Boxing
Boxing is a combat sport in which two people wearing protective gloves, throw punches at each other for a predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring. Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and is a common fixture in most international games—it has its own World Championships. Boxing is overseen by a referee over a series of one- to three-minute intervals called rounds; the result is decided when an opponent is deemed incapable to continue by a referee, is disqualified for breaking a rule, or resigns by throwing in a towel. If a fight completes all of its allocated rounds, the victor is determined by judges' scorecards at the end of the contest. In the event that both fighters gain equal scores from the judges, professional bouts are considered a draw. In Olympic boxing, because a winner must be declared, judges award the content to one fighter on technical criteria. While humans have fought in hand-to-hand combat since the dawn of human history, the earliest evidence of fist-fighting sporting contests date back to the ancient Near East in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.
The earliest evidence of boxing rules date back to Ancient Greece, where boxing was established as an Olympic game in 688 BC. Boxing evolved from 16th- and 18th-century prizefights in Great Britain, to the forerunner of modern boxing in the mid-19th century with the 1867 introduction of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules; the earliest known depiction of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the 3rd millennium BC. Depictions from the 2nd millennium BC are found in reliefs from the Mesopotamian nations of Assyria and Babylonia, in Hittite art from Asia Minor. A relief sculpture from Egyptian Thebes shows both spectators; these early Middle-Eastern and Egyptian depictions showed contests where fighters were either bare-fisted or had a band supporting the wrist. The earliest evidence of fist fighting with the use of gloves can be found on Minoan Crete. Various types of boxing existed in ancient India; the earliest references to musti-yuddha come from classical Vedic epics such as the Ramayana and Rig Veda.
The Mahabharata describes two combatants boxing with clenched fists and fighting with kicks, finger strikes, knee strikes and headbutts. Duels were fought to the death. During the period of the Western Satraps, the ruler Rudradaman - in addition to being well-versed in "the great sciences" which included Indian classical music, Sanskrit grammar, logic - was said to be an excellent horseman, elephant rider and boxer; the Gurbilas Shemi, an 18th-century Sikh text, gives numerous references to musti-yuddha. In Ancient Greece boxing was enjoyed consistent popularity. In Olympic terms, it was first introduced in the 23rd Olympiad, 688 BC; the boxers would wind leather thongs around their hands. There were no boxers fought until one of them acknowledged defeat or could not continue. Weight categories were not used; the style of boxing practiced featured an advanced left leg stance, with the left arm semi-extended as a guard, in addition to being used for striking, with the right arm drawn back ready to strike.
It was the head of the opponent, targeted, there is little evidence to suggest that targeting the body was common. Boxing was a popular spectator sport in Ancient Rome. In order for the fighters to protect themselves against their opponents they wrapped leather thongs around their fists. Harder leather was used and the thong soon became a weapon; the Romans introduced metal studs to the thongs to make the cestus. Fighting events were held at Roman Amphitheatres; the Roman form of boxing was a fight until death to please the spectators who gathered at such events. However in times, purchased slaves and trained combat performers were valuable commodities, their lives were not given up without due consideration. Slaves were used against one another in a circle marked on the floor; this is. In AD 393, during the Roman gladiator period, boxing was abolished due to excessive brutality, it was not until the late 16th century. Records of Classical boxing activity disappeared after the fall of the Western Roman Empire when the wearing of weapons became common once again and interest in fighting with the fists waned.
However, there are detailed records of various fist-fighting sports that were maintained in different cities and provinces of Italy between the 12th and 17th centuries. There was a sport in ancient Rus called Kulachniy Boy or "Fist Fighting"; as the wearing of swords became less common, there was renewed interest in fencing with the fists. The sport would resurface in England during the early 16th century in the form of bare-knuckle boxing sometimes referred to as prizefighting; the first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the London Protestant Mercury, the first English bare-knuckle champion was James Figg in 1719. This is the time when the word "boxing" first came to be used; this earliest form of modern boxing was different. Contests in Mr. Figg's time, in addition to fist fighting contained fencing and cudgeling. On 6 January 1681, the first recorded boxing match took place in Britain when Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle engineered a bout between his butler and his butcher with the latter winning the prize.
Early fighting had no written rules. There were no weight divisions or round limits, no referee. In general, it was chaotic. An early article on boxing was published i
YouTube
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion. YouTube allows users to upload, rate, add to playlists, comment on videos, subscribe to other users, it offers a wide variety of corporate media videos. Available content includes video clips, TV show clips, music videos and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers, live streams, other content such as video blogging, short original videos, educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Hulu offer some of their material via YouTube as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can only watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos and add comments to videos. Videos deemed inappropriate are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old.
YouTube and its creators earn advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. The vast majority of its videos are free to view, but there are exceptions, including subscription-based premium channels, film rentals, as well as YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, subscription services offering premium and ad-free music streaming, ad-free access to all content, including exclusive content commissioned from notable personalities; as of February 2017, there were more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each minute, one billion hours of content being watched on YouTube every day. As of August 2018, the website is ranked as the second-most popular site in the world, according to Alexa Internet. YouTube has faced criticism over aspects of its operations, including its handling of copyrighted content contained within uploaded videos, its recommendation algorithms perpetuating videos that promote conspiracy theories and falsehoods, hosting videos ostensibly targeting children but containing violent and/or sexually suggestive content involving popular characters, videos of minors attracting pedophilic activities in their comment sections, fluctuating policies on the types of content, eligible to be monetized with advertising.
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. According to a story, repeated in the media and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos, shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, but Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story, digestible". Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.
Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site's founders deciding to accept uploads of any type of video. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital and an $8 million investment from Artis Capital Management between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California; the domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, the website was developed over the subsequent months. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo; the video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, can still be viewed on the site. YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005; the first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005.
Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site launched on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day. The site grew and, in July 2006, the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos in May 2010. In May 2011, 48 hours of new videos were uploaded to the site every minute, which increased to 60 hours every minute in January 2012, 100 hours every minute in May 2013, 300 hours every minute in November 2014, 400 hours every minute in February 2017; as of January 2012, the site had 800 million unique users a month. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. According to third-party web analytics providers and SimilarWeb, YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world, as of December 2016.
USA Today
USA Today is an internationally distributed American daily, middle-market newspaper that serves as the flagship publication of its owner, the Gannett Company. The newspaper has a centrist audience. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, it operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters on Jones Branch Drive, in McLean, Virginia, it is printed at five additional sites internationally. Its dynamic design influenced the style of local and national newspapers worldwide, through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features. With a weekly circulation of 1,021,638 and an approximate daily reach of seven million readers as of 2016, USA Today shares the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. USA Today is distributed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada and the Pacific Islands.
The genesis of USA Today was on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project NN" met with Gannett Company chairman Al Neuharth in Cocoa Beach, Florida to develop a national newspaper. Early regional prototypes included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper which Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication; the two proposed design layouts were mailed to newsmakers and prominent leaders in journalism, for review and feedback. The Gannett Company's board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, titled USA Today, on December 5, 1981. At launch, Neuharth was appointed president and publisher of the newspaper, adding those responsibilities to his existing position as Gannett's chief executive officer. Gannett announced the launch of the paper on April 20, 1982. USA Today began publishing on September 15, 1982 in the Baltimore and Washington, D.
C. metropolitan areas for an newsstand price of 25¢. After selling out the first issue, Gannett expanded the national distribution of the paper, reaching an estimated circulation of 362,879 copies by the end of 1982, double the amount of sales that Gannett projected; the design uniquely incorporated color graphics and photographs. Only its front news section pages were rendered in four-color, while the remaining pages were printed in a spot color format; the paper's overall style and elevated use of graphics – developed by Neuharth, in collaboration with staff graphics designers George Rorick, Sam Ward, Suzy Parker, John Sherlock and Web Bryant – was derided by critics, who referred to it as "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in," because it opted to incorporate concise nuggets of information more akin to the style of television news, rather than in-depth stories like traditional newspapers, which many in the newspaper industry considered to be a dumbing down of the news. Although USA Today had been profitable for just ten years as of 1997, it changed the appearance and feel of newspapers around the world.
On July 2, 1984, the newspaper switched from predominantly black-and-white to full color photography and graphics in all four sections. The next week on July 10, USA Today launched an international edition intended for U. S. readers abroad, followed four months on October 8 with the rollout of the first transmission via satellite of its international version to Singapore. On April 8, 1985, the paper published its first special bonus section, a 12-page section called "Baseball'85," which previewed the 1985 Major League Baseball season. By the fourth quarter of 1985, USA Today had become the second largest newspaper in the United States, reaching a daily circulation of 1.4 million copies. Total daily readership of the paper by 1987 had reached 5.5 million, the largest of any daily newspaper in the U. S. On May 6, 1986, USA Today began production of its international edition in Switzerland. USA Today operated at a loss for most of its first four years of operation, accumulating a total deficit of $233 million after taxes, according to figures released by Gannett in July 1987.
On January 29, 1988, USA Today published the largest edition in its history, a 78-page weekend edition featuring a section previewing Super Bowl XXII. On April 15, USA Today launched a third international printing site, based in Hong Kong; the international edition set circulation and advertising records during August 1988, with coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics, selling more than 60,000 copies and 100 pages of advertising. By July 1991, Simmons Market Research Bureau estimated that USA Today had a total daily readership of nearly 6.6 million, an all-time high and the largest readership of any daily newspaper in the United States. On September 1 of that year, USA Today launched a fourth printsite for its international edition in London for the United Kingdom and the British Isles; the international edition's schedule was changed as of April 1, 1994 Monday through Friday, rather than from Tuesday through Saturday, in order to accommodate business travelers.
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not transmitted, though it may employ point to point, point to multipoint, or mesh wired or wireless links. Though all video cameras fit this definition, the term is most applied to those used for surveillance in areas that may need monitoring such as banks and other areas where security is needed. Though Videotelephony is called'CCTV' one exception is the use of video in distance education, where it is an important tool. Surveillance of the public using CCTV is common in many areas around the world. In recent years, the use of body worn video cameras has been introduced as a new form of surveillance used in law enforcement, with cameras located on a police officer's chest or head. Video surveillance has generated significant debate about balancing its use with individuals' right to privacy when in public.
In industrial plants, CCTV equipment may be used to observe parts of a process from a central control room, for example when the environment is not suitable for humans. CCTV systems may only as required to monitor a particular event. A more advanced form of CCTV, utilizing digital video recorders, provides recording for many years, with a variety of quality and performance options and extra features. More decentralized IP cameras equipped with megapixel sensors, support recording directly to network-attached storage devices, or internal flash for stand-alone operation. There are about 350 million surveillance cameras worldwide as of 2016. About 65% of these cameras are installed in Asia; the growth of CCTV has been slowing in recent years. The first CCTV system was installed by Siemens AG at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, Nazi Germany in 1942, for observing the launch of V-2 rockets; the noted German engineer Walter Bruch was responsible for the technological design and installation of the system.
In the U. S. the first commercial closed-circuit television system became available in 1949, called Vericon. Little is known about Vericon except it was advertised as not requiring a government permit; the earliest video surveillance systems involved constant monitoring because there was no way to record and store information. The development of reel-to-reel media enabled the recording of surveillance footage; these systems required magnetic tapes to be changed manually, a time consuming and unreliable process, with the operator having to manually thread the tape from the tape reel through the recorder onto an empty take-up reel. Due to these shortcomings, video surveillance was not widespread. VCR technology became available in the 1970s, making it easier to record and erase information, the use of video surveillance became more common. During the 1990s, digital multiplexing was developed, allowing several cameras to record at once, as well as time lapse and motion-only recording; this increased savings of time and money which led to an increase in the use of CCTV.
CCTV technology has been enhanced with a shift toward Internet-based products and systems, other technological developments. Closed-circuit television was used as a form of pay-per-view theatre television for sports such as professional boxing and professional wrestling. Boxing telecasts were broadcast live to a select number of venues theaters, where viewers paid for tickets to watch the fight live; the first fight with a closed-circuit telecast was Joe Louis vs. Joe Walcott in 1948. Closed-circuit telecasts peaked in popularity with Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, with "The Rumble in the Jungle" fight drawing 50 million CCTV viewers worldwide in 1974, the "Thrilla in Manila" drawing 100 million CCTV viewers worldwide in 1975. In 1985, the WrestleMania I professional wrestling show was seen by over one million viewers with this scheme; as late as 1996, the Julio César Chávez vs. Oscar De La Hoya boxing fight had 750,000 viewers. Closed-circuit television was replaced by pay-per-view home cable television in the 1980s and 1990s.
In September 1968, New York was the first city in the United States to install video cameras along its main business street in an effort to fight crime. Another early appearance was in 1973 in Times Square in New York City; the NYPD installed it in order to deter crime, occurring in the area. During the 1980s video surveillance began to spread across the country targeting public areas, it was seen as a cheaper way to deter crime compared to increasing the size of the police departments. Some businesses as well those that were prone to theft, began to use video surveillance. From the mid-1990s on, police departments across the country installed an increasing number of cameras in various public spaces including housing projects and public parks departments. CCTV became common in banks and stores to discourage theft, by recording evidence of criminal activity. In 1998, 3,000 CCTV systems were in use in New York City. A study by Nieto in 2008 found many businesses in the United States had invested in video surveillance technology to protect products and promote safe workplace and consumer environments.
A nationwide survey of a wide variety of companies found. In private sector CCTV surveillance technology is operated in a wide variety of establishments such as in industry/manufacturing, financial/insurance/banking and distribution, util
Robert L. Johnson
Robert Louis Johnson is an American entrepreneur, media magnate, executive and investor. He is the co-founder of BET, acquired by Viacom in 2001, he founded RLJ Companies, a holding company that invests in various business sectors. Johnson is the former majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, he became the first black American billionaire. Johnson's companies have counted among the most prominent African-American businesses in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Johnson was born in 1946 in Hickory, the ninth out of ten children to Edna and Archie Johnson, his mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a farmer. His parents moved the family to Illinois when he was a child, he was an honors student in high school. Johnson graduated from the University of Illinois in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in social studies. While at the University of Illinois, Johnson was a member of the Beta chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, he received a master's degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1972.
After graduating from Princeton, Johnson found a job in Washington, D. C. that introduced him to the television industry. He served as the public affairs director for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In this position is. Around the same time he worked as the director of communications for the Washington, D. C. office of the National Urban League. Johnson worked as a press secretary for Congressman Walter E. Fauntroy, he became vice president of government relations at the National Cable and Television Association. In 1980, Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television, which became a full-fledged channel in 1983. Johnson left NCTA in 1979 to create Black Entertainment Television, the first cable television network aimed at African-Americans; when the network launched in 1980, it only aired for two hours on Friday night. BET first turned a profit in 1985 and it became the first black-controlled company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1991. In 1998, Johnson and Liberty Media bought all outstanding shares of the company.
This purchase gave Johnson 42% of the company. Viacom acquired BET in 2000 for a reported $3 billion. Johnson remained BET CEO until 2006. Johnson founded The RLJ Companies, a holding company with a diverse portfolio including hotel real estate investment, private equity, financial services, asset management, automobile dealerships and entertainment, Video lottery terminal gaming; the RLJ Companies is headquartered in Maryland. By January 2009, Ion Media had another subchannel network, Urban TV, in the works with him targeted to African-Americans; as of 2013, Johnson was a member of the board of directors for RLJ Lodging Trust, RLJ Entertainment, Inc. KB Home, Lowe's Companies, Inc. Strayer Education, Think Finance, Inc. NBA Board of Governors, The Business Council, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Johnson has served as a member of the board of directors for several other companies and organizations, including US Airways, Hilton Hotels, General Mills, the United Negro College Fund, Deutsche Bank's Americas Advisory Board.
Johnson became the first African-American majority club owner of a major American sports league with his 2002 purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. In 2010, Johnson sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats to Michael Jordan. In 2016, Johnson finalized a partnership agreement with AMC Networks through his RLJ Company after launching his own video on demand streaming service Urban Movie Channel in 2014. According to the agreement, AMC will use its programming and distribution clout to benefit Acorn and UMC. Additionally, the RLJ-AMC partnership will allow for greater investment in content from African-American creatives, Johnson emphasized; the agreement called for AMC to provide RLJ with a $60 million loan on a seven-year term and $5 million on a one-year term. AMC has received warrants to purchase at least 20 million shares or the equivalent of 50.1% of the company. The time frame for exercising those warrants is open-ended, AMC said. In 2011, Johnson worked with Morgan Freeman to raise funds for hurricane preparedness in the Bahamas.
Johnson released a neckwear line in coordination with PVH and The Ella Rose Collection, the RLJ Ella Rose Africa Tie Collection, in 2012 to benefit the charitable organization Malaria No More. In 2007, Johnson created the Liberia Enterprise Development Fund with a $30 million investment; the fund provides credit for Liberian entrepreneurs. In January 2008, Johnson became the target of criticism for remarks he made to supporters of Hillary Clinton about Barack Obama. Johnson said, "As an African-American, I'm frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been and involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, he said it in his book." This statement was interpreted as a criticism of Obama's acknowledged use of marijuana in his youth. The Clinton campaign denied this, submitting that the comments were referring to Obama's work as a community organizer.
In subsequent days, Johnson was roundly criticized for his comments as hypocritical given the prodigious glorification of drug use and sale by artists prominently featured on BET. On January 17, 2008, Johnson sent Obama the following apology: I'm writing to apologize to you and your family for the un-called-for comments I made at a recent Clinton event. In my zeal to support Senator Clinton, I made some inappropriate remarks for which I am sorry. I hope that you will acce
Columbia University
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, it is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world. Columbia was established as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain in reaction to the founding of Princeton University in New Jersey, it was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the Revolutionary War and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have played an important role in the development of notable scientific fields and breakthroughs including: brain-computer interface.
The Columbia University Physics Department has been affiliated with 33 Nobel Prize winners as alumni, faculty or research staff, the third most of any American institution behind MIT and Harvard. In addition, 22 Nobel Prize winners in Physiology and Medicine have been affiliated with Columbia, the third most of any American institution; the university's research efforts include the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Goddard Institute for Space Studies and accelerator laboratories with major technology firms such as IBM. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university administers the Pulitzer Prize annually. Columbia is organized into twenty schools, including three undergraduate schools and numerous graduate schools, it maintains research centers outside of the United States known as Columbia Global Centers. In 2018, Columbia's undergraduate acceptance rate was 5.1%, making it one of the most selective colleges in the United States, the second most selective in the Ivy League after Harvard.
Columbia is ranked as the 3rd best university in the United States by U. S. News & World Report behind Princeton and Harvard. In athletics, the Lions field varsity teams in 29 sports as a member of the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference; the university's endowment stood at $10.9 billion in 2018, among the largest of any academic institution. As of 2018, Columbia's alumni and affiliates include: five Founding Fathers of the United States — among them an author of the United States Constitution and co-author of the Declaration of Independence. S. presidents. Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, at which time Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college. However, it was not until the founding of the College of New Jersey across the Hudson River in New Jersey that the City of New York considered founding a college.
In 1746, an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In 1751, the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery towards the foundation of a college. Classes were held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan; the college was founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States. In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander Hamilton.
The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783; the college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and British forces. Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia College; the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where the
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
