The Big Easy sizzles in the summer, but the city really pops on the Fourth of July, a New Orleans holiday that packs the French Quarter with even more food, music and fun.
This live feed is in New Orleans for the 2011 4th July fireworks:
New Orleans Fireworks live
Event Information:
Grab a seat along the banks of the Mississippi River for ringside views of the "Dueling Barges," a fireworks bonanza launched from two riverboats as part of the Crescent City's Go 4th on the River celebration. The fireworks display starts around 9 p.m., and is choreographed with a simulcast tribute to patriotic classics.
La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763). During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port to smuggle aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez launched the southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779.[14] New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted to French control. Nearly all of the surviving 18th century architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from this Spanish period. (The most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent.) Napoleon sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, Irish, Germans and Africans. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city.
US national weather service has reported that the Mississippi River has peaked at just under 48ft in the southern US city of Memphis. The flooding has been caused by melting snow and heavy rains.
This live webcam is monitoring the levels on the Mississippi:
Mississippi river webcam
Location Information:
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. About 2,320 miles (3,730 km) long, the river originates at Lake Itasca, Minnesota and flows slowly southwards in sweeping meanders, terminating 95 river miles below New Orleans, Louisiana where it begins to flow to the Gulf of Mexico. Along with its major tributary, the Missouri River, the river drains all or parts of 31 U.S. states stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Canada-U.S. border on the north, including most of the Great Plains, and is the fourth longest river in the world and the tenth most powerful river in the world.
The Mississippi River drains the majority of the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, except for the areas drained to the Hudson Bay via the Red River of the North, by the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, the Rio Grande (and numerous other rivers in Texas), the Alabama River-Tombigbee River, and the Chattahoochee River-Apalachicola River.
