Portal:Iowa

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Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States of America on the rolling hills between the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. The state is the center of one of the Earth’s most productive agricultural regions. Admitted to the Union on December 28, 1846, Iowa became the 29th State. Iowa ranks 26th in total area and 30th in population among the 50 states. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the state population was 3,007,856 in 2009. Des Moines is the capital, most populous city, and center of the most populous metropolitan area of Iowa.

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The Iowa-class battleships were a class of fast battleships ordered by the United States Navy in 1939 and 1940 to escort the Fast Carrier Task Forces that would operate in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Six were ordered during the course of World War II, but only four were completed in time to see service in the Pacific Theater. The last two had been laid down, but as a result of the post war draw down of the armed forces they were canceled prior to completion and eventually scrapped. Like other third generation American battleships, the Iowa class was a departure from the traditionally held role of the battleship of engaging other battleships in a line of battle. Conceived, constructed, and commissioned at a time of changing naval strategy, the Iowa class was built with an intended role of defending United States aircraft carriers from enemy attack rather than for engaging in battleship on battleship gunfights. To this end, these battleships followed the design pattern set forth in the preceding North Carolina-class and South Dakota-class battleships, which placed great emphasis on speed as well as the secondary and anti-aircraft batteries. The Iowa-class battleships served in every major U.S. war of the mid and latter half of the 20th century. In World War II, they defended aircraft carriers and shelled Japanese positions before being placed in reserve at the end of the war. Recalled for action during the Korean War, the battleships provided seaborne artillery support for United Nations forces fighting against North Korea. In 1968, New Jersey was recalled for action in the Vietnam War and shelled Viet Cong and Vietnam People's Army military forces. All four were reactivated and armed with missiles during the 1980s as part of the 600-ship Navy initiative, and in 1991 Missouri and Wisconsin fired missiles and 16-inch (406 mm) guns at Iraqi targets during the First Gulf War. Citing the impending end of the Cold War and the sizable operating expense, the United States Navy decommissioned all four battleships in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2001 and 2006 sister ships New Jersey and Wisconsin became the second and third battleships of the class to open as a museum ships, respectively. The fourth ship - Iowa - has yet to donated; she was to have become a museum ship in San Francisco, California, but due in part to political differences between the non profit and San Francisco's city council the original museum ship plans fell through. Iowa remains berthed in the Suisun Bay reserve fleet in Suisun Bay, California, pending the outcome of a renewed round of bidding for the battleship.

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz trumpet/cornet soloists of the 1920s. His turns on "Singin' the Blues" (1927) and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (1927), in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity of tone and a gift for improvisation. Especially these two recordings helped to invent the jazz ballad style and hinted at what, in the 1950s, would become cool jazz. "In a Mist" (1927), one of a handful of his piano compositions but the only one he recorded, mixed classical influences with jazz syncopation. Beiderbecke has also been credited for his influence, directly, on Bing Crosby and, indirectly, via saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, on Lester Young. A native of Davenport, Iowa, Beiderbecke taught himself to play cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering that some critics have connected to his original sound. He first recorded with a Midwestern jazz ensemble the Wolverines in 1924, after which he played briefly for the Detroit-based Jean Goldkette Orchestra before joining Frankie "Tram" Trumbauer for an extended gig at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, Missouri. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer both joined Goldkette in 1926. The band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1926. The following year, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke left Detroit to join the best-known and most prestigious dance orchestra in the country: the New York–based Paul Whiteman Orchestra. A few stints in rehabilitation centers, as well as the support of Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family in Davenport, did not check Beiderbecke's fall. He left the Whiteman band in 1930 and the following summer died in his Queens apartment at the age of twenty-eight.

• ...that the present-day city of Davenport, Iowa is named after George Davenport, a 19th-century American frontiersman, trader and US Army officer?
• ...that the August 8–9, 1993, tornado outbreak in the American Midwest spawned the most recent single tornado to cause multiple deaths in Minnesota?
• ...that the quarterbacks for the Michigan Wolverines football teams of the 19th century included a Brigadier General decorated for valor in World War I, the brother of a famous novelist, one of the founders of General Motors, the physician at a Kimberly-Clark mill, the son of the Governor of Wyoming, a steamboat builder, a Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Pythias and a sheep rancher from Walla Walla?

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The Iowa State Fair is famous for its butter cow.
Sculpture by John K. Daniels More Selected Pictures

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