Wednesday, September 10, 2008















Let's go see what is happening in Syracuse, New York. Danielle (from STCC) is from there. We all probably know Syracuse University (home of the Orangemen) is there but what about other things?

The photos are: 1) the Syracuse skyline, 2) Syracuse University Hill, 3) Franklin Square, and 4) Armory Square (the city's nightlife district).

Syracuse is a city in Central New York, USA. According to the 2000 census, the city population was 147,306, and its metropolitan area had a population of 732,117. It is the county seat of Onondaga County and the economic and educational hub of Central New York, a region with over a million inhabitants. Syracuse is also well provided with convention sites, with a downtown convention complex and, directly west of the city, the Empire Expo Center, which hosts the annual Great New York State Fair. Syracuse was named after the original Syracuse, a city on the eastern coast of Sicily, Italy.
The city has functioned as a major crossroads over the last two centuries, first between the Erie Canal and its branch canals, then of the railway network. Today, Syracuse is located by the intersection of Interstates 90 and 81, and its airport is the largest in the region.
Syracuse is home to Syracuse University, a major research university, as well as several smaller colleges and professional schools.
The Syracuse area was first seen by Europeans when French missionaries came to the area in the 1600s. A group of Jesuit priests, soldiers, and coureurs des bois (including Pierre Esprit Radisson) set up a mission, known as Saint Marie Among the Iroquois or Ste. Marie de Gannentaha, on the northeast shore of Onondaga Lake, at the invitation of the Onondaga Nation, one of the five constituent members of the Iroquois confederacy.
The mission was short lived, as the Mohawk Nation hinted to the Onondaga that they should sever their ties to the French, or the Onondaga's guests would suffer some horrible fate. The men in the mission caught wind of this and left under cover of a cold night in March. Their entire stay was less than two years. The remains of the mission have been located underneath a restaurant in nearby Liverpool. There is now a living history museum in Liverpool that recreates the mission.
Just after the Revolutionary War, more settlers came to the area, mostly to trade with the Onondaga Nation. Ephraim Webster left the Continental Army to settle in 1784, and Asa Danforth, another revolutionary war hero, and Comfort Tyler, whose engineering skill contributed to regional development, arrived four years later. All three settled in Onondaga Hollow south of the present city center, which was then marshy. Salt was discovered in several swamps in Syracuse, which brought more settlers to the area, and eventually gave the city the nickname "Salt City".
The original settlement went through several name changes until 1824, first being called Salt Point (1780), then Webster's Landing (1786), Bogardus Corners (1796), Milan (1809), South Salina (1812), Cossits’ Corners (1814), and Corinth (1817). The U.S. Postal Service rejected the name Corinth upon its application for a post office, stating there was already a post office by this name in New York. Because of similarities such as a salt industry and a neighboring village named Salina, the name Syracuse was chosen, after Syracuse, Sicily.
In 1825, the Village of Syracuse was officially incorporated. Five years later, the Erie Canal, which ran through the village, was completed. In 1848, Syracuse merged with nearby Salina to become the City of Syracuse. The opening of the canal caused a steep increase in the sale of salt, not simply due to the improved and lower cost of transportation, but because the canal caused New York farms to change from wheat to pork, and curing pork required salt. As salt production climbed, the processing became increasingly mechanized, and local industry became more generalized; population grew to 5,000 by 1850, from 250 in 1820, making it the twelfth largest city in the Union.
By the twentieth century, Syracuse University was no longer sectarian, it has grown from a few classrooms located in downtown Syracuse into a major research institution. It is nationally well-recognized for its college basketball, college football, and college lacrosse teams. Le Moyne College was founded in 1946; Onondaga Community College in 1962.
World War II sparked significant industrial expansion in the area: specialty steel, fasteners, custom machining. After the war, two of the Big Three automobile manufacturers (General Motors & Chrysler) had major operations in the area. Syracuse was headquarters for Carrier Corporation, Crouse-Hinds traffic signal manufacturing, and General Electric had its main television manufacturing plant at Electronics Parkway in Syracuse.
Syracuse's population peaked at 221,000 in 1950. Immigration from abroad introduced many ethnic groups to the city, particularly German, Irish, Italian, and Polish. African Americans had lived in Syracuse since Revolutionary War days, but between 1940 and 1960, some of the three million African Americans who migrated from the south to northern cities also settled in Syracuse. In the 1980s, many immigrants from Africa and Central America also moved to Syracuse, as they did to many northern cities — sometimes under the auspices of several religious charities. However, these new Syracusans could not make up for the flow of residents out of Syracuse, either to its suburbs or out of state, due to job loss. The city's population slowly decreases every year.
Much of the city fabric changed after World War II, although Pioneer Homes, one of the earliest government housing projects in the US, had been completed earlier, in 1941. Many of Syracuse's landmark buildings were demolished in the 1950s and 1960s. The federal Urban Renewal program cleared large sectors that remained undeveloped for many decades, although several new museums and government buildings were built.
The manufacturing industry in Syracuse began to falter in the 1970s. Many small businesses failed during this time, which contributed to an already increasing unemployment rate. Rockwell International moved their factory outside New York state. General Electric moved its manufacturing operations to Singapore. The Carrier Corporation moved its headquarters out of Syracuse and outsourced manufacturing to Asian locations. Nevertheless, although city population has declined since 1950, the Syracuse metropolitan area population has remained fairly stable, even growing by 2.5 percent since 1970. While this growth rate is greater than much of Upstate New York, it is far below the national average during that period.


Today's Jumble (9/10/08):
HIRMT = MIRTH; PARPE = PAPER; RUVESS = VERSUS; ANIZIN = ZINNIA
CIRCLED LETTERS = IRPRESZI
When he won the distinguished gentleman contest, it was a ---
"SIR PRIZE"

Today is Swap Ideas Day. It is also TV Dinner Day because Swanson sold its first on this day in 1954.

Other things on this day in history:

506 - The bishops of Visigothic Gaul meet in the Council of Agde.
1419 - John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy is assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France.
1608 - John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.
1776 - American Revolutionary War: Nathan Hale volunteers to spy.
1798 - At the Battle of St. George's Caye, British Honduras defeats Spain.
1813 - The U.S. defeats the British Fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
1823 - Simón Bolívar is named President of Peru.
1846 - Elias Howe gets a patent for the sewing machine.
1858 - George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.
1897 - Lattimer Massacre - a sheriff's posse kills twenty unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania, United States.
1898 - Empress Elizabeth of Austria is assassinated by Luigi Lucheni.
1919 - Austria and the Allies sign the Treaty of Saint-Germain recognizing the independence of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
1927 - France had its first Davis Cup win, though it had competed since 1905.
1932 - The New York City Subway's third competing subway system, the municipally-owned IND, is opened.
1939 - World War II: The submarine HMAS Oxley is mistakenly sunk by the submarine HMS Triton near Norway and becomes the Royal Navy's first loss.
1939 - Canada declares war on Nazi Germany, joining France, the UK, New Zealand and Australia in the Allies.
1942 - World War II: The British carry out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to re-launch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign.
1943 - World War II: German forces begin their occupation of Rome.
1945 - Mike the Headless Chicken is decapitated; he survives for another 18 months before choking to death.
1951 - United Kingdom began an economic boycott of Iran.
1961 - Italian Grand Prix, a crash causes the death of German driver Wolfgang von Trips and 13 spectators hit by his Ferrari.
1963 - 20 African-American students enter public schools in Alabama.
1967 - The people of Gibraltar vote to remain a British dependency rather than becoming part of Spain.
1972 - The United States loses its first international basketball game in a disputed match against the Soviet Union at Munich, Germany.
1974 - Guinea-Bissau gains independence from Portugal.
1976 - A British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing 176.
1977 - Last execution by Guillotine in France. Hamida Djandoubi, convicted for torture and murder.
1990 - The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire – the largest church in Africa is consecrated by Pope John Paul II.
2000 - Cats closes on Broadway.
2002 - Switzerland, noted as a neutral country, joins the United Nations.
2003 - Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden, is stabbed fatally while shopping, and dies of her wounds on September 11.
2007 - Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan after seven years in exile, following a military coup in October 1999.
2008 - The Large Hadron Collider by CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.

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