While the four main maritime republics of Italy are now history, they continue to live on in the Regatta of the Ancient Maritime Republics as well as on the coat of arms and the naval jack of the Italian Navy, which like the Union Jack of the United Kingdom, combines the flags of a now united group of countries.

The Upper East Side has numerous historic buildings, including stately and gracious apartment buildings particularly along Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue. As such there are six historic districts on the Upper East Side. It is also the home to several museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The concentration of museums is large enough that a stretch of Fifth Avenue is known as “Museum Mile.” It is also home to cultural institutions such as the 92nd Street Y.

For over 100 years, the Upper East Side has also been famous for being the home of some of the wealthiest people in the world. In early 1900′s industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick built mansions in the neighborhood.  At the end of 1900′s, such business people and entrepreneurs as Estee Lauder, Michael Bloomberg, and Ron Perelman made their homes on the Upper East Side. In fact, in 2006, a book was published about one building, 740 Park Avenue, with the subtitle “The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building.”

The holiday is also known by other names, such as:

• “The Fourth”: “Some wealthier farmers and businessmen, like James Reed, could afford to stock the recesses of their wagons with bottles of brandy and champagne, which they brought out to celebrate the Fourth, the crossing of the continental divide, or other special occasions.”—John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1979), p. 94
• “Independence Day”: “Monday, July 4th. This was ‘independence day’ in Boston. What firing of guns, and ringing of bells, and rejoicings of all sorts, in every part of our country!”—Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast (1840), and “Joe Sestak stepped out of a Chevy Suburban on the morning of July 3 and met up with a group of 15 campaign volunteers gathered in the parking lot of a drugstore in Canonsburg, Pa., just southwest of Pittsburgh. The town is the birthplace of Perry Como. It is also said to have the largest Independence Day parade in western Pennsylvania. Sestak and his supporters walked across an intersection and took their assigned place near the back of a procession amid firetrucks, dune buggies, a horse-drawn carriage, a bagpipe band and an S.U.V. ferrying Junior Miss Mid Mon Valley, an 8-year-old beauty queen sitting on top of the vehicle with her legs dangling through the sunroof. Sestak, a Navy admiral turned politician, surveyed the scene, then turned to me and said: ‘I heard this parade was gigantic and wonderful. But look at this!’”—Michael Sokolove, “Joe Sestak, the 60th Democrat,” The New York Times, August 22, 2010.
• “July Fourth”: “Memorial Day is the most profound holiday of the year. July Fourth may be more significant to us as a nation, but this is the one that brings lumps to our throats. I gaze at the waves of small American flags in cemeteries, flapping in the breeze like Kansas wheat, and I am overwhelmed.”—Sam Allis, “Never forget: Those beautiful flags, big and small, each signify a death in combat in service to our country,” The Boston Globe, May 31, 2010, and “The crack of the ball off a wooden bat, the soft thud of the ball into an outfielder’s outstretched glove and cheers as a home run sails out of the park. The sounds of baseball are as much a part of summer as evening thunderstorms and July Fourth fireworks.”—Amy Orndorff, “This Ballgame Is in the ‘burbs,” The Washington Post, June 25, 2010, p. T05.

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Virginia
• West Virginia

And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass. In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses; And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses. Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What arethese, my lord? And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the LORD of all the earth. The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country. And the bay went forth, and sought to go that they might walk to and fro through the earth: and he said, Get you hence, walk to and fro through the earth. So they walked to and fro through the earth. Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.—The Bible, Zechariah 6:1-8 (King James Version).

“Springtime for Hitler” is also the song that opens the fake musical.  It’s lyrics famously include the lines, “And now it’s…/Springtime for Hitler and Germany/Deutschland is happy and gay!/We’re marching to a faster pace/Look out, here comes the master race!”

It most commonly is used to refer to the period in the later part of the Roman Empire, when it was ruled by four emperors at a time—one senior “Augustus” each for the Eastern and Western halves and one junior “Caesar” each for the Eastern and Western halves.