United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous 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 and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Black market
A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the drug trade, illegal currency transactions and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitute membership in the unreported economy; because tax evasion or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants will attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory authority. Cash usage is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash usage does not leave a footprint.
Common motives for operating in black markets are to trade contraband, avoid taxes and regulations, or skirt price controls or rationing. The totality of such activity is referred to with the definite article as a complement to the official economies, by market for such goods and services, e.g. "the black market in bush meat". The black market is distinct from the grey market, in which commodities are distributed through channels that, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer, the white market, in which trade is legal and official. Black money is the proceeds of an illegal transaction, on which income and other taxes have not been paid, which can only be legitimised by some form of money laundering; because of the clandestine nature of the black economy it is not possible to determine its size and scope. The literature on the black market has not established a common terminology and has instead offered many synonyms including: subterranean. There is no single underground economy.
These underground economies are omnipresent, existing in market oriented as well as in centrally planned nations, be they developed or developing. Those engaged in underground activities circumvent, escape or are excluded from the institutional system of rules, rights and enforcement penalties that govern formal agents engaged in production and exchange. Different types of underground activities are distinguished according to the particular institutional rules that they violate. Four major underground economies can be identified: the illegal economy the unreported economy the unrecorded economy the informal economyThe "illegal economy" consists of the income produced by those economic activities pursued in violation of legal statutes defining the scope of legitimate forms of commerce. Illegal economy participants engage in the production and distribution of prohibited goods and services, such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking, prostitution; the "unreported economy" consists of those economic activities that circumvent or evade the institutionally established fiscal rules as codified in the tax code.
A summary measure of the unreported economy is the amount of income that should be reported to the tax authority but is not so reported. A complementary measure of the unreported economy is the "tax gap", namely the difference between the amount of tax revenues due the fiscal authority and the amount of tax revenue collected. In the U. S. unreported income is estimated to be $2 trillion resulting in a "tax gap" of $450–$600 billion. The "unrecorded economy" consists of those economic activities that circumvent the institutional rules that define the reporting requirements of government statistical agencies. A summary measure of the unrecorded economy is the amount of unrecorded income, namely the amount of income that should be recorded in national accounting systems but is not. Unrecorded income is a particular problem in transition countries that switched from a socialist accounting system to UN standard national accounting. New methods have been proposed for estimating the size of the unrecorded economy.
But there is still little consensus concerning the size of the unreported economies of transition countries. The "informal economy" comprises those economic activities that circumvent the costs and are excluded from the benefits and rights incorporated in the laws and administrative rules covering property relationships, commercial licensing, labor contracts, financial credit and social security systems. A summary measure of the informal economy is the income generated by economic agents that operate informally; the informal sector is defined as the part of an economy, not taxed, monitored by any form of government, or included in any gross national product, unlike the formal economy. In developed countries the informal sector is characterized by unreported employment; this is hidden from the state for tax, social security or labour law purposes but is legal in all other aspects. On the other hand, the term black market can be used in reference to a specific part of the economy in which contraband is traded.
Goods and services acquired illegally and/or transacted for in an illegal manner may exchange above or below the price of legal market transactions: They may be cheaper than legal market prices. The supplier taxes; this is the case in the underground economy. Criminals steal goods and sell them below the legal market price, but there is no receipt, so for
Chicago
Chicago the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450, it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area referred to as Chicagoland, the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States; the metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area. Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed and grew in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, the city made a concerted effort to rebuild; the construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, by 1900 Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, the steel-framed skyscraper. Chicago is an international hub for finance, commerce, technology, telecommunications, transportation, it is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is the largest and most diverse derivatives market gobally, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures. O'Hare International Airport is the one of the busiest airports in the world, the region has the largest number of U. S. highways and greatest amount of railroad freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, it ranked seventh in the entire world in the 2017 Global Cities Index; the Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, generating $680 billion in 2017. In addition, the city has one of the world's most diversified and balanced economies, not being dependent on any one industry, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago's 58 million domestic and international visitors in 2018, made it the second most visited city in the nation, behind New York City's approximate 65 million visitors. The city ranked first place in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities. Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, film, comedy and music jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams; the name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more as ramps.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:...when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. The city has had several nicknames throughout its history such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, the City of the Big Shoulders, which refers to the city's numerous skyscrapers and high-rises. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples; the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable arrived in the 1780s, he is known as the "Founder of Chicago".
In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area, to be part of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn and rebuilt; the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis; the Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. Receiver of Public Monies; the City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city. As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago's first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, the Illi
Canadian whisky
Canadian whisky is a type of whisky produced in Canada. Most Canadian whiskies are blended multi-grain liquors containing a large percentage of corn spirits, are lighter and smoother than other whisky styles; when Canadian distillers began adding small amounts of highly-flavourful rye grain to their mashes, people began demanding this new rye-flavoured whisky, referring to it as "rye". Today, as for the past two centuries, the terms "rye whisky" and "Canadian whisky" are used interchangeably in Canada and refer to the same product, made with only a small amount of rye grain. In Canada, whisky that had some rye grain added to the mash bill to give it more flavour came to be called "rye"; the regulations under Canada's Food and Drugs Act stipulate the minimum conditions that must be met in order to label a product as "Canadian whisky" or "Canadian Rye Whisky" —these are upheld internationally through geographical indication agreements. These regulations state that whisky must "be mashed and aged in Canada", "be aged in small wood for not less than three years", "contain not less than 40 per cent alcohol by volume" and "may contain caramel and flavouring".
Within these parameters Canadian whiskies can vary especially with the allowance of "flavouring"—though the additional requirement that they "possess the aroma and character attributed to Canadian whisky" can act as a limiting factor. Canadian whiskies are most blends of whiskies made from a single grain, principally corn and rye, but sometimes wheat or barley. Mash bills of multiple grains may be used for some flavoring whiskies; the availability of inexpensive American corn, with its higher proportion of usable starches relative to other cereal grains, has led it to be most used to create base whiskies to which flavouring whiskies are blended in. Exceptions to this include the Highwood Distillery which specializes in using wheat and the Alberta Distillers which developed its own proprietary yeast strain that specializes in distilling rye; the flavouring whiskies are most rye whiskies, blended into the product to add most of its flavour and aroma. While Canadian whisky may be labelled as a "rye whisky" this blending technique only necessitates a small percentage of rye to create the flavour, whereas much more rye is required if it were added to a mash bill alongside the more distilled corn.
The base whiskies are distilled to 180 to 190 proof which results in few congener by-products and creates a lighter taste. By comparison, an American whisky distilled any higher than 160 proof is labelled as "light whiskey"; the flavouring whiskies are distilled to a lower proof so that they retain more of the grain's flavour. The relative lightness created by the use of base whiskies makes Canadian whisky useful for mixing into cocktails and highballs; the minimum three year aging in small wood barrels applies to all whiskies used in the blend. As the regulations do not limit the specific type of wood that must be used, a variety of flavours can be achieved by blending whiskies aged in different types of barrels. In addition to new wood barrels, charred or uncharred, flavour can be added by aging whiskies in used bourbon or fortified wine barrels for different lengths of time. In Canada under British rule, gristmills distilled surplus grains to avoid spoilage. Distilling methods and technologies were brought to Canada by American and European immigrants with experience in distilling wheat and rye.
This early whisky from improvised stills with the grains closest to spoilage, was produced with various, uncontrolled proofs and was consumed, unaged, by the local market. While most distilling capacity was taken up producing rum, a result of Atlantic Canada's position in the British sugar trade, the first commercial scale production of whisky in Canada began in 1801 when John Molson purchased a copper pot still used to produce rum, in Montreal. With his son Thomas Molson, partner James Morton, the Molsons operated a distillery in Montreal and Kingston and were the first in Canada to export whisky, benefiting from Napoleonic Wars' disruption in supplying French wine and brandies to England. Gooderham and Worts began producing whisky in 1837 in Toronto as a side business to their wheat milling but surpassed Molson's production by the 1850s as it expanded their operations with a new distillery in what would become the Distillery District. Henry Corby started distilling whisky as a side business from his gristmill in 1859 in what became known as Corbyville and Joseph Seagram began working in his father-in-law's Waterloo flour mill and distillery in 1864, which he would purchase in 1883.
Meanwhile, Americans Hiram Walker and J. P. Wiser moved to Canada: Walker to Windsor in 1858 to open a flour mill and distillery and Wiser to Prescott in 1857 to work at his uncle's distillery where he introduced a rye whisky and was successful enough to buy the distillery five years later; the disruption of American Civil War created an export opportunity for Canadian-made whiskies and their quality those from Walker and Wiser who had begun the practice of aging their whiskies, sustained that market after post-war tariffs were introduced. In the 1880s, Canada's National Policy placed high tariffs on foreign alcoholic products as whisky began to be sold in bottles and the federal government instituted a bottled in bond program that provided certification of the time a whisky spent aging and allowed deferral of taxes for that period, which encouraged aging. In 1890 Canada became the first country to enact an aging law for whiskies, requiri
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel with fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts. The most common type has the foremast being shorter than the main. While the schooner was gaff-rigged, modern schooners carry a Bermuda rig; the first detailed definition of a schooner, describing the vessel as two-masted vessel with fore and aft gaff-rigged sails appeared in 1769 in William Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine. According to the language scholar Walter William Skeat, the term schooner comes from scoon, while the sch spelling comes from the adoption of the Dutch spelling. Another study suggests that a Dutch expression praising ornate schooner yachts in the 17th century, "een schoone Schip", may have led to the term "schooner" being used by English speakers to describe the early versions of the schooner rig as it evolved in England and America; the Dutch word "schoon" means nice, good looking, sexually arousing, or horny.. A popular legend holds that the first schooner was built by builder Andrew Robinson and launched in Gloucester, Massachusetts where a spectator exclaimed "Oh how she scoons", scoon being similar to scone, a Scots word meaning to skip along the surface of the water.
Robinson replied, "A schooner let her be." The launch is variously described as being in 1713 or 1745. Naval architects such as Howard Chapelle have dismissed this invention story as a "childish fable", but some language scholars feel that the legend may support a Gloucester origin of the word. Other sources state the etymology as uncertain. Although associated with North America, schooners were first used by the Dutch in the 16th or 17th century, they were further developed in North America from the early 18th century, came into extensive use in New England. Schooners were popular in trades requiring speed and windward ability, such as slaving, blockade running, offshore fishing. In the Chesapeake Bay area several distinctive schooner types evolved, including the Baltimore clipper and pungy. Schooners were popular among pirates in the West Indies during the Golden Age of Piracy, for their speed and agility, they could sail in shallow waters, while being smaller than other ships of the time period, they could still hold enough cannons to intimidate merchant vessels into submission.
Schooners first evolved in the late 17th century from a variety of small two-masted gaff-rigged vessels used in the coast and estuaries of the Netherlands. Most were working craft but some pleasure yachts with schooner rigs were built for wealthy merchants. Following the arrival of the Dutch Stadtholder William of Orange on the British throne, the British Royal Navy built a royal yacht with a schooner rig in 1695, HMS Royal Transport; this vessel, captured in a detailed Admiralty model, is the earliest documented schooner. Royal Transport was noted for its speed and ease of handling, mercantile vessels soon adopted the rig in Europe and in European colonies in North America. Schooners were popular with colonial traders and fishermen in North America with the first documented reference to a schooner in the United States appearing in Boston port records in 1716. North American shipbuilders developed a variety of schooner forms for trading and privateering. Essex, was the most significant shipbuilding center for schooners.
By the 1850s, over 50 vessels a year were being launched from 15 shipyards and Essex became recognized worldwide as North America's center for fishing schooner construction. In total, Essex launched over 4,000 schooners, most headed for the Gloucester, fishing industry. Bath, was another notable center, which during much of the 19th century had more than a dozen yards working at a time, from 1781 to 1892 launched 1352 schooners, including the Wyoming. Schooners were popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, long dominating yacht races such as the America's Cup, but gave way in Europe to the cutter. Schooners were used to carry cargo in many different environments, from ocean voyages to coastal runs and on large inland bodies of water, they were popular in North America. In their heyday, during the late 19th century more than 2,000 schooners carried on the Great Lakes. Three-masted "terns" were a favourite rig of Canada's Maritime Provinces; the scow schooner, which used a schooner rig on a flat-bottomed, blunt-ended scow hull, was popular in North America for coastal and river transport.
Schooners were used in North American fishing the Grand Banks fishery. Some Banks fishing schooners such as Bluenose became famous racers. Two of the most famous racing yachts and Atlantic, were rigged as schooners, they were about 152 feet in length. Although a schooner may have several masts, the typical schooner has only two, with the foremast shorter than the mainmast. There may be a bowsprit to help balance the rig; the principal issue with a schooner sail plan is how to fill the space between the two masts most effectively. Traditional schooners were gaff rigged, the trapezoid shape of the foresail occupied the inter-mast space to good effect, with a useful sail area and a low center of effort. A Bermuda rigged schooner has four triangular sails: a mainsail, a main staysail abaft the foremast, plus a forestaysail and a jib forward of the foremast. An advantage of the staysail schooner is that it is handled and reefed by a small crew, as both staysails can be self-tacking; the main staysail will not overlap the mainsail, so does little to prepare the wind for the mainsail, but is effective when close-hauled or when on a beam reach.
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Canada–United States border
The Canada–United States border known as the International Boundary, is the longest international border in the world between two countries. It is shared between Canada and the United States, the second- and fourth/third largest countries by area, respectively; the terrestrial boundary is 8,891 kilometres long, of which 2,475 kilometres is Canada's border with Alaska. Eight Canadian provinces and territories, thirteen U. S. states are located along the border. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States. In the second article of the Treaty the parties agreed on all of the boundaries of the United States, including but not limited to the boundary with British North America to the north; the agreed boundary included the line from the northwest angle of Nova Scotia to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River, proceeded down along the middle of the river to the 45th parallel of north latitude. That parallel had been established in the 1760s as the boundary between the provinces of Quebec and New York.
It was surveyed and marked by John Collins and Thomas Valentine from 1771 to 1773. The Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes became the boundary further west. Northwest of Lake Superior, the boundary followed rivers to the Lake of the Woods. From the Lake of the Woods, the boundary was agreed to go straight west until it met the Mississippi River. In fact that line never meets the river; the Jay Treaty of 1794 created the International Boundary Commission, charged with surveying and mapping the boundary. It provided for removal of British military and administration from Detroit and other frontier outposts on the U. S. side. It was superseded by the Treaty of Ghent concluding the War of 1812, which included pre-war boundaries; the Rush–Bagot Treaty of 1817 provided a plan for demilitarizing the two combatant sides in the War of 1812 and laid out preliminary principles for drawing a border between British North America and the United States. Westward expansion of both British North America and the United States saw the boundary extended west along the 49th parallel from the Northwest Angle at Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains under the Treaty of 1818.
That treaty extinguished British claims south of that latitude to the Red River Valley, part of Rupert's Land. The treaty extinguished U. S. claims to land north of that line in the watershed of the Missouri River, part of the Louisiana Purchase. Along the 49th parallel, the border vista is theoretically straight but in practice follows the 19th-century surveyed border markers and varies by several hundred feet in spots. Disputes over the interpretation of the border treaties and mistakes in surveying required additional negotiations resulting in the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842; the treaty resolved the dispute known as the Aroostook War over the boundary between Maine on the one hand, New Brunswick and the Province of Canada on the other. The treaty redefined the border between New Hampshire and New York on the one hand, the Province of Canada on the other, resolving the Indian Stream dispute and the Fort Blunder dilemma at the outlet to Lake Champlain; the part of the 45th parallel that separates Quebec from the U.
S. states of Vermont and New York had first been surveyed from 1771 to 1773 after it had been declared the boundary between New York and Quebec, it was surveyed again after the War of 1812. The U. S. federal government began to construct fortifications just south of the border at Rouses Point, New York, on Lake Champlain. After a significant portion of the construction was completed, measurements revealed that at that point, the actual 45th parallel was three-quarters of a mile south of the surveyed line; this created a dilemma for the United States, not resolved until a provision of the treaty left the border on the meandering line as surveyed. The border along the Boundary Waters in present-day Ontario and Minnesota between Lake Superior and the Northwest Angle was redefined. An 1844 boundary dispute during U. S. President James K. Polk's administration led to a call for the northern boundary of the U. S. west of the Rockies to be latitude 54° 40' north, but the United Kingdom wanted a border that followed the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean.
The dispute was resolved in the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary through the Rockies. The Northwest Boundary Survey laid out the land boundary, but the water boundary was not settled for some time. After the Pig War in 1859, arbitration in 1872 established the border between the Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands; the International Boundary Survey, called the Northern Boundary Survey in the United States, began in 1872. Its mandate was to estab
Alcoholic drink
An alcoholic drink is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of alcohol produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. Drinking alcohol plays an important social role in many cultures. Most countries have laws regulating the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages; some countries ban such activities but alcoholic drinks are legal in most parts of the world. The global alcoholic drink industry exceeded $1 trillion in 2014. Alcohol is a depressant, which in low doses causes euphoria, reduces anxiety, improves sociability. In higher doses, it causes drunkenness, unconsciousness, or death. Long-term use can lead to alcohol abuse, physical dependence, alcoholism. Alcohol is one of the most used recreational drugs in the world with about 33% of people being current drinkers; as of 2016 women on average drink 0.7 drinks and males 1.7 drinks a day. In 2015, among Americans, 86% of adults had consumed alcohol at some point, 70% had drunk it in the last year, 56% in the last month.
Alcoholic drinks are divided into three classes—beers and spirits—and their alcohol content is between 3% and 50%. Discovery of late Stone Age jugs suggest that intentionally fermented drinks existed at least as early as the Neolithic period. Many animals consume alcohol when given the opportunity and are affected in much the same way as humans, although humans are the only species known to produce alcoholic drinks intentionally. Beer is a beverage fermented from grain mash, it is made from barley or a blend of several grains and flavored with hops. Most beer is carbonated as part of the fermentation process. If the fermented mash is distilled the drink becomes a spirit. In the Andean region, the most common beer is chicha, made from grain or fruits. Beer is the most consumed alcoholic beverage in the world. Cider or cyder is a fermented alcoholic drink made from any fruit juice. Cider alcohol content varies from 1.2% ABV to 8.5% or more in traditional English ciders. In some regions, cider may be called "apple wine".
Mead is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey with water, sometimes with various fruits, grains, or hops. The alcoholic content of mead may range from about 8% ABV to more than 20%; the defining characteristic of mead is that the majority of the drink's fermentable sugar is derived from honey. Pulque is the Mesoamerican fermented drink made from the "honey water" of maguey cacti; the drink distilled from pulque is mescal. Wine is a fermented beverage produced from sometimes other fruits. Wine involves a longer fermentation process than beer and a long aging process, resulting in an alcohol content of 9%–16% ABV. "Fruit wines" are made from fruits other than grapes, such as cherries, or apples. Sake is a popular example of "rice wine". Sparkling wine like French Champagne, Catalan Cava or Italian Prosecco can be made by means of a secondary fermentation. A distilled drink or liquor is an alcoholic drink produced by distilling ethanol produced by means of fermenting grain, fruit, or vegetables.
Unsweetened, alcoholic drinks that have an alcohol content of at least 20% ABV are called spirits. For the most common distilled drinks, such as whiskey and vodka, the alcohol content is around 40%; the term hard liquor is used in North America to distinguish distilled drinks from undistilled ones. Vodka, baijiu, whiskey and soju are examples of distilled drinks. Distilling eliminates some of the congeners. Freeze distillation concentrates ethanol along with fusel alcohols in applejack. Fortified wine is wine, such as sherry, to which a distilled beverage has been added. Fortified wine is distinguished from spirits made from wine in that spirits are produced by means of distillation, while fortified wine is wine that has had a spirit added to it. Many different styles of fortified wine have been developed, including port, madeira, marsala and the aromatized wine vermouth. Rectified spirit called "neutral grain spirit", is alcohol, purified by means of "rectification"; the term neutral refers to the spirit's lack of the flavor that would have been present if the mash ingredients had been distilled to a lower level of alcoholic purity.
Rectified spirit lacks any flavoring added to it after distillation. Other kinds of spirits, such as whiskey, are distilled to a lower alcohol percentage to preserve the flavor of the mash. Rectified spirit is a clear, flammable liquid that may contain as much as 95% ABV, it is used for medicinal purposes. It may be a grain spirit or it may be made from other plants, it is used in mixed drinks and tinctures, as a household solvent. Alcohol has significant negative health effects, including increased risk of cancer. Negative effects are related to the amount consumed with no safe lower limit seen. Wine, distilled spirits and other alcoholic drinks contain ethyl alcohol and alcohol consumption has short-term psychological and physiological effects on the user. Different concentrations of alcohol in the human body have different effects on a person; the effects of alcohol depend on the amount an individual has drunk, the percentage of alcohol in the wine, beer or spirits and the timespan that the consumption took place, the amount of food eaten and whether an indiv
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