Portal:United States
Introduction
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Barrie R. Cassileth helped create one of the first palliative cancer care programs in the United States?
- ... that the Pellissippi Parkway in East Tennessee takes its name from a Native American name that was applied to both the Clinch and Ohio Rivers?
- ... that in 1850s New Orleans, the French revolutionary Joseph Déjacque called for black slaves and the white working class to overthrow the United States in a social revolution?
- ... that Addie Viola Smith was the first female Foreign Service officer to serve under the United States Department of Commerce?
- ... that United States delegates to the Mont Tremblant Conference argued that the British Empire should be liquidated after World War II?
- ... that Kobe Shoji escaped 120 °F (49 °C) heat at the Poston Internment Camp by enlisting in the U.S. Army's 442nd Infantry Regiment?
- ... that at WSTA, the first radio station in the U.S. Virgin Islands, goats and chickens sometimes wandered in during broadcasts?
- ... that Mily Treviño-Sauceda, the co-founder of the first national grassroots women's farmworker organization in the United States, the National Alliance of Farmworker Women, was a child farmworker in the 1960s?
Selected society biography -
Born into a wealthy, established family in Milton, Massachusetts, Bush was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. He attended Phillips Academy and served as a pilot in the United States Navy Reserve during World War II before graduating from Yale and moving to West Texas, where he established a successful oil company. Following an unsuccessful run for the United States Senate in 1964, he was elected to represent Texas's 7th congressional district in 1966. President Richard Nixon appointed Bush as the ambassador to the United Nations in 1971 and as chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973. President Gerald Ford appointed him as the chief of the Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974 and as the director of Central Intelligence in 1976. Bush ran for president in 1980 but was defeated in the Republican presidential primaries by Reagan, who then selected Bush as his vice presidential running mate. In the 1988 presidential election, Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis.
Foreign policy drove Bush's presidency as he navigated the final years of the Cold War and played a key role in the reunification of Germany. He presided over the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War, ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in the latter conflict. Though the agreement was not ratified until after he left office, Bush negotiated and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created a trade bloc consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Domestically, Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise by enacting legislation to raise taxes to justify reducing the budget deficit. He championed and signed three pieces of bipartisan legislation in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Immigration Act and the Clean Air Act Amendments. He also appointed David Souter and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Bush lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton following an economic recession, his turnaround on his tax promise, and the decreased emphasis of foreign policy in a post–Cold War political climate. (Full article...)
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Selected culture biography -
Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952 Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and '40s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.
Selected location -
It is known as the world's traditional automotive center — "Detroit" is a metonym for the American automobile industry — and an important source of popular music, legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames emerged in the twentieth century, including Rock City, Arsenal of Democracy (during World War II), The D, D-Town, and The 3-1-3 (its area code). The metropolitan area is an important center for research and development; its broad based economy includes advanced manufacturing, robotics, biotechnology, information technology, and finance. Metro Detroit attracts about 15.9 million visitors annually.
In 2008, Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 910,920 residents. A population shift to the suburbs began in the 1950s and continued as the metropolitan area grew to one of the nation's largest. The name Detroit sometimes refers to the Metro Detroit area, a sprawling region with a population of 4,425,110 for the Metropolitan Statistical Area, and 5,354,225 for the Combined Statistical Area, making it the nation's eleventh-largest as of the 2008 Census Bureau estimates. The Windsor-Detroit area, a critical commercial link straddling the Canada-U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,800,000.
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Anniversaries for June 5
- 1947 – At a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war–torn Europe.
- 1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, "Hound Dog", on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
- 1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies the next day.
- 1977 – The Apple II (pictured), the first practical personal computer, goes on sale.
- 1981 – In what later turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California have developed a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems.
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More did you know? -
- ... that the maize weevil (pictured) is a serious pest of maize in the United States, and also infests standing crops and cereals in all tropical areas of the world?
- ... that presidential advisor John P. Lewis argued that aid to developing nations was a necessary component of American foreign policy, despite the budgetary costs and the potential for misuse?
- ... that in his dissenting opinion in the case of Taylor v. Beckham, U.S. Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that the right to hold elected offices should be considered part of the definition of "liberty" and protected by the Fourteenth Amendment?
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