Portal:Connecticut

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The flag of Connecticut

Connecticut (/kəˈnɛtɪkət/ kə-NET-ik-ət) is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Connecticut lies between the major hubs of New York City and Boston along the Northeast Corridor, where the New York metropolitan area, which includes six of Connecticut's seven largest cities, extends well into the southwestern part of the state. Connecticut is the third-smallest state by area after Rhode Island and Delaware, and the 29th most populous with slightly more than 3.6 million residents as of 2020, ranking it fourth among the most densely populated U.S. states.

The state is named after the Connecticut River, the longest in New England which roughly bisects the state and drains into the Long Island Sound between the towns of Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. The name of the river is in turn derived from anglicized spellings of Quinnetuket, a Mohegan-Pequot word for "long tidal river". Before the arrival of the first European settlers, the region was inhabited by various Algonquian tribes. In 1633, the Dutch West India Company established a small, short-lived settlement called House of Hope in Hartford. Half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the first major settlements were established by the English around the same time. Thomas Hooker led a band of followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form the Connecticut Colony, while other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony; both merged into the former by 1664.

Connecticut's official nickname, the "Constitution State", refers to the Fundamental Orders adopted by the Connecticut Colony in 1639, which is considered by some to be the first written constitution in Western history. As one of the Thirteen Colonies that rejected British rule during the American Revolution, Connecticut was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States. In 1787, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, state delegates to the Constitutional Convention, proposed a compromise between the Virginia and New Jersey Plans; its bicameral structure for Congress, with a respectively proportional and equal representation of the states in the House of Representatives and Senate, was adopted and remains to this day. In January 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the Constitution. (Full article...)

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Official portrait, 2003

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

The eldest son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush and a member of the Bush family, he flew warplanes in the Texas Air National Guard in his twenties. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball before being elected governor of Texas in 1994. As governor, Bush successfully sponsored legislation for tort reform, increased education funding, set higher standards for schools, and reformed the criminal justice system. He also helped make Texas the country's leading producer of wind-powered electricity. In the 2000 United States presidential election, he won over Democratic incumbent Vice President Al Gore, despite losing the popular vote after a narrow and contested Electoral College win that involved a Supreme Court decision to stop a recount in Florida. (Full article...)
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State facts

  • Total area: 5,543 mi2
    • Land: 4,845 mi2
    • Water: 698 mi2
  • Highest elevation: 2,379 ft (Mount Frissell)
  • Population 3,576,452 (2015 est)
  • Admission to the Union: January 9, 1788 (5th)

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Portrait of Ives by Clara Sipprell, c. 1947

Charles Edward Ives (/vz/; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American actuary, businessman, and modernist composer. Ives was amongst the earliest American internationally renowned composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century.

Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster. (Full article...)
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