1.
Yoruba people
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Yoruba people are an ethnic group of Southwestern and North Central Nigeria as well as Southern and Central Benin, together known as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute over 40 million people in total, the majority of this population is from Nigeria and make up 21% of its population, according to the CIA World Factbook, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language, which is tonal, the Yoruba share borders with the Bariba to the northwest in Benin, the Nupe to the north, and the Ebira to the northeast in central Nigeria. To the east are the Edo, Ẹsan, and the Afemai groups in mid-western Nigeria, adjacent the Ebira and Edo groups are the related Igala people found in the northeast to the left bank of the Niger river. To the southwest are the Gbe speaking Mahi, Egun, Fon and Ewe who border Yoruba communities in Benin, to the southeast are Itsekiri who live in the north-west end of the Niger delta. They are ancestrally related to the Yoruba but chose to maintain a cultural identity. Significant Yoruba populations in other West African countries can be found in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia and this older group has communities in such countries as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Brazil, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, among others. As an ethnic description, the word Yoruba was first recorded in reference to the Oyo Empire in a written by the 16th-century Songhai scholar Ahmed Baba. It was popularized by Hausa usage and ethnography written in Arabic and Ajami during the 19th century, the extension of the term to all speakers of dialects related to the language of the Oyo dates to the second half of the 19th century. It is due to the influence of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Anglican bishop in Nigeria, Crowther was himself a Yoruba and compiled the first Yoruba dictionary as well as introducing a standard for Yoruba orthography. The number of speakers is estimated at about 30 million in 2010. Yoruba is classified within the Edekiri languages, which together with the isolate Igala, Igala and Yoruba have important historical and cultural relationships. The languages of the two ethnic groups bear such a close resemblance that researchers such as Forde and Westermann and Bryan regarded Igala as a dialect of Yoruba, the Yoruboid languages are assumed to have developed out of an undifferentiated Volta-Niger group by the 1st millennium BCE. There are three dialect areas, Northwest, Central, and Southeast. The area where North-West Yoruba is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire, south-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. Central Yoruba forms an area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY. Though for a part based on the Oyo and Ibadan dialects. As of the 7th century BCE the African peoples who lived in Yorubaland were not initially known as the Yoruba, although they shared a common ethnicity, by the 8th century, a powerful Yoruba kingdom already existed in Ile-Ife, one of the earliest in Africa
2.
Nigeria
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Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. It comprises 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Nigeria is officially a democratic secular country. Modern-day Nigeria has been the site of numerous kingdoms and tribal states over the millennia, the modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th century, and the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures whilst practising indirect rule through traditional chiefdoms, Nigeria became a formally independent federation in 1960, and plunged into a civil war from 1967 to 1970. Nigeria is often referred to as the Giant of Africa, owing to its large population, with approximately 184 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the seventh most populous country in the world. Nigeria has one of the largest populations of youth in the world, Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Christians, who live mostly in the southern part of the country, and Muslims in the northern part. A minority of the population practise religions indigenous to Nigeria, such as native to the Igbo. As of 2015, Nigeria is the worlds 20th largest economy, worth more than $500 billion and $1 trillion in terms of nominal GDP and it overtook South Africa to become Africas largest economy in 2014. The 2013 debt-to-GDP ratio was 11 percent, Nigeria is a member of the MINT group of countries, which are widely seen as the globes next BRIC-like economies. It is also listed among the Next Eleven economies set to become among the biggest in the world, Nigeria is a founding member of the African Union and a member of many other international organizations, including the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and OPEC. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country and this name was coined in the late 19th century by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later married Lord Lugard, a British colonial administrator. The origin of the name Niger, which applied only to the middle reaches of the Niger River, is uncertain. The word is likely an alteration of the Tuareg name egerew n-igerewen used by inhabitants along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu prior to 19th-century European colonialism. The Nok civilisation of Northern Nigeria flourished between 500 BC and AD200, producing life-sized terracotta figures which are some of the earliest known sculptures in Sub-Saharan Africa, further north, the cities Kano and Katsina have a recorded history dating to around 999 AD. Hausa kingdoms and the Kanem-Bornu Empire prospered as trade posts between North and West Africa, the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people consolidated in the 10th century and continued until it lost its sovereignty to the British in 1911. Nri was ruled by the Eze Nri, and the city of Nri is considered to be the foundation of Igbo culture, Nri and Aguleri, where the Igbo creation myth originates, are in the territory of the Umeuri clan. Members of the clan trace their lineages back to the patriarchal king-figure Eri, in West Africa, the oldest bronzes made using the lost-wax process were from Igbo Ukwu, a city under Nri influence. The Yoruba kingdoms of Ife and Oyo in southwestern Nigeria became prominent in the 12th and 14th centuries, the oldest signs of human settlement at Ifes current site date back to the 9th century, and its material culture includes terracotta and bronze figures
3.
Bloomington, Illinois
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Bloomington is a city in Illinois, United States and the county seat of McLean County. It is adjacent to Normal, and is the populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area. The 2010 census showed the city had a population of 76,610, making it the 12th most populated city in Illinois, combined with Normal, the twin cities have a population of roughly 130,000. Bloomington is located at 40°29′03″N 88°59′37″W, the city is at an elevation of 797 feet above sea level. According to the 2010 census, Bloomington has an area of 27.229 square miles. Average monthly precipitation ranged from 1.71 inches in February to 4.52 inches in May, the Bloomington area was at the edge of a large grove occupied by the Kickapoo people before the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the early 1820s. Springing from the settlement of Keg Grove, later called Blooming Grove, Bloomington was named as county seat on December 25,1830, when the County of McLean was incorporated, a county seat was established. However, the legislation stated the site of Bloomington would be located later, james Allin, one of the new countys promoters, offered to donate 60 acres of his land for the new town. His offer was accepted, and Bloomington was laid out and its lots were sold at a well-attended and noisy auction on the 4th of July 1831. At this time there were few roads, but rich soils brought new farmers who began commerce by conducting their business in the newly formed county. People came from all over to trade and do business at the center, known today as Downtown Bloomington, including Abraham Lincoln who was working as a lawyer in nearby Springfield. In 1900 an officer on patrol discovered a fire in a laundry across the street from the old City Hall and he sounded the alarm but the fire destroyed the majority of the downtown, especially the areas north and east of the courthouse. However, the burnt area was rebuilt from the designs of local architects George Miller. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Bloomington continued to grow, agriculture, the construction of highways and railroads, and the growth of the insurance business all influenced the growth of Bloomington and its downtown area. The downtown area became a shopping center attracting trade from adjoining counties. This trend has continued to the present day, where expansion has included many restaurants, as of the census of 2010, there were 76,610 people and 30,454 households within the city. The population density was 2,814.8 people per square mile, there were 34,339 housing units at an average density of 1,261.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 77. 5% White,10. 1% African American,0. 3% Native American,7. 0% Asian,1. 42% from other races, hispanic or Latino of any race were 5. 6% of the population
4.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. 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 wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, 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. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
5.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
6.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
7.
The Gumps
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The Gumps, a popular comic strip about a middle-class family, was created by Sidney Smith in 1917, launching a 42-year run in newspapers from February 12,1917, until October 17,1959. According to a 1937 issue of Life, The Gumps was inspired by Andy Wheat, through Dr. Thomas Smith of Bloomingdale, Illinois, a dentist and a brother of Sidney Smith, Wheat met the cartoonist, who saw in him an ideal comic character. Wheat subsequently had his surname changed to Gump to match the cartoon character. His wifes name is Min, and he has two children, Chester and Goliath, now living in San Francisco, and an Uncle Bim who lives in Georgia, Gumps home is in Tucson, Arizona, but he also has a farm near his birthplace in Mississippi. The Gumps were utterly ordinary, chinless, bombastic blowhard Andy Gump, who is henpecked by his wife, Min, their sons Sam and baby James, wealthy Uncle Bim and they had a cat named Hope and a dog named Buck. The idea was envisioned by Joseph Patterson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Patterson referred to the masses as gumps and thought a strip about the domestic lives of ordinary people and their ordinary activities would appeal to the average American newspaper reader. He hired Smith to write and draw the strip, and it was Smith who breathed life into the characters, Smith was the first cartoonist to kill off a regular character, His May 1929 storyline about the death of Mary Gold caused a national sensation. The Gumps made its debut in an unusual way, cartoonist Sidney Smith had previously drawn and written Old Doc Yak, a talking-animal strip that sustained only a brief run. The very last Old Doc Yak strip depicted Yak and his moving out of their house. On Thursday, February 8,1917, the last panel showed only the empty house, on Monday, February 12,1917, after the Gumps were introduced in the space formerly occupied by Old Doc Yak, they moved into the house formerly occupied by the Yak family. The Gumps had a key role in the rise of syndication when Robert R and it was a picture paper, and it was a perfect setting for the newly developed art of the comic strip. The first issue shows but a strip, The Gumps. It was the almost instant popularity of this strip that directly brought national syndication into being. As one of the earliest continuity strips, The Gumps was extremely popular, many of these shorts were directed by Norman Taurog, later famed as the leading director of Elvis Presley movies. In 1924, Smith wrote his characters into a novel, Andy Gump, His Life Story, the strip and its merchandising made Smith a wealthy man. On his way home from signing a $150,000 a year contract in 1935, he crashed his new Rolls-Royce, Patterson replaced Smith with sports cartoonist Gus Edson. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when actor Martin Landau was a cartoonist, he worked as Edsons assistant on The Gumps, the Gumps launched a craze for continuity strips in newspapers. It also influenced radio and television programming, at the Chicago Tribunes radio station WGN, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll signed on as staffers in 1925
8.
Old Doc Yak
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Old Doc Yak was a comic strip by Sidney Smith that centered on a talking goat. The origin of the character was Buck Nix, a goat Smith drew in 1908 for the Chicago Evening Journal, for three years, Nix romanced a she-goat called Nanny. In 1913, Doc Yak appeared in several short features produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, Doc Yak was a family man and more mature than Buck Nix. He had a son, Yutch, along with a number of domestic problems, the last daily Old Doc Yak strip, on February 10,1917, depicted Yak and his family moving out while wondering who might move into the house next. The last panel showed the empty house, the next days newspapers, in the space formerly occupied by Old Doc Yak, printed the very first strip of Smiths The Gumps, showing the Gumps moving into the house formerly occupied by the Yak family. Old Doc Yak continued as a Sunday strip until June 22,1919, the Gumps likewise took over the Sunday space the following week. On December 7,1930, Old Doc Yak was revived as a topper for The Gumps Sunday page, in 1998, Old Doc Yak and Yutch appeared in Valiant Varmints, a one-shot comic book from Shanda Fantasy Arts. Old Doc Yak at Don Marksteins Toonopedia, archived from the original on September 7,2015
9.
Joseph Medill Patterson
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Joseph Medill Patterson was an American journalist, publisher and founder of the Daily News in New York. His younger sister was publisher Cissy Patterson and he was the father of publisher Alicia Patterson, who founded and edited Newsday. His father was Robert W. Patterson Jr. a journalist at the Chicago Tribune who married the owners daughter and his grandfather was publisher Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune and a mayor of Chicago, Illinois. Joseph Medill Patterson became one of the most significant newspaper publishers in the United States, founding New Yorks Daily News and he was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his famous grandfather. His mother, Elinor, and his aunt, Kate, both named their sons after their famous father. As a young adult, he asked his father if he could go to China to cover the Boxer Rebellion, granted permission, he went as a correspondent for William Randolph Hearst but did not arrive in time. He attended Yale University where he was a member of Scroll, upon graduation, he returned to Chicago, and covered the police beat for the Chicago Tribune. Patterson served in Illinois legislature briefly, married and was the father of three daughters by 1906. The youngest, Alicia, explained, “He had wanted a boy, instead of three daughters in succession, and that meant one of the Patterson girls would have to be his substitute son. ”Nearly 20 years later, in 1923, after his three daughters had become young women, his mistress gave birth to his son, James Joseph Patterson. Joseph Medill Patterson feuded with his father and resigned from the Tribune and he announced he was a socialist and wrote a muckraking article published in Colliers. Patterson moved to a farm in the country, wrote a novel, after his father died, Patterson took over the management of the Tribune. He had a dispute about how to run the Tribune with his cousin, after World War I ended, he visited London and observed a newspaper in tabloid form for the first time. Patterson moved to New York City and founded the New York Daily News as a tabloid on June 26,1919, with McCormick as co-editor and publisher. However, the two were unable to resolve their dispute, so in 1925 Patterson ceded full authority over the Tribune to McCormick in return for control of the Daily News. Initially, the Daily News was somewhat more liberal than the Tribune, however, over the years, it became more conservative as Patterson drifted rightward. He took an approach to managing the various comic strip properties in his papers. He suggested the character of Gasoline Alley adopt a foundling child who became Skeezix. Patterson influenced Chester Goulds Dick Tracy, changing the title from Plainclothes Tracy, milton Caniff credited Patterson for suggesting a comic strip about the Orient, which led to the creation of Caniffs Terry and the Pirates
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