Epcot is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks and Products division. Inspired by an unrealized concept developed by Walt Disney, the park opened on October 1, 1982, as EPCOT Center, was the second of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World, after the Magic Kingdom. Spanning 305 acres, more than twice the size of the Magic Kingdom park, Epcot is dedicated to the celebration of human achievement, namely technological innovation and international culture, is referred to as a "permanent world's fair". Epcot was conceived by Walt Disney during the early development of Walt Disney World, as an experimental planned community that would serve as a center for American innovation and urban living. Known as "EPCOT", the idea included an urban city center, residential areas, schools, a series of mass transportation systems that would connect the community. After Disney's death in 1966, the "EPCOT" concept was abandoned as the company had uncertainty about maintaining an operating city.

In the 1970s, WED Enterprises began developing a second theme park for the resort to supplement Magic Kingdom, as that park's popularity grew. The new park maintained the idea of showcasing modern innovation and enterprise through avant-garde edutainment attractions, as well as the addition of a world nations exposition; the newly-designed park, featuring two sections—Future World and World Showcase—opened as EPCOT Center in 1982. In 1994, the park was renamed to "Epcot", dropping "Center" from the name. In 2018, Epcot hosted 13.444 million guests, ranking it as the fourth-most-visited theme park in North America and the seventh-most-visited theme park in the world. The park is represented by a geodesic sphere; the theme park opened on October 1, 1982. The dedication plaque near the entrance states: To all who come to this place of joy and friendship, welcome. Epcot is inspired by Walt Disney's creative vision. Here, human achievements are celebrated through imagination, wonders of enterprise and concepts of a future that promises new and exciting benefits for all.

May EPCOT Center entertain and inspire and above all, may it instill a new sense of belief and pride in man's ability to shape a world that offers hope to people everywhere. The park's name, was an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a utopian city of the future planned by Walt Disney interchanging "city" and "community." In Walt Disney's words: "EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed but will always be introducing and testing, demonstrating new materials and new systems, and EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world of the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise."His original vision was for a model community which would have been home to twenty thousand residents and a test bed for city planning as well as organization. It was to have been built in the shape of a circle with businesses and commercial areas at its center with community buildings and recreational complexes around it while residential neighborhoods would line the perimeter.

This radial plan concept is influenced by British planner Ebenezer Howard and his Garden Cities of To-morrow. Transportation would have been provided by PeopleMovers. Automobile traffic would be kept underground; the original model of EPCOT can still be seen by passengers riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority attraction in the Magic Kingdom park. Walt Disney was not able to obtain funding and permission to start work on his Florida property until he agreed to first build Magic Kingdom, he died. After Walt Disney's death, Walt Disney Productions decided that it did not want to be in the business of running a city without Walt's guidance; the model community of Celebration, Florida has been mentioned as a realization of Disney's original vision, but Celebration is based on concepts of new urbanism, radically different from Disney's modernist and futurist visions. However, the idea of EPCOT was instrumental in prompting the state of Florida to create the Reedy Creek Improvement District and the cities of Bay Lake and Reedy Creek, a legislative mechanism allowing Disney to exercise governmental powers over Walt Disney World.

Control over the RCID is vested in the landowners of the district, the promise of an actual city in the district would have meant that the powers of the RCID would have been distributed among the landowners in EPCOT. Because the idea of EPCOT was never implemented, Disney remained the sole landowner in the district allowing it to maintain control of the RCID and the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista; the original plans for the park showed indecision over the park's purpose. Some Imagineers wanted it to represent the cutting edge of technology, while others wanted it to showcase international cultures and customs. At one point, a model of the futuristic park was pushed together against a model of a World's Fair international theme, the two were combined; the park was named EPCOT Center to reflect the ideals and values of the city. It was constructed for an estimated $800 million to $1.4

Charles W. LaPradd was an American football player during the early 1950s, he played college football for the University of Florida and was recognized as an All-American as a defensive lineman. He served as the president of St. Johns River Community College in northeast Florida. LaPradd was born and raised in St. Augustine, Florida, in a family of nine children and modest means, he attended Ketterlinus High School in St. Augustine, where he lettered in football and basketball, but left school to join the U. S. Army before graduation. After serving in the U. S. Army paratroops, he returned to Ketterlinus to finish his remaining high school diploma requirements. LaPradd attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he played for coach Bob Woodruff's Florida Gators football team from 1950 to 1952, he had hitch-hiked to Gainesville for a chance to try out for the Florida Gators football team. He played for the Gators as a freshman walk-on in 1949, after convincing the coaches to permit him to try out for the squad, earned an athletic scholarship.

As was typical of college football in the 1950s, when the rules required athletes to play both offense and defense and permitted only limited substitutions, he played tackle on both the offensive and defensive lines. He was a third-team All-Southeastern Conference selection as a sophomore in 1950, a second-team All-SEC pick following his junior season in 1951, he was married and had an infant son during his senior year, was a member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. At six feet, three inches tall and 215 pounds, he was the lightest tackle on the team as a senior in 1952, he was described by his teammates as a "man among boys," stronger and more physically mature at 25 years old than most opposing players. He was the defensive leader of the Gators; the Gators' 1952 season was a season of firsts for the team. Led by LaPradd, the Gators dominated the rival Georgia Bulldogs 33–0 in the annual Florida–Georgia football rivalry game in Jacksonville, which would remain the Gators' largest victory over the Bulldogs for forty years.

Afterward, the team received its first-ever NCAA-sanctioned invitation to a bowl game, the 1953 Gator Bowl, in which the Gators defeated the Tulsa Golden Hurricane 14–13 on January 1, 1953. The Gators finished their season 8–3, their first eight-win season since 1928, ranked No. 15 in the country by the Associated Press, their first-ever national ranking in the final AP Poll. Following the season, LaPradd was a first-team All-SEC selection and received first-team All-American honors from the Associated Press and the New York Daily News, he was the Gators' only All-America first team member since Dale Van Sickel in 1928. Coach Woodruff would recall LaPradd, the former walk-on who had to plead for a chance to try out for the team, as the Gators' greatest lineman of the 1950s; the Green Bay Packers selected LaPradd in the 1952 NFL Draft, but he injured his legs in a car accident on the day he graduated from college and never had the opportunity to play in the National Football League. He graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in physical education in 1953.

While earning his master's degree in secondary school administration and his doctoral degree in higher education administration from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, he worked as a graduate assistant coach for the Florida State Seminoles football team. Afterward, he served as an assistant coach for the Seminoles for four seasons from 1957 to 1961, the FSU dean of men for two years, he served as the president of the three-campus St. Johns River Community College in Orange Park, Palatka and St. Augustine from 1966 to 1972. After resigning from SJRCC in 1972, he went into private business and established a regional beer distributorship based in Gainesville. LaPradd was a "Gator Great" member of the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame, was inducted into the Florida-Georgia Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2006, The Gainesville Sun ranked LaPradd twenty-first on its all-time list of the 100 greatest Florida Gators football players from the team's first 100 years of play. LaPradd died February 1, 2006.

He was survived by his daughter. After his death, friends and admirers endowed the Dr. Charles W. LaPradd Ph. D. Fellowship Fund at the University of Florida for the benefit of doctoral candidates in the university's College of Health and Human Performance. 1952 College Football All-America Team Florida Gators football, 1950–59 List of Florida Gators football All-Americans List of Florida State University people List of Pi Kappa Phi alumni List of University of Florida alumni List of University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame members Carlson, University of Florida Football Vault: The History of the Florida Gators, Whitman Publishing, LLC, Georgia. ISBN 0794822983. Golenbock, Peter, Go Gators! An Oral History of Florida's Pursuit of Gridiron Glory, Legends Publishing, LLC, St. Petersburg, Florida. ISBN 0-9650782-1-3. Hairston, Tales from the Gator Swamp: A Collection of the Greatest Gator Stories Ever Told, Sports Publishing, LLC, Illinois. ISBN 1-58261-514-4. McCarthy, Kevin M. Fightin' Gators: A History of University of Florida Football, Arcadia Publishing, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

ISBN 978-0-7385-0559-6. McEwen, The Gators: A Story of Florida Football, The Strode Publishers, Alabama. ISBN 0-87397-025-X. Nash, Noel, ed; the Gainesville Sun Presents The Greatest Moments in Florida Gators Football, Sports Publishing, Inc. Champaign, Illinois. ISBN 1-57167-196X

Irina Mitrea is a Romanian-American mathematician who works as a professor of mathematics at Temple University. She is known for her research on partial differential equations as well as for promoting mathematics to schoolgirls. Mitrea earned a master's degree from the University of Bucharest in 1993, completed her doctorate in 2000 at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Carlos Kenig and Mikhail Safonov. After temporary positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and Cornell University, she joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 2004, earned tenure there in 2007, she taught at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute before moving to Temple. She is the founder of the Girls and Mathematics Program at Temple University, a week-long summer camp in mathematics for middle-school girls. In 2008, Mitrea won the Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize of the Association for Women in Mathematics. In 2014, she was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to partial differential equations and related fields as well as outreach to women and under-represented minorities at all educational levels."

She is part of the 2019 class of fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Home page