New York Attractions

New York Attractions, The city announced last week that the Statue of Liberty will reopen for visitors and tourists on July 4, which will attract thousands of people from around the world to New York. To avoid the rush, check out these hidden gems to develop a richer sense of the city.

Section of the Berlin Wall
520 Madison Ave.
It’s a piece of world history, and you don’t have to travel to Germany to see a part of the Berlin Wall. Located in a courtyard near an office building on Madison Avenue, there are five panels of the famed wall by cafe tables where one can sit and observe them. The panels display the work of French artist Thierry Noir, who painted sections of the wall in an attempt to beautify it. It’s a monumental bit of history, hidden in plain sight.

The Panorama at the Queens
Museum of Art
New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY
Have a visitor in town who wants to see every last bit of the city? The Queens Museum of Art has you covered. It contains a 9,335-square-foot scale model of New York City that was built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair and contains all five boroughs.

Koreatown
West 31st through West 33rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
Everyone knows Chinatown, but another Asian enclave that’s well worth the visit is Koreatown near Herald Square. Try out a classic Korean dish like bibimbap, purchase some authentic stationery and then sing the night away at one of Koreatown’s many karaoke clubs

Upright Citizens Brigade
307 W. 26th St and 153 E. Third St.
United Citizen’s Brigade is an improvisational theatre that hosts some of New York City’s finest comedy shows – one of the founders of the theatre is none other than Amy Poehler. There are shows every day of the week in their Chelsea and East Village locations, and with tickets as low as $5, UCB is much more affordable than a Broadway show.

Brooklyn Flea Market
176 Lafayette Ave. and East River State Park
Now that it is spring, your guests from home and from other schools will surely want to spend their time outside enjoying the warm weather. Why not take a trip to the seasonal Brooklyn Flea Market that features over 250 vendors? They sell everything from dresses and jewelry to vintage bikes and house ware – you’ll find something one of a kind.

Empire State Building

Empire State Building, If asked to imagine a green building, what would you see with your mind’s eye? A fragile-looking glass and steal box? Maybe a garden and solar panels covering the roof? A sign out front that reads something like, “Sustainably Grown Organic Tofu Cooperative?”

Perhaps you’d chuckle as you picture the naive idealists at SGOTC paying through the nose to stock up on unproven energy-efficient technology in the delusional hope that it would some day save energy and money.

Prepare to re-imagine and get your mind blown in the process. The 2.7 million-square foot Empire State Building — brawny, angular icon of early twentieth century grit and ambition (and still New York City’s second-tallest building) — is green. And it’s saving energy and money — lots of it.

Owner Tony Malkin worked with experts from organizations ranging from Johnson Controls to Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) to develop a retrofit that would save 38 percent of the building’s energy and $4.4 million each year. Oh — and add about 250 jobs as well.

The building’s retrofit was a grand experiment, really. RMI describes Malkin as saying, “We knew that by retrofitting the Empire State Building, we would catch the world’s attention. Through this project, we set out to prove or disprove energy efficiency

Colin Powell Date Of Birth: April 5, 1937 – Famous April Birthdays

Colin Powell Date Of Birth: April 5, 1937 – Famous April Birthdays, Colin Luther Powell (born April 5, 1937) is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005.

He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987-1989), as Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1993), holding the latter position during the Gulf War. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Nicki Minaj Birthplace

Nicki Minaj Birthplace, Onika Tanya Maraj (born December 8, 1982), known by her stage name Nicki Minaj is a Trinidadian-born American musician. She was born in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago, and moved to the New York borough of Queens when she was five.

After releasing three mixtapes between 2007 and 2009 and being signed to Young Money Entertainment in August 2009, Minaj released her debut album, Pink Friday, in November 2010. It quickly became a commercial success, peaking at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and being certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a month after its release. She became the first female solo artist to have seven singles on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. Her second single, “Your Love”, reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart, making Minaj the first female artist to top the chart unaccompanied since 2002. She also became the first female artist to be included on MTV’s Annual Hottest MC List. Minaj was named the 2011 Rising Star by Billboard. Her second studio album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded will be released on April 3, 2012.

Maraj was born in 1982[note 1] in Saint James, a suburb of Trinidad and Tobago’s capital city Port of Spain. Her parents are of mixed Indian and Afro-Trinidadian ancestry and she lived in Saint James with her grandmother until age five, because her parents were looking for a place to live in the Queens borough of New York City at the time. Her mother would occasionally visit, and one day, when Minaj was five, her mother picked her up to move to Queens. According to Minaj, her father drank heavily, took drugs, and once tried to kill her mother by setting the house on fire.

She attended Elizabeth Blackwell Middle School 210, where she played the clarinet. She graduated from LaGuardia High School. At LaGuardia, a school specializing in music and the visual and performing arts, Minaj participated in the drama program. She had initially planned to sing at LaGuardia, but lost her voice on the day of the audition.

First Female Space Shuttle Commander

First Female Space Shuttle Commander, Though dozens of women have flown on the space shuttle during the course of its 30-year career, only two have commanded the spaceship.

Those two are NASA astronauts Eileen Collins, who led the STS-93 flight of the shuttle Columbia in July 1999, and Pamela Melroy, who commanded the STS-120 mission of Discovery in November 2007.

Because becoming a shuttle commander requires previous spaceflight experience, as well as at least 1,000 hours experience piloting a jet aircraft, fewer women have achieved this position than those that have flown as mission specialists.

With NASA planning to retire the space shuttles after the final flight of Atlantis July 8, no further chances will arise for women to command the reusable space planes. However, both Collins and Melroy expressed the hope that more women could become commanders of future American spacecraft as NASA embarks on a new mission to explore asteroids, the moon and Mars.

Collins was born in 1956 in Elmira, N.Y. She has masters degrees in operations research and space systems management, and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force. She was selected as an astronaut candidate in January 1990
first spaceflight, the STS-63 mission of Discovery in February 1995, Collins became the first female space shuttle pilot, a second-in-command position behind the commander. After another flight, the May 1997 voyage of Atlantis, Collins became the first female space shuttle commander on the STS-93 mission of the shuttle Columbia.

“I was just doing my job — a job I loved,” Collins told SPACE.com. “I was very mission-oriented, I always focused on the safety of the mission, the accuracy, what is our mission statement, are we fulfilling that. I never really thought that much about, OK, I’m a woman and this is the first time a woman has flown as a pilot, the first time a woman has flown as commander.”

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