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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The list of Philadelphia Eagles first-round draft picks began three years after the professional American football team based in Philadelphia joined the National Football League (NFL) in 1933 as a replacement team for the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets. After the AFL-NFL merger, the Eagles were moved to the current NFC East division. Every April, each NFL franchise adds new players to its roster through a collegiate draft held at the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", more commonly known as the NFL Draft. Teams are ranked in inverse order based on their previous season's records, with the worst record picking first, the second-worst picking second, and so on. Two exceptions to this order are made for teams that played in the previous Super Bowl: the Super Bowl champion picks last, and the Super Bowl loser picks next to last. Teams often trade their picks to other teams for different picks, players, cash, or combinations thereof; thus, it is not uncommon for a team's actual pick to differ from its assigned pick, or for a team to have extra or no draft picks in any round. The Eagles' first selection as an NFL team was running back Jay Berwanger from the University of Chicago. The Eagles have selected number one overall three times: Berwanger in 1936, Sam Francis in 1937, and Chuck Bednarik in 1949, as well as second overall five times, and third overall three times. Three eventual Hall of Famers have been drafted by the Eagles: Steve Van Buren, Bednarik, and Bob Brown. The team's most recent first-round choice was Brodrick Bunkley, a defensive tackle from Florida State University.
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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 - February
- February 2, 1854 - The Act of Consolidation is passed, consolidating all of Philadelphia County into the City of Philadelphia.
- February 5, 1824 - The Franklin Institute is founded by Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating.
- February 12, 1875 - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Philadelphia is elevated to level of Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
- February 25, 1957 - The body of an unsolved murder of an unidentified boy, dubbed the "Boy in the Box", is found.
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Did you know...
... that Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park is the only major building remaining from the Centennial Exposition of 1876? It currently houses the Please Touch Museum.
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"Other American cities, no matter how bad their condition may be, all point with scorn to Philadelphia as worse; 'the worse-governed city in the country.'"
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