Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i Faces People, Places, and World Culture for Kids and Children

New York, New York! When many people think of New York City, they picture the tall skyscrapers and tourist attractions of Manhattan. The Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park are all found there. But Manhattan is only one of five boroughs of the city. Here are five fascinating facts to get your started on your journey through Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn. 1 New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790. George Washington’s inauguration was held at Federal Hall on Wall Street on April 30, 1789. A statue of Washington stands in the approximate spot where he was sworn in. 2 Many of our favorite foods originated in New York City. Nathan’s Franks were first sold on Coney Island…

If someone asked you to list the greatest cities in the world, chances are pretty good that New York City would be close to the top of your list. For people all over the world, New York City is a place of excitement, adventure, and curiosity. It is home to more than 8 million people and is known for its tall skyscrapers that house many of the biggest and most important companies in the world. It is also home to Central Park, Times Square, Broadway, the Hudson and East rivers, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building. But New York did not spring into life as such a huge and famous city. The first New Yorkers were Native Americans of the Algonquin tribes who fished…

New York City has five boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. What exactly is a borough? Depending on which state you are in, a borough can have several different definitions. In some states, it is another name for a town. But in New York, a borough is a smaller division of a larger city. When the British controlled New York, it encompassed five counties. A British map from 1683 shows them as New York (now Manhattan), Richmond (Staten Island), Kings (Brooklyn), and Queens (Queens). The fifth area was the actual city of New York, which was just a small area on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Eventually, the village of Brooklyn also grew into a city. The rest of the area that makes up the modern…

Sandy Ground, the oldest continuously inhabited black settlement in the United States, is located on the south shore of Staten Island. In 1828, just one year after slavery was abolished in New York, African American John Jackson purchased land there. Jackson operated a ferry between Sandy Ground and Manhattan and New Jersey. He was the first black land owner on all of Staten Island. In the 1840s, black oystermen from Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay began migrating to the settlement. They left Maryland because of state laws that restricted the activities of free blacks and prohibited them from owning or captaining their own boats. They were drawn to Sandy Ground by the oyster beds of the Raritan Bay. At the time, these oyster beds were among the richest in the country. During…

LOCATION: southern tip of the state of New York AREA: 302.6 square miles (784 square kilometers) ELEVATION: 33 feet above sea level BOROUGHS: The Bronx (pop. 1.4 million) Brooklyn (pop. 2.6 million) Manhattan (pop. 1.6 million) Queens (pop. 2.3 million) Staten Island (pop. 476,000) POPULATION: 8.4 million (2018 estimate) PEOPLE: 32% white, 29% Hispanic or Latino, 22% African American, 14% Asian LANGUAGES: About 800 different languages are spoken throughout the city.…

New Yorkers are resilient. As the song, “New York, New York” goes, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. There’s no better example of a tough, hard-working New Yorker than the mighty oyster. In the early 1600s, there were 220,000 acres of oyster reefs in what is now New York City. The waterways were pristine, teeming with diverse marine species—whales, otters, turtles, a huge variety of fish, and mollusks like oysters. Oysters were a plentiful food source for the Lenape, the original inhabitants of Mannahatta, which means “island of many hills.” The Lenape ate lots and lots of oysters. How do we know? Archeologists have discovered tremendous piles of oyster shells, which they call middens. Several hundred middens have been identified around New York City, which…

Designed to make every arrival and departure feel like a special occasion, Grand Central Terminal (GCT) has been dazzling visitors ever since it opened on February 2, 1913. Today, this beautiful Beaux-Arts building is one of the most-visited spots in New York City. Let’s take a look at a few of the gems that make this historic landmark sparkle. The Transportation Sculpture This spectacular statuary—all 1,500 tons of it—really rocks. Three figures from Roman mythology perch above the terminal’s main entrance on 42nd Street. Hercules (on the left) represents strength; Mercury (in the middle) is associated with speed, commerce, and transportation; and Minerva (on the right) represents wisdom. Designed by French sculptor Jules-Félix Coutan, Transportation is 66 feet wide and stands 48 feet tall at its highest point. Coutan made…

Central Park is the largest park on the island of Manhattan. It encompasses more than 840 acres. It includes a zoo, a museum, a skating rink, many playing fields and playgrounds, an open-air theater, a band shell, three small lakes, and numerous walking and bike paths. About 42 million people visit every year. The park’s design was inspired by natural landscapes and old-fashioned farmlands. It has green woodland areas and open meadows. The space that the park was to be built on had almost no soil for plants to grow. The city had to import more than 500,000 square feet of New Jersey dirt. Almost 600 different species of plants and animals live within the park. In 2002, a new species of centipede was discovered in Central Park and named…

What is the name of the animal we know and love in North America, opossum or possum? It is actually an opossum. The first time it was mentioned in the New World was by Captain John Smith in 1608. He based the name on the Algonquin word ‘apasum’ which means “white animal.” The possum without the “o” is native to Australia. It looks similar to the Virginia opossum, but is more closely related to kangaroos and other Australian marsupials (pouched animals). Characteristics The Virginia (or common) opossum is the only marsupial found in the United States and Canada. This ancient mammal has been hanging around for at least 70 million years, making it one of Earth’s oldest surviving species. It is about the size of a big housecat, with a…

In some ways, New York City’s subway system is magical. You go underground, zip through dark tunnels, and come up again in a completely different place. But the trains are no magic carpet. They’re more like bad-tempered dragons. They clank, they screech, they rumble, and sometimes they shoot out sparks. Passengers can get jostled around inside them. But they sure can cover the ground, and the city couldn’t run without them. Adam of Brooklyn, New York, loves the subways. “I like them so much because I’m interested in maps,” Adam says. He knows all the different train lines, has ridden on many of them, and points out with delight that they can be confusing because “there are stops with the same name in completely different places, which is kind of…