother Mo, helped integrate the University of Arizona cafeteria. Mo and Stewart were respected student athletes and Mo was student body president, on their way to lunch at the Student Union one day, they saw a group of black students eating lunch outside the building. Black students were allowed to buy food in the cafeteria, but had to eat outside, when Mo and Stewart invited Morgan Maxwell Jr. a black freshman, to share their table in the cafeteria, it helped to calm some long-simmering racial issues surrounding segregation at the university. Udall received his law degree and was admitted to the Arizona bar in 1948 and he began his law practice in Tucson shortly thereafter. Udall became increasingly active in service, being elected to the School Board of Amphitheater Public Schools in Tucson in June 1951. As a school board member, he participated in desegregating the Amphitheater School District before the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, Udall was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives from Arizonas Second District in 1954. He served with distinction in the House for three terms on the Interior and Education and Labor committees, Udall served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Under his leadership, the Interior Department aggressively promoted an expansion of public lands. Marshall integrated the team in 1962, during Udalls tenure as Secretary of the Interior, in September 1962, he was summoned unexpectedly into a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev while on a tour of the Soviet Union. It was during this meeting that Khrushchev famously hinted at his secret deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba by telling Udall, now we can swat your ass. This was a prelude to the Cuban Missile Crisis, upon Udalls recommendation President Kennedy asked former U. S. Poet Laureate Robert Frost to read a poem at his inauguration. A pioneer of the movement, Udall warned of a conservation crisis in the 1960s with his best-selling book on environmental attitudes in the United States. In the book, he wrote about the dangers of pollution, overuse of natural resources, along with Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, The Quiet Crisis is credited with creating a consciousness in the country that led to the environmental movement
10.
American Samoa
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American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of Samoa. American Samoa consists of five islands and two coral atolls. The largest and most populous island is Tutuila, with the Manuʻa Islands, Rose Atoll, All islands except for Swains Island are part of the Samoan Islands, located west of the Cook Islands, north of Tonga, and some 300 miles south of Tokelau. To the west are the islands of the Wallis and Futuna group, the 2010 census showed a total population of 55,519 people. The total land area is 199 square kilometers, slightly more than Washington, American Samoa is the southernmost territory of the U. S. and one of two U. S. territories south of the Equator, along with the uninhabited Jarvis Island. Tuna products are the exports, and the main trading partner is the United States. American Samoa is noted for having the highest rate of enlistment of any U. S. state or territory. Most American Samoans are bilingual and can speak English and Samoan fluently, Samoan is the same language spoken in neighboring independent Samoa. Contact with Europeans began in the early 18th century, dutchman Jacob Roggeveen was the first known European to sight the Samoan Islands in 1722. This visit was followed by French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville who named them the Navigator Islands in 1768, contact was limited before the 1830s, when English missionaries and traders began arriving. The site of battle is called Massacre Bay. Mission work in the Samoas had begun in late 1830 when John Williams of the London Missionary Society arrived from the Cook Islands, by that time, the Samoans had gained a reputation for being savage and warlike, as violent altercations had occurred between natives and European visitors. In March 1889, an Imperial German naval force entered a village on Samoa, three American warships then entered the Apia harbor and prepared to engage the three German warships found there. Before any shots were fired, a typhoon wrecked both the American and German ships, a compulsory armistice was then called because of the lack of any warships. Forerunners to the Tripartite Convention of 1899 were the Washington Conference of 1887, the Treaty of Berlin of 1889, the following year, the USA formally occupied its portion, a smaller group of eastern islands, one of which contains the noted harbor of Pago Pago. The Navy secured a Deed of Cession of Tutuila in 1900, the territory became known as the US Naval Station Tutuila. On July 17,1911, the US Naval Station Tutuila, in 1918 during the final stages of World War I, the flu pandemic had taken its toll, spreading rapidly from country to country. The result of Poyers quick actions earned him the Navy Cross from the US Navy, with this distinction, American Samoans regarded Poyer as their hero for what he had done to prevent the deadly disease
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