1.
Salt Lake City
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Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and the most populous municipality of the U. S. state of Utah. With an estimated population of 190,884 in 2014, the city lies at the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo Combined Statistical Area. This region is a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along an approximately 120-mile segment of the Wasatch Front and it is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin. The city was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young, Isaac Morley, George Washington Bradley and numerous other Mormon followers, who extensively irrigated and cultivated the arid valley. Due to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named Great Salt Lake City—the word great was dropped from the name in 1868 by the 17th Utah Territorial Legislature. Today, however, less than half the population of Salt Lake City proper are members of the LDS Church. It was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913, Salt Lake City has since developed a strong outdoor recreation tourist industry based primarily on skiing, and hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. It is the banking center of the United States. Before Mormon settlement, the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. The land was treated by the United States as public domain, the first U. S. explorer in the Salt Lake area is believed to be Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845, the Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846. The first permanent settlements in the date to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints on July 24,1847. Upon arrival at the Salt Lake Valley, president of the church Brigham Young is recorded as stating, This is the right place, Brigham Young claimed to have seen the area in a vision prior to the wagon trains arrival. They found the broad valley empty of any human settlement, four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young designated the building site for the Salt Lake Temple, which would eventually become a famous Mormon and Salt Lake City landmark. The Salt Lake Temple, constructed on the block that would later be called Temple Square, construction started in 1853, and the temple was dedicated on 6 April 1893. The temple has become an icon for the city and serves as its centerpiece, in fact, the southeast corner of Temple Square is the initial point of reference for the Salt Lake Meridian, and for all addresses in the Salt Lake Valley. The Mormon pioneers organized a new state called Deseret and petitioned for its recognition in 1849, the United States Congress rebuffed the settlers in 1850 and established the Utah Territory, vastly reducing its size, and designated Fillmore as its capital city. Great Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the capital in 1858
2.
University of Utah
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The University of Utah is a public coeducational space-grant research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. As the states flagship university, the university more than 100 undergraduate majors. The university is classified in the highest ranking, R-1, Doctoral Universities – Highest Research Activity by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the Carnegie Classification also considers the university as selective, which is its second most selective admissions category. Quinney College of Law and the School of Medicine, Utahs only medical school, as of Fall 2015, there are 23,909 undergraduate students and 7,764 graduate students, for an enrollment total of 31,673. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret and it received its current name in 1892, four years before Utah attained statehood, and moved to its current location in 1900. The university ranks among the top 50 U. S. universities by total research expenditures with over $486 million spent in 2014, in addition, the universitys Honors College has been reviewed among 50 leading national Honors Colleges in the U. S. The university has also ranked the 12th most ideologically diverse university in the country. The universitys athletic teams, the Utes, participate in NCAA Division I athletics as a member of the Pac-12 Conference and its football team has received national attention for winning the 2005 Fiesta Bowl and the 2009 Sugar Bowl. A Board of Regents was organized by Brigham Young to establish a university in the Salt Lake Valley, early classes were held in private homes or wherever space could be found. The university closed in 1853 due to lack of funds and lack of feeder schools, the university moved out of the council house into the Union Academy building in 1876 and into Union Square in 1884. Additional Fort Douglas land has granted to the university over the years. Upon his death in 1900, Dr. John R. Park bequeathed his fortune to the university. One third of the faculty resigned in protest of these dismissals, the controversy was largely resolved when Kingsbury resigned in 1916, but university operations were again interrupted by World War I, and later The Great Depression and World War II. Student enrollment dropped to a low of 3,418 during the last year of World War II, ray Olpin made substantial additions to campus following the war, and enrollment reached 12,000 by the time he retired in 1964. Growth continued in the decades as the university developed into a research center for fields such as computer science. During the 2002 Winter Olympics, the university hosted the Olympic Village, the University of Utah Asia Campus opened as an international branch campus in the Incheon Global Campus in Songdo, Incheon, South Korea in 2014. Three other European and American universities are also participating, the Asia Campus was funded by the South Korean government. Campus takes up 1,534 acres, including the Health Sciences complex, Research Park and it is located on the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley, close to the Wasatch Range and approximately 2 miles east of downtown Salt Lake City
3.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
4.
Utah Utes football
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The Utah Utes football program is a college football team that currently competes in the Pac-12 Conference of the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I and represents the University of Utah. The Utah college football program began in 1892 and has played games at the current site of Rice–Eccles Stadium since 1927. They have won conference championships in five conferences during their history, and, as of the end of the 2016 season, they have a cumulative record of 661 wins,453 losses. The Utes have a record of 16–4 in bowl games, among Utahs bowl appearances are two games from the Bowl Championship Series, the Fiesta Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. In the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, Utah defeated the Pittsburgh Panthers 35–7, during those seasons, Utah was a member of the Mountain West Conference, whose champion does not receive an automatic invitation to a BCS bowl. The Utes were the first team from a conference without a bid to play in a BCS bowl game—colloquially known as being a BCS Buster—and the first BCS Buster to play in a second BCS Bowl. During Utahs first year in 1892, the Utes won one game, the first two games were against the local YMCA, but no one knows when these contests took place. Utahs first game against another college, Utah Agricultural College, was scheduled for Thanksgiving Day, Utah did not field a team in 1893, but resumed playing in 1894. One other season in Utahs history has been cancelled, in 1918 Utah did not field a team due to World War I. Utah had its first sustained success when, in 1904, it hired Joe Maddock to coach football, as well as basketball, during his six seasons, he coached the football team to a record of 28–9–1. The school enthusiastically embraced the former Michigan Wolverine, in 1905, the Galveston Daily News reported, He has the Mormons all football crazy. He has written here to say that his team now holds the championship of Utah, Montana, Wyoming, when he won the hard-fought battle with Colorado College a week ago the Salt Lake City papers said, Maddock is a new way of saying success. The great Michigan tackle has taken boys who never saw a football before, in early 1910, Maddock retired from coaching Fred Bennion coached the Utes from 1910 to 1913. 1910 was also Utahs first season as a member of a conference, Bennion finished with a record of 16–8–3 during his four seasons. Nelson Norgren finished with a record of 13–11 during his years from 1913 to 1917. Utah did not field a team for the 1918 season because of a shortage of players due to World War I, when play resumed in 1919, Thomas Fitzpatrick started his football coaching career. He continued as coach until end of the 1924 season. His teams finished with a record of 23–17–3, Utah won their first conference championships in these early years, in 1922
5.
Major League Soccer
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Major League Soccer is a mens professional soccer league, sanctioned by U. S. Soccer, that represents the sports highest level in both the United States and Canada. MLS constitutes one of the professional sports leagues of the United States. The league comprises 22 teams—19 in the U. S. and 3 in Canada, the MLS regular season runs from March to October, with each team playing 34 games, the team with the best record is awarded the Supporters Shield. The postseason includes twelve teams competing in the MLS Cup Playoffs through November and December, culminating in the championship game, MLS teams also play in other domestic competitions against teams from other divisions in the U. S. Open Cup and in the Canadian Championship. MLS teams also compete against continental rivals in the CONCACAF Champions League, Major League Soccer was founded in 1993 as part of the United States successful bid to host the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The first season took place in 1996 with ten teams, MLS experienced financial and operational struggles in its first few years, The league lost millions of dollars, teams played in mostly empty American football stadiums, and two teams folded in 2002. Instead of operating as an association of independently owned teams, MLS is an entity in which each team is owned and controlled by the leagues investors. The investor-operators control their teams as owners control teams in other leagues, MLS headquarters is located in New York City. Major League Soccers regular season runs from March to October, teams are divided into the Eastern and Western Conferences. Teams play 34 games in a schedule,23 matches against teams within their conference. Midway through the season, teams break for the annual All-Star Game, at the end of the regular season, the team with the highest point total is awarded the Supporters Shield. While MLS has looked into changing to a format, there are no current plans to do so. If the league were to change its schedule, a break would be needed, especially with several teams in colder climates. It would also have to compete with the more popular National Football League, National Hockey League, MLS teams also play in other competitions. Every year, up to five MLS teams play in the CONCACAF Champions League against other clubs from the CONCACAF region, two U. S. -based MLS teams qualify based on MLS regular-season results, the winner of the Western conference and the winner of the Eastern conference. The third U. S. team to qualify is the winner of the MLS Cup. A fourth U. S. -based MLS team can qualify via the U. S. Open Cup, Canadian MLS clubs play against lower division Canadian clubs in the Canadian Championship for the one Champions League spot allocated to Canada. MLSs 22 teams are divided between the Eastern and Western Conferences, each club is allowed up to 28 players on its first team roster
6.
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
7.
College football
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It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. No minor league farm organizations exist in American football and it is in college football where a players performance directly impacts his chances of playing professional football. The best collegiate players will declare for the professional draft after 3 to 4 years of collegiate competition. Those not selected can still attempt to land an NFL roster spot as a free agent. Even after the emergence of the professional National Football League, college football remained extremely popular throughout the U. S, in many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests. This allows them to more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium. College athletes, unlike players in the NFL, are not permitted by the NCAA to be paid salaries, colleges are only allowed to provide non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books. Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as football, by the 1840s, students at Rugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known as Rugby football. The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges, the first documented gridiron football match was a game played at University College, a college of the University of Toronto, November 9,1861. One of the participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was William Mulock, a football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear. In 1864, at Trinity College, also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland, modern Canadian football is widely regarded as having originated with a game played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional mob football played in England. The games remained largely unorganized until the 19th century, when games of football began to be played on college campuses. Each school played its own variety of football, Princeton University students played a game called ballown as early as 1820. A Harvard tradition known as Bloody Monday began in 1827, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes, in 1860, both the town police and the college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go. The Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a figure called Football Fightum. The authorities held firm and it was a dozen years before football was again played at Harvard. Dartmouth played its own version called Old division football, the rules of which were first published in 1871, all of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities
8.
Stadium
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Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stade at Olympia, where the word stadium originated. In modern times, a stadium is officially a stadium when at least 50% of the capacity is an actual building. If the majority of the capacity is formed by grasshills, the venue is not officially considered a stadium. Most of the stadiums with a capacity of at least 10,000 are used for football, or soccer. A large amount of sports venues are also used for concerts. Stadium is the Latin form of the Greek word stadion, a measure of length equalling the length of 600 human feet, as feet are of variable length the exact length of a stadion depends on the exact length adopted for 1 foot at a given place and time. Although in modern terms 1 stadion =600 ft, in a historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller. The equivalent Roman measure, the stadium, had a similar length — about 185 m -, the English use of stadium comes from the tiered infrastructure surrounding a Roman track of such length. Most dictionaries provide for both stadiums and stadia as valid English plurals, although etymological purists sometimes apply stadia only to measures of length in excess of 1 stadium. The oldest known stadium is the one in Olympia, in the western Peloponnese, Greece, initially the Games consisted of a single event, a sprint along the length of the stadium. The stadion, a measure of length, may be related to the Stadium, Greek and Roman stadiums have been found in numerous ancient cities, perhaps the most famous being the Stadium of Domitian, in Rome. The excavated and refurbished ancient Panathenaic stadium hosted a version of the Olympic Games in 1870,1875,1896 and 1906. The excavation and refurbishment of the stadium was part of the legacy of the Greek national benefactor Evangelos Zappas, the first stadiums to be built in the modern era were basic facilities, designed for the single purpose of fitting as many spectators in as possible. One such early stadium was the Lansdowne Road Stadium, the brainchild of Henry Dunlop, banned from locating sporting events at Trinity College, Dunlop built the stadium in 1872. Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, other early stadiums from this period in the UK include the Stamford Bridge stadium and Anfield stadium. In the U. S. However, many of these caught fire. All of the 19th-century wooden parks were replaced, some only a few years. Goodison Park was the first purpose-built football stadium in the world, walton-based building firm Kelly brothers were instructed to erect two uncovered stands that could each accommodate 4,000 spectators
9.
Western United States
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The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West, the Far West, or simply the West, traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because European settlement in the U. S. expanded westward after its founding, prior to about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. Since then, the frontier moved westward and eventually lands west of the Mississippi River came to be referred to as the West. The West contains several major biomes, the Western U. S. is the largest region of the country, covering more than half the land area of the United States. Given this expansive and diverse geography it is no wonder the region is difficult to specifically define, a majority of the historian respondents placed the eastern boundary of the West east of the Census definition out on the eastern edge of the Great Plains or on the Mississippi River. The survey respondents as a whole showed just how little agreement there was on the boundaries of the West, within a region as large and diverse as the Western United States, smaller areas with more closely shared demographics and geography have developed as subregions. Meanwhile, the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington can be considered part of the Northwest or Pacific Northwest, West Texas in the Chihuahuan Desert may be considered as part of the Western U. S. Fort Worth has long laid claim to be Where the West Begins, the West is still one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States with 49.5 inhabitants per square mile. Only Texas with 78.0 inhabitants/sq mi, Washington with 86.0 inhabitants/sq mi. and California with 213.4 inhabitants/sq mi. exceed the national average of 77.98 inhabitants/sq mi. The entire Western region has also strongly influenced by European, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Native Americans. African and European Americans, however, continue to wield a stronger political influence because of the rates of citizenship and voting among Asians. The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U. S. particularly in the reservations in the Mountain. The Western United States has a sex ratio than any other region in the United States. Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became an issue, agencies of the federal government own. National parks are reserved for activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, logging. The largest city in the region is Los Angeles, located on the West Coast, Other West Coast cities include San Diego, San Bernardino, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. Prominent cities in the Mountain States include Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boise, El Paso, and Cheyenne. Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which and they collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean
10.
2002 Winter Olympics
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Approximately 2,400 athletes from 78 nations participated in 78 events in fifteen disciplines, held throughout 165 sporting sessions. The 2002 Winter Olympics and the 2002 Paralympic Games were both organized by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Utah became the fifth state in the United States to host the Olympic Games, and the 2002 Winter Olympics are the most recent games to be held in the United States. These were the first Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Jacques Rogge, the opening ceremony was held on February 8,2002, and sporting competitions were held up until the closing ceremony on February 24,2002. Production for both ceremonies was designed by Seven Nielsen, and music for both ceremonies was directed by Mark Watters, Salt Lake City became the most populous area ever to have hosted the Winter Olympics, although the two subsequent host cities populations were larger. Following a trend, the 2002 Olympic Winter Games were also larger than all prior Winter Games, with 10 more events than the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The Salt Lake Games faced a scandal and some local opposition during the bid. Nevertheless, from sporting and business standpoints, this was one of the most successful Winter Olympiads in history, over 2 billion viewers watched more than 13 billion viewer-hours. The Games were also financially successful raising more money with fewer sponsors than any prior Olympic Games, the surplus was used to create the Utah Athletic Foundation, which maintains and operates many of the remaining Olympic venues. U. S. Federal subsidies amounted to $1.3 billion, Salt Lake City was chosen over Québec City, Canada, Sion, Switzerland, and Östersund, Sweden, on June 16,1995, at the 104th IOC Session in Budapest, Hungary. The 1976 Winter Olympics were ultimately awarded to Innsbruck, Austria, 1Because of the no-commercialization policy of the Olympics, the Delta Center, now the Vivint Smart Home Arena, was labeled as the Salt Lake Ice Center, causing some confusion for visitors. The Oxford Olympics Study established the outturn cost of the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics at USD2.5 billion in 2015-dollars and cost overrun at 24% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is, operational costs incurred by the committee for the purpose of staging the Games. The competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, average cost for Winter Games since 1960 is USD3.1 billion, average cost overrun is 142%. A total 78 National Olympic Committees sent athletes to the Salt Lake City games, cameroon, Hong Kong, Nepal, Tajikistan, and Thailand participated in their first Winter Olympic Games. There were 78 events contested in 7 sports, in the following calendar for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, each blue box represents an event competition, such as a qualification round, on that day. The yellow boxes represent days during which medal-awarding finals for a sport are held, the number in each box represents the number of finals that were contested on that day. All dates are in Mountain Standard Time Host country To sort this table by nation, total medal count, or any other column, several medals records were set and/or tied. They included, Norway tied the Soviet Union at the 1976 Winter Olympics for most gold medals at a Winter Olympics, germany set a record for most total medals at a Winter Olympics, with 36
