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Parent Portals: Geography / North America / United States

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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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  Captain Mildred H. McAfee was the first director of the WAVES (1942–1945). The photo was taken in 1942 or 1943, when she was ranked lieutenant commander.

  
  United States Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve), better known as the WAVES (for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), was the women's branch of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. It was established on July 21, 1942, by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 30. This authorized the U.S. Navy to accept women into the Naval Reserve as commissioned officers and at the enlisted level, effective for the duration of the war plus six months. The purpose of the law was to release officers and men for sea duty and replace them with women in shore establishments. Mildred H. McAfee, on leave as president of Wellesley College, became the first director of the WAVES. She was commissioned a lieutenant commander on August 3, 1942, and later promoted to commander and then to captain.
  
  The notion of women serving in the Navy was not widely supported in the Congress or by the Navy, even though some of the lawmakers and naval personnel did support the need for uniformed women during World War II. Public Law 689, allowing women to serve in the Navy, was due in large measure to the efforts of the Navy's Women's Advisory Council, Margaret Chung, and Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady of the United States. (Full article...)
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  Cover of the first issue of Science-Fiction Plus; art is by Alex Schomburg

  
  Science-Fiction Plus was an American science fiction magazine published by Hugo Gernsback for seven issues in 1953. In 1926, Gernsback had launched Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, but he had not been involved in the genre since 1936, when he sold Wonder Stories. Science-Fiction Plus was initially in slick format, meaning that it was large-size and printed on glossy paper. Gernsback had always believed in the educational power of science fiction, and he continued to advocate his views in the new magazine's editorials. The managing editor, Sam Moskowitz, had been a reader of the early pulp magazines, and published many writers who had been popular before World War II, such as Raymond Z. Gallun, Eando Binder, and Harry Bates. Combined with Gernsback's earnest editorials, the use of these early writers gave the magazine an anachronistic feel.
  
  Sales were initially good, but soon fell. For the last two issues Gernsback switched the magazine to cheaper pulp paper, but the magazine remained unprofitable. The final issue was dated December 1953. (Full article...)
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  Charles Henry Stonestreet SJ (November 21, 1813 – July 3, 1885) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served in prominent religious and academic positions, including as provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland Province and president of Georgetown University. He was born in Maryland and attended Georgetown University, where he co-founded the Philodemic Society. After entering the Society of Jesus and becoming a professor at Georgetown, he led St. John's Literary Institution and St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Maryland. He was appointed president of Georgetown University in 1851, holding the office for two years, during which time he oversaw expansion of the university's library. The First Plenary Council of Baltimore was held at Georgetown during his tenure.
  
  As provincial superior, Stonestreet worked with Anthony Ciampi in the aftermath of the devastating fire at the College of the Holy Cross, and addressed growing anti-Catholicism. Owing to violence from the Know Nothings, he forbade Jesuits from wearing their clerical attire in public or being addressed by their ecclesiastical titles. He later became president of Gonzaga College, where he oversaw the establishment and construction of St. Aloysius Church, of which he became the first pastor. In 1863, Stonestreet was involved in the legal incorporation of Boston College, and testified in court as to his knowledge of the conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, specifically Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd. Later, he was assigned to Georgetown, parishes throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., including as pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown, and Holy Cross, where he lived out his last years. (Full article...)
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  Debris and smoke fly through the air as USS Iowa's Turret Two's center gun explodes

  
  On 19 April 1989, an explosion occurred within the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) during a fleet exercise in the Caribbean Sea near Puerto Rico. The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret's crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Two major investigations were undertaken into the cause of the explosion, one by the U.S. Navy and then one by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Sandia National Laboratories. The investigations produced conflicting conclusions.
  
  The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator. (Full article...)
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  James Russell Lowell, c. 1855

  
  James Russell Lowell (/ˈloʊəl/; February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.
  
  Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. He published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. The couple had several children, though only one survived past childhood. (Full article...)
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  The New Rochelle 250th Anniversary half dollar is a commemorative coin struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint to mark the 250th anniversary of the settling of New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. Artist Gertrude K. Lathrop designed the piece; she was chosen after work by Lorrilard Wise was rejected by the federal Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). The coin depicts a fatted calf on one side, being led by John Pell, who sold the land on which New Rochelle now stands; the other shows a fleur de lis, an element of the city seal of New Rochelle and of France's La Rochelle, its eponym. The piece is dated 1938 but was minted the previous year. The New Rochelle piece was the last new-design commemorative struck by the Mint until 1946.
  
  Aware of the many commemorative issues being authorized by the U.S. Congress in the mid-1930s, members of the Westchester County Coin Club sought a half dollar for the New Rochelle anniversary. They gained the support of members of Congress, who secured the passage of legislation for the half dollar during 1936. After Wise's work was rejected, Lathrop was hired based on her work on the Albany Charter half dollar (1936). She decided to depict the "fatt calfe" which was to be presented annually to Pell if he asked for it, lest New Rochelle's land be forfeited back to him. The CFA approved her work, and the coins were struck at the Philadelphia Mint in 1937. (Full article...)
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  The Texas Centennial half dollar was a commemorative fifty-cent piece struck by the U.S. Bureau of the Mint for collectors from 1934 to 1938. It features an eagle and the Lone Star of Texas on the obverse, while the reverse is a complex scene incorporating the winged goddess Victory, the Alamo Mission, and portraits of Texan founding fathers Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, together with the six flags over Texas. Proposed by the American Legion's Texas Centennial Committee as a fundraising measure for the 100th anniversary of Texas's independence from Mexico, the coin's issue was approved by Congress in 1933, ending a multi-year pause on new commemorative issues under the Hoover administration. It was designed by sculptor Pompeo Coppini, previously the designer of several Texan public monuments. Rough models of the coin were approved by the committee in May 1934, but rejected by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, who viewed the design as crowded and overly-complicated. A compromise was reached, and the coin entered production at the Philadelphia Mint in October 1934.
  
  The Centennial Committee intended the coins to help finance the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin, and vended them through the American Legion and banks across Texas. The vast majority of this initial, 1934-dated, issue went unsold and was sent back to the Mint to be melted down for its silver. Smaller issues were produced at the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco mints for the next four years, even beyond the centennial itself in 1936. The Texas Centennial Committee ceased sales of the coin in November 1938. Despite the relative lack of sales, the issue has proven popular with collectors, with the coins gradually appreciating in value. (Full article...)
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  The Convention of 1833 (April 1–13, 1833), a political gathering of settlers of Mexican Texas, was a successor to the Convention of 1832, whose requests had not been addressed by the Mexican government. Despite the political uncertainty succeeding from a recently-concluded civil war, 56 delegates met in San Felipe de Austin to draft a series of petitions to the Alamo. The volatile William H. Wharton presided over the meeting.
  
  Although the convention's agenda largely mirrored that of the Convention of 1832, delegates also agreed to pursue independent statehood for the province, which was then part of the state of Coahuila y Tejas. Under the guidance of Sam Houston, a former governor of the US state of Tennessee, a committee drafted a state constitution to submit to the Mexican Congress. The proposed constitution was largely patterned on US political principles but retained several Spanish customs. Delegates also requested customs exemptions and asked for a ban on immigration to Texas to be lifted. (Full article...)
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  July 8, 1947, issue of the Roswell Daily Record, featured a story announcing the Roswell Army Air Field "capture" of a "flying saucer" from a ranch near Roswell

  
  Military balloon debris recovered in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, later became the basis for conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon program was intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After metallic and rubber debris was recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon.
  
  In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the army's weather balloon claim had been a cover story, and speculated that the debris was of extraterrestrial origin. Popularized by the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, this speculation became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, which over time expanded the incident to include governments concealing evidence of extraterrestrial beings, grey aliens, multiple crashed flying saucers, alien corpses and autopsies, and the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology, none of which have any factual basis. (Full article...)
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  John C. Breckinridge by Mathew Brady

  
  The political career of John C. Breckinridge included service in the state government of Kentucky, the Federal government of the United States, as well as the government of the Confederate States of America. In 1857, 36 years old, he was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan. He remains the youngest person to ever hold the office. Four years later, he ran as the presidential candidate of a dissident group of Southern Democrats, but lost the election to the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln.
  
  A member of the Breckinridge political family, John C. Breckinridge became the first Democrat to represent Fayette County in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1851, he was the first Democrat to represent Kentucky's 8th congressional district in over 20 years. A champion of strict constructionism, states' rights, and popular sovereignty, he supported Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act as a means of addressing slavery in the territories acquired by the U.S. in the Mexican–American War. Considering his re-election to the House of Representatives unlikely in 1854, he returned to private life and his legal practice. He was nominated for vice president at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, and although he and Buchanan won the election, he enjoyed little influence in Buchanan's administration. (Full article...)
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  Shojo Beat is a shōjo manga magazine formerly published in North America by Viz Media. Launched in June 2005 as a sister magazine for Shonen Jump, it featured serialized chapters from six manga series, as well as articles on Japanese culture, manga, anime, fashion and beauty. After its initial launch, Shojo Beat underwent two redesigns, becoming the first English anthology to use the cyan and magenta ink tones common to Japanese manga anthologies. Viz launched a related imprint of the same name for female-oriented manga, light novels and anime.
  
  Targeted at teenage girls, the first issue of Shojo Beat launched with a circulation of 20,000. By 2007, the average circulation was approximately 38,000 copies, with half coming from subscriptions rather than store sales. It was well received by critics, who praised its mix of manga series and the inclusion of articles on Japanese culture, though some critics found the early issues boring and poorly written. In May 2009, Viz announced that it was discontinuing the magazine; the July 2009 issue was the last released. Fans were disappointed at the sudden news. Industry experts felt its loss would leave female comic fans without a magazine of their own but praised Viz for its choice to continue using the Shojo Beat imprint and branding for its shōjo manga and anime releases. (Full article...)
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  The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 comedy-drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Wes Anderson. Ralph Fiennes leads a seventeen-actor ensemble cast as Monsieur Gustave H., famed concierge of a twentieth-century mountainside resort in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka. When Gustave is framed for the murder of a wealthy dowager (Tilda Swinton), he and his recently befriended protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) embark on a quest for fortune and a priceless Renaissance painting amidst the backdrop of an encroaching fascist regime. Anderson's American Empirical Pictures produced the film in association with Studio Babelsberg, Fox Searchlight Pictures, and Indian Paintbrush's Scott Rudin and Steven Rales. Fox Searchlight supervised the commercial distribution, and The Grand Budapest Hotel's funding was sourced through Indian Paintbrush and German government-funded tax rebates.
  
  Anderson and longtime collaborator Hugo Guinness conceived The Grand Budapest Hotel as a fragmented tale following a character inspired by a friend they shared. They initially struggled in brainstorming, but the experience touring Europe and researching the literature of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig shaped their vision for the film. The Grand Budapest Hotel draws visually from Europe-set mid-century Hollywood films and the United States Library of Congress's photochrom print collection of alpine resorts. Filming took place in eastern Germany from January to March 2013. French composer Alexandre Desplat composed the symphonic, Russian folk-inspired score, which expanded on his early work with Anderson. The film explores themes of fascism, nostalgia, friendship, and loyalty, and further studies analyze the function of color as a storytelling device. (Full article...)
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  Spine of 1937 republication

  
  American Writers is a work of literary criticism by American writer and critic John Neal. Published by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in five installments between September 1824 and February 1825, it is recognized by scholars as the first history of American literature and the first substantial work of criticism concerning US authors. It is Neal's longest critical work and at least 120 authors are covered, based entirely on Neal's memory. With no notes or books for reference, Neal made multiple factually inaccurate claims and provided coverage of many authors that modern scholars criticize as disproportionate to their role in American literature. Scholars nevertheless praise the staying power of Neal's opinions, many of which are reflected by other critics decades later, notably "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" by Mark Twain. Theories of poetry and prose in American Writers foreshadowed and likely influenced later works by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. Neal argued American literature relied too much on British precedent and had failed to develop its own voice. He offered sharp criticism of many authors while simultaneously urging critics not to offer writers from the US undeserved praise, lest it stifle the development of a truly distinct American literature. Poe's later critical essays on literature reflected these strictures.
  
  Neal wrote the series in London, where he lived between 1824 and 1827. Having moved there from Baltimore, his goals were to establish himself as America's leading literary figure, encourage the development of a uniquely American writing style, and reverse British disdain for literature from the US. He soon became the first American published in any British literary journal, American Writers being the longest and best-remembered of his works on American topics in multiple UK periodicals. He wrote for Scottish publisher William Blackwood under an English pseudonym, which Neal assumed was convincing. Blackwood and British readers likely realized they were reading the work of an American, and multiple leading American periodicals revealed Neal as the author before the series was completed. (Full article...)
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  Hurricane Ismael off the coast of Baja California nearing landfall

  
  Hurricane Ismael was a weak, but deadly Pacific hurricane that killed over one hundred people in northern Mexico in September of the 1995 Pacific hurricane season. It developed from a persistent area of deep convection on September 12, and steadily strengthened as it moved to the north-northwest. Ismael attained hurricane status on September 14 while located 210 miles (340 km) off the coast of Mexico. It continued to the north, and after passing a short distance east of Baja California Sur it made landfall on Topolobampo in the state of Sinaloa with winds of 80 mph (130 km/h). Ismael rapidly weakened over land, and dissipated on September 16 over northwestern Mexico. The remnants entered the United States and extended eastward into the Mid-Atlantic States.
  
  Offshore, Ismael produced waves of up to 30 feet (9.1 m) in height. Hundreds of fishermen were unprepared for the hurricane, which was expected to move more slowly, and as a result 52 ships were wrecked, killing 57 fishermen. On land, Ismael caused 59 deaths in mainland Mexico and resulted in $26 million in damage (1995 USD$, 53.7 million 2025 USD). The hurricane destroyed thousands of houses, leaving 30,000 people homeless. Moisture from the storm extended into the United States, causing heavy rainfall and localized moderate damage in southeastern New Mexico. (Full article...)
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  Painting of Tecumseh based on an 1808 sketch

  
  Tecumseh (/tɪˈkʌmsə, -si/ tih-KUM-sə, -⁠see; c. 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. Even though his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in the War of 1812, he became an iconic folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian popular history.
  
  Tecumseh was born in what is now Ohio at a time when the far-flung Shawnees were reuniting in their Ohio Country homeland. During his childhood, the Shawnees lost territory to the expanding American colonies in a series of border conflicts. Tecumseh's father was killed in battle against American colonists in 1774. Tecumseh was thereafter mentored by his older brother Cheeseekau, a noted war chief who died fighting Americans in 1792. As a young war leader, Tecumseh joined Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket's armed struggle against further American encroachment, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and with the loss of most of Ohio in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. (Full article...)
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  Fort Southerland Park in 2022

  
  Fort Southerland, also known as Redoubt E and possibly Fort Diamond, is a redoubt built during the American Civil War to protect Camden, Arkansas. Confederate forces built it along with four other redoubts in early 1864 after a Union victory in the Little Rock campaign the previous year. Fort Southerland is about the size of a city block and is roughly oval. It could hold three cannons. When Union forces captured Camden in April 1864 during the Camden Expedition, they improved the defenses of the five redoubts, which were not sufficient for proper defense of the city. After the Confederates retook Camden later that month, they continued to improve the city's defenses.
  
  The fort lies within Fort Southerland Park, a municipal park dedicated in 1974. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, and is part of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark. Along with Fort Lookout (Redoubt A), it is one of only two of the redoubts around Camden still in existence. (Full article...)
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  In 1948, Harry S. Truman and Alben W. Barkley were elected president and vice president of the United States, defeating Republican nominees Thomas E. Dewey and Earl Warren. Truman, a Democrat and vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt, had ascended to the presidency upon Roosevelt's death in 1945. He announced his candidacy for election on March 8, 1948. Unchallenged by any major nominee in the Democratic primaries, he won almost all of them easily; however, many Democrats like James Roosevelt opposed his candidacy and urged former Chief of Staff of the United States Army Dwight D. Eisenhower to run instead.
  
  Truman wanted U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas to be his running mate. Douglas declined, claiming a lack of political experience; in reality, his friend Thomas Gardiner Corcoran had advised him not to be a "number two man to a number two man". Senator Barkley's keynote address at the 1948 Democratic National Convention energized the delegates and impressed Truman, who then selected Barkley as his running mate. When the convention adopted Truman's civil rights plank in a close vote of 651+1⁄2 to 582+1⁄2, many Southern delegates walked out of the convention. After order was restored, a roll call vote gave Truman a majority of delegates to be the nominee; Barkley was nominated the vice-presidential candidate by acclamation. (Full article...)
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  Smith in 1948

  
  Addie Viola Smith (November 14, 1893 – December 13, 1975), also known as Shi Fanglan (Chinese: 施芳蘭; pinyin: Shī Fānglán), was an American attorney who served as the United States trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1939. She was the first female Foreign Service officer in the United States Foreign Service to work under the United States Department of Commerce, the first woman to serve as an assistant trade commissioner, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner.
  
  Smith was born and raised in Stockton, California. In 1917, she moved to Washington, D.C. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she attended the Washington College of Law part-time, earning her bachelor of laws in 1920. In October that year she joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Beijing as a clerk in the trade commissioner's office. Smith was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and appointed trade commissioner of Shanghai in 1928, a post she held until 1939. For the remainder of her career, she held several roles in the United States government, international organizations, and the United Nations. (Full article...)
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  The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary commemorative coins were issued by the United States Mint in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first crewed landing on the Moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Consisting of a gold half eagle ($5 coin), two different sizes of silver dollars, and a copper-nickel clad half dollar, each of the four was issued in proof condition, with all but the larger silver dollar also issued in uncirculated. The gold coins were struck at the West Point Mint, the silver at the Philadelphia Mint and the base metal half dollars at the mints in Denver and San Francisco.
  
  All four coins have the same design. The obverse depicts a bootprint on the lunar surface, based on a photograph taken by Aldrin. That design is by Maine sculptor Gary Cooper, with engraving by Joseph Menna of the Mint. The reverse, as mandated by Congress, depicts the visor and surrounding helmet of Aldrin's space suit, with Armstrong, the U.S. Flag and the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle in the reflection. This is based on a well-known photograph taken by Armstrong, and was created and engraved by Phebe Hemphill of the Mint. The depiction of Aldrin made him the seventh individual to appear on a U.S. coin who was alive at the time the coins were struck. (Full article...)
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  Seen from the east in 2010

  
  1 Wall Street (also known as the Irving Trust Company Building, the Bank of New York Building, and the BNY Mellon Building) is a 654-foot-tall (199 m) Art Deco skyscraper in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The building, which occupies a full city block, consists of two sections. The original 50-story building was designed by Ralph Thomas Walker of the firm Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker and constructed between 1929 and 1931 for Irving Trust, an early-20th-century American bank. A 28-story annex to the south (later expanded to 36 stories) was designed by the successor firm Voorhees, Walker, Smith, Smith & Haines and built between 1963 and 1965.
  
  The limestone facade consists of slight inwardly-curved bays with fluting to resemble curtains. On the lower stories are narrow windows and elaborate entrances. The massing of 1 Wall Street incorporates numerous small setbacks, and there are chamfers at the corners of the original building. The top of the original building consists of a freestanding tower with fluted windowless bays. The facade of the annex is crafted in a style reminiscent of the original structure. The original building has an ornate lobby, known as the Red Room, with colored mosaics. The 10th through 45th floors were originally rented to tenants, while the other floors contained offices, lounges, and other spaces for Irving Trust. After 1 Wall Street was converted to a residential building, the upper stories were divided into 566 condominium apartments. (Full article...)
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  Kolob Canyons from the end of Kolob Canyons Road. Stream erosion has incised the Kolob Plateau to form canyons that expose the red-orange colored Navajo Sandstone and other formations.

  
  
  The geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area includes nine known exposed formations, all visible in Zion National Park in the U.S. state of Utah. Together, these formations represent about 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation in that part of North America. Part of a super-sequence of rock units called the Grand Staircase, the formations exposed in the Zion and Kolob area were deposited in several different environments that range from the warm shallow seas of the Kaibab and Moenkopi formations, streams and lakes of the Chinle, Moenave, and Kayenta formations to the large deserts of the Navajo and Temple Cap formations and dry near shore environments of the Carmel Formation.
  
  Subsequent uplift of the Colorado Plateau slowly raised these formations much higher than where they were deposited. This steepened the stream gradient of the ancestral rivers and other streams on the plateau. The faster-moving streams took advantage of uplift-created joints in the rocks to remove all Cenozoic-aged formations and cut gorges into the plateaus. Zion Canyon was cut by the North Fork of the Virgin River in this way. Lava flows and cinder cones covered parts of the area during the later part of this process. (Full article...)
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  Grace White Sherwood (1660–1740), called the Witch of Pungo, is the last person known to have been convicted of witchcraft in Virginia.
  
  A farmer, healer, and midwife, she was accused by her neighbors of transforming herself into a cat, damaging crops, and causing the death of livestock. She was charged with witchcraft several times. The court ordered that Sherwood's guilt or innocence be determined by ducking her in water. If she sank, she was innocent; if she did not, she was guilty. Sherwood floated to the surface and may have spent almost eight years in jail before being released. (Full article...)
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  Du Bois in 1907

  
  William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (/duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
  
  Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was its first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. (Full article...)
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  Brocato, c. 1953

  
  Cosimo O. Brocato Jr. (October 31, 1929 – September 1, 2015) was an American scout, coach and football player best known for his time with the Houston / Tennessee Oilers / Titans, for which he was a scout from 1974 to 1976, and again from 1981 until his death in 2015. A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Brocato attended St. John's High School (renamed Jesuit High School in 1960) and later played college football for the Baylor Bears as a linebacker and placekicker. He was selected in the 1953 National Football League (NFL) draft by the Chicago Cardinals but left in training camp to begin a coaching career. He served as an assistant coach at Haynesville High School in Louisiana from 1954 to 1957, as the head coach of St. John's / Jesuit High School from 1958 to 1968, as the defensive coordinator for the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks from 1969 to 1970, and as the defensive coordinator for the Texas–Arlington Mavericks from 1971 to 1973.
  
  Brocato resigned from Texas–Arlington in 1974 to become a scout for the Houston Oilers of the NFL for three seasons before spending 1977 through 1981 with the United States Scouting Combine, an organization that provided scouting data to NFL teams. He returned to the Oilers in 1981 and remained with them until his death in 2015. He is considered by his colleagues to have been one of the greatest scouts in football history and helped the team draft several players who went on to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Brocato invented the three-cone drill, one of the main events at the NFL Scouting Combine, and mentored numerous scouts during his career of over 40 years. He has been considered for induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on several occasions, and was a semifinalist for the classes of 2023 and 2024. (Full article...)
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  Prince Romerson (c. 1840 – March 30, 1872) was a Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. One of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than 100 documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaii was still an independent nation.
  
  Living in the American Northeast before the war, Romerson enlisted in the Union Navy in 1863 as part of the Blockading Squadrons responsible for maintaining the blockade of the ports of the Confederacy. After being discharged from naval service, he reenlisted in the Union Army under the 5th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, a United States Colored (USCT) regiment, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant on June 1, 1864. Romerson fought with the 5th USCC until the end of the war. Illness prevented him from continuing with his regiment's reassignment to Clarksville, Texas, and he was mustered out in 1865. After the war, like many former USCT veterans, he remained in the army on the frontier as one of the Buffalo Soldiers. He died in 1872. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that the Chicago Community Bond Fund sought to put itself out of business by eliminating cash bail?
• ... that Ngiam Tong Dow negotiated Singapore's first and largest purchase of gold from South Africa in 1968 by comparing two halves of a United States one-dollar bill?
• ... that opera composer and librettist Joseph Redding was also a chess expert and lawyer who argued a landmark decision before the United States Supreme Court?
• ... that George Washington was first exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and later relocated during the 1976 Bicentennial to Trenton?
• ... that Yemi Mobolade is the first Black person and the first non-Republican to be elected the mayor of Colorado Springs, Colorado?
• ... that the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University Library helped to create a public domain archive of sounds from Yellowstone National Park?
• ... that in 2017 Ivanka Trump became the first Jewish member of a U.S. first family?
• ... that the names of Harvey Meyerhoff, Elie Wiesel, and Bill Clinton are carved into the cornerstone of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to Meyerhoff's daughter?

Selected society biography -

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in November 1962, he was elected nine times and served for 46 years in the U.S. Senate. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate, and the third-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the son of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Selected image -

• 
  First cabinet of Barack Obama

  Photograph: Chuck Kennedy

  The first cabinet of Barack Obama, photographed in the White House East Room in September 2009. Consisting of the heads of the sixteen United States federal executive departments and seven additional members, the Cabinet of the United States acts as an advisory body to the President. Of the persons shown, five (Gary Locke, Peter R. Orszag, Christina Romer, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gates) left the Obama administration before the end of the president's first term.
• 
  Keypunch

  Picture: Unknown; restoration: Mmxx

  A woman using a Hollerith pantograph, a machine developed by Herman Hollerith for the punching of cards, providing data which could then be processed. Such tools were used in the 1890 United States Census, the first time the country's census was tabulated by machine.
• 
  Watergate scandal

  Photo credit: U.S. News & World Report

  U.S. President Gerald Ford appearing at an October 1974 House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing regarding his pardon of Richard Nixon. Nixon had resigned due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal, which began with an attempted break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office complex on June 17, 1972.
• 
  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.
• 
  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.
• 
  1900 United States presidential election

  Image: Northwestern Litho. Co.; Restoration: NativeForeigner

  A campaign poster from the 1900 United States presidential election for the incumbent William McKinley, who would eventually win. The poster shows McKinley standing on a gold coin, representing the gold standard, with support from soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professionals, claiming to restore prosperity at home and victory abroad. The election was a repeat of the 1896 election, pitting McKinley against William Jennings Bryan.
• 
  Lansdowne portrait

  Painting credit: Gilbert Stuart

  The Lansdowne portrait is an iconic life-size portrait of George Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. It depicts the 64-year-old president of the United States during his final year in office. The portrait was a gift to the former British prime minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, and spent more than 170 years in England. In 1968, it was loaned to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and purchased by the gallery in 2001. This copy of the Lansdowne portrait, also painted by Stuart, hangs in the East Room of the White House; it was rescued by First Lady Dolley Madison during the Burning of Washington in 1814.
• 
  Howell Cobb

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

  Howell Cobb (September 7, 1815 – October 9, 1868) was an American politician and five-term member of the United States House of Representatives who served as Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th governor of Georgia from 1851 to 1853, and as Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan from 1857 to 1860. Cobb is probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as president of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. This line engraving of Cobb was produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.
• 
  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.
• 
  Heinrich C. Berann

  Painting credit: Heinrich C. Berann

  Heinrich C. Berann (1915–1999) was an Austrian painter and cartographer. He achieved world fame with his panoramic maps that combined modern cartography with classical painting. Towards the end of his life, he created four panoramic posters of national parks which were published by the U.S. National Park Service. This 1994 panorama shows Denali National Park and Preserve in central Alaska, with Denali, the highest mountain on the continent, and the glaciers on its southern flanks.
• 
  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.
• 
  Trinity nuclear test

  Photo credit: Berlyn Brixner

  The Trinity nuclear test explosion, .016 seconds after detonation. The fireball is about 200 metres (700 ft) wide. Conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at a location 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what is now White Sands Missile Range, Trinity was the first test of technology for a nuclear weapon.
• 
  Apollo 11 in popular culture

  Photograph: Jack Weir; restoration: CarolSpears

  Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans, commander Neil Armstrong and LM pilot Buzz Aldrin, on the Moon. On July 21, 1969, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the Moon. This mission quickly captured the public's imagination and became prominent in popular culture. Over 530 million viewers worldwide watched the Moon landing, and it received widespread newspaper coverage. For example, the July 21, 1969, edition of The Washington Post—shown here—used the main headline "'The Eagle Has Landed'—Two Men Walk on the Moon". In subsequent years, the Moon landing has been frequently depicted or referenced in media, including in literature, films, and video games.
• 
  Salem witch trials

  Lithographer: Joseph E. Baker; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A fanciful 1892 lithograph of the Salem witch trials. The trials, which took place between February 1692 and May 1693 in colonial Massachusetts, involved people accused of witchcraft, and have been used as a cautionary tale about the dangers of religious extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process, and governmental intrusion on individual liberties.
• 
  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Engraving: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restoration: Andrew Shiva

  Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) was an American soldier and politician who was elected the 19th President of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. The election, at the end of the Reconstruction Era, was highly contentious and he was declared the winner through the Compromise of 1877. As president he ended Army support for Republican state governments in the South, promoted civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Selected culture biography -

Phillip Jack Brooks better known by his ring name CM Punk, is an American professional wrestler and wrestling color commentator currently signed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) on its Raw brand, where he is the leader of Nexus.

Punk initially came to prominence through his career on the professional wrestling independent circuit, primarily as a member of the Ring of Honor (ROH) roster, where he won the ROH Tag Team Championship, ROH World Championship, and was the first head trainer of the ROH wrestling school. In 2005, Punk signed a contract with WWE and was sent to its developmental promotion, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), where he won every championship available in the promotion.

Throughout his career, Punk has consistently used the gimmick of being straight edge, a lifestyle he follows in real life. Depending on Punk's alignment as a crowd favorite or villain, he emphasizes different aspects of the culture to encourage the desired audience reaction.

Selected location -

Interstate 15 in Arizona is part of Interstate 15 (I-15), a transcontinental Interstate Highway from San Diego, California, to the Canadian border. The highway segment passes through Mohave County in the far northwest corner of the U.S. state of Arizona. Despite its length of 29.43 miles (47.36 km) and isolation from the rest of the state in the remote Arizona Strip, it is notable for the scenic section through the Virgin River Gorge. The highway heads in a northeasterly direction from the Nevada border northeast of Mesquite, Nevada, to the Utah border southwest of St. George, Utah. The southern portion of the routing of I-15 was built close to the alignment of the old U.S. Route 91, but the northern section through the Virgin River Gorge was built along an alignment that previously had no road. The southern section of the highway was complete and opened in the early 1960s, while the section through the gorge did not open to traffic until 1973. When it opened, the portion of I-15 through the Virgin River Gorge was the most expensive section of rural Interstate per mile.

Selected quote -

Anniversaries for March 24

• 1765 – During the American Revolutionary War the Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act, which required residents of the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
• 1832 – In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith (pictured).
• 1900 – New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
• 1934 – U.S. Congress passes the Tydings–McDuffie Act allowing the Philippines to become a self-governing commonwealth.
• 1965 – NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television sets, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash-landing.
• 1989 – In Alaska's Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (42,000 m³) of petroleum after running aground. Known as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it remains one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.

Selected cuisines, dishes and foods -

Shrimp gumbo and rice

The cuisine of New Orleans encompasses common dishes and foods in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is perhaps the most distinctively recognized regional cuisine in the United States. Some of the dishes originated in New Orleans, while others are common and popular in the city and surrounding areas, such as the Mississippi River Delta and southern Louisiana. The cuisine of New Orleans is heavily influenced by Creole cuisine, Cajun cuisine, and soul food. Later on, due to immigration, Italian cuisine and Sicilian cuisine also has some influence on the cuisine of New Orleans. Seafood also plays a prominent part in the cuisine. Dishes invented in New Orleans include po' boy and muffuletta sandwiches, oysters Rockefeller and oysters Bienville, pompano en papillote, and bananas Foster, among others. (Full article...)

Selected panorama -

Portland skyline

Portland skyline

More did you know? -

• ...Washingtonia, (pictured) a genus of palm that produces a fruit eaten by Native Americans in the United States?

• ...that the Land Run of 1889 resulted in the founding of both Oklahoma City and Guthrie, whose populations grew from zero to over 10,000 in less than a day?

• ...that William Hawkins Polk, brother of President James Polk, was a U.S. Representative and ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples?

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