United States

Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories and various possessions. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.842 million km²) and with over 320 million people, the country is the world's third or fourth-largest by total area and the third most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Hilt

The hilt (rarely called the haft) of a sword is its handle, consisting of a guard, grip and pommel. Also meaning To the limit; completely: played the role to the hilt. Idiom: to the hilt. The guard may contain a crossguard or quillons. A ricasso may also be present, but this is rarely the case. A tassel or sword knot may be attached to the guard or pommel.

Pommel

The pommel (Anglo-Norman pomel "little apple") is an enlarged fitting at the top of the handle. They were originally developed to prevent the sword slipping from the hand. From around the 11th century in Europe they became heavy enough to be a counterweight to the blade. This gave the sword a point of balance not too far from the hilt allowing a more fluid fighting style. Depending on sword design and swordsmanship style, the pommel may also be used to strike the opponent (e.g., using the Mordhau technique).

Pommels have appeared in a wide variety of shapes, including oblate spheroids, crescents, disks, wheels, and animal or bird heads. They are often engraved or inlayed with various designs and occasionally gilt and mounted with jewels. Ewart Oakeshott introduced a system of classification of medieval pommel forms in his The Sword in the Age of Chivalry (1964) to stand alongside his blade typology. Oakeshott pommel types are enumerated with capital letters A–Z, with subtypes indicated by numerals.

Blue Movie

Blue Movie (stylized as blue movie; aka Fuck) is a 1969 American film directed, produced, written and cinematographed by American producer Andy Warhol.Blue Movie, the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, is a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn and helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon in modern American culture. Further, according to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made.Viva and Louis Waldon, playing themselves, starred in Blue Movie.

Plot

The film includes dialogue about the Vietnam War, various mundane tasks and, as well, unsimulated sex, during a blissful afternoon in a New York City apartment. The film was presented in the press as, "a film about the Vietnam War and what we can do about it." Warhol added, "the movie is about ... love, not destruction."

Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Leopold Fuckel

Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Leopold Fuckel (3 February 1821, in Reichelsheim – 8 May 1876) was a German botanist who worked largely on fungi.

From 1836 to 1852 he worked as an apothecary, afterwards deriving income from a vineyard he owned in Oestrich im Rheingau.

The species epithet in the binomen Botryotinia fuckeliana, a plant pathogen and the causal agent of gray mold disease, was named by mycologist Heinrich Anton de Bary in honor of him. Fuckel was the taxonomic authority of the mycological genera Aleuria, Phyllachora (Nitschke ex Fuckel), Plectania and Sclerotinia.

Works

His exsiccatae of Rhineland fungi, "Fungi rhenani exsiccati", contained a number of the type species for the taxa that he proclaimed (Edit I Fascic. I-XXVII, 1863-75, edit. Fascic II. I-XXI, 1871-75). He was also the author of:

USA (disambiguation)

USA or U.S.A. usually refers to the United States of America, a country in North America.

USA or U.S.A. may also refer to:

Places

Business

Universities

Other uses

USA Network

USA Network (commonly referred to as simply "USA") is an American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by the NBCUniversal Cable division of NBCUniversal, itself a subsidiary of Comcast. Once a minor player in basic cable, the network has steadily gained popularity due to its original programming; USA also broadcasts syndicated reruns of current and former "network television" (i.e., broadcast) series and theatrically-released feature films, as well as limited sports programming.

As of July 2015, USA Network is available to approximately 95.567 million pay television households (82.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States.

History

Paramount and Universal ownership

USA Network originally launched on September 22, 1977 as the Madison Square Garden Network (not to be confused with the New York City regional sports network of the same name). The network was founded by cable provider UA-Columbia Cablevision and Kay Koplovitz. The channel was one of the first national cable television channels, using satellite delivery as opposed to microwave relay to distribute its programming to cable systems. Initially, the network ran a mix of college and less well-known professional sports, similar to those found during the early years of ESPN. The channel began its broadcast day after 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on weekdays and 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on weekends.

USA-229

USA-229, known before launch as NRO Launch 34 (NROL-34), is a pair of American signals intelligence satellites which were launched in 2011. They are operated by the United States National Reconnaissance Office.

Both satellites were deployed by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 carrier rocket, which launched from Space Launch Complex 3E at the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The launch occurred at 04:24 UTC on 15 April 2011. The rocket placed the satellites into a low Earth orbit. By 04:29 UTC, official updates on the status of the spacecraft had been discontinued.

Whilst details of the satellites and their missions are officially classified, amateur observers have identified that the Atlas V deployed two satellites, one of which has officially been catalogued as debris. The two spacecraft have been identified as being a pair of third or fourth generation Naval Ocean Surveillance System satellites. Amateur observations have located the spacecraft in an orbit with a perigee of 1,025 kilometres (637 mi) and an apogee of 1,207 kilometres (750 mi), inclined at 64.4 degrees to the plane of the equator. Current generation NOSS satellites are always launched and operated in pairs, and are used to locate and track ships from the radio transmissions that they emit.