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Albany County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York, generally located in the vicinity of Albany, New York, the capital of New York State. Albany is also the county seat of Albany County. It is part of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area. The name is from the title of the Duke of York and Albany, who became James II of England. As of the 2000 census, the population was 294,565. As originally established, Albany County had an indefinite amount of land, but has only 530 square miles (1,372.69 km²) as of March 3, 1888. Albany County is governed by a County Executive and a 39-member County Legislature. The current County Executive is Michael G. Breslin (D) and the Chair of the Legislature is Charles Houghtailing (D). Other county elected officials include County Sheriff James Campbell, County District Attorney David Soares, and County Comptroller Michael Conners. More selected articles • Read more...

Hurricane Floyd was the sixth named storm, fourth hurricane, and third major hurricane in the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season. Floyd triggered the second largest evacuation in US history (behind Hurricane Rita) when 2.6 million coastal residents of five states including Florida were ordered from their homes as Hurricane Floyd approached. The Cape Verde-type hurricane formed off the coast of Africa and lasted from September 7 to September 19, peaking in strength as a very strong Category 4 hurricane &mdash; just short of the highest possible rating &mdash; on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. It was among the largest Atlantic hurricanes of its strength ever recorded.

Floyd struck The Bahamas at peak strength, causing heavy damage. It then paralleled the East Coast of the United States, causing massive evacuations and costly preparations. The storm weakened significantly, however, before making landfall in North Carolina as a Category 2 hurricane, and caused further damage as it travelled up the Mid-Atlantic region and into New England. The hurricane produced torrential rainfall in eastern North Carolina, adding more rain to an area hit by Hurricane Dennis just weeks earlier. The rains caused widespread flooding over a period of several weeks; nearly every river basin in the eastern part of the state exceeded 500-year flood levels. In total, Floyd was responsible for 57 fatalities and $4.5 billion ($5.7 billion in 2006 U.S. dollars) in damage, mostly in North Carolina. More selected articles • Read more...

Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) is the first intercollegiate fraternity established by African Americans. Founded on December 4, 1906, on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a social fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha has initiated over 175,000 men into the organization and has been open to men of all races since 1940. The fraternity utilizes motifs and artifacts from Ancient Egypt to represent the organization and preserves its archives at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

The founders, Henry Callis, Charles Chapman, Eugene Jones, George Kelley, Nathaniel Murray, Robert Ogle, and Vertner Tandy, are collectively known as the "Seven Jewels". The fraternity expanded when a second chapter was chartered at Howard University in 1907. Beginning in 1908, Alpha Phi Alpha became the prototype for other Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLO). Today, there are over 680 active Alpha chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, the West Indies, and the Virgin Islands.Alpha Phi Alpha evolved into a primarily service organization and has provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World Wars, Civil Rights Movements, and addresses social issues such as apartheid, AIDS, urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues affecting people of color. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial and World Policy Council are programs of Alpha Phi Alpha, and the fraternity jointly leads philanthropic programming initiatives with March of Dimes, Head Start, Boy Scouts of America and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America More selected articles • Read more...

Queens is the largest in area and the second most populous of the five boroughs of New York City, New York, USA. Located on the western portion of Long Island, it is home to New York City's two major airports (John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia), the New York Mets baseball team, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (home of the annual U.S. Open), Kaufman Astoria Studios, Silvercup Studios, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and Queens Center (the most profitable per-square-foot mall in America).

American Community Survey, immigrants comprise 47.6% of Queens residents. With a population of 2.2 million it is the second most populous borough in New York City (behind Brooklyn) and the tenth most populous county in the United States. The 2.2 million figure is the highest historical population for the borough. Were each borough an independent city, Queens would be the 4th largest city in the United States. Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of New York and was named for the then-queen consort, Catherine of Braganza, the Catholic wife of Charles II. The borough is often considered one of the more suburban boroughs of New York City. Neighborhoods in central (except those situated along Queens Boulevard), southern, and eastern Queens have a look and feel similar to the bordering suburbs of western Nassau County. In its northwestern section, however, Queens is home to many urban neighborhoods and several central business districts. Long Island City, on the Queens' waterfront across from Manhattan, is the site of the Citicorp Building, the tallest skyscraper in New York City outside of Manhattan. More selected articles • Read more...

The James A. Farley Building is New York City's General Post Office and is located at 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. The Post Office is officially named "The James A. Farley Building" and consists of the old general post office building and its western annex. The Farley building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and occupies two full city blocks, an eight-acre footprint straddling the tracks of the Northeast Corridor (Farley Corridor) in western Midtown Manhattan. The building was designated in 1982 as a monument to the political career of former Postmaster General James Farley.

The Farley Post Office is the only Post Office in New York City that is open to the public 24 hours and 7 days a week. The James A. Farley Building in New York boasts the longest giant order Corinthian colonnade in the world. The James A. Farley Building was constructed in two stages. The original monumental front half was built in 1912 and opened for postal business in 1914; the building was doubled in 1934 by James A.Farley as Postmaster General, replacing the 1878 Post Office at Park Row and Broadway. Where it backs up to Ninth Avenue: along the side streets, McKim, Mead, and White's range, which continues its Corinthian giant order as pilasters between the window bays, was simply repeated in order to carry the facade to Ninth Avenue. More selected articles • Read more...

Kaaterskill Falls is a two-drop waterfall located near in the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York, on the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, between the hamlets of Haines Falls and Palenville in Greene County's Town of Hunter. The dual cascades total 260 feet (79 m) in height, making the falls the highest in New York, and one of the Eastern United States' taller waterfalls.

The falls are one of America's oldest tourist attractions, with it appearing in some of the most prominent books, essays, poems and paintings of the early 19th century. Long before Alexis de Tocqueville's famous essay on America, Kaaterskill Falls was lauded as a place where a traveler could see a wilder image, a sort of primieval Eden. Beginning with Thomas Cole's first visit in 1825, they became an icon subject for painters of the Hudson River School, setting the wilderness ideal for American landscape painting. The Falls also inspired "Catterskill Falls", a poem by William Cullen Bryant. The falls, like the clove and creek with which they share a name, are a relatively recent addition to the Catskills in geologic time. They evolved through stream capture at the end of the Illinoian Stage, when runoff from the glacial melt that created North-South Lake began to flow away from the nearby headwaters of Schoharie Creek and down the steep slopes of the newly-created clove. The rushing waters of what would become known as Spruce Creek eroded a natural amphitheater at roughly 2,000 feet (609 m) on the south slope of South Mountain. More selected articles • Read more...

The Catskill Mountains (also known as simply the Catskills), a natural area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau. They are sometimes considered an extension of the Appalachian Mountains into Upstate New York, although they are not geologically related. The Catskills are west of the Hudson River and lie within the bounds of six counties (Otsego, Delaware, Sullivan, Schoharie, Greene, and Ulster). The Catskill Mountains are also considered a physiographic section of the larger Appalachian Plateau province, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian physiographic division.

At the eastern end of the range the mountains begin quite dramatically with the Catskill Escarpment rising up suddenly from the Hudson Valley. The western boundary is far less certain, as the mountains gradually decline in height and grade into the rest of the Allegheny Plateau. Nor is there a consensus on where the Catskills end to the north or south, with it being certain only that by the time one reaches either I-88, the Delaware River or the Shawangunk Ridge that one is no longer in the Catskills. More selected articles • Read more...

The Transportation in New York is made up of some of the most extensive and one of the oldest transportation infrastructures in the country. Engineering difficulties because of the terrain of New York State and the unique issues of New York City brought on by urban crowding have had to be overcome since the state was young. Population expansion of the state generally followed the path of the early waterways, first the Hudson River and then the Erie Canal. Today, railroad lines and the New York State Thruway follow the same general route.

Transportation was used early on to support industry and commerce in New York State. The Boston Post Road, between what then the relatively small City of New York and Boston, began as a path to deliver the post using post riders (the first ride to lay out the Upper Post Road starting January 22, 1673), and developed into a wagon, or stage road in later colonial times. During the 19th century, pieces of the road were taken over and improved by turnpike companies. In the 1910s and 1920s, the Lower Post Road alignment (and realignments made to the route) was a National Auto Trail known as the Boston Post Road. Large sections of the various routes are still given the name Boston Post Road, much of it is now U.S. Route 1. By the American Revolutionary War, the colonial Province of New York was still small and relatively sparsely populated. More selected articles • Read more...

The New York City Transit Police Department, officially established in 1953, was a transit police department responsible for the protection of New York City Subway and bus lines. In 1936, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia authorized the hiring of Special Patrolmen for the New York City Subway system, these patrolmen eventually became the Transit Police. In 1949 the department was officially divorced from the New York City Police Department, but was eventually fully re-integrated in 1995 as the Transit Bureau of the New York City Police Department by New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. In 1997, the Transit Bureau became the Transit Division within the newly formed Transportation Bureau. In July of 1999, the Transit Division once again became the Transit Bureau. Headquarters for the NYPD Transit Bureau are located at 130 Livingston Street in Brooklyn Heights.

One main task of the Transit Police was its defense of the subway system from defacement. Graffiti was very prominent throughout the subway system by the mid-1980s and the city government took a hard line in response, though some saw it instead as a "social trend" and a sign of diversity. The Transit Police, and specifically a new unit called the Vandal Squad began to fine and arrest those painting graffiti. They also made a policy to remove any work of graffiti within 24 hours of its creation. By the end of the 1980s, the Transit Police had effectively solved the problem of graffiti in the subway system. More selected articles • Read more...

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, long known as a major African-American cultural and business center. After being associated for much of the twentieth century with crime and poverty, it is now experiencing social and economic gentrification.

Harlem stretches from the East River to the Hudson River between 155th Street&mdash;where it meets Washington Heights&mdash;to a ragged border along the south. Central Harlem begins at 110th Street, at the northern boundary of Central Park; Spanish Harlem extends east Harlem's boundaries south to 96th Street, while in the west it begins north of Upper West Side, which gives an irregular border west of Morningside Avenue. Harlem's boundaries have changed over the years; as Ralph Ellison observed: "Wherever Negroes live uptown is considered Harlem." The first European settlement in what is now Harlem was by Hendrick de Forest and Dutch settlers in 1637. More selected articles • Read more...

Wall Street is a street in lower Manhattan island, New York City, USA. It runs east from Broadway downhill to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. Wall Street was the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange, over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. Wall Street is also shorthand (or a metonym) for "influential financial interests" in the U.S," as well as for the financial industry in the New York City area. Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, NYMEX, and NYBOT. Many New York-based financial firms are no longer headquartered on Wall Street, but are in midtown Manhattan, the outer boroughs of the city, Long Island, Westchester County, Fairfield County, Connecticut, or New Jersey.

The name of the street derives from the fact that during the 17th century, Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony. Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, in part using African slaves, led the Dutch in the construction of a stronger stockade. A strengthened 12 ft wall of timber and earth was created by 1653 fortified by palisades. The wall was created, and strengthened over time, as a defense against attack from various Native American tribes, New England colonists, and the British. More selected articles • Read more...

Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City that includes roughly the area between 34th Street and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. The neighborhood provides transportation, hospital and warehouse infrastructure support to the Midtown Manhattan business district. Its gritty reputation had depressed real estate prices relative to much of the rest of Manhattan until the early 1990s.

Throughout its history, Hell's Kitchen has figured prominently in the New York City underworld, especially in Irish-American organized crime circles. Gangsters like Owney Madden, bootleggers like Bill Dwyer, and Westies leaders Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone were Hell's Kitchen natives. The rough and tumble days on the West Side figure prominently in Damon Runyon stories. Various Manhattan ethnic conflicts formed the basis of the musical and film West Side Story. More selected articles • Read more...

Hunter Mountain is located in the towns of Hunter and Lexington, just south of the village of Hunter, in Greene County, New York, United States. At approximately 4,040 feet (1,234 m) in elevation, it is the highest peak in the county and the second-highest peak in the Catskill Mountains.

While the mountain is closely associated with the highly popular eponymous ski area built around the Colonel's Chair ridge at the mountain's northwest corner, that takes up only a small portion of the mountain. The actual summit, some distance from the ski area, is graced with a fire lookout tower, the highest in the state and second-highest in the Northeast. The former road to it is open to hikers, horses (and possibly mountain bikers in the future). It is the most popular route to the mountain's summit. Hunter takes the shape of a medium-length ridge, rising steeply from Stony Clove Notch in the east, then gently to the summit in the center, and gently back down to the west where the land makes a much less steep drop into Taylor Hollow, the col between it and neighboring Rusk Mountain. As with its eastern neighbor Plateau Mountain, there is a considerable amount of level ground above 3,500 feet (1,067 m), the cutoff elevation for inclusion in the Catskill High Peaks. More selected articles • Read more...

The New York Dolls are an American rock band formed in New York City, United States in 1971. In 2004 the band reformed with three of their original members, two of whom, David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, continue on today and released a new album in 2006. The original bassist, Arthur Kane died shortly after their first reunion concert. The New York Dolls prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era and even later; the Dolls' visual style influenced the look of many new wave and glam metal groups, and their playing style set the tone for many later rock and roll bands.

Initially, the group was composed of singer David Johansen, guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets (who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain after a few months), bass guitarist Arthur "Killer" Kane and drummer Billy Murcia. The original lineup's first performance was on Christmas Eve 1971 at a homeless shelter, the infamous Endicott Hotel.The band was influenced by vintage rhythm and blues, the early Rolling Stones, classic American girl group songs, and anarchic post-psychedelic bands such as the MC5 and the Stooges, as well as then-current glam rockers such as Marc Bolan. They did it their own way, creating something which critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote "doesn't really sound like anything that came before it. More selected articles • Read more...

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and the oldest to have been published continually as a daily. Since 1976, it has been owned by Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and is one of the 10 largest newspapers in the United States. Its editorial offices are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, in Manhattan.

The paper was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$10,000 from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet quite unlike today's tabloid. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, such as Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott, who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party. The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in the country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion. Hamilton chose for his first editor William Coleman, but the most famous 19th century Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. So well respected was the Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864. More selected articles • Read more...

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC or DEC) is responsible for the conservation, improvement, and protection of natural resources within the U.S. state of New York. It was founded in 1970, replacing the previous Conservation Department. The department manages the state forests, Forest Preserve, wildlife management areas and certain other state lands of New York. It is responsible for regulating sport fishing, hunting and trapping within the state, and enforcing environmental laws and regulations.

NYSDEC has an annual budget of approximately $1 billion and employs 3,378 people across the state. It manages over 4 e6acre of protected state-owned land (including all Forest Preserve holdings in the Adirondack and Catskill parks) and another 690,000 acre of privately-owned land on which it holds conservation easements. The department's activities go beyond land management and environmental enforcement to include the publication of a magazine and a state bird atlas, and the operation of three major ski areas. More selected articles • Read more...

Tops is an American supermarket chain based in Williamsville, New York, with stores in the western and central regions of that state, and in northwestern Pennsylvania. It is a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley Private Equity. Tops was co-founded by Armand Castellani, who was born in 1917 in a village outside of Rome, Italy. His family came to the United States in 1920, and eventually settled in Niagara Falls, where his father, Ferrante, opened a small neighborhood grocery store. Following his mother's death in 1933, Castellani left school to help manage the store. He continued to do so until joining the Army in 1941. He attained the rank of captain after five years' service. After World War II, Castellani returned to the family business. In 1951, he set out on his own and opened the Great Bear Market in Niagara Falls. Shortly thereafter, he partnered with Thomas Buscaglia, owner of a grocery equipment firm, T.A. Buscaglia Equipment Co. Throughout the 1950s, Buscaglia, as CEO, and Castellani worked together, entering into a cooperative agreement with other small stores to build the foundation of what was to become the Tops Friendly Markets chain. More selected articles • Read more...

The New York Islanders are a professional ice hockey team that plays in the NHL that is based in Uniondale, a hamlet located on Long Island in Town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, United States. The team is a member of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Islanders began play in 1972 and rapidly developed a dominant team that won four consecutive Stanley Cup championships in the early 1980s. They play their home games at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. With the impending start of the World Hockey Association (WHA) in the fall of 1972, the upstart league had plans to place its New York team in the brand-new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Nassau County. However, Nassau County officials did not consider the WHA a major league and wanted nothing to do with the upstart New York Raiders. The only legal way to keep the Raiders out of the Coliseum was to get an NHL team to play there, so William Shea, who had helped bring the New York Mets to the area a decade earlier, was pressed into service once again. More selected articles • Read more...

New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, often referred to as the Tri-State Region, is the most populous metropolitan area in the United States and is also one of the most populous in the world. The metropolitan area is defined by the United States Census Bureau as the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), with an estimated population (as of 2005) of 18,747,320. The MSA is further subdivided into four metropolitan divisions. The 23-county metropolitan area includes ten counties in New York State, including the five boroughs of New York City, the two other counties of Long Island, and three in the lower Hudson Valley, twelve counties in Northern and Central New Jersey, and one county in northeastern Pennsylvania. The largest urbanized area in the United States is at the heart of the metropolitan area, the New York--Newark, NY--NJ--CT Urbanized Area (with a population of 17,799,861 as of the 2000 census.) More selected articles • Read more...

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was a historic event held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel (Sullivan County) is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, which is in adjoining Ulster County.

To many, the festival exemplified the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era." Thirty-two of the best-known musicians of the day appeared during the sometimes rainy weekend. Although attempts have been made over the years to recreate the festival, the original event has proven to be unique and legendary. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll The event was captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock; an accompanying soundtrack album; and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. More selected articles • Read more...