1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
3.
Oxford, Mississippi
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Oxford is a city in, and the county seat of, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1837, it was named after the British university city of Oxford in hopes of having the university located there. As of the 2010 US Census, the population is 18,916, Oxford is the home of the University of Mississippi, founded in 1848, also commonly known as Ole Miss. Oxford has been named by USA Today as one of the top six college towns in the nation and it is included in The Best 100 Small Towns in America. Lafayette County consistently leads the state rankings in the lowest unemployment rate per quarter, Oxford City Schools are ranked as Star schools, the highest ranking available, and Lafayette County school systems are consistently ranked as 5-star systems. Oxford and Lafayette County were formed from lands ceded by the Chickasaw in the treaty of Pontotoc Creek in 1832. The county was organized in 1836, and in 1837 three pioneers—John Martin, John Chisom, and John Craig—purchased land from Hoka, a female Chickasaw landowner and they named it Oxford, intending to promote it as a center of learning in the Old Southwest. In 1841, the Mississippi legislature selected Oxford as the site of the state university, in the postwar Reconstruction Era, the town recovered slowly, aided by federal judge Robert Andrews Hill, who secured funds to build a new courthouse in 1872. Even after Mississippi disfranchised most African Americans in the Constitution of 1890, during the Civil Rights Movement, Oxford drew national attention in the Ole Miss riot of 1962. Thousands of armed volunteers flowed into the Oxford area, Meredith traveled to Oxford under armed guard to register, but riots by segregationists broke out in protest of his admittance. That evening, cars were burned, federal marshals were pelted with rocks, bricks and small arms fire, two men were killed by gunshot wounds. The riot spread into adjacent areas of the city of Oxford, order was finally restored to the campus with the early morning arrival of nationalized Mississippi National Guard and regular U. S. Army units, who camped in the City. More than 3000 journalists came to Oxford on September 26,2008 to cover the first presidential debate of 2008, Oxford is within 100 miles of Memphis, Tennessee. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 10.0 square miles. The city is located in the North Central Hills region of Mississippi, the region is known for its heavily forested hills made up of red clay. The area is higher and greater in relief than areas to the west, the changes in elevation can really be noticed when traveling on the Highway 6 bypass since the east-west highway tends to transect many of the north-south ridges. Downtown Oxford sits on one of these ridges and the University of Mississippi sits on another one, the streets in the downtown area follow a grid pattern with two naming conventions. Many of the streets are numbered from west to east, beginning at the old railroad depot
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Greek Revival architecture
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The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in Northern Europe and the United States. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture, the term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1842. With a newfound access to Greece, or initially the books produced by the few who had actually been able to visit the sites, archaeologist-architects of the period studied the Doric and Ionic orders. This was especially the case in Britain, Germany and the United States, Greek Revival architecture took a different course in a number of countries, lasting until the Civil War in America and even later in Scotland. Despite the unbounded prestige of ancient Greece amongst the elite of Europe. The monuments of Greek antiquity were known chiefly from Pausanias and other literary sources, visiting Ottoman Greece was difficult and dangerous business prior to the period of stagnation beginning with the Great Turkish War. Few Grand Tourists called on Athens during the first half of the 18th century and it would take until the expedition funded by the Society of Dilettanti of 1751 by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett before serious archaeological inquiry began in earnest. Access to the originals in Greece itself only became easier after the Greek War of Independence ended in 1832, Lord Byrons participation, following James Stuarts travels to Greece in the early 1750s, intellectual curiosity quickly led to a desire to emulate. Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by George Lyttelton to produce the first Greek building in England, arguably the greatest British exponent of the style was Decimus Burton. In London twenty three Greek Revival Commissioners churches were built between 1817 and 1829, the most notable being St. Pancras church by William and Henry William Inwood. Such was the popularity of the Doric in Edinburgh that the city now enjoys a striking visual uniformity, nevertheless, Greek continued to be in favour in Scotland well into the 1870s in the singular figure of Alexander Thomson, known as Greek Thomson. In Germany, the Greek revival is predominantly found in two centres, Berlin and Munich, the earliest Greek building was the Brandenburg Gate by Carl Gotthard Langhans, who modelled it on the Propylaea. Ten years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Berlin Akademie initiated a competition for a monument to the king that would promote morality, similarly, in Munich von Klenzes Glyptothek and Walhalla were the fulfilment of Gillys vision of an orderly and moral German world. The purity and seriousness of the style was intended as an assertion of German national values and partly intended as a riposte to France. By comparison, the Greek revival in France was never popular with either the state or the public, what little there is started with Charles de Waillys crypt in the church of St Leu-St Gilles, and Claude Nicolas Ledouxs Barriere des Bonshommes. It would take until Laboustres Neo-Grec of the Second Empire for the Greek revival to flower briefly in France, the style was especially attractive in Russia, if only because they shared the Eastern Orthodox faith with the Greeks. The historic centre of Saint Petersburg was rebuilt by Alexander I of Russia, the Saint Petersburg Bourse on Vasilievsky Island has a temple front with 44 Doric columns. Leo von Klenzes expansion of the palace that is now the Hermitage Museum is another example of the style, following the Greek War of Independence, Romantic Nationalist ideology encouraged the use of historically Greek architectural styles in place of Ottoman or pan-European ones
6.
William Faulkner
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William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and he is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature generally, two of his works, A Fable and his last novel The Reivers, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Absalom, Absalom. is often included on similar lists, Faulkner was born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner and Maud Butler. He had three brothers, Murry Charles Jack Falkner, author John Faulkner, and Dean Swift Falkner. Soon after his first birthday, his family moved to Ripley, Mississippi, Murry hoped to inherit the railroad from his father, John Wesley Thompson Falkner, but John had little confidence in Murrys ability to run a business and sold it for $75,000. Following the sale of the business, Murry became disappointed and planned a new start for his family by moving to Texas. Maud, however, disagreed with this proposition, and it was decided that they would move to Oxford, Mississippi, where Murrys father owned several businesses, making it easy for Murry to find work. Thus, four days prior to Williams fifth birthday on September 21,1902, the Falkner family settled in Oxford and his family, particularly his mother Maud, his maternal grandmother Lelia Butler, and Caroline Callie Barr crucially influenced the development of Faulkners artistic imagination. Both his mother and grandmother were avid readers and also painters and photographers, while Murry enjoyed the outdoors and encouraged his sons to hunt, track, and fish, Maud valued education and took pleasure in reading and going to church. She taught her sons to read before sending them to school and exposed them to classics such as Charles Dickens. Faulkners lifelong education by Callie Barr is central to his novels preoccupations with the politics of sexuality, as a schoolchild, Faulkner had much success early on. He excelled in the first grade, skipped the second, and continued doing well through the third, however, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades of his schooling, Faulkner became a much more quiet and withdrawn child. He began to play hooky occasionally and became indifferent to his schoolwork. The decline of his performance in school continued, and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh, and then final grade, Faulkner also spent much of his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders. These included war stories shared by the old men of Oxford and stories told by Barr of the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. Faulkners grandfather would tell him of the exploits of Williams great-grandfather, after whom he was named, William Clark Falkner, who was a successful businessman, writer. Telling stories about William Clark Falkner, whom the family called Old Colonel, had become something of a family pastime when Faulkner was a boy
7.
University of Mississippi
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The University of Mississippi is an American public research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. It is the state of Mississippis flagship and largest university, with an enrollment of 24,250 in fall 2016. It is both a sea-grant and space-grant institution and is classified as an R1, Doctoral University — Highest Research Activity. Across all its campuses, it comprises approximately 2,200 faculty members,10,600 staff members, and 24,000 students, and has a total budget of roughly $2 billion. About 55 percent of its undergraduates and 60 percent overall come from Mississippi, the Mississippi Legislature chartered the University of Mississippi on February 24,1844. The university opened its doors to its first class of 80 students four years later in 1848, for 23 years, the university was Mississippis only public institution of higher learning, and for 110 years it was the states only comprehensive university. When the university opened, the campus consisted of six buildings, constructed from 1846 to 1848, the Lyceum is the oldest building on campus. Originally, the Lyceum housed all of the classrooms and faculty offices of the university, the buildings north and south wings were added in 1903, and the Class of 1927 donated the clock above the eastern portico. The Lyceum is now the home of the administration offices. The columned facade of the Lyceum is represented on the official crest of the university, in 1854, the university established the fourth state-supported, public law school in the United States, and also began offering engineering education. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, classes were interrupted when almost the entire student body from the University of Mississippi enlisted in the Confederate army. The Lyceum was used as a hospital during the Civil War for both Union and Confederate soldiers, especially those who were wounded at the battle of Shiloh, two hundred-fifty soldiers who died in the campus hospital were buried in a cemetery on the grounds of the university. During the post-war period, the university was led by former Confederate general A. P. Stewart and he served as Chancellor from 1874-1886. The university became coeducational in 1882 and was the first such institution in the Southeast to hire a female faculty member, Sarah McGehee Isom, the student yearbook was published for the first time in 1897. A contest was held to solicit suggestions for a title from the student body. Elma Meek, a student, submitted the entry of Ole Miss. Meeks source for the term is unknown, some historians theorize she made a diminutive of old Mississippi or derived the term from ol missus and this sobriquet was not only chosen for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the university was informally known. Ole Miss is defined as the schools intangible spirit, which is separate from the tangible aspects of the university, the university began medical education in 1903, when the University of Mississippi School of Medicine was established on the Oxford campus
8.
John Updike
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John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954 and he also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His most famous work is his Rabbit series, which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry Rabbit Angstrom over the course of several decades, both Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest were recognized with the Pulitzer Prize. Updike populated his fiction with characters who frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations and his work has attracted significant critical attention and praise, and he is widely considered one of the great American writers of his time. He described his style as an attempt to give the mundane its beautiful due, Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the only child of Linda Grace and Wesley Russell Updike, and was raised in the nearby small town of Shillington. The family later moved to the village of Plowville. His mothers attempts to become a published writer impressed the young Updike, one of my earliest memories, he later recalled, is of seeing her at her desk. I admired the writers equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper, and I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in—and come back in. These early years in Berks County, Pennsylvania, would influence the environment of the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, as well as many of his early novels, Updike graduated from Shillington High School as co-valedictorian and class president in 1950 and attended Harvard with a full scholarship. He received recognition for his writing as a teenager by winning a Scholastic Art, at Harvard, he soon became well known among his classmates as a talented and prolific contributor to the Harvard Lampoon, of which he served as president. He graduated summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, upon graduation, Updike attended The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford with the ambition of becoming a cartoonist. After returning to the United States, Updike and his moved to New York. This was the beginning of his writing career. Updike stayed at The New Yorker as a staff writer for only two years, writing Talk of the Town columns and submitting poetry and short stories to the magazine. In New York, Updike wrote the poems and stories came to fill his early books like The Carpentered Hen. These works were influenced by Updikes early engagement with The New Yorker and this early work also featured the influence of J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, and the Modernists Marcel Proust, Henry Green, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov. During this time, Updike underwent a spiritual crisis. Suffering from a loss of faith, he began reading Søren Kierkegaard
