Symhpony

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations , commonly AFL-CIO , is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 54 national and international unions (including Canadian), together representing more than 10 million workers. It was formed in 1955 when the AFL and the CIO merged after a long estrangement. From 1955 until 2005, the AFL-CIO's member unions represented nearly all unionized workers in the United States. The largest union in the AFL-CIO is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), with more than a million members, since 2005 when several large unions split away from AFL-CIO.

The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided gorge carved by the Colorado River in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park — one of the first national parks in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of preservation of the Grand Canyon area, and visited on numerous occasions to hunt and enjoy the scenery.

The longstanding scientific consensus has been that the canyon was created by the Colorado River over a period of 6 million years, but research released in 2008 suggests a much longer 17 million year time span. The canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, ranges in width from 4 to 18 miles (6.4 to 29 km) and attains a depth of more than a mile (1.6 km). Nearly two billion years of the Earth's history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. The "canyon started from the west, then another formed from the east, and the two broke through and met as a single majestic rent in the earth some six million years ago. The merger apparently occurred where the river today, coming from the north, bends to the west, in the area known as the Kaibab Arch."

During prehistory, the area was inhabited by Native Americans who built settlements within the canyon and its many caves. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon ("Ongtupqa" in Hopi language) a holy site and made pilgrimages to it.

The first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon was García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540.

The Grand Canyon was largely unexplored until after the U.S. Civil War. In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran with a thirst for science and adventure, made the first recorded journey through the canyon on the Colorado River. He accomplished this trek with nine men in four small wooden boats, though only six men completed the journey. Powell referred to the sedimentary rock units exposed in the canyon as "leaves in a great story book".

Final Fantasy ( ファイナルファンタジー , Fainaru Fantajī ^? ) is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise. The series began in 1987 as an eponymous console role-playing game developed by Square, spawning a video game series that became the central focus of the franchise. The franchise has since branched out into other genres and platforms, such as tactical RPGs, portable games, MMORPGs, and games for mobile phones. As of March 2007, there are twenty-eight games in the franchise. The series has spurred the release of three animated productions, two full-length CGI films, and several literary adaptations.

Most Final Fantasy installments are independent stories (the numbers after the title refers more to volumes than sequels); however, they feature common elements that define the franchise. The series has popularized many features that are now widely used in console RPGs, and it is well known for its visuals, music, and innovation. Many titles in the series have been commercially and critically successful; it is the fourth-best-selling video game franchise, with more than 80 million units sold as of December 2007. In addition, the series was awarded a star on the Walk of Game in 2006.