Portal:Philadelphia
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States and the largest in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, both in area and population. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County. Philadelphia has the third-largest downtown residential population in the U.S., behind New York and Chicago. The Philadelphia metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in the U.S. by the official definition, with some 6.9 million people. Philadelphia is the central city of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area.
Philadelphia is one of the oldest and most historically significant U.S. cities. It was the nation's first capital. At the time of the American Revolution, it was the second-largest English-speaking city in the world, after only London. Into the first part of the 19th century, it was the country's most populous city and eclipsed Boston and New York City in political and social importance. Benjamin Franklin played an extraordinary role in Philadelphia's rise.
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Oney Judge was a slave at George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon, in Virginia. A servant in Washington's presidential households beginning in 1789, she escaped to freedom from the Philadelphia President's House on Saturday, May 21, 1796, and defied his attempts to recapture her. More is known about her than any other Mount Vernon slave because she was twice interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the 1840s. The Pennsylvania Gazette ran this "runaway" advertisement on May 24, 1796.
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Interstate 476 is a 132.10 mi (212.59 km)-long auxiliary Interstate Highway, designated between Interstate 95 near Chester, Pennsylvania and Interstate 81 near Scranton, Pennsylvania. It serve as the primary north-south Interstate corridor through eastern Pennsylvania. It consists of both the 21.5-mile Mid-County Expressway, locally referred to as the "Blue Route", through the suburban-Philadelphia counties of Delaware and Montgomery, and the 110.6-mile Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which connects the Philadelphia metropolitan area with the Lehigh Valley, the Poconos, and the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Proposed as early as 1929, construction of the Mid-County Expressway through Delaware County was not completed until 1991 due to massive community and environmental opposition during the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 1970s. After completion of the Mid-County Expressway, in 1996 the Interstate 476 designation was extended to include the entire length of the existing Northeast Extension. Since the extension, I-476 has been the longest auxiliary Interstate highway in the United States.
Selected biography
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the December 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Before his arrest he was a member of the Black Panther Party, an activist, part-time cab driver, journalist, radio personality, news commentator and broadcaster. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. Supporters and opponents disagree on the appropriateness of the death penalty, whether he is guilty, or whether he received a fair trial. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live from Death Row. Since 1995, Abu-Jamal has been incarcerated at Pennsylvania's SCI Greene near Waynesburg, where most of the state’s capital case inmates are held. In 2008, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction, but ordered a new capital sentencing hearing over concerns that the jury was improperly instructed. In April 2009, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal for a new trial, allowing his July 1982 conviction to stand. A separate appeal by prosecutors to reinstate the death penalty has not yet been heard.
Selected anniversaries - September
- September 6, 1943 - 79 people are killed when a Pennsylvania Railroad train derails in Kensington.
- September 15, 1855 - Philadelphia City Council dedicates Fairmount Park to the public.
- September 22, 1734 - A large number of followers of the Schwenkfelder Church, a religious sect that follows the teachings of Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig, arrive in Philadelphia.
- September 26, 1777 - American Revolutionary War: British forces, led by General Howe, march into Philadelphia.
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Did you know...
... that the 17-ton Founder's Bell, which hangs within the tower of the One South Broad building, is sounded hourly (except on Sundays) and can be heard for a distance of 25 miles (40 km)?
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"It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerly influence."
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