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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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  Interstate 182 (I-182) is an east–west auxiliary Interstate Highway in the U.S. state of Washington. It serves as a connector from I-82 to the Tri-Cities region that crosses the Columbia River on the Interstate 182 Bridge between Richland and Pasco. I-182 is 15 miles (24 km) long and entirely concurrent with U.S. Route 12 (US 12); it also intersects State Route 240 (SR 240) and US 395.
  
  Business leaders in the Tri-Cities began lobbying for a freeway in 1958 after early alignments for I-82 were routed away from the area. I-182 was created by the federal government in 1969 as a compromise to the routing dispute, which allowed for direct access to the Tri-Cities and a bypass for other traffic. The new freeway would also include construction of a bridge between Richland and Pasco, proposed since the 1940s at the site of an earlier cable ferry that ran until 1931. (Full article...)
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  Samuel A. Mulledy SJ (/mʌˈleɪdi/ muh-LAY-dee; March 27, 1811 – January 8, 1866) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served as president of Georgetown College in 1845. Born in Virginia, he was the brother of Thomas F. Mulledy, who was a prominent 19th-century Jesuit in the United States and a president of Georgetown. As a student at Georgetown, Samuel was one of the founding members of the Philodemic Society, and proved to be a distinguished student, which resulted in his being sent to Rome to complete his higher education and be ordained to the priesthood. Upon his return to the United States, he became the master of novices at the Jesuit novitiate in Maryland, before being named president of Georgetown. He sought to be relieved of the position after only a few months, and returned to teaching and ministry.
  
  Mulledy was expelled from the Society of Jesus over charges of alcoholism in 1850. He took up ministerial work at congregations throughout the northeastern United States, remaining at each for no more than a few years. He eventually became chaplain to Archbishop John Hughes and was assigned as an assistant at the Church of St. Lawrence O'Toole in New York City (later known as St. Ignatius Loyola), where he became pastor in 1863 and lived out the remainder of his life. On his deathbed, he petitioned the Jesuit provincial superior to allow him to be readmitted to the Society; four days before his death, his request was granted and he professed his vows. (Full article...)
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  Photograph by Mathew Brady, c. 1859

  
  Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.
  
  Davis, the youngest of ten children, was born in Fairview, Kentucky, but spent most of his childhood in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. His eldest brother Joseph Emory Davis secured the younger Davis's appointment to the United States Military Academy. Upon graduating, he served six years as a lieutenant in the United States Army. After leaving the army in 1835, Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of general and future President Zachary Taylor. Sarah died from malaria three months after the wedding. Davis became a cotton planter, building Brierfield Plantation in Mississippi on his brother Joseph's land and eventually owning as many as 113 slaves. (Full article...)
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  Jordan in 2014

  
  Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963), also known by his initials MJ, is an American businessman and former professional basketball player. He played 15 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) between 1984 and 2003, winning six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. He was integral in popularizing basketball and the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s, becoming a global cultural icon. His profile on the NBA website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."
  
  Jordan played college basketball with the North Carolina Tar Heels. As a freshman, he was a member of the Tar Heels' national championship team in 1982. Jordan joined the Bulls in 1984 as the third overall draft pick and quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring while gaining a reputation as one of the best defensive players. His leaping ability, demonstrated by performing slam dunks from the free-throw line in Slam Dunk Contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". Jordan won his first NBA title with the Bulls in 1991 and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a three-peat. Citing physical and mental exhaustion from basketball and superstardom, Jordan abruptly retired from basketball before the 1993–94 NBA season to play Minor League Baseball in the Chicago White Sox organization. He returned to the Bulls in March 1995 and led them to three more championships in 1996, 1997, and 1998, as well as a then-record 72 regular season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for the second time in January 1999, returning for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards. He was selected to play for the United States national team during his college and NBA careers, winning four gold medals—at the 1983 Pan American Games, 1984 Summer Olympics, 1992 Tournament of the Americas and 1992 Summer Olympics—while also being undefeated. (Full article...)
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  Matthew Stanley Quay (/kweɪ/; September 30, 1833 – May 28, 1904) was an American politician of the Republican Party who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1887 until 1899 and from 1901 until his death in 1904. Quay's control of the Pennsylvania Republican political machine for almost twenty years made him one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the country. As chair of the Republican National Committee and thus party campaign manager, he helped elect Benjamin Harrison as president in 1888. He was also instrumental in the 1900 election of Theodore Roosevelt as vice president.
  
  Quay studied law and began his career in public office by becoming prothonotary of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, in 1856. He became personal secretary to Governor Andrew Curtin in 1861 after campaigning for him the previous year. During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army, commanding the 134th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment as a colonel. Quay received the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He acted as Pennsylvania's military agent in Washington before returning to Harrisburg to assist Curtin and aid in his re-election in 1863. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1865 to 1868. (Full article...)
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  Waterfall in Macleay Park

  
  Balch Creek is a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) tributary of the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Beginning at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains (West Hills), the creek flows generally east down a canyon along Northwest Cornell Road in unincorporated Multnomah County and through the Macleay Park section of Forest Park, a large municipal park in Portland. At the lower end of the park, the stream enters a pipe and remains underground until reaching the river. Danford Balch, after whom the creek is named, settled a land claim along the creek in the mid-19th century. After murdering his son-in-law, he became the first person legally hanged in Oregon.
  
  Basalt, mostly covered by silt in the uplands and sediment in the lowlands, underlies the Balch Creek watershed. The upper part of the watershed includes private residential land, the Audubon Society of Portland nature sanctuary, and part of Forest Park. Mixed conifer forest of Coast Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and western hemlock with a well-developed understory of shrubs and flowering plants is the natural vegetation. Sixty-two species of mammals and more than 112 species of birds use Forest Park. A small population of coastal cutthroat trout resides in the stream, which in 2005 was the only major water body in Portland that met state standards for bacteria, temperature, and dissolved oxygen. (Full article...)
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  Lewis Warner Green (January 28, 1806 – May 26, 1863) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator. He was the president of Hampden–Sydney College, Transylvania University, and Centre College for various periods between 1849 and 1863. Born in Danville, Kentucky, baptized in Versailles, and educated in Woodford County, Green enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his education. He graduated in 1824 as one of two members of the school's first graduating class. He enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky in 1832 before graduating. After one year as a professor at Hanover College, he returned to Centre in 1839. He left again the next year for a position at Western Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he spent six years. He then went to Baltimore to preach full-time, though he resigned after just over a year and a half due to poor health.
  
  Green was elected president of Hampden–Sydney College in January 1849. He was recruited by numerous other institutions after his eight-year term. Among these institutions was Transylvania, which recruited him to their presidency shortly following the establishment of a normal school by the Kentucky General Assembly. The bill that created the normal school was repealed after a year and a half and he resigned in late 1857. Green was elected president of Centre College that year and entered office in January 1858. After leading the school through the start of the Civil War, he died in office in 1863 from an illness which he caught after helping wounded soldiers. He was buried in Danville's Bellevue Cemetery. He was a member of the Stevenson political family through the marriage of his daughter; as a result, he was the father-in-law of vice president Adlai Stevenson I, the great-grandfather of Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson II, and the great-great-grandfather of senator Adlai Stevenson III. (Full article...)
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  5 September 1943. Dwarfed by and silhouetted against clouds of smoke generated to provide concealment, C-47s from the US Army Air Forces drop a battalion of the 503rd Parachute Regiment at Nadzab, New Guinea. A battalion dropped minutes earlier is landing in the foreground.

  
  The Landing at Nadzab was an airborne landing on 5 September 1943 during the New Guinea campaign of World War II in conjunction with the landing at Lae. The Nadzab action began with a parachute drop at Lae Nadzab Airport, combined with an overland force.
  
  The parachute drop was carried out by the US Army's 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment and elements of the Australian Army's 2/4th Field Regiment into Nadzab, New Guinea in the Markham Valley, observed by General Douglas MacArthur, circling overhead in a B-17. The Australian 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, 2/6th Field Company, and B Company, Papuan Infantry Battalion reached Nadzab after an overland and river trek that same day and began preparing the airfield. The first transport aircraft landed the next morning, but bad weather delayed the Allied build up. Over the next days, the 25th Infantry Brigade of the Australian 7th Division gradually arrived. An air crash at Jackson's Field ultimately caused half the Allied casualties of the battle. (Full article...)
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  Jereboam O. Beauchamp murders Solomon P. Sharp.

  
  The Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy (sometimes called the Kentucky Tragedy) was the murder of Kentucky legislator Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp. As a young lawyer, Beauchamp had been an admirer of Sharp until Sharp allegedly fathered an illegitimate child with Anna Cooke, a planter's daughter. Sharp denied paternity of the stillborn child. Later, Beauchamp began a relationship with Cooke, who, according to legend, agreed to marry him on the condition that he kill Sharp to avenge her honor. Beauchamp and Cooke married in June 1824, and in the early morning of November 7, 1825, Beauchamp murdered Sharp at Sharp's home in Frankfort.
  
  An investigation soon revealed Beauchamp as the killer, and he was apprehended at his home in Glasgow, four days after the murder. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by hanging. He was granted a stay of execution to allow him to write a justification of his actions. Anna Cooke-Beauchamp was tried for complicity in the murder, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Her devotion to Beauchamp prompted her to stay in his cell with him, where the two attempted a double suicide by drinking laudanum shortly before the execution. This attempt failed. On the morning of the execution, the couple again attempted suicide, this time by stabbing themselves with a knife Anna had smuggled into the cell. When the guards discovered them, Beauchamp was rushed to the gallows, where he was hanged before he could die of his stab wound. He was the first person legally executed in the state of Kentucky. Anna Cooke-Beauchamp died from her wounds shortly before her husband was hanged. In accordance with their wishes, the couple's bodies were positioned in an embrace when buried in the same coffin. (Full article...)
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  John Littlejohn (December 7, 1756 – May 13, 1836) was an English-born American tradesman, Methodist preacher and politician. Born in Penrith, Cumberland, he briefly attended trade school in London before returning to Penrith. When Littlejohn was around twelve years old, he immigrated to British America to pursue various apprenticeships under tradesmen in Virginia and Maryland. While not particularly religious as a youth, he was inspired by Methodist revivalist sermons and began service as a circuit rider in 1776, after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.
  
  As part of his preaching efforts, Littlejohn traveled across the new United States, including Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington. After several years of itinerancy he settled in Leesburg, Virginia, where Littlejohn served as a local preacher and saddler for several decades, and occasionally as a county magistrate, sheriff, and tax collector. As the Loudoun County sheriff during Britain's burning of Washington in 1814, he protected a safehouse containing the relocated National Archives, including the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. In 1818, Littlejohn moved with his family to Kentucky, where he served as a land agent, preaching alongside his work during travel across the state. He retired to Logan County in southern Kentucky, where he became a slaveholder. Littlejohn died in 1836, after sixty years of preaching. (Full article...)
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  Tournament logo

  
  The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was the third edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the world championship for women's national soccer teams. It was hosted as well as won by the United States and took place from June 19 to July 10, 1999, at eight venues across the country. The tournament was the most successful FIFA Women's World Cup in terms of attendance, television ratings, and public interest.
  
  The 1999 edition was the first to field sixteen teams, an increase from the twelve in 1995, and featured an all-female roster of referees and match officials. It was played primarily in large American football venues due to expected demand following the successful 1996 Olympics women's tournament. The average attendance was 37,319 spectators per match and the total attendance was 1.194 million, a record that stood until 2015. The tournament earned a profit of $4 million on its $30 million operating budget. (Full article...)
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  The Lexington–Concord Sesquicentennial half dollar, sometimes the Lexington–Concord half dollar or Patriot half dollar, is a commemorative fifty-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1925 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolutionary War. It was designed by Chester Beach and features Daniel Chester French's 1874 The Minute Man statue on the obverse.
  
  Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation introduced legislation in 1924 which would provide for a commemorative half dollar for the anniversary. The bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Calvin Coolidge. Beach had to satisfy committees from both Lexington and Concord, and the Commission of Fine Arts passed the design only reluctantly, feeling Beach had been given poor materials to work with. (Full article...)
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  Lumbee Indians fighting Ku Klux Klansmen during the incident

  
  The Battle of Hayes Pond, also known as the Battle of Maxton Field or the Maxton Riot, was an armed confrontation between members of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization and Lumbee people at a Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina, on the night of January 18, 1958. The clash resulted in the disruption of the rally and a significant amount of media coverage praising the Lumbees and condemning the Klansmen.
  
  In 1956, James W. "Catfish" Cole, a KKK member from South Carolina, established the North Carolina Knights, a Klan organization aimed at defending racial segregation. In early 1958 Cole focused his efforts on upholding segregation in Robeson County, North Carolina, which had a triracial population of Native Americans, whites, and blacks. Many of the Native Americans were members of the recently recognized Lumbee Tribe, a group having its origins in other Indigenous peoples but had grown into a single community around the county. Cole oversaw two cross burnings meant to frighten the Lumbees from racial mixing, and scheduled a Klan rally which he hoped would have a large turnout. (Full article...)
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  In this c. 1772 portrait, Adams points at the Massachusetts Charter, which he viewed as a constitution that protected the peoples' rights.

  
  Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S. September 16], 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams. He founded the Sons of Liberty.
  
  Adams was born in Boston, brought up in a religious and politically active family. A graduate of Harvard College, he was an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector before concentrating on politics. He was an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760s, and he became a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent. His 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter calling for colonial non-cooperation prompted the occupation of Boston by British troops, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Adams and his colleagues devised a committee of correspondence system in 1772 to help coordinate resistance to what he saw as the British government's attempts to violate the British Constitution at the expense of the colonies, which linked like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Continued resistance to British policy resulted in the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the coming of the American Revolution. Adams was actively involved with colonial newspapers publishing accounts of colonial sentiment over British colonial rule, which were fundamental in uniting the colonies. (Full article...)
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  Portrait, c. 1870–1880

  
  Rutherford Birchard Hayes (/ˈrʌðərfərd/ ^ⓘ; October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. A staunch abolitionist from Ohio, he was also a brevet major general for the Union army during the American Civil War.
  
  As an attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861. He was a staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. At the start of the Civil War, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat, rising in the ranks to serve as brevet major general. After the war, he earned a reputation in the Republican Party as a prominent member of the "Half-Breed" faction. He served in Congress from 1865 to 1867 and was elected governor of Ohio, serving two consecutive terms from 1868 to 1872 and half of a third two-year term from 1876 to 1877 before his swearing-in as president. (Full article...)
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  M Street elevation in December 2018

  
  The Georgetown Car Barn, historically known as the Capital Traction Company Union Station, is a building in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. Designed by the architect Waddy Butler Wood, it was built between 1895 and 1897 by the Capital Traction Company as a union terminal for several Washington and Virginia streetcar lines. The adjacent Exorcist steps, later named after their appearance in William Friedkin's 1973 horror film The Exorcist, were built during the initial construction to connect M Street with Prospect Street.
  
  The Car Barn, built for use as a passenger station and to store streetcars, was also the terminal for Washington's only cable car system. Almost immediately after the building opened, Capital Traction converted its streetcar lines to electrical power and modified the Car Barn to suit. Still, the building was never used to the extent anticipated by its builders. (Full article...)
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  Mehl c. 1950

  
  Benjamin Maximillian Mehl (November 5, 1884 – September 28, 1957), usually known as B. Max Mehl, was an American dealer in coins, selling them for over half a century. The most prominent dealer in the United States, through much of the first half of the 20th century, he is credited with helping to expand the appeal of coin collecting from a hobby for the wealthy to one enjoyed by many.
  
  Mehl was born in Congress Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire. His family brought him to what is now Lithuania, and then to the United States, settling in Fort Worth, Texas, where he lived for almost all of his adult life. While still a teenager, he began to sell coins, which he had previously collected. Joining the American Numismatic Association (ANA) in 1903 at age 18, he quickly became a full-time coin dealer, and by 1910 was one of the most well-known in the country. (Full article...)
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  The Draped Bust dollar is a United States dollar coin minted from 1795 to 1803, and was reproduced, dated 1804, into the 1850s. The design succeeded the Flowing Hair dollar, which began mintage in 1794 and was the first silver dollar struck by the United States Mint. The designer is unknown, though the distinction is usually credited to artist Gilbert Stuart. The model is also unknown, though Ann Willing Bingham has been suggested.
  
  In October 1795, newly appointed Mint Director Elias Boudinot ordered that the legal fineness of 0.892 (89.2%) silver be used for the dollar rather than the unauthorized fineness of 0.900 (90%) silver that had been used since the denomination was first minted in 1794. Due largely to a decrease in the amount of silver deposited at the Philadelphia Mint, coinage of silver dollars declined throughout the latter years of the 18th century. In 1804, coinage of silver dollars was halted; the last date used during regular mint production was 1803. (Full article...)
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  Barney in 1898, photograph by Alice Hughes

  
  Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism.
  
  Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner, Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work of Sappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and courtesan Liane de Pougy and longer relationships with writer Élisabeth de Gramont and painter Romaine Brooks. (Full article...)
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  Shannen Says is an eight-episode American reality television series broadcast on WE TV from April 10 to May 13, 2012. The show focuses on the preparations for the 2011 wedding of actress Shannen Doherty and photographer Kurt Iswarienko, with help from celebrity-wedding planner David Tutera. Doherty and Iswarienko developed the show as a way to document the stress on a couple while planning their wedding.
  
  Filmed in Malibu, California, between August 2011 and October 2011, Shannen Says was produced by RelativityReal and Doherty's production company No Apologies Productions. To prepare for filming, Doherty watched reality shows by Tori Spelling and Kim Kardashian. The series was released on the iTunes Store and Amazon Video under the title Shannen Says, Season 1, but it was not made available on DVD or Blu-ray. (Full article...)
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  Irataba, c. 1864

  
  Irataba (Mohave: eecheeyara tav [eːt͡ʃeːjara tav], also known as Yara tav, Yarate:va, Arateve; c. 1814 – 1874) was a leader of the Mohave Nation, known as a mediator between the Mohave and the United States. He was born near the Colorado River in present-day Arizona. Irataba was a renowned orator and one of the first Mohave to speak English, a skill he used to develop relations with the United States.
  
  Irataba first encountered European Americans in 1851, when he assisted the Sitgreaves Expedition. In 1854, he met Amiel Whipple, then leading an expedition crossing the Colorado. Several Mohave aided the group, and Irataba agreed to escort them through the territory of the Paiute to the Old Spanish Trail, which would take them to southern California. Noted for his large physical size and gentle demeanor, he later helped and protected other expeditions, earning him a reputation among whites as the most important native leader in the region. (Full article...)
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  Baldwin photographed in c. 1890

  
  Marcus Elmore Baldwin (October 29, 1863 – November 10, 1929), nicknamed "Fido" and "Baldy", was an American professional baseball pitcher who played seven seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). In 346 career games, he pitched to a 154–165 win–loss record with 295 complete games. Baldwin set the single-season MLB wild pitches record with 83 that still stands today.
  
  Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baldwin made his professional debut for a Cumberland, Maryland, team in 1883. Though signed by Chicago White Stockings president Albert Spalding to pitch against the St. Louis Browns in the 1886 World Series, Baldwin did not play after the Browns objected. He made his MLB debut for the White Stockings in 1887, when a writer for the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern called him the "swiftest pitcher in the National League" (NL). Released by Chicago player–manager Cap Anson, he signed with the Columbus Solons of the American Association (AA) in 1889, where he led the league in innings pitched (513+2⁄3), losses (34), strikeouts (368), and walks (274). (Full article...)
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  The Franklin half dollar is a coin that was struck by the United States Mint from 1948 to 1963. The fifty-cent piece pictures Founding Father Benjamin Franklin on the obverse and the Liberty Bell on the reverse. A small eagle was placed to the right of the bell to fulfill the legal requirement that half dollars depict the figure of an eagle. Produced in 90 percent silver with a reeded edge, the coin was struck at the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco mints.
  
  Mint director Nellie Tayloe Ross had long admired Franklin, and wanted him to be depicted on a coin. In 1947, she instructed her chief engraver, John R. Sinnock, to prepare designs for a Franklin half dollar. Sinnock's designs were based on his earlier work, but he died before their completion. The designs were completed by Sinnock's successor, Gilroy Roberts. The Mint submitted the new designs to the Commission of Fine Arts ("Commission") for its advisory opinion. The Commission disliked the small eagle and felt that depicting the crack in the Liberty Bell would expose the coinage to jokes and ridicule. Despite the Commission's disapproval, the Mint proceeded with Sinnock's designs. (Full article...)
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  Fort Rosalie was destroyed in the 1729 massacre; its ruins now lie within Natchez National Historical Park.

  
  The Natchez revolt, or the Natchez massacre, was an attack by the Natchez Native American people on French colonists near present-day Natchez, Mississippi, on November 28, 1729. The Natchez and French had lived alongside each other in the Louisiana colony for more than a decade prior to the incident, mostly conducting peaceful trade and occasionally intermarrying. After a period of deteriorating relations and warring, Natchez leaders were provoked to revolt when the French colonial commandant, Sieur de Chépart, demanded land from a Natchez village for his own plantation near Fort Rosalie. The Natchez plotted their attack over several days and managed to conceal their plans from most of the French; colonists who overheard and warned Chépart of an attack were considered untruthful and were punished. In a coordinated attack on the fort and the homesteads, the Natchez killed almost all of the Frenchmen, while sparing most of the women and enslaved Africans. Approximately 230 colonists were killed overall, and the fort and homes were burned to the ground.
  
  When the French in New Orleans, the colonial capital, heard the news of the massacre, they feared a general Indian uprising and were concerned that the Natchez might have conspired with other tribes. They first responded by ordering a massacre of the Chaouacha people – who had played no role in the revolt – and wiped out their entire village. The French and their Choctaw allies then retaliated against the Natchez villages, capturing hundreds of Natchez and selling them into slavery, although many managed to escape to the north and take refuge among the Chickasaw people. The Natchez waged low-intensity warfare against the French over the following years, but retaliatory expeditions against Natchez refugees among the Chickasaw in 1730 and 1731 forced them to move on and live as refugees among the Creek and Cherokee tribes. By 1741, the Natchez had established a town in the northern parts of the Upper Creek Nation. There, with permission from the Abihka, they reconstituted their town and were signatories in the 1790 Treaty of New York and the 1796 Treaty of Colerain. They remain a constituent tribe of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. (Full article...)
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  "Barge of the Dead" is an episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager. It is the third episode of the sixth season and was first broadcast by UPN on October 6, 1999. "Barge of the Dead" was developed from a story by Ronald D. Moore and Bryan Fuller, who wrote the teleplay, and was directed by Mike Vejar. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet and Maquis crew of the starship USS Voyager after they are stranded in the Delta Quadrant, far from the rest of the Federation.
  
  In this episode, the half-Klingon, half-human B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) has a near-death experience and appears to be sent to the Klingon version of Hell known as Gre'thor. There she encounters her Klingon mother Miral (Karen Austin), who is damned because of Torres' refusal to fully accept her own identity as a Klingon. After being resuscitated by the Voyager crew, Torres becomes intent on revisiting Gre'thor to save her mother. The episode also guest stars Eric Pierpoint as Kortar, who ferries the souls of the dishonored on the Barge of the Dead, and Sherman Augustus as the dead Klingon Hij'Qa. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that Mel Carnahan was the first person to be elected to the United States Senate posthumously?
• ... that a man was denaturalized and deported from the United States for working at a Nazi death camp, despite the courts never holding that he did it willingly?
• ... that the Hosanna Meeting House was a station on the Underground Railroad and had a secret chamber to conceal fugitive slaves beneath its floorboards?
• ... that Helen Hornbeck Tanner was part of a major case supporting the Ojibwe before the Supreme Court of the United States while in her 80s?
• ... that in 1968, ADR's Autoflow flowchart software became the first program to receive a software patent in the United States?
• ... that Massachusetts gave the United States its first openly LGBT state legislator to be elected, as well as the first out congressperson and state attorney general?
• ... that El Yucateco was the first Mexican brand of hot sauce sold in the United States?
• ... that Manhood was Josh Hawley's second book to be published by Regnery, after he was dropped by Simon & Schuster for his support of attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election?

Selected society biography -

Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883 – September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist and epigrapher who studied the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. Morley led extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza on behalf of the Carnegie Institution and published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing. He also wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience.

To his contemporaries, "Vay" Morley was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day. Although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications, particularly on calendric inscriptions, are still cited. In his role as director of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution, he oversaw and encouraged many others who later established notable careers in their own right. His commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies helped inspire the necessary sponsorship for projects that would ultimately reveal much about ancient Maya civilization.

Morley also conducted espionage in Mexico on behalf of the United States during World War I, but the scope of those activities only came to light well after his death. His archaeological field work in Mexico and Central America provided suitable cover for his work with the United States' Office of Naval Intelligence investigating German activities and anti-American activity. (Full article...)

Selected image -

• 
  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.
• 
  James A. Garfield

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

  James A. Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881, until his death by assassination six and a half months later. He had been shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2 that year by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker. According to some historians, Garfield might have survived his wounds had the doctors attending him had at their disposal today's medical research and techniques. Instead, they probed the wound with unsterilized fingers and equipment, trying to locate the bullet, and the resulting infection was a significant factor in his death.
  
  This picture is a line engraving of Garfield, 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 26 presidents, which was reportedly given to Treasury Secretary Lyman J. Gage.
• 
  Art and engraving on United States banknotes

  Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing, after John Vanderlyn; restored by Andrew Shiva

  Artists producing banknotes in Colonial America began experimenting with copper plates as an alternative to wood engraving in the early 18th century. Applied to the production of paper currency, copper-plate engraving, and later steel engraving, enabled banknote design and printing to rapidly advance during the 19th century. This engraved vignette appeared on certain United States five-dollar bills issued in 1875. Produced for the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the engraving is of John Vanderlyn's painting Landing of Columbus, which hangs in the United States Capitol rotunda. It depicts Christopher Columbus landing on San Salvador Island on October 12, 1492, on the first of his voyages to the New World.
• 
  Memorials and services for the September 11 attacks

  Photo credit: David Iliff

  A collection of hand-painted tiles adorns this fence in Greenwich Village in Manhattan as a memorial for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Recurring themes within these pieces of art include world peace, American patriotism, and appreciation of the heroism of the FDNY and NYPD.
• 
  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.
• 
  Battle of Malvern Hill

  Map: Private Robert K. Sneden, mapmaker for Samuel P. Heintzelman's III Corps

  The Battle of Malvern Hill was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac. It was the final battle of the Seven Days Battles during the American Civil War, taking place on Malvern Hill near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Including inactive reserves, more than fifty thousand soldiers from each side took part, using more than two hundred pieces of artillery and three warships. The battle resulted in a tactical victory for the Union side, but the Confederates claimed a strategic victory as the Union failed to go on to capture Richmond.
  
  This is a map of the night's march undertaken by the Union forces after the battle.
• 
  Benjamin Harrison

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

  Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) was a politician and lawyer who served as the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893. Before ascending to the presidency, Harrison established himself as a prominent local attorney, church leader, and politician in Indianapolis, Indiana, and as a Union Army soldier in the American Civil War. After a term in the U.S. Senate (1881–1887), the Republican Harrison was elected to the presidency in 1888. Hallmarks of his administration included unprecedented economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff and Sherman Antitrust Act, as well as modernizing the U.S. Navy and admitting six new western states to the Union.
• 
  New Kensington, Pennsylvania

  Lithograph: Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler; restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A lithograph by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler showing the town of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, in 1896. Originally part of Burrell (and later Lower Burrell) Township, the city of New Kensington was founded in 1891. During the public sale held on June 10, 1891, thousands of people came to the area, including a number of investors, including the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which later became Alcoa. The city continued to grow and, as of 2010, New Kensington has a population of 13,116.
• 
  Burning of Washington

  Artist: George Munger; Restoration: Lise Broer

  In the evening hours of August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, British forces attacked Washington, D.C., setting fire to the White House and the unfinished Capitol Building (damage to latter shown here), among other buildings. This was the second and last time in United States history that a foreign power has captured and occupied the United States capital.
• 
  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."
• 
  Chester A. Arthur

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

  Chester A. Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st President of the United States from 1881 to 1885. Born in Vermont and raised in upstate New York, Arthur practiced law in New York City before serving as a quartermaster general in the Civil War. He became active in the Republican party after the war, was elected vice president on the ticket of President James A. Garfield, and assumed the presidency upon Garfield's assassination six months into his presidency. He effected a reform of the civil service during his presidency, as well as navy reform and an act to prohibit immigration by Chinese laborers and deny citizenship to those already in the US. Due to his poor health, Arthur did not seek a second term.
• 
  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.
• 
  Lillian Ascough

  Photograph credit: Edmonston; restored by Adam Cuerden

  Lillian Ascough (1880–1974) was an American suffragist. She served as the Connecticut chair of the National Woman's Party (NWP) and the vice president of the Michigan branch of the NWP. She was a speaker in the Suffrage Special, an event created by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1916, which toured the "free states" which had already allowed women's suffrage in the United States. This formal photographic portrait of Ascough was taken around 1915 and published in the magazine The Suffragist.
• 
  American Airlines Flight 77

  Photo: Tech. Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill, USAF

  Damage caused by American Airlines Flight 77 to the Pentagon as a result of the September 11 attacks. The flight was one of four commercial airliners hijacked that day, and the perpetrators crashed it into the building, causing 189 deaths, including all 64 on board the plane. The damaged sections were rebuilt in 2002.
• 
  Ansel Adams

  Photograph credit: J. Malcolm Greany

  Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist, known for his black-and-white images of the American West. As a child, he visited Yosemite National Park with his family and was given his first camera. He was later tasked by the United States Department of the Interior to take photographs of national parks. For this work, and for his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Selected culture biography -

Roman Vishniac was a renowned Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

Vishniac was an extremely diverse photographer, an accomplished biologist and a knowledgeable collector and teacher of art history. Throughout his life, he made significant scientific contributions to the fields of photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors. In turn, he was strongly tied to his Jewish roots and was a Zionist later in life.

Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photography: his pictures from the shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and images of microscopic biology. He is known for his book A Vanished World, published in 1983, which was one of the first such pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe from that period and also for his extreme humanism, respect and awe for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.

Selected location -

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,579,212 residents and a land area of 68,667 square miles (177,847 km²), Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state. Its name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people", and is known informally by its nickname, The Sooner State. Formed from Indian Territory on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was the 46th state to enter the union. Its citizens are known as Oklahomans, and the state's capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.

A major producer of natural gas, oil and food, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly 60 percent of Oklahomans living in their metropolitan statistical areas.

With small mountain ranges, prairie, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains and the U.S. Interior Highlands—a region especially prone to severe weather. With a prevalence of residents with Native American ancestry, more than 25 Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, the most of any state. It is located on a confluence of three major American cultural regions and historically served as a route for cattle drives, a destination for southern settlers, and a government-sanctioned territory for Native Americans.

Selected quote -

Anniversaries for January 20

Selected cuisines, dishes and foods -

Multi-colored flint corn

New England cuisine is an American cuisine which originated in the New England region of the United States, and traces its roots to traditional English cuisine and Native American cuisine of the Abenaki, Narragansett, Niantic, Wabanaki, Wampanoag, and other native peoples. It also includes influences from Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine, among others. It is characterized by extensive use of potatoes, beans, dairy products and seafood, resulting from its historical reliance on its seaports and fishing industry. Corn, the major crop historically grown by Native American tribes in New England, continues to be grown in all New England states, primarily as sweet corn although flint corn is grown as well. It is traditionally used in hasty puddings, cornbreads and corn chowders. (Full article...)

Selected panorama -

Night Panorama of the Las Vegas Strip

Night panorama of the Las Vegas Strip, featuring Project City Center construction to the right

More did you know? -

• ...that the Indiana Historical Society (pictured) is the oldest state historical society west of the Allegheny Mountains?

• ...that in the 1958 court case Trop v. Dulles, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that it was unconstitutional for the government to cancel the citizenship of a U.S. citizen as a punishment?

• ...that political illustrator Steve Brodner has caricatured American Presidents going back to Richard Nixon?

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