1.
Missouri
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Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1821. With over six million residents, it is the eighteenth most populous state, the largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capitol is in Jefferson City on the Missouri River, the state is the twenty-first most extensive by area and is geographically diverse. The Northern Plains were once covered by glaciers, then tallgrass prairie, in the South are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Mississippi River forms the border of the state, eventually flowing into the swampy Missouri Bootheel. Humans have inhabited the land now known as Missouri for at least 12,000 years, the Mississippian culture built cities and mounds, before declining in the 1300s. When European explorers arrived in the 1600s they encountered the Osage, the French established Louisiana, a part of New France, and founded Ste. Genevieve in 1735 and St. Louis in 1764, after a brief period of Spanish rule, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans from the Upland South, including enslaved African Americans, rushed into the new Missouri Territory, many from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee settled in the Boonslick area of Mid-Missouri. Soon after, heavy German immigration formed the Missouri Rhineland, Missouri played a central role in the westward expansion of the United States, as memorialized by the Gateway Arch. The Pony Express, Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, as a border state, Missouris role in the American Civil War was complex and there were many conflicts within. After the war, both Greater St. Louis and the Kansas City metropolitan area became centers of industrialization and business, today, the state is divided into 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis. Missouris culture blends elements from the Midwestern and Southern United States, the musical styles of ragtime, Kansas City jazz, and St. Louis Blues, developed in Missouri. The well-known Kansas City-style barbecue, and lesser known St. Louis-style barbecue can be found across the state, St. Louis is also a major center of beer brewing, Anheuser-Busch is the largest producer in the world. Missouri wine is produced in the nearby Missouri Rhineland and Ozarks, Missouris alcohol laws are among the most permissive in the United States. Outside of the large cities popular tourist destinations include the Lake of the Ozarks, U. S. President Harry S. Truman is from Missouri. Other well known Missourians include Mark Twain, Walt Disney, Chuck Berry, some of the largest companies based in the state include Express Scripts, Monsanto, Emerson Electric, Edward Jones, and OReilly Auto Parts. Missouri has been called the Mother of the West and the Cave State, however, Missouris most famous nickname is the Show Me State, the state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, a Siouan-language tribe
2.
College
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College is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university. In ancient Rome a collegium was a club or society, a group of living together under a common set of rules. Aside from the educational context - nowadays the most common use of college - there are various other meanings also derived from the original Latin term. In the United States, college can be a synonym for university, in Singapore and India, this is known as a junior college. The municipal government of the city of Paris uses the sixth form college as the English name for a lycée. In some national education systems, secondary schools may be called colleges or have college as part of their title, in Australia the term college is applied to any private or independent primary and, especially, secondary school as distinct from a state school. Melbourne Grammar School, Cranbrook School, Sydney and The Kings School, there has also been a recent trend to rename or create government secondary schools as colleges. In the state of Victoria, some high schools are referred to as secondary colleges. Interestingly, the pre-eminent government secondary school for boys in Melbourne is still named Melbourne High School, in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, college is used in the name of all state high schools built since the late 1990s, and also some older ones. In New South Wales, some schools, especially multi-campus schools resulting from mergers, are known as secondary colleges. In Queensland some newer schools which accept primary and high school students are styled state college, in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, college refers to the final two years of high school, and the institutions which provide this. In this context, college is an independent of the other years of high school. Here, the expression is a version of matriculation college. This is because these schools have traditionally focused on academic, rather than vocational, subjects. Some private secondary schools choose to use the college in their names nevertheless. Some secondary schools elsewhere in the country, particularly ones within the school system. In New Zealand the word normally refers to a secondary school for ages 13 to 17
3.
Owl
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Exceptions include the diurnal northern hawk-owl and the gregarious burrowing owl. Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds and they are found in all regions of the Earth except Antarctica and some remote islands. Owls are divided into two families, the Strigidae family of owls, and the Tytonidae family of barn-owls. Owls possess large, forward-facing eyes and ear-holes, a beak, a flat face, and usually a conspicuous circle of feathers. The feathers making up this disc can be adjusted to focus sounds from varying distances onto the owls asymmetrically placed ear cavities. Most birds of prey have eyes on the sides of their heads, although owls have binocular vision, their large eyes are fixed in their sockets—as are those of most other birds—so they must turn their entire heads to change views. As owls are farsighted, they are unable to see anything within a few centimeters of their eyes. Caught prey can be felt by owls with the use of feathers on the beak. Their far vision, particularly in low light, is exceptionally good, Owls can rotate their heads and necks as much as 270°. Owls have 14 neck vertebrae compared to seven in humans, which makes their necks more flexible, other anastomoses between the carotid and vertebral arteries support this effect. The smallest owl—weighing as little as 31 g and measuring some 13.5 cm —is the elf owl, around the same diminutive length, although slightly heavier, are the lesser known long-whiskered owlet and Tamaulipas pygmy owl. The largest owl by length is the great grey owl, which measures around 70 cm on average, however, the heaviest owls are two similarly sized eagle owls, the Eurasian eagle-owl and Blakistons fish owl. These two species, which are on average about 2.53 cm shorter in length than the great grey, as noted above, their facial discs help owls to funnel the sound of prey to their ears. In many species, these discs are placed asymmetrically, for better directional location, Owl plumage is generally cryptic, although several species have facial and head markings, including face masks, ear tufts, and brightly coloured irises. These markings are more common in species inhabiting open habitats. Sexual dimorphism is a difference between males and females of a species. Reverse sexual dimorphism, when females are larger than males, has been observed across multiple owl species, the degree of size dimorphism varies across multiple populations and species, and is measured through various traits, such as wing span and body mass. Overall, female owls tend to be larger than males
4.
San Diego State University
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San Diego State University is a public research university in San Diego, California, and is the largest and oldest higher education institution in San Diego County. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university in the 23-member California State University, SDSU has a Fall 2016 student body of 34,688 and an alumni base of more than 280,000. The Carnegie Foundation has designated San Diego State University a Doctoral University with Higher Research Activity, in the 2015–16 fiscal year, the university obtained $130 million in public and private funding—a total of 707 awards—up from $120.6 million the previous fiscal year. SDSU sponsors the second highest number of Fulbright Scholars in the State of California, since 2005, the university has produced over 65 Fulbright student scholars. The university generates over $2.4 billion annually for the San Diego economy, while 60 percent of SDSU graduates remain in San Diego, making SDSU a primary educator of the regions work force. Established on March 13,1897, San Diego State University first began as the San Diego Normal School and it was located on a 17-acre campus on Park Boulevard in University Heights. It opened with seven faculty members and 91 students, the curriculum was limited to English, history. In 1923, the San Diego Normal School became San Diego State Teachers College, by the 1930s the school had outgrown its original campus. In 1931 it moved to its current location on a mesa at what was then the edge of San Diego. In 1935, the school expanded its offerings beyond teacher education, in 1960, San Diego State College became a part of the California State Colleges system, now known as The California State University. Finally in 1972 San Diego State College became California State University, San Diego, John F. Kennedy, then the President of the United States of America, gave the graduation commencement address at San Diego State University on June 6,1963. Kennedy was given a doctorate degree in law at the ceremony. In 1964, this event was registered as California Historical Landmark #798, on May 29,1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a near-capacity audience in the Open Air Theater. King discussed his vision for the future and called for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in April 2012, his Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama spoke at SDSUs Viejas Arena as part of his Compassion Without Borders tour. SDSU has had 10 presidents, two of whom served in an acting capacity, several structures on the campus are named in past presidents honor, such as Hardy Tower, Hepner Hall, and the Malcolm A. In March 2017 President Hirshman announced his intention to resign June 30,2017, samuel T. Black Edward L. Hardy Walter R. Hepner Malcolm A. Love Donald E. Walker Brage Golding Trevor Colbourn Thomas B, SDSU also offers 26 different teaching credentials. The university offers doctoral degrees than any other campus in the entire California State University
5.
Octagon
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In geometry, an octagon is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A regular octagon has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a truncated square, t. A truncated octagon, t is a hexadecagon, t, the sum of all the internal angles of any octagon is 1080°. As with all polygons, the external angles total 360°, the midpoint octagon of a reference octagon has its eight vertices at the midpoints of the sides of the reference octagon. A regular octagon is a figure with sides of the same length. It has eight lines of symmetry and rotational symmetry of order 8. A regular octagon is represented by the Schläfli symbol, the internal angle at each vertex of a regular octagon is 135°. The area of an octagon of side length a is given by A =2 cot π8 a 2 =2 a 2 ≃4.828 a 2. In terms of the circumradius R, the area is A =4 sin π4 R2 =22 R2 ≃2.828 R2. In terms of the r, the area is A =8 tan π8 r 2 =8 r 2 ≃3.314 r 2. These last two coefficients bracket the value of pi, the area of the unit circle. The area can also be expressed as A = S2 − a 2, where S is the span of the octagon, or the second-shortest diagonal, and a is the length of one of the sides, or bases. This is easily proven if one takes an octagon, draws a square around the outside and then takes the corner triangles and places them with right angles pointed inward, the edges of this square are each the length of the base. Given the length of a side a, the span S is S = a 2 + a + a 2 = a ≈2.414 a. The area is then as above, A =2 − a 2 =2 a 2 ≈4.828 a 2, expressed in terms of the span, the area is A =2 S2 ≈0.828 S2. Another simple formula for the area is A =2 a S, more often the span S is known, and the length of the sides, a, is to be determined, as when cutting a square piece of material into a regular octagon. From the above, a ≈ S /2.414, the two end lengths e on each side, as well as being e = a /2, may be calculated as e = /2. The circumradius of the octagon in terms of the side length a is R = a
6.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
7.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
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Lancaster, is a city located in South Central Pennsylvania which serves as the seat of Pennsylvanias Lancaster County and one of the oldest inland towns in the United States. With a population of 59,322, it ranks eighth in population among Pennsylvanias cities, the Lancaster metropolitan area population is 507,766, making it the 101st largest metropolitan area in the US and 2nd largest in the South Central Pennsylvania area. Lancaster hosts more electronic public CCTV outdoor cameras per capita than such as Boston or San Francisco. Lancaster was home to James Buchanan, the nations 15th president, originally called Hickory Town, the city was renamed after the English city of Lancaster by native John Wright. Its symbol, the red rose, is from the House of Lancaster, Lancaster was part of the 1681 Penns Woods Charter of William Penn, and was laid out by James Hamilton in 1734. It was incorporated as a borough in 1742 and incorporated as a city in 1818, the revolutionary government then moved still farther away to York, Pennsylvania. Lancaster was capital of Pennsylvania from 1799 to 1812, after which the capital was moved to Harrisburg, in 1851, the current Lancaster County Prison was built in the city, styled after Lancaster Castle in England. The prison remains in use, and was used for public hangings until 1912 and it replaced a 1737 structure on a different site. The first paved road in the United States was the former Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, opened in 1795, the Turnpike connected the cities of Lancaster and Philadelphia, and was designed by a Scottish engineer named John Loudon McAdam. Lancaster residents are known to use the word macadam in lieu of pavement or asphalt and this name is a reference to the paving process named for McAdam. The city of Lancaster was home to important figures in American history. Wheatland, the estate of James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States, is one of Lancasters most popular attractions, Thaddeus Stevens, considered among the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives, lived in Lancaster as an attorney. Stevens gained notoriety as a Radical Republican and for his abolitionism, the Fulton Opera House in the city was named for Lancaster native Robert Fulton, a renaissance man who created the first fully functional steamboat. All of these individuals have had schools named after them. After the American Revolution, the city of Lancaster became an iron-foundry center, two of the most common products needed by pioneers to settle the Frontier were manufactured in Lancaster, the Conestoga wagon and the Pennsylvania long rifle. The Conestoga wagon was named after the Conestoga River, which runs through the city, the innovative gunsmith William Henry lived in Lancaster and was a U. S. congressman and leader during and after the American Revolution. In 1803, Meriwether Lewis visited Lancaster to be educated in survey methods by the well-known surveyor Andrew Ellicott, during his visit, Lewis learned to plot latitude and longitude as part of his overall training needed to lead the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1879, Franklin Winfield Woolworth opened his first successful five and dime store in the city of Lancaster, Lancaster was one of the winning communities for the All-America City award in 2000
8.
Northwest Missouri State University
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Northwest Missouri State University is a state university in Maryville, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1905 as a college, it offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. The campus, based on the design for Forest Park at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, is the official Missouri State Arboretum, the school is governed by a state-appointed Board of Regents and headed by President Dr. John Jasinski. The Northwest Bearcats compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association and Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association for mens and womens sports and they have won six NCAA Division II football national championships and finished four times as runner-up. The Northwest Bearcats cheerleading squad have won three Universal Cheerleaders Association Division II National Champions, the Northwest Bearcat Mens Basketball team has won one national championship. Becoming the first Division II school to win both a football and basketball championship in the academic year. In 1905 the Missouri Legislature created five districts in the state to establish normal schools, Maryville won the competition for the Northwest district with an offer to donate 86 acres and $58,000 on the site of a Methodist Seminary. The other districts in the network were to be at Kirksville, Cape Girardeau, Springfield, the original mission of the school, initially known as the Fifth District Normal School, was to teach elementary school teachers. Classes began on June 13,1906 with a lab school teaching Maryvilles children in kindergarten through third grade, the school was later expanded to a full-fledged high school before dropping back to its current configuration of kindergarten through sixth grade. In 1919 the school was renamed Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, in 1949 the name was shrunk to Northwest Missouri State College by the Board of Regents. In 1969, Missouri Governor Warren Hearnes pushed for switching St. Joseph Junior College from a school into a four-year state college. Opening a new state school within 45 miles of Maryville was perceived in Maryville as an attempt to kill the school. Those fears came to the forefront in 1988 when Shalia Aery, commissioner of education under Governor John Ashcroft. On August 14,1972, Northwest was elevated to university status so that it could offer masters degrees and its name changed to Northwest Missouri State University. The university currently holds four Missouri Quality Awards, granted in 1997,2001,2005, Northwest is the only educational institution to receive multiple Missouri Quality Awards. In 1987, Northwest unveiled its Electronic Campus Program, the first such program among public U. S. colleges, the campus design was inspired by the Forest Park design for the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair which evolved into the campus for Washington University. In 1993 the state legislature designated Northwest the official Missouri State Arboretum, the defining landmark of the campus is the Administration Building, very similar to Brookings Hall at Washington University in St. Louis. Brookings Hall served as the Administration Building of the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, the master St. Louis design was created by Cope & Stewardson, famed for designing schools throughout the country based on the Oxford University style
9.
Harvard University
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Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, james Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College, Harvards $34.5 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university, the nominal cost of attendance is high, but the Universitys large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. Harvards alumni include eight U. S. presidents, several heads of state,62 living billionaires,359 Rhodes Scholars. To date, some 130 Nobel laureates,18 Fields Medalists, Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it obtained British North Americas first known printing press, in 1639 it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard an alumnus of the University of Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his scholars library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650 and it offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational. The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701, in 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the college toward intellectual independence from Puritanism. When the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year later, in 1804, in 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassizs approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans participation in the Divine Nature, agassizs perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the divine plan in all phenomena. When it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on an archetype for his evidence. Charles W. Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. While Eliot was the most crucial figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education, during the 20th century, Harvards international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the universitys scope. Rapid enrollment growth continued as new schools were begun and the undergraduate College expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. In the early 20th century, the student body was predominately old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, by the 1970s it was much more diversified
10.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
