African Americans
African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The term refers to descendants of enslaved black people who are from the United States. Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West/Central African and European descent, some have Native American ancestry. According to U. S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants do not self-identify as African American; the overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities. Immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not self-identify with the term. African-American history starts in the 16th century, with peoples from West Africa forcibly taken as slaves to Spanish America, in the 17th century with West African slaves taken to English colonies in North America.
After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, the last four million black slaves were only liberated after the Civil War in 1865. Due to notions of white supremacy, they were treated as second-class citizens; the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, only white men of property could vote. These circumstances were changed by Reconstruction, development of the black community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, the elimination of racial segregation, the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States; the first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526. The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free black domestic servant from Seville and Miguel Rodríguez, a white Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine, is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what is now the continental United States.
The ill-fated colony was immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned; the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence. The first recorded Africans in British North America were "20 and odd negroes" who came to Jamestown, Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants; as English settlers died from harsh conditions and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. An indentured servant would work for several years without wages; the status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or was bought out, their children did not inherit their status, on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", a small cash payment called "freedom dues".
Africans could raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch, a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn for running away. In the Spanish Florida some Spanish married or had unions with Pensacola, Creek or African women, both slave and free, their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos; the Spanish encouraged slaves from the southern British colonies to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism. King Charles II of Spain issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism.
Most went to the area around St. Augustine, but escaped slaves reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-black militia unit defending Spain as early as 1683. One of the Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black "slaves", John Casor, resulting from the court ruling of a civil case; the popular conception of a race-based slave system did not develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves into New Amsterdam. All the colony's slaves, were freed upon its surrender to the British. Massachusetts was the first British colony to recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women took the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as under English common law; this principle was called partus sequitur ventrum. By an act of 1699, the colony ordered all free blacks deported defining as slaves all people of African descent who remained in the c
North American B-25 Mitchell
The North American B-25 Mitchell is an American twin-engine, medium bomber manufactured by North American Aviation. The design was named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U. S. military aviation. Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II and after the war ended many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 Mitchells rolled from NAA factories; these included a few limited models, such as the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber and the United States Army Air Forces' F-10 reconnaissance aircraft and AT-24 trainers. The Air Corps issued a circular in March 1938 describing the performance they required from the next bombers — a payload of 1,200 lb with a range of 1,200 mi at more than 200 mph; those performance specifications led NAA to submit their NA-40 design. The NA-40 had benefited from the North American XB-21 of 1936, the company's successful design for an earlier medium bomber, accepted and ordered, but cancelled.
However, the company's experience from the XB-21 contributed to the design and development of the NA-40. The single NA-40 built flew first at the end of January 1939, it went through several modifications to correct problems. These improvements included fitting 1,600 hp Wright R-2600 "Twin Cyclone" radial engines, in March 1939, which solved the lack of power. In March 1939, North American delivered the redesigned and improved NA-40 to the United States Army Air Corps for evaluation, it failed to win orders. The aircraft was intended to be an attack bomber for export to the United Kingdom and France, both of which had a pressing requirement for such aircraft in the early stages of World War II. However, the French had opted for a revised Douglas 7B; the NA-40B was destroyed in a crash on 11 April 1939 while undergoing testing. Although the crash was not considered due to a fault with the aircraft design, the Army ordered the DB-7 as the A-20; the Air Corps issued a specification for a medium bomber in March 1939, capable of carrying a payload of 2,400 lb over 1,200 mi at 300 mph NAA used the NA-40B design to develop the NA-62, which competed for the medium bomber contract.
There was no YB-25 for prototype service tests. In September 1939, the Air Corps ordered the NA-62 into production as the B-25, along with the other new Air Corps medium bomber, the Martin B-26 Marauder "off the drawing board". Early into B-25 production, NAA incorporated a significant redesign to the wing dihedral; the first nine aircraft had a constant-dihedral, meaning the wing had a consistent, upward angle from the fuselage to the wingtip. This design caused stability problems. "Flattening" the outer wing panels by giving them a slight anhedral angle just outboard of the engine nacelles nullified the problem, gave the B-25 its gull wing configuration. Less noticeable changes during this period included an increase in the size of the tail fins and a decrease in their inward tilt at their tops. NAA continued design and development in 1940 and 1941. Both the B-25A and B-25B series entered USAAF service; the B-25B was operational in 1942. Combat requirements led to further developments. Before the year was over, NAA was producing the B-25D series at different plants.
In 1942, the manufacturer began design work on the cannon-armed B-25G series. The NA-100 of 1943 and 1944 was an interim armament development at the Kansas City complex known as the B-25D2. Similar armament upgrades by U. S-based commercial modification centers involved about half of the B-25G series. Further development led to the B-25H, B-25J, B-25J2; the gunship design concept dates to late 1942 and NAA sent a field technical representative to the SWPA. The factory-produced B-25G entered production during the NA-96 order followed by the redesigned B-25H gunship; the B-25J reverted to the bomber role, but it, could be outfitted as a strafer. NAA manufactured the greatest number of aircraft in World War II, the first time a company had produced trainers and fighters simultaneously, it produced B-25s at both its Inglewood main plant and an additional 6,608 aircraft at its Kansas City, Kansas plant at Fairfax Airport. After the war, the USAF placed a contract for the TB-25L trainer in 1952; this was a modification program by Hayes of Alabama.
Its primary role was reciprocating engine pilot training. A development of the B-25 was the North American XB-28, designed as a high-altitude bomber. Two prototypes were built with the second prototype, the XB-28A, evaluated as a photo-reconnaissance platform, but the aircraft did not enter production; the majority of B-25s in American service were used in the war against Japan in Asia and the Pacific. The Mitchell fought from the Northern Pacific to the Far East; these areas included the campaigns in the Aleutian Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Britain, China and the island hopping campaign in the Central Pacific. The aircraft's potential as a ground-attack aircraft emerged during the Pacific war; the jungle environment reduced the usefulness of medium-level bombing, made low-level attack the best tactic. Using similar mast height level tactics and skip bombing, the B-25 proved itself to be a capable anti-shipping weapon and sank many enemy sea vessels of various types. An ever-increasing number of forward firing guns made the B-25 a formidable strafing aircraft for island warfa
Hollywood Burbank Airport
Hollywood Burbank Airport Bob Hope Airport, is a public airport 3 miles northwest of downtown Burbank, in Los Angeles County, California. The airport serves the northern Greater Los Angeles area, including Glendale and the San Fernando Valley, it is closer to Griffith Park and Hollywood than Los Angeles International Airport, is the only airport in the area with a direct rail connection to downtown Los Angeles. Non-stop flights serve cities in the western United States, while JetBlue Airways has daily flights to New York City and Boston; the entire airport was within the Burbank city limits, but the north end of Runway 15/33 has been extended into the city of Los Angeles. The airport is owned by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority and controlled by the governments of those cities; the Airport Authority contracts with TBI Airport Management, Inc. to operate the airport, which has its own police and fire departments, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority Police. Boarding uses portable boarding ramps rather than jet bridges.
Federal Aviation Administration records say the airport had 2,647,287 passenger boardings in calendar year 2008, 2,294,991 in 2009, 2,239,804 in 2010. The Federal Aviation Administration National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2017–2021 categorized it as a medium-hub primary commercial service facility; the airport has been named United Airport, Union Air Terminal, Lockheed Air Terminal, Hollywood-Burbank Airport, Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport, Bob Hope Airport, Hollywood Burbank Airport. United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was a holding company created in 1928 that included Boeing Aircraft and United Air Lines, itself a holding company for a collection of small airlines that continued to operate under their own names. One of these airlines was Pacific Air Transport, which Boeing had acquired because of PAT's west coast mail contract in January 1928. UA&T found one in Burbank. UA&T had the benefit of surveys that the Aeronautics Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had conducted starting in 1926 to identify potential airport sites.
It took the cooperation of the city to assemble the site. The 234-acre site was rife with vines and trees and the ground had to be filled and leveled, but it had good drainage, a firm landing surface, steady winds, good access to ground transport. Construction was completed in just seven months. In an age when few aircraft had brakes and many had a tail skid instead of a wheel, runways were not paved. There were no taxi strips. Two of the runways were over 3,600 feet long. Generous dimensions, the site had room for expansion. United Airport was dedicated amid much festivity on Memorial Day weekend, 1930; the airport and its handsome Spanish Revival-style terminal was a showy competitor to nearby Grand Central Airport in Glendale, Los Angeles' main airline terminal. The new Burbank facility was the largest commercial airport in the Los Angeles area until it was eclipsed in 1946 by the Los Angeles Airport in Westchester when that facility commenced scheduled airline operations; the Burbank facility remained United Airport until 1934.
The name change came the same year that Federal anti-trust actions caused United Aircraft and Transport to dissolve, which took effect September 26, 1934. The Union Air Terminal moniker stuck until Lockheed bought the airport in 1940 and renamed it Lockheed Air Terminal. In March 1939 sixteen airline departures a day were scheduled out of Burbank: eight on United Airlines, five on Western Airlines and three on TWA. Commercial air traffic continued while Lockheed's extensive factories supplied the war effort and developed military and civil aircraft into the mid-1960s; the April 1957 OAG lists nine weekday departures on Western, six on United, six on Pacific Air Lines, one on TWA and one on American Airlines. Pacific Southwest Airlines had 48 Douglas DC-4 departures a week to SFO and SAN. In 1958, Oakland-based Transocean Air Lines was operating Lockheed Constellation propliner service three times a week nonstop to Honolulu as well as a Constellation flight operated twice a week on a round trip routing of Oakland - Burbank - Chicago Midway Airport - New York Idlewild Airport - Hartford.
By the summer of 1962, PSA was operating all of its nonstop flights to San Francisco and San Diego with new Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop aircraft with a combined total of 32 departures a week from Burbank. Jet service arrived at Burbank during the late 1960s with Pacific Air Lines operating Boeing 727-100s nonstop to Las Vegas and San Francisco as well one-stop direct to Eureka/Arcata. Pacific Southwest Airlines flew from Burbank to the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego with 727s, Hughes Airwest flew Douglas DC-9-10s and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30s nonstop to Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Denver with one-stop DC-9s to Houston Hobby Airport. Hughes Airwest operated one-stop DC-9 jet service to Grand Canyon National Park Airport near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. In 1986 United Airl
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It has been described as the first major military campaign fought by air forces; the British recognise the battle's duration as being from 10 July until 31 October 1940, which overlaps the period of large-scale night attacks known as The Blitz, that lasted from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. German historians do not accept this subdivision and regard the battle as a single campaign lasting from July 1940 to June 1941, including the Blitz; the primary objective of the German forces was to compel Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement. In July 1940, the air and sea blockade began, with the Luftwaffe targeting coastal-shipping convoys and shipping centres, such as Portsmouth. On 1 August, the Luftwaffe was directed to achieve air superiority over the RAF with the aim of incapacitating RAF Fighter Command.
As the battle progressed, the Luftwaffe targeted factories involved in aircraft production and strategic infrastructure. It employed terror bombing on areas of political significance and on civilians; the Germans had overwhelmed France and the Low Countries, leaving Britain to face the threat of invasion by sea. The German high command knew the difficulties of a seaborne attack and its impracticality while the Royal Navy controlled the English Channel and the North Sea. On 16 July, Adolf Hitler ordered the preparation of Operation Sea Lion as a potential amphibious and airborne assault on Britain, to follow once the Luftwaffe had air superiority over the UK. In September, RAF Bomber Command night raids disrupted the German preparation of converted barges, the Luftwaffe's failure to overwhelm the RAF forced Hitler to postpone and cancel Operation Sea Lion. Germany proved unable to sustain daylight raids, but their continued night-bombing operations on Britain became known as the Blitz. Historian Stephen Bungay cited Germany's failure to destroy Britain's air defences to force an armistice as the first major German defeat in World War II and a crucial turning point in the conflict.
The Battle of Britain takes its name from a speech given by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 18 June: "What General Weygand called the'Battle of France' is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin." Strategic bombing during World War I introduced air attacks intended to panic civilian targets and led in 1918 to the amalgamation of British army and navy air services into the Royal Air Force. Its first Chief of the Air Staff Hugh Trenchard was among the military strategists in the 1920s like Giulio Douhet who saw air warfare as a new way to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare. Interception was nearly impossible with fighter planes no faster than bombers, their view was that the bomber will always get through, the only defence was a deterrent bomber force capable of matching retaliation. Predictions were made that a bomber offensive would cause thousands of deaths and civilian hysteria leading to capitulation, but widespread pacifism contributed to a reluctance to provide resources.
Germany was forbidden a military air force by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, therefore air crew were trained by means of civilian and sport flying. Following a 1923 memorandum, the Deutsche Luft Hansa airline developed designs for aircraft such as the Junkers Ju 52, which could carry passengers and freight, but be adapted into bombers. In 1926, the secret Lipetsk fighter-pilot school began operating. Erhard Milch organised rapid expansion, following the 1933 Nazi seizure of power, his subordinate Robert Knauss formulated a deterrence theory incorporating Douhet's ideas and Tirpitz's "risk theory", which proposed a fleet of heavy bombers to deter a preventive attack by France and Poland before Germany could rearm. A 1933–34 war game indicated a need for fighters and anti-aircraft protection as well as bombers. On 1 March 1935, the Luftwaffe was formally announced, with Walther Wever as Chief of Staff; the 1935 Luftwaffe doctrine for "Conduct of the Air War" set air power within the overall military strategy, with critical tasks of attaining air superiority and providing battlefield support for army and naval forces.
Strategic bombing of industries and transport could be decisive longer term options, dependent on opportunity or preparations by the army and navy, to overcome a stalemate or used when only destruction of the enemy's economy would be conclusive. The list excluded bombing civilians to destroy homes or undermine morale, as, considered a waste of strategic effort, but the doctrine allowed revenge attacks if German civilians were bombed. A revised edition was issued in 1940, the continuing central principle of Luftwaffe doctrine was that destruction of enemy armed forces was of primary importance; the RAF responded to Luftwaffe developments with its 1934 Expansion Plan A rearmament scheme, in 1936 it was restructured into Bomber Command, Coastal Command, Training Command and Fighter Command. The latter was under Hugh Dowding, who opposed the doctrine that bombers were unstoppable: the invention of radar at that time could allow early detection, prototype monoplane fighters were faster. Priorities were disputed, but in December 1937 the Minister in charge of defence coordination Sir Thomas Inskip decided in Dowding's favour, that "The role of our air force is not an early k
Transcontinental Air Transport
Transcontinental Air Transport was an airline founded in 1928 by Clement Melville Keys that merged in 1930 with Western Air Express to form what became TWA. Keys enlisted the help of Charles Lindbergh to design a transcontinental network to get government airmail contracts. Lindbergh established numerous airports across the country in this effort. On July 7, 1929 transcontinental trips began, it offered a 48-hour coast to coast trip, with the first leg on the Pennsylvania Railroad overnight from New York City to Columbus, Ohio. There, passengers boarded a Ford Trimotor aircraft at Port Columbus International Airport that flew to Waynoka, Oklahoma. Passengers caught the Santa Fe Railway for an overnight trip to Clovis, New Mexico, where they would take a second Ford Trimotor flight to Los Angeles. One-way fare from New York to Los Angeles was $352. Cynics were to deride its TAT abbreviation as "Take A Train." The Ford Trimotor service was one of the first to offer meals en route. It was one of the first to be geared toward passenger service.
In its first eighteen months of operation, the company lost $2.7 million. In 1929 it merged with Maddux Air Lines and in 1930, during what was to become the Air Mail scandal, it merged with Western Air Express to form Transcontinental & Western Air. Western became an independent company once again in 1934. However, Transcontinental opted to retain the T&WA name, evolved into Trans World Airlines or TWA. On September 3, 1929 a westbound TAT flight crashed on Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, with loss of all aboard; the Associated Press said. The September crash was the first of three serious accidents for TAT over the next five months; the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum in Grants, New Mexico has a restored light and arrow, used to direct pilots along the way. American Heritage article PBS Chasing Sun profile Planes, Trains and a Downtown Auto Dealer by Jay Berman. Los Angeles Downtown News April 22, 2013 Biography of Clement Melville Keys Alphabetilately profile Atchison and Santa promotional brochure for Transcontinental Air Transport.
PRR Commemorative Brass Presentation Paperweight for the opening of The First "Rail-Air" Transcontinental Passenger Service via the Pennsylvania Railroad, Transcontinental Air Transport, & Santa Fe Railroad. July 7, 1929 Poster for the train-plane Timetables
Robert Cummings
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings, was an American film and television actor known for his roles in comedy films such as The Devil and Miss Jones and Princess O'Rourke, but was effective in dramatic films two of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers and Dial M for Murder. Cummings received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, won the Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Single Performance in 1955. On February 8, 1960, he received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture and television industries; the motion picture star is at 6816 Hollywood Boulevard, the television star is on 1718 Vine Street. Cummings was born in Joplin, Missouri, a son of Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings and the former Ruth Annabelle Kraft, his father was a surgeon, part of the original medical staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, he was the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Missouri. Cummings' mother was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind. While attending Joplin High School, Cummings was taught to fly by his godfather, Orville Wright, the aviation pioneer.
His first solo was on March 3, 1927. During high school, Cummings gave Joplin residents rides in his aircraft for $5 per person; when the government began licensing flight instructors, Cummings was issued flight instructor certificate No. 1, making him the first official flight instructor in the United States. Cummings studied at Drury College in Springfield, but his love of flying caused him to transfer to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he studied aeronautical engineering for a year before he dropped out because of financial reasons, his family having lost in the 1929 stock market crash. Cummings became interested in acting while performing in plays at Carnegie and decided to pursue that as a career. Since the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City paid its male actors $14 a week, Cummings decided to study there. Cummings was unable to find any roles. Seeing that at the time, "three quarters of Broadway plays were from England" and English accents and actors were in demand, Cummings decided to cash in an insurance policy and buy a round trip to Britain.
He was driving a motorbike through the country, picking up the accent and learning about the country. His bike broke down at Harrogate. While waiting for repairs, Cummings came up with a plan, he invented the name "Blade Stanhope Conway" and bribed the janitor of a local theatre to put on the marquee: "Blade Stanhope Conway in Candida". He got a photograph taken of himself standing in front of this marquee, did 80 prints. In London, he outfitted himself with a new wardrobe and did up a letter introducing the actor-author-manager-director "Blade" of Harrogate Repertory Theatre, sent it off to 80 New York theatrical agents and producers. Cummings managed to obtain several meetings. One of the producers to whom he sent letters, Charles Hopkings, cast him in a production of The Roof by John Galsworthy, playing the role of the Hon. Reggie Fanning. In the cast was Henry Hull; the play ran from October to November 1931 and Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times listed "Conway" as among the cast who provide "some excellent bits of acting."In November 1932, "Conway" replaced Edwin Styles in the Broadway revue Earl Carroll's Vanities.
He had studied dance by correspondence course. Cummings encouraged an old drama school classmate, Margaret Kies, to use a similar deception - she became the "British" Margaret Lindsay, he said pretending to be Conway broke up his first marriage, to a girl from Joplin. "She couldn't stand me."He was an extra in Sons of the Desert and in the musical short Seasoned Greetings. Cummings decided to change his approach, when in the words of one report, "suddenly the bottom dropped out of the John Bull market, he appeared under this name in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, which ran from January to June in 1934. He had a duet with Vivi Janiss, a native of Nebraska, with whom he sang "I Like the Likes of You". Cummings and Janiss went with the show when it went on tour after the Broadway run, they married towards the end of the tour; the tour of Ziegfeld ended in Los Angeles in January 1935. Cummings wanted to move there, he returned to New York, but heard King Vidor was looking for Texan actors for So Red the Rose and auditioned pretending to be Texan.
He practised his Texan accent by listening to cowboy bands on the radio. The ruse was exposed, he followed it with a part in Paramount's The Virginia Judge. In July, the studio signed Cummings to a long term contract. Before his first two Paramount films had been released, he was given a leading part in Millions in the Air. Cummings had a good role in the Western Desert Gold was in Forgotten Faces, Border Flight, Three Cheers for Love, Hollywood Boulevard, The Accusing Finger, Hideaway Girl, Arizona Mahoney, The Last Train from Madrid. In the mid 1930s, his mother and he received $1 million from mining stock, once thought to be worthless, left to them by Cummings' father. Most of these were B pictures, he had a small role in an A picture, Souls at Sea was in Sophie Lang Goes West, Wells Fargo, College Swing. He ha
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, United States. Its estimated 2014 population was 200,167, making it the third-largest city in Los Angeles County and the 23rd-largest city in California, it is located about 8 mi north of downtown Los Angeles. Glendale lies in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley, bisected by the Verdugo Mountains, is a suburb in the Los Angeles metropolitan area; the city is bordered to the northwest by the Sun Tujunga neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The Golden State, Ventura and Foothill freeways run through the city. Glendale is known to have one of the largest communities of Armenian descent in the United States. In 2013, Glendale was named LA's Neighborhood of the Year by the editors of Curbed.com. Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery contains the remains of many noted celebrities and local residents. Grand Central Airport was the departure point for the first commercial west-to-east transcontinental flight flown by Charles Lindbergh; the area was long inhabited by the Tongva people, who were renamed the Gabrieleños by the Spanish missionaries, after the nearby Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.
In 1798, José María Verdugo, a corporal in the Spanish army from Baja California, received the Rancho San Rafael from Governor Diego de Borica, formalizing his possession and use of land on which he had been grazing livestock and farming since 1784. Rancho San Rafael was a Spanish concession. Unlike the Mexican land grants, the concessions were similar to grazing permits, with the title remaining with the Spanish crown. In 1860, his grandson Teodoro Verdugo built the Verdugo Adobe, the oldest building in Glendale; the property is the location of the Oak of Peace, where early Californio leaders including Pio Pico met in 1847 and decided to surrender to Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont. Verdugo's descendants sold the ranch in various parcels, some of which are included in present-day Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, Highland Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In 1884, residents gathered to form a townsite and chose the name "Glendale" (it was bounded by First Street on the north, Fifth Street on the south, Central Avenue on the west, the Childs Tract on the east.
Residents to the southwest formed "Tropico" in 1887. The Pacific Electric Railway brought streetcar service in 1904. Glendale incorporated in 1906, annexed Tropico 12 years later. An important civic booster of the era was Leslie Coombs Brand, who built an estate in 1904 called El Miradero, featuring an eye-catching mansion, the architecture of which combined characteristics of Spanish and Indian styles, copied from the East Indian Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, which he visited. Brand loved to fly, built a private airstrip in 1919 and hosted "fly-in" parties, providing a direct link to the soon-to-be-built nearby Grand Central Airport; the grounds of El Miradero are now city-owned Brand Park and the mansion is the Brand Library, according to the terms of his will. Brand partnered with Henry E. Huntington to bring the Pacific Electric Railway, or the "Red Cars", to the area. Today, he is memorialized by one of Brand Boulevard; the city's population rose from 13,756 in 1920 to 62,736 in 1930.
The Forest Lawn Cemetery opened in 1906 and was renamed Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in 1917. Pioneering endocrinologist and entrepreneur Henry R. Harrower opened his clinic in Glendale in 1920, which for many years was the largest business in the city; the American Green Cross, an early conservation and tree preservation society, was formed in 1926. Until as late as the 1960s, Glendale was a sundown town. Nonwhites were required to leave city limits by a certain time each day or risk arrest and possible violence. In the 1930s, Glendale and Burbank prevented the Civilian Conservation Corps from stationing African American workers in a local park, citing sundown town ordinances that both cities had adopted. In 1964, Glendale was selected by George Lincoln Rockwell to be the West Coast headquarters of the American Nazi Party, its offices, on Colorado Street in the downtown section of the city, remained open until the early 1980s. In 1977 and 1978, 10 murdered women were found in and around Glendale in what became known as the case of the Hillside Strangler.
The murders were the work of Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, the latter of whom resided at 703 East Colorado Street, where most of the murders took place. Glendale is located at the junction of the San Fernando and the San Gabriel. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 79.212 km2. It is bordered to the north by the foothill communities of La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Tujunga. Glendale is located 10 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Several known earthquake faults criss-cross the Glendale area and adjacent mountains, as in much of Southern California. Among the more recognized faults are the
Aerial view of Grand Central Airport, looking southeast
This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency website http://www.afhra.af.mil/.
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