Inauguration Day

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The Boston Tea Party

Bild: http://www.onthisdeity.com

The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was no party at all. It was the beginning of the American Revolution.

Boston was a very important port in America in the 1700s. At that time America was still a colony of Britain. At about the same time, exactly in 1730, the British government demanded more taxes from the Americans who of course were not happy about that. So things were difficult between Britain and the USA at that time. And the Boston Massacre of 1700, in which British soldiers who were stationed in Boston, had killed five American men, had even made it worse.

In 1773 three ships that had tea on them were in Boston harbour. The tea was meant for a big British company and was about to be delivered. That was exactly in the night of December 16th, 1773.

Some American men, who called themselves „Sons of Liberty“ decided to go on board of these ships. They went there in three groups, 50 men in each one, dressed up as native Indians. They took boxes of tea and threw them into  the sea, while the people of Boston were watching them and cheered and waved. Actually 350 big  boxes of tea went into the sea. So the British company lost a lot of money.

The Americans said that they would not pay for the tea, so the British government was really angry.

This was actually the first time that the Americans protested against the British government and rules and therefore the Boston Tea Party is considered to be the beginning of the American revolution.

A Glimpse on the USA - Project

Photo: marinifamily.files.wordpress.com


July Fourth

July Fourth is the birthday of the United States. It is a national holiday. Another name for July Fouth is Independence Day.
Americans celebrate July Fourth as Independence Day because on July 4. 1776, the original thirteen colonies declared their independence from England.
Before 1776, the King of England ruled the thirteen colonies in America. The colonists were angry with the King because of taxes. They wanted their independence from England. A war started in 1775 between the colonists and soldiers from England. The colonists won the war. They wanted to say why they wanted their independence or freedom from England. So they chose Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.
On July 4, 1776, the leaders of the colonies signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It said that all people were equal and had the right to live in freedom. A new nation was born, People rang bells and fired guns for the birth of the United States of America.
Today, July Fourth is celebrated in many different ways.
During the day, many people get together with friends and family members for picnics. Many cities have parades with bands in the streets. At night there are noisy fireworks. These beautiful fireworks of different colors light up the sky all across the country.

Armin




Photo: all-inspirational.com

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was the twenty-sixth president of the United States. He was president from1901 to 1909. He was a very intelligent man. Theodore was a boxer, a soldier, a rancher, and an explorer.
He was not strong when he was a boy. He had problem with his breathing. Roosevelt had asthma. His father wanted him to be strong. After he became president, Roosevelt kept his body strong. One day, another boxer hit him in the eye. After that accident, Theodore became blind in one eye. His nickname was “Teddy”. When he was president, he often went hunting. One day he went hunting with some friends and saw a small bear. He did not shoot the bear and he said, the little bear must go free.
The next day the story of the small bear was in the newspapers. Soon people called toy bears for children “teddy bears”.
Then he went to South America to explore places that nobody knew about. Everybody loved energy.

Teresa

Photo: sonofthesouth.net

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States. He was born in Kentucky in 1809. His family was very poor. He didn’t go to school. When Lincoln was a little boy, he worked on his family’s farm and taught himself to read and write. Later, Lincoln studied law and he became a lawyer. After that, he became a politician.

Everybody liked Abraham Lincoln because he was intelligent and hardworking. He wanted to be good at everything he did. He said that he wanted to win the “race of life”.
Lincoln became president in 1860. In 1861, there was a war between the North and de South of the United States. The people in the South wanted a separate government from the United States. The North wanted the United States to stay together as one country. Lincoln was the leader of the North. In the war, brother killed brother. The Civil War was four years long. The North won the Civil War. The war ended on April 9, 1865. Six days later, President Lincoln and his wife went to the theater. Inside the theater, a man went behind the president and shot him in his head. The man’s name was John Wilkes Booth. He was a supporter of the South. Lincoln died the next morning.

Melanie

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was a black clergyman from Atlanta, Georgia. When King was a child, he learned that black people and white people did not mix in public places. Black and white children went to different schools. This kind of separation is called segregation. He was a good student and went to college at a young age. He was only fifteen years old, when he finished college, he began to fight segregation. He did not believe in violence. He helped black people to protest in peace. King also wanted equality for everybody. He wanted black and white men and women to have an equal chance in the United States. This is called the civil rights movement. In 1963, King was the leader of the civil rights march on Washington, D.C. Thousands of people listened to his famous speech. It begins, “I have a dream.” In 1968, an assassin killed King. He was only thirty-nine years old. His birthday, Janury 15, is a national holiday in the United States.

Mihriban, Monika

clergyman – Pfarrer
public – öffentlich
separation – Trennung
segregation – Rassentrennung
violence – Gewalt
equality - Gleichberechtigung
civil rights movement – Bürgerrechtsbewegung
speech – Rede
Nobel Peace Prize – Friedensnobelpreis
award – Auszeichnung
assassin - Auftragskiller



Photo: upload.wikimedia.org


Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore is mountain in the state of South Dakota.
The faces of four American presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt – are carved into the mountain.
These faces, known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, are the largest carved figures in the world. The memorial is the work of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The state of South Dakota chases Borglum for the job because he was famous for his huge statues. But, even for Borglum, this memorial was a challenge. Borglum began work in 1927. The only way to get up the mountain was on foot or horseback. And Borglum and his helpers hat to make the trip hundreds of times just to bring up the equipment they needed. Borglum had prepared a smaller model of the faces. Workers then used drills and dynamite to remove rock and create the faces. The Mount Rushmore Memorial took fourteen years to complete. Borglum died shortly before it was done. His son finished to work. Finally, in 1941 the memorial was opened to the public. People were amazed. The faces of the presidents looked so real, and the are about sixty feet high.

Franzi


Photo: oneworldnews.files.wordpress.com

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is a building in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. It has the offices of the U.S. Department of Defense. The Department of Defense includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
The word pentagon comes from the Greek penta, which means “five”. A pentagon is a figure with five sides. The Pentagon has five rings. The rings are inside each other. Each ring has five sides. The Pentagon is the largest office building in the world. It has seventeen miles of halls. People can get lost in the Pentagon. So the walls on each floor are a different color (brown, green, red, gray, and blue). This helps people to know where they are. There are also many maps in the halls!
The Pentagon is so big that it is like a city. Almost 30.00 people work there. The Pentagon has its own doctors, dentists, and nurses. It has its own banks and stores. It has a post office, a fire department, and a police department. It also has an important center for communications. This center guards the country. It is hundreds of feet under the ground. The Pentagon even has its own radio and TV stations.

Niki


The Government of the United States

The American President is one oft the most powerful men in the world.
He can make war or peace .
He can touch the lives of millions in many different countries. But the President cannot do just what he wants.
The Congress must agree first. In some ways, the United States is like fifty small countries and not one large one.
Every state has its own governot, its own police, and its own laws.
The government of the whole country works from Washington, the capital city. Congress has two parts, the Senate an the House of Representatives. Like the senators, they can make new laws. Americans choos a new President every four years. In America the President is the Head of State. He makes the most important devisions and chooses the members of his cabinet who will help him to govern the country.

Stefanie



The White House


Originally the White House was grey and was called the Presidential Palace.
The architect James Hoban won a contest which was held to pick a design for the president’s home. The president’s home was an important part of the plan. President Washington never lived in the Presidential Palace. The first president who lived there was John Adams and his wife. Mrs. Adams often complained about the cold in the Presidential Palace. Fifty fireplaces were not enough to keep the building warm. In war the British army destroyed the Presidential Palace. After the war James Hoban rebuilt the Presidential Palace in white.

Albert, Sebastian

Inauguration Day - Barrack Obama

Today, January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Inauguration means "Amtseinführung/Vereidigung".


Winning the White House
When the results came in, 67 million people voted for Barack and 58 million voted for John McCain. Barack won 365 electoral votes and John McCain won 173 votes. At least 270 electoral votes are needed to become President of the United States.

Barack Obama won the election. On that cold, windy night in a park in Chicago called Grant Park, Barack, Joe Biden, and their families were greeted warmly with cheers and tears from thousands of supporters gathered to celebrate his victory. After he won, Barack gave a speech that was shown on televisions around the country and around the world. He began his speech with these words:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

The people in the park cheered. Many people in all parts of the country, as well as the world, were happy to have witnessed this moment in American history. Barack continued his speech by saying that even though being President is not easy, he would do his best for the country and for the American people while he is President.

Facts about Barack Obama
The name Barack means “blessing from God”
He is left-handed.
His favorite music includes artists like The Fugees, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Kanye West.
He won a Grammy award for the audio recording of his book Dreams from My Father.
He has authored three very successful books.
According to his official Facebook profile, his favorite TV show is Sportcenter.
When he was a child, he wanted to become an architect.
He collects comic books.
When he lived in Indonesia, he had two baby crocodiles, chickens, ducks and a gibbon named Tata as his pets.
He loves to cook chili.

Barack Obama will be the first African American president, and one of the youngest presidents ever elected. He has a wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Malia, 10, and Natasha (called Sasha), 7.


Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father came to America from Kenya, which is a country in Africa. His parents, Ann and Barack, met when they were students at the University of Hawaii. Since Barack had the same name as his father, young Barack went by the nickname “Barry”.

After his dad finished college, he went back to Kenya, leaving his mother to take care of Barry. In 1967, when Barry was six years old, his mother married a student from Indonesia and they moved to Indonesia with him. They had many pets, including baby crocodiles and a gibbon, which is a type of monkey.

While they were in Indonesia, his mother had another baby. Her name was Maya. Right after she was born, Barry’s mother got divorced, and Barry, his mother, and his new baby sister moved back to Hawaii.

Soon, Barry’s mother had to go back to Indonesia to work. Her job was studying how farmers lived and how their lives could be made better. When she went away, Barry lived with his grandparents. He called them Gramps and Toot, and he was very close with them and his sister.

Growing up, Barry enjoyed spending time on the beach, fishing and bodysurfing. He was a really good student. He went to an expensive private school even though his family didn’t have much money to pay for it. His family felt that the best thing they could do for Barry was to give him a good education, so they worked hard to pay for his school.

Barry earned good grades and played on his high school basketball team. He loved playing basketball as a kid, and President-Elect Obama still loves to play whenever he can. Even when he was campaigning for president, he took time out every day to shoot hoops with his friends.


The life of Barrack Obama in pictures

Have a look at all American Presidents so far.

US Election - Facts
Every four years the people of the United States choose a new President.
You have to be thirty-five years old to run for President.
Last year's (2008) Republican Candidate was Barack Obama. He became President.
Last year's (2008) Democratic Candidate was John McCain.
Candidates try to get people to vote for them by giving speeches and shaking hands.
The political parties choose their candidate at their conventions.
The candidates have debates where they answer questions about the issues that are important to the people in our country.
On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, people go to the polls to vote.


Today, January 20th, 2009
Barack Obama will be sworn in as president just days before the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and his inauguration theme will reflect the timing: "A New Birth Of Freedom," a phrase from the Gettysburg Address.


This is the Oath of Office for President (US Constitution, Article II, Section 1)

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."



The Emmy Winning video "Yes We Can" is a collage style music video inspired by a speech delivered by Barack Obama following the 2008 New Hampshire primary, derived from similar union catch cries. The song was released on February 2, 2008 by the Black Eyed Peas member Will.i.am on Dipdive.com and also on YouTube.




Lyrics:

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots;
A President who chose the moon as our new frontier;
And a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.
We know the battle ahead will be long,
But always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
(We want change.)
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics
They will only grow louder and more dissonant.
We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check.
We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America,
There has never been anything false about hope.
Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA;
We will remember that there is something happening in America;
That we are not as divided as our politics suggests;
That we are one people;
We are one nation; and together,
We will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three Words that will ring from coast to coast;
From sea to shining sea:
Yes We Can.

Electing a US President

Barack Obama is the new US President.
He was born on August 4, 1961 in Hawaii and lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Soon he will move to the White House in Washington D.C. (= District of Columbia) with his wife Michelle and his daughters Malia and Sasha.