Titanic's 101 Anniversary

On April 10th, 1912, the Titanic, the biggest and most luxurious ship ever built in history, sailed for New York, from the port of Southampton, in what was meant to be its maiden voyage. A few days later, on the early hours of April 15th, the ship went down into the Atlantic Ocean due to an iceberg collision. More than 1500 people perished in the water after its sinking, and only a few fortunates (aprox 700 people) survived thanks to the few lifeboats that the transatlantic carried.

Some of these survivors were interviewed on television in the 1970s, as it is shown in the following clip:

In 1985, over 70 years after the tragedy, the remains of the wrecked ship were found in the depths of the ocean by a French-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Dr Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The RMS Titanic company gained full rights for the protection and preservation of the remains of the Titanic in 1994.

On its 100th anniversary, last year, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer announced that he intended to build an exact replica of the ship, named "Titanic II", that would sail, at the latest, on 2016.

[Source: Wikipedia.org]

April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day (April 1) is a "holiday" celebrated in many english-speaking countries in the world, and it's widely recognized and celebrated as a day when people play practical jokes on each other.

Many possible origins have been discussed throughout the years, some of them are as follow:

• In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392), the "Nun's Priest's Tale" is set "Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two". It is believed to be a copying error, the right transcription being, "Syn March was gon". Thus, the passage originally meant 32 days after April, i.e. May 2. Readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean "March 32", i.e. April 1.
• In 1508, French poet Eloy d'Amerval referred to a poisson d’avril (April fool, literally "April fish"), a possible reference to the holiday.
• In 1539, Flemish poet Eduard de Dene wrote of a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on April 1. In 1686, John Aubrey referred to the holiday as "Fooles holy day", the first British reference.
• On April 1, 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to "see the Lions washed".

However, the most plausible one took place during the ruling of Charles IX of France (1550 - 1574).

During the Middle Ages, all through France and many other European towns, the New Year was celebrated on March 25. In some places of France, the festivity lasted for one week, thus ending on the 1st of April. In 1564, it was decreed that New Year's Day should be moved to January 1st, following the calendar of Pope Gregory XIII, however most of the french colonies in the United States kept on celebrating the festivity from March 25 to April 1.

By the 18th century, people following the Gregorian calendar made fun of those who celebrated the New Year during the first week of Spring, and considered them to be "fools". Afterwards, to avoid being ridiculized and treated as fools, people decided to turn the day into a "mocking day", and thus was born the tradition of making jokes on the first day of April.

[Source: Wikipedia.org]

DFTBA

John Green, alongside with his brother Hank, started making videos on YouTube on January 2007, as a way to keep in touch with each other. 6 years from that, they have created a huge community of people, called "Nerdfighters", who work together towards decreasing "Worldsuck" (that is, the amount of bad things in the world) just by doing good things for others.

Very recently, the Vlogbrothers (as they are worldwide known now) started a channel called Crash Course, in which they post videos about academic topics such as Literature, Chemistry, Biology, History, and Ecology. This is a fun and interesting way of learning new things or adding knowledge about the topics you may be studying at school/university at the moment.

As this is a class of US History, I decided that it would be a great idea to post the list of videos that John Green has done about the matter, given that we have already seen all these topics in class.

The Witch Trials

The Witch Trials took place during the end of the 17th Century in Salem, Massachussetts. Here we present a video on this interesting topic, made by Tomàs Canet, Daniela Leonte and Andreea Marasuica.

A nation votes, Ohio decides

Today, in the United States of America, citizens are voting to elect their next President, as well as their congressmen for various states. However, not all votes are created equal. The two campaigns are spending big money on only a few states: the so-called "swing states" that will decide the election. If you are a republican living in New York, your vote does not count. The same can be said for a democrat living in Texas. 

This is due to how the electoral college works, as explained in the video above. The US uses a winner-take-all electoral system, where all the electoral votes from a state are granted to a single candidate if he gets just over 50% of the votes. 

This can lead to situations where the race comes down to a single state. For example, in the 2000 elections, the state of Florida gave the presidency to Bush after months of controversial recounts because the result was too close to call. This created a situation where 500 votes decided the next president of the US, regardless of the fact that Al Gore had obtained 500,000 more votes than Bush, on a national scale.

On this election, all polls seem to suggest that Ohio will determine the president of the new term. No Republican candidate has ever won the presidency without carrying this state. Depending on how Ohio decides, this might create another scenario where the president-elect does not have the popular vote. Jon Stewart, a famous comedian in the US, captures the irony of it on the video below and on his converage of the election night, titled "A nation votes, Ohio decides".

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Swing State Hell
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

IOWA

State abbreviation: IA

Capital city: Des Moines

US Region: Midwest

Borders: Minnesota to the North; Wisconsin and Illinois to the East; Missouri to the South; and South Dakota and Nebraska to the West.S

State bird: Eastern Goldfinch

State flower : Wild Rose

Motto:"Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain."

Important cities: Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, Iowa City.

You can find more information about this state here.

http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Iowa/flower_prairierose.html

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/flags/ia_flag.htm

http://statebirds.blogspot.com/search/label/Iowa%20-%20Eastern%20Goldfinch

MISSISSSIPPI

Nicknames: The Magnolia State; The Hospitality State
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great River"). The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, which had been cleared for cotton cultivation in the 19th century.

The state symbol is the magnolia grandiflora tree.









Population Ranked 31st in the U.S. - Total 2,967,297 (2010 US Census)
Surrounded by Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama,

Midwestern United States

The region consists of 12 states:

Illinois;
Indiana;
Iowa;
Kansas;
Michigan;
Minnesota;
Mossouri;
Nebraska;
North Dakota;
Ohio;
South Dakota;
Wisconsin.

History

The settlement of the area began in the 17th century because of the French exploration of the region. In 1763 their control over the area of Mississippi River ended as a conclusion of the French and Indian War. Later, British colonists began to expand into the Ohio Country during the period of the 1750s.

● To the development of the Midwest, two waterways have been very important. The first was the Ohio River, which flowed into the Mississippi River. The second was the network of routes within the Great Lakes. The Erie Canal completed an all-water shipping route, so Lakeport and River cities grew up to start these new shipping routes.

● In the middle of the 19th century the region got its first railroads. The railroad junction in Chicago grew to be the world’s largest.
The population of automobiles and buses travelling was growing very quickly. Henry Ford and Charles Kettering, the inventor of the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline, were products of the Midwest, as were the Wright brothers.

● The Northwest Ordinance region, which could be also called the heart of Midwest, was the first region of the United States that prohibited slavery.
Democratic notions were brought by American Revolutionary veterans.

Culture

● Like the most regions of the United States, the region of Midwest is mostly Christian. Roman Catholicism is the largest religious domination, although there are other religions as: Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Judaism and Islam. More or less 50% of the people in the Midwest regularly go to church.

● A large African-American urban population lives in the most of the region’s major cities because of the 20th century migration from the South. There is a huge combination of industry and cultures, blues, jazz and rock and roll led to a musical creativity in the 20th century who has produced new music genres such as the Motown Sound and techno from Detroit and house & blues music from Chicago.


Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#History

Egle Medisauskaite, Group AA