The history of the petroleum industry in the United States goes back to the early 19th century, although the indigenous peoples, like many ancient societies, have used petroleum seeps since prehistoric times; where found, these seeps signaled the growth of the industry from the earliest discoveries to the more recent. Petroleum became a major industry following the oil discovery at Oil Creek Pennsylvania in 1859. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the US was the largest oil producing country in the world; it is now the 3rd largest.
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“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
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—Henry James (1843–1916)
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—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
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His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
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—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
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—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)