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Culver City, California
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Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California. The city was named after its founder, Harry Culver, as of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, over the years, it has annexed more than 40 pieces of adjoining land and now comprises about five square miles. Since the 1920s, Culver City has been a center for motion picture and later television production, from 1932 to 1985, it was the headquarters for the Hughes Aircraft Company. National Public Radio West and Sony Pictures Entertainment have headquarters in the city, the NFL Network studio is also based in Culver City. Archaeological evidence suggests a human presence in the area of present-day Culver City since at least 8,000 BC, the region was the homeland of the Tongva-Gabrieliño Native Americans, who held a presence in the region for over 8,000 years. The city was founded primarily on the lands of the former Rancho La Ballona, Rancho Rincon de los Bueyes, and Rancho La Cienega o Paso de la Tijera. In 1861, during the American Civil War, Camp Latham was established by the 1st California Infantry under Col. James H. Carleton and the 1st California Cavalry under Lt. Col. Benjamin F. Davis. Named for California Senator Milton S. Latham, the camp was the first staging area for the training of Union troops and their operations in Southern California. It was located on land of the Rancho La Ballona, on the South side of Ballona Creek, near what is now the intersection of Jefferson, the post was later moved to Camp Drum, which became the Drum Barracks. Harry Culver first attempted to establish Culver City in 1913, the city was incorporated on September 20,1917, the city was one of many all-white planned communities started in the Los Angeles area around this time. The first film studio in Culver City was built by Thomas Ince in 1918, in 1919, silent film comedy producer Hal Roach built his studios there, and Metro Goldwyn Mayer in the 20s. During Prohibition, speakeasies and nightclubs such as the Cotton Club lined Washington Boulevard, Culver Center, one of Southern Californias first shopping malls, was completed in 1950 on Venice Boulevard near the Overland Avenue intersection. Today, it has retail stores, a supermarket, a Rite Aid department store, Best Buy. Hughes Aircraft opened its Culver City plant in July 1941, there the company built the H-4 Hercules transport. Hughes was also a subcontractor in World War II. It developed and patented a flexible feed chute for faster loading of machine guns on B-17 bombers, Hughes produced more ammunition belts than any other American manufacturer, and built 5,576 wings and 6,370 rear fuselage sections for Vultee BT-13 trainers. Hughes grew after the war, and in 1953 Howard Hughes donated all of his stock in the company to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, after he died in 1976, the institute sold the company, which made it the second-best-endowed medical research foundation in the world
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Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
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Find a Grave
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Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry. com, the worlds largest for-profit genealogy company, the site was created in 1995 by Salt Lake City resident Jim Tipton to support his hobby of visiting the burial sites of celebrities. He later added an online forum, Find a Grave was launched as a commercial entity in 1998, first as a trade name and then incorporated in 2000. The site later expanded to include graves of non-celebrities, in order to allow visitors to pay respect to their deceased relatives or friends. In 2013, Tipton sold Find a Grave to Ancestry. com, burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history. In a September 30,2013, press release, Ancestry, as of March 2017, Find a Grave contained over 159 million burial records and 75 million photos. The website contains listings of cemeteries and graves from around the world, american cemeteries are organized by state and county, and many cemetery records contain Google Maps and photographs of the cemeteries and gravesites. Individual grave records may contain dates and places of birth and death, biographical information, cemetery and plot information, photographs, Interment listings are added by individuals, genealogical societies, and other institutions such as the International Wargraves Photography Project. Contributors must register as members to submit listings, called memorials, the submitter becomes the manager of the listing but may transfer management. Only the current manager of a listing may edit it, although any member may use the features to send correction requests to the listings manager. Managers may add links to other listings of deceased spouses, parents, members may post requests for photos of a specific grave, these requests will be automatically sent to other members who have registered their location as being near that grave. Find a Grave also maintains lists of memorials of famous persons by their claim to fame, such as Medal of Honor recipients, religious figures, Find a Grave exercises editorial control over these listings. Canadian Headstones Interment. net National Cemetery Administrations Nationwide Gravesite Locator Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Tombstone tourist Colker, web site answers grave concerns about stars. Web site attracts millions of grave-seekers, Find VIPs who R. I. P. through online cemetery. Genealogy, Find a Grave tremendous on many different levels, terre Haute, Indiana, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. Archived from the original on May 14,2011, tip, Find a Grave has info youre dying to know. Tracking Down Relatives, Visiting Graves Virtually, media related to Images from Find A Grave at Wikimedia Commons Official website
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The Political Graveyard
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The Political Graveyard is a website and database that catalogues information on more than 277,000 American political figures and political families, along with other information. The database attempts to capture very basic biographical and office-holding data for its political figures, besides where they are buried, it records dates and locations of birth and death, offices held and the applicable dates, organizational affiliations, and cause of death. It also reports their relation with other politicians listed, their political party, the name comes from the websites inclusion of the burial locations of the deceased, when known. The site was created in 1996 by Lawrence Kestenbaum, then an academic specialist at Michigan State University, Kestenbaum was formerly a county commissioner, and in 2004 was elected to be County Clerk/Register of Deeds of Washtenaw County, Michigan. The site and its underlying database were developed from a personal interest triggered by the Biographical Directory of the U. S. Congress, since then his personal research, and the information contributions of hundreds of volunteers have greatly expanded the information available. It is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 Creative Commons License, over the years the definition of eligible political figure has been expanded. It now includes most high officials, ambassadors, all elected and some appointed statewide officeholders. It lists unsuccessful candidates, presidential electors, and delegates to U. S. presidential nominating conventions of the political parties. Politicians are listed alphabetically, by office held or sought, and by location of birth, residence, some are listed in categories, including occupations, ethnicity, religious and organizational affiliation, honors and awards. Politicians accused of crimes or touched by scandal are listed by the nature of the accusation, as well as by decade, cause of death is broken down into dozens of categories. The site also lists political families, individuals listed on the site are linked together if their relationship meets the Rule of 1/1000 common ancestry. The sites largest cluster, with 2,134 members, is called Two Thousand Related Politicians, most of the families are subsets of this group. The largest subset family is the Huntington-Chapin-Waterman family of Connecticut, with 229 members
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Jewish cemetery
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A Jewish cemetery is a cemetery where members of the Jewish faith are buried in keeping with Jewish tradition. Cemeteries are referred to in different ways in Hebrew, including bet kevarot, beit almin or bet olam. The land of the cemetery is considered holy and a consecration ceremony takes place upon its inauguration. According to Jewish tradition, Jewish burial grounds are sacred sites, establishing a cemetery is one of the first priorities for a new Jewish community. A Jewish cemetery is generally purchased and supported with communal funds, showing proper respect for the dead is intrinsic to Jewish law. The connection between the soul and the body after death is an essential aspect of Jewish belief in the eternity of the soul. In larger Jewish communities, cemeteries are sometimes subdivided into sections according to the chevra kadisha that uses and is responsible for that section of the cemeterys care, early Jewish cemeteries were located outside of the city. In the Diaspora, it is traditional to bury the dead with the feet in the direction of Jerusalem, the tombstones usually have inscriptions in Hebrew and the regional language. During the Nazi Germany regime, Jewish cemeteries all over Europe were destroyed and desecrated, the largest Jewish cemeteries of Europe can be found in Budapest, Łódź, Prague, Warsaw, Vienna and Berlin. Other Jewish cemeteries in Europe include the Jewish Cemetery in Khotyn, the mission of the International Jewish Cemetery Project is to document every Jewish burial site in the world. Bereavement in Judaism IAJGS International Jewish Cemetery Project JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry Database of European Jewish Burial Grounds
6.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
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Al Jolson
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Al Jolson was an American singer, film actor, and comedian. At the peak of his career, he was dubbed The Worlds Greatest Entertainer and his performing style was brash and extroverted, and he popularized a large number of songs that benefited from his shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach. Numerous well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing Crosby, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Dylan once referred to him as somebody whose life I can feel. Broadway critic Gilbert Seldes compared him to the Greek god Pan, claiming that Jolson represented the concentration of our national health, in the 1930s, Jolson was Americas most famous and highest-paid entertainer. Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international tours. Although he is best remembered today as the star of the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with The Jolson Story, for which Larry Parks played Jolson, the formula was repeated in a sequel, Jolson Sings Again. In 1950, he became the first star to entertain GIs on active service in the Korean War. He died just weeks after returning to the U. S. partly owing to the exertion of performing. Defense Secretary George Marshall posthumously awarded him the Medal of Merit, According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Jolson was to jazz, blues, and ragtime what Elvis Presley was to rock n roll. Being the first popular singer to make a spectacular event out of singing a song and his specialty was performing on stage runways extending out into the audience. According to music historian Larry Stempel, No one had heard anything quite like it before on Broadway, author Stephen Banfield agreed, writing that Jolsons style was arguably the single most important factor in defining the modern musical. Jolson also enjoyed performing in blackface makeup, a convention since the mid-19th century. With his unique and dynamic style of singing black music, such as jazz and blues, as early as 1911, he became known for fighting against black discrimination on Broadway. Al Jolson was born as Asa Yoelson in the Jewish village of Srednik now known as Seredžius, near Kaunas in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He was the fifth and youngest child of Moses Rubin Yoelson and Nechama Naomi Cantor, his four siblings were Rose, Etta, another sister who died in infancy, and Hirsch. Jolson claimed not to know when he was born, and later chose to claim he was born on May 26,1886. His one-time sister-in-law, Margaret Weatherwax, claimed Jolson was the age as their father, Ralph
8.
Paul Williams (architect)
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Paul Revere Williams, FAIA was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He practiced largely in Southern California and designed the homes of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck. He also designed many public and private buildings, orphaned at four years of age, Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier and he went on to attend the University of Southern California, designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became an architect in 1921, and the first certified African-American architect west of the Mississippi. He married Della Mae Givens on June 27,1917, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles and they had three children, Paul Revere Williams, Jr. Marilyn Frances Williams, and Norma Lucille Williams. Williams won a competition at age 25, and three years later opened his own office. Known as a draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings upside down. This skill was developed so that his clients could see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Struggling to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920, from 1921 through 1924, Williams worked for Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, eventually becoming chief draftsman, before establishing his own office, in 1923, Williams became the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects. In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles, during World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect. In 1951, Williams won the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc, man of the Year award and in 1953 he received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his outstanding contributions as an architect and member of the African-American community. Williams also received doctorates from Lincoln University of Missouri, Howard University. In 1956, he won an award for service, from Wisdom Magazine, for contributions to knowledge, in 1957, he became the first black member to be inducted into the AIAs College of Fellows. An April 2,1957 letter from the Executive Secretary of AIA, book, The Small Home of Tomorrow, with a successor volume New Homes for Today. Essay, I Am a Negro, American Magazine, in 2004, USC honored him by listing him among its distinguished alumni, in the television commercial for the school shown during its football games. In 2017, Williams will be honored with the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
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Interstate 405 (California)
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Interstate 405, also known as I-405 or the 405, is a major north–south Interstate Highway in Southern California. It is a longer route than using Interstate 5, running along the western and southern parts of the Greater Los Angeles Area from Irvine in the south to near San Fernando in the north. The entire route is known as the segment of the San Diego Freeway. I-405 is a heavily traveled thoroughfare by both commuters and by freight haulers along its length and is the busiest and most congested freeway in the United States. The freeways annual average daily traffic between exits 21 and 22 in Seal Beach reached 374,000 in 2008, making it the highest count in the nation. It has played a role in the development of dozens of cities and suburbs along its route through Los Angeles. This route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System, Interstate 405 begins at the El Toro Y interchange with Interstate 5 in southeastern Irvine. It then runs northwest through Orange County to Long Beach in Los Angeles County, the freeway then roughly follows the outline of the Pacific coast, varying between five and ten miles inland before crossing over the Sepulveda Pass in the Santa Monica Mountains. I-405 next travels northerly through the San Fernando Valley, before its termination with I-5 in the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, large portions of the route closely parallel Sepulveda Boulevard. As a result of these problems, it may take longer to pass through the entire Los Angeles area using this bypass route instead of merely taking the primary route I-5 through Downtown. Another parallel freeway is proposed to connect the Valley and the LA basin, despite 4 years of construction disruptions, billions of dollars of public money, LA Times commentary claims traffic with the lane expansions is actually just as bad or worse. There are a number of points of interest that I-405 passes by or connects to, for transportation, these include John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Long Beach Municipal Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. With connections, it is very close to the Port of Long Beach. I-405 also passes cultural facilities such as the Getty Center, the Skirball Cultural Center, the route also passes by or through many recreation and commercial destinations. I-405 was approved as an interstate in 1955. Construction began in 1957 with the first section, mostly north of LAX Airport being completed in 1961 followed by sections west of Interstate 605 within the few years. The highway was renumbered to Interstate 405 during the 1964 renumbering, the final section covering most of Orange County opened in 1969. Construction required the already existing Mulholland Highway to be re-routed 1.1 miles to the south along a new 579-foot-long bridge, the freeway from present-day I-10 to I-5 near San Fernando was once known as the Sepulveda Freeway as it was named for Sepulveda Boulevard
