It is possible to drive from Virginia to Nebraska and only travel
through 2 states; Tennessee and Missouri. Travel distance from Bristol,
Virginia to Brownville, Nebraska is 1,054 miles. |
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
VIRGINIA TO NEBRASKA
Thursday, January 7, 2021
WILLIAM PENN STATUE
William
Penn is a
bronze statue by Alexander Milne Calder of William Penn, the founder and namesake
for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
It
is located atop the Philadelphia City Hall. It was installed in 1894. It was
cast in fourteen sections and took almost two years to finish.
At
thirty-seven feet in height, it is tallest statue atop any building in the
world.
FUN
FACT: For almost 90 years, an unwritten gentlemen’s agreement forbade any
building in the city from rising above the hat on the Penn statue. This
agreement ended in 1985, when final approval was given to the Liberty Place
complex. Its centerpieces are two skyscrapers, One Liberty Place and Two
Liberty Place, which rose well above the height of Penn’s hat.
SEE
ALSO: Philadelphia City Hall
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WILLIAM PENN STATUE ATOP PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL |
1894 - WILLIAM PENN STATUE READY FOR LIFTUP |
PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL
Philadelphia
City Hall serves
as the seat of the municipal government of the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It houses the chambers of the Philadelphia
City Council and the offices of the Mayor of Philadelphia. It is also a
courthouse, serving as the seat of the First Judicial District of
Pennsylvania, and houses the Civil Trial and Orphans' Court Divisions of the
Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia.
Built
of brick, white marble, and limestone, Philadelphia City Hall is the world’s
largest free-standing masonry building. The weight of the building is borne by granite and
brick walls up to 22 feet thick. The building structure used over 88 million
bricks and thousands of tons of marble and granite.
The
building was constructed from 1871 to 1901. Designed to be the world’s
tallest building, it was surpassed during construction by the Washington
Monument and the Eiffel Tower. Upon completion of its tower in 1894, it
became the world’s tallest habitable building. It was also the first secular
building to have this distinction, as all previous world’s tallest buildings
were religious structures, including European cathedrals and – for the
previous 3,800 years – the Great Pyramid of Giza.
With
almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the largest municipal building in the United
States.
FUN
FACT: In the 1950s, the city council investigated tearing down City Hall for
a new building elsewhere. They found that the demolition would have bankrupted
the city due to the building’s masonry construction.
SEE
ALSO: William Penn Statue
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NORTHSIDE OF PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL By Toniklemm - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81012838 |
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
GULMARG GOLF CLUB
The Gulmarg Golf Club is a public golf course in a meadow at Gulmarg in Kashmir, India. The golf course, at an elevation of 8,690 feet above sea level, is the highest green golf course in the world. The golf course gets covered in by a thick layer of snow during the winter. It is open from April to November. The
18-hole course features India’s longest hole, a 610-yard part 5. It is also
the longest golf course in India. |
Gulmarg Golf Course, Gulmarg, Kashmir By Shibnath Samanta - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49458221 |
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
EUREKA (FERRYBOAT)
Eureka is a side-wheel paddle steamboat, built in 1890, which is now preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Originally named Ukiah to commemorate the railway’s recent extension into the City of Ukiah, the boat was built by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon yard. The ship originally carried people between San Francisco and Tiburon during the day and hauled railroad freight cars at night. Ukiah had two sets of standard gauge tracks that ran the length of the main deck. Passenger accommodations were on the upper deck. During the First World War, Ukiah was used to ferry heavy loads of railroad cars across the bay for the United States Railroad Administration. Due to stresses brought on by the heavy loads, Ukiah was rebuilt at the Southern Pacific Yards in Oakland between 1920-1922, and emerged as the auto/passenger ferry Eureka. Between 1922 and 1941 Eureka was on the Sausalito commuter run, departing Sausalito at 7:30 and San Francisco at 5:15. As a passenger ferry, she could carry 2,300 passengers and 120 automobiles. At that time, she was the biggest and the fastest double-ended passenger ferry boat in the world – 299 feet 6 inches long, with an extreme width of 78 feet and gross tonnage of 2,420 tons. Completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 doomed ferry service between San Francisco and Marin and service was completely abandoned in 1941. Although
a number of large ferryboats survive in the U.S., Eureka is the only one with
a wooden hull. Beneath
her upper works, the round-bottomed hull is 42 feet wide and 277 feet long. Her
walking beam engine was built in 1890 by the Fulton Iron Works in San Francisco.
It is the only walking beam engine in the United States preserved in a
floating vessel. Eureka is the largest existing wooden ship in the world. |
FERRYBOAT EUREKA |
Monday, January 4, 2021
MOBILE CITY, TEXAS
Mobile City is a city in Rockwall County, Texas. The population was 188 at
the 2010 census. It currently has the highest population density for any
city in Texas, and is the only Texas city that is on the highest population
densities of American cities list. It currently ranks 74th on the list,
and has the lowest population for any city on that list. It is tied with
Poplar Hills, Kentucky as the smallest city by total area on the list.
Mobile City consists of a mobile home park, liquor store, and convenience store. Originally
a mobile home park outside of city limits, it was incorporated on January 25,
1990, so that a beer/wine/liquor store could open. |
Sigel's Liquor Store in Mobile City, TX By Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44863423 |
DEVON ISLAND
Devon
Island is
located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada.
With
an area of 21,331 square miles (slightly smaller than Croatia), it the
largest uninhabited island in the world. It the second-largest of the Queen Elizabeth
Islands, Canada’s sixth-largest island, and the 27th-largest
island in the world.
|
Sunday, January 3, 2021
GREAT LAKES GEOGRAPHY
The Province of Ontario includes portions of 4 of the 5 Great Lakes, with the exception being Lake Michigan. The
State of Michigan includes portions of 4 of the 5 Great Lakes, with the
exception being Lake Ontario.
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KENNETH C. GRIFFIN – RESIDENTIAL PURCHASES – NYC AND CHICAGO
Kenneth Griffin, born October 15, 1968 is an American billionaire hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder, chief executive (CEO), Co-Chief Investment Officer (Co-CIO) and majority owner of the investment firm Citadel. Griffin owns an expansive private luxury real estate portfolio valued at around $1 billion. In 2019 Griffin set the record for the most expensive residential sale ever closed in the U.S., when he purchased roughly 24,000 square feet across three floors at 220 Central Park South for $238 million. The space was “raw space” meaning Griffin had to build it out. In 2017 Griffin, who is a resident of Chicago, purchased a penthouse apartment atop the No. 9 Walton, a luxury condo tower, for $58.75 million. The purchase broke the record for the most expensive sale in Chicago’s history. |
220 Central Park South is a residential skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, situated along Billionaires' Row on the south side of Central Park South between Broadway and Seventh Avenue. 220 Central Park South is composed of two sections: a 70-story, 950-foot tower on 58th Street that is the 17th-tallest building in New York City, and an 18-story section on Central Park South. |
Looking east along 58th Street across 9th Avenue By Jim.henderson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82938492 |