The World Heritage Sites list has developed over time. It is part of a process; and the list continues to grow.
As of 2020, there are 24 places in the United States which are on the World Heritage List.
The Tentative List consists of sites which have been nominated. The evaluation process is not yet completed.
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park is a United States National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The park was created in 1906 to protect some of the best preserved cliff dwellings in the world. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The park occupies 81.4 square miles (211 square kilometers) near the Four Corners and features ruins of homes and villages built by the ancestral Puebloan people, sometimes called the Anasazi. The ancestral Puebloans made these stone villages their home in the 13th century. However, the first ancestral Puebloans had settled in Mesa Verde over 600 years before the cliff dwellings were ever built.
These first people are known as the Basketmakers and they lived in pithouses clustered into small villages usually built on mesa tops but sometimes in the overhangs of the cliffs. These hunter-gatherer people settled and began farming and using the bow and arrow, a weapon that was more efficient and accurate than the atlatl. By 750 AD, the people were building mesa-top villages made of adobe. By the late 12th century they began to build the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous.
Mesa Verde is best known for cliff dwellings, which are structures built within caves and under outcropping in cliffs — including Cliff Palace, which is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The Spanish term "Mesa Verde" translates into English as "green table". Approximately 600 of the over 4700 archeological sites found in Mesa Verde National Park are cliff dwellings.
Mesa Verde National Park is in the south-western corner of the state of Colorado.
Elevations in the park range from about . The terrain is dominated by ridges and valleys running roughly north and south. The northernmost point is 13.2 miles (21.2 kilometers) farther north than the southernmost.
Although explorers from Spain went through the general region in the 18th century, actual sight of the cliffs dwellings by outsiders seems to have first occurred in the latter half of the 19th century.
The fame of Mesa Verde soon began to spread thanks to the Wetherill ranchers and the archeological work of Gustaf Nordenskiöld. Vandalism led to President Teddy Roosevelt's support of protecting the area as a national park in 1906.
Shelling of Yeonpyeong
The shelling of Yeonpyeong was an exchange of artillery between the North and South Korean military on Yeonpyeong Island on 23 November 2010. After a South Korean artillery practice on the island, North Korea fired about 170 shells at Yeonpyeong. The shelling damaged the island greatly. It killed four South Koreans and hurt 19. At this, South Korea shelled North Korean gun positions. North Koreans said that they had fired the shells because they heard South Korean shells being fired into the North Korean part of the sea. Many nations disapproved of what the North did, and the tension (angry feelings) in Korea grew. The United Nations said that it was one of the most serious things that had happened after the end of the Korean War.
South Korea and the United States began the Hoguk exercise which they did every year. The Hoguk exercise was a large military practice with both South Korean and US militaries. The 2010 exercise used 70,000 soldiers from all four kinds of the South Korean military. They had 600 land vehicles, 90 helicopters, 50 warships, and 500 aircraft. The North Korean government felt that these exercises were a preparation for attacking the North, though the South and US said it was not.
On the morning of 23 November, North Korea said that it complained to the South, "asking whether (the [Hoguk] exercise) was an attack against the North". It said that it would not allow firing in what the North thought was its part of the sea. South Korean forces practiced firing in waters near Baengnyeong Island and Yeonpyeong Island in South Korean waters. According to a South Korean military official, the shells were fired towards waters in the south, away from North Korea. The firing was not part of the Hoguk exercise. It was a practice they did every month.
At 14:34 in Korean time, North Korea moved 22-mm Multiple Launch Rocket System shells towards an artillery place in Kaemori. Then it began firing on the island of Yeonpyeong. The firing went on 14:34 to 14:55 and again from 15:10 to 15:41. Many of the shells destroyed homes and shops. When they saw this, South Korea used 15mm self-propelled howitzers to fire about 80 shells at the North. The firing ended at about 16:42. It was the first artillery battle between North and South Korea since the 1970s. It was thought to be one of the most serious attacks by the North on the South since the Korean War ended.
Several fires began because of the North Korean shelling, so the South Korean military moved civilians away from Yeonpyeong.
Two South Korean soldiers, Hasa (Sergeant) Seo Jeong-wu and Ilbyeong (Private First Class) Moon Gwang-wuk, were killed. Six other people in the military were seriously hurt. Two workers on the island, Kim Chi-baek, who was 61, and Bae Bok-chul, who was 60, were also killed. Many parts of the island were put on fire because of the attack. Most of the people living on the island were moved after the shelling. From the 1,780 people living there, about 1,500 moved away. Many of them moved to Incheon on the mainland. The Incheon city sent 22 fire engines and ambulances to the island.
Nantucket Memorial Airport
Nantucket Memorial Airport (airport code KACK) serves the city of Nantucket, Massachusetts. The airport opened in 2009.
The following airlines fly to Nantucket Memorial Airport:
Midway International Airport
Midway International Airport (airport code KMDW) is a secondary airport serving the city of Chicago, Illinois. It was the largest airport in Chicago before O'Hare International Airport was built. It is on the South Side of Chicago in Garfield Ridge and in Clearing.
Originally named Chicago Air Park, Midway Airport was built on a plot in 1923 with one cinder runway that primarily served airmail services. In 1926 the city leased the airport for commercial purposes. The airport was designated as Chicago Municipal Airport on December 12, 1927. By 1928 the airport had twelve hangars and four runways, lit for night operations.
In 1931 a new passenger terminal opened at 62nd St; the following year the airport claimed to be the "World's Busiest" with over 100,846 passengers on 60,947 flights. The March 1939 OAG shows 47 weekday departures: 13 on United, 13 American, 9 TWA, 4 Northwest and two each on Eastern, Braniff, Pennsylvania Central and C&S. New York's airport (Newark, then LaGuardia by the end of 1939) was then the busiest airline airport in the United States, but Midway passed LaGuardia in 1948 and kept the title until 1960.
More construction was funded in part by $1 million from the Works Progress Administration; the airport expanded to fill the square mile in 1938–41 after a court ordered the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad to reroute tracks that had crossed the square along the north edge of the older field.
On June 30, 1956, United Airlines Flight 718, a Douglas DC-7, was headed for Midway Airport. Over the Grand Canyon it collided with a TWA Super Constellation, killing all 128 people on both planes. This became the impetus for the modern air traffic control system.
On December 8, 1972, United Airlines Flight 553, a Boeing 737-200, crashed into a residential area outside Midway during landing. The crash of the 737-200 killed 43 of the 61 on board, and two on the ground.