Home About us Products Services Contact us Bookmark
:: wikimiki.org ::
Peanuts

Peanuts

Peanuts was a syndicated daily comic strip written and drawn by American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000. The strip was one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 40 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in many newspapers. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schulz lived and worked for over 30 years in Santa Rosa, California (Sonoma County). Prior to moving to Santa Rosa, Schulz had had a studio in Sebastopol, California, but it was destroyed by fire in 1966. The Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa celebrates his life's work and art of cartooning. In 2000, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors renamed the "Sonoma County - Charles M. Schulz Airport" in his honor. The airport's amusing logo features Snoopy in goggles and scarf, taking to the skies on top of his red doghouse. A bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa Rosa.

History

Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly panel comic that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1949. When his work was picked up by United Feature Syndicate, they decided to go for the new comic strip he had been working on. This strip was somewhat similar to the panel comic, but it had a cast of characters, rather than different nameless little folk for each page. Maybe the name would have been the same, though, had it been less close to the names of two other comics of the time: Al Capp's Li'l Abner and a now-forgotten strip entitled Little Folks. To avoid confusion the syndicate settled on the name "Peanuts", a title Schulz himself was not particularly fond of. In a 1987 interview, Schulz said "It's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity—and I think my humor has dignity". The strip soon got an obvious main character, which Schulz would rather have named the strip after: "Good Ol' Charlie Brown", a character informed by some of the painful experiences of Schulz's formative years. In fact, the periodic collections of the strips in paperback book form typically had either "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy" in the title, not "Peanuts". Peanuts premiered on October 2, 1950 in seven newspapers nationwide: The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Tribune, The Allentown Call-Chronicle, The Bethlehem Globe-Times, The Denver Post and The Seattle Times. At first there was only a daily strip. The first Sunday strip appeared January 6 1952, in the half page format, which was the only complete format for the entire life of the Sunday strip. Most readers did not know that they often missed one or more panels, so their newspaper could save space. The strip's early years resembled that which it finally developed into, but with significant differences. The art was cleaner and sleeker, though simpler, with thicker lines and short, squat characters; for example, in these early strips, Charlie Brown's famous round head is closer to the shape of an American football. In fact, most of the kids were initially fairly round-headed. Charlie was unique in appearing to have virtually no hair. Though this is often interpreted as him being bald, Charles Schulz explained that he saw Charlie Brown as having hair that was so light, and cut so short, that it wasn't seen very well. Schulz described his style as "The Toothpick School," i.e., as though drawn with a toothpick. American football Peanuts is remarkable for its deft social commentary, especially compared with other strips appearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. Schulz did not explicitly address racial and gender equality issues so much as he assumed them to be self-evident in the first place. Peppermint Patty's athletic skill and self-confidence is simply taken for granted, for example, as is Franklin's presence in a racially-integrated school and neighborhood. As illustrated above, Robert L. Short wrote several books in which he claimed he detected theological messages in the strips. Additionally, he used them as illustrations during his lecturing about the gospel. Schulz supported such interpretation but ultimately attempted not to align himself with it. Although he was a Christian who once taught Bible classes, and whose Linus character routinely quoted scripture, Schulz referred to himself more than once as a secular humanist. Schulz could throw barbs at any number of topics when he chose, though. Over the years he tackled everything from the Vietnam War to school dress codes to the "new math". One of his most prescient sequences came in 1963 when he added a little boy named "5" to the cast, whose sisters were named "3" and "4", and whose father had changed the family surname to their ZIP Code to protest the way numbers were taking over people's identities. Another sequence lampooned Little Leagues and "organized" play, when all the neighborhood kids join snowman-building leagues and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on building his own snowmen without leagues or coaches. The storyline Charles Schulz was most proud of was in the early 1970s, when Charlie Brown came down with a strange ailment that made him see every round and spherical object as a baseball, like the sun and ice cream scoops. This condition soon worsens to the point where he develops a strange rash on his head that precisely resembles the stitching pattern of a baseball. Charlie Brown is sent to summer camp to recuperate, wearing a paper grocery bag on his head at all times. The other kids dub him "Mr. Sack", treat him with unaccustomed respect and even elect him camp president. Eventually, Charlie believes his condition is easing and goes out to see the sunrise hoping not to see it as a baseball. As it turns out, he does not, but what he does see indicates, to his frustration, that his condition has simply become even stranger than before. what he does see, Linus. Bottom: Charlie Brown, Schroeder, Lucy.|left]] Peanuts probably reached its peak in American pop-culture awareness between 1965 and 1980; this period was the heyday of the daily strip, and there were numerous animated specials and book collections. However, during the 1980s other strips surpassed Peanuts in popularity, most notably Doonesbury, Garfield, The Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, and the number of Peanuts books on store shelves dwindled. However, Schulz still had one of the highest circulations in daily newspapers, and because of licensing and marketing, Peanuts brought Charles Schulz a large income. The daily Peanuts strips were formatted in a 4-panel "space saving" format beginning in the 1950s, with a few very rare 8 panel strips. In 1975, the panel format was shortened slightly horizontally, and shortly after the lettering became larger to accommodate the shrinking format. In 1998, Schulz abandonded this strict format and started using the entire length of the strip, in part to combat the dwindling size of the comics page, and also to experiment. Schulz continued the strip for 50 years, with no assistants even in the lettering and coloring process. Starting in the 1980s his artistic line started to shake. This became more noticeable in the 1990s, along with his format change--in some ways the art seems to have deteriorated somewhat, especially where character expression was concerned. Nevertheless, he continued the strip until he was unable to due to health reasons, and died the night before the final strip was published in newspapers. The final daily original Peanuts comic strip was published on January 3, 2000. The final original Sunday strip was published in newspapers a day after Schulz's death on February 12. Following its finish, many newspapers began reprinting older strips under the title Classic Peanuts.

Cast

Peanuts did not have a lead character from the onset. Its initial cast was small, featuring only Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty (not the later character Peppermint Patty), and a beagle, Snoopy. The strip soon began to focus on Charlie Brown, though. Charlie Brown's main characteristic is his self-defeating stubbornness: he can never win a ballgame, but continues playing baseball; he can never fly a kite successfully, but continues trying to fly his kite. Others see this as the character's admirable determined persistence to try his best against all odds. Though his inferiority complex was evident from the start, in the earliest strips he also got in his own licks when socially sparring with Patty and Shermy. Some early strips also involved romantic attractions between Charlie Brown and Patty or Violet, the next major character added to the strip. Violet As the years went by, Shermy and Patty appeared less often, while new major characters were introduced. Schroeder, Lucy van Pelt, and her brother Linus debuted as very young children--Schroeder and Linus both in diapers and pre-verbal. Snoopy, who began as a more or less typical dog, soon started to verbalize his thoughts via speech balloons; eventually he adopted other human characteristics such as walking on his hind legs, reading books, using a typewriter, and participating in sports. The Peanuts characters generally do not age, or age very slowly, except in the case of infant characters who catch up to the rest of the cast, then stop. Linus, for example, is born in the first couple of years of the strip's run. He ages from infancy to right around Charlie Brown's age over the course of the first ten years, during which we see him learn to walk and talk with the help of Lucy and Charlie Brown. Linus then stops aging when he is about a year or so younger than Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown himself was four when the strip began, and gradually aged over the next two decades until he settled in as an eight year old (after which he is consistently referred to as eight when any age is given, so we can safely assume that was his "stopping point"). The Peanuts gang as a whole can be roughly broken up into three generations: # Charlie Brown and his peers (Lucy, Shermy, Violet, Schroeder, and others), who are all in 2nd grade. # the younger siblings Linus and Sally, along with Frieda, Eudora, and a few minor characters. They are 1-2 years behind the older generation, about kindergarden grade. # Rerun, Linus and Lucy's youngest brother. Another character who joined the strip as an infant, he eventually reached preschool age. preschool In the 1960s, the strip began to focus more on Snoopy. Many of the strips from this point revolve around Snoopy's active fantasy life, in which he imagined himself to be (most famously) a World War I flying ace or a bestselling suspense novelist, to the bemusement and consternation of the children who wonder what he is doing but also occasionally participate. Snoopy eventually took on more than 150 distinct personas over the course of the strip, from "Joe Cool" to Mickey Mouse. Schulz continued to introduce new characters into the strip, particularly including a tomboyish, frecklefaced, redheaded girl named Patricia Reichardt, better known as "Peppermint Patty". Patty is an assertive, athletic, but rather obtuse girl who shakes up Charlie Brown's world by calling him "Chuck", flirting with him, and giving him compliments he's not so sure he deserves. She also brings in a new group of friends, including the strip's first black character, Franklin, and Peppermint Patty's bookish sidekick Marcie, who calls Patty "Sir" and Charlie Brown "Charles". (Most other characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all times, except for Eudora, who also calls him "Charles"; Charlie Brown's sister Sally, who usually calls him "big brother"; and a minor character named Peggy Jean in the early 1990s, who called him "Brownie Charles".) Some have speculated that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are portrayals of lesbians, but this may well be idle fantasy, especially considering both girls' admitted affection for Charlie Brown. Marcie resembles, and acts like, a younger version of Doonesburys Honey Huan. However, from occasional references within the strip, it's clear she was modeled on Billie Jean King. Other notable characters include Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, who was fixated on Linus; Snoopy's friend Woodstock the bird as well as a few other birds such as Conrad, Oliver, Bill and Harriet, all who spoke entirely in vertical lines; Pig-Pen, the perpetually dirty boy who could raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk, or in a snowstorm; and Spike, Snoopy's desert-dwelling brother from Needles, California, who was apparently named for Schulz's own childhood dog. After some early anomalies, adult figures never again appeared in the strip. Peanuts had several other recurring characters who were similarly absent from view. Some, such as the Great Pumpkin or the Red Baron, may or may not have been figments of the cast's imaginations. Others, such as the Little Red-Haired Girl (Charlie Brown's perennial dream girl), Joe Shlabotnik (Charlie Brown's baseball hero), World War II (the vicious cat who lives next door to Snoopy), and Charlie Brown's unnamed pen pal, were real. Schulz added some additional fantastic elements, sometimes imbuing inanimate objects with sparks of life. Charlie Brown's nemesis, the Kite-Eating Tree, is one example. Sally Brown's school building, that expressed thoughts and feelings about the students (and the general business of being a brick building), is another. Linus' famous "security blanket" also displayed occasional signs of anthropomorphism. At one point, a character named Charlotte Braun entered the cast. She resembled a female Charlie Brown in appearance but was louder and ruder than Lucy, and quickly proved to be unpopular. She did not appear in more than ten strips.

Books

Charlotte Braun.]] Peanuts strips have been reprinted in many books over the years. Some represented chronological collections of strips, while others were thematic collections, such as Snoopy's Tennis Book. Some single-story books were produced, such as Snoopy and the Red Baron. In addition, most of the Peanuts television animated specials were adapted into book form. Charlotte Braun Charles Schulz always resisted publication of early Peanuts strips, as they did not reflect the characters as he eventually developed them. However, in 1997 he began talks with Fantagraphics Books to have the entire run of the strip published chronologically in book form. The first volume in the collection, The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1952, was published in April 2004. Peanuts is in a unique situation compared to other comics in that archive quality masters of most strips are still owned by the syndicate. The following books publish much of this previously-unreproduced material.
- Chip Kidd, ed. (2001) Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0375420975 (hardcover), ISBN 0375714634 (paperback).
- Derrick Bang with Victor Lee. (2002 reprinting) 50 Years of Happiness: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz. Santa Rosa, California: Charles M. Schulz Musuem. ISBN 0968557406
- Derrick Bang, ed. (2003) Lil' Beginnings. Santa Rosa, California: Charles M. Schulz Museum. The complete run of Li'l Folks (1947–1950) ISBN 0974570915
- Charles M. Schulz (2004) Who's on First, Charlie Brown?. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345464125.
- The entire run of Peanuts, covering nearly 50 years of comic strips, will be reprinted in Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts, a 25-volume set to come out over a 12-year period, two volumes per year. The final volume is expected to be published in 2016.
  - (April 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1952. ISBN 156097589X
  - (October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1953 to 1954. ISBN 1560976144
  - (October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1954 Box Set. ISBN
  - (April 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1956. ISBN 1560976470
  - (October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1957 to 1958. ISBN 1560976705
  - (October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1958 Box Set. ISBN
  - (scheduled for April 2006) The Complete Peanuts: 1959 to 1960. ISBN 1560976713
  - (scheduled for October 2006) The Complete Peanuts: 1961 to 1962. ISBN 1560976721
  - (scheduled for October 2006) "The Complete Peanuts: 1959 to 1962 Box Set". ISBN
  - (scheduled for April 2007) "The Complete Peanuts: 1963 to 1964".
  - (scheduled for October 2007) "The Complete Peanuts: 1965 to 1966".
  - (scheduled for October 2007) "The Complete Peanuts: 1963 to 1966 Box Set". ISBN Each of the Fantagraphics books contains an index by subject for the comics reprinted within its volume. This allows users to find, for example, all strips containing Linus. Each of the volumes has an introduction written by a famous person. Authors who have created intros so far include Walter Cronkite, Garrison Keillor, Matt Groening and Jonathan Franzen.

Television, film, and theatre

In addition to the strip itself and numerous books, the Peanuts characters have appeared in animated form on television many times. This started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the characters in 1961 for a series of black and white commercials for the Ford Falcon. The ads were animated by Bill Melendez for Playhouse Pictures, a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz and Melendez became friends, and when producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a two-minute animated sequence for a TV documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown in 1963, he brought on Melendez for the project. Before the documentary was completed, the three of them (with help from their sponsor, the Coca-Cola Company) produced their first half-hour animated special, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was first aired on the CBS network in 1965. The animated version of Peanuts differs in some aspects from the strip. In the strip, adult voices are seldom heard, and conversations are usually only depicted from the children's end--in other words, the characters just answer questions or repeat the questions posed to them. To translate this aspect to the animated medium, Melendez famously used the sound of a modified trombone to simulate adult "voices". A more serious deviation from the strip was the treatment of Snoopy. In the strip, the dog's thoughts are verbalized in speech balloons; in animation, he is typically silent, his thoughts communicated through growls, laughs, and pantomime, or by having human characters verbalizing his thoughts for him. These treatments have both been abandoned temporarily in the past; they experimented with teacher dialog in She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, and in the animated adaptations of the plays, Snoopy's thoughts were conveyed in voiceover. The elimination of Snoopy's "voice" is probably the most controversial aspect of the adaptations, but Schulz apparently wanted or at least approved of the treatment. The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the impetus for CBS to air many more prime-time Peanuts specials over the years, beginning with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's All-Stars in 1966. In total, more than thirty animated specials were produced. Until his death in 1976, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi composed highly-acclaimed musical scores for the specials; in particular, the piece "Linus and Lucy" has become popularly known as the signature theme song of the Peanuts franchise. Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez also collaborated on four theatrical feature films starring the characters, the first of which was A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969). Most of these made use of material from Schulz's strips, which were then adapted, although in other cases plots were developed around areas where there were minimal strips to reference. Such was also the case with The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, a Saturday-morning TV series which debuted on CBS in 1983 and lasted for two seasons. By the late-1980s, the specials' popularity had begun to wane, and CBS had sometimes rejected a few specials. An eight-episode TV mini-series called This is America, Charlie Brown, for instance, was released during a writer's strike. Eventually, the last Peanuts specials were released direct-to-video, and no new ones were created until after the year 2000 when ABC got the rights to the three fall holiday specials. The Nickelodeon cable network re-aired the bulk of the specials, as well as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, for a time in the late 1990s under the name of You're On Nickelodeon Charlie Brown. Many of the specials and feature films have also been released on various home video formats over the years. After Shultz died, many of the newer specials were based on comic strips Shultz had written. The Peanuts characters even found their way to the live stage, appearing in the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!!. You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown was originally an extremely successful off-Broadway musical that ran for four years (1967-1971) in New York City and on tour, with Gary Burghoff as the original Charlie Brown. An updated revival opened on Broadway in 1999. It was also adapted for television twice, as a live-action NBC special and an animated CBS special.

Feature films


- A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)
- Snoopy, Come Home (1972)
- Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)
- Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980)

Animated TV specials


- A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1963; television documentary with 2-minute animated sequence)
- A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
- Charlie Brown's All-Stars (1966)
- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
- You're in Love, Charlie Brown (1967)
- He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (1968)
- Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz (1969)
- It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969)
- Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971)
- You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972)
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
- There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973)
- It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown (1974)
- It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974)
- Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975)
- You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (1975)
- It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976)
- What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! (1977)
- It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977)
- Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown (1979)
- You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979)
- Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown (1980)
- It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1980)
- She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980)
- It's Magic, Charlie Brown (1981)
- Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981)
- A Charlie Brown Celebration (1982)
- Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? (1983)
- What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983)
- It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984)
- Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1985)
- You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985)
- Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown (1985)
- It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown (1988)
- The This is America, Charlie Brown mini-series (1988-1989)
  - The Mayflower Voyages
  - The Birth of the Constitution
  - The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk
  - The NASA Space station
  - The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad
  - The Great Inventors
  - The Smithsonian and the Presidency
  - The Music and Heroes of America
- Why, Charlie Brown, Why? (1990)
- You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown (1990)
- Snoopy's Reunion (1991)
- It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown (1992)
- It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992)
- You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! (1994)
- It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown! (1997)
- Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles Schulz (2000)
- Here's to You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years (2000)
- It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown (2000)
- A Charlie Brown Valentine (2002)
- Charlie Brown Christmas Tales (2002)
- The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (2002)
- Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown (2003)
- I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown (2003)

Other media

The Peanuts characters are currently spokespeople in print and television advertisements for the MetLife insurance company. Over the years, they have also appeared in ads for Dolly Madison snack cakes, Friendly's restaurants, Cheerios breakfast cereal, and Ford automobiles. The characters were licensed for use as atmosphere for the national Cedar Fair theme park chain as well as the Camp Snoopy attractions in Minnesota and Southern California. Pig-Pen appeared in a memorable spot for Regina Vacuum Cleaners. "Snoopy on Ice", a live Ice Capades-style show aimed primarily at young children, has had many touring productions over the years. A giant helium Snoopy balloon has long been a feature in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. The characters have been featured on Hallmark Cards since 1960, and can be found adorning clothing, figurines, plush dolls, flags, balloons, posters, Christmas ornaments, and countless other bits of licensed merchandise. Cartoon tributes have appeared in other comic strips since Schulz's death in 2000. In May of that year, many cartoonists included a reference to Peanuts in their own strips. Originally planned as a tribute to Schulz's retirement, after his death that February it became a tribute to his life and career. Similarly, on 30 October 2005, several comic strips again included references to Peanuts, and specifically the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" television special.

See also


- The Peanuts Characters category, for a list of Peanuts characters who have their own articles.
- The Apollo 10 Lunar module was nicknamed "Snoopy" and the command module "Charlie Brown".

External links


- [http://www.snoopy.com/ Peanuts official website]
- [http://www.peanutscollectorclub.com/ Peanuts Collector Club]
- [http://g2301m.unileoben.ac.at/~nermal/peanuts/peanuts.html Profiles of the strip's characters]
- [http://www.aaugh.com/guide/ AAUGH.com Peanuts Book Collecting Guide]
- [http://web.mit.edu/smcguire/www/peanuts.html Peanuts Animation and Reprints Page]
- [http://www.peanutscollectorclub.com/peantfaq.txt Comprehensive FAQ]
- [http://www.schulzmuseum.org/ Charles M. Schulz Museum website] Peanuts Peanuts ja:ピーナッツ (漫画)

Syndication

Syndication may mean:
- television syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside of the network system
- print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips
- web syndication, where web feeds make a portion of a web site available to other sites or individual subscribers
- syndication (horse racing), in the thoroughbred horse racing industry, the sale of the breeding rights to a specific stallion to a group of investors

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.

History

American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded1 from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Government

Iraq of the United States.]]

Republic and suffrage

The United States is an example of a constitutional republic, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential democracy. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Americans enjoy almost universal suffrage from the age of 18 regardless of race, sex, or wealth. There are some limits, however: felons are disenfranchised and in some states former felons are likewise. Furthermore, the national representation of territories and the federal district of Washington, DC in Congress is limited: residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes but their only Congressional representative is a non-voting delegate.

Federal government

The federal government is the national government, comprising the Legislative Branch (led by Congress), the Executive Branch (led by the President), and the Judicial Branch (led by the Supreme Court). These three branches were designed to apply checks and balances on each other. The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government to defense, foreign affairs, the issuing and management of currency, the management of trade and relations between the states, and the protection of human rights. In addition to these explicitly stated powers, the federal government—with the assistance of the Supreme Court—has gradually extended these powers into such areas as welfare and education, on the basis of the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.

The Congress

necessary and proper The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population; in contrast, each state has two Senators, regardless of population. There are a total of 100 senators, who serve six-year terms. The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the necessary-and-proper clause, which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

The President

necessary-and-proper clause At the top level of the executive branch is the President of the United States. The President and Vice-President are elected as 'running mates' for four-year terms by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D. C.) in both houses of Congress (see U.S. Electoral College). The relationship between the President and the Congress reflects that between the English monarchy and parliament at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution. Congress can legislate to constrain the President's executive power, even with respect to his or her command of the armed forces; however, this power is used only very rarely—a notable example was the constraint placed on President Richard Nixon's strategy of bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The President cannot directly propose legislation, and must rely on supporters in Congress to promote his or her legislative agenda. The President's signature is required to turn congressional bills into law; in this respect, the President has the power—only occasionally used—to veto congressional legislation. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The ultimate power of Congress over the President is that of impeachment or removal of the elected President through a House vote, a Senate trial, and a Senate vote. The threat of using this power has had major political ramifications in the cases of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The President makes around 2,000 executive appointments, including members of the Cabinet and ambassadors, which must be approved by the Senate; the President can also issue executive orders and pardons, and has other Constitutional duties, among them the requirement to give a State of the Union address to Congress once a year. Although the President's constitutional role may appear to be constrained, in practice, the office carries enormous prestige that typically eclipses the power of Congress: the Presidency has justifiably been referred to as 'the most powerful office in the world'. The Vice President is first in the line of succession, and is the President of the Senate ex officio, with the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote. The members of the President's Cabinet are responsible for administering the various departments of state, including the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. These departments and department heads have considerable regulatory and political power, and it is they who are responsible for executing federal laws and regulations. George W. Bush is the 43rd President, currently serving his second term.

The Courts

George W. Bush The highest court is the Supreme Court, which consists of nine justices. The court deals with federal and constitutional matters, and can declare legislation made at any level of the government as unconstitutional, nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions. Below the Supreme Court are the courts of appeals, and below them in turn are the district courts, which are the general trial courts for federal law. Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the individual court systems of each state, each dealing with its own laws and having its own judicial rules and procedures. A case may be appealed from a state court to a federal court only if there is a federal question; the supreme court of each state is the final authority on the interpretation of that state's laws and constitution.

State and local governments

supreme court of each state. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] The state governments have the greatest influence over people's daily lives. Each state has its own written constitution and has different laws. There are sometimes great differences in law and procedure between the different states, concerning issues such as property, crime, health, and education. The highest elected official of each state is the Governor. Each state also has an elected legislature (bicameral in every state except Nebraska), whose members represent the different parts of the state. Of note is the New Hampshire legislature, which is the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and has one representative for every 3,000 people. Each state maintains its own judiciary, with the lowest level typically being county courts, and culminating in each state supreme court, though sometimes named differently. In some states, supreme and lower court justices are elected by the people; in others, they are appointed, as they are in the federal system. The institutions that are responsible for local government are typically town, city, or county boards, making laws that affect their particular area. These laws concern issues such as traffic, the sale of alcohol, and keeping animals. The highest elected official of a town or city is usually the mayor. In New England, towns operate directly democratically, and in some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, counties have little or no power, existing only as geographic distinctions. In other areas, county governments have more power, such as to collect taxes and maintain law enforcement agencies.

Political divisions

With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves to be nation states modeled after the European states of the time. Although considered as sovereigns initially, under the Articles of Confederation of 1781 they entered into a "Perpetual Union" and created a fully sovereign federal state, delegating certain powers to the national Congress, including the right to engage in diplomatic relations and to levy war, while each retaining their individual sovereignty, freedom and independence. But the national government proved too ineffective, so the administrative structure of the government was vastly reorganized with the United States Constitution of 1789. Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. Since the Union victory in 1865, the independent status of the individual states has not been broached again by any state, and the status of each state within the union has been deemed by mainstream officials and academics to be settled as being subordinate to the union as a whole. In subsequent years, the number of states grew steadily due to western expansion, the purchase of lands by the national government from other nation states, and the subdivision of existing states, resulting in the current total of 50. The states are generally divided into smaller administrative regions, including counties, cities and townships. The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The U.S. is divided into three distinct sections:
- the "continental United States," also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous or contiguous United States
- Alaska, which is physically connected only to Canada
- the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean. The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the United States' only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited. The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.

Foreign relations and military

sovereign] The immense military and economic dominance of the United States has made foreign relations an especially important topic in its politics, with considerable concern about the image of the United States throughout the world. Reactions towards the United States by other nationalities are often strong, ranging from uninhibited admiration and mimicking of all things American to anti-Americanism. US foreign policy has swung about several times over the course of its history between the poles of strict isolationism and imperialism and everywhere in between. Three of the nation's four military branches are administered by the Department of Defense: the Army, the Navy (including the Marine Corps), and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, but is placed under the Department of the Navy in time of war. The combined United States armed forces consist of 1.4 million active duty personnel, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Military conscription ended in 1973. The United States Armed forces are considered to be the most powerful military (of any sort) on Earth and their force projection capabilities are unrivaled by any other nation. The 2005 defense budget amounted to $401.7 billion, which is an increase of 4% over 2004 and of 35% since 2001. Over 50% of that number is spent in research & development. (For comparison, in 2004 the European Union (considered as the second-largest military force) had a combined total of 1.6 million troops, and a defense budget of €160 billion, with less than 10% of that being spent on R&D.)

Largest cities

The United States has dozens of major cities, including 11 of the 55 global cities of all types — with three "alpha" global cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The figures expressed below are for populations within city limits. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metro area populations, although the top three would be unchanged. Note that some cities not listed (such as Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) are still considered important on the basis of other factors and issues, including culture, economics, heritage, and politics. The twenty largest cities, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 estimates, are as follows:

Economy

The United States has the largest single-country economy in the world, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $40,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. gross domestic product The largest industry of the U.S. is now service, which employs roughly three quarters of the U.S. work force. The United States has many natural resources, including oil and gas, metals, and such minerals as gold, soda ash, and zinc. In agriculture, the U.S. is a top producer of, among other crops, corn, soy beans, and wheat; the United States is a net exporter of food. The U.S. manufacturing sector produces goods such as, cars, airplanes, steel, and electronics, among many others. Economic activity varies greatly from one part of the country to another, with many industries being largely dependent on a certain city or region; New York City is the center of the American financial, publishing, broadcasting, and advertising industries; Silicon Valley is the country’s primary location for high-technology companies, while Los Angeles is the most important center for film production. The Midwest is known for its reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry, with Detroit, Michigan, serving as the center of the American automotive industry; the Great Plains are known as the "breadbasket" of America for their tremendous agricultural output; the intermountain region serves as a mining hub and natural gas resource; the Pacific Northwest for fish and timber, while Texas is largely associated with the oil industry; the Southeast is a major hub for both medical research and the textiles industry. Several countries continue to link their currency to the dollar or even use it as a currency (such as Ecuador), although this practice has subsided since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Many markets are also quoted in dollars, such as those of oil and gold. The dollar is also the predominant reserve currency in the world, and more than half of global reserves are in dollars. The largest trading partner of the United States is Canada (19%), followed by China (12%), Mexico (11%), and Japan (8%). More than 50% of total trade is with these four countries. In 2003, the United States was ranked as the third most visited tourist destination in the world; its 40,400,000 visitors ranked behind France's 75,000,000 and Spain's 52,500,000. Labor unions have existed since the 19th century, and grew large and powerful from the 1930s to the 1950s. See Labor history of the United States. Since 1970 they have shrunk in the private sector and now cover fewer than 8% of the workers. However union membership has grown rapidly in the public sector, especially among teachers, nurses, police, postal workers, and municipal clerks. There have been few strikes in recent years. The United States' imports exceed exports by 80%, leading to an annual trade deficit of $700,000,000,000, or 6% of gross domestic product. It is the largest debtor nation in the world, with total gross foreign debt of over $13,000,000,000,000 (2005 estimate); and it absorbs more than 50% of global savings annually. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has increased the use of neoliberal economic policies that reduce government intervention and reduce the size of the welfare state, backing away from the more interventionist Keynsian economic policies that had been in favor since the Great Depression. As a result, the United States provides fewer government-delivered social welfare services than most industrialized nations, choosing instead to keep its tax burden lower and relying more heavily on the free market and private charities. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level ($5.15 per-hour), including the highest, Washington State at $7.35. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two--Ohio and Kansas--are below; and six do not have state laws. America's wealth is relatively highly concentrated. The average C.E.O. earns 500 times the typical amount a worker grosses, this is up from 25 times in the late 1970s. In terms of wealth the top 1% of Americans own 40% of all assets and 50.1% of the country's income goes to the top twenty percent of households. Average wages for the majority of employees have been largely stagnating since the 1970s. America's poverty line defined as a family of four earning less than $19,157 is at 12.7% of the general population. Approximately one out of every five children in the United States grows up below the official poverty line. Among racial groups; African Americans have the lowest median income while Asians had the highest. Regionally, the southern states had the lowest median incomes while the West Coast and New England had the highest. The current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked that the U.S.’s growing income inequality since the 1970s is, "not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing."[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm] However, Greenspan also noted, "...you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has. But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."

Transportation

Alan Greenspan ]] Because the United States is a relatively young nation, most of the development of U.S. cities has taken place since the invention of the automobile. To link its vast territory, the United States built a network of high-capacity, high-speed highways, of which the most important element is the Interstate Highway system, commissioned in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and modeled after the German Autobahn. The United States also has a transcontinental rail system, which is used for moving freight across the lower forty-eight states. Passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak, which serves forty-six of the lower forty-eight states. Many cities in the United States have extensive mass-transit systems. New York City operates one of the world's largest and most heavily used subway systems. The regional rail and bus networks that extend into Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut are among the most heavily used in the world. Air travel is often preferred for destinations over 300 miles (500 kilometers) away. In terms of passengers, seventeen of the world's thirty busiest airports in 2004 were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; in terms of cargo, in the same year, twelve of the world's thirty busiest airports were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Memphis International Airport. There are several major seaports in the United States; the three busiest are the Port of Los Angeles, California; the Port of Long Beach, California; and the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others include Houston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Seattle, Washington; plus, outside the contiguous forty-eight states, Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Society

Demographics

Hawaii The mean center of the U.S. population continues to drift farther west and south. The fastest growing region is the western United States followed by the southern portion. According to Census 2000, the states that saw the greatest increases from 1990 were: Nevada (66.3%), Arizona (40%), Colorado (30.6%), Utah (29.6%), Idaho (28.5%), Georgia (26.4%), Florida (23.5%), Texas (22.8%), North Carolina (21.4%), and Washington (21.1%). [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t2/tab03.pdf]

Ethnicity and race

:Main article: Racial demographics of the United States The United States is a very racially diverse country. According to the 2000 census, it has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. The majority of Americans descend from white European immigrants who arrived at the establishment of the first colonies (most after Reconstruction). This majority--69.1% in 2000--decreases each year, and is expected to become a plurality within a few decades. The most frequently stated European ancestries are German (15.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (8.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). Many immigrants also hail from Slavic countries such as Poland and Russia. Other significant immigrant populations came from eastern and southern Europe and French Canada. Russia Hispanics from Mexico and South and Central America are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population (2000 census). People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans (Blacks). African Americans are spread throughout the country, but their presence is largest in the South. Asian Americans--including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders--are a third significant minority (3.7% of the population in 2000). Most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up 0.9% of the population (2000 census). About 35% live on Indian reservations.

Religion

Polls estimate that just under 80 percent of Americans are Christians of various denominations. The other 20 percent comprises other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, other various faiths, and those without a specific religion. The United States is noteworthy among developed nations for its relatively high level of religiosity. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 44% of Americans attend a religious service at least once a week. However, this rate is not uniform across the country; attendance is more common in the Bible Belt—composed largely of Southern and Midwestern states—than in the Northeast and West Coast. In the Southern states, Baptists are the largest group, followed by Methodists; Roman Catholics are dominant in the Northeast and in large parts of the Midwest due to their being settled by descendants of Catholic immigrants from Europe (such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) or other parts of North America (mainly Quebec and Puerto Rico). The rest of the country for the most part has a complex mixture of various Christian groups.

Education

West Coast's home at Monticello and the University of Virginia (library building shown above, and designed by Jefferson), the only collegiate campus on the list. Both sites are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.]] In the United States, education is a state, not federal, responsibility, and the laws and standards vary considerably. However, the federal government, through the Department of Education, is involved with funding of some programs and exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. In most states, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten, which children normally enter at age 5, and following through 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is an artist who specializes in drawing cartoons. The term can also be applied to those who produce comic books, anime, manga, as well as comic strip creators and those working in animation. Those artists whose work is said to have a "cartoony" style are also called cartoonists. A cartoonist traditionally sketches the picture out roughly in pencil first, before going over the sketches in black ink, using either brushes or metal nibbed pens. Cartoonists whose work is intended for online publication increasingly work in digital media. Large comic book publishers (such as Marvel or DC) utilize teams of cartoonists to produce the art (typically one doing the pencil work and another doing the inking, with the coloring added digitally by colorists). When a consistent artistic style is wanted among different cartoonists (such as Archie Comics), character model sheets may be used as reference. Traditional animation houses employ specialized cartoonists, called "inbetweeners", to draw the motions connecting the broad movements of a character.

See also


- List of cartoonists
- Editorial cartoonist
- Comic strip creator
- Comic book creator
- Mangaka

External links


- [http://www.cartoon-crn.com/index.htm Cartoonists Rights Network] Category:Art and design workers
- Cartoonist ja:漫画家 simple:Cartoonist

October 2

October 2 is the 275th day (276th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 90 days remaining.

Events


- 1187 - Siege of Jerusalem: Saladin captures Jerusalem after 88 years of Crusader rule.
- 1535 - Jacques Cartier discovers Montreal, Quebec.
- 1780 - American Revolutionary War: British spy John Andre is hanged by American forces for his role in Benedict Arnold's p sell West Point to the British Army.
- 1789 - George Washington transmits the proposed Constitutional amendments (the so called "Bill of Rights") to the States for ratification.
- 1835 - The Texas Revolution begins with the Battle of Gonzales: Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, Texas, but encounter stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia.
- 1836 - Naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle after a five-year journey collecting biological data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution.
- 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Saltville - Union forces attack Saltville, Virginia, but are defeated by Confederate troops.
- 1872 - On this day, Phileas Fogg sets off on his round world trip to return on December 21st or lose £20,000 in the book "Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne
- 1889 - In Colorado, Nicholas Creede strikes it rich in silver during the last great silver boom of the American old west.
- 1889 - In Washington, DC, the first international Conference of American States begins.
- 1919 - US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed.
- 1924 - The Geneva Protocol is adopted as a means to strengthen the League of Nations.
- 1928 - The "Prelature of the Holy Cross and the Work of God", commonly known as Opus Dei, was founded by Saint Josemaría Escrivá.
- 1935 - Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
- 1941 - World War II: In Operation Typhoon, Germany begins an all-out offensive against Moscow.
- 1944 - World War II: Nazi troops end the Warsaw Uprising.
- 1950 - The comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published in seven US newspapers.
- 1951 - Gordon Matthew Sumner (Sting) of the band The Police is born.
- 1955 - The ENIAC computer is deactivated at 11:45 PM.
- 1955 - Alfred Hitchcock Presents debuts (last new episode aired on June 26, 1962).
- 1958 - Guinea declares itself independent from France.
- 1959 - The Twilight Zone pilot premieres.
- 1962 - Johnny Carson debuts as host of The Tonight Show.
- 1967 - Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first African-American justice of United States Supreme Court.
- 1968 - A peaceful student demonstration in Mexico City ends in the Tlatelolco massacre.
- 1978 - Baseball: Bucky Dent hits a home run for the New York Yankees to defeat the Boston Red Sox in a one-game play off at Fenway Park. The home run was Dent's 5th of the season.
- 1990 - A Chinese airline Boeing 737-247 is hijacked; after landing at Guangzhou it crashes into two airliners on the ground, killing 132
- 1992 - The Carandiru Massacre takes place after a riot in the Carandiru prison system in São Paulo, Brazil.
- 1996 - The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
- 1996 - An AeroPerú Boeing 757 crashes in Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Lima, Peru killing 70.
- 1996 - Lance Armstrong is diagnosed with testicular cancer that spreads to his liver, lungs, and brain.
- 2000 - NBC Today Show expanded it to three hours (7:00–10:00 A.M. Eastern Time/Pacific Time; 6:00–9:00 A.M. Central Time/Mountain Time)
- 2000 - The science fiction TV-series Andromeda premiered, it ended on May 13, 2005.
- 2001 - Bankruptcy of Swissair.
- 2001 - First palindromic MM-DD-YYYY date since August 31, 1380.
- 2004 - American Samoa joins the North American Numbering Plan.
- 2005 - The Ethan Allen tour boat capsized on Lake George in Upstate New York, killing twenty-one people.

Births


- 1452 - King Richard III of England (d. 1485)
- 1539 - Saint Charles Borromeo, Italian cardinal (d. 1584)
- 1644 - François-Timoléon de Choisy, French writer (d. 1724)
- 1722 - Leopold Widhalm, Austrian luthier (d. 1776)
- 1737 - Francis Hopkinson, American author and signer of the Declaration of Independence (d. 1791)
- 1768 - William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, British general and politician (d. 1854)
- 1798 - King Charles Albert of Sardinia (d. 1849)
- 1800 - Nat Turner, American leader of slave uprising (d. 1831)
- 1832 - Edward Burnett Tylor, English anthropologist (d. 1917)
- 1847 - Paul von Hindenburg, German officer and politician (d. 1934)
- 1851 - Ferdinand Foch, French soldier (d. 1929)
- 1852 -