1 A half step (or ''semitone'') is the distance from one key on the keyboard to the next adjacent key. 2  Key 1 to Key 2 is a half step since they are next to each other. 3  A half step is not always from a white key to a black key.
The Virginia House of Burgesses established in 1619 is considered the first representative assembly (government) in the US and the Americas.
The First Assembly, nevertheless, inaugurated a new era in colonial government, one that would later blossom into a fully developed constitutional system in which the preservation of peace and order, as John Pory remarked, would lay in the foundations of representative government.