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Introduction

Flag of the United States of America

The United States of America is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district and 14 territories. It is located mostly in central North America. The U.S. has three land borders, two with Canada and one with Mexico, and has sea borders with Cuba, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda and Russia, and is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 50 states, only Alaska and Hawaii are not contiguous with any other state. The U.S. also has a collection of districts, territories, and possessions in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Each state has a high level of autonomy according to the system of federalism. The U.S. traces its national origin to the declaration by 13 British colonies in 1776 that they were one free and independent state. They were recognized as such by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Since then, the nation has grown to become a superpower and exerts a high level of economic, political, military, and cultural influence.

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  Abby is an American sitcom created by Nat Bernstein and Mitchel Katlin that aired for one season on UPN from January 6, 2003, to March 4, 2003. The show revolves around television producer Abigail "Abby" Walker (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) and her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Will Jeffries (Kadeem Hardison). After they break up in the pilot episode, they agree to live together as friends in their rent-controlled San Francisco apartment.
  
  Bernstein and Katlin had intended to feature Abby and Will as an interracial couple and had cast Sean O'Bryan, a white actor, as Will. After a negative response from test audiences, they gave the role to Hardison and recast O'Bryan as a supporting character, along with Randy J. Goodwin and Tangie Ambrose. (Full article...)
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  Thomas F. Mulledy SJ (/mʌˈleɪdi/ muh-LAY-dee; August 12, 1794 – July 20, 1860) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became the president of Georgetown College, a founder of the College of the Holy Cross, and a Jesuit provincial superior. His brother, Samuel Mulledy, also became a Jesuit and president of Georgetown.
  
  Mulledy entered the Society of Jesus and was educated for the priesthood in Rome, before completing his education in the United States. He twice served as president of Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. At Georgetown, Mulledy undertook a significant building campaign, which resulted in Gervase Hall and Mulledy Hall (later renamed Isaac Hawkins Hall). He became the second provincial superior of the Maryland Province of the Jesuit order, and orchestrated the sale of the province's slaves in 1838 to settle its debts. This resulted in outcry from his fellow Jesuits and censure by the church authorities in Rome, who exiled him to Nice in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia for several years. While provincial superior, Mulledy was also the vicar general for the Diocese of Boston. (Full article...)
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  Cast of the holotype specimen at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History; the tail and uncertain bones are at left, the body at right

  
  Podokesaurus is a genus of coelophysoid dinosaur that lived in what is now the eastern United States during the Early Jurassic Period. The first fossil was discovered by the geologist Mignon Talbot near Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1910. The specimen was fragmentary, preserving much of the body, limbs, and tail. In 1911, Talbot described and named the new genus and species Podokesaurus holyokensis based on it. The full name can be translated as "swift-footed lizard of Holyoke". This discovery made Talbot the first woman to find and describe a non-bird dinosaur. The holotype fossil was recognized as significant and was studied by other researchers, but was lost when the building it was kept in burned down in 1917; no unequivocal Podokesaurus specimens have since been discovered. It was made state dinosaur of Massachusetts in 2022.
  
  Estimated to have been about 1 m (3 ft) in length and 1–40 kg (2–90 lb) in weight, Podokesaurus was lightly constructed with hollow bones, and would have been similar to Coelophysis, being slender, long-necked, and with sharp, recurved teeth. The vertebrae were very light and hollow, and some were slightly concave at each end. The cervical (neck) vertebrae were relatively large in length and diameter compared to the dorsal (back) vertebrae, and the caudal (tail) vertebrae were long and slender. The humerus (upper-arm bone) was small and delicate, less than half the length of the femur (thigh-bone). The pubis (pubic bone) was very long, expanding both at the front and hind ends. The femur was slender, nearly straight, had thin walls, and was expanded at the back side of its lower end. The three metatarsals of the lower leg were closely appressed together forming a compact structure. (Full article...)
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  Hurricane Isabel shortly after landfall

  
  The effects of Hurricane Isabel in Delaware resulted in one of only thirteen presidential disaster declarations for the state of Delaware. Hurricane Isabel formed from a tropical wave on September 6, 2003, in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It moved northwestward, and within an environment of light wind shear and warm waters, it steadily strengthened to reach peak winds of 165 mph (266 km/h) on September 11. After fluctuating in intensity for four days, Isabel gradually weakened and made landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with winds of 105 mph (169 km/h) on September 18. It quickly weakened over land and became extratropical over Pennsylvania the next day. The storm's center remained to the south and west of Delaware, and was about 175 miles (282 km) from the state at its closest approach. At that time, Isabel was a strong tropical storm located in central Virginia.
  
  The effects of the hurricane were compounded by flooding caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Henri days before. Moderate winds of up to 62 mph (100 km/h) downed numerous trees, tree limbs, and power lines across the state, leaving at least 15,300 without power. Numerous low-lying areas were flooded due to high surf, strong storm surge, or run-off from flooding further inland. The passage of Hurricane Isabel resulted in $40 million in damage (2003 USD, ($66.3 million 2025 USD)) and no casualties in the state. Hurricane Isabel was the ninth named storm of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season on September 6, 2003. (Full article...)
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  The deep fryer in the Imperial Food Products plant where the fire started

  
  On September 3, 1991, an industrial fire caused by a failed improvised repair to a hydraulic line destroyed the Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Despite three previous fires in 11 years of operation, the plant had never received a safety inspection. The fire killed 25 people and injured 54, many of whom were unable to escape due to locked exits. It was the second deadliest industrial disaster in North Carolina's history.
  
  Imperial Food Products was a corporation owned by Emmett Roe, who acquired the Hamlet facility in 1980 to produce chicken products. The company had a poor safety record at one of its other plants, and the Hamlet building lacked a fire alarm or an operational fire sprinkler system. For reasons that remain disputed, Roe ordered several exterior doors of the plant locked in the summer of 1991—including a labeled fire exit—in violation of federal safety regulations and without notifying most workers. In September, the plant's maintenance workers attempted to replace a leaking hydraulic line, attached to the conveyor belt which fed chicken tenders into a fryer in the processing room, with improvised parts. On September 3 at around 8:15 am, they turned on the conveyor belt after altering the line; it separated from its connection and spewed hydraulic fluid around the room. The fluid vaporized and was ignited by the fryer's flame. Fire engulfed the facility in minutes, severing telephone lines and filling the plant with hydrocarbon-charged smoke and carbon monoxide. (Full article...)
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  Martha Graham, c. 1940

  
  Appalachian Spring is an American ballet created by the choreographer Martha Graham and the composer Aaron Copland, later arranged as an orchestral work. Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Copland composed the ballet music for Graham; the original choreography was by Graham, with costumes by Edythe Gilfond and sets by Isamu Noguchi. The ballet was well received at the 1944 premiere, earning Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music during its 1945 United States tour. The orchestral suite composed in 1945 was played that year by many symphony orchestras; the suite is among Copland's best-known works, and the ballet remains essential in the Martha Graham Dance Company repertoire.
  
  Graham was known for creating the "Graham technique" of dance; in the 1930s, she began commissioning scores from various composers, often related to American history and culture. Around the same time, Copland incorporated relatable and accessible musical characteristics of the Americana style to increase his music's appeal to the general public; he first implemented this in earlier ballets like Billy the Kid and Rodeo. The initial scenario for Appalachian Spring devised by Graham was revised many times by both her and Copland; the title characters' names were changed numerous times and other characters from the early revisions were cut in the final production. Originally orchestrated for a thirteen-piece chamber orchestra, the score was arranged into various suites by Copland for different purposes; the original ballet featured eight episodes, three of which were cut in the well-known orchestral suite. (Full article...)
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  Australian troops at Milne Bay

  Australian troops at Milne Bay in 1942, shortly after the battle

  
  The Battle of Milne Bay (25 August – 7 September 1942), also known as Operation RE or the Battle of Rabi (ラビの戦い) by the Japanese, was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II. Japanese naval infantry, known as Kaigun Tokubetsu Rikusentai (Special Naval Landing Forces), with two small tanks attacked the Allied airfields at Milne Bay that had been established on the eastern tip of New Guinea. Due to poor intelligence work, the Japanese miscalculated the size of the predominantly Australian garrison and, believing that the airfields were defended by only two or three companies, initially landed a force roughly equivalent in size to one battalion on 25 August 1942. The Allies, forewarned by intelligence from Ultra, had heavily reinforced the garrison.
  
  Despite suffering a significant setback at the outset, when part of their small invasion force had its landing craft destroyed by Royal Australian Air Force aircraft as they attempted to land on the coast behind the Australian defenders, the Japanese quickly pushed inland and began their advance towards the airfields. Heavy fighting followed as they encountered the Australian Militia troops that formed the first line of defence. These troops were steadily pushed back, but the Australians brought forward veteran Second Australian Imperial Force units that the Japanese had not expected. Allied air superiority helped tip the balance, providing close support to troops in combat and targeting Japanese logistics. Finding themselves heavily outnumbered, lacking supplies and suffering heavy casualties, the Japanese withdrew their forces, with fighting coming to an end on 7 September 1942. (Full article...)
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  The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on May 27, 1963, by Columbia Records. Whereas his self-titled debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, this album represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary lyrics to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. It opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary soon after the release of the album. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".
  
  Dylan's lyrics embraced news stories drawn from headlines about the ongoing civil rights movement and he articulated anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare. Balancing this political material were love songs, sometimes bitter and accusatory, and material that features surreal humor. Freewheelin' showcased Dylan's songwriting talent for the first time, propelling him to national and international fame. The success of the album and Dylan's subsequent recognition led to his being named as "Spokesman of a Generation", a label Dylan repudiated. (Full article...)
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  Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce the Sesame Street television series. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
  
  Sesame Street premiered on National Educational Television (NET) as a series run in the United States on November 10, 1969, and moved to NET's successor, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), in late 1970. The Workshop was formally incorporated in 1970. Gerald S. Lesser and Edward L. Palmer were hired to perform research for the series; they were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later termed the "CTW model". The CTW applied this system to its other television series, including The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact. The early 1980s were a challenging period for the Workshop; difficulty finding audiences for their other productions and a series of bad investments harmed the organization until licensing agreements stabilized its revenues by 1985. (Full article...)
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  Pearl Jam performing in Amsterdam in 2012. From left to right: Mike McCready, Jeff Ament, Matt Cameron (on drums), Eddie Vedder, and Stone Gossard

  
  Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. The band's lineup consists of founding members Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), Mike McCready (lead guitar), and Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), as well as Matt Cameron (drums), who joined in 1998. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also been a touring/session member with the band since 2002. Former members include Dave Krusen (an original member), Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abbruzzese, and Jack Irons, all of whom were the band's drummers from 1990 to 1998. One of the key bands in the grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries from the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands from that decade, dubbed "the most popular American rock and roll band of the '90s".
  
  Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous bands, Green River and Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album, Ten, in 1991. Ten stayed on the Billboard 200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-selling rock records ever, being certified 13× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released in 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold over 950,000 copies in its first week of release, setting the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release at the time. Their third album, Vitalogy (1994), became the second-fastest-selling CD in history at the time, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week. (Full article...)
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  Baby Driver is a 2017 action film written and directed by Edgar Wright. It stars Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver seeking freedom from a life of crime with his girlfriend Debora (Lily James). Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, and Kevin Spacey appear in supporting roles. Eric Fellner and his Working Title Films partner Tim Bevan produced Baby Driver in association with Big Talk Productions' Nira Park. Sony and TriStar Pictures handled commercial distribution of the film. Baby Driver was a co-production pact between TriStar and MRC.
  
  Wright developed Baby Driver for over two decades. He devised the idea in his youth, and his early directing experience further shaped his ambitions for Baby Driver. Originally based in Los Angeles, Wright revised the film's setting to Atlanta, integrating the city's ethos into an important storytelling device following financing support through tax subsidies from the Georgia state government. Principal photography took place in Atlanta from February to May 2016. Production involved the planning of meticulously coordinated stunts, choreography, and in-camera editing. Thematic studies of Baby Driver examine patterns of color symbolism and Baby's evolving morality. (Full article...)
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  The Battle of San Patricio was fought on February 27, 1836, between Texian rebels and the Mexican army, during the Texas Revolution. The battle occurred as a result of the outgrowth of the Texian Matamoros Expedition. The battle marked the start of the Goliad Campaign, the Mexican offensive to retake the Texas Gulf Coast. It took place in and around San Patricio.
  
  By the end of 1835, all Mexican troops had been driven from Texas. Frank W. Johnson, the commander of the volunteer army in Texas, and James Grant gathered volunteers for a planned invasion of the Mexican port town of Matamoros. In February 1836, Johnson and about 40 men led a herd of horses to San Patricio in preparation for the expedition. Johnson assigned some of his troops to a ranch 4 miles (6.4 km) outside town to guard the horses, while the rest of his men garrisoned in three different locations in town. (Full article...)
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  Dr. E. Urner Goodman

  
  Edward Urner Goodman (May 15, 1891 – March 13, 1980) was an
  influential leader in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) movement for much of the twentieth century. Goodman was the national program director from 1931 until 1951, during the organization's formative years of significant growth when the Cub Scouting and Exploring programs were established. He developed the BSA's national training center in the early 1930s and was responsible for publication of the widely read Boy Scout Handbook and other Scouting books, writing the Leaders Handbook used by Scout leaders in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1950s, Goodman was executive director of Men's Work for the National Council of Churches in New York City and active in church work.
  
  Goodman is best remembered today for having created the Order of the Arrow (OA), a popular and highly successful program of the BSA that continues to honor Scouts for their cheerful service. Since its founding in 1915, the Order of the Arrow has grown to become a nationwide program having thousands of members, which recognizes those Scouts who best exemplify the virtues of cheerful service, camping, and leadership by membership in BSA's honor society. As of 2007, the Order of the Arrow has more than 183,000 members. (Full article...)
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  The Pilgrim Tercentenary half dollar or Pilgrim half dollar was a commemorative fifty-cent coin struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1920 and 1921 to mark the 300th anniversary (tercentenary) of the arrival of the Pilgrims in North America. It was designed by Cyrus E. Dallin.
  
  Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Walsh was involved in joint federal and state efforts to mark the anniversary. He saw a reference to a proposed Maine Centennial half dollar and realized that a coin could be issued for the Pilgrim anniversary in support of the observances at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The bill moved quickly through the legislative process and became the Act of May 12, 1920. (Full article...)
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  The 2000 Sugar Bowl was the designated Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship Game for the 1999 NCAA Division I-A football season and was played on January 4, 2000, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Florida State Seminoles, representing the Atlantic Coast Conference, defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies, representing the Big East Conference, by a score of 46–29. With the win, Florida State clinched the 1999 BCS national championship, the team's second national championship in its history.
  
  An estimated total of 79,280 people attended the game in person, while approximately 18.4 million US viewers watched the game on ABC television. The resulting 17.5 television rating was the third-largest ever recorded for a BCS college football game. Tickets were in high demand for the game, withs tens of thousands of fans from both teams attending, many using scalped tickets to gain entry. (Full article...)
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  1989 is the fifth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 27, 2014, by Big Machine Records. Executive-produced by Swift and the Swedish producer Max Martin, it was Swift's effort to recalibrate her artistic identity from country to pop.
  
  Swift produced 1989 with an ensemble that included Martin, Shellback, Jack Antonoff, Ryan Tedder, Nathan Chapman, and Imogen Heap. Recorded in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, the album was titled after Swift's birth year as a symbolic rebirth. Inspired by 1980s synth-pop, the production incorporates dense synthesizers, programmed drum machines, and processed electronic backing vocals—a stark contrast to the acoustic arrangements that had characterized Swift's past albums. The lyrics expand on her autobiographical songwriting about love and heartbreak, depicting failed relationships from relatively lighthearted and more complex perspectives. (Full article...)
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  Watchmen is a comic book limited series by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-volume edition in 1987. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced Moore to create original characters instead.
  
  Moore used the story as a means of reflecting contemporary anxieties, deconstructing and satirizing the superhero concept, and making political commentary. Watchmen depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. In 1985, the country is edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the protagonists' personal development and moral struggles as an investigation into the murder of a government-sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement. (Full article...)
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  In 1896, William Jennings Bryan ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States. Bryan, a former Democratic congressman from Nebraska, gained his party's presidential nomination in July of that year after electrifying the Democratic National Convention with his Cross of Gold speech. He was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate, former Ohio governor William McKinley.
  
  Born in 1860, Bryan grew up in rural Illinois and in 1887 moved to Nebraska, where he practiced law and entered politics. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1890, and was re-elected in 1892, before mounting an unsuccessful US Senate run. He set his sights on higher office, believing he could be elected president in 1896 even though he remained a relatively minor figure in the Democratic Party. In anticipation of a presidential campaign, he spent much of 1895 and early 1896 making speeches across the United States; his compelling oratory increased his popularity in his party. (Full article...)
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  Josip "Jozo" Tomasevich (1908 – October 15, 1994; Serbo-Croatian: Josip Tomašević) was an American economist and historian whose speciality was the economic and social history of Yugoslavia. Tomasevich was born in the Kingdom of Dalmatia, then part of Austria-Hungary, and after completing high school and attending a commercial academy, he earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Basel in Switzerland. In the mid-1930s, he worked at the National Bank of Yugoslavia in Belgrade and published three well-received books on Yugoslavia's national debt, fiscal policy, and money and credit respectively.
  
  In 1938, he moved to the United States as the recipient of a two-year Rockefeller fellowship and conducted research at Harvard University before joining the academic staff of Stanford University. During World War II, Tomasevich worked for the Board of Economic Warfare and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and post-war he joined the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. In 1948, he joined the staff at San Francisco State College (later San Francisco State University). He combined research and teaching there for twenty-five years until his retirement in 1973, which was broken by a year of teaching at Columbia University in 1954. Between 1943 and 1955, Tomasevich published two positively reviewed books on economic matters; one focused on marine resources and the other on the peasant economy of Yugoslavia. (Full article...)
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  North façade of the Stanford Memorial Church from the Main Quad

  
  Stanford Memorial Church (also referred to informally as MemChu) is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was built during the American Renaissance by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland. Designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, a student of Henry Hobson Richardson, the church has been called "the University's architectural crown jewel".
  
  Designs for the church were submitted to Jane Stanford and the university trustees in 1898, and it was dedicated in 1903. The building is Romanesque in form and Byzantine in its details, inspired by churches in the region of Venice, especially, Ravenna. Its stained glass windows and extensive mosaics are based on religious paintings the Stanfords admired in Europe. The church has five pipe organs, which allow musicians to produce many styles of organ music. Stanford Memorial Church has withstood two major earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, and was extensively renovated after each. (Full article...)
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  U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the advocate of the coup d'état, in 1956

  
  The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état (Golpe de Estado en Guatemala de 1954) deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and marked the end of the Guatemalan Revolution. The coup installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala. The coup was largely the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess.
  
  The Guatemalan Revolution began in 1944, after a popular uprising toppled the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. Juan José Arévalo was elected president in Guatemala's first democratic election. He introduced a minimum wage and near-universal suffrage. Arévalo was succeeded in 1951 by Árbenz, who instituted land reforms which granted property to landless peasants. The Guatemalan Revolution was disliked by the U.S. federal government, which was predisposed during the Cold War to see it as communist. This perception grew after Árbenz had been elected and formally legalized the communist Guatemalan Party of Labour. The U.S. government feared that Guatemala's example could inspire nationalists wanting social reform throughout Latin America. The United Fruit Company (UFC), whose highly profitable business had been affected by the softening of exploitative labor practices in Guatemala, engaged in an influential lobbying campaign to persuade the U.S. to overthrow the Guatemalan government. U.S. President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFortune to topple Árbenz in 1952, which was a precursor to PBSuccess. (Full article...)
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  Adventure Time is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward and co-produced by Frederator Studios for Cartoon Network. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (John DiMaggio)—a dog with the power to change size and shape at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), the Ice King (Tom Kenny), Marceline (Olivia Olson), BMO (Niki Yang), and others. The series is based on a 2007 short film that aired on Nicktoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Nickelodeon's executives passed on its option before Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series from Fred Seibert and Ward, which was previewed on March 11, 2010. The same year, the series premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, and it ended its eight-year run on September 3, 2018.
  
  The series drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and video games. It was produced using hand-drawn animation; action and dialogue for episodes are decided by storyboarding artists based on rough outlines. Because each episode took roughly eight to nine months to complete, multiple episodes were worked on concurrently. The cast members recorded their lines in group recordings, and the series regularly employed guest actors for minor and recurring characters. Each episode runs for about eleven minutes; pairs of episodes are often telecast to fill half-hour program slots. Cartoon Network announced on September 29, 2016, that the series would conclude in 2018, after the airing of its tenth season. The series finale aired on September 3, 2018, which was followed by the Adventure Time: Distant Lands specials and the Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake spin-off, which were released on Max. Two additional spin-offs, entitled Adventure Time: Side Quests and Adventure Time: Heyo BMO, have also been greenlit by Cartoon Network Studios as of June 2024. (Full article...)
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  MLS Cup 1996 was the inaugural edition of the MLS Cup, the championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level soccer league of the United States. Hosted at Foxboro Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on October 20, 1996, it was contested by D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy to decide the champion of the 1996 season.
  
  Both finalists finished in the top two spots of their respective conferences, with D.C. placing second in the East and Los Angeles atop the West. The two teams also had identical win–loss records in the first two rounds of the playoffs, losing the opening match of the Conference Semifinals and winning the remaining four matches of both rounds. The final match was played in heavy rain due to the proximity of Hurricane Lili, which also inundated the field. The MLS Cup had an attendance of 34,643 spectators, falling short of the 42,000 people who paid for tickets, and included a large contingent of traveling D.C. supporters. (Full article...)
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  "Pilot", also known as "Everybody Lies", is the first episode of the medical drama House. It premiered on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. It introduces the character of managerial, antisocial Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) and his team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. The episode features House's attempts to diagnose a kindergarten teacher after she collapses in class.
  
  House was created by David Shore, who got the idea for the misanthropic title character from a doctor's visit. Initially, producer Bryan Singer wanted an American to play House, but British actor Hugh Laurie's audition convinced him that a foreign actor could play the role. Shore wrote House as a character with parallels to Sherlock Holmes—both are drug users, blunt, and close to being friendless. The show's producers wanted House disabled in some way and gave the character a damaged leg arising from an improper diagnosis. (Full article...)
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  Clockwise from top: the Village Center; village pool at Law Memorial Park; Briarcliff High School; Briarcliff Manor Public Library; village clock and Municipal Building.

  
  Briarcliff Manor (/ˈbraɪ.ərklɪf/) is a suburban village in Westchester County, New York, 30 miles (50 km) north of New York City. It is on 5.9 square miles (15 km²) of land on the east bank of the Hudson River, geographically shared by the towns of Mount Pleasant and Ossining. Briarcliff Manor includes the communities of Scarborough and Chilmark, and is served by the Scarborough station of the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line. A section of the village, including buildings and homes covering 376 acres (152 ha), is part of the Scarborough Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The village motto is "A village between two rivers", reflecting Briarcliff Manor's location between the Hudson and Pocantico Rivers. Although the Pocantico is the primary boundary between Mount Pleasant and Ossining, since its incorporation the village has spread into Mount Pleasant.
  
  In the precolonial era, the village's area was inhabited by a band of the Wappinger tribes of Native Americans. In the early 19th century, the area was known as Whitson's Corners. Walter William Law moved to the area and purchased lands during the 1890s. Law developed the village, establishing schools, churches, parks, and the Briarcliff Lodge. Briarcliff Manor was incorporated as a village in 1902, and celebrated its centennial on November 21, 2002. The village has grown from 331 people when established to 7,867 in the 2010 census. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that the Springfield Science Museum is home to the oldest operating projection planetarium in the United States?
• ... that just seven years after being elected to a local school board, Nancy Ross was a candidate for Vice President of the United States?
• ... that after his soccer career, Steve Palacios enlisted in the United States Army and played for the United States Armed Forces soccer team?
• ... that Pete Johnson was the first Republican to hold statewide office in Mississippi since the Reconstruction era?
• ... that the Red Hill Band was commended by the United States Senate in 1965 for its "excellence and its state and community contributions"?
• ... that the Haitian Revolution began when Cécile Fatiman sacrificed a black pig, a ritual that was later repeated by Haitians resisting the United States occupation and the Duvalier dynasty?
• ... that Patsy Cline's cover of Willie Nelson's "Crazy" was the all-time most played song in jukeboxes in the United States, 35 years after its release?
• ... that the August 2014 United States floods set rainfall records across cities in several states, including Michigan, Maine, and New York?

Selected society biography -

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (born August 4, 1961) was the 44th President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in December 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign policy, Obama gradually withdrew combat troops from Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and signed an arms control treaty with Russia. In October 2009, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Selected image -

• 
  Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk

  Photograph credit: Aaron Allmon II

  The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a semi-retired American single-seat, twin-engine stealth and attack aircraft that was developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force. Its maiden flight took place in 1981, and it was the first operational aircraft to be designed around stealth technology. This F-117 was photographed flying over Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
• 
  Stand in the Schoolhouse Door

  Photo credit: U.S. News & World Report

  Attempting to block racial integration at the University of Alabama, Governor George Wallace (left) stands defiantly at the door on June 11, 1963, in an incident known as the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door. Wallace moved aside after being ordered to do so by President John F. Kennedy; years later, he became a born-again Christian and recanted his segregationist views.
• 
  William Henry Harrison

  Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

  William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States in 1841. He died of typhoid, pneumonia or paratyphoid fever 31 days into his term, becoming the first president to die in office. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis regarding succession to the presidency. Vice President John Tyler claimed a constitutional mandate to become the new president and took the presidential oath of office, setting an important precedent for an orderly transfer of the presidency and its full powers when the previous president fails to complete the elected term.
• 
  Charles J. Guiteau

  Cartoon: James Wales; Restoration: Jujutacular

  An 1881 editorial cartoon of Charles J. Guiteau, an American lawyer who assassinated President James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881. Guiteau, depicted here holding a note that reads "An office or your life!", believed himself to be largely responsible for Garfield's victory, and demanded an ambassadorship in return, but his requests were rejected. Despite the use of the insanity defense in his trial, he was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 30, 1882.
• 
  Fractional currency

  Banknote design credit: United States Department of the Treasury; photographed by the National Numismatic Collection

  Fractional currency, also referred to as shinplasters, was introduced by the United States federal government following the outbreak of the Civil War. These low-denomination banknotes of the U.S. dollar were in use between 21 August 1862 and 15 February 1876; they were issued in denominations of 3, 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 cents across five issuing periods. The notes could be redeemed by the U.S. Postal Service for the face value in postage stamps.
  
  This picture shows a third-issue fifty-cent fractional currency note (one of three variants of this denomination), issued by the United States Department of the Treasury between 5 December 1864 and 16 August 1869, featuring a portrait of Francis E. Spinner, then treasurer of the United States, on the obverse. This banknote is in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
  
  

  Other denominations:
  '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000001A-QINU`"'
  

  
  * 3¢
  * 5¢
  * 10¢
  * 25¢
  * 50¢ (I)
  * 50¢ (III)
  
• 
  I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse

  Photograph: Kevin Rofidal, United States Coast Guard; edit: Papa Lima Whiskey

  The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Saint Anthony Falls of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Once the third-busiest bridge in the state, it suddenly collapsed on August 1, 2007, killing 13 and injuring 145. Rescue of people stranded on the bridge was complete in three hours, while recovery of bodies—involving 75 local, state and federal agencies—took three weeks. An NTSB investigation cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the collapse, noting that a too-thin gusset plate ripped along a line of rivets.
• 
  United States Naval Academy map

  Map: C.E. Miller; restoration: Awardgive

  A map of the United States Naval Academy, as it appeared in 1924. Established in 1845, the service academy educates and prepares officers for commissioning into the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. During the 1920s, the academy's athletics program began its era of success, taking a gold medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics and tying the University of Washington in the 1924 Rose Bowl.
• 
  California Trail

  Artist: Daniel A. Jenks; Restoration: Papa Lima Whiskey

  A drawing of travelers on the California Trail, one of the major emigrant trails across the Western United States used by over 250,000 people heading west during the California Gold Rush. This, combined with those coming from the east across the Isthmus of Panama or around Cape Horn, greatly increased the population of California, and spurred the movement to make it the 31st U.S. state.
• 
  Wes Brady, ex-slave

  Photograph: Federal Writers' Project; restoration: Chick Bowen

  A 1937 photograph of Wes Brady, a former slave. Born c. 1850, Brady had been owned by a farmer in Marshall, Texas before emancipation. As a young boy he worked the fields, picking cotton. He recalled "The rows was a mile long and no matter how much grass was in them, if you leaves one sprig on your row they beats you nearly to death."
  
  This portrait is part of the Slave Narrative Collection, a massive compilation of slave narratives – containing 10,000 typed pages representing more than 2,000 interviews – which was undertaken by the US Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938.
• 
  Check used for the Alaska Purchase

  Check: William H. Seward; scan: Our Documents initiative

  The check used for the Alaska Purchase, issued on August 1, 1868, and signed by US Secretary of State William H. Seward. For a total of $7.2 million, the United States government purchased Russian America from the Russian Empire (represented here by Russian Minister to the United States Eduard de Stoeckl). The lands involved became the modern state of Alaska in 1959.
• 
  William H. Seward

  Photograph: Unknown; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  William H. Seward (1801–1872) was United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as Governor of New York and United States Senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a dominant figure in the Republican Party in its formative years, and was generally praised for his work on behalf of the Union as Secretary of State during the American Civil War. His firm stance against foreign intervention in the Civil War helped deter Britain and France from entering the conflict, which might have led to the independence of the Confederate States. His contemporary Carl Schurz described Seward as "one of those spirits who sometimes will go ahead of public opinion instead of tamely following its footprints."
• 
  The Grange Poster

  Poster: J. Hale Powers & Co. Fraternity & Fine Art Publishers; restoration: Trialsanderrors

  An 1873 print promoting the Grange, the oldest U.S. agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. In 2005 it had 160,000 members.
  
  The central scene shows a farmer with one foot on his shovel, captioned "I Pay for All". From left to right, the top insets show a farmer's fireside and the Grange in session; the bottom ones show a harvest dance, a broken-down cabin signposted "Ignorance" and "Sloth", and a Biblical scene of the gleaners Ruth and Boaz.
• 
  Half eagle

  National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History; photographed by Jaclyn Nash

  The half eagle is a United States coin that was produced for circulation from 1795 to 1929 and in commemorative and bullion coins since the 1980s. Composed almost entirely of gold, it has a face value of five dollars. It was the first gold coin to be minted by the United States, its production being authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. The design and composition of the half eagle changed many times over the years, but this version was designed by Christian Gobrecht and produced from 1839 to 1866. The obverse design depicts a classic portrait of Liberty facing to the left, and the reverse depicts a modified eagle, with the value changed from "5 D." to "FIVE D.".
  
  Other designs:
  '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000001B-QINU`"'
  

  
  * 1795
  * 1795–1798
  * 1797
  * 1807–1812
  * 1813–1834
  * 1813–1834 (alt)
  * 1834–1838
  * 1839–1866
  * 1866
  * 1908–1929
  
• 
  Henry Mayer

  Cartoon credit: Henry Mayer; restored by Adam Cuerden

  This is a cartoon by the German-American cartoonist and animator Henry Mayer (1868–1954), entitled The Awakening, which first appeared in the magazine Puck in February 1915. Published in support of women's suffrage in the United States, the cartoon depicts Lady Liberty wearing a cape labeled "Votes for Women" and standing astride the states (colored white) that had granted women the right to vote. A poem by Alice Duer Miller is printed beneath.
• 
  National Child Labor Committee

  Photo credit: Lewis Wickes Hine; restored by Michel Vuijlsteke

  A 1908 photo of child laborers in a glass factory in Indiana, United States, taken by Lewis Hine for the National Child Labor Committee, which formed after the 1900 census revealed that about 1 in 6 children between the ages of five and ten were gainfully employed. Hine's photos of children working in industrial settings resulted in a wave of popular support for federal child labor regulations put forward by the NCLC.

Selected culture biography -

Ieoh Ming Pei (born 26 April 1917), commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese-American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou. In 1935 he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was unhappy with the focus at both schools on Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching the emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and became friends with the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1939, he married Eileen Loo, who had introduced him to the GSD community. They have been married for over seventy years, and have six children, including architect C.C. "Didi" Pei.

Pei has won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the AIA Gold Medal in 1979, the first Praemium Imperiale for Architecture in 1989, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2003. In 1983, he won the Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of architecture.

Selected location -

Minnesota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. The 12th-largest state by area in the U.S., it is the 21^st most populous, with just over five million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the 32^nd state on May 11, 1858. The state is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes".

Nearly 60% of Minnesota's residents live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area known as the Twin Cities. The remainder of the state consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; eastern deciduous forests, also heavily farmed and settled; and the less populated northern boreal forest. The state's image of being populated by whites of Nordic and German descent has some truth, but diversity is increasing; substantial influxes of African, Asian, and Latin American immigrants have joined the descendants of European immigrants and of the original Native American inhabitants.

The extremes of the climate contrast with the moderation of Minnesota’s people. The state is known for its moderate-to-progressive politics and social policies, its civic involvement, and high voter turnout. It ranks among the healthiest states by a number of measures, and has one of the most highly educated and literate populations.

Selected quote -

Anniversaries for January 21

Selected cuisines, dishes and foods -

Examples of modern Tex-Mex dishes and ingredients: corn, tortilla chips, cheese, tacos, salsa, chilies, and beef dishes

Tex-Mex cuisine (derived from the words Texas and Mexico) is a regional American cuisine that originates from the culinary creations of Tejano people. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. It is a subtype of Southwestern cuisine found in the American Southwest. (Full article...)

Selected panorama -

The Crystal Range as seen from Desolation Valley near Lake Aloha

The Crystal Mountains as seen from Desolation Valley near Lake Aloha

More did you know? -

• ... that Harold Bell co-created Woodsy Owl (pictured), mascot of the United States Forest Service, on the set of the television series Lassie?
• ... that University of Michigan gymnast Sam Mikulak won the 2011 NCAA all-around championship and represented the United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro?
• ... that Vincent de Roulet, when serving as United States Ambassador to Jamaica, was declared persona non grata by the Prime Minister of Jamaica?

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