New York
State in northeast USA; nicknamed Empire State
Area:
127,200 sq km/49,099 sq mi
Capital:
Albany
Towns and Cities:
New York, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse
Physical:
Mountains: Adirondacks, Catskills; lakes: Champlain, Placid, Erie,
Ontario; rivers: Mohawk, Hudson, St Lawrence (with Thousand Islands);
Niagara Falls; Long Island; New York Bay; Fire Island national seashore;
Hudson Valley; Finger Lakes
Features:
New York City; Erie Canal; Lake Placid, site of 1980 Winter Olympics;
Long Island, including the Hamptons; Fort Ticonderoga; Statue of Liberty
national monument; Franklin Delano Roosevelt national historic site
and Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park; home of Theodore Roosevelt, Oyster
Bay; Washington Irving's home at Philipsburg Manor; Seneca Falls, site
of women's-rights convention 1848; Mount Lebanon Shaker village; colleges:
Columbia University (1745), Cornell University, Vassar College, New
York University, Colgate, CUNY, SUNY, Renssalaer Polytech, Pratt, Juilliard,
and the Eastman School of Music; West Point Military Academy (1801);
the world's largest museum of photography, in George Eastman House,
home of the founder of Eastman Kodak Company, in Rochester; Corning
Museum of Glass ; the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown; Fenimore
House (commemorating the writer James Fennimore Cooper), Cooperstown;
Saratoga Springs, with medicinal springs, National Museum of Dance,
and Performing Arts Centre (summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra
and the New York City Ballet); Woodstock artists' colony; horse racing
at Belmont, Aqueduct, Saratoga Springs; United Nations headquarters
Products:
Dairy products, apples, clothing, periodical and book printing and
publishing, electronic components and accessories, office machines and
computers, communications equipment, motor vehicles and equipment, pharmaceuticals,
aircraft and parts
Population:
(1995) 18,136,100
Famous People:
Aaron Burr, Grover Cleveland, James Fenimore Cooper, George Gershwin,
Alexander Hamilton, Fiorello La Guardia, Washington Irving, Henry James,
Herman Melville, Arthur Miller, Nelson Rockefeller, Franklin D Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt, Peter Stuyvesant, Walt Whitman
History:
Explored by the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano for France
1524; explored by Samuel de Champlain for France and Henry Hudson
for the Netherlands 1609; colonized by the Dutch from 1614; first
permanent settlement at Albany (Fort Orange) 1624; Manhattan Island
purchased by Peter Minuit 1625; New Amsterdam annexed by the English
1664. The first constitution was adopted 1777, when New York became
one of the original 13 states. The Battle of Saratoga 1777, following
which British troops surrendered, is considered the turning point
of the American Revolution. By 1810 New York was the most populous
of the states, a rank it maintained until the 1960s. The Erie
Canal, completed 1825, fostered commerce by providing a link between
the Atlantic and the Great Lakes. After the Civil War, New York
was transformed from a chiefly agricultural state to an industrial
giant. By 1970, however, the state was suffering economic decline,
particularly in manufacturing. But it remains an important industrial
state, and in New York City it contains the commercial, financial
(Wall Street), and cultural capital of the country.
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