1.
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
2.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
3.
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
4.
Yahoo!
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Yahoo Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 2,1995, Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early internet era in the 1990s. Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, Google Employee number 20 and it is globally known for its Web portal, search engine Yahoo. Search, and related services, including Yahoo, answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports, and its social media website. It is one of the most popular sites in the United States, according to news sources, roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo websites every month. Yahoo itself claims it attracts more than half a billion consumers every month in more than 30 languages, in January 1994 Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, when they created a website named Jerry and Davids guide to the World Wide Web. The site was a directory of websites, organized in a hierarchy. In March 1994, Jerry and Davids Guide to the World Wide Web was renamed Yahoo, the yahoo. com domain was created on January 18,1995. The word yahoo is a backronym for Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle or Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, the term hierarchical described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the definition of a yahoo, rude, unsophisticated. This meaning derives from the Yahoo race of beings from Gullivers Travels. Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo added a web portal. By 1998, Yahoo was the most popular starting point for web users and it also made many high-profile acquisitions. Its stock price skyrocketed during the bubble, Yahoo stocks closing at an all-time high of $118.75 a share on January 3,2000. However, after the bubble burst, it reached a post-bubble low of $8.11 on September 26,2001. Yahoo began using Google for search in 2000, over the next four years, it developed its own search technologies, which it began using in 2004. In response to Googles Gmail, Yahoo began to offer unlimited email storage in 2007, the company struggled through 2008, with several large layoffs. In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made a bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion
5.
Hip hop music
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It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements, MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling beats or bass lines from records, while often used to refer solely to rapping, hip hop more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. Hip hops early evolution occurred as sampling technology and drum machines became available and affordable. Turntablist techniques such as scratching and beatmatching developed along with the breaks and Jamaican toasting, rapping developed as a vocal style in which the artist speaks or chants along rhythmically with an instrumental or synthesized beat. The Sugarhill Gangs 1979 song Rappers Delight is widely regarded to be the first hip hop record to gain popularity in the mainstream. The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles, prior to the 1980s, hip hop music was largely confined within the United States. However, during the 1980s, it began to spread to scenes in dozens of countries. New school hip hop was the wave of hip hop music, originating in 1983–84 with the early records of Run-D. M. C. The Golden age hip hop period was a period between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. Notable artists from this era include the Juice Crew, Public Enemy, & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions and KRS-One, EPMD, Slick Rick, Beastie Boys, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop that often focuses on the violent lifestyles, in the West Coast hip hop style, G-funk dominated mainstream hip hop for several years during the 1990s. I. G. In the 1990s, hip hop began to diversify with other regional styles emerging, such as Southern rap, at the same time, hip hop continued to be assimilated into other genres of popular music, examples being Neo soul and nu metal. Hip hop became a pop music genre in the mid-1990s. The popularity of hip hop music continued through the 2000s, with hip hop influences also increasingly finding their way into mainstream pop, the United States also saw the success of regional styles such as crunk, a Southern genre that emphasized the beats and music more than the lyrics. Starting in 2005, sales of hip hop music in the United States began to severely wane, during the mid-2000s, alternative hip hop secured a place in the mainstream, due in part to the crossover success of artists such as OutKast and Kanye West. Creation of the hip hop is often credited to Keith Cowboy, rapper with Grandmaster Flash. However, Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was known as disco rap. Cowboy later worked the hip hop cadence into a part of his stage performance, the first use of the term in print was in The Village Voice, by Steven Hager, later author of a 1984 history of hip hop
6.
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
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The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. While veterans benefits have been provided since the Revolutionary War, the Veterans Administration itself was founded in 1930, with a total 2009 budget of about $87. In 2012, the budget for VA was $132 billion. VA2014 budget request for 2014 was $152.7 billion and this included $66.5 billion in discretionary resources and $86.1 billion in mandatory funding. The discretionary budget request represented an increase of $2.7 billion, or 4.3 percent and it is administered by the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The Continental Congress of 1776 encouraged enlistments during the American Revolutionary War by providing pensions for soldiers who were disabled, direct medical and hospital care given to veterans in the early days of the U. S. was provided by the individual states and communities. In 1811, the first domiciliary and medical facility for veterans was authorized by the federal government, in the 19th century, the nations veterans assistance program was expanded to include benefits and pensions not only for veterans, but also their widows and dependents. After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, many state veterans homes were established, since domiciliary care was available at all state veterans homes, incidental medical and hospital treatment was provided for all injuries and diseases, whether or not of service origin. Indigent and disabled veterans of the Civil War, Indian Wars, Spanish–American War, Congress established a new system of veterans benefits when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Included were programs for disability compensation, insurance for servicepersons and veterans, the establishment of the Veterans Administration came in 1930 when Congress authorized the president to consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans. The three component agencies became bureaus within the Veterans Administration, brigadier General Frank T. Hines, who directed the Veterans Bureau for seven years, was named as the first Administrator of Veterans Affairs, a job he held until 1945. The close of World War II resulted in not only a vast increase in the veteran population, in addition, during the late 1940s, the VA had to contend with aging World War I veterans. During that time, the clientele of the VA increased almost fivefold with an addition of nearly 15,000,000 World War II veterans and approximately 4,000,000 World War I veterans. Prior to World War II, in response to scandals at the Veterans Bureau, programs that cared for veterans were centralized in Washington and this centralization caused delays and bottlenecks as the agency tried to serve the World War II veterans. As a result, the VA went through a decentralization process, the World War II GI Bill was signed into law on June 22,1944, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The United States government began serious consolidated services to veterans in 1930, the GI Bill of Rights, which was passed in 1944, had more effect on the American way of life than any other legislation - with the possible exception of the Homestead Act. VA health care facilities provide a spectrum of medical, surgical. The responsibilities and benefits programs of the Veterans Administration grew enormously during the six decades
7.
Bing (search engine)
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Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsofts previous search engines, MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Bing provides a variety of search services, including web, video, image and map search products. Bing, Microsofts replacement for Live Search, was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28,2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, California, in July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo. announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo. Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012, the deal was altered in 2015, meaning Yahoo. was only required to use Bing for a majority of searches. In October 2011, Microsoft stated that they were working on new back-end search infrastructure with the goal of delivering faster, known as Tiger, the new index-serving technology had been incorporated into Bing globally since August that year. In May 2012, Microsoft announced another redesign of its engine that includes Sidebar. As of November 2015, Bing is the second largest search engine in the US with a volume of 20. 9%. Search, which Bing largely powers, has 12. 5%, Microsoft originally launched MSN Search in the third quarter of 1998, using search results from Inktomi. It consisted of an engine, index, and web crawler. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own search engine results. The upgrade started as a program in November 2004. Image search was powered by a party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to compete in the market. The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8,2006, the new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta. On March 21,2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsofts Platform and Systems division. As part of change, Live Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter. A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsofts search offerings were made under the Live Search branding, soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31,2008
8.
Ask.com
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Ask. com is a question answering-focused e-business and web search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design, Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves. com website around that core engine. In late 2010, facing competition from more popular search engines. Douglas Leeds was elevated from president to CEO in 2010, Ask. com has been criticized for its browser toolbar, which has been accused of behaving like malware due to its bundling with other software and the difficulty of its uninstallation. Three venture capital firms, Highland Capital Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Ask. com is currently owned by InterActiveCorp under the NASDAQ symbol NASDAQ, IAC. Ask. coms corporate headquarters are located at 555 City Center, in the Oakland City Center development in downtown Oakland, Ask. com was originally known as Ask Jeeves, Jeeves being the name of a gentlemans gentleman, or valet, fetching answers to any question asked. The character was based on Bertie Woosters valet Jeeves, in the works of P. G. Wodehouse. In movies, the Jeeves character was played by Arthur Treacher, the original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language, as well as by traditional keyword searching. The current Ask. com still supports this, with support for math, dictionary, in 2005 the company announced plans to phase out Jeeves and on 27 February 2006, the character disappeared from Ask. com. He was stated to be going into retirement, however, the UK/Ireland edition of the website prominently brought the character back in 2009. IAC owns a variety of sites including country-specific sites for UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, on 5 June 2007, Ask. com relaunched with a 3D look. On 16 May 2006, Ask implemented a Binoculars Site Preview into its search results, on search results pages, the Binoculars let searchers have a sneak peek of the page they could visit with a mouse-over activating a pop-up screenshot. In December 2007, Ask released the AskEraser feature, allowing users to opt-out from tracking of search queries and IP and they also vowed to erase this data after 18 months if the AskEraser option is not set. HTTP cookies must be enabled for AskEraser to function, on 4 July 2008, InterActiveCorp announced the acquisition of Lexico Publishing Group, which owns Dictionary. com, Thesaurus. com, and Reference. com. On 26 July 2010, Ask. com released a closed-beta Q&A service, the service was released to the public on 29 July 2010. Ask. com launched its mobile Q&A app for the iPhone in late 2010, Ask. com now reaches 100 million global users per month through its website with more than 2 million downloads of its flagship mobile app. The company has released additional apps spun out of its Q&A experience, including Ask Around in 2011. In 2010, Ask. com abandoned the search industry, with the loss of 130 search engineering jobs, formerly the direct sales engine for Ask. com, Ask Sponsored Listings is no longer available, having merged with Sendori, an operating business of IAC, in 2011
9.
Alessia Cara
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Alessia Caracciolo, professionally known as Alessia Cara, is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She is signed to EP Entertainment and Def Jam Recordings and released her single, Here, from the debut studio album, Know-It-All. A sleeper hit, the reached the top five in the United States. Prior to her work for Def Jam, she produced acoustic covers on YouTube, in 2016, Cara found greater success in the release of her third single, Scars to Your Beautiful. The single reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, in 2017, Cara collaborated with producer Zedd to create the single Stay, which has since reached number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. Caracciolo is from Brampton, Ontario where she attended Cardinal Ambrozic Catholic Secondary School and she is of Italian descent from Calabria, her father was born in Canada to Italian parents, and her mother is an Italian immigrant. As a child, she wrote poetry and did theatre and she began playing guitar at the age of 10 and taught herself how to play various songs. At the age of 13 she began her own YouTube channel where she posted covers of songs that she performed, Caras singing and writing style has been compared to singers such as Lorde, Amy Winehouse, Rihanna, and Norah Jones. She also appeared on radio stations, including 15 Seconds of Fame on Mix 104.1 Boston. In 2015, she signed a deal with EP Entertainment imprint, in April 2015, Cara released her official debut single, through Def Jam. Titled Here, it was described as a song for everyone who secretly hates parties by MTV, produced by Pop & Oak and Sebastian Kole, the song is her personal experience with going to a party before realizing how much she hated parties. On May 5,2015, the song was chosen as the track by Spin. The song was named one of the best Canadian songs of April by Complex. Rolling Stone later ranked Here at number 21 on its year-end list of the 50 best songs of 2015, on July 29,2015, Cara made her first-televised debut performing her single, Here on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Here then received a nomination for the Original Song at the Streamy Award and she released the EP Four Pink Walls, containing five songs, including her debut single, Here. Her debut album Know-It-All was released on November 13,2015 and she was short-listed for the BBC Music Sound of. Award for 2016 and finished as the runner-up, Cara was awarded as Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the 2016 Juno Awards. On March 7,2016, the video for Wild Things was released
