1.
Social class
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Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social historians. However, there is not a consensus on the best definition of the class, the precise measurements of what determines social class in society has varied over time. According to philosopher Karl Marx, class is determined entirely by ones relationship to the means of production, the term class is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth, in order to determine military service obligations. In the late 18th century, the class began to replace classifications such as estates, rank. Historically social class and behavior was sometimes laid down in law, definitions of social classes reflect a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and Structural functionalism, the common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors, objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity, Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of ones own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time and this is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology. Marxists explain the history of civilized societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society, in the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. Furthermore, in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, an industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers and sergeants who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. This would mark the beginning of a society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money. Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, that saw social class as emerging from an interplay between class, status and power. Weber believed that class position was determined by a relationship to the means of production. Weber derived many of his key concepts on social stratification by examining the structure of many countries. He noted that contrary to Marxs theories, stratification was based on more than simply ownership of capital, Weber pointed out that some members of the aristocracy lack economic wealth yet might nevertheless have political power. Likewise in Europe, many wealthy Jewish families in lack prestige and honor, Class, A persons economic position in a society
2.
Spanish Empire
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The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, the Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976. The unity did not mean uniformity, nevertheless, some historians assert that Portugal was part of the Spanish monarchy at the time, while others draw a clear distinction between the Portuguese and Spanish empires. During the 15th century, Castile and Portugal became territorial and commercial rivals in the western Atlantic. The conquest was completed with the campaigns of the armies of the Crown of Castile between 1478 and 1496, when the islands of Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Tenerife were subjugated. The Portuguese tried in vain to keep secret their discovery of the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea, chronicler Pulgar wrote that the fame of the treasures of Guinea spread around the ports of Andalusia in such way that everybody tried to go there. Worthless trinkets, Moorish textiles, and above all, shells from the Canary and Cape Verde islands were exchanged for gold, slaves, ivory and Guinea pepper. The Crown officially organized this trade with Guinea, every caravel had to get a government license, the treaty delimited the spheres of influence of the two countries, establishing the principle of the Mare clausum. It was confirmed in 1481 by the Pope Sixtus IV, in the papal bull Æterni regis, thus, the limitations imposed by the Alcáçovas treaty were overcome and a new and more balanced worlds division would be reached at Tordesillas between both emerging maritime powers. Seven months before the treaty of Alcaçovas, King John II of Aragon died, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the last Moorish king out of Granada in 1492 after a ten-year war. The Catholic Monarchs then negotiated with Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor attempting to reach Cipangu by sailing west, Castile was already engaged in a race of exploration with Portugal to reach the Far East by sea when Columbus made his bold proposal to Isabella. Columbus discoveries inaugurated the Spanish colonization of the Americas and these actions gave Spain exclusive rights to establish colonies in all of the New World from north to south, as well as the easternmost parts of Asia. The treaty of Tordesillas was confirmed by Pope Julius II in the bull Ea quae pro bono pacis on 24 January 1506, Spains expansion and colonization was driven by economic influences, a yearning to improve national prestige, and a desire to spread Catholicism into the New World. The Catholic Monarchs had developed a strategy of marriages for their children in order to isolate their long-time enemy, the Spanish princes married the heirs of Portugal, England and the House of Habsburg. Following the same strategy, the Catholic Monarchs decided to support the Catalan-Aragonese house of Naples against Charles VIII of France in the Italian Wars beginning in 1494. As King of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and Venice for control of Italy, these conflicts became the center of Ferdinands foreign policy as king. Only a year later, Ferdinand became part of the Holy League against France and this war was less of a success than the war against Venice, and in 1516, France agreed to a truce that left Milan in its control and recognized Spanish control of Upper Navarre
3.
Social class in the United Kingdom
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The social structure of the United Kingdom has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, with the concept still affecting British society in the early-21st century. Since the advent of industrialisation, this system has been in a constant state of revision, although definitions of social class in the United Kingdom vary and are highly controversial, most are influenced by factors of wealth, occupation and education. The British monarch is usually viewed as being at the top of the class structure. However, claims that the UK has become a society have frequently been met with scepticism. Research has shown that social status in the United Kingdom is influenced by, although separate from, the biggest current study of social class in the United Kingdom is the Great British Class Survey. Prior to the century, one did not speak of class or classes. Older terms like estates, rank, and orders were predominant, the class system in the United Kingdom is widely studied in academia but no definition of the word class is universally agreed to. Besides these academic models, there are myriad popular explanations of class in Britain, in the work Class, Jilly Cooper quotes a shopkeeper on the subject of bacon, When a woman asks for back I call her madam, when she asks for streaky I call her dear. Opportunities resulting from consistent economic growth and the expanding British Empire also enabled some from much poorer backgrounds to rise through the class system. However their wealth, if not their power, has rebounded strongly since the 1980s, benefiting from greatly increased values of the land. In particular the great centre of the City of London was open to outsiders to an unusual degree. At the time of the formation of Great Britain in 1707, some basic categories covering most of the British population around this time are as follows. The social grade classification created by the National Readership Survey over 50 years ago achieved widespread usage during the 20th century in marketing and government reports, the UK Office for National Statistics produced a new socio-economic classification in 2001. The reason was to provide a comprehensive and detailed classification to take newer employment patterns into account. On 2 April 2013 analysis of the results of a survey, the results released were based on a survey of 160,000 residents of the United Kingdom most of whom lived in England and described themselves as white. Class was defined and measured according to the amount and kind of economic, cultural and this theoretical framework was developed by Pierre Bourdieu who first published his theory of social distinction in 1979. In this new model, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge would be considered middle class despite being second-in-line to the throne, as he is an army officer. This may seem to indicate the model is really a set of subdivisions of the middle classes, members of the elite class are the top 6% of British society with very high economic capital, high social capital, and very highbrow cultural capital
4.
Harrods
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Harrods is a luxury department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London. It is owned by the state of Qatar, the store occupies a 5-acre site and has 330 departments covering one million square feet of retail space. The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique, which is Latin for all things for all people, several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the food halls, are well known. In 1824, at the age of 25, Charles Henry Harrod established a business at 228 Borough High Street in Southwark and he ran this business, variously listed as a draper, mercer, and a haberdasher, until 1831 at least. During 1825, the business was listed as Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail and his first grocery business appears to be as ‘Harrod & Co. Grocers’ at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E. C.1. in 1832. In 1834 in Londons East End, he established a grocery in Stepney, at 4, Cable Street. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1880. However, the stores booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, remarkably, in view of this calamity, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year—and made a record profit in the process. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family, a chance meeting in London with businessman, Edgar Cohen, eventually led to Charles Harrod selling his interest in the store for £120,000 via a stock market floatation in 1889. The new company was called Harrod’s Stores Limited, sir Alfred James Newton became chairman and Richard Burbidge managing director. Financier William Mendel was appointed to the board in 1891 and he raised funding for many of the expansion plans. Richard Burbidge was succeed in 1917 by his son Woodman Burbidge, nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their ordeal. The department store was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985, following denial that it was for sale, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar in May 2010. A fortnight previously, chairman of Harrods since 1985, Mohamed Al-Fayed, had stated that People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, but I put two fingers up to them. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsburys and it is a special place that gives people pleasure. A spokesman for Mohamed Al-Fayed said in reaching the decision to retire, wished to ensure that the legacy, Harrods was sold for £1.5 billion, half of the sale will be used to pay bank debts of £625 million. Al-Fayed later revealed in an interview that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Al-Fayed said Im here every day, I cant take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots. I say is this right, I run a business and I need to take the trustees permission to take my profit
5.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
6.
Wales
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Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and it had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2. Wales has over 1,680 miles of coastline and is mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon. The country lies within the temperate zone and has a changeable. Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, Llywelyn ap Gruffudds death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of Englands conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh Liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism, Welsh national feeling grew over the century, Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, two-thirds of the population live in south Wales, mainly in and around Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, and in the nearby valleys. Now that the countrys traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales economy depends on the sector, light and service industries. Wales 2010 gross value added was £45.5 billion, over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, and the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the land of song, Rugby union is seen as a symbol of Welsh identity and an expression of national consciousness. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term Wælisc when referring to the Celtic Britons in particular, the modern names for some Continental European lands and peoples have a similar etymology. The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales and these words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen. The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era of the Welsh people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland. It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, in particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to the Welsh. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century and it is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh, until c.1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. The Latinised forms of names, Cambrian, Cambric and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales, Welsh
7.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
8.
Ireland
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Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, in 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.4 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.6 million live in the Republic of Ireland, the islands geography comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild, thick woodlands covered the island until the Middle Ages. As of 2013, the amount of land that is wooded in Ireland is about 11% of the total, there are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is moderate and classified as oceanic. As a result, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, however, summers are cooler than those in Continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant, the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century CE, the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the Norman invasion in the 12th century, England claimed sovereignty over Ireland, however, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, with the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s and this subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the fields of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, an indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music. The culture of the island shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, and sports such as association football, rugby, horse racing. The name Ireland derives from Old Irish Eriu and this in turn derives from Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, which is also the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning fat, prosperous, during the last glacial period, and up until about 9000 years ago, most of Ireland was covered with ice, most of the time
9.
Edith Wharton
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Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927,1928 and 1930, Wharton combined her insiders view of Americas privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her eras other literary and public figures, Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander, who was sixteen, and Henry Edward, who was eleven. She was baptized April 20,1862, Easter Sunday, at Grace Church, to her friends and family she was known as Pussy Jones. The saying keeping up with the Joneses is said to refer to her fathers family and she was also related to the Rensselaer family, the most prestigious of the old patroon families. She had a lifelong friendship with her Rhinelander niece, landscape architect Beatrix Farrand of Reef Point in Bar Harbor. Edith was born during the Civil War, she was three years old when the South surrendered, after the war, the family traveled extensively in Europe. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France, Italy, Germany, during her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French, German, and Italian. At the age of ten, she suffered from typhoid fever while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest, after the family returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York and their summers in Newport, Rhode Island. While in Europe, she was educated by tutors and governesses and she rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time, intended to enable women to marry well and to be displayed at balls and parties. She thought these requirements were superficial and oppressive, Edith wanted more education than she received, so she read from her fathers library and from the libraries of her fathers friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, Edith began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl. She attempted to write a novel at age eleven and her first publication was a translation of the German poem, Was die Steine Erzählen by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, which earned her $50. Her family did not wish her name to appear in print because the names of upper class women of the time appeared in print to announce birth, marriage. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friends father and he was a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson and supported womens education. He played a role in Ediths efforts to educate herself. In 1877, at the age of 15, she wrote a 30,000 word novella Fast
10.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
11.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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