Michigan in the context of "Ric-Tic Records"

A charter township is a form of local government in the U.S. state of Michigan. While all townships in Michigan are organized governments, a charter township has been granted a charter, which allows it certain rights and responsibilities of home rule that are generally intermediate between those of a city (a semi-autonomous jurisdiction in Michigan) and a village. Unless it is a home-rule village, a village is subject to the authority of any township in which it is located.

Of Michigan's 1,240 townships, 143 are charter townships. A number of charter townships are among the most populous municipalities in Michigan. For example, Clinton Township and Canton Township, both in Metro Detroit, were respectively the 8th and 9th most populous municipalities in Michigan at the 2020 census. The most recent township to become a charter township is Brady Township in Kalamazoo County, which adopted charter status on January 3, 2024.

Ontario is the southernmost province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it is home to 38.5% of the country's population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada's fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area of all the Canadian provinces and territories. It is home to the nation's capital, Ottawa, and its most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario's provincial capital.

Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast. To the south, it is bordered by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania (through Lake Erie), and New York. Almost all of Ontario's 2,700 km (1,700 mi) border with the United States follows rivers and lakes: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. There is only about 1 km (5⁄8 mi) of actual land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.

A borough in some U.S. states is a unit of local government or other administrative division below the level of the state. The term is currently used in six states:

• A type of municipality: Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania (also formerly Michigan and Minnesota)
• A subdivision of a consolidated city, corresponding to another present or previous political subdivision: New York and Virginia
• In Alaska only, a borough is a county-equivalent.

A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers. Lakes, like other bodies of water, are part of the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Most lakes are fresh water and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume of water.

Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are generally shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars or other material at coastal regions of oceans or large lakes. Most lakes are fed by springs, and both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams.

The Consulate-General of Japan, Detroit (在デトロイト日本国総領事館, Zai Detoroito Nippon-koku Sōryōjikan) is a diplomatic mission of Japan. It is located in Suite 1600 Tower 400 of the GM Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. Its jurisdiction includes the states of Michigan and Ohio.

The Japanese government proposed opening the consulate in order to improve Japan's image with the United States and decrease tensions between the Japanese government and automotive companies. It was also established due to an increase in the numbers of Japanese businesses and residents in the states of Michigan and Ohio. Officials from the American and Japanese governments hoped that the consulate opening would ease trade-related tensions.

The Renaissance Center, commonly known as the RenCen, is a complex of seven connected skyscrapers in downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. Located on the Detroit International Riverfront, the RenCen is owned and used by General Motors as its world headquarters. The complex includes a 73-story Marriott hotel at its center, surrounded by four 39-story office towers, connected by a large square podium containing public spaces, a conference center, retail stores, restaurants, and a company showroom.

Developed as an urban renewal project in the 1970s, the Renaissance Center was envisioned as a "city-within-a-city," and was meant to anchor a wider redevelopment of the then-declining city of Detroit. The project was developed and funded by a consortium led by the Ford Motor Company, and John Portman served as its principal architect. The five original towers were built in the Modern architectural style and completed in 1977, with two matching towers added later in 1981.

Detroit (/dɪˈtrɔɪt/ dih-TROYT, locally also /ˈdiːtrɔɪt/ DEE-troyt, French pronunciation: [detʁwa] , literally "Strait") is the most populous city in the state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. It is the 26th-most populous city in the United States and the largest U.S. city on the Canada–United States border, with a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census. The Metro Detroit area, at over 4.4 million people, is the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the nation and second-largest in the Midwest (after the Chicago metropolitan area). The county seat of Wayne County, Detroit is a significant cultural center known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive and industrial background.

In 1701, French explorers Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. One of its main features, the Detroit River, became the busiest commercial hub in the world. In the mid-20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay that has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, but successfully exited in 2014. In 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Detroit's population grew for a second consecutive year and led population growth in Michigan for the first time since the 1950s.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States, covers the 9th District of the Federal Reserve, which is made up of Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, northwestern Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Although its geographical territory is the third largest of the 12 Federal Reserve banks, it serves the smallest population base of the system. It has one branch, which is in Helena, Montana.

Tornado Alley, also known as Tornado Valley, is a loosely defined location of the central United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tornado climatologists distinguish peaks in activity in certain areas and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.

As a colloquial term there are no definitively set boundaries of Tornado Alley, but the area common to most definitions extends from Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, and eastern portions of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Research suggests that the main alley may be shifting eastward away from the Great Plains, and that tornadoes are also becoming more frequent in the northern and eastern parts of Tornado Alley where it reaches the Canadian Prairies, Ohio, Michigan, and Southern Ontario.

The Great Lakes Basin consists of the Great Lakes and the surrounding lands of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the United States, and the province of Ontario in Canada, whose direct surface runoff and watersheds form a large drainage basin that feeds into the lakes. It is generally considered to also include a small area around and beyond Wolfe Island, Ontario, at the east end of Lake Ontario, which does not directly drain into the Great Lakes, but into the Saint Lawrence River.

The Basin is at the center of the Great Lakes region.