Indiana

Indiana ⁱ/ɪndiˈænə/ is a U.S. state located in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th U.S. state on December 11, 1816.

Before becoming a territory, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans inhabited Indiana for thousands of years. Since its founding as a territory, settlement patterns in Indiana have reflected regional cultural segmentation present in the Eastern United States; the state's northernmost tier was settled primarily by people from New England and New York, Central Indiana by migrants from the Mid-Atlantic states and from adjacent Ohio, and Southern Indiana by settlers from the Southern states, particularly Kentucky and Tennessee.

Indiana has a diverse economy with a gross state product of $298 billion in 2012. Indiana has several metropolitan areas with populations greater than 100,000 and a number of smaller industrial cities and towns. Indiana is home to several major sports teams and athletic events including the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, the NASL's Indy Eleven, the NBA's Indiana Pacers, the WNBA's Indiana Fever, the Indianapolis 500, and Brickyard 400 motorsports races.

The Great Gildersleeve

The Great Gildersleeve is a radio situation comedy broadcast from August 31, 1941, to March 21, 1957. Initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, it was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. The series was built around the character Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, a regular element of the radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly. The character was introduced in the October 3, 1939 episode (number 216) of that series. Peary played a similarly named character, Dr. Gildersleeve on earlier episodes. The Great Gildersleeve enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 1940s. Actor Harold Peary played the character during its transition from the parent show into the spin-off and later in four feature films released at the height of the show's popularity.

In Fibber McGee and Molly, Peary's Gildersleeve had been a pompous windbag and nemesis of Fibber McGee. "You're a haa-aa-aa-aard man, McGee!" became a Gildersleeve catchphrase. The character went by several aliases on Fibber McGee and Molly; his middle name was revealed to be "Philharmonic" in "Gildersleeve's Diary" episode on October 22, 1940.

Fibber McGee and Molly

Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series that maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.

Husband and wife in real life

The stars of the program were real-life husband and wife team James "Jim" Jordan (16 November 1896 – 1 April 1988) and Marian Driscoll (15 April 1898 – 7 April 1961), who were natives of Peoria, Illinois.

Jordan was the seventh of eight children born to James Edward Jordan and Mary (née Tighe) Jordan, while Driscoll was the twelfth out of thirteen children born to Daniel P. and Anna (née Carroll) Driscoll. The son of a farmer, Jim wanted to be a singer; Marian, the daughter of a coal miner, wanted to be a music teacher. Both attended the same Catholic church, where they met at choir practice. Marian's parents had attempted to discourage her professional singing and acting aspirations. When she started seeing young Jim Jordan, the Driscolls were far from approving of Jim and his ideas. Jim's voice teacher gave him a recommendation for work as a professional in Chicago, and he followed it. He was able to have steady work but soon tired of the life on the road. In less than a year, Jim came back to Peoria and went to work for the Post Office. His profession was now acceptable to Marian's parents, and they stopped objecting to the couple's marriage plans. The pair were married in Peoria on August 31, 1918.

Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo is a wireless speaker and voice command device from Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25-inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. The device responds to the name "Alexa"; this "wake word" can be changed by the user (to also "Amazon" or "Echo" at present.). The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. It can also control several smart devices.

Amazon had been developing Echo inside its Lab126 offices in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass. since at least 2010. The device, codenamed 'Doppler' or 'Project D', was part of Amazon’s first attempts to expand its device portfolio beyond the original Kindle Ereader.

The Echo (initially limited to Amazon Prime members or by invitation) became widely available on June 23, 2015. Additionally, the service behind it (Alexa Voice Service) is available to be added to other devices and other companies’ devices and services are encouraged to connect to it (using the Alexa Skills Kit).