Osama Bin Laden's Early Life

Osama Bin Laden is one of the, if not the single, most notorious figures in America.  But how was he brought up? How did his radical Islamist ideas and hatred for the United States become planted in his mind?
Osama Bin Laden was born Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 to construction billionaire Mohammed Awad Bin Laden.  Bin Laden was one of fifty of his father's children.
Osama Bin Laden only knew his father for a short time before his parent divorced.  After the split, his mother took him to live with her new husband, Muhammed Al-Attas.  Thus, Bin Laden spent the majority of his childhood with his four step-siblings and he attended Al Thager Model School--at the time, the most prestigious schools in the area.  When he was fourteen, Bin Laden was recognized as an outstanding student at Al Thager.  Because of this, he was offered an invitation to join a small Islamic study group; Bin Laden was told that he and the group would memorize the entire Koran--a highly regarded accomplishment--before their graduation from the institution.  However, the group soon lost its original focus and Bin Laden began his learnings in some of the principles of violent jihad.
The teacher who educated the study group was influenced by a sect of Islam called the Brotherhood, thus he began instructing his pupils about the importance of instituting pure, Islamic law around the Arab world.  This teacher often used allegories with violent endings as he taught that truly loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word, even if these means were reached through death and destruction.  By the time of their graduation, Bin Laden and his fellow pupils had completely adopted these principles and the attitude of Islamic teen activists.
Osama Bin Laden went on to create Al Qaeda (a militant group), orchestrated attacks on America, and masterminded the tragedy of 9/11.

S'mores

S'more has been a long time camping icon. It is always pictured as campers roasting the marshmallow until it is soft and gooey and then putting it between two graham crackers and chocolate. There is, however, no consensus on where s'mores actually came from, but the early sighting of smores takes place in 1927 when a recipe for the smores appeared in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts. Which in the recipe called it "some mores", along with instructions for building 12 different kinds of campfires to roast the marshmallows. Historically, the origin might have taken place during the Victorian era, where popular desserts included sandwich cookies and sponge cakes, which were usually filled with jam, cream, or lemon curd. More recent possibilities of the origin include the Mallomar, a graham cracker topped with a blob of marshmallow coated with chocolate. Mallomar was manufactured by Nabisco and first sold in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1913. Others include the MoonPie, a pair of graham cracker cookies with a marshmallow filling, dipped in chocolate that first went on the market in Chattanooga in Tenessee during the year 1917. S'mores might not have a specific origin, but the usage of melted marshmallow has been in practice for more than a century. Europeans have long used the marshmallows found in its swamp plant form as a medicine to treat sore throats and using it as a cough drop. In the mid-1800s, the French came up with the idea of turning marshmallow sap into a meringue-like froth with egg whites and sugar. This, however, was very expensive and only available to the upper class as tea snacks. The food soon spread to the Americas in the early 20th century and it has been seen throughout the world we live in. It is still not certain whether smores were created by girl scout experiments or inspired by the companies and the French, one thing is for sure, it will still be an icon for things related to camping. 

Bibliography:
http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/14/the-gooey-story-of-smores/
http://www.smore4u.com/food/history-of-the-smore/

McDonalds

In the 1930s, the McDonalds family moved from Manchester, New Hampshire to Hollywood, where Maurice and his brother Maurice worked as handymen at the Motion Picture studios. In 1937, their father Patrick McDonald opened a food stand near the Monrovia airport selling only hot dogs at first. Later, hamburgers were added to the menu for ten cents each or 50 cents with all you can drink orange juice. In the 1940s, Maurice and Richard took over the business and moved it to San Bernardino. There, they rebranded to "McDonald's Bar-B-Que" restaurant selling twenty-five menu items mostly barbecue. Then in 1948, they found out that most of their profits came from the burgers and not the barbecue. So, they once again closed their restaurant and turned the place into what we now know as McDonald's. The first year, they sold only hamburgers, cheeseburgers, potato chips, coffee, soft drinks and apple pie. The following year, the brothers found out that customers did not enjoy the options of potato chips and apple pies. Therefore, they replace the two items with french fries and milkshakes, America's favorites.

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Notably, one of the most successful periods of McDonald's was during the 1960s where they started the "Look for the Golden Arches" campaign. During this time, the ad was very noticeable and has forever played a key role in the McDonald's corporation. During the year 1962, the company sold its millionth hamburger and also introduced Ronald McDonald, the red-haired clown, who was designed to appeal to children. The 1960s was also crucial to the success of McDonald's thanks to the growth of automobile usage. The automobiles came with suburbanization and contributed heavily to the success of the business. In the early 60s, Kroc bought the company from the McDonalds brothers for 2.7 million dollars. He aimed to make McDonald's the number one fast-food chain in the country. In 1963, franchises were being built in Detroit and in 1965, the corporation went public. Common shares were offered at 22.50 dollars per share. By the end of the first day, the price has risen to 30 dollars. A block of 100 shares purchased for 2,250 dollars in 1965 is worth over 5.7 million dollars as of the end of 2010.



Bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_McDonald%27s
http://flashbak.com/you-deserve-a-break-today-1960s-1980s-mcdonalds-history-in-advertising-29820/

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was an American politician and one of the first openly gay officials in the United States.

Harvey Milk's Life Before Politics
Milk was born in New York in 1930 to a small Jewish family.  In school, he was a well-liked, intelligent student growing up; he was involved in many extracurricular activities as he played football and sang in his high school's opera program.
After graduating from the New York State College for Teachers in 1951, Harvey Milk joined the Navy as a diving instructor during the Korean War.  After he was discharged in 1955, Milk moved to New York City where he worked a variety of jobs: public school teacher, production associate for Broadway musicals, stock analyst, Wall Street investment banker.  However, in 1972 he became bored with life in New York and decided to move to San Francisco where he opened a camera shop on Castro Street, the heart of the city's gay community.

Harvey Milks Life in Politics:
Before his move to San Francisco, Milk remained private about his homosexuality.  Even with the budding gay rights movement, he chose to remain on the sidelines.  However, as his camera shop, Castro Camera, became a neighborhood center, Milk found his voice as a gay rights activist and leader.  In 1973, he declared his candidacy for a position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  But, as a green politician with little financial support, Milk lost the election.  This loss did not deter him from running again two years later, and again he lost the second election.  By his third run, Milk had become a political force to be reckoned with as he was an outspoken leader for San Francisco's gay community and had supporters in George Moscone, Willie Brown, and Dianne Feinstein. His campaign focused not only on gay rights, but also child care, housing, a civilian police review board, etc. In 1977, Harvey Milk finally won a seat on the San Francisco City-County Board.  On his inauguration day on January 9, 1978, Harvey Milk became San Francisco's first openly gay officer and one of the country's first openly gay individuals to be elected to office.


Assassination:
Milk's ascension came at a time where homosexuality was still regarded as a mental illness by medical professionals.  However, San Francisco's mayor, George Moscone, was extremely liberal and was an avid supporter of gay rights which prompted him to abolish the city's anti-sodomy law.
On the other side of Moscone, was Dan White, a conservative who saw these liberal alterations as a breakdown of traditional values and was troubled by the growing acceptance of homosexuality.  He often clashed with the much more liberal Milk on policy issues.
After a year in office, White decided to resign as he was unable to support his family on the small salary that the job offered.  But, encouraged by his supporters, he asked Moscone to reappoint him; Moscone refused as he--and other board members--wanted to appoint a more liberal individual to his seat.
On November 27, 1978, White entered City Hall with a gun.  He began arguing with the mayor and again asked to be reappointed, and when he was refused, he shot Moscone four times.  He then went down the hall and found Milk, shooting him five times.  Very soon after the shooting, he went to the police station and turned himself in.

Harvey Milk was and still is one of the most revered and respected members of the gay community.  He made revolutionary steps towards equality and will go down in history as one of America's most influential politicians.

George W Bush

Naomi Zimmermann

George W Bush

George W Bush served from 2001 until 2009 and has left a lasting impact upon the country.

George W Bush was elected in 2000 when he ran against Al Gore. Although Al Gore won the popular vote, Bush won the election because he got the majority of electoral votes. The court case Bush v Gore was surrounding the disputed votes in Florida. The Florida votes were decisive as whichever candidate won the state would win the election. The first count said that Bush had won the state and thereby election, but due to the pressure of some there was a recount. The Bush administration filed a lawsuit to stop the recount and it went to the Supreme Court, which was headed by Rehnquist. The Rehnquist court ordered for the recount to stop as there hadn’t been set standards for the different counties and they had changed as the counting went on. The Bush v Gore case was one of the most judicial activist cases as it affirmed federal power and contributed to Rehnquist’s legacy as a judicial activist despite his original support for judicial restraint when he entered the court.

On September 11th, 2001, a group Al Qaeda terrorists flew planes into multiple buildings. Headed by Osama Bin Laden, the terrorists damaged the Pentagon in DC and destroyed the World Trade Center buildings in NYC. The attack was the worst foreign attack in America and around 3,000 Americans died, which led to Congress passing the USA PATRIOT Act. The Act allowed for more aggressive anti-terrorist measures to be taken and thereby gave law enforcement more power to do so. This included the increased accessibility of wiretaps (for law enforcement, not civilians) with the aim of tracking terrorists as well as the right for federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to perform background checks without court orders.

Following the attacks Bush announced that the United States would engage in a war on terror in what is known as the Bush Doctrine. This included that there would be no distinction made between the terrorists themselves and the countries that harbored them. He declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the axis of evil. The US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban government was harboring Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader. Although bin Laden was not killed at the time, an attack by the US Navy SEALS in May of 2011 in Pakistan resulted in his ultimate demise. In March of 2003, the US led a coalition of countries into Iraq as they were under the false pretense that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. The invasion lasted a mere three weeks before the Iraqi military and government collapsed and Hussein was executed.

Internal affairs also plagued the nation during Bush’s presidency. The cause of the Recession was not a new concept: banks had lenient lending policies which resulted in people investing money they didn’t have (and things becoming overvalued until they crash down) in a boom-and-bust cycle. This pattern can be seen as the cause of economic failures in the US since the Panic of 1819. The Recession began in 2007, and within 2 years the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped by over 50%. The Average measures the average stock prices of 30 large public companies in the US and is a clear indicator of economic prosperity, so for it to drop so dramatically in such a short span indicated severe economic failure. The real estate prices also dropped by over 30% in markets across the country in the housing bust, a reaction to the housing bubble in a boom-and-bust cycle is a trend in economic recessions.

A graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average between 2002 and 2013. The large dip between 2007 and 2010 is indicative of the Recession.

A graph describing the housing prices from 1997 until 2011. This graph is a clear indication of the centuries old boom-and-bust cycle of economic failures. The increase in housing prices is the Housing Bubble, and the sharp decline indicated the period following when the Housing bubble burst(vertex).

Links:

Class notes

AP US History Crash Course

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/djia.asp