Portal:California

California
California
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	State of California
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California (/ˌkælɪˈfɔːrnjəˌ -ni.ə/ ^ⓘ KAL-ih-FORN-yə, -⁠FOR-nee-ə) is a state in the Western United States, lying on the American Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and the Mexican state of Baja California to the south. With over 38.9 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km²), it is the most populous U.S. state, the third-largest U.S. state by area, and the most populated subnational entity in North America.

The Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas in California are the nation's second- and fifth-most populous urban regions respectively. Greater Los Angeles has over 18.7 million residents and the San Francisco Bay Area has over 9.6 million residents. Los Angeles is the state's most populous city and the nation's second-most populous city, after New York City. San Francisco is the second-most densely populated major city in the country, after New York City. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous county, and San Bernardino County is the nation's largest county by area. Sacramento is the state's capital city.

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America, and the indigenous peoples of California constituted the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including the depopulation of indigenous peoples in the California genocide. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, as a free state, following the Compromise of 1850. (Full article...)

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The exposed geology of the Death Valley area presents a diverse and complex set of at least 23 formations of sedimentary units, two major gaps in the geologic record called unconformities, and at least one distinct set of related formations geologists call a group. The oldest rocks in the area that now includes Death Valley National Park are extensively metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure and are at least 1700 million years old. These rocks were intruded by a mass of granite 1400 Ma (million years ago) and later uplifted and exposed to nearly 500 million years of erosion.

Marine deposition occurred 1200 to 800 Ma, forming thick sequences of conglomerate, mudstone, and carbonate rock topped by stromatolites, and possibly glacial deposits from the hypothesized Snowball Earth event. Rifting thinned huge roughly linear parts of the supercontinent Rodinia enough to allow sea water to invade and divide its landmass into component continents separated by narrow straits. A passive margin developed on the edges of these new seas in the Death Valley region. Carbonate banks formed on this part of the two margins only to be subsided as the continental crust thinned until it broke, giving birth to a new ocean basin. An accretion wedge of clastic sediment then started to accumulate at the base of the submerged precipice, entombing the region's first known fossils of complex life. These sandy mudflats gave way about 550 Ma to a carbonate platform which lasted for the next 300 million years of Paleozoic time. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various California-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Presidio of San Francisco, founded by José Joaquín Moraga in 1776. (from History of California)
Image 2The Getty Villa (from Culture of California)
Image 3The colonial coat of arms of the Californias, granted by Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of New Spain. (from History of California)
Image 4Dividing the Light (2007), a skyspace by James Turrell at Pomona College (from Culture of California)
Image 5Poppies, Antelope Valley, a California Impressionist painting by Benjamin Chambers Brown (from Culture of California)
Image 6Balthazar, Inhabitant of Northern California, an 1818 portrait of a Miwok man by artist Mikhail Tikhanov. (from History of California)
Image 7The Vallecitos stop of the Butterfield Overland Mail, in Julian, California. (from History of California)
Image 8Junípero Serra conducting the first mass in Monterey Bay in 1770. (from History of California)
Image 9The railway station in Sacramento in 1874. (from History of California)
Image 10Pacheco Adobe, built 1835 by Salvio Pacheco on Rancho Monte del Diablo. (from History of California)
Image 11Map of Spain's Manila galleon trade routes, showing routes between the Spanish East Indies and Acapulco passing along the coast of California. (from History of California)
Image 12General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo reviewing his troops in Sonoma in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 13The American capture of San Diego by the USS Cyane in 1846 (from History of California)
Image 14Mission San Francisco Solano, founded in 1823 by order of Governor Luis Antonio Argüello, was the last Californian mission established. (from History of California)
Image 15A Southern Pacific Train at Arcade Depot, Los Angeles, 1891 (from History of California)
Image 16The 1835 Manifiesto a la República Mejicana, by José Figueroa, was the first book published in California (from Culture of California)
Image 17Forces raising the U.S. flag over the Monterey Customhouse following their victory at the Battle of Monterey (from History of California)
Image 18Map of the route taken by the Anza Expedition of 1775–76, from the Presidio of Tubac to San Francisco Bay. (from History of California)
Image 19Depiction of the Donner Party heading west on the California Trail. (from History of California)
Image 20The Petaluma Adobe, built by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo in 1836 on Rancho Petaluma. (from History of California)
Image 21Bodega y Quadra led a 1775 expedition along the coast of California into the Pacific Northwest. (from History of California)
Image 22Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, established in 1770, was the headquarters of the Californian mission system from 1797 until 1833. (from History of California)
Image 23Portrait of an "assimilated" Maidu man in Sacramento, 1867. (from History of California)
Image 24"Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California", c. 1850 (from History of California)
Image 25The University of California, Berkeley is the flagship school of the University of California system. (from Culture of California)
Image 26Founded by Vicente Francisco de Sarría in 1817, Mission San Rafael Arcángel, was the last mission founded during the Spanish period. (from History of California)
Image 27The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions. (from History of California)
Image 28Flag of Company A (The California 100) during the U.S. Civil War. (from History of California)
Image 29Juan Bautista de Anza led the 1774-76 Anza Expeditions. (from History of California)
Image 30General Richard Barnes Mason was the longest serving U.S. Military Governor of California (1847–1849), overseeing California's transition into statehood. (from History of California)
Image 31Gaspar de Portolá served as the first Governor of the Californias and led the famed Portolá expedition of 1769-70. (from History of California)
Image 32Map of the Butterfield Overland Mail routes through California, c. 1858. (from History of California)
Image 33The Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. (from History of California)
Image 34California was often depicted as an island, due to the Baja California peninsula, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, such as in this 1650 map by cartographer Johannes Vingboons. (from History of California)
Image 35Goldfields in the Sierra Nevada and Shasta Cascade. (from History of California)
Image 36The Battle of Río San Gabriel, in 1847, was a decisive victory for the American campaign in Alta California. (from History of California)
Image 37The Treaty of Cahuenga, signed at the Campo de Cahuenga in 1847 by Californio general Andrés Pico and American general John C. Frémont, proclaimed a ceasefire under an American victory. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed a year later in 1848, officially ended the Mexican–American War and formally ceded Alta California to the United States. (from History of California)
Image 38While slavery was abolished in California by Mexican authorities in 1829, the first California State Legislature under U.S. statehood passed the 1850 Indian Indenture Act, which allowed for the forced labor of indigenous Californians by Americans. (from History of California)
Image 39Presidio of Santa Barbara. (from Culture of California)
Image 40SS California (1848), the first paddle steamer to steam between Panama City and San Francisco, as part of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. (from History of California)
Image 41Depiction of the revolt of the Mission Indians against padre Luis Jayme at Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1775. (from History of California)
Image 42California's first State Capitol building in San Jose, which served as the capital of California 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 43Depiction of the California hide trade. (from History of California)
Image 44Advertisement for sailing to California, c. 1850. (from History of California)
Image 45Mission Santa Barbara, founded in 1786, was the first mission to be established by Fermín de Lasuén. (from History of California)
Image 46Francis Drake's 1579 landing in "New Albion" (modern-day Point Reyes); engraving by Theodor De Bry, 1590. (from History of California)
Image 47In-N-Out burgers (from Culture of California)
Image 48Between 1846 and 1873, U.S. government agents waged an extermination campaign against Indigenous Californians, known as the California genocide, resulting in as many as 100,000 deaths. (from History of California)
Image 49Concord Coach no. 251 in Wells Fargo livery in Old Town San Diego. (from History of California)
Image 50Stanford University Oval (from Culture of California)
Image 51Portrait of a Californio in traditional vaquero clothing. Californios benefitted immensely by the establishment of the ranchos of California, following the Mexican secularization act of 1833. (from History of California)
Image 52Angustias de la Guerra played a crucial role in defending women's property rights during the drafting of the Constitution of California. (from History of California)
Image 53The 1846 Bear Flag Revolt declared the California Republic and prefaced the American conquest of California. (from History of California)
Image 54Manuel Domínguez built Domínguez Adobe on Rancho San Pedro in 1826. (from History of California)
Image 55The 1562 map of the Americas, created by Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez, which applied the name California for the first time. (from History of California)
Image 56San Francisco harbor, c. 1850–51. (from History of California)
Image 57Joaquín Murrieta, called the "Robin Hood of California", was a notorious outlaw during the California Gold Rush. He served as inspiration for Zorro, the famed Californian bandit-hero character. (from History of California)
Image 58Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, founded in 1771 by padres Pedro Benito Cambón and Ángel de la Somera. (from History of California)

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They say California's the big burrito; Texas is a big taco right now. We want to follow that through. Florida is a big tamale.

— Dan Rather

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Image 1

Official portrait, 2019

Nancy Patricia Pelosi (/pəˈloʊsi/ pə-LOH-see; née D'Alesandro; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who served as the 52nd speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman elected as U.S. House Speaker and the first woman to lead a major political party in either chamber of Congress, leading the House Democrats from 2003 to 2023. A member of the House since 1987, Pelosi currently represents California's 11th congressional district, which includes most of San Francisco. She is the dean of California's congressional delegation.

Pelosi was born and raised in Baltimore, and is the daughter of mayor and congressman Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. She graduated from Trinity College, Washington in 1962 and married businessman Paul Pelosi the next year; the two had met while both were students. They moved to New York City before settling down in San Francisco with their children. Focused on raising her family, Pelosi stepped into politics as a volunteer for the Democratic Party in the 1960s. After years of party work, she was first elected to Congress in a 1987 special election and is now in her 19th term; she is the dean of California's congressional delegation. Pelosi steadily rose through the ranks of the House Democratic Caucus to be elected House minority whip in 2001 and elevated to House minority leader a year later, becoming the first woman to hold each of those positions in either chamber of Congress. (Full article...)
Image 2

Hartman in character as Chick Hazard, Private Eye, circa 1978.

Philip Edward Hartman (né Hartmann; September 24, 1948 – May 28, 1998) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and graphic designer. Hartman was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and his family moved to the United States when he was ten years old. After graduating from California State University, Northridge with a degree in graphic arts, he designed album covers for bands including Poco and America. In 1975, Hartman joined the comedy group the Groundlings, where he helped Paul Reubens develop his character Pee-wee Herman. Hartman co-wrote the film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and made recurring appearances as Captain Carl on Reubens' show Pee-wee's Playhouse.

In 1986, Hartman joined the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a cast member, and stayed for eight seasons until 1994. Nicknamed "Glue" for his ability to hold the show together and help other cast members, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for his SNL work in 1989. He also starred as Bill McNeal in the sitcom NewsRadio, voiced Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure on The Simpsons, and appeared in supporting roles in the films Houseguest, Sgt. Bilko, Jingle All the Way, and Small Soldiers. (Full article...)
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Perry in 2023

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television personality. She is known for her influence on modern pop music and her camp style, being dubbed the "Queen of Camp" by Vogue and Rolling Stone. At 16, Perry released a gospel record titled Katy Hudson (2001) under Red Hill Records, which was commercially unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles at 17 to venture into secular music, and later adopted the stage name "Katy Perry" from her mother's maiden name. She recorded an album while signed to Columbia Records, but was dropped before signing to Capitol Records.

Perry rose to fame with One of the Boys (2008), a pop rock record containing her debut single "I Kissed a Girl" and follow-up single "Hot n Cold", which reached number one and three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 respectively. The disco-influenced pop album Teenage Dream (2010) spawned five U.S. number one singles—"California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "E.T.", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"— the only album by a female singer to do so. A reissue of the album titled Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection (2012) subsequently produced the U.S. number one single "Part of Me". Her empowerment-themed album Prism (2013) had two U.S. number one singles, "Roar" and "Dark Horse". Both their respective music videos made Perry the first artist to have multiple videos reach one billion views on Vevo and YouTube. The electropop album Witness (2017) featured themes of feminism and a political subtext, while Smile (2020) was influenced by motherhood and her mental health journey. Afterwards, she embarked on her Las Vegas concert residency titled Play (2021–2023), receiving critical acclaim and commercial success. (Full article...)
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Jolie in 2022

Angelina Jolie (/dʒoʊˈliː/; born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times.

Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin' to Get Out (1982). Her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in Hackers (1995). After starring in the biographical television films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), Jolie won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a sociopath in the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. Her portrayal of the titular heroine in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a household name. Her fame continued with roles in the action films Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), and Salt (2010). She also received acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008), the latter earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other commercial successes include the fantasy film Maleficent (2014), its 2019 sequel, and the superhero film Eternals (2021). She played a voice role in the Kung Fu Panda animated film series from 2008 to 2016. Jolie has directed and written the war dramas In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), and First They Killed My Father (2017). (Full article...)
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Blanc in 1959

Melvin Jerome Blanc (born Blank /blæŋk/; May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over 60 years. During the Golden Age of Radio, he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including those of Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, The Great Gildersleeve, Judy Canova, and his own short-lived sitcom.

However, he became known worldwide for his work in the Golden Age of American Animation as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. Blanc also voiced the Looney Tunes characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd after replacing their original performers Joe Dougherty and Arthur Q. Bryan, respectively, although he occasionally voiced Elmer during Bryan's lifetime as well. He later voiced characters for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, including Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones, Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons, Secret Squirrel on The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, the title character of Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman on Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels and The Flintstone Kids. (Full article...)
Image 6

Jackson in 1988

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Known as the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. During his four-decade career, his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture. Jackson influenced artists across many music genres. Through stage and video performances, he popularized complicated street dance moves such as the moonwalk, which he named, as well as the robot.

The eighth child of the Jackson family, Jackson made his public debut in 1964 with his older brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5 (later known as the Jacksons). Jackson began his solo career in 1971 while at Motown Records. He became a solo star with his 1979 album Off the Wall. His music videos, including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool. He helped propel the success of MTV and continued to innovate with the videos for his subsequent albums: Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995), and Invincible (2001). Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, while Bad was the first album to produce five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. (Full article...)
Image 7

Gyllenhaal in 2019

Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal (/ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl/ JIL-ən-hawl, Swedish: [ˈjʏ̂lːɛnˌhɑːl]; born December 19, 1980) is an American actor. Born into the Gyllenhaal family, he is the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, and the younger brother of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. He began acting as a child, making his acting debut in City Slickers (1991), followed by roles in his father's films A Dangerous Woman (1993) and Homegrown (1998). His breakthrough roles were as Homer Hickam in October Sky (1999) and as a psychologically troubled teenager in Donnie Darko (2001).

Gyllenhaal starred in the 2004 science fiction disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. He played Jack Twist in Ang Lee's 2005 romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, for which Gyllenhaal won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. His career progressed with starring roles in the thriller Zodiac (2007), the romantic comedy Love & Other Drugs (2010), and the science fiction film Source Code (2011). Further acclaim came with his roles in Denis Villeneuve's thrillers Prisoners (2013) and Enemy (2013), and he received nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performances as a manipulative journalist in Nightcrawler (2014) and a troubled writer in Nocturnal Animals (2016). His highest-grossing release came with the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), in which he portrayed Quentin Beck / Mysterio. He has since starred in Wildlife (2018), Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), The Guilty (2021), and Ambulance (2022). (Full article...)
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Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis (April 6, 1901 – September 11, 1984) was a Democratic politician and educator from California who served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947, representing the 12th congressional district in Los Angeles County. He was the first political opponent of Richard M. Nixon, who defeated Voorhis for re-election in 1946 in a campaign cited as an example of Nixon's use of red-baiting during his political rise.

Voorhis was born in Kansas, but the family relocated frequently in his childhood. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University (where he was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa) and a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School. In 1928, he founded the Voorhis School for Boys and became its headmaster. He retained the post into his congressional career. (Full article...)
Image 9

Publicity photo of Anna May Wong from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

Born in Los Angeles to second-generation Taishanese Chinese American parents, Wong became engrossed with films and decided at the age of 11 that she would become an actress. Her first role was as an extra in the movie The Red Lantern (1919). During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first films made in color, and in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon and had achieved international stardom in 1924. Wong had been one of the first to embrace the flapper look. In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the "world's best dressed woman." In the 1920s and 1930s, Wong was acclaimed as one of the top fashion icons. (Full article...)
Image 10

Pauling in the 1940s

Linus Carl Pauling (/ˈpɔːlɪŋ/ PAW-ling; February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of five people to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen, Frederick Sanger, and Karl Barry Sharpless). Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.

Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond include the concept of orbital hybridisation and the first accurate scale of electronegativities of the elements. Pauling also worked on the structures of biological molecules, and showed the importance of the alpha helix and beta sheet in protein secondary structure. Pauling's approach combined methods and results from X-ray crystallography, molecular model building, and quantum chemistry. His discoveries inspired the work of Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins on the structure of DNA, which in turn made it possible for geneticists to crack the DNA code of all organisms. (Full article...)
Image 11

Portrait, c. 1969–1974

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. He graduated from Duke Law School in 1937, practiced law in California, and then moved with his wife Pat to Washington, D.C., in 1942 to work for the federal government. After serving active duty in the Naval Reserve during World War II, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946. His work on the Alger Hiss case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, which elevated him to national prominence. In 1950, he was elected to the Senate. Nixon was the running mate of Eisenhower, the Republican Party's presidential nominee in the 1952 election, and served for eight years as vice president. He narrowly lost the 1960 presidential election to the Democratic Party nominee John F. Kennedy; after his loss in the 1962 race for governor of California, he announced his retirement from political life. However, in 1968, he made another run for the presidency and defeated the Democratic incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey. (Full article...)
Image 12

McCloskey in 2014

Paul Norton McCloskey Jr. (born September 29, 1927) is an American politician who represented San Mateo County, California as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983.

Born in Loma Linda, California, McCloskey pursued a legal career in Palo Alto, California, after graduating from Stanford Law School. He served in the Korean War as a member of the United States Marine Corps. For his service, he was awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1967, defeating Shirley Temple in the Republican primary. He co-authored the 1973 Endangered Species Act. He unsuccessfully challenged President Richard Nixon in the 1972 Republican primaries on an anti-Vietnam War platform and was the first member of Congress to publicly call for President Nixon's resignation after the Saturday Night Massacre. (Full article...)
Image 13

Hanna in 1977

William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, voice actor, and occasional musician who is best known for co-creating Tom and Jerry and providing the vocal effects for the series' title characters. Alongside Joseph Barbera, he also founded the animation studio and production company Hanna-Barbera.

Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930 and steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, creating or producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors. (Full article...)
Image 14

The GFDL logo

The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify (except for "invariant sections") a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities (greater than 100), the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

The GFDL was designed for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software. However, it can be used for any text-based work, regardless of subject matter. For example, the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia uses the GFDL (coupled with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License) for much of its text, excluding text that was imported from other sources after the 2009 licensing update that is only available under the Creative Commons license. (Full article...)
Image 15

Martin with the Yankees in 1954

Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989), commonly called "Billy", was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager who, in addition to leading other teams, was five times the manager of the New York Yankees. First known as a scrappy infielder who made considerable contributions to the championship Yankee teams of the 1950s, he then built a reputation as a manager who would initially make bad teams good, before ultimately being fired amid dysfunction. In each of his stints with the Yankees he managed them to winning records before being fired by team owner George Steinbrenner or resigning under fire, usually amid a well-publicized scandal such as Martin's involvement in an alcohol-fueled fight.

Martin was born in a working-class section of Berkeley, California. His skill as a baseball player gave him a route out of his home town. Signed by the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks, Martin learned much from Casey Stengel, the man who would manage him both in Oakland and in New York, and enjoyed a close relationship with Stengel. Martin's spectacular catch of a wind-blown Jackie Robinson popup late in Game Seven of the 1952 World Series saved that series for the Yankees, and he was the hitting star of the 1953 World Series, earning the Most Valuable Player award in the Yankee victory. He missed most of two seasons, 1954 and 1955, after being drafted into the Army, and his abilities never fully returned; the Yankees traded him after a brawl at the Copacabana club in New York during the 1957 season. Martin bitterly resented being traded, and did not speak to Stengel for years, a time during which Martin completed his playing career with various teams. (Full article...)

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... that rhythmic gymnast Isabelle Connor is the first UC Santa Cruz student to compete at the Olympics?
... that the serial arsonist who started the fatal Nihon Shōgakkō fire confessed to starting at least 25 other California fires in the early 1920s?
... that the California Golden Bears men's basketball team won the 1959 NCAA University Division Basketball Championship Game by a single point over West Virginia?
... that during the January 1982 California floods, more than 18,000 landslides swept through the San Francisco Bay Area with little warning?
... that the opening day of a California TV station was affected by a strike when workers refused to cross a two-man picket line?
... that Bull Island was farmed by the Money family for over 100 years before being turned into a wildlife preserve?
... that Richmond station includes a "rather disquieting" artwork by William Mitchell?
... that ranchers in the community now known as Loybas Hill ran their own telephone company for 60 years?

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Oceanside, California

Credit: Wikibofh

Oceanside is the third largest city in San Diego County, California. The city has a population of 173,303. Together with Vista and Carlsbad, it makes up the Tri-City area. The city is just south of U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, the busiest military base in the United States.

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Credit: Rogerroger.org

The Kern River is a river in the U.S. state of California, approximately 164 miles (264 km) long. It drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfield. Fed by snowmelt near Mount Whitney, the river passes through scenic canyons in the mountains and is a popular destination for whitewater rafting and kayaking.

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