Word: pennsylvania
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...marks the sesquicentennial of the first oil well, which was drilled in Titusville, Pa. It has been more than a century since any major producer shipped oil in an actual barrel, but the unit has been the industry's standard ever since the overwhelmed Pennsylvania oilmen struck their first gusher. Before U.S. drilling began in 1859, "rock oil" (to differentiate it from vegetable oil or animal fat) was sopped up with rags, wrung out and peddled as a cure for everything from headaches to deafness. Spurred by demand for lamp fuel as whale blubber grew scarce, derricks popped...
...boom took hold and the barrel size was set at 42 gal. (160 L), Pennsylvania's roads became clogged with horse-drawn wagons piled high with the containers, prompting construction of the first oil pipelines (made of wood) and leading 25-year-old John D. Rockefeller to form what became the Standard Oil Co. It eventually controlled up to 90% of U.S. oil-refining until the company was broken up in 1911. (See pictures showing the history of the Exxon Valdez disaster...
...Despite his grass-roots support, it's uncertain if Williams can muster a council majority next month to pass the ordinance, which would likely be the first such law to emerge amid the Great Recession. (A Pennsylvania judge last year mandated a program in Philadelphia that requires lenders there to at least participate in a modification-mediation process before resorting to foreclosure.) John Mechem, spokesman for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington, D.C., argues the ordinance is "ill-conceived" because it would "encourage banks not to do business [in] the city, which would limit competition." But even if it doesn...
...badger OPEC about oil prices, and he has struggled to explain why he once called coal a "nightmare." Several of his scientific initiatives have stalled on Capitol Hill, victims of lackluster salesmanship. He got his unofficial welcome to politics in February, during a tour of the University of Pennsylvania's operations facility, when a snippy Vice President Joe Biden responded to Chu's seemingly innocuous comments about energy efficiency by publicly chastising him for straying off message. "He won a Nobel Prize," Biden told the crowd. "I got elected seven times...
Yale took third place, with a four-way tie for fourth pitting the University of Pennsylvania and MIT against the California Institute of Technology and Stanford...