Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America

18 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Richard Zietz/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Richard Zietz/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centuries, they began fighting the American Revolutionary War in April 1775 and formed the United States of America by declaring full independence in July 1776. Just prior to declaring independence, the Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: New England (New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Connecticut); Middle (New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware); Southern (Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; and Georgia). The Thirteen Colonies came to have very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems, dominated by Protestant English-speakers. The first of these colonies was Virginia Colony in 1607, a Southern colony. While all these colonies needed to become economically viable, the founding of the New England colonies, as well as the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, were substantially motivated by their founders’ concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The Middle Colonies were established on an earlier Dutch colony, New Netherland. All the Thirteen Colonies were part of Britain’s possessions in the New World, which also included territory in Canada, Florida, and the Caribbean.   read more…

Yale University in New Haven

24 September 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  6 minutes

Benjamin Franklin College courtyard © Helpfullguy99/cc-by-sa-4.0

Benjamin Franklin College courtyard © Helpfullguy99/cc-by-sa-4.0

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Collegiate School was renamed Yale College in 1718 to honor the school’s largest private benefactor for the first century of its existence, Elihu Yale.   read more…

Theme Week New England – Connecticut

22 February 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  10 minutes

Hartford - Connecticut State Capitol © flickr.com - jglazer75/cc-by-2.0

Hartford – Connecticut State Capitol © flickr.com – jglazer75/cc-by-2.0

Connecticut is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. The state is named for the Connecticut River, a major U.S. river that approximately bisects the state. The word “Connecticut” is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for “long tidal river”. The capital is Hartford. Other big cities are Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, New Britain, Meriden, Bristol, West Haven, Milford and Middletown. Connecticut is the third smallest state by area, the 29th most populous, and the fourth most densely populated of the 50 United States. It is known as the “Constitution State“, the “Nutmeg State”, the “Provisions State”, and the “Land of Steady Habits”. It was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States. Much of southern and western Connecticut (along with the majority of the state’s population) is part of the New York Metropolitan Area, as well as New York City and the five largest cities in New Jersey (Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, and Edison), which is widely referred to as the Tri-State area. Connecticut’s center of population is in Cheshire, which is also located within the Tri-State area.   read more…

Theme Week New England

20 February 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Bon voyage, Theme Weeks Reading Time:  10 minutes

Massachusetts - Sunset on Cape Cod Bay © flickr.com - PapaDunes/cc-by-sa-2.0

Massachusetts – Sunset on Cape Cod Bay © flickr.com – PapaDunes/cc-by-sa-2.0

New England is a geographical region which comprises six states of the northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and south, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. The physical geography of New England is diverse for such a small area; southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. With the Atlantic fall line lying so close to the coast, numerous industrial cities were able to take advantage of water power along the numerous rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south. Indian summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that sometimes occurs in autumn in New England. The US National Weather Service defines this as weather conditions that are sunny and clear with above normal temperatures, occurring late-September to mid-November.   read more…

The sail training ship USCGC Eagle

1 May 2013 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  3 minutes

© USCG - Brown, Telfair H. PA1

© USCG – Brown, Telfair H. PA1

The USCGC Eagle is a 295-foot (90 m) barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the United States Coast Guard. She is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in American military service. She is the seventh U.S. Navy or Coast Guard ship to bear the name in a line dating back to 1792. Each summer, Eagle conducts cruises with cadets from her homeport at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London (Connecticut) and candidates from the Officer Candidate School for periods ranging from a week to two months. These cruises fulfill multiple roles; the primary mission is training the cadets and officer candidates, but the ship also performs a public relations role. Often, Eagle makes calls at foreign ports as a goodwill ambassador.   read more…

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