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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States.
It is a white painted, neoclassical mansion located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW in Washington, D.C. Although faced with white sandstone, the visible building is mostly constructed from steel girders and concrete.
The Southern facade right
Very few people realize the size of the White House, since much of it is below ground or otherwise minimized by landscaping. In fact, the White House has: 6 stories, 134 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases, 3 lifts, a tennis court, a cinema, a swimming pool, a jogging track and a bowling lane. 5 full-time chefs cater for the staff and there are 5,000 visitors every day.
The Library of Congress is one of four official national libraries of the United States (together with the National Library of Medicine, National Agricultural Library, and the National Archives and Records Administration). Originally founded as a research library for the U.S. Congress in 1800, its original collection was composed of the books of former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson. Later, the Library assumed a role as a legal repository to guarantee copyright protection. All authors seeking American copyright had to submit two copies of the work to the Library. This requirement is no longer enforced, but copies of many books published in the U.S. still arrive at the Library regularly. It contains many important books, such as a copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
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The Library itself is spread over three buildings in Washington, D.C, each named after an early president, being James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
With over 128 million items, it is one of the largest libraries in the history of the world, surpassed only by the British Library, which contains over 150 million items. With over 1000 km of shelves, the Library of Congress certainly is the longest library in the world.
Left the Main Library Building at the start of the 20th century.
The Lincoln Memorial, on the National Mall in Washington, DC, is a memorial to United States President Abraham Lincoln.
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The focus of the memorial is inside the monument, Daniel Chester French's statue of Lincoln, seated, right. French studied many of Mathew Brady's photographs of Lincoln, and depicted the president as worn and pensive, gazing eastwards down the Reflecting Pool at the capital's starkest emblem of the Union, the Washington Monument. One hand is clenched, the other open. Beneath his hands, the Roman fasces, symbols of the authority of the Republic, are sculpted in relief on the seat.
At the peak of the violent crime wave in the early 1990s, Washington DC was known as the murder capital. The number of homicides peaked in 1991, with 482 in that year. Despite the high rate of crime, violence was not evenly distributed across the city, but rather was primarily concentrated in specific neighborhoods.
As of 2005, violent crime in DC is primarily concentrated in areas east of the Anacostia River, and tourist advice generally recommends that visitors do not venture east of the U.S. Capitol building.
Religion appears to be more important to the citizens of DC than in many other cities. The key religions reflect the overall mix in the USA, other than the "non-religious" category being rather smaller than other cities. The Breakdown is (2004): Protestant: 68 %, Roman Catholic: 16 %, Other Christian: 1 %, Other Religions: 3 % and Non-Religious: 7 %
The three largest Protestant denominations in DC are: Baptist (47 % of the total population), Methodist (7 %) and Episcopalian (5 %). •
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts hosts the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Washington Ballet, and other musical and stage performances.
The Washington Post is the oldest and most read daily newspaper in Washington. The Post is also one of the most reputable daily newspapers in the U.S. and is highly influential in its political reporting, particularly after the role of its reporters in cracking the Watergate scandal.
2.2.4 New York
New York City (officially named the City of New York), often referred to as "the Big Apple", is the largest city in the United States. It is the world's most important centre for global finance and communications. The city is also home to hundreds of world-class museums, galleries, and performance venues, making it the cultural and entertainment capital of the Western Hemisphere.
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New York City is part of the New York Metropolitan Area, which, with over 22 million people, is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world. The population of the continent of Australia is less. The city comprises five boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, each of which could be a major city in its own right.
Right the 5 boroughs bordered by the State of New Jersey and the counties of Nassau and Westchester.
Manhattan (New York County, pop. 1,564,798) is the business centre of the city, and the most superlatively urban. It is the most densely populated, and the home of most of the city's skyscrapers.
The Bronx (Bronx County, pop. 1,363,198) is known as the purported birthplace of hip hop culture, as well as being the home of the New York Yankees. It is the only part of the city on the mainland.
Brooklyn (Kings County, pop. 2,472,523) is the most populous borough, with a strong native identity. It ranges from a business district downtown to large residential tracts in the central and southeastern areas.
Queens (Queens County, pop. 2,225,486) is the most diverse county in the U.S., with more immigrants than anywhere else. Geographically it is the largest of the boroughs, and the legacy of its old constituent towns is still evident.
Staten Island (Richmond County, pop. 459,737) is somewhat isolated and the most suburban part of the city. But it in the last decades it has been growing more a part of city life, especially since the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in 1964.
European settlement began with the founding of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1626. Many Huguenots (French protestants) seeking religious freedom also settled in the area. In 1664, English ships captured the city without struggle, and it was renamed New York, after James, Duke of York to whom the territory had been given by his brother Charles II. The Duke of York in turn took his title from the City of York in England, hence the prefix 'New'.
In 1863, New York had become a large city but had not yet began its major growth spurt, when it suffered the Draft Riot, which the Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the bloodiest riot in history, costing approximately 1,200 lives and causing $1.5m of damage, the equivalent of billions today. The riot initially started as a protest against President Abraham Lincoln's Enrollment Act of Conscription to
draft men to fight in the ongoing Civil War. Some 50,000 people, particularly poor Irish immigrants, rioted, smashing store windows and attacking people, mainly African Americans, on the street.
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After the Riots and the end of the Civil War, the rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new and better life in the United States. In 1886, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled and ever since has been a symbol greeting immigrants arriving in the USA.
The Statue was a gift from France, made in 1884 and arriving in New York Harbour in 1885 on board the French frigate Isere. In transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates. (The right arm and the torch, which were completed earlier, had been exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876) The Statue was reassembled on her new pedestal in four months' time. On October 28,1886, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty by U.S. President Grover Cleveland took place in front of thousands of spectators.
The Statue of Liberty left
As New York grew, its skyline became one of the most famous in the world, mostly due to its skyscapers, that even today make tourists spend so much time looking up at them that locals describe them as 'rubbernecking'.
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New York City is the chief centre of finance in the world economy, with Wall Street in Lower Manhattan's Financial District. Financial trading exchanges based in the city include the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), NASDAQ, the American Stock Exchange, the New York Mercantile Exchange, and New York Board of
Trade
The daily turnover in terms of transaction value is staggering - a successful desk (or single trading position) on the NYSE will handle more than a billion dollars of foreign exchange transactions per day, out of a total daily value of more than a trillion dollars traded on just that single site in a single "market" (category of financial instrument); foreign exchange in this case.
Left the NYSE
NASDAQ, originally an acronym for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, is a stock exchange run by the National Association of Securities Dealers. When it began trading in 1971, it was the world's first electronic stock market. Since 1999, it is the largest American stock exchange with over half the companies traded in the United Spates listed.
The "state of the economy" usually determines the amount of transactions each day in New York - the more confidence there is, the higher the volume. However most days the turnover in trades is in the hundreds of trillions of USD.
New York City serves as an enormous engine for the global economy, with an estimated gross metropolitan product of US$488.8 billion in 2003. If it were a nation, the city would have the 16th highest gross domestic product in the world, exceeding that of Russia ($433 billion), for example.
However, note that the median annual income for a household in 2003 in the city was $38,293, and the median annual income for a family was $41,887. Males had a median annual income of $37,435 versus $32,949 for females. The per capita annual income for the city is $22,402. 21.2 % of the population and 18.5 % of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 30.0 % of those under the age of 18 and 17.8 % of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
The Mayor of New York controls an economy and population larger than most countries in the world. The Mayor is elected by direct popular vote. The mayor has executive authority over five divisions of city government as well as several independent government offices. The divisions, each comprising several city agencies and headed by an appointed Deputy Mayor, are: Operations, Economic Development and Rebuilding, Policy, Administration and Legal Affairs. The mayor has
broad emergency powers which can be exercised in cases of emergency weather conditions, natural disaster, riots, civil unrest, invasion or other emergency.
The most dramatic emergency, perhaps ever in the history of the USA, took place in 2001.
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The September 11 attacks in 2001 were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks. According to the U.S. government, nineteen members of al-Quaeda, a militant Islamic group, hijacked four commercial aircraft. They crashed one into each of the two tallest towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan after which both towers collapsed.
Right the second tower is hit
The third aircraft crashed into the U.S. Department of Defense headquarters, the Pentagon, in Arlington Count, Virginia, just outside the capital, Washington, D.C. The majority of the fourth plane was found in Pennsylvania. The attacks were the most lethal ever carried out in the U.S. The death toll of nearly 3,000 exceeded the toll of approximately 2,400 dead after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
The Freedom Tower, to be built on the site of the Twin Towers, is intended to be the world's highest skyscraper after its scheduled completion in 2008.
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New York City has a highly active and influential theatre district, which is centred around Times Square in Manhattan, but best known as Broadway. It serves both as the heart of the American theatre industry, and as a major attraction for visitors from around the world. The dozens of theatres in this district are responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, and help contribute billions of dollars every year to the city's economy. Along with those of London's West End theatre district, Broadway theatres are considered to be of the highest quality in the world. While plays and musicals in New York are often classified as either "Broadway" or "Off-Broadway" (or even "Off-Off-Broadway") to denote theatrical quality or mass-market appeal, not all "Broadway" theatres are located directly on Broadway itself.
Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission.
Right Broadway with most of the traffic being yellow taxicabs.
There are two kinds of taxis: "medallion taxis," which are the familiar yellow taxis, and "car services," which may only be radio- or computer-dispatched to pick up customers who have called for a taxi. Yellow cabs patrol most of Manhattan and may be hailed with a raised hand.
Passengers must by law be taken anywhere within the five boroughs -although some drivers baulk at this. As of May 2004, fares begin at $2.50 ($3.00 after 8 pm, and $3.50 during peak, weekday hours). Prices increase based on time elapsed and distance travelled.
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Shopping is the most popular recreation for many Americans, both New Yorkers and visitors. Fifth Avenue is a famous shopping corridor for luxury items, while Macy's Department Store on Seventh Avenue and the area around Herald Square are a major destination for more moderately-priced goods. In recent years, the area around 23rd Street has become a major location for many retailers, while Greenwich Village is home to hundreds of independent music and book stores. The "diamond district" (located on 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) is the city's main location for jewellery shopping, and Soho is now famous for high-priced clothing boutiques. Soho used to be the centre of the New York art scene, but with the increasing commercialism of the neighborhood, most galleries have moved to Chelsea. There are also large shopping districts found in central Brooklyn, and along Queens Boulevard in Queens.
Annually on New Year's Eve, hundreds of thousands of people congregate in Times Square as millions watch on television.
Macy's is advertised as being the world's largest store, covers a whole block, and annually has a parade that brings a section of New York to a standstill.
The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York in 1924. Since then this has been an annual event drawing tens of thousands of spectators and in later years millions of television viewers.
The 2004 Macy's Parade right
New York City has by far the most extensive network of public transport in the United States. The world famous New York Subway is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It is the most extensive subway system in the world when measured by mileage of track (1050 km of mainline track), and the
fifth largest when measured by annual usage (1.4 billion passenger trips in 2004). The subway system connects all five boroughs except Staten Island, which is served by the Staten Island Railway. The city is also served by the PATH subway system, which connects the borough of Manhattan to New Jersey. In addition these, city residents rely on hundreds of bus lines, both publicly and privately owned, which serve all areas of the five boroughs.
2.3 History
A major American encyclopaedia starts its article on American history with the following:
"The history of the United States is the story of a great nation that was carved out of a wilderness by a brave and freedom-loving people. The men and women who built the United States came from almost every part of the world. They represented many different nationalities, and religions. Through the years, the people and their descendants learned to live and work together, and to take pride in being Americans."
The reality is of course rather different. The history of the USA here is split into three sections: the history of Native Americans, the history of the main groups of immigrants and how the USA came to be formed and the third section is post-revolution USA.
2.3.1 Native Americans
Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, scientists generally agree that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, at least 12,000 years ago.
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One result of these successive waves of migration is that large groups of Native Americans with similar languages and perhaps physical characteristics as well, moved into various geographic areas of North, and then later, Central and South America.
While many Native American groups retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European occupation of the New World, in some regions, especially in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states.
Etowah (Mississippi) idols from about 950 AD left
It was not acceptable to American immigrants in the 18th and 19lh centuries that the people they regarded as "savages" had built civilizations and by policy, most archaeological remains were destroyed and records obliterated.
The European colonization of the Americas forever changed the lives and cultures of the Native Americans. In the 15th to 19th centuries, their populations were ravaged, by the results of displacement, disease, and in many cases by warfare with European groups and enslavement by them. The first Native American group encountered by Columbus, the 250,000 Araxvaks, were violently enslaved. Only 500 survived by the year 1550, and the group was extinct before 1650.
In the 15th century Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically, the horse had originally evolved in the Americas, but the last American horses, died out at the end of the last ice age. The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game.
Europeans also brought diseases against which the Native Americans had no immunity. Ailments such as chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved fatal to Native Americans. More dangerous diseases such as smallpox were especially deadly to Native American populations. It is difficult to estimate the percentage of the total Native American population killed by these diseases, since waves of disease oftentimes preceded European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. Some historians estimate that up to 80 % of some Native populations may have died due to European diseases.
In recent years it has become popular to assert that Native Americans learned scalping from Europeans, historical evidence suggesting that scalping by Native Americans had not necessarily been practiced before contact with Europeans. The first admitted case of white men scalping Native Americans took place in New Hampshire colony on February 20,1725.
In the 19th century, the Westward expansion of the United States incrementally expelled large numbers of Native Americans from vast areas of their territory, either by forcing them into marginal lands farther and farther west, or by outright massacres. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the Five Civilized Tribes from the east onto western reservations, primarily to take their land for settlement. The forced migration was marked by great hardship and many deaths. Its route is known as the Trail of Tears.
Conflicts generally known at the time as "Indian Wars" broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. Authorities entered numerous treaties during this period, but later broke almost all of them. Well-known battles include the atypical Native American victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890, when the US Cavalry attempted to exterminate the Sioux Nation and killed all the men, women and children they could find. On January 31,1876 the United States government ordered all surviving Native Americans to move into reservations or reserves.
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Probably the most famous leader of the Native Americans was Geronimo, born Goyathlay ("He Who Yawns"), (1829 - 1909).
He was leader of the Chiricah.ua Apache who fought long against the encroachment of settlers of European descent on tribal lands. He became famous for his daring exploits and numerous escapes from capture. His forces became the last major force of independent Indian warriors who refused to acknowledge the United States Government in the American West. This came to an end in 1886, when Geronimo surrendered to US Army General Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. He was a prisoner initially, but later a celebrity.
Geronimo in about 1870 right
In the late nineteenth century reformers in efforts to civilize Indians adapted the practice of educating native children in Indian Boarding Schools. These schools, which were primarily run by Christians proved traumatic to Indian children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions (both in violation of the U.S. Constitution), and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity and adopt European-American culture. There are also many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuses occurring at these schools.
Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, forced sterilizations, termination policies of the 1950s, and 1960s, and slavery have had negative effects on Native Americans' mental and ultimately physical health. Contemporary health problems include poverty, alcoholism, heart disease and diabetes.
As recently as the 1960s, Native Americans were being jailed for teaching their traditional beliefs. As recently as the 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was still actively pursuing a policy of "assimilation" the goal of which was to eliminate the reservations and steer Indians into mainstream U.S. culture. Even their lands are perhaps no longer safe; as of 2004, there were still claims of theft of Native American land for the coal and uranium it contains.
According to 2003 United States Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states: California with 413,382, Arizona with 294,137 and Oklahoma with 279,559. As of 2000, the largest tribes surviving in the U.S. by population were Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfoot, Iroquois and Pueblo.
2.3.2 Immigration and the creation of the USA
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The Vikings were probably the first Europeans to reach America. Although archaeological remains have been found in Canada from about 1,000 years ago, so far there is no conclusive evidence for Viking habitation in today's USA.
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In 1492, Columbus, an explorer and trader sailed westward from Spain, seeking a short sea route to the Orient. He found, instead, a vast "New World" as it became known later, although Columbus himself named it the "Other World".
Following Columbus' voyage, explorers, soldiers, and settlers from several European countries sailed to this land, soon called America, after Amerigo Vespucci, by most Europeans. Vespucci made voyages to the New World for Spain and Portugal beginning in 1497.
Amerigo Vespucci left
The discovery of the existence of America caused a wave of excitement in Europe. To many Europeans, the New World offered opportunities for wealth, power, and imperialism. Having concentrated initially on central and south America, where they found gold in large quantities, during the 1500's, Spaniards moved into what is now the Southeastern and Western United States. They took control of Florida and the land west of the Mississippi River, basing their activity on the West Coast. In 1565, the Spanish founded St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest permanent settlement by Europeans in what is now the United States.
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The English and French began exploring eastern North America in about 1500. At first, both nations sent only explorers and fur traders to the New World. But after 1600, they began establishing permanent settlements there. The French settlements were chiefly in what is now Canada and the south of the USA. The English settlements included the 13 colonies that later became the United States.
Explorer Bartholomew Gosnold sailed to New England in 1602, 18 years before the pilgrim fathers. During that journey which is well documented, Gosnold named Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard (after his infant daughter). He then returned in 1607 and established the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown in Virginia.
Bartholomew Gosnold right
Jamestown became the first real English colony and eventually led to the creation of the United States of America. Many historians believe the US would have become Spanish territory if it had not been for Gosnold.
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