Glendale in Arizona

22 November 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

Glendale Glitters around Christmas © Gage Skidmore/cc-by-sa-3.0

Glendale Glitters around Christmas © Gage Skidmore/cc-by-sa-3.0

Glendale is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, located approximately 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Downtown Phoenix. It hasd a population of 248,325. In the late 1800s the area that is now Glendale was all desert. William John Murphy, a native of New Hartford, New York, who resided in the town of Flagstaff in what was then the territory of Arizona, was in charge of building the 40-mile-long (64 km) Arizona Canal from Granite Reef to New River for the Arizona Canal Company. In 1885, he completed the canal, which would bring water to the desert land. Murphy was deep in debt, since he had agreed to be paid in Arizona Canal Company stock and bonds and land instead of cash.   read more…

The Super Bowl LIV in Miami Gardens

31 January 2020 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida, Sport Reading Time:  15 minutes

© nfl.com

© nfl.com

The NFL Super Bowl LIV, the 54th Super Bowl and the 50th modern-era National Football League (NFL) championship game (American Football) will decide the league champion for the league’s 2019 and 100th season. The game will be played on February 2, 2020 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. This will be the 11th Super Bowl hosted by the South Florida region and the sixth Super Bowl hosted in Miami Gardens, which hosted Super Bowl XLIV ten years earlier. At the beginning of the Super Bowl, America the Beautiful (America the Beautiful on YouTube) and the American national anthem (The Star-Spangled BannerUS National Anthem by Beyonce) is intoned, followed by a fly-over over the stadium by a flying unit of the United States Armed Forces (one will have to wait in vain for a while to be able to watch the overflight by the new 6th armed forces, the United States Space Force). This year’s legendary halftime show will be co-headlined by the American artist Jennifer Lopez and the Colombian artist Shakira.   read more…

Atlanta in Georgia

29 March 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  10 minutes

Piedmont Park and Downtown skyline © flickr.com - seanpinto/cc-by-2.0

Piedmont Park and Downtown skyline © flickr.com – seanpinto/cc-by-2.0

The city serves as the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, home to 5.8 million people and the ninth-largest metropolitan area in the nation. Atlanta is the seat of Fulton County and a small portion of the city extends eastward into DeKalb County. Atlanta was founded as a transportation hub at the intersection of two railroad lines in 1837. After being mostly burned to the ground during the American Civil War, the city rose from its ashes to become a national center of commerce and the unofficial capital of the “New South“. During the 1960s, Atlanta became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and many other locals playing major roles in the movement’s leadership. In the decades following, the city earned a reputation as “too busy to hate” for the relatively progressive views of its citizens and leaders compared to other cities in the “Deep South“. During the modern era, Atlanta has attained international prominence as a major air transportation hub, with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the world’s busiest airport by passenger traffic since 1998.   read more…

Tampa on the west coast of Florida

21 August 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  14 minutes

Henry B. Plant Museum © James E. Scholz/cc-by-sa-4.0

Henry B. Plant Museum © James E. Scholz/cc-by-sa-4.0

Tampa is a major city in, and the county seat of, Hillsborough County. It is located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico, and is the largest city in the Tampa Bay Area. The city has a population of 377,000. Today, Tampa is part of the metropolitan area most commonly referred to as the “Tampa Bay Area”. For U.S. Census purposes, Tampa is part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The four-county area is composed of roughly 2.9 million residents, making it the second largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA) in the state, and the fourth largest in the Southeastern United States, behind Miami, Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. Tampa displays a wide variety of architectural designs and styles. Most of Tampa’s high rises demonstrate post-modern architecture. The design for the renovated Tampa Museum of Art displays post-modern architecture, while the city hall and the Tampa Theatre belong to Art Deco architecture. The Tampa mayor Pam Iorio made the redevelopment of Tampa’s downtown, especially residential development, a priority. Several residential and mixed-development high-rises have been constructed. Another of Mayor Iorio’s initiatives was the Tampa Riverwalk, a mixed-use path along the Hillsborough River in downtown. Channelside was recently approved to undergo major renovations by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik along with other investors. Several museums are part of the plan, including new homes for the Tampa Bay History Center, the Glazer Children’s Museum, and the Tampa Museum of Art.   read more…

American Football

9 January 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Sport Reading Time:  11 minutes

Sun Life Stadium - Raiders running back Phillip Adams and Miami Dolphins cornerback Jimmy Wilson © flickr.com - June Rivera/cc-by-sa-3.0

Sun Life Stadium, today the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami
Raiders running back Phillip Adams and Miami Dolphins cornerback Jimmy Wilson
© flickr.com – June Rivera/cc-by-sa-3.0

American football evolved in the United States, originating from the sports of association football and rugby football. The first game of American football was played on November 6, 1869, between two college teams, Rutgers and Princeton, under rules based on the association football rules of the time. During the latter half of the 1870s, colleges playing association football switched to the Rugby Union code, which allowed carrying the ball. A set of rule changes drawn up from 1880 onward by Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football”, established the snap, eleven-player teams, and the concept of downs; later rule changes legalized the forward pass, created the neutral zone, and specified the size and shape of the football.   read more…

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