While New York State has 62 counties, New York City is comprised of five boroughs: The Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. NY and VA are the only states that allow for consolidated cities to have boroughs within them. There are three states that allow municipalities to be boroughs instead of cities: CT, PA, NJ.
In the past 75 years, only four new counties have been organized, in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Meanwhile South Dakota has gone the other way, eliminating one and stripping three of any official function. Alaska is in transition, with changing status from Census District to Borough to County.
The original county structure of England, from which the American system takes its name, has its origins in the Middle Ages. It has undergone many reforms, so that there are currently many layers of historical and traditional county names, ceremonial counties as well as modern demarcations of metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties. For example, the historic county of Middlesex (whose name derives from its being the territory of the Middle Saxons) was incorporated into Greater London in 1965, which is now the ceremonial and administrative county.
Ohio has 88 counties. All but two elect three county commissioners as the co-executive officers of the county, and also elect a county prosecutor, auditor, treasurer and coroner. Cuyahoga County (the greater Cleveland area) and Summit County (the greater Akron area) both have a county-charter form of government, with a single county executive and, other than the county prosecutor, all other main officers are appointed by the county executive.
Since World War I, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio, has developed and flown blimps (non-rigid airships). Though the “Goodyear Blimps” are primarily known for promotional appearances (and serving as camera platforms at sporting events), from the 1910s through the 1950s, many of these blimps were developed for military use, particularly for the US Navy.
The current generation of Goodyear’s blimps, introduced beginning in 2014, are not, technically speaking, blimps – they are, in fact, semi-rigid airships, or dirigibles (in other words, they have a rigid internal structure).
The US Navy’s USS Akron was a helium-filled rigid airship in the 1930s. 785 ft long, both she and her sister ship the Macon were among the largest flying objects ever built. Although the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin II were some 18 ft longer and slightly more voluminous, the two German airships were filled with hydrogen, so the US Navy craft still hold the world record for helium-filled airships.
The America’s Challenge gas balloon race is part of the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Festival. Last year, nine teams from various countries took part in the race, in which balloons filled with hydrogen (or helium) lift off and travel as far as they can. The winner is the balloon which travels the farthest. In 2019, a team from Poland won the race, flying 1614 miles before landing in a remote area in northern Ontario in Canada.
Only five Canadian provinces have counties: Quebec, Ontario and the three Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island). British Columbia has Regional districts.
A number of Canadian counties are named for British counties (York, Essex, Cumberland), towns or regions (Durham, Halifax). Others are named for local features (Niagara, Huron).
The British title of Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale was suspended during World War I for Prince Edward Augustus, the German holder of it at the time, and has not been reinstated since, although his heirs may at any time ask the Queen to permit it.
Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, centered on the Cumberland Gap and at the border of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, contains the Tri-State Point that is accessible by trails. The nearby Cumberland Gap Tunnel goes underneath and close to the tri-state point. The Cumberland Gap is a natural break in the Appalachian Mountains.
The Cumberland Gap was frequently traveled by Native Americans, and then by European settlers. The earliest written account of it dates to the 1670s by Abraham Wood of Virginia, an English fur trader and explorer.
Gary Puckett & The Union Gap were a pop-rock music group, from San Diego. They took their name from Union Gap, a town near Yakima, Washington, where Puckett grew up.
Inspired by the band’s name, the group often wore replica Civil War-era Union army uniforms while on stage. They had five songs hit the Top 10 in the U.S. in the late 1960s, including “Young Girl” and “Lady Willpower,” both of which reached #2.
Gary, Indiana, was for a century the state’s second largest city, but in the 60s it went into economic decline, and has since lost half its population. It was named ather the head of US Steel, which established the first economic presence in the town, which is now a suburb of Chicago.
The song “Gary, Indiana”, along with the more famous “Seventy-Six Trombones”, is from the musical The Music Man. The show, written by Meredith Willson, was first performed on Broadway in 1957. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and ran for 1,375 performances. The cast album won the first Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and spent 245 weeks on the Billboard charts.
West Side Story debuted in 1957 in Washington DC, Philadelphia, and on Broadway.
Columbia Records initially declined to record the *West Side Story *cast album, saying the score was too depressing and too difficult.
The 1961 film, West Side Story, nominated for 11 Academy Awards, won 10 of them. It did not win for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. That Oscar went to Judgment at Nuremberg which was also nominated for 11 Academy Awards.
John Wayne won a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the 1969 movie True Grit. Upon accepting his Oscar, Wayne said, “Wow! If I’d known that, I’d have put that patch on 35 years earlier.”
Charles Portis, who wrote the novel the film was based on, lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he died on February 17, 2020 at the age of 86
In the mid-1930s, actor John Wayne often appeared in low-budget Western films. During 1935 and 1936, Wayne starred in thirteen straight such films; in all thirteen films, his character’s first name was “John.”
Wayne Brady made his professional stage review as Billy Flynn in the 2004 Broadway revival of Chicago, a fine example of “stunt casting”–purring a popular actor into a long running show to generate new interest. Sometimes it works, as in the case of Brady, and sometimes it doesn’t (Melanie Griffith in Chicago?)
Errol Flynn, one of Hollywood’s leading actors during the 1930’s and 1940’s, had a bit of a checkered past before achieving stardom.
He was expelled from school at the age of 17 for theft. Then he was fired from his job with a shipping company for pilfering petty cash. Then, after relocation to Britain, he was dismissed from his job with an acting troupe for throwing a female stage manager down a stairwell.