Richard M. Nixon, the son of a grocer, was born on 9th January, 1913. His father owned a small lemon farm in Yorba Linda, California. A good student, Nixon graduated from Whittier College in 1934.

After obtaining a degree at Duke University Law School, Nixon returned to Whittier where he joined the law firm of Kroop & Bewley. In 1937 he moved to Washington where he served in the Office of Price Administration.

Nixon joined the United States Navy in August, 1942. Given the rank of lieutenant he was sent to the Pacific as an operations officer with the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command. He left the Navy in January 1946 when theRepublican Party in Whittier asked him to run for Congress. During the campaign he attacked the New Deal and accused his Democratic Party opponent as an enemy of free enterprise.

Elected to the House of Representative, Nixon was invited to join the House of Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) where he became involved in its campaign against subversion. In 1947 the HUAC began its investigation into the entertainment industry and was responsible for the blacklisting of 320 artists.

J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided Nixon with information on members of the Communist Party. Nixon soon emerged as the most skillful members of the House of Un-American Activities Committee and played an important role in the interrogation of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. This led to the successful prosecution of Alger Hiss, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg.

These cases brought Nixon to the attention of the public and in 1952 Dwight Eisenhower chose him as his running mate in the presidential election of 1952. During the campaign Nixon was accused of receiving $18,235 from private citizens. In a television speech he accounted for the money and Eisenhower allowed him to remain on the team.

Adlai Stevenson was chosen as the Democratic Party candidate for the 1952 presidential election. It was one of the dirtiest in history with Nixon, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, leading the attack on Stevenson. Speaking in Indiana, Nixon described Stevenson as a man with a "PhD from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment." In an attempt to link Stevenson with the Soviet spy ring he added: "Somebody had to testify for Alger Hiss, but you don't have to elect him President of the United States." 
Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon's campaign was a great success and in November the easily defeated the Democratic Party candidate, Adlai Stevenson by 33,936,252 votes to 27,314,922.

In October, 1953, Joseph McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the Army. The president, Dwight Eisenhower, was furious and now realised that it was time to bring an end to McCarthy's activities. Eisenhower instructed Nixon to attack McCarthy. On 4th March, 1954, Nixon made a speech where, although not mentioning McCarthy, made it clear who he was talking about: "Men who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply."

After the Republican victory, Nixon became the government's chief spokesman. He travelled widely and he impressed world leaders with his knowledge of foreign affairs. This included a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union.

In 1960 Nixon won the Republican presidential nomination. After his eight years as Eisenhower's deputy, Nixon was expected to win. However, theDemocratic candidate, John F. Kennedy, ran a successful campaign and won by just 100,000 votes out of the 68 million cast. Nixon became a lawyer in Los Angeles, and after losing the race for governor of California in 1962, claimed he was retiring from politics.

Nixon changed his mind and in 1968 he won his party's presidential nomination. Nixon picked Spiro T. Agnew as his running mate. This time Nixon won and in his inaugural address on 20th January, 1969, he promised to bring the nation together again.

In 1969 Nixon appointed Henry Kissinger as his adviser on National Security Affairs. In this post Kissinger played an important role in the improved relations with both China and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. He also iniated peace talks between the Arabs and the Israelis.

Kissinger later admitted that in September 1970, Nixon ordered him to organize a coup against the government of Salvador Allende. Kissinger also said that he called off the operation a month later. The government documents, however, indicate that the Central Intelligence Agency continued to encourage a coup in Chile.

During the presidential campaign Nixon promised to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War. However, negotiations with North Vietnam at the Paris peace talks were unproductive and Nixon decided to escalate the war by bombing National Liberation Front bases in Cambodia . In an effort to avoid international protests at this action, it was decided to keep information about these raids hidden. Pilots were sworn to secrecy and operational logs were falsified.

The bombing failed to destroy the NLF bases and so in April, 1970, Nixon decided to send in troops to finish off the job. The invasion of Cambodia provoked a wave of demonstrations in the United States in the United States and in one of these, four students were killed when National guardsmen opened fire at Kent State University.

By 1972 Nixon was convinced that a victory in Vietnam was unobtainable. In October, 1972, Henry Kissinger came close to agreeing to a formula to end the war. The plan was that US troops would withdraw from Vietnam in exchange for a cease-fire and the return of 566 American prisoners held in Hanoi. It was also agreed that the governments in North and South Vietnam would remain in power until new elections could be arranged to unite the whole country.

The main problem with this formula was that whereas the US troops would leave the country, the North Vietnamese troops could remain in their positions in the south. In an effort to put pressure on North Vietnam to withdraw its troops, Nixon ordered a new series of air-raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. It was the most intense bombing attack in world history. In eleven days, 100,000 bombs were dropped on the two cities. The destructive power was equivalent to five times that of the atom bomb used on Hiroshima.

The North Vietnamese refused to change the terms of the agreement and so in January, 1973. Nixon agreed to sign the peace plan that had been proposed in October. However, the bombing had proved to be popular with the American public as they had the impression that North Vietnam had been bombed into submission. 

Nixon won the 1972 presidential election against the anti-Vietnam War campaigner, George McGovern, with 61 per cent of the popular vote. During the election campaign there was a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate complex in Washington. Reports by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, began to claim that some of Nixon's top officials were involved in organizing the Watergate break-in.

Nixon continued to insist that he knew nothing about the case or the payment of "hush-money" to the burglars. However, in April 1973, Nixon forced two of his principal advisers H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, to resign. A third adviser, John Dean, refused to go and was sacked. Nixon's vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was also forced to go after being charged with income evasion and was replaced by Gerald Ford.

On 20th April, Dean issued a statement making it clear that he was unwilling to be a "scapegoat in the Watergate case". When Dean testified on 25th June, 1973 before the Senate Committee investigating Watergate, he claimed that Nixon participated in the cover-up. He also confirmed that Nixon had tape-recordings of meetings where these issues were discussed.

The Special Prosecutor now demanded access to these tape-recordings. At first Nixon refused but when the Supreme Court ruled against him and members of the Senate began calling for him to be impeached, he changed his mind. However, some tapes were missing while others contained important gaps.

Under extreme pressure, Nixon supplied tapescripts of the missing tapes. It was now clear that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up and members of the Senate began to call for his impeachment. On 9th August, 1974, Nixon became the first President of the United States to resign from office.

On 8th September, 1974, the new president, Gerald Ford, controversially granted Nixon a full pardon "for all offences against the United States" that might have been committed while in office. The pardon brought an end all criminal prosecutions that Nixon might have had to face concerning the Watergate Scandal. However, other members of his staff involved in helping in his deception were imprisoned.

In 1977 Nixon's chief-of staff, Jack Brennan, informed the media that he was willing to give a television interview on his presidency. Nixon was trying to get an agreement for an interview that did not involve a discussion of Watergate. Under these terms, the most he was offered was $400,000. David Frost offered $600,000 (over $2 million in today’s money) and a 20 percent share of any profits, if he was willing to discuss all subjects. Nixon agreed because he considered Frost a lightweight interviewer who would not know enough about the case. This was a miscalculation. Frost recruited James Reston, Jr. and Bob Zelnick to evaluate the Watergate minutiae prior to the interview.

The interviews began on March 23, 1977 and lasted 12 days. Frost lured Nixon into a false sense of security by interviewing Nixon for 24 hours without mentioning Watergate. In these sessions he gave him an easy time and allowed Nixon to boast about his contribution to world peace. However, in the final six hour session, his questioning revealed details of a previously unknown conversation between Nixon and Charles Colson. This clearly unsettled Nixon and Frost was able to go in for the kill. During the interview Nixon suggested that the break-in might have been botched on purpose. He added that he suspected that the CIA had been behind the operation.

The episode on Watergate, broadcast on 4th May, 1977, was watched by 45 million people. A Gallup poll conducted after the interview showed that 69 percent of the public thought that Nixon was still trying to cover up, 72 percent still thought he was guilty of obstruction of justice, and 75 percent thought he deserved no further role in public life.

David Frost was recently asked by Joan Bakewell why he had been willing to take such a dangerous risk by talking on television about Watergate. Frost had been told by Nixon’s chief of staff and confidant, Jack Brennan, that Nixon feared that some of the people who had gone to prison over Watergate, would sue him when they were released. Frost added that this surprisingly did not happen. Maybe Nixon needed the money to stop them from talking. It was not only the burglars who needed “hush money”.

Richard M. Nixon died of a stroke on 22nd April, 1994.




http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/richardnixon
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnixon.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery to find a water route to the Pacific and explore the uncharted west. Lewis and Clark were everything Jefferson hoped for as explorers—they were literate in their description of flora and fauna, they were trained mapmakers, they had a scientific sense of observation, and they could lead a party of men through the unknown. While they didn’t find the woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, or mountains of pure salt that Jefferson imagined, their discoveries were no less mind-boggling: some 300 species unknown to science, nearly 50 Indian tribes, and thousands of miles of uncharted territory. This online “Journey Log” catalogues every tribe, plant, and animal they encountered on their expedition, presented with their journals, maps, and drawings, as well as contemporary photographs and illustrations. Visitors follow the Corps of Discovery in this dynamic site through 22 discrete segments based on geographic milestones. A crop of the original William Clark map from 1806 illustrates each segment so that visitors can explore every plant or animal that was discovered, each tribe that was encountered, and examine the related journals and maps.

They went throught the states Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia,Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri , Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Sought and North Dacota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

http://lewis-clark.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Expedition

Battle of Gettysburg

In July of 1863, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia of 75,000 men and the 97,000 man Union Army of the Potomac, under George G. Meade, concentrated together at Gettysburg and fought the Battle of Gettysburg.

Of the more than 2,000 land engagements of the Civil War, Gettysburg ranks supreme. Although the Battle of Gettysburg did not end the war, it was the great battle of the war, marking the point when the ultimate victory of the North over the South became clear to both sides alike.

Here at Gettysburg, on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, more men fought and died than in any other battle in American history.

In taking his army north from the Rappahannock, General Lee's objective was to induce the Union Army to disperse across a broad front along the Mason-Dixon line, and then, by maneuver, draw it to a point far from its base of supply where it could be attacked and beaten in detail. In the execution of this operation, the three corps of the Rebel army marched from the vicinity of Culpeper Courthouse into the Shenandoah Valley and across the Potomac at Williamsport and Sheperdstown. Once in the Cumberland Valley, Ewell's corps, leading the invasion, marched to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. There, CSA General Jubal Early's division turned east and, passing through the South Mountain at the Cashtown Gap, marched past Gettysburg to York while General Ewell, with Rodes's and Johnson's divisions, marched to Carlisle, sending one brigade forward to the Susquehanna in front of Harrisburg. Confederate General A.P. Hill's corps, and General Longstreet's, followed Ewell as far as Chambersburg, arriving there, on June 27, and went into camp. On June 25, when it became clear to its commander, General Joseph Hooker US, that the enemy was crossing the Potomac west of the Blue Ridge, the Union army, scattered about the Manassas plain, marched to Leesburg and crossed the river at Edward's Ferry, moving west to Frederick, Maryland, and into the Middletown Valley to block the anticipated movement of the enemy east through Turner's Gap. Two days later, realizing from reports received that the enemy had reached the Susquehanna River at two points—Harrisburg and Wrightsville—Hooker demanded that President Lincoln give him command of additional forces in order to move north toward the enemy. When Lincoln refused Hooker abruptly resigned and George G. Meade stepped into his place. Meade immediately ordered the army to march, in six columns, northeastward toward the line of Pipe Creek, the 1st, 3rd and 11th corps taking position between Emittsburg and Taneytown, the 2nd, 5th, and 6th corps taking position between Taneytown and Manchester. In the night of June 30, Meade received word from Washington that the enemy forces on the Susquehanna had fallen back and seemed to moving in three directions toward Gettysburg. Meade ordered his army to prepare for a defensive battle behind Pipe Creek and sent John Reynolds, commander of the 1st Corps, supported by the 11th and 3rd Corps, to move toward Gettysburg; with the mission of retarding the anticipated movement of the enemy toward Pipe Creek, if possible, and then fall back. Because Reynolds did not encounter any infantry force approaching, he marched on to Gettysburg and hurriedly formed his corps into a battle line just west of the town, and soon was engaged with A.P. Hill's corps, marching out from the Cashtown Gap July 1  -  Day 1 The Confederate 1st Corps and General A.P. Hill's corps grappled along McPherson's Ridge for several hours. Early in the struggle, Reynolds was killed by a sniper's bullet to the brain, and O.O. Howard, commander of the 11th Corps, assumed command. At the time the 11th Corps arrived, two of Ewell's divisions—Rodes and Early—appeared on the right flank of the Union line and attacked. This forced Howard to form a battle line perpendicular to the fighting front of the 1st Corps. The combined rebel pressure against the hinge connecting the two Union lines resulted in Union resistance collapsing and a general retreat commenced, the Union forces running pell-mell through the streets of Gettysburg and up to the heights of Cemetery Hill. The rebel forces under Hill and Ewell pursued, but, worn out and disorganized by the battle, and without fresh forces immediately at hand, the pursuit petered out on the bottom slopes of the hill as night fell. Learning of Reynolds's death late in the afternoon, Meade had sent Winfield Hancock, commander of the 2nd Corps, to Gettysburg, to take command from Howard. By early evening, receiving a dispatch from Hancock, reporting the condition of things, Meade decided to move the entire army up. Meade arrived on the field about midnight, followed by the arrival of the 5th Corps, the 2nd Corps, and the next day the 6th Corps. July 2  -  Day 2 On July 2, both armies spent most of the daylight getting set for action: Meade's army digging in along Cemetery Ridge which stretched two miles from Cemetery Hill to the Round tops, and Lee's army maneuvering into attacking position. Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Longstreet's corps—Hood's, McLaws, and R.H. Anderson's division detached from Hill's corps, attacked Sickles's 3rd Corps at the Peach Orchard and crushed it, driving the survivors through the Wheat Field and Devil's Den. While Longstreet's attack was in progress, Richard Ewell's corps launched an effort to route the Union forces holding Cemetery Hill, but his men found the steep hill difficult to climb, the Union fire power too strong, and, though their front reached the cemetery gate, they were forced to back down. At the climax of Longstreet's battle against Meade's left, Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade charged into a widening breach in the Union line, at a cleft in the ridge, and was almost into the Union rear when McGilvery's artillery battery galloped up, unlimbered, and annihilated the brigade with canister blasts. Meade's old Pennsylvania Reserve division arrived shortly after and charged into Plum Run Valley, throwing Longstreet's men back to the Emmitsburg Road. July 3  -  Day 3 As the day before, the morning of the 3rd passed quietly, with both armies positioned on ridges about a mile apart. The silence was broken around 1:00 p.m., when the rebel artillery, a hundred guns massed hub to hub, exploded with a thunderous cannonade that lasted until 2 o'clock. The cannonade threw most of its shells over the Union line, the shells falling among the parks of Union trains in rear of Cemetery Ridge. When the cannonade was over, a mass of 15,000 shaggy men in brown homespun moved out from the rebel position and began walking toward Cemetery Ridge, across the Emittsburg Road, past the carnage of the day before, and up the slight incline that leads to the Clump of Trees. As they walked, great gaps were torn in their line by Union artillery, quickly closed by men from a second line stepping up. At 600 yards out from the Clump of Trees, the rebel line shook and swayed, like wheat in gusts of wind, as the Union defenders let loose volley after volley of rifle fire. Then the two sides came together: patches of rebels, led by those of the 26th North Carolina Regiment, overran the stone wall at the Clump of Trees and grappled with the Union cannoneers manning the guns behind, killing them, turning the pieces, and working them—until reinforcements swarmed them from the Union rear and drove them back from the guns and over the wall. The great gray tide swept back in trickles now across the field, the soldiers turning their backs from the fire as against the wind and walking. As they walked, they found General Lee astride Traveller waiting by the Emmitsburg Road. "Steady men, steady," some of them heard him shout. "We need good men just now, it's not your fault." In fifty minutes of almost hand-to-hand combat at the bloody stone wall, ten thousand men had been killed or wounded. The glory of Pickett's Charge was now history.  July 4, 1863 The next day, as he had done with McClellan at Antietam, General Lee—his officers protesting sharply—held his army in line of battle inviting Meade to attack him. Meade rode up and down his lines, counting his casualities, his ammunition, conferring with the colonels, and decided the prudent thing to do was stand on the defensive. General Lee waited patiently, until near the twilight of the day when he was suddenly heard to clap his hands and exclaim: "It's too bad, too, too bad!" And then he quietly gave the order to withdraw, and soon his army was marching south, along the east face of the South Mountain, its trains already long gone into the Cumberland Valley heading for Williamsport. At the Monterey Gap, he passed his army through the South Mountain and took up a position in a bend of the Potomac, at Falling Waters, where he remained for three days facing Meade, waiting for the swollen river to fall. Here, Meade decided to stand on the defensive again and Lee finally crossed his army over the river. Sources : http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gtburg.htm http://www.brotherswar.com/intro.htm http://americancivilwar.com/getty.html

New York

History of New York

Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian-born navigator sailing for France, discovered New York Bay in 1524. Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch, reached the bay and sailed up the river now bearing his name in 1609, the same year that northern New York was explored and claimed for France by Samuel de Champlain.

In 1624 the first permanent Dutch settlement was established at Fort Orange (now Albany). One year later Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for trinkets worth about 60 Dutch guilders and founded the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City), which was surrendered to the English in 1664.

New York's extremely rapid commercial growth may be partly attributed to Gov. De Witt Clinton, who pushed through the construction of the Erie Canal (Buffalo to Albany), which was opened in 1825. Today, the 641-mile Gov. Thomas E. Dewey Thruway connects New York City with Buffalo and with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania express highways. Two toll-free superhighways, the Adirondack Northway (linking Albany with the Canadian border) and the North-South Expressway (crossing central New York from the Pennsylvania border to the Thousand Islands), have been opened.

The great metropolis of New York City is the nerve center of the nation. It is a leader in manufacturing, foreign trade, commerce and banking, book and magazine publishing, and theatrical production. A leading seaport, its John F. Kennedy International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world. New York is also home to the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world. The printing and publishing industry is the city's largest manufacturing employer, with the apparel industry second.

Nearly all the rest of the state's manufacturing is done on Long Island, along the Hudson River north to Albany, and through the Mohawk Valley, Central New York, and Southern Tier regions to Buffalo. The St. Lawrence Seaway and power projects have opened the North Country to industrial expansion and have given the state a second seacoast.

The principal industries are printing and publishing, industrial machinery and equipment, electronic equipment, and instruments. The convention and tourist business is also an important source of income.

New York farms produce cattle and calves, corn and poultry, and vegetables and fruits. The state is a leading wine producer.

Major points of interest are Castle Clinton, Fort Stanwix, and Statue of Liberty National Monuments; Niagara Falls; U.S. Military Academy at West Point; National Historic Sites that include homes of Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park and Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay and New York City; the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls; National Memorials, including Grant's Tomb and Federal Hall in New York City; Fort Ticonderoga; the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown; and the United Nations, skyscrapers, museums, theaters, and parks in New York City.






Geography of New York


The geography of New York City is characterized by its coastal position at the meeting of the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean in a naturally sheltered harbor. The city's geography, with its scarce availability of land, is a contributing factor in making New York City the most densely populated city in the United States with a population over 100,000. Environmental issues are chiefly concerned with managing this density, which also explains why New York is among the most energy efficient and least automobile-dependent cities in the United States. The city's climate is temperate.

Demographics New York

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006, New York was the third largest state in population after California and Texas, with an estimated population of 19,306,183, which is a decrease of -9,538 from the prior year and an increase of 329,362, or 1.7%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 601,779 people (1,576,125 births minus 974,346 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 422,481 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 820,388 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of about 800,213. This means a very small population change for the state.

Economy of  New York

Despite the loss of the World Trade Center buildings, New York has remained at the core of national and international financial dealings and has continued as the global center of corporate headquarters in finance and services, media, entertainment and telecommunications, manufacturing, and trade. Profits on Wall Street, however, are not expected to equal the heights achieved in 2003, and financial services jobs are on the decline at present. Hundreds of nationwide corporations make their home in New York, from finance to insurance to advertising. New York City leads the country in the number of Fortune 500 and 1000 companies headquartered there, including 8 of the world's top 10 securities firms, and about two-fifths of the country's 50 leading law firms, as well as 219 banks representing every major country. The city's biggest industry is publishing, with more printing plants than anywhere else in the United States and approximately 13,000 employees. New York's clothing industry is headquartered in the Garment District near Times Square, where hundreds of factories employ more than 100,000 people.

In recent years, the high-tech and "new media" industries have taken a $9.2 billion toehold in the city, particularly in what is being termed Silicon Alley—Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City has supported growth in this arena through its Digital NYC: Wired to the World program that assists with construction and remodeling efforts that result in affordable spaces with ready access to the Internet. New York City offers hundreds of thousands of miles of installed fiber-optic cable, enabling businesses to communicate with clients around the globe. Life science research and development is seeing a similar surge in activity, as the headquarters of at least three of the world's primary pharmaceutical companies have located within midtown Manhattan. Pfizer has announced ambitious expansion plans that will reportedly result in 2,000 new jobs by 2009, along with new office space and an extensive makeover for its current headquarters. Alongside cutting-edge research, professional services firms related to financial consultation or legal issues of intellectual property also flourish.

New York tourism contributes greatly to the local economy, fueled by huge advertising campaigns and interest in the site of the 9/11 tragedy. Hotel room occupancy rates are steadily increasing to more than 85 percent, and traffic through the area's airports broke the 8,000,000 mark in early 2005. Many tourists visit the city in order to experience its art and culture, resulting in a leisure and hospitality industry with more than 600,000 workers.

Television and film production in New York City constitutes another growth industry, demonstrating a significant increase in the number of overall shooting days for movies, videos, advertisements, and television programs. Almost 150 studios and stages support the industry, and film production costs in the city are now so reasonable that they rival those of Los Angeles. Three of the "Big Five" music recording businesses have headquarters in New York City.

Sources :

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108252.html 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_York_City 

http://www.iloveny.com/kids/history_pre_1900.asp 

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108252.html 

http://newyork.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/New-York-Politics-and-Government,671471.aspx
http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ny.htm