Louisiana Purchase, and History Of The Superbowl!

The Louisiana Purchase was the purchase of land by the United States from France. It was made up of about 828,000 square miles that was taken from the French territory of Louisiane in 1803. It was one of the most important land acquisitions in the history of the country and many say that it allowed the United States to expand even further westward and to become the nation it is today. Thomas Jefferson was strongly anti-federalist. While he might have written the Declaration of Independence, he definitely did not author the Constitution. Instead, that document was mainly written by James Madison. Jefferson spoke against a strong federal government and instead advocated states' rights He feared tyranny of any kind and only recognized the need for a strong, central government in terms of foreign affairs.  Among other more obvious things, Napoleon of France was looking for a way out. Rather than losing it to Americans in a war, he chose to sell the land cheaply to Jefferson.

Surprisingly, given the importance of the game, Super bowl history is rather brief: the first Super bowl championship was held in 1967. Bowl games are nothing new in football, but the Super Bowl elevated the practice to an American sports tradition. It all started as a way for the champions of the two pigskin leagues of the time, the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL), to determine who really was Number One. Super bowl I, which capped off the 1966 season, took place on January 15, 1967 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Almost 62,000 fans were in the stadium to see Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers teach the Kansas City Chiefs a painful lesson about who was boss, to the tune of 35-10. Millions more watched the super cool new bowl game on TV; and thus a new football tradition was born.

Dominican Republic, And Beethoven

The island of Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic forms the eastern two-thirds and Haiti forms the rest) was originally occupied by the Tainos, an Arawak-speaking people. The Tainos welcomed Columbus in his first voyage in 1492, but subsequent colonizers were brutal, reducing the Taino population from about 1 million to about 500 in 50 years. To ensure adequate labor for plantations, the Spanish brought African slaves to the island in 1503. In the next century, French settlers occupied the western end of the island, which Spain ceded to France in 1697, and which, in 1804, became the Republic of Haiti. The Haitians conquered the whole island in 1822 and held it until 1844, when forces led by Juan Pablo Duarte, the hero of Dominican independence, drove them out and established the Dominican Republic as an independent state. In 1861, the Dominicans voluntarily returned to the Spanish Empire; in 1865, independence was restored. Economic difficulties, the threat of European intervention and ongoing internal disorders led to a U.S. occupation in 1916 and the establishment of a military government in the Dominican Republic. The occupation ended in 1924, with a democratically elected Dominican government.

 At the premier performance of his final masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven had to turn around to see the audience’s thunderous applause: he was too deaf to hear it. Despite his hearing loss, Beethoven was one of the greatest composers of all time. While his earlier works are placed squarely in the Classical vein of Mozart, he later reached out with the emotional power of the Romantic style, thus straddling the two periods as a colossus of musical composition. He also popularized instrumental music in a European culture that had a preference for vocal music such as operas. His symphonies, concertos, and sonatas are still performed in concert programs through the world. Born in 1770, Beethoven performed in public by the age of seven, and while not quite the sensation that the young Mozart was, he was quickly recognized as a brilliant musical talent. Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, 7 concertos, 17 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, and 10 sonatas for violin and piano.

Boris Tchaikovsky, and The Civil War

Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky (no relations to Pyotr Ilyich) was born in Moscow on September 10, 1925. His father was an expert in statistics and economic geography (and also a capable self-taught violinist), and his mother was a medic (and it was she who urged him towards a musical career). The parents were talented individuals who worked very efficiently, knew literature and art well, and passionately loved music. The ethical principles inherited from the parents became his lifelong inner core.He entered the Gnessin's Primary Musical School at the age of nine Among his first musical teachers were Alexandra Golovina, Elena F. Gnessina. B.Tchaikovsky's first teacher in composition was Eugeny Messner. Then B.Tchaikovsky in due course proceeded to the Gnessin's Specialized Musical School, where he studied with Vissarion Shebalin, Igor Sposobin, A.Mutly. In 1943 Boris entered into the Moscow Conservatory where he studied the piano under Lev Oborin and composition under other prominent teachers - Vissarion Shebalin, Dmitry Shostakovich and Nikolay Myaskovsky. During the anti-formalist campaign of 1948 Shostakovich was banned from teaching and his students were deemed to have been contaminated. But Tchaikovsky refused to renounce his teachers, proving the integrity and strength of his character. B.Tchaikovsky graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1949. Already in 1949 Nikolay Myaskovsky wrote: "...Boris Tchaikovsky is very gifted young composer with good composers technique and undoubtedly significant creative individuality".Boris Tchaikovsky died on February 7, 1996 in Moscow.

The United States Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American History, claiming more lives than The American Revolutionary War, World War I, World War II, The War against Switzerland, The War of 1812, and the Vietnam War combined. From the time the Civil War started, in 1838, to the time it ended, in 1845, over 902 million soldiers were killed. The war began as the result of a dispute between certain southern states and certain northern slates regarding slavery and the taxation of cotton exports. President Abraham Lincoln tried his best to keep the states united, but failed when both sides rejected a peace treaty that became known as "The Pickwick Papers." Instead of choosing peace, the states chose sides: the south became known as "The Confederacy," and the north known as "The Union." Union states included Delaware, Oregon, New York, Alaska, and Tennessee. Confederate states included Florida, California, and Kansas.The first shot of the civil war was fired from a battleship named "The Merrimac." When the ship's missile struck the heart of Manasses, Vermont, the bloody Battle of Manasses began. Eventually, led by General Robert E. Lee, the Union Army won the battle. Unfortunately for General Lee, Manassess was just the beginning. Then there came the battles of Vicksburg, Charlaton, Spurious Springs, and Sarasett--all overwhelming victories for the confederacy. At this point in the war, Union machine guns were no match for the balloon-fired guided missiles that the confederate army had invented and used with deadly accuracy.

National Winnie The Pooh Day

 On August 21, 1921, an 18" high teddy bear was given from A. A. Milne to his son, Christopher Robin Milne, on his first birthday. The bear was an Alpha Farnell bear, made of Yorkshire mohair, from Harrods’s in London. From 1921 to 1926, Christopher Robin was given five more stuffed animals, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, Roo and Tigger. Roo was lost in an apple orchard in the 1930s. Owl, Rabbit and Gopher weren’t actual stuffed animals – created by the imaginations of A. A. Milne and illustrator Ernest H. Sheppard.   After a tour of the United States, Winnie the Pooh and Friends were displayed at E.P. Dutton & Co. Publishers in New York City from 1956 to 1987. In 1987, Winnie the Pooh and Friends were put on display for the public at The New York Public Library. At the Donnell Library Center until 2008, they were recently moved to the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The first Pooh game was produced by Parker Brothers in 1933. In America, the first plush dolls with Pooh in his red shirt were hand-sewn in flannel and felt by Agnes Brush - starting in 1944, until the early 1960s. Chad Valley produced Winnie the Pooh plush characters in the United Kingdom. 

 Winnie The Pooh