Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and largest film industry in the world, which has had a profound effect on global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade. (Full article...)
San Francisco (/ˌsænfrənˈsɪskoʊ/; Spanish for "Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial and cultural center in Northern California. The city proper is the 17th most populous in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers), at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 331 U.S. cities proper with more than 100,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $133,856) and fifth by aggregate income as of 2019. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, Frisco, and Baghdad by the Bay.
San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, FIRE, and professional services sectors. As of 2018, the metropolitan area, with 6.7 million residents, ranked 6th by GDP ($884 billion) and first by GDP per capita ($131,538) across the OECD countries, ahead of global cities like London, Singapore, or Hong Kong. San Francisco anchors the 12th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States with 4.7 million residents, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $592 billion in 2019. The wider San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area is the fifth most populous, with 9.6 million residents, and the third-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $1.09 trillion in 2019. Of the 105 primary statistical areas in the U.S. with over 500,000 residents, this CSA had the highest GDP per capita in 2019, at $112,910. In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $200.5 billion, and a GDP per capita of $228,118. San Francisco was ranked seventh in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of March 2022. (Full article...)
Image 7Map of the route, Juan Bautista de Anza travelled in 1775–76 from Mexico to today's San Francisco via the Gila River corridor and the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River. (from History of California)
Image 15The courtyard of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, with California's oldest pepper tree (Schinus molle), planted in 1830, visible through the arch. (from History of California)
Image 16A 1562 map of the Americas, which applied the name California for the first time. (from History of California)
Image 17Merchant ships fill San Francisco harbor in 1850 or 1851 (from History of California)
Image 18The Mojave and Sonoran deserts block easy land travel to California. The easiest way across was to use the Gila River corridor. (from History of California)
Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly-gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hartman in character as Chick Hazard, Private Eye, c. 1978
London in 1903
Official portrait, 2019
Image 12
Ruth E. Norman (born Ruth Nields; August 18, 1900 – July 12, 1993), also known as Uriel, was an American religious leader who co-founded the Unarius Academy of Science, based in Southern California. Raised in California, Norman received little education and worked from an early age in a variety of jobs. In the 1940s, she developed an interest in psychic phenomena and past-life regression. These pursuits led to her introduction to Ernest Norman, a self-described psychic, in 1954. He engaged in channeling, past-life regression, and attempts at communication with extraterrestrials. She married Ernest, her fourth husband, in the mid-1950s. Together they published several books about his revelations and formed Unarius, an organization which later became known as the Unarius Academy of Science, to popularize his teachings. The couple discussed numerous details about their alleged past lives and spiritual visits to other planets, forming a mythology from these accounts.
After Ernest died in 1971, Ruth succeeded him as their group's leader and primary channeler. She subsequently began publishing accounts of her experiences and revelations. In early 1974, she predicted that a space fleet of benevolent extraterrestrials, the Space Brothers, would land on Earth later that year, which led the Unarius Academy to purchase a property to serve as the landing site. After the extraterrestrials failed to appear, Norman said that trauma she had suffered in a past life had caused her to make an inaccurate prediction. Undaunted, she rented a building for Unarius' meetings and sought publicity for the movement, claiming to have united the Earth with an interplanetary confederation. She revised the Space Brothers' expected landing date several times, before finally settling on 2001. Her health declined in the late 1980s, prompting her students to try to heal her with rituals of past-life regression. Despite predicting that she would live to see the extraterrestrials land, Norman died in 1993. Unarius has continued to operate after her death, and formed a board of directors. Since the 2000s, leaders have concentrated on individual transformation leading to spiritual change in humankind. (Full article...)
Walter Francis O'Malley (October 9, 1903 – August 9, 1979) was an American sports executive who owned the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers team in Major League Baseball from 1950 to 1979. In 1958, as owner of the Dodgers, he brought major league baseball to the West Coast, moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles despite the Dodgers being the second most profitable team in baseball from 1946 to 1956, and coordinating the move of the New York Giants to San Francisco at a time when there were no teams west of Kansas City, Missouri. For this, he was long vilified by Brooklyn Dodgers fans. However, Pro-O'Malley parties describe him as a visionary for the same business action, and many authorities cite him as one of the most influential sportsmen of the 20th century. Other observers say that he was not a visionary, but instead a man who was in the right place at the right time, and regard him as the most powerful and influential owner in baseball after moving the team.
... that the settling of Martensdale, California, went so badly that the town's namesake spent the rest of his life as a fugitive?
... that when the U.S. government wanted to remove Chain Island, a group of "California capitalists" offered to do it for free, recouping expenses by mining it for gold?
A surfer performing a gash, or very sharp turn. Santa Cruz and the surrounding Northern Californiacoastline is a popular surfing destination, however the year-round low temperature of the ocean in that region (averaging 57ºF/14ºC) necessitates the use of wetsuits.
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