Portal:Virginia

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Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach. Its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of more than 8.8 million live.

Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Central Virginia lies predominantly in the Piedmont, the foothill region of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base. (Full article...)

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Virginia House is a country house on a hillside overlooking the James River in the Windsor Farms neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia.

The house was constructed from the materials of the 16th century Warwick Priory in Warwickshire, England, and shipped over and reassembled, completed several months before the stock market crash of 1929. Virginia House is in the Tudor architectural style but incorporates a range of designs from other English houses and has modern facilities such as seven baths and central heating.

Virginia House belonged to Alexander and Virginia Weddell, an interior designer who had created a lavish interior for the house, salvaging many materials from the priory and other old English manor houses and adding further elegant English and Spanish antiques, oriental carpets, silks and silverware. Today Virginia House is operated by the Virginia Historical Society as a museum, although it largely remains as it was in the 1930s except for gradual crumbling sandstone replacement. Immediately to the west of the property is Agecroft Hall.

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First Lieutenant Charles Bare Gatewood (April 5, 1853 – May 20, 1896) was an American soldier born in Woodstock, Virginia. He served in the United States Army in the 6th Cavalry after graduating from West Point. Upon assignment to the American Southwest, Gatewood led platoons of Apache and Navajo scouts against renegades during the Apache Wars. In 1886 he played a key role in ending the Geronimo Campaign by persuading Geronimo to surrender to the army.

Beset with health problems due to exposure in the Southwest and Dakotas, Gatewood was critically injured in the Johnson County War and retired from the Army in 1895, dying a year later from stomach cancer. Before his retirement he was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but was denied the award. He was portrayed by Jason Patric in the 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend.

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This month in Virginia history

October 2002: The Beltway sniper attacks strike Northern Virginia
October 19, 1781: According to tradition, the "The World Turned Upside Down” is played at the Surrender of Yorktown. (Yorktown Victory Monument, pictured)
October 19, 1864: Union General Sheridan rides from Winchester to the Battle of Cedar Creek, rallying his troops and reversing the course of the battle.
October 23, 1995: The commercial Conestoga 1620 rocket is terminated during its failed launch at Wallops Island; its project is scrubbed shortly thereafter.
October 31, 1887: the 1887 Halloween tropical storm hits the Eastern seaboard, driving numerous vessels aground onto the Virginia coast

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Credit: NASA

Little Joe 1 rocket being prepared for a test flight at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore, as part of Project Mercury, 1959

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... that a government surplus audio console used by a Virginia radio station was believed to have been used to broadcast Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats?
... that five peregrine falcon chicks were released from the roof of an office building in Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to combat an overpopulation of pigeons?
... that PBS Appalachia Virginia is the first all-non-terrestrial public TV station in the United States?
... that by September 29, 1864, the 23rd Virginia Infantry Battalion only had 78 enlisted men present for duty?
... that a Virginia TV station broadcast an all-Black variety show on its first day in 1950?
... that an exhibition hall for the 1939 New York World's Fair later hosted athletic events at a historically Black university in Virginia?