Polk County, Tennessee
Polk County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U. S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2016 census estimate, the population was 16,773, its county seat is Benton. The county was created on November 1839, from parts of Bradley and McMinn counties; the county was named after then-governor James K. Polk. Polk County is included in the Cleveland, metropolitan statistical area, included in the Chattanooga-Cleveland-Dalton, TN-GA-AL Combined Statistical Area. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 442 square miles, of which 435 square miles is land and 7.7 square miles is water. The total area is 1.65% water. Located in the extreme southeastern corner of Tennessee, it is the state's only county to share borders with both Georgia and North Carolina. Much of the terrain of eastern Polk County is mountainous, including Big Frog Mountain, constituting part of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Large tracts of Polk County are part of the Cherokee National Forest.
The Ocoee River, site of whitewater slalom events in the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympic Games, runs through Polk County and is vital to one of the county's major industries, whitewater rafting. The calmer Hiwassee River, a tributary of the Tennessee River which flows through northern Polk County, is used for rafting and tubing. Monroe County Cherokee County, North Carolina Fannin County, Georgia Murray County, Georgia Bradley County McMinn County Big Frog Wilderness Cherokee National Forest William L. Davenport Refuge Ducktown Basin Museum and Burra Burra Mine Fourth Fractional Township Wildlife Management Area Hiwassee/Ocoee Scenic River State Park As of the census of 2010, there were 16,825 people, 6,653 households, 4,755 families residing in the county; the population density was 38.7 people per square mile. There were 7,991 housing units at an average density of 18.4 per square mile. There were 6,653 households out of which 26.10% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 56.60% were married couples living together, 9.00% had a female householder with no husband present, 26.30% were non-families.
25.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.20% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 2.96. In the county, the population was spread out with 22.14% under the age of 18, 5.0% from 20 to 24, 10.20% from 25 to 34, 21.60% from 35 to 49, 21.70% from 50-64, 17.10% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42.5 years. The racial origins of the county is White alone being 97.5%, Black or African American alone, 0.3%, American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 0.4%, Asian alone, 0.1%, Two or More Races, 1.3%, Some Other Race being 0.04%. Hispanic or Latino origin being 1.3% of the population. In 2000, the median income for a household in the county was $29,643, the median income for a family was $36,370. Males had a median income of $27,703 versus $21,010 for females; the per capita income for the county was $16,025. About 9.70% of families and 13.00% of the population were below the poverty line, including 13.80% of those under age 18 and 18.40% of those age 65 or over.
Public schools in Polk County are operated by the Polk County Schools district. High Schools include Polk County High School; the district has Chilhowee Middle. The district has three elementary schools, Benton Elementary, South Polk Elementary and Copper Basin Elementary. Polk County was created by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly on November 23, 1839. Copper was discovered in Ducktown in 1843, by the 1850s a large mining operation was taking place here; this operation continued until the 1970s. In 1973, a large music festival known as the "Midwest Monster Peace Jubilee and Music Festival" known as the "Monster Peace Jubilee", was planned by Indiana-based promoter C. F. Manifest Inc. to take place on a 1,300 acre farm north of Benton on Labor Day of that year. Nicknamed "Polkstock" due to its resemblance to 1969's Woodstock in Bethel, New York, the event was expected to attract 500,000 and was opposed by locals the religious community, who believed the festival would bring sex and drugs, as well as much of the perceived rock music culture.
While the festival was still in the planning stages, the owner of the farm received a burning cross in his yard, shortly there after, a barn on his property suspiciously burned. The festival was shut down by the state circuit court, on the request of the district attorney, that the festival would constitute a public nuisance, due to drug and traffic problems. On May 27, 1983, a massive explosion at an illegal fireworks factory exploded, killing eleven workers; the operation, located on a bait farm a few miles south of Benton, was unlicensed, produced M-80 and M-100 fireworks, both illegal in Tennessee, was the largest illegal fireworks operation in the United States to date. The Ocoee Whitewater Center was the site of the canoe slalom events for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Copperhill Ducktown Benton US-64 US-74 US-411 SR-40 SR-30 SR-68 SR-74 SR-123 SR-163 SR-313 SR-314 SR-315 National Register of Historic Places listings in Polk County, Tennessee Official site Polk County/Copper Basin Chamber of Commerce Polk County, TNGenWeb - free genealogy resources for the county Polk County at Curlie
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in the U. S. state of Tennessee, the county seat of Knox County. The city had an estimated population of 186,239 in 2016 and a population of 178,874 as of the 2010 census, making it the state's third largest city after Nashville and Memphis. Knoxville is the principal city of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which, in 2016, was 868,546, up 0.9 percent, or 7,377 people, from to 2015. The KMSA is, in turn, the central component of the Knoxville-Sevierville-La Follette Combined Statistical Area, which, in 2013, had a population of 1,096,961. First settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee; the city struggled with geographic isolation throughout the early 19th century. The arrival of the railroad in 1855 led to an economic boom. During the Civil War, the city was bitterly divided over the secession issue, was occupied alternately by both Confederate and Union armies. Following the war, Knoxville grew as a major wholesaling and manufacturing center.
The city's economy stagnated after the 1920's as the manufacturing sector collapsed, the downtown area declined and city leaders became entrenched in partisan political fights. Hosting the 1982 World's Fair helped reinvigorate the city, revitalization initiatives by city leaders and private developers have had major successes in spurring growth in the city the downtown area. Knoxville is the home of the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee, whose sports teams, called the "Volunteers" or "Vols", are popular in the surrounding area. Knoxville is home to the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for East Tennessee and the corporate headquarters of several national and regional companies; as one of the largest cities in the Appalachian region, Knoxville has positioned itself in recent years as a repository of Appalachian culture and is one of the gateways to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The first people to form substantial settlements in what is now Knoxville arrived during the Woodland period.
One of the oldest artificial structures in Knoxville is a burial mound constructed during the early Mississippian culture period. The earthwork mound is now surrounded by the University of Tennessee campus. Other prehistoric sites include an Early Woodland habitation area at the confluence of the Tennessee River and Knob Creek, Dallas Phase Mississippian villages at Post Oak Island, at Bussell Island. By the 18th century, the Cherokee had become the dominant tribe in the East Tennessee region, although they were at war with the Creek and Shawnee; the Cherokee people called the Knoxville area kuwanda'talun'yi, which means "Mulberry Place." Most Cherokee habitation in the area was concentrated in the Overhill settlements along the Little Tennessee River, southwest of Knoxville. The first white traders and explorers were recorded as arriving in the Tennessee Valley in the late 17th century, though there is significant evidence that Hernando de Soto visited Bussell Island in 1540; the first major recorded Euro-American presence in the Knoxville area was the Timberlake Expedition, which passed through the confluence of the Holston and French Broad into the Tennessee River in December 1761.
Henry Timberlake, en route to the Over hill settlements along the Little Tennessee River, recalled being pleasantly surprised by the deep waters of the Tennessee after having struggled down the shallow Holston for several weeks. The end of the French and Indian War and confusion brought about by the American Revolution led to a drastic increase in Euro-American settlement west of the Appalachians. By the 1780's, white settlers were established in the Holston and French Broad valleys; the U. S. Congress ordered all illegal settlers out with little success; as settlers continued to trickle into Cherokee lands, tensions between the settlers and the Cherokee rose steadily. In 1786, James White, a Revolutionary War officer, his friend James Connor built White's Fort near the mouth of First Creek, on land White had purchased three years earlier. In 1790, White's son-in-law, Charles McClung—who had arrived from Pennsylvania the previous year—surveyed White's holdings between First Creek and Second Creek for the establishment of a town.
McClung drew up 64 0.5-acre lots. The waterfront was set aside for a town common. Two lots were set aside for a graveyard. Four lots were set aside for a school; that school was chartered as Blount College and it served as the starting point for the University of Tennessee, which uses Blount College's founding date of 1794, as its own. In 1790, President George Washington appointed North Carolina surveyor William Blount governor of the newly created Territory South of the River Ohio. One of Blount's first tasks was to meet with the Cherokee and establish territorial boundaries and resolve the issue of illegal settlers; this he accomplished immediately with the Treaty of Holston, negotiated and signed at White's Fort in 1791. Blount wanted to place the territorial capital at the confluence of the Clinch River and Tennessee River, but when the Cherokee refused to cede this land, Blount chose White's Fort, which McClung had surveyed the previous year. Blount named the new capital Knoxville after Revolutionary War general and Secretary of War Henry Knox, who at the time was Blount's immediate superior.
Problems arose from the Holston Treaty. Blount believed that he had "purchased" mu
Passiflora incarnata
Passiflora incarnata known as maypop, purple passionflower, true passionflower, wild apricot, wild passion vine, is a fast-growing perennial vine with climbing or trailing stems. A member of the passionflower genus Passiflora, the maypop has large, intricate flowers with prominent styles and stamens. One of the hardiest species of passionflower, it is both found as a wildflower in the southern United States and in cultivation for its fruit and striking bluish purple blooms; the stems can be pubescent. Leaves are alternate and palmately 3-lobed and 5-lobed, measuring 6–15 centimetres, they have two characteristic glands at the base of the blade on the petiole. Flowers have five bluish-white petals, they exhibit a white and purple corona, a structure of fine appendages between the petals and stamens. The large flower is arranged in a ring above the petals and sepals, they are pollinated by insects such as bumblebees and carpenter bees, are self-sterile. The flower begins to bloom in July; the fleshy fruit referred to as a maypop, is an oval yellowish berry about the size of a hen egg.
As with other passifloras, it is the larval food of a number of butterfly species, including the zebra longwing and Gulf fritillary. In many cases its fruit is popular with wildlife; the egg-shaped green fruits ` may pop'. This phenomenon gives the P. incarnata its common name, as well as the fact that its roots can remain dormant for most of the winter underground and the rest of the plant "pops" out of the ground by May, unharmed by the snow. The maypop occurs in thickets, disturbed areas, near riverbanks, near unmowed pastures and railroads, it thrives in areas with lots of available sunlight. It is not found in shady areas beneath a forest canopy; the Cherokee in the Tennessee area called it ocoee. For thousands of years the maypop was a staple food and medicinal plant for the Cherokee and to this day it is a revered piece of their heritage. This, other passionflowers are the exclusive larval host plants for the Gulf fritillary and non-exclusive for the variegated fritillary butterflies. Passiflora incarnata is cultivated and in its native range and homeland is a popular low maintenance garden plant that can be trained to adorn fences and arbors.
The maypop in the wild is an aggressive vine and native to the southeastern United States extending into the central portion of the US reaching Illinois and Ohio. The vines can carpet the floor of thickets in the wild in a matter of days in favorable weather; the plants need direct sunlight for at least half of the day. The best soils for P. incarnata are well-drained but the plants tolerate wet and acidic soils. The plants have a high drought tolerance. P. incarnata can be planted all the year in zone 7–11. The space between two plants is 36–60 inches. One to two years are necessary; each flower has a short life. The fruit develops in two to three months; the harvest depends on vine size and age of the plant but one reported 10–20 fruits per vine. Seeds can be collected in the fall. There are some problems with caterpillars in the culture of P. incarnata. The flowers appear to be suitable for bumblebee pollination and in the summer attract the ruby throated hummingbird, which will drink its nectar eagerly.
As both bees and hummingbirds look for nectar, the pollen filled flower anthers brush the back of the bee or the face of the hummingbird and, when the bee moves to the next flower, the pollen is transferred to the central sticky stigma. Passiflora incarnata can become an agricultural weed; the genus Passiflora introduced for agricultural purpose has been reported as an important weed in certain regions of the world. The United States Department of Agriculture notes that P. incarnata is referred to as a weed by these publications: Weeds of Kentucky and adjacent states: a field guide and Weeds of the United States and Canada. Mechanical control as removing the suckers is advised to prevent the spreading of maypop, it is recommended to train the vines onto trellis and fences to limit propagation. The plant has been used as an herbal medicine in the belief it may treat anxiety, insomnia, or hypertension. Methanol extractions from the leaves has been reported to be an effective antitussive in mice.
Passionflower is included in the national pharmacopeias of France and Switzerland, is monographed in the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia and the British Herbal Compendium, the ESCOP monographs, the Community Herbal Monographs of the EMA, the German Standard Licences, the German Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia, the Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States, the Pharmacopeia of Egypt. The botanical drugs included in the current European and British Pharmacopoeias are the dried aerial parts of the plant. In North America and South America, tea made from the roots is used as a tonic. In Australia, it is believed to be a sedative and anxiolytic. In traditional medicine, passionflower is reputed to have sedative effects as used in Europe, but in 1978, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited its use in over-the-counter sedative preparations because it had not been proven safe and effective; when used in food manufacturing as a flavor, passionflower is included among substances approved by the FDA.
Passionflower is classified as recognized
Bed and breakfast
A bed and breakfast is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast. Bed and breakfasts are private family homes and have between four and eleven rooms, with six being the average. In addition, a B&B has the hosts living in the house. Bed and breakfast is used to describe the level of catering included in a hotel's room prices, as opposed to room only, half-board or full-board. Guests are accommodated in private bedrooms with private bathrooms, or in a suite of rooms including an en suite bathroom; some homes have private bedrooms with a bathroom, shared with other guests. Breakfast is served in a dining room, or the host's kitchen. B&Bs and guest houses may be operated as either a secondary source of income or a primary occupation; the owners themselves prepare the breakfast and clean the rooms, but some bed and breakfasts hire staff for cleaning or cooking. Properties with hired professional management are uncommon but may exist if the same owner operates multiple B&Bs.
Some B&Bs operate in a niche market. Floating bed and breakfasts are houseboats which offer B&B accommodation. In some communities, former lighthouse keeper quarters have been turned into B&B rooms after the light has been automated or decommissioned. In China expatriates have remodelled traditional structures in quiet picturesque rural areas and opened a few rustic boutique hotels with minimum amenities. Most patrons are tourists but they are growing in popularity among the Chinese. In Cuba, which opened up to tourism in the 1990s after the financial support of the Soviet Union ended, a form of B&B called casa particular became the main form of accommodation outside the tourist resorts. Not all casas particulares offer breakfast. In Hungary, B&Bs are popular, they are a small family-run hotel, have an intimate ambience and a pleasant atmosphere. It provides an affordable alternate for the hotels. In Hungarian the B&B is called "Panzió" or "Szálló". In India, the government is promoting the concept of breakfast.
The government is doing this to increase tourism keeping in view of the demand for hotels during the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. They have classified B&Bs in 2 categories - Gold B&Bs, Silver B&Bs. All B&Bs must be approved by the Ministry of Tourism, who will categorize it as Gold or Silver based upon a list of pre-defined criteria. Enormous growth in metro cities like Delhi, Pune and Mumbai have seen such rapid growth that people are rushing to these cities to find a respectable job for their respective trades, operating or hosting a Bed & Breakfast is becoming a favourite option among them. Average B&B service providers are offering standard services and other accoutrements that westerners have come to expect when traveling abroad; the basics include: air-conditioner or air cooler, free food, free wi-fi internet. Premium providers may offer extra services to justify the increased price; some of these services include, but are not limited to: buildings with a lift/elevator, no surcharge electricity use for the duration of a customers stay, free geyser usage.
50Mbit/s to 100Mbit/s leased internet line for guests, an intercom system, security with IP cameras that are monitored by security guards 24*7 rounds out the services provided to premium properties. The cost to rent a room at standard B&Bs are around $100 to $120 per person per month, premium B&B packages start around $180 per person per month, but may increase if more services are provided Registered Irish B&Bs are star rated by Fáilte Ireland and along with the majority unregistered B&Bs, form the B&B Owners Association Ireland. B&Bs in Ireland are family owned & run, with a small percentage being leased/managed but still with the personal service expected in this sector. Owners / Managers nearly always live on premises. Breakfast can mean continental style buffet; the Israeli B&B is known as a zimmer. All over the country, but in northern Israel the zimmer has developed into an extensive industry; this industry began to develop in the 1990s, when agriculture became less profitable, many families with farms in moshavim, farms and in cities decided to try their luck in the business of hospitality.
In the last decade, there has been development of bed and breakfasts in southern Israel in the Negev. In Italy, regional law regulates B&Bs. There is a national law "Legge 29 marzo 2001, n. 135" but each region maintains a specific regulation. Each region can adopt different regulations but they must observe the national law on Tourism. Bed & Breakfast in the Netherlands means what it says, namely'bed with breakfast'. In the Netherlands, it is often referred to as lodgings with breakfast, a guestroom or guesthouse. Bed & Breakfast is a small-scale type of accommodation, available to guests for a short stay. Nearly all bed & breakfasts are established in a residential home and are run by the owners of that particular residence. Dutch bed & breakfasts are held in historic monumental houses or farms. There are 5,000 bed & breakfasts in the Netherlands. Bed and breakfasts in New Zealand tend to be more expensive than motels and feature historic homes and furnished bedrooms at a commensurate price; the trend of B&Bs in Pakistan is quite widespread.
Popular resorts like Murree, which attract many tourists from different parts of the country, have a number of such res
Copperhill, Tennessee
Copperhill is a city in Polk County, United States. The population was 354 at the 2010 census, it is included in the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area. For years, up until the 1980s, the production of copper and acid denuded the area of any greenery, although the area has now been reforested, due to a multimillion-dollar effort by the successor companies to the original copper company; the copper and acid plants have been permanently closed and most of the plant infrastructure removed and sold overseas. Much of the scrap metals from the site have been sold to China. Glenn Springs Holdings has cleaned and purified all the surrounding creeks and waterways, water quality is now back to near pristine condition according to published EPA and Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation studies; the town is now a tourist attraction, with near daily rail excursions from Blue Ridge, Georgia, on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railroad, near daily rail excursions from The Gee Creek Wilderness on the Hiwassee River Railroad.
Whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River attracts many people and other outdoor activities such as Mountain Biking and Hiking are popular in the area. The area was the host for the whitewater portion of the 1996 Summer Olympics. Copperhill is located at 34°59′32″N 84°22′27″W, situated in extreme southeast Tennessee, bordering North Georgia, its twin city is McCaysville, with the two situated as a single town aligned along a northwestward-flowing river, known as the Toccoa River in Georgia, the Ocoee River in Tennessee, rather than the east/west state line, which cuts diagonally across streets and through buildings. There is a main downtown area, which the town shares with McCaysville, it retains a historic feel of when it was thriving; the main street through town is Ocoee Street which becomes Toccoa Street to the east-southeast in McCaysville. A truss bridge over the river at the state line links them to Blue Ridge Drive to the south-southwest. In the early morning hours of February 16, 1990, a major flood struck the towns, although it is now hard to see any damage from this flooding.
The upstream Blue Ridge Dam was raised several feet by the Tennessee Valley Authority, thus minimizing any potential future possible occurrence of flooding. There have been no further incidents with the river flooding; as a result of the state line and businesses on the Copperhill side of town have area code 423, while those on the McCaysville side have area code 706. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.9 square miles, of which 1.9 square miles is land and 0.04 square miles is water. As of the census of 2000, there were 511 people, 239 households, 146 families residing in the city; the population density was 271.9 people per square mile. There were 274 housing units at an average density of 145.8 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 97.46% White, 0.20% Native American, 2.35% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.98% of the population. There were 239 households out of which 20.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.4% were married couples living together, 10.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 38.5% were non-families.
34.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 18.4% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.73. In the city, the population was spread out with 18.2% under the age of 18, 8.4% from 18 to 24, 23.7% from 25 to 44, 29.4% from 45 to 64, 20.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females, there were 79.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 79.4 males. The median income for a household in the city was $25,313, the median income for a family was $28,365. Males had a median income of $23,125 versus $18,542 for females; the per capita income for the city was $15,677. About 8.7% of families and 10.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 5.3% of those under age 18 and 14.7% of those age 65 or over. The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Copperhill has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps.
Burra Burra Mine City website City charter The News Observer
Electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. In early days, electricity was considered as being not related to magnetism. On, many experimental results and the development of Maxwell's equations indicated that both electricity and magnetism are from a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others; the presence of an electric charge, which can be either positive or negative, produces an electric field. The movement of electric charges produces a magnetic field; when a charge is placed in a location with a non-zero electric field, a force will act on it. The magnitude of this force is given by Coulomb's law. Thus, if that charge were to move, the electric field would be doing work on the electric charge, thus we can speak of electric potential at a certain point in space, equal to the work done by an external agent in carrying a unit of positive charge from an arbitrarily chosen reference point to that point without any acceleration and is measured in volts.
Electricity is at the heart of many modern technologies, being used for: electric power where electric current is used to energise equipment. Electrical phenomena have been studied since antiquity, though progress in theoretical understanding remained slow until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Practical applications for electricity were few, it would not be until the late nineteenth century that electrical engineers were able to put it to industrial and residential use; the rapid expansion in electrical technology at this time transformed industry and society, becoming a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution. Electricity's extraordinary versatility means it can be put to an limitless set of applications which include transport, lighting and computation. Electrical power is now the backbone of modern industrial society. Long before any knowledge of electricity existed, people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", described them as the "protectors" of all other fish.
Electric fish were again reported millennia by ancient Greek and Arabic naturalists and physicians. Several ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attested to the numbing effect of electric shocks delivered by catfish and electric rays, knew that such shocks could travel along conducting objects. Patients suffering from ailments such as gout or headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt might cure them; the earliest and nearest approach to the discovery of the identity of lightning, electricity from any other source, is to be attributed to the Arabs, who before the 15th century had the Arabic word for lightning ra‘ad applied to the electric ray. Ancient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity around 600 BCE, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing.
Thales was incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but science would prove a link between magnetism and electricity. According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature. Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert wrote De Magnete, in which he made a careful study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static electricity produced by rubbing amber, he coined the New Latin word electricus to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed. This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646. Further work was conducted in the 17th and early 18th centuries by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature, he explained the paradoxical behavior of the Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of electricity consisting of both positive and negative charges. In 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery of bioelectromagnetics, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which neurons passed signals to the muscles. Alessandro Volta's battery, or voltaic pile, of 1800, made from alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines used; the recognition of electromagnetism, the unity of electric
Benton, Tennessee
Benton is a town in Polk County, United States. The population was 1,385 at the 2010 census, it is the county seat of Polk County. Benton is included in the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area. Benton was founded in 1840 as a county seat for Polk County, established the previous year; the town a trading post known as McKamy's stock stand, was named in honor of Thomas Hart Benton. The Benton fireworks disaster was an industrial disaster which occurred on May 27, 1983 on a farm southeast of Benton. An explosion at a secret illegal fireworks operation killed eleven, injured one, caused damage within a radius of several miles, revealed the operation; the operation was by far the largest and most successful known illegal fireworks operation and the blast, having been heard over 20 miles away, was arguably the largest and most powerful explosion involving firework explosives. Benton is located at 35°10′27″N 84°39′13″W; the town is situated just southeast of the confluence of the Ocoee River and the Hiwassee River 34 miles upstream from the latter's mouth along the Chickamauga Lake impoundment of the Tennessee River.
The Unicoi Mountains rise prominently to the east of Benton. Benton is centered on the junction of U. S. Route 411, which connects the town to Etowah to the north and Tennga, Georgia to the south, Tennessee State Route 314, which connects Benton to Parksville and the Ocoee Dam area to the southeast. Benton is located 20 miles east of Interstate 75. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.3 square miles, all land. One of the scenic areas around Benton is Lake McCamy, where a hiking trail leads to the Benton Falls; as of the census of 2000, there were 1,138 people, 468 households, 301 families residing in the town. The population density was 502.1 people per square mile. There were 513 housing units at an average density of 226.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 98.86% White, 0.09% African American, 0.18% Native American, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 0.09% from other races, 0.70% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.53% of the population.
There were 468 households out of which 26.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.6% were married couples living together, 12.8% had a female householder with no husband present, 35.5% were non-families. 31.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.5% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.34 and the average family size was 2.95. In the town, the population was spread out with 22.7% under the age of 18, 11.1% from 18 to 24, 29.4% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, 14.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.6 males. The median income for a household in the town was $22,667, the median income for a family was $31,146. Males had a median income of $24,667 versus $23,295 for females; the per capita income for the town was $12,580. About 15.1% of families and 20.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 34.5% of those under age 18 and 20.9% of those age 65 or over.
Polk County Library Cooperative Town charter
