U.S. Steel
United States Steel Corporation, more known as U. S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, with production operations in the United States and Central Europe; as of 2016, the company was the world's 24th-largest steel producer and second-largest domestic producer, trailing only Nucor Corporation. Though renamed USX Corporation in 1986, the company returned to its present name in 2001 after spinning off its energy business, including Marathon Oil, other assets from its core steel concern; the company experienced significant downsizing during the 1980s. J. P. Morgan and attorney Elbert H. Gary founded U. S. Steel on March 2, 1901 by combining Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company for $492 million. At one time, U. S. Steel was largest corporation in the world, it was capitalized at $1.4 billion. The company established its headquarters in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City.
In 1907 US Steel bought its largest competitor, the Tennessee Coal and Railroad Company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Tennessee Coal was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the General Electric Company; the federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U. S. Steel in 1911, but that effort failed. In 1902, its first full year of operation, U. S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. About 100 years as of 2001 it produced only 8 percent more than it did in 1902 and its shipments accounted for only about 8 percent of domestic consumption. According to author Douglas Blackmon in Slavery by Another Name, the growth of U. S. Steel and its subsidiaries in the South was dependent on the labor of cheaply paid black workers and exploited convicts; the company could obtain black labor at a fraction of the cost of white labor by taking advantage of the Black Codes and discriminatory laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Southern states after the Reconstruction Era.
In addition, U. S. Steel had agreements with more than 20 counties in Alabama to obtain the labor of its prisoners paying locales nine dollars a month for workers who would be forced into their mines through a system of convict leasing; this practice continued until at least the late 1920s. While some individuals were guilty of a crime they did not receive payment or recognition for their work; this practice was not, unique to U. S. Steel as eight Southern states had similar practices and many companies, as well as farmers, took advantage of this; the Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street, was distinguished by its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativeness during its heyday. In 1901, it controlled two-thirds of steel production and, through its Pittsburgh Steamship Company, developed the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes; because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation—Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake—and fears of antitrust litigation, U.
S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors innovated faster Bethlehem Steel, run by U. S. Steel's Charles M. Schwab. U. S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911. James A. Farrell was named president in 1911 and served until 1932. U. S. Steel ranked 16th among United States corporations in the value of World War II production contracts. Production peaked at more than 35 million tons in 1953, its employment was greatest in 1943. The federal government intervened to try to control U. S. Steel. President Harry S. Truman attempted to take over its steel mills in 1952 to resolve a crisis with its union, the United Steelworkers of America; the Supreme Court blocked the takeover by ruling that the president did not have the Constitutional authority to seize the mills President John F. Kennedy was more successful in 1962 when he pressured the steel industry into reversing price increases that Kennedy considered dangerously inflationary. In the postwar years, the steel industry and heavy manufacturing went through restructuring that caused a decline in US Steel's need for labor and portfolio.
Many jobs moved offshore. By 2000, the company employed 52,500 people. In the early days of the Reagan Administration, steel firms won substantial tax breaks in order to compete with imported goods, but instead of modernizing their mills, steel companies shifted capital out of steel and into more profitable areas. In March 1982, U. S. Steel took its concessions and paid $1.4 billion in cash and $4.7 billion in loans for Marathon Oil, saving $500 million in taxes through the merger. The architect of tax concessions to steel firms, Senator Arlen Specter, complained that "we go out on a limb in Congress and we feel they should be putting it in steel." The events are the subject of a song by folk singer Anne Feeney. In 1984 the federal government prevented U. S. Steel from acquiring National Steel, political pressure from the United States Congress, as well as the United Steelworkers, forced the company to abandon plans to import British Steel Corporation slabs. U. S. Steel acquired National Steel's assets in 2003 after National Steel went bankrupt.
As part of its diversification plan, U. S. Steel
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
Liberty Avenue (Pittsburgh)
Liberty Avenue is a major thoroughfare starting in downtown Pittsburgh, United States, just outside Point State Park. Liberty Ave. runs through Downtown Pittsburgh, the Strip District and ends in the neighborhood of Shadyside at its intersection with Centre Avenue and Aiken Avenue. A survey of Pittsburgh in 1784 shows a Liberty Street in its present location, it is called Liberty Street in a map from 1860. Beginning in the 19th century, the thoroughfare became a place of middle- and upper-class commerce. A history of Pittsburgh notes that a Market House was established in 1832 along Liberty Street between Sixth Street and Cecil Alley. Liberty hosted food suppliers and small manufacturers. In 1894, the Joseph Horne department store was built there. In the early 20th century, the Clark Building and the Second National Bank were built there. At length, it became a home for theater and movies, with the Stanley Theatre, the Lowe's Penn and the Harris Theatre. However, much of this activity was checked, first by the Great Depression, by the St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936.
Some businesses were closed, others moved elsewhere. A section of Liberty Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh became a red-light district in the 1970s and'80s, hosting the city's sex industry, including burlesque houses, strip bars, peep shows, attracting vice and crime; the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, formed in 1984, worked over the next 25 years to transform the area into the Cultural District, a center for the arts bringing the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Bricolage Production Company, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Arts Education Center, a museum of cartoon art, The ToonSeum, to Liberty Avenue. Liberty Avenue in the downtown area underwent an years-long extensive $3.6 million redesign and repavement, completed by 1991. Liberty Ave. is a main road through the Strip District. It is the home to many businesses offices and business-to-business service and product providers; the factory to manufacture George Westinghouse's air brakes was located at 2425 Liberty.
This has now become the home of the Pittsburgh Opera. There are few retail establishments on Liberty Ave. in the Strip District. Liberty Ave. is the site of the main business district in Bloomfield. Liberty Ave. is home to West Penn Hospital as well as many small store fronts. A semi-fictionalized version of Liberty Avenue is featured prominently in the American version of the television program Queer as Folk
Sports in Pittsburgh
Sports in Pittsburgh have been played dating back to the American Civil War. Baseball and the first professional American football game had been played in the city by 1892. Pittsburgh was first known as the "City of Champions" when the Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Panthers, Pittsburgh Steelers won multiple championships in the 1970s. Today, the city has three major professional sports franchises, the Pirates and Penguins. Local universities Duquesne and Robert Morris field Division I teams in men's and women's basketball and Division I FCS teams in football. Robert Morris fields Division I men's and women's ice hockey teams. Pittsburgh is once again being called the "City of Champions" as its Steelers and Penguins are recent champions of the NFL and NHL in 2009; these accomplishments and others helped Pittsburgh earn the title of "Best Sports City" in 2009 from the Sporting News. Including the 2008–09 seasons, the Steelers have reached the NFL playoffs in six of the last eight seasons—winning two Super Bowl titles—and the Penguins have reached the NHL playoffs the last four years with back-to-back finals appearances, an Atlantic Division Crown, a Stanley Cup championship, none of which won at home.
The flag of Pittsburgh is colored with black and gold, based on the colors of William Pitt's coat of arms. The city's first National Hockey League franchise, the Pittsburgh Pirates were the first to wear black and gold as their colors; the colors were adopted by founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Art Rooney, in 1933. In 1948, the Pittsburgh baseball Pirates switched their colors from blue to black and gold. Pittsburgh's second NHL franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins, wore blue and white, due to then-general manager Jack Riley's upbringing in Ontario. In 1979, after the Steelers and Pirates had each won their respective league championships, the Penguins altered their color scheme to match, despite objections from the Boston Bruins, who has used the black and gold combination since the 1934-35 NHL season. In 1975, late Steelers radio broadcaster Myron Cope invented the Terrible Towel, which has become "arguably the best-known fan symbol of any major pro sports team." Cope was one of multiple sports figures born in its surrounding area.
Pittsburgh is sometimes called the "Cradle of Quarterbacks" due to the number of prominent players of that position who hail from the area, including NFL greats Jim Kelly, George Blanda, Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Joe Montana. The City of Pittsburgh has had various professional sports franchises throughout its history and today is home to three teams competing at the highest professional level in their respective sports: the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL, the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball. Prior to 1876, three amateur Pittsburgh baseball teams—the Enterprise, the Xanthas, the Olympics—competed, most at Recreation Park. On April 15, 1876, Recreation Park was the site of a game between the Xanthas and the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, an unrelated forerunner to the "Alleghenys" team which would be renamed the Pirates; the Alleghenies won the game 7–3. The 1877 squad was the most successful yet, finishing within 1 game of the pennant in the International Association.
1882 marked the first "major league" and professional season for the Pittsburgh Alleghenies and in 1887, the Alleghenies moved from American Association to the National League after owner William Nimick became frustrated over a contract dispute. The Pirates were purchased in 1900 by Barney Dreyfuss, who would go down in history as the "Father of the modern World Series" and its precursor, the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup, both of which saw the Pirates participate in the inaugural series, he recruited Hall of Famers Fred Clarke and Pittsburgh native Honus Wagner and built the first concrete and steel baseball stadium, Forbes Field. Under Dreyfuss, the Pirates won pre-World Series world titles in 1901 and 1902, National League pennants from 1901–1903, 1909, 1925 and 1927 and World Series in 1909 and 1925; the 1902 squad set major league records for winning percentage and today is the second most winning team fielded in the sport. The franchise won the World Series three more times—in 1960, 1971, 1979.
In 1960, the team became the first to win a World Series on a home run, remain the only team to win on a homer in the decisive seventh game. In 1979, the Pirates repeated the accomplishment their own 1925 World Series team, coming back from a 1-game to 3 deficit, winning three games in a row when facing elimination, for the title, thus the Pirates became the only franchise in the history of all sports to win world titles more than once when coming back from a 1–3 deficit. The 1979 Pirates are unique in that they are the only team in all sports to have players who captured all four MVP awards: Seasonal, All Star Game, NLCS, World Series within a single season. Since 1970 the team has won their division and qualified for the playoffs nine times
Enrico Biscotti Company
Enrico Biscotti Company is a bakery and restaurant in Pittsburgh. The main location is in the Strip District neighborhood; the main product is biscotti. It was featured in the film My Sweet, a film by Lagattuta's wife, it has been featured on Food Network. Owner Larry Lagattuta founded Enrico Biscotti bakery, featuring bread and biscotti, in 1993, he had been an account executive with Lucent Technologies. A few years the offerings were expanded to include pizzas and cappuccino. Owner Lagattuta offers an occasional class in bread baking. In 2003, a second location was opened in Shadyside neighborhood. Unlike the original bakery/cafe, the Shadyside location is more of a restaurant. In 2010, a third location opened in Highland Park neighborhood; the unintentional grand opening occurred during the February 9–10, 2010 North American blizzard, with the cafe serving as a soup kitchen for the snowed-in neighbors
Ketchup
Ketchup is a sauce used as a condiment. Recipes used egg whites, oysters, mussels, or walnuts, among other ingredients, but now the unmodified term refers to tomato ketchup. Various other terms for the sauce include catsup, ketsup, red sauce, tomato sauce, or mushroom ketchup or tomato ketchup. Ketchup is a sweet and tangy sauce now made from tomatoes and vinegar, with assorted seasonings and spices; the specific spices and flavors vary, but include onions, coriander, cumin and mustard. The market leader in the United States and United Kingdom is Heinz. Hunt's has the second biggest share of the US market with less than 20%. In much of the UK, Australia and New Zealand ketchup is known as "tomato sauce" or "red sauce". Tomato ketchup is most used as a condiment to dishes that are served hot and may be fried or greasy: french fries, hot dogs, chicken tenders, tater tots, hot sandwiches, meat pies, cooked eggs, grilled or fried meat. Ketchup is sometimes used as the basis for, or as one ingredient in, other sauces and dressings, the flavor may be replicated as an additive flavoring for snacks such as potato chips.
In the 17th century, the Chinese mixed a concoction of pickled fish and spices and called it kôe-chiap or kê-chiap meaning the brine of pickled fish or shellfish. By the early 18th century, the table sauce had arrived in the Malay states, where English colonists first tasted it; the Malaysian-Malay word for the sauce was kecap. That word evolved into the English word "ketchup". English settlers took ketchup with them to the American colonies; the term Catchup was used in 1690 in the Dictionary of the Canting Crew, well acclaimed in North America. The spelling "catchup" may have been used in the past. In the United Kingdom, preparations of ketchup were and prepared with mushrooms as a primary ingredient, rather than tomatoes. Ketchup recipes began to appear in British and American cookbooks in the 18th century. In a 1742 London cookbook, the fish sauce had taken on a British flavor, with the addition of shallots and mushrooms; the mushrooms soon became the main ingredient, from 1750 to 1850 the word ketchup began to mean any number of thin dark sauces made of mushrooms or walnuts.
In the United States, mushroom ketchup dates back to at least 1770, was prepared by British colonists in "English speaking colonies in North America". In contemporary times, mushroom ketchup is available in the UK, although it is not a used condiment. Many variations of ketchup were created, but the tomato-based version did not appear until about a century after other types. An early recipe for "Tomata Catsup" from 1817 still has the anchovies that betray its fish-sauce ancestry: Gather a gallon of fine and full ripe tomatas. Let them rest for three days, press off the juice, to each quart add a quarter of a pound of anchovies, two ounces of shallots, an ounce of ground black pepper. Boil up together for half an hour, strain through a sieve, put to it the following spices. Pound all together, it will keep for seven years. By the mid-1850s, the anchovies had been dropped. James Mease published another recipe in 1812. In 1824, a ketchup recipe using tomatoes appeared in The Virginia Housewife. American cooks began to sweeten ketchup in the 19th century.
As the century progressed, tomato ketchup began its ascent in popularity in the United States. Ketchup was popular. People were less hesitant to eat tomatoes as part of a processed product, cooked and infused with vinegar and spices. Tomato ketchup was sold locally by farmers. Jonas Yerkes is credited as the first American to sell tomato ketchup in a bottle. By 1837, he had distributed the condiment nationally. Shortly thereafter, other companies followed suit. F. & J. Heinz launched their tomato ketchup in 1876. Heinz tomato ketchup was advertised: "Blessed relief for Mother and the other women in the household!", a slogan which alluded to the lengthy and onerous process required to produce tomato ketchup in the home. With industrial ketchup production and a need for better preservation there was a great increase of sugar in ketchup, leading to our modern sweet and sour formula. In Australia, it wasn't until the late 19th century that sugar was added to tomato sauce in small quantities, but today contains just as much as American ketchup and only differed in the proportions of tomatoes and vinegar in early recipes.
The Webster's Dictionary of 1913 defined "catchup" as: "table sauce made from mushrooms, walnuts, etc.." Modern ketchup emerged in the early years of the 20th century, out of a debate over the use of sodium benzoate as a preservative in condiments. Harvey W. Wiley, the "father" of the Food and Drug Administration in the US, challenged the safety of benzoate, banned in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. In response, entrepreneurs including He
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U. S. history. As a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States; the loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, secessionist partisans in seven Southern slave states declared state secessions from the country and unveiled their defiant formation of a Confederate States of America in rebellion against the U. S. Constitutional government; the Confederacy grew to control over half the territory in eleven states, it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from exiled native secessionists without territory or population.
These were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave holding states of Delaware and Maryland were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed; the Confederate States was never diplomatically recognized by the government of the United States or by that of any foreign country. The states that remained loyal to the U. S. were known as the Union. The Union and the Confederacy raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought in the South over the course of four years. Intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, more than the number of U. S. military deaths in all other wars combined. The war ended when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the southern states followed suit. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed the transportation systems; the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, four million black slaves were freed.
During the Reconstruction Era that followed the war, national unity was restored, the national government expanded its power, civil rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation. In the 1860 presidential election, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported banning slavery in all the U. S. territories. The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to abolish slavery; the three pro-Union candidates together received an overwhelming 82% majority of the votes cast nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes centered in the north, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas' votes were distributed nationally and Constitutional Unionist John Bell's votes centered in Tennessee and Virginia; the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a plurality of the popular votes and a majority of the electoral votes nationally. He was the first Republican Party candidate to win the presidency.
However, before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies declared secession and formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, with an average of 49 percent. Of those states whose legislatures resolved for secession, the first seven voted with split majorities for unionist candidates Douglas and Bell, or with sizable minorities for those unionists. Of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession. Outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincoln's March 4, 1861, inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war. Speaking directly to the "Southern States", he attempted to calm their fears of any threats to slavery, reaffirming, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists.
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, I have no inclination to do so." After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene, but none did, none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter. While in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive during 1861–1862. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy much of its western armies, seized New Orleans; the successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta to William T. Sherman and his march to th
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