america

I have been re-reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country. Bill Bryson is an American (from Iowa) who moved to the UK. After 20 years of living in England with his English wife (and 4 kids) he moved with his family to New Hampshire for a few years. This book is a collection of articles he...

Pew Research just published U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly. The share of Europeans who have a favourable view of the USA (politically I presume) is at its lowest at least for the last 20 years, but some might say ever, as Europeans used to...

Check this on BBC News. Wilfires have been ravaging California for over a month. There is currently 1000 acres (= 1000 football fields) being burned every 30 minutes. That 48,000 acres per day, about the size of Washington DC. In total 2.3 million acres (9300 km², 4x the size of Luxembourg) have...

No less than 90% of American homes have air conditioning. In Europe it's under 1% (except in Italy and Spain where its a bit over 10%). It's not because the United States has a hotter climate. It's really a cultural thing, and that partly explains why the average American produces nearly twice...

This is some groundbreaking news. The consensus had been that Siberians colonised the Americas around 15,000 to 14,000 years ago. This was not only supported by archaeology, but also but genetics, as the Q1a-M3 lineage of Native Americans was formed some 15,000 years ago. Pushing the date back...

I have mentioned and summarised the concept of Spiral Dynamics in this thread. I find the concept fascinating and extremely useful to study the evolution of societies in history, but also to understand the current socio-political situation in modern countries and forecast how societies are going...

The great American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) appears to have belonged to R1b-L151>S1194>S1200>S14328>SZ5489>Y28597>S10242 according to the Edison Y-DNA project (lineage 1). He is descended from John Edison and Sarah Ogden from the Netherlands. This branch of R1b is found in...

The Lee family descended from Richard Lee I (1617–1664), who emigrated from Shropshire, England to Virginia, played an important role in American history. Based on the results from the Lee Surname DNA Research Project, descendants of Richard Lee I and his wife Anne Constable (Subgroup 21)...

The influential Randolph family of Virginia belongs to R1b-P312>Z39300 (aka PH2278) based on the results from the Randolph/Randall/Randle/Randol Surname Group (Albemarle County group). The family contributed numerous politicians, statesmen and military officers in the course of U.S. history...

Benjamin Franklin, a polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whose head has featured on the $100 bills since 1914, is a probable member of haplogroup R1b-U106>Z18>DF95 according to the results from the Franklin Family Y-DNA Project. His family hailed from the small...

Here are the Y-haplogroups of US presidents known at present: 1. George Washington R1b-U152>Z56 2. John Adams R1b-S1200>S14328>S6849 3. Thomas Jefferson T1a1a 4. James Madison 5. James Monroe I2a1a-L161.1 6. John Quincy Adams R1b-S1200>S14328>S6849 7. Andrew Jackson I1 8...

The population of the United States is shaped by centuries of migration, isolation, growth, and admixture between ancestors of global origins. Here, we assemble a comprehensive view of recent population history by studying the ancestry and population structure of more than 32,000 individuals in...

I have recently read Enlightenment Now by Harvard and MIT cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, which really is an extraordinary book. In chapter 21, Professor Pinker explains that many of the most contentious political beliefs are not grounded in reason or the depth of knowledge regarding an...

Besides its decennial official count, the U.S. Census Bureau produces national population projections every few years, but these projections are not broken down by state. That's where the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service comes in. "We are one of the few research...

20 of 20 correct. https://my.uscis.gov/en/prep/test/civics/view

The Pew Research Center has published a new and revealing classification of religion in America. I am not going to copy the whole article here (9 long pages). Here are just a few charts to highlight the research and my comments. Here is a summary of the new classification. As you will see...

In another thread, I was explaining how, for many Northwest Europeans, the decision to get married or live under a civil union or domestic partnership was often simply motivated by the desire to have a wedding party (still a dream for many women, regardless of their religiosity). I was...

A survey by the Pew Research Center published last week revealed that Americans express increasingly warm feelings toward religious groups (other than theirs), meaning that overall Americans are becoming more tolerant. A considerable amelioration in attitudes has been witnessed in only two and...

I am only seeing this one year after it was published, but the Nancy Hanks Lincoln mtDNA Study confirmed that President Abraham Lincoln was a member of mtDNA X1c, one of the rarest maternal haplogroups in Europe. Haplogroup X1, already much rarer than X2, is found mostly in the North Africa, the...

President William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe. Clinton is his adoptive father's name. His genealogy shows that his paternal grandfather hailed from Mississippi as did his previous patrilinear ancestors until the early 19th century. I looked for the Blythe surnames on...