John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford. Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever", "Semper Fidelis", "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post".
Sharon Christa McAuliffe was an American teacher and astronaut from Concord, New Hampshire, who was killed on the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L where she was serving as a payload specialist.
Joseph Henry was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was the secretary for the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smithsonian Institution. He was highly regarded during his lifetime. While building electromagnets, Henry discovered the electromagnetic phenomenon of self-inductance. He also discovered mutual inductance independently of Michael Faraday, though Faraday was the first to make the discovery and publish his results. Henry developed the electromagnet into a practical device. He invented a precursor to the electric doorbell and electric relay (1835). His work on the electromagnetic relay was the basis of the practical electrical telegraph, invented by Samuel F. B. Morse and Sir Charles Wheatstone, separately. In his honor the SI unit of inductance is named the henry.
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black dot moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually several hours. A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than three times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth.
A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly (transits) between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Mercury appears as a tiny black dot moving across the disk of the Sun.
A Transit of Venus occurs when the planet Venus passes between the Sun and the Earth, as it happened in:
The Biddle family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is an Old Philadelphian family descended from English immigrants William Biddle (1630–1712) and Sarah Kempe (1634–1709), who arrived in the Province of New Jersey in 1681. Quakers, they had emigrated from England in part to escape religious persecution. Having acquired extensive rights to more than 43,000 acres (170 km2) of lands in West Jersey, they settled first at Burlington, a city which developed along the east side of the Delaware River.
Frederick Fennell was an internationally recognized conductor and one of the primary figures in promoting the Eastman Wind Ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the US and abroad. In Fennell's New York Times obituary, colleague Jerry F. Junkin was quoted as saying "He was arguably the most famous band conductor since John Philip Sousa."
The United States Marine Band is the premier band of the United States Marine Corps. Established by act of Congress on July 11, 1798, it is the oldest of the United States military bands and the oldest professional musical organization in the United States. Today, the Marine Band also includes the Marine Chamber Orchestra and Marine Chamber Ensembles.
Charles Henry Niehaus, was an American sculptor.
Observations of the planet Venus include those in antiquity, telescopic observations, and from visiting spacecraft. Spacecraft have performed various flybys, orbits, and landings on Venus, including balloon probes that floated in the atmosphere of Venus. Study of the planet is aided by its relatively close proximity to the Earth, compared to other planets, but the surface of Venus is obscured by an atmosphere opaque to visible light.
American patriotic music is a part of the culture and history of the United States since its founding in the 18th century and has served to encourage feelings of honor for the country's forefathers and for national unity. These songs include hymns, military themes, national songs, and music from stage and screen, as well as songs adapted from poems. Much of American patriotic music owes its origins to six main wars—the American Revolution, the American Indian Wars, the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, the American Civil War, and the Spanish–American War. During the period prior to American independence, much of America's patriotic music was aligned with the political ambitions of the British in the new land and so several songs are tied with the country's British origin.
The United States Capitol rotunda is the tall central rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. It has been described as the Capitol's "symbolic and physical heart". Built between 1818 and 1824, the rotunda is located below the Capitol dome, which was built between 1857 and 1866.
Sten Felix Odenwald is an American astronomer, author, and NASA scientist-educator. Odenwald has worked as part of the NASA Cosmic Background Explorer, Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment investigating the cosmic infrared background. He has published four books: The Astronomy Cafe, The 23rd Cycle, Patterns in the Void and Back to the Astronomy Cafe. He has also appeared in a number of TV and radio documentaries on astronomy and space weather. Since receiving his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1982, he has been an astronomer in the Washington, D.C. area, primarily at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since 2000, he has been actively involved in science and math education at NASA, and was a founding member of the Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum, among many other high-visibility NASA education projects involving space weather issues, archeoastronomy and the transits of Venus in 2004 and 2012. He is currently the director of STEM Education at the National Institute of Aerospace.
Jeremiah Horrocks, sometimes given as Jeremiah Horrox, was an English astronomer. He was the first person to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record. Most remarkably, Horrocks (correctly) asserted that Jupiter was accelerating in its orbit while Saturn was slowing and interpreted this as due to mutual gravitational interaction, thereby demonstrating that gravity's actions were not limited to the Earth, Sun, and Moon.
Major General George Henry Thomas, also known as the Thomas Circle Monument, is an equestrian sculpture in Washington, D.C. that honors Civil War general George Henry Thomas. The monument is located in the center of Thomas Circle, on the border of the downtown and Logan Circle neighborhoods. It was sculpted by John Quincy Adams Ward, best known for his work on the statue of George Washington in Wall Street, Manhattan. Attendees at the dedication in 1879 included President Rutherford B. Hayes, Generals Irvin McDowell, Philip Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman, senators and thousands of soldiers.
The 1882 transit of Venus, which took place on 6 December 1882, was the second and last transit of Venus of the 19th century, the first having taken place eight years earlier in 1874. Many an expedition was sent by European powers to describe both episodes, eight of them alone were approved and financed in 1882 by the United States Congress.
"Columbia's Pride" is a patriotic American march composed by John Philip Sousa in 1914, based on his 1890 song, "Nail the Flag to the Mast." "Columbia's Pride" was published in 1914 by Theodore Presser Co. in Philadelphia as a score for piano.
