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Site Search and Site Map
Welcome!
Although this site has been created primarily for my
students, everyone is welcome. In these pages you'll find many sources of information.
The Online Resources section below has numerous
links that are of current interest. For more links to material on just about any
topic you're looking for, use the E-Links button above. Linked off of that
page are pages containing hundreds of links to sites covering a number of topics.
Visit often ... I update frequently! Hope
you enjoy the site!
Quote of the Month
"The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows
much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men. In a
large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our
companions are chosen for us."
~GK Chesterton
Numbers of the Month
The fastest growing cities in America are in Texas. Georgetown grew 7.8% last
year. That’s more than any other city with a population of at least 50,000.
Fast-growing Texas cities also include New Braunfels (6.6%), Frisco (6.3%),
Pearland (5.3%) and Pflugerville (4.5%) … suburbs all. Fast growth rates in the
state's suburbs have been consistent for some time, reflecting outward pressure
from inner-city housing woes and suburban economic growth. While the fastest
growth was concentrated in suburban areas, Texas’ metropolitan areas also gained
hundreds of thousands of new residents. Texas’ four largest metropolitan areas
together grew more last year than any state in the country except Texas itself.
Not surprisingly, Texas also gained more housing units than any other state
(adding 162,000). Still, despite the fast growth of some large US cities, of the
19,505 incorporated places in the US, around 76% (14,804) had fewer than 5,000
people in 2015. Only about 3.9% (754) had populations of 50,000 or more.
~The
Texas Tribune, 05/19/2016
Then and Now
07/01/1862 - The first federal polygamy legislation was enacted.
07/01/1863 - The Civil War battle of Gettysburg began.
07/01/1898 - During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough
Riders waged a victorious assault on San Juan Hill in Cuba.
07/01/1943 - 'Pay-as-you-go' income tax withholding began.
07/01/1944 - Delegates from 44 countries began meeting at Bretton Woods, NH,
where they agreed to establish the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank.
07/01/1946 - The US exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the
Pacific.
07/01/1963 - The US Post Office first began using Zip Codes.
07/01/1968 - The US, Britain, the Soviet Union and 58 other countries signed the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
07/01/1991 - President GHW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court
... and the battle began!
07/01/1997 - Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British
colony.
07/02/1776 - The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that these
United Colonies are, and of right, out to be, Free and Independent States.
07/02/1926 - The US Army Air Corps began.
07/02/1962 - Ernest Hemingway, the winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in literature,
died at 62 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
07/02/1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signed a sweeping civil rights bill.
07/02/1976 - The Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was not inherently cruel
or unusual.
07/02/2017 - Salvation Army Founders Day
07/03/1608 - Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec.
07/03/1775 - General George Washington took command of the Continental Army at
Cambridge MA.
07/03/1930 - Congress created the US Veterans Administration.
07/03/1962 - Algeria became independent after 132 years of French rule.
07/03/1971 - Jim Morrison died in Paris. The official cause of death was a heart
attack.
07/03/2017 - Festival of Cerridwen – Wicca, Celtic
07/04/1776 - The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
07/04/1802 - The US Military Academy officially opened at West Point NY.
07/04/1831 - Dr. Samuel Francis Smith, a Baptist minister in Boston wrote
America. He scribbled his original words to a melody he found in a German
songbook not realizing the tune was that of the British national anthem. Hours
later, the congregation of Boston's Park Street Church sang it for the first
time.
07/04/1826 - Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, died
at Monticello VA.
07/04/1826 - John Adams died in Quincy MA.
07/04/1884 - France presented the Statue of Liberty to the US as a gift.
07/04/2017 - Happy Independence Day!
07/05/1811 - Venezuela became the first South American country to declare its
independence from Spain.
07/05/1865 - William Booth founded the Salvation Army in London.
07/05/1946 - The bikini made its debut during an outdoor fashion show at the
Molitor Pool in Paris.
07/05/1975 - Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Wimbledon singles
title as he defeated Jimmy Connors.
07/05/1984 - The Supreme Court weakened the 70-year-old "exclusionary rule,"
deciding that evidence seized with defective court warrants could be used
against defendants in criminal trials.
07/06/1854 - The first official meeting of the Republican Party took place in
Jackson MI.
07/06/1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formed.
07/06/1933 - The first All-Star baseball game took place at Chicago's Comiskey
Park. The American League defeated the National League 4 to 2.
07/06/1945 - President Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal
of Freedom.
07/06/1967 - The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted over two years and claimed
over 600,000 lives.
07/06/2017 - Birth of the Dalai Lama – Buddhism
07/07/1865 - Officials hanged four people in Washington for conspiring with John
Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Lincoln.
07/07/1898 - The US annexed Hawaii.
07/07/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood bill.
07/07/1981 - President Reagan announced he was nominating Arizona judge Sandra
Day O'Connor to become the first female justice on the US Supreme Court.
07/08/1663 - King Charles II of England granted a charter to Rhode Island.
07/08/1856 - Charles Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts patented the first machine
gun.
07/08/1889 - The Wall Street Journal was first published.
07/08/1947 - The US Army swore in its first women recruits.
07/08/1950 - General Douglas MacArthur became commander-in-chief of UN forces in
Korea.
07/08/2017 - Guru Purnima or Vyasa Purnima – Hinduism
07/08/2017 - Asalha Puja (Dharma Day) – Buddhism
07/09/1872 - John Blondell of Thomaston MN patented the doughnut cutter.
07/09/1893 - Doctors performed the first successful open-heart surgery.
07/09/1896 - William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous Cross of Gold speech at
the Democratic national convention in Chicago.
07/09/2017 - Martyrdom of the Bab – Baha’i
07/10/1850 - Vice President Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency following
the death of President Taylor.
07/10/1919 - President Wilson personally delivered the Treaty of Versailles to
the Senate and urged its ratification.
07/10/1991 - Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as the first elected
president of the Russian Republic.
07/10/1992 - A federal judge in Miami sentenced former Panamanian leader Manuel
Noriega, convicted of drug and racketeering charges, to 40 years in prison. The
sentence was later cut to 10 years.
07/11/1533 - Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry XIII.
07/11/1798 - A congressional act formally reestablished the Marine Corps and
created the Marine Band.
07/11/1864 - Confederate forces led by General Jubal Early began an abortive
invasion of Washington DC, turning back the next day.
07/11/1977 - The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to the Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
07/11/2017 - World Population Day
07/12/100BC - Roman Dictator Julius Caesar was born.
07/12/1817 - Naturalist-author Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord MA.
07/12/1862 - Congress authorized the Medal of Honor.
07/12/1881 - William H. Bonney Jr., aka Billy the Kid, was shot and killed by
Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner NM.
07/13/1960 - John Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at his
party's convention in Los Angeles.
07/13/1977 - A blackout lasting 25 hours hit the New York area. (There were a
lot of kids born 9 months later!)
07/13/2017 - Ullambana (O-Bon / Festival of Souls lunar) – Buddhism, Shinto
07/14/1798 - Congress passed the Sedition Act making it a federal crime to
publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the US government.
07/14/1933 - The German government outlawed all political parties except the
Nazi Party.
07/14/1958 - The army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy.
07/15/1606 - Dutch painter Rembrandt was born.
07/15/1870 - Georgia became the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
07/15/1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater won the nomination for president at the
Republican national convention in San Francisco.
07/15/1998 - The Congressional Budget Office estimated federal surpluses of
$1.55 trillion over the next decade. (My, how times have changed!)
07/16/1790 - The District of Columbia became the seat of the US government.
07/16/1918 - The Bolsheviks executed Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family.
07/16/1945 - The US exploded its first experimental atomic bomb in the desert
near Alamogordo NM.
07/16/1951 - JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was first published.
07/16/1964 - In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San
Francisco, Barry Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no
vice." Does anyone still believe that?
07/16/1979 - Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq.
07/17/1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the US.
07/17/1945 - President Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill began meeting at Potsdam in the final Allied summit
of WWII.
07/17/2017 - 
World Emoji
Day
07/18/64AD - The Great Fire of Rome began.
07/18/1947 - President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which
placed the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the
line of succession after the vice president.
07/18/1969 - Ted Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge killing Mary Jo Kopechne. He
received a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of the accident.
07/19/1848 - A pioneer women's rights convention opened in Seneca Falls, NY.
07/19/1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for
Victory" campaign in Europe.
07/19/1969 - Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and
Michael Collins, went into orbit around the moon.
07/19/1979 - The Nicaraguan capital of Managua fell to Sandinista guerrillas two
days after President Anastasio Somoza had fled the country.
07/19/1993 - President Clinton announced a compromise allowing homosexuals to
serve in the military if they refrained from all homosexual activity ... the
"don't ask, don't tell" policy. It probably should have been called "don't ask,
don't act."
07/20/1861 - The Congress of the Confederate States began holding sessions in
Richmond VA.
07/20/1881 - Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of
the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.
07/20/1942 - The first detachment of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, later
known as WACs, began basic training at Fort Des Moines IA.
07/20/1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf
Hitler with a bomb failed.
07/20/1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became
the first men to walk on the moon.
07/21/1861 - The South won the first Battle of Bull Run at Manassas VA.
07/21/1925 - The Monkey Trial ended in Dayton, TN with John Scopes convicted of
violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The conviction
was later overturned.
07/21/1949 - The US Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty ... which created
NATO.
07/21/1954 - France surrendered North Vietnam to the Communists.
07/21/1980 - Draft registration began in the US for 19- and 20-year-old men.
07/22/1934 - Federal agents shot John Dillinger to death in Chicago.
07/22/1937 - The Senate rejected President Roosevelt's proposal to add more
justices to the Supreme Court.
07/22/1975 - The House joined the Senate in voting to restore the American
citizenship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
07/23/1846 - Protesting slavery and the US involvement in the Mexican War, Henry
David Thoreau refused to pay his $1 poll tax and the Concord MA constable jailed
him. This experience moved him to write Civil Disobedience.
07/23/1904 - Charles Menches invented the ice cream cone during the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.
07/23/1914 - Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing
of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin. The dispute led to WWI.
07/23/1979 - Ayatollah Khomeini banned Rock and Roll music in Iran.
07/23/2017 - National Hotdog Day
07/23/2017 - Parents’ Day
07/23/2017 - Birthday of Haile Selassie I – Rastafarian
07/24/1929 - President Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which
renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy.
07/24/1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in
the first underwater test of the device.
07/24/1974 - The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Nixon had to
turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special
prosecutor.
07/24/2017 - Pioneer Day – LDS
07/25/1593 - France's King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman
Catholicism.
07/25/1952 - Puerto Rica became a self-governing commonwealth of the US.
07/25/2017 - Papa Ogou (St Jacques le Majeur) – Voudon
07/26/1775 - Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General.
07/26/1947 - President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the
Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
07/26/1953 - Fidel Castro began his revolt against Fulgencio Batista with an
unsuccessful attack on an army barracks in eastern Cuba. Castro ousted Batista
in 1959.
07/26/1990 - President GHW Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities
Act.
07/26/2017 - Gran'Dlai et Gran'Aloumandia (Sainte Anne) – Voudon
07/27/1794 - French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown
and placed under arrest. He was executed the following day.
07/27/1953 - The Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, ending three
years of fighting.
07/27/1974 - The House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend President Nixon's
impeachment on a charge that he had personally engaged in a course of conduct
designed to obstruct justice in the Watergate case.
07/27/2017 - Korean War Veterans Armistice Day
07/28/1868 - The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process of
law, took effect.
07/28/1945 - A US Army bomber crashed into the 79th floor of New York's Empire
State Building, killing 14 people.
07/29/1030 - The patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II, died in battle.
07/29/1890 - Artist Vincent van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in
France.
07/29/1958 - President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act,
which created NASA.
07/29/2017 - Maitresse Silverine – Voudon
07/30/1729 - The city of Baltimore was founded.
07/30/1885 - Jean Francois Gravelet stepped out over Niagara Falls for the first
tightrope walk over the famous waterfall. She did it on a 3" rope stretched
1,166 feet.
07/30/1942 - President Roosevelt signed a bill creating a women's auxiliary
agency in the Navy known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency
Service).
07/30/1965 - President Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill ... which went
into effect the following year.
07/31/1777 - The Marquis de Lafayette, a 19-year-old French nobleman, became a
major-general in the American Continental Army.
07/31/1919 - Germany adopted its Weimar Constitution.
07/31/1991 - President GHW Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed
the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow.
Online Resource Links
What ISIS Really Wants - The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths.
It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is
a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy —
and for how to stop it |
ISIS
Claims Responsibility, Calling Paris Attacks First of the Storm |
Syria Iraq: The Islamic State Militant Group
| Isis:
The Inside Story |
Frontline: The Rise of ISIS |
Council on Foreign Relations: A Primer on ISIS Iraq
|
Cracks in ISIS Are Becoming More Clear
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How ISIS’ Attacks Harm the Middle East
What it’s like to live on $2 a day in the United States (PDF)
Check out
Today's Front Pages. Each day, you can see the front pages of more than 800
newspapers from around the world in their original, unedited form.
Whether or not you noticed, the earth's population passed 7 billion a while back.
You might enjoy NPR's wonderful video,
Visualizing How a Population Grows to 7 Billion.
Check out the St. Louis Fed's presentation
The Financial Crisis: What Happened?. The original video is no longer available
but you can view the power point presentation.
Want to take a survey but not sure how many responses to collect? This
Survey Calculator gives you the number for any given population size and desired
confidence level. A reverse calculator lets you enter characteristics of an existing
survey and gives the confidence interval (±X%) to apply to the results. The Survey
System site, sponsored by a survey software company, also gives clear explanations
of statistical significance, survey design and related concepts. Also check out
20 Questions a Journalist (and You, too!) Should Ask About Poll Results.
PBS's
30 Second Candidate allows you to view more political ads than you ever knew
existed. Choose the Historical Timeline link to see how political ads have changed
over the years. Start with the infamous
Daisy Ad that Lyndon Johnson used against Barry Goldwater. Click on Watch
Johnson ads. Then click on either the QuickTime link or the Real Video link
next to Daisy.
Check out
Political Compass. The site does a good job of explaining political ideologies
(although with definitions different from those I use) and gives you a chance to
discover your own political philosophy.
Law Library of Congress: North Korea -- Collection of links to websites on North
Korean government, politics and law. Includes legal guides, country studies and
links to constitutions and branches of government (where available).
Council on Foreign Relations: North Korea -- Background, articles and opinion
pieces about North Korea government and politics. Many of the articles focus on
North Korea's nuclear program. From the Council on Foreign Relations, "an independent
membership organization and a nonpartisan think tank and publisher."
State of the Union (SOTU) -- The site uses an interactive timeline to provide
a visual representation of prominent words in presidential State of the Union addresses
by displaying significant words as "determined by comparing how frequently the word
occurs in the document to how frequently it appears throughout the entire body of
SOTU addresses." The Appendices section describes the statistical methods
used. Also includes the full text of addresses.
Small Town Papers -- This site provides access
to scanned images of recent issues of dozens of small town newspapers from throughout
the United States. Newspapers are updated periodically, 2-3 weeks after publication.
The site also includes a searchable archive (of articles, photos and advertisements),
which covers different periods for each paper, some as far back as the 1890s. Access
to the archives requires free registration.
This website serves as a centralized location to learn about the
Congressional Research Service and search for CRS
reports that have been released to the public by members of Congress. (CRS Reports
do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report.) Features a
searchable database with more than 8,000 reports, a list of recently released reports,
other collections of CRS reports and a FAQ about CRS.
Stem Cell Research -- See the official NIH resource for
Stem Cell Research. In 2005, NOVA aired an overview of
The Stem Cell Issue.
Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2004
-- This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its
armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or
for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older
lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures
abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted.
Government
Product Recalls
Homeland Security Knowledgebase,
Homeland Security News and Resources
If you're worried about retirement, try some of the following sites.
IRS Tax Information for Retirement Plans
Social Security Retirement Planner
Retirement Planning Resources from Smart Money
Keeping the Shi'ites Straight -- Based on the opinion
that no story has been more confusing for the Western news media to cover in postwar
Iraq than the politics of the country's Shi'ite majority, this article provides
a basic outline of Shi'ite religious history. Discusses the Sadr family (Muhammad
Baqir as-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Muqtada as-Sadr), Muhammad
Baqir al-Hakim and other figures.
This commercial site presents brief information about dozens of
Black Inventors from the United States. Some entries
include portraits and images. Also includes a searchable timeline covering 1721-1988.
Does not include bibliographic information.
Annenberg Political Fact Check -- This site describes
itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit, consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce
the level of deception and confusion in US politics. The site provides original
articles, with summaries and sources, analyzing factual accuracy in TV ads, debates,
speeches, interviews and news releases. Searchable. From the Annenberg Public Policy
Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
White House Tapes: The President Calling -- Three
of America's most compelling presidents -- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon -- bugged
their White House offices and tapped their telephones. In this documentary project,
American Radio Works eavesdrops on presidential telephone calls to hear how each
man used one-on-one politics to shape history. Includes audio, a transcript of the
documentary and background information on each president and the tapes.
The State of State and Local Finances -- New studies afford a state-by-state
or city-by-city analysis of fiscal well being.
The Year of Living Dangerously -- While leaders in a growing number of states
appear to believe they're serving the public good by squeezing government dry, there's
little question that minimizing management carries a host of dangers that directly
affect the lives of citizens.
Government Debt by Country Map -- Shows countries' general government gross
debt as a percentage of GDP in 2012.
First Amendment Library -- Provides info on Supreme
Court First Amendment jurisprudence, including rulings, arguments, briefs,
historical material, commentary and press coverage.
Community Service
If you need a presentation or workshop for your group,
use this
Community link
or the link at the top of the page.
The link will take you to a list of the topics I currently have available.
To schedule a date or for more information, feel free to contact me at
dramyglenn@earthlink.net
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