The Northwest Ordinance enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. It created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains, between British North America and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south; the upper Mississippi River formed the territory's western boundary. In the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolutionary War, Great Britain yielded this region to the United States. However, the Confederation Congress faced numerous problems gaining control of the land. S. treasury. The ordinance superseded the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the Land Ordinance of 1785. Designed to serve as a blueprint for the development and settlement of the region, what the 1787 ordinance lacked was a strong central government to implement it; this need was addressed shortly thereafter, when the new federal government came into existence in 1789.

The 1st United States Congress reaffirmed the 1787 ordinance, with slight modifications, renewed it through the Northwest Ordinance of 1789. Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, it established the precedent by which the Federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation, it set legislative precedent with regard to American public domain lands. The U. S. Supreme Court recognized the authority of the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 within the applicable Northwest Territory as constitutional in Strader v. Graham, but did not extend the Ordinance to cover the respective states once they were admitted to the Union; the prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the geographic divide between slave states and free states from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River.

It helped set the stage for political conflicts over slavery at the federal level in the 19th century until the Civil War. The territory was acquired by Great Britain from France following victory in the Seven Years' War and the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Great Britain took over the Ohio Country, as its eastern portion was known, but a few months closed it to new European settlement by the Royal Proclamation of 1763; the Crown tried to restrict settlement of the thirteen colonies between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, which raised colonial tensions among those who wanted to move west. With the colonials' victory in the American Revolutionary War and signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the United States claimed the territory, as well as the areas south of the Ohio; the territories were subject to overlapping and conflicting claims of the states of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia dating from their colonial past. The British were active in some of the border area until after the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812.

The region had long been desired for expansion by colonists. The states were encouraged to settle their claims by the US government's de facto opening of the area to settlement following the defeat of Great Britain. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, a delegate from Virginia, proposed that the states should relinquish their particular claims to all the territory west of the Appalachians, the area should be divided into new states of the Union. Jefferson's proposal to create a federal domain through state cessions of western lands was derived from earlier proposals dating back to 1776 and debates about the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson proposed creating ten rectangular states from the territory, suggested names for the new states: Cherronesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Pelisipia, Washington and Saratoga; the Congress of the Confederation modified the proposal, passing it as the Land Ordinance of 1784. This ordinance established the example that would become the basis for the Northwest Ordinance three years later.

The 1784 ordinance was criticized by George Washington in 1785 and James Monroe in 1786. Monroe convinced Congress to reconsider the proposed state boundaries. Other politicians questioned the 1784 ordinance's plan for organizing governments in new states, worried that the new states' small sizes would undermine the original states' power in Congress. Other events such as the reluctance of states south of the Ohio River to cede their western claims resulted in a narrowed geographic focus; when passed in New York in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance showed the influence of Jefferson. It called for dividing the territory into gridded townships, so that once the lands were surveyed, they could be sold to individuals and speculative land companies; this would provide both a new source of federal government revenue and an orderly pattern for future settlement. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the concept of fee simple ownership, by which ownership was in perpetuity with unlimited power to sell or give it away.

This was called the "first guarantee of freedom of contrac

The history of Oldham is one of dramatic change, from obscure Pennine hamlet to preeminent mill town and textile processing capital of the world. Oldham's industrial history includes hatting, coal mining, structural engineering, mechanical engineering, textile machinery manufacture and cotton spinning - for which the town is most noted. Oldham has been described as the "most prodigious" mill town in Lancashire, the "one that grew the quickest, from most insignificant beginnings, the cotton spinning capital of the world."Since the mid-20th century, Oldham has seen the demise of its textile industry, the troubled integration of new cultural traditions and religions. With respect to the ensuing depression that followed Oldham's slump in textile manufacture, one author remarked that "when the fall came, it was the town that crashed the hardest." The earliest known evidence of a human presence in what is now Oldham is attested by the discovery of Neolithic flint arrow-heads and workings found at Werneth and Beesom Hill, implying habitation 7–10,000 years ago.

Evidence of Roman and Celtic activity is confirmed by an ancient Roman road and Bronze age archaeological relics found at various sites within the town. Though Anglo-Saxons occupied territory around the area centuries earlier, Oldham as a permanent, named place of dwelling, is believed to date from 865, when Danish invaders established a settlement called Aldehulme. Unmentioned in the Domesday Book, Oldham during the Middle Ages is believed to have been nothing but a mere scattering of small and insignificant settlements spread across the moorland and dirt tracks which linked Manchester to York; however Oldham does appear in legal documents from this time, invariably recorded as territory under minor ruling families and barons. In the 13th century, Oldham was documented as a manor held from The Crown by a family surnamed Oldham, whose seat was at Werneth Hall, it was this family which may have produced one of the greatest benefactors to education for the nation. Richard de Oldham was recorded as lord of the manor of Werneth/Oldham.

His daughter and heiress, married John de Cudworth, from whom descended the Cudworth family of Werneth Hall who were successive lords of the manor of Werneth/Oldham. A Member of this family was James I's Chaplain Ralph Cudworth; the Cudworths remained lords of the manor until their sale of the estate to Sir Ralph Assheton of Middleton. Much of Oldham's history is concerned with textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. Oldham's soils were too thin and poor to sustain crop growing, so for decades prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade. In the 17th century there were in Oldham various thriving crafts and trades chiefly devoted to cloth-making and linen-making on a domestic basis, it was not until the last quarter of the 18th century that Oldham changed from being a cottage industry township producing garments via domestic manual labour, to a sprawling industrial metropolis of textile factories.

The climate and topography of Oldham were unrelenting constraints upon the social and economic activities of the human inhabitants. Located 700 feet above sea level with no major river or visible natural resources, Oldham had poor geographic attributes compared with other settlements for investors and their engineers; as a result, Oldham played no part in the initial period of the Industrial Revolution, although it did become seen as obvious territory to industrialise because of its convenient position between the labour forces of Manchester and southwest Yorkshire. Cotton spinning and milling were introduced to Oldham when its first mill, Lees Hall, was built by William Clegg in about 1778, the beginning of a spiralling process of urbanisation and socioeconomic transformation. Within a year, 11 other mills had been constructed, by 1818 there were 19 – not a large number in comparison with other local settlements; the first steam engine for Oldham went into operation in 1794. Oldham's small local population was increased by the mass migration of workers from its outlying villages, resulting in a population increase from just over 12,000 in 1801 to 137,000 in 1901.

The speed of this urban growth meant that Oldham, with little pre-industrial history to speak of, was born as a factory town. Oldham became the world's manufacturing centre for cotton spinning in the second half of the 19th century. In 1851, over 30% of Oldham's population was employed within the textile sector, compared to 5% across Great Britain, it overtook the major urban centres of Manchester and Bolton as the result of a mill building boom in the 1860s and 1870s, a period during which Oldham became the most productive cotton-spinning town in the world. By 1911 there were 16.4 million spindles in Oldham, compared with a total of 58 million in the United Kingdom and 143.5 million in the world. At its peak, there were over operating night and day. Oldham was hit hard by the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861–1865, when supplies of raw cotton from the United States were cut off. Wholly reliant upon the textile industry, the cotton famine created chronic unemployment in the town. By 1863 a committee had been formed, with aid from central government, land was purchased with the intention of employing local co

The Bölkow Bo 102 Helitrainer was an unusual ground-based helicopter training aid, developed and built by Bölkow of Germany in the late-1950s. Designed to be mounted on a swivelling captive rig the Bo 102 allowed trainee pilots to practise procedures such as engine starting, rotor engagement and manipulation of the flight controls. Many of the Bo 102's components, including the single-bladed fibre-glass main rotor were used in the company's next design, the Bo 103. Preserved examples of the Bo 102 are on public display at the Hubschraubermuseum Bückeburg, the Helicopter Museum,Classic Rotors Helicopter Museum, California and in Rota, Spain. General characteristics Crew: One Main rotor diameter: 6.6 m Main rotor area: 34.8 m2 Gross weight: 700 kg Performance Armament Related development Bölkow Bo 103 Related lists List of rotorcraft Airbus early history 1920–1990