You are looking at all articles with the topic "United States". We found 317 matches.

Hint: To view all topics, click here. Too see the most popular topics, click here instead.

🔗 United States 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Food and drink/Foodservice

The Pizza Meter refers to sudden increases of pizza orders from U.S. government offices, such as the White House and The Pentagon, before large events such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Panama Invasion, and the Grenada invasion.

On the night of August 1, 1990, the night before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, military personnel at The Pentagon came together to discuss issues in the Middle East. According to Frank Meeks, the owner of Washington, D.C.'s Domino's Pizza franchise of 45 restaurants, the CIA ordered a record-breaking 21 pizzas from Domino's that night. Between January 7 to January 16, 1991, the number of pizza deliveries to the Pentagon past 10 p.m reached 101, with another 55 pizzas delivered to the White House on January 16 between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.

Meeks tied the influx of pizza orders from the Pentagon, White House, and the CIA to oncoming major announcements from the White House, publicizing his observations. Consequently, the public nicknamed the event "The Pizza Meter". Shortly after Meeks' comments were released, government offices no longer ordered from Domino's branches in Washington, opting to buy pizza at separate times or at different pizza joints.

🔗 United States 🔗 Espionage 🔗 Law Enforcement

LOVEINT is the practice of intelligence service employees making use of their extensive monitoring capabilities to spy on their love interest or spouse. The term was coined in resemblance to intelligence terminology such as SIGINT, COMINT or HUMINT.

🔗 United States 🔗 Media 🔗 Popular Culture 🔗 Georgia (U.S. state) 🔗 United States/United States Presidents 🔗 Animals in media

The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident, sensationalized as the "killer rabbit attack" by the press, involved a swamp rabbit (Sylvilagus aquaticus) that swam toward then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat on April 20, 1979. The incident caught the imagination of the media after Carter's press secretary, Jody Powell, mentioned the event to a correspondent months later.

Political opponents argued that the incident was symbolic of Carter's purported weakness. According to Powell, anti-Carter political commentators went so far as to blame it for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis.

🔗 United States

The expert wizard amendment was a proposed amendment by New Mexico state senator Duncan Scott, which would require psychologists and psychiatrists to dress up as wizards when they were in court proceedings providing expert testimony regarding a defendant's competency. The amendment, proposed in 1995, passed New Mexico's Senate unanimously. Scott revealed the amendment was satirical prior to a vote in New Mexico House of Representatives following which it was removed and thus never signed into law.

Scott said that he crafted the amendment because he felt that there were an excessive number of mental health practitioners acting as expert witnesses.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Africa 🔗 United Kingdom 🔗 Correction and Detention Facilities 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Cold War 🔗 Islands 🔗 British Overseas Territories 🔗 Aviation/airport 🔗 Asia 🔗 Asia/British Indian Ocean Territory 🔗 Africa/Mauritius

Diego Garcia () is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago. It has been used as a joint UK–U.S. military base since the 1970s, following the expulsion of the Chagossians by the UK government. The Chagos Islands are a British overseas territory, though a treaty to transfer sovereignty from the UK to Mauritius was signed on 22 May 2025, with a provision that the military base at the island would remain under British control for at least 99 years. The agreement may be renewed for an additional 40 years after the initial 99-year period, and for an additional period thereafter. The UK government expected the treaty to be ratified sometime in 2026. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed "deep concern" at the terms of the deal.

Located just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia lies 3,535 km (2,197 mi) east of Tanzania, 2,984 km (1,854 mi) east-southeast of Somalia, 726 km (451 mi) south of the Maldives, 1,796 km (1,116 mi) southwest of India, 2,877 km (1,788 mi) west-southwest of Sumatra, 4,723 km (2,935 mi) northwest of Australia, and 2,112 km (1,312 mi) northeast of Mauritius Island. Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, an underwater mountain range that includes the Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the other 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. The island observes UTC+6 year-round.

Diego Garcia was discovered by Portuguese sailors in 1512 and remained uninhabited until the French began using it as a leper colony and for coconut plantations in the late 18th century. After the Napoleonic Wars, the island was transferred to British control. It remained part of Mauritius until 1965, when it became part of the newly formed British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

In 1966, Diego Garcia had a population of 924, mostly contract workers employed in coconut plantations. However, between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossian inhabitants were forcibly removed to make way for the military base. In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding advisory opinion that the decolonisation of Mauritius had not been lawfully completed when it gained independence in 1968, and that the UK was "under an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible". The United Nations General Assembly later voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution endorsing this opinion and calling on the UK to end its administration, though the UK has dismissed the ruling as non-binding.

Until the resettlement of Île du Coin, Diego Garcia remained the only inhabited island of the BIOT, with a population of around 4,000 consisting predominantly of military personnel. It is one of two critical U.S. bomber bases in the Indo-Pacific region, alongside Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. It is nicknamed the "Footprint of Freedom" by the U.S. Navy due to its shape and strategic location in the Indian Ocean.

🔗 United States 🔗 Insects 🔗 United States History

Albert's swarm was an immense concentration of the Rocky Mountain locust that swarmed the Western United States in 1875. It was named after Albert Child, a physician interested in meteorology, who calculated the size of the swarm to 198,000 square miles (510,000 km²) by multiplying the swarm's estimated speed with the time it took for it to move through southern Nebraska.

The 1875 swarm is referred to repeatedly in a western Missouri historical record that explains:

It was the year 1875 that will long be remembered by the people of at least four states, as the grasshopper year. The scourge struck Western Missouri April, 1875, and commenced devastating some of the fairest portions of our noble commonwealth. They gave Henry [County] an earnest and overwhelming visitation, and demonstrated with an amazing rapidity that their appetite was voracious, and that everything green belonged to them for their sustenance.

One estimate numbers the locusts in the swarm at 3.5 trillion. Another estimate numbers the swarm at 12.5 trillion, which is the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to Guinness World Records.

🔗 United States 🔗 Computing 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Microsoft 🔗 United States/American television

“Where do you want to go today?” was the title of Microsoft’s second global image advertising campaign. The broadcast, print and outdoor advertising campaign was launched in November 1994 through the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. The campaign had Microsoft spending $100 million through July 1995, of which $25 million would be spent during the holiday shopping season ending in December 1994.

Tony Kaye directed a series of television ads filmed in Hong Kong, Prague and New York City that showed a broad range of people using their PCs. The television ads were first broadcast in Australia on November 13, the following day in both the United States and Canada, with Britain, France and Germany seeing the spots in subsequent days. An eight-page print ad described the personal computer as “an open opportunity for everybody” that “[facilitates] the flow of information so that good ideas—wherever they come from—can be shared”, and was placed in mass-market magazines including National Geographic, Newsweek, People, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated.

The New York Times described the campaign as taking “a winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technology”. However, the Times reported in August 1995 that the response to Microsoft’s campaign in the advertising trade press had been “lukewarm” and quoted Brad Johnson of Advertising Age as stating that “Microsoft is on version 1.0 in advertising. Microsoft is not standing still. It will improve its advertising.” Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, then the firm’s executive vice president, acknowledged that the response to the campaign had been “chilly”.

In June 1999, Microsoft announced that it would be ending its nearly five-year-long relationship with Wieden+Kennedy, shifting $100 million (~$166 million in 2022) in billings to McCann Erickson Worldwide Advertising in a split that was described by The New York Times as mutual. Dan Wieden, president and chief creative officer of the advertising agency, characterized the relationship with Microsoft as “intense” and said that it had “run its course”.

🔗 United States 🔗 United States/Arizona 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Mining 🔗 Organized Labour 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 Latino and Hispanic heritage 🔗 Latino and Hispanic heritage/Mexican-American

The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested them beginning on July 12, 1917, in Bisbee, Arizona. The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge, the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. Those arrested were taken to a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee. The US government soon brought in members of the US Army to assist with relocating the deportees to Columbus, New Mexico.

As Phelps Dodge, in collusion with the sheriff, had closed down access to outside communications, it was some time before the story was reported. The company presented their action as reducing threats to United States interests in World War I in Europe, largely because the wartime demand for copper was heavy. The Governor of New Mexico, in consultation with President Woodrow Wilson, provided temporary housing for the deportees. A presidential mediation commission investigated the actions in November 1917, and in its final report, described the deportation as "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal (Page 6)." Nevertheless, no individual, company, or agency was ever convicted in connection with the deportations. Arizona and Cochise County never prosecuted the case, and in United States v. Wheeler (1920), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution by itself does not give the federal government the power to stop kidnappings, even ones involving moving abductees across state lines on federally-regulated railroads.

🔗 United States 🔗 Socialism 🔗 Urban studies and planning 🔗 Cooperatives 🔗 United States/Washington - Seattle 🔗 Micronations 🔗 United States/Washington 🔗 Anarchism 🔗 Black Lives Matter

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ or the Zone), also known as Free Capitol Hill, is a self-declared intentional community and commune of around 200 residents, covering about six city blocks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The zone was established on June 8, 2020 after the East Precinct was abandoned by the Seattle Police Department.

🔗 United States 🔗 Law

Hush-A-Phone v. United States, 238 F.2d 266 (D.C. Cir. 1956) was a seminal ruling in United States telecommunications decided by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hush-A-Phone Corporation marketed a small, cup-like device which mounted on the speaking party's microphone, reducing the risk of conversations being overheard and increasing sound fidelity for the listening party. At the time, AT&T had a near-monopoly on America's phone system, even controlling the equipment attached to its network. In this era, Americans had to lease equipment from "Ma Bell" or use approved devices. At this time Hush-A-Phone had been around for 20 years without any issues. However, when an AT&T lawyer saw one in a store window, the company decided to sue on the grounds that anything attached to a phone could damage their network.

AT&T, citing the Communications Act of 1934, which stated in part that the company had the right to make changes and dictate "the classifications, practices, and regulations affecting such charges," claimed the right to "forbid attachment to the telephone of any device 'not furnished by the telephone company.'"

Initially, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in AT&T's favor. It found that the device was a "foreign attachment" subject to AT&T control and that unrestricted use of the device could, in the commission's opinion, result in a general deterioration of the quality of telephone service.