In 1860 most Houstonians supported John C Breckinridge an independent Democratic candidate for president However he lost the election to Abraham Lincoln As the Civil War began there was tension between supporters of the Confederacy and the few Union sympathizers the Chamber of Commerce kept the city together during the conflict Galveston was blockaded on October 4 1862 which in turn soured Houston's economy on January 1 1863 John B Magruder's Confederate forces recaptured the city However the war was won by the Union forces in 1865 Texas was governed under a military command during Reconstruction but Federal forces could not control the anarchy and lawlessness that broke out after the war Civilians settled old grudges and several counties were essentially without civilian government, The Bank of America Center is one of the first significant examples of postmodern architecture built in downtown Houston the building completed in 1984 and designed by Philip Johnson and partner John Burgee is reminiscent of the Dutch Gothic architecture of canal houses that were once common in the Netherlands the first section is 21 stories tall while the whole building reaches a height of 56 stories. In July 2015 BP reached an $18.7bn settlement with the US government the states of Alabama Florida Louisiana Mississippi and Texas as well as 400 local authorities to date BP's cost for the clean-up environmental and economic damages and penalties has reached $54bn, Texas lies at the juncture of two major cultural spheres of Pre-Columbian North America the Southwestern and the Plains areas the area now covered by Texas was occupied by three major indigenous cultures which had reached their developmental peak before the arrival of European explorers and are known from archaeology These are:, 5.2.2 Texas politics today Houston Texas Business Directory. 1630 map of the Portuguese fort and the city of Malacca The Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction Over the years the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption They have acted as riot police and as detectives protected the Texas governor tracked down fugitives and functioned as a paramilitary force both for the republic and the state the Texas Rangers were unofficially created by Stephen F Austin in 1823 and formally constituted in 1835 the Rangers were integral to several important events of Texas history and some of the best-known criminal cases in the history of the Old West. . . Houston Texas Business Directory, JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston Texas is the tallest composite building in the world, (107) 4.67 Traces (1,600) The Allies had mixed success in mainland Asia in March 1944 the Japanese launched the first of two invasions an operation against British positions in Assam India and soon besieged Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima in May 1944 British forces mounted a counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma by July and Chinese forces that had invaded northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops in Myitkyina the second Japanese invasion of China aimed to destroy China's main fighting forces secure railways between Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields by June the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a new attack on Changsha in Hunan province!
. Houston has the largest number of bike commuters in Texas with over 160 miles of dedicated bikeways the city is currently in the process of expanding its on and off street bikeway network.[when?] in 2015 Downtown Houston added a cycle track on Lamar Street running from Sam Houston Park to Discovery Green in August 2017 Houston City Council approved spending for construction of 13 additional miles of bike trails; Stephen F Austin was the first American empresario given permission to operate a colony within Mexican Texas, The Texas Revolution has been the subject of poetry and of many books plays and films Most English-language treatments reflect the perspectives of the Anglos and are centered primarily on the battle of the Alamo. From the first novel depicting events of the revolution 1838's Mexico versus Texas through the mid-20th century most works contained themes of anticlericalism and racism depicting the battle as a fight for freedom between good (Anglo Texian) and evil (Mexican) in both English- and Spanish-language literature the Alamo is often compared to the battle of Thermopylae the 1950s Disney miniseries Davy Crockett which was largely based on myth created a worldwide craze for everything Alamo-related. Within several years John Wayne directed and starred in one of the best-known and perhaps least historically accurate film versions the Alamo (1960).[Note 18] Notably this version made the first attempt to leave behind racial stereotypes; it was still banned in Mexico in the late 1970s works about the Alamo began to explore Tejano perspectives which had been all but extinguished even from textbooks about the revolution and to explore the revolution's links to slavery. B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita Kansas 1944 In 1900 after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane efforts to make Houston into a viable deep-water port were accelerated the following year the discovery of oil at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel by 1910 the city's population had reached 78,800 almost doubling from a decade before African Americans formed a large part of the city's population numbering 23,929 people which was nearly one-third of Houston's residents! ! .
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