1.
City (California)
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California is a state located in the Western United States. It is the most populous state and the third largest by area after Alaska, according to the 2010 United States Census, California has 37,253,956 inhabitants and 155,779.22 square miles of land. California has been inhabited by numerous Native American peoples since antiquity, after the Mexican Cession of 1848, the California Gold Rush brought worldwide attention to the area. California is divided into 58 counties and contains 482 municipalities, one, San Francisco, is a consolidated city–county. California law makes no distinction between city and town, and municipalities may use either term in their official names. According to the 2010 Census,30,908,614 of Californias 37,253,956 residents lived in urban areas, the first municipality to incorporate was Sacramento on February 27,1850, while the most recent was Jurupa Valley on July 1,2011. Eight cities were incorporated before the states September 9,1850, the largest municipality by population and land area is Los Angeles with 3,792,621 residents and 468.67 square miles. The smallest by population is Vernon with 112 people, while the smallest by area is Amador City at 0.31 square miles
2.
Contra Costa County, California
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Contra Costa County is a county in the state of California in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,049,025, the name is Spanish for opposite coast, referring to its position on the other side of the bay from San Francisco. Contra Costa County is included in the San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area and it occupies the northern portion of the East Bay region and is primarily suburban. In the northern part of the county, significant coal and sand deposits were formed in even earlier geologic eras, other areas of the county have ridges exposing ancient but intact seashells, embedded in sandstone layers alternating with limestone. Layers of volcanic ash ejected from geologically recent but now extinct volcanoes, compacted and now tilted by compressive forces, may be seen at the site of some road excavations. This county is an agglomeration of several distinct geologic terranes, as is most of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, younger deposits at middle altitudes include pillow lavas, the product of undersea volcanic eruptions. There is an extensive but little recorded human history pre-European settlement in this area, the earliest definitively established occupation by modern man appears to have occurred six to ten thousand years ago. However, there may have been human presence far earlier, at least as far as non–settling populations are concerned, extensive trading from tribe to tribe transferred exotic materials such as obsidian throughout the region from far distant Californian tribes. Unlike the nomadic Native American of the Great Plains it appears that these tribes did not incorporate warfare into their culture but were generally cooperative. Within these cultures the concept of individual or collective land ownership was nonexistent, early European settlers in the region, however, did not record much about the culture of the natives. Most of what is known comes from preserved contemporaneous and excavated artifacts. Although there were no missions established within this county, Spanish influence here was direct and extensive, in 1821 Mexico gained independence from Spain. Mission lands extended throughout the Bay Area, including portions of Contra Costa County, between 1836 and 1846, during the era when California was a province of independent Mexico, the following 15 land grants were made in Contra Costa County. Rough surveying was based on a map, or diseño, measured by streams, shorelines, and/or horseman who marked it with rope, lands outside rancho grants were designated el sobrante, as in surplus or excess, and considered common lands. The law required the construction of a house within a year, fences were not required and were forbidden where they might interfere with roads or trails. Locally a large family required roughly 2000 head of cattle and two leagues of land to live comfortably. Foreign entrepreneurs came to the area to provide goods that Mexico couldn’t, Rancho Canada de los Vaqueros was granted to Francisco Alviso, Antonio Higuera, and Manuel Miranda. Two ranchos, both called Rancho San Ramon, were granted by the Mexican government in the San Ramon Valley, in 1833, Bartolome Pacheco and Mariano Castro shared the two square league Rancho San Ramon
3.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
4.
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
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
U.S. state
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A U. S. state is a constituent political entity of the United States of America. There are 50 states, which are together in a union with each other. Each state holds administrative jurisdiction over a geographic territory. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders. States range in population from just under 600,000 to over 39 million, four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, State governments are allocated power by the people through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in principles, and each provides for a government. States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the government playing a much larger role than it once did. There is a debate over states rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government. States and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a legislature consisting of the Senate. Each state is represented in the Senate by two senators, and is guaranteed at least one Representative in the House, members of the House are elected from single-member districts. Representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census, the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50, alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959. The Constitution is silent on the question of states have the power to secede from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, as a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance
7.
Municipal corporation
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A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs. Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located, often, this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter is a document establishing a municipality such as a city or town. The concept developed in Europe during the Middle Ages and is considered to be a version of a constitution. Traditionally the granting of a charter gave a settlement and its inhabitants the right to town privileges under the feudal system, townspeople who lived in chartered towns were burghers, as opposed to serfs who lived in villages. Towns were often free, in the sense that they were protected by the king or emperor. Today the process for granting charters is determined by the type of government of the state in question, in monarchies, charters are still often a royal charter given by the Crown or the state authorities acting on behalf of the Crown. In federations, the granting of charters may be within the jurisdiction of the level of government such as a state or province. In Brazil, municipal corporations are called municípios and are created by means of legislation at the state level. All municipal corporations must also abide by a municipal law which is passed and amended at the municipal level. In Canada charters are granted by provincial authorities, in Germany, municipal corporations existed since antiquity and through medieval times, until they became out of favour during the absolutism. In order to strengthen the spirit, the city law of Prussia dated 19 November 1808 picked up this concept. It is the basis of municipal law. In India, a Municipal Corporation is a local government body. This standard varies from state to state, according to laws passed by state legislatures, the Corporation of Chennai was the first Municipal Corporation in India. It was established on 29 September 1688 by the British East India Company, the second was Hyderabad Municipal Corporation established in 1869 by the Nizam rulers of Hyderabad State. The third was the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, established in 1876, the Bombay Municipal Corporation was established in 1888 by the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act. The Delhi Municipal Council was established in 1911 during the Delhi Durbar when New Delhi was proclaimed to be the new Capital of India and it was elevated to Municipal Corporation level on 7 April 1958 by an Act of Parliament which established the Municipal Corporation of Delhi
8.
California's 3rd State Senate district
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Californias 3rd State Senate district is one of 40 California State Senate districts. It is currently represented by Democrat Bill Dodd of Napa, the district stretches over the northern San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta regions. It includes parts of the North Bay, Wine Country, due to redistricting, the 3rd district has been moved around different parts of the state. The current iteration resulted from the 2011 redistricting by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, California State Senate California State Senate districts Districts in California District map from the California Citizens Redistricting Commission
9.
Bill Dodd (California politician)
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William Harold Bill Dodd is an American politician who is currently serving in the California State Senate. A Democrat, he represents the 3rd Senate District encompassing the northern San Francisco Bay Area, before serving in the Assembly, he served on the Napa County Board of Supervisors. Prior to his time in elected office, Dodd was President and CEO of Diversified Water Systems, the company was started by his father, William D. Dodd, who came to Napa and Solano County to start multiple Servisoft Water franchises. In the early 1980s DWS expanded into the industry, specializing in home. Dodd purchased the business from his family in 1988 and in 1989 expanded the business further, after merging the companies together, Dodd operated multiple Culligan franchises, selling, renting and servicing water quality improvement products throughout Northern California. The company had a significant customer base in residential, commercial and industrial accounts, in 1991, DWS consolidated its Vallejo and Napa operations to American Canyon and there built a state of the art softening and deionized regeneration plant. In 1993, the company expanded again, building a 5 gallon bottled water plant in American Canyon, during his time operating DWS, Dodd grew the company from 8 employees to over 40 and increased sales nearly tenfold. In 1998 Dodd sold DWS to the United States Filtration Company, Dodd remained employed by USF for 5 years before retiring from the water business to devote his full time to public service. Dodd was active in the State and Nation trade associations, in 1985 he was elected President of the Pacific Water Quality Association and in 1994, elected to National Water Quality Association. During his tenure the industry embraced third party certification of water treatment products and worked in Sacramento on important legislation to protect consumers. He was awarded the PWQA and WQA Hall of Fame Award, Award of Merit for work in PR and Governmental affairs, all awards were bestowed upon his father. Prior to serving in the Assembly, Bill served on the Napa County Board of Supervisors for 14 years and he also represented the cities and county of Napa on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission including a two-year term as chairman. In addition, Dodd served as an Honorary Commander for the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base. Dodd was a leader in securing nearly $100 million in funding for the Jamison Canyon Road project and many other projects in the Napa, Solano. Dodd was an advocate for preservation of agricultural land and affordable housing. In 2013, having previously been a registered Republican, Dodd changed his affiliation to the Democratic Party, in explaining the change, Dodd described himself as a fiscal conservative but I agree with the Democratic viewpoint on most social issues. In 2014 Dodd ran for the District 4 Assembly seat, representing all or parts of Colusa, Napa, Solano, Sonoma and his primary victory over four opponents earned him a general election run against Republican Charlie Schaupp. Dodd won the seat with a margin in excess of 20 points, Dodd was named to the Transportation, Water, Parks and Wildlife, Business and Professions, Agriculture and Rules Committee
10.
California Democratic Party
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The California Democratic Party is the state branch of the United States Democratic Party in the state of California. Headquartered in Sacramento, it is chaired by veteran Democratic politician and former United States Representative John L. Burton and it is the majority party in both chambers of the California State Legislature, i. e. the State Assembly and the Senate. In regards to businesses and economics, the California Democratic party takes a stance that protects consumers, small businesses, unions, the platform also makes a point to champion the economic reforms of President Barack Obama. The 2012 platform addresses the issues of family in several sections, the platform promises to protect seniors, children and all types of families with fair economic and social policies. These policies range from continuing Medicare for the elderly and keeping playgrounds safe for children, the platform also highlights the right of a woman to make choices for her own body and claims that healthcare is a natural right of all people. The California democrats further promise to protect the dignity of disabled citizens, the platform is dedicated to advocating for the rights of women through equal pay and affirmative action. The party prioritizes the creation of a sustainable and earth-friendly state, focus is placed on the development of alternative forms of energy and how energy is consumed. In addition, the stresses that green jobs are a solution to economic. Finally, the platform takes stances on open internet use, immigration, the Democrats of California support the right of the people to express their thoughts and ideas through any media, and their right to assemble. The party believes that laws should be fair and that immigrants should not be discriminated against. The party wishes to bring education to the forefront, aiming to turn California into a state for academic achievement. A Detailed description of the California Democratic Partys position on all of the issues can be found in their 2012 Platform document. The California Democratic Party passes multiple resolutions every year as a way of expressing their opinion to lawmakers statewide, while the partys resolutions have no legal force themselves, they are official documents that elected representatives should take into account when making decisions. A few recent resolutions are summarised below,2012 Buy American This resolution, written 18 November 2012, encourages all arms of government to favor American suppliers of goods and services. The above are three of a long list of Resolutions passed by the California Democratic Party in 2012 and in preceding years. The history of the Democratic Party of California is complex and long, the State has traded hands every few cycles since its admission into the union in 1850. At that time, the state was firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party, until the early 1880s after the Republican Party abolished slavery, the Republicans held the state through the power and influence of railroad men. The Democratic Party responded by taking an anti-corporate, anti freedom of attainment position, in 1894, Democrat James Budd was elected to the governorship, and the Democratic Party attempted to make good on their promises to reform the booming railroad industry
11.
California's 14th State Assembly district
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Californias 14th State Assembly district is one of 80 California State Assembly districts. It is currently represented by Democrat Tim Grayson of Concord, the district is located in the East Bay, spanning the Carquinez Strait. Parts of the Diablo Range are also in the district, including Mount Diablo itself, California State Assembly California State Assembly districts Districts in California District map from the California Citizens Redistricting Commission
12.
United States House of Representatives
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The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the Senate, composes the legislature of the United States. The composition and powers of the House are established by Article One of the United States Constitution, since its inception in 1789, all representatives are elected popularly. The total number of voting representatives is fixed by law at 435, the House is charged with the passage of federal legislation, known as bills, which, after concurrence by the Senate, are sent to the President for consideration. The presiding officer is the Speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof and is traditionally the leader of the controlling party. He or she and other leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conferences. The House meets in the wing of the United States Capitol. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress of the Confederation was a body in which each state was equally represented. All states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates, the issue of how to structure Congress was one of the most divisive among the founders during the Convention. The House is referred to as the house, with the Senate being the upper house. Both houses approval is necessary for the passage of legislation, the Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from large states such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, as it called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, the Constitution was ratified by the requisite number of states in 1788, but its implementation was set for March 4,1789. The House began work on April 1,1789, when it achieved a quorum for the first time, during the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives, However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed. Regional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery, One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican–American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War, the war culminated in the Souths defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Because all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the years of Reconstruction that followed witnessed large majorities for the Republican Party, which many Americans associated with the Unions victory in the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877, the ensuing era, the Democratic and the Republican Party held majorities in the House at various times. The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw an increase in the power of the Speaker of the House
13.
Mike Thompson (California politician)
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Charles Michael Mike Thompson is the U. S. Representative for Californias 5th congressional district, serving since 1999 and he is the current Chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. He is a member of the Democratic Party, the district, numbered as the 1st District until 2013, includes Napa County plus portions of Contra Costa, Lake, Solano, and Sonoma counties. Thompson was born in St. Helena, California, the son of Beverly Ann and his father was of English ancestry and his mother was of Italian and Swiss descent. Thompson served as an aide to Democrat Jackie Speier before winning election to the California State Senate in 1990, following the 1992 general election, Democratic state Senator Barry Keene of the neighboring 2nd District resigned. Thompson, whose hometown of St. Helena had shifted from the 4th district and into the 2nd district after reapportionment and he narrowly beat Republican businesswoman Margie Handley but won easy reelection in 1994. In 1998, however, Thompson was due to be termed out of the state senate, Riggs opted to retire, believing that he faced almost certain defeat given Thompsons name recognition and reputation. He has been reelected seven times with no opposition, and has turned what was a swing district for most of the 1980s and 1990s into a fairly safe Democratic seat. For his first seven terms, Thompson represented a district stretching from the far northern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area all the way to the North Coast. However, his district was renumbered as the 5th district after the 2010 census and was somewhat more compact. Thompson is a Blue Dog Democrat and was previously a member of the New Democrat Coalition and he has been labeled as a moderate Democratic leader. Thompson has voted with the Democratic party 91% of the time, abortion Thompson is a Roman Catholic, and is pro-choice. They stated that on those issues, such as abortion rights, in response to the Statement of Principles, the U. S. Health care Thompson has been a supporter of an option for healthcare. Additionally, in 2010, Thompson voted for the Patient Protection, Foreign policy In late 2002, Thompson joined Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington and David Bonior of Michigan on a trip to Iraq. During the trip, the spoke to officials in Baghdad. Presciently, they expressed skepticism about the Bush administrations claims that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction
14.
Democratic Party (United States)
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The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The Democrats dominant worldview was once socially conservative and fiscally classical liberalism, while, especially in the rural South, since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has also promoted a social-liberal platform, supporting social justice. Today, the House Democratic caucus is composed mostly of progressives and centrists, the partys philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state. It seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy, the party has united with smaller left-wing regional parties throughout the country, such as the Farmer–Labor Party in Minnesota and the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota. Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business, the New Deal Coalition of 1932–1964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extraction—many of whom were Catholics based in the cities. After Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal of the 1930s, the pro-business wing withered outside the South, after the racial turmoil of the 1960s, most southern whites and many northern Catholics moved into the Republican Party at the presidential level. The once-powerful labor union element became smaller and less supportive after the 1970s, white Evangelicals and Southerners became heavily Republican at the state and local level in the 1990s. However, African Americans became a major Democratic element after 1964, after 2000, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Asian Americans, the LGBT community, single women and professional women moved towards the party as well. The Northeast and the West Coast became Democratic strongholds by 1990 after the Republicans stopped appealing to socially liberal voters there, overall, the Democratic Party has retained a membership lead over its major rival the Republican Party. The most recent was the 44th president Barack Obama, who held the office from 2009 to 2017, in the 115th Congress, following the 2016 elections, Democrats are the opposition party, holding a minority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The party also holds a minority of governorships, and state legislatures, though they do control the mayoralty of cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D. C. The Democratic Party traces its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and that party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. They have been liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy both parties changed position several times and that party, the Democratic-Republican Party, came to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812 the Federalists virtually disappeared and the national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans. The Democratic-Republican party still had its own factions, however. As Norton explains the transformation in 1828, Jacksonians believed the peoples will had finally prevailed, through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president
15.
Mark DeSaulnier
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Mark James DeSaulnier /dəˈsoʊnjeɪ/ is an American politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, serving Californias 11th Congressional District since 2015. Previously, he served in the California Legislature representing Californias 7th State Senate district from 2008 to 2015, from 2006 to 2008, DeSaulnier represented Californias 11th State Assembly district. He also served as a Contra Costa County supervisor and on the Concord City Council, DeSaulnier received endorsements from Congresswoman Tauscher and Congressman George Miller for the seat. In the September 1 primary election, DeSaulnier came in second, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, DeSaulnier earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the College of the Holy Cross. He traveled cross-country to California in the early 1970s and eventually settled in Concord, as a young man, DeSaulnier worked as a probation officer, a truck driver and a hotel services employee. DeSaulnier was a member of both the Teamsters International Union and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union and his jobs allowed his early exposure to the challenges of working families and the power of organized labor to create equity among employers and employees. A small businessman, DeSaulnier owned and operated restaurants in the greater Bay Area before taking office in the Legislature in 2006. He is a member of the Concord Chamber of Commerce and the Contra Costa Council, DeSaulnier lives in Concord where he raised his two adult sons, Tristan and Tucker. He is a runner and has completed twenty-one marathons. DeSaulnier was appointed to the Concord Planning Commission in 1988, in 1991, he was elected to the Concord City Council and served as mayor of Concord in 1993. He was also a member of the University of California Toxic Substances Research, DeSaulnier served on the Board of Supervisors until 2006. He was elected in 1994 and re-elected in 1998 and 2002, in June 1998, he received 98.4 percent of the vote against write-in candidates. In March 2002, he retained his seat with 79 percent of the vote against challenger Dione Mustard, although the Board of Supervisors is a non-partisan office, DeSaulnier was active in Republican party affairs during much of his tenure as county supervisor. Many of the candidates that DeSaulnier aided supported the anti-union Proposition 226 on the June 1998 statewide ballot, during DeSaulniers tenure on the Board of Supervisors, he sponsored the Industrial Safety Ordinance and the Refinery Flare Rule for local refineries and chemical facilities. DeSaulnier served on the boards of the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. He was appointed to represent the Bay Area on the California Air Resources Board by the Air District, on a county level, DeSaulnier introduced a Womens Health Program to serve the health-care needs of all women in Contra Costa County. He also established the annual Children and Families Budget, a separate County budget that reviews and his other projects for children include AfterSchool4All, the Future Fund and the Children and Families Committee of the Board of Supervisors. The Contra Costa Times editorial board was critical of DeSaulniers record as county supervisor, an editorial published in 2009 stated, Many of the financial problems that afflict Contra Costa County today stem directly from decisions DeSaulnier championed while he was supervisor
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2010 United States Census
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The 2010 United States Census, is the twenty-third and currently most recent United States national census. National Census Day, the day used for the census, was April 1,2010. As part of a drive to increase the accuracy,635,000 temporary enumerators were hired. The population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, as required by the United States Constitution, the U. S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U. S. Census was the previous census completed, participation in the U. S. Census is required by law in Title 13 of the United States Code. On January 25,2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves personally inaugurated the 2010 Census enumeration by counting World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, more than 120 million census forms were delivered by the U. S. Post Office beginning March 15,2010, the number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was approximately 134 million on April 1,2010. The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%, from April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called non-response follow-up. In December 2010, the Census Bureau delivered population information to the president for apportionment, personally identifiable information will be available in 2082. The Census Bureau did not use a form for the 2010 Census. In several previous censuses, one in six households received this long form, the 2010 Census used only a short form asking ten basic questions, How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1,2010. Were there any additional people staying here on April 1,2010 that you did not include in Question 1, mark all that apply, Is this house, apartment, or mobile home – What is your telephone number. What is Person 1s age and Person 1s date of birth, is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin. Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else, the form included space to repeat some or all of these questions for up to twelve residents total. In contrast to the 2000 census, an Internet response option was not offered, detailed socioeconomic information collected during past censuses will continue to be collected through the American Community Survey. The survey provides data about communities in the United States on a 1-year or 3-year cycle, depending on the size of the community, rather than once every 10 years. A small percentage of the population on a basis will receive the survey each year. In June 2009, the U. S. Census Bureau announced that it would count same-sex married couples, however, the final form did not contain a separate same-sex married couple option
17.
Pacific Time Zone
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The Pacific Time Zone observes standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time. During daylight saving time, its time offset is UTC−7 and is based on the mean solar time of the 105th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. In the United States and Canada, this zone is generically called the Pacific Time Zone. Specifically, it uses Pacific Standard Time when observing standard time, most of Canada uses daylight saving time. In Mexico, the UTC−8 time zone is known as the Northwest Zone, the largest city in the Pacific Time Zone is Los Angeles, the citys metropolitan area is the largest in the zone. The following states or areas are part of the Pacific Time Zone, California Washington Oregon – all, except for most of Malheur County, nevada Idaho Panhandle – the northern half of Idaho, north of the Salmon River. The town of Hyder, Alaska, is officially in the Alaska Time Zone, however, most of the town observes the Pacific Time because of strong connections with nearby Stewart, British Columbia, which is in the Pacific Time Zone. The United States Post Office in Hyder strictly adheres to Alaska Time, in Canada, the Pacific Time Zone includes most of British Columbia, all of Yukon, and the townsite of Tungsten. In Mexico, the state of Baja California lies completely within the Pacific Time Zone and this does not include the state of Baja California Sur, which is south of Baja California. Through 2006, the time changed to daylight time at 02,00 LST to 03,00 LDT on the first Sunday in April. The Canadian provinces and territories that use daylight time each adopted these dates between October 2005 and February 2007, in Mexico, beginning in 2010, the portion of the country in this time zone uses the extended dates, as do some other parts. The vast majority of Mexico, however, still uses the old dates
18.
Daylight saving time
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Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that evening daylight lasts an hour longer, while sacrificing normal sunrise times. Typically, regions that use Daylight Savings Time adjust clocks forward one hour close to the start of spring, American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin proposed a form of daylight time in 1784. New Zealander George Hudson proposed the idea of saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation, starting on April 30,1916, many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the energy crisis of the 1970s. The practice has both advocates and critics, DST clock shifts sometimes complicate timekeeping and can disrupt travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, heavy equipment, and sleep patterns. Computer software often adjusts clocks automatically, but policy changes by various jurisdictions of DST dates, industrialized societies generally follow a clock-based schedule for daily activities that do not change throughout the course of the year. The time of day that individuals begin and end work or school, North and south of the tropics daylight lasts longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the effect becoming greater as one moves away from the tropics. However, they will have one hour of daylight at the start of each day. Supporters have also argued that DST decreases energy consumption by reducing the need for lighting and heating, DST is also of little use for locations near the equator, because these regions see only a small variation in daylight in the course of the year. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season, unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some monasteries of Mount Athos and all Jewish ceremonies. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells, despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST, 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklins day. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him time to collect insects. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk and his solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament Robert Pearce, a select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearces bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915, william Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912. Starting on April 30,1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime, Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the year
19.
ZIP Code
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ZIP Codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, was chosen to suggest that the travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly. The basic format consists of five numerical digits, an extended ZIP+4 code, introduced in 1983, includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, a hyphen, and four additional digits that determine a more specific location within a given ZIP Code. The term ZIP Code was originally registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, USPS style for ZIP is all caps and the c in code is also capitalized, although style sheets for some publications use sentence case or lowercase. The early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers, the United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example, Mr. John Smith 3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue Minneapolis 16, by the early 1960s a more organized system was needed, and on July 1,1963, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide. Three months later, on October 1,1963, the U. S, an earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with one exception, according to the historian of the U. S. Robert Moon, an employee of the post office, is considered the father of the ZIP Code, he submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector. The post office gives credit to Moon only for the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or sec center, an SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes, the mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. The United States Post Office used a character, which it called Mr. ZIP. He was often depicted with a such as USE ZIP CODE in the selvage of panes of stamps or on labels contained in, or the covers of. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4, often called plus-four codes, add-on codes, or add ons. But initial attempts to promote use of the new format met with public resistance. For Post Office Boxes, the rule is that each box has its own ZIP+4 code. However, there is no rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box. It is common to use add-on code 9998 for mail addressed to the postmaster,9999 for general delivery, for a unique ZIP Code, the add-on code is typically 0001
20.
North American Numbering Plan
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The North American Numbering Plan is a telephone numbering plan that encompasses 25 distinct regions in twenty countries primarily in North America, including the Caribbean and the U. S. territories. Not all North American countries participate in the NANP, each participating country forms a regulatory authority that has plenary control over local numbering resources. The FCC also serves as the U. S. regulator, Canadian numbering decisions are made by the Canadian Numbering Administration Consortium. The NANP divides the territories of its members into numbering plan areas which are encoded numerically with a telephone number prefix. Each telephone is assigned a telephone number unique only within its respective plan area. The telephone number consists of a central office code and a four-digit station number. The combination of a code and the telephone number serves as a destination routing address in the public switched telephone network. For international call routing, the NANP has been assigned the calling code 1 by the International Telecommunications Union. The North American Numbering Plan conforms with ITU Recommendation E.164, from its beginnings in 1876 and throughout the first part of the 20th century, the Bell System grew from essentially local or regional telephone systems. These systems expanded by growing their subscriber bases, as well as increasing their service areas by implementing additional local exchanges that were interconnected with tie trunks and it was the responsibility of each local administration to design telephone numbering plans that accommodated the local requirements and growth. As a result, the Bell System as a developed into an unorganized system of many differing local numbering systems. The diversity impeded the efficient operation and interconnection of exchanges into a system for long-distance telephone communication. The new numbering plan was accepted in October 1947, dividing most of North America into 86 Numbering Plan Areas. Each NPA was assigned a Numbering Plan Area code, often abbreviated as area code and these codes were first used by long-distance operators to establish long-distance calls between toll offices. The first customer-dialed direct call using area codes was made on November 10,1951, from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California. Direct distance dialing was introduced across the country and by the early 1960s most areas of the Bell System had been converted and it was commonplace in cities. In the following decades, the system expanded to all of the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda. By 1967,129 area codes had been assigned, mexican participation was planned, but implementation stopped after two area codes had been assigned and Mexico opted for an international numbering format, using country code 52
21.
Area code 925
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Area code 925 is a California telephone area code that was split from area code 510 on March 14,1998. It covers the portions of the East Bay counties of Alameda. The area was part of area code 415, one of the first three area codes created in California in 1947, which originally covered all of central California. In 1991, area code 510 was created to encompass most of the East Bay, Area code 925 was created March 14,1998, when area code 510 was split along the natural border of the East Bay hills. The number was formed by adding 415 and 510, the area code includes southeastern Alameda County, and all of Contra Costa County except the western part. com,925 Area Code
22.
Geographic Names Information System
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It is a type of gazetteer. GNIS was developed by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names to promote the standardization of feature names, the database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited, variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded. Each feature receives a permanent, unique feature record identifier, sometimes called the GNIS identifier, the database never removes an entry, except in cases of obvious duplication. The GNIS accepts proposals for new or changed names for U. S. geographical features, the general public can make proposals at the GNIS web site and can review the justifications and supporters of the proposals. The Bureau of the Census defines Census Designated Places as a subset of locations in the National Geographic Names Database, U. S. Postal Service Publication 28 gives standards for addressing mail. In this publication, the postal service defines two-letter state abbreviations, street identifiers such as boulevard and street, department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey, National Mapping Division, Digital Gazeteer, Users Manual. Least Heat Moon, William, Blue Highways, A Journey Into America, standard was withdrawn in September 2008, See Federal Register Notice, Vol.73, No. 170, page 51276 Report, Principles, Policies, and Procedures, Domestic Geographic Names, U. S. Postal Service Publication 28, November 2000. Board on Geographic Names website Geographic Names Information System Proposals from the general public Meeting minutes
23.
County seat
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A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is used in the United States, Canada, Romania, China, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, county towns have a similar function. In the United States, counties are the subdivisions of a state. Depending on the state, counties may provide services to the public, impose taxes. Some types of subdivisions, such as townships, may be incorporated or unincorporated. The city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county, a county seat is usually, but not always, an incorporated municipality. The exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia, likewise, some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, Cape May Court House, New Jersey, though unincorporated, is a section of Middle Township, in some of the colonial states, county seats include or formerly included Court House as part of their name. Most counties have only one county seat, an example is Harrison County, Mississippi, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats. The practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days when travel was difficult, there have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride for the towns involved. There are 36 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states, Coffee County, for example, the official county seat is Greensboro, but an additional courthouse has been located in nearby High Point since 1938. For example, Clearwater is the county seat of Pinellas County, Florida, in New England, the town, not the county, is the primary division of local government. Historically, counties in this region have served mainly as dividing lines for the judicial systems. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no county level of government and thus no county seats, in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine the county seats are legally designated shire towns. County government consists only of a Superior Court and Sheriff, both located in the shire town. Bennington County has two towns, but the Sheriff is located in Bennington. In Massachusetts, most government functions which would otherwise be performed by county governments in other states are performed by town governments. As such, Massachusetts has dissolved many of its county governments, two counties in South Dakota have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county
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East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)
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The eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area, commonly referred to as the East Bay, includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, with a population of roughly 2.5 million in 2010, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area. Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay and the third largest in the Bay Area, the city serves as a major transportation hub for the U. S. West Coast, and its port is the largest in Northern California, increased population has led to the growth of such large edge cities as Berkeley, Hayward, Concord and Fremont. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 with its terminus at the newly constructed Oakland Long Wharf. Today the Port of Oakland is the Bay Areas largest port, in 1868, the University of California was formed from the private College of California and a new campus was built in what would become Berkeley. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake saw a number of refugees flee to the relatively undamaged East Bay. As the East Bay grew, the push to connect it with a permanent link than ferry service resulted in the completion of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936. The Bay Area saw further growth in the decades following World War II, the 1937 completion of the Caldecott Tunnel through the Berkeley Hills fueled growth further east, where there was undeveloped land. Cities in the Diablo Valley, including Concord and Walnut Creek, the addition of the BART commuter rail system in 1972 further encouraged development in increasingly far-flung regions of the East Bay. Today, the valleys east of the Berkeley Hills contain large affluent suburban communities such as Walnut Creek, San Ramon, the East Bay is not a formally defined region, aside from its being described as a region inclusive of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. As development moves generally eastward, new areas are described as being part of the East Bay, beyond the borders of Alameda County, the large population of Tracy is connected as a bedroom community housing commuters traveling to or through the East Bay. Except for some hills and ridges which exist as parklands or undeveloped land, and some farmland in eastern Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, the East Bay is highly urbanized. The East Bay shoreline is a corridor with several cities exceeding 100,000 residents, including Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Richmond. In the inland valleys on the east side of the Berkeley Hills, the land is developed, particularly on the eastern fringe of Contra Costa county. In the inland valleys, the density is less and the cities smaller. The only cities exceeding 100,000 residents in the valleys are Antioch. The free East Bay Monthly has been published since 1970, in the early years of the evolution of USA Today, during the early 1980s, they operated regional newspapers, with the regions paper entitled East Bay Today
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San Francisco Bay Area
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The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco. The Bay Areas nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California, the fifth-largest in the United States, the Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 Companies in the United States, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The eastern side of the bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is known locally as the East Bay, the inner East Bay is more densely populated, with generally older buildings, and a more ethnically diverse population. The word Lamorinda was coined by combining the names of the cities it includes, Lafayette, Moraga, walnut Creek is situated east of Lamorinda and north of the San Ramon Valley and, together with Concord, Martinez, and Pleasant Hill comprises Central Contra Costa County. The cities of Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, Oakley and the areas surrounding them comprise East Contra Costa County. The Tri-Valley consists of the Amador, the Livermore, and the San Ramon Valleys, dublin and Pleasanton comprise the Amador Valley, Livermore lies in the Livermore Valley, and the San Ramon Valley consists of Alamo, Danville, Diablo and its namesake, San Ramon. The outer East Bay is connected to the inner East Bay by BART, Interstate 580 to the south, and State Routes State Route 4 to the north, the outer East Bays infrastructure was mostly built up after World War II. This area remains largely white demographically, although the Hispanic and Filipino populations have grown significantly over the past 2–3 decades, the region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known locally as the North Bay. This area encompasses Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County, the city of Fairfield, being part of Solano County, is often considered the easternmost city of the North Bay. With few exceptions, this region is affluent, Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the state. The North Bay is relatively rural compared to the remainder of the Bay Area, with areas of undeveloped open space, farmland. Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is the North Bays largest city, with a population of 167,815 and a Metropolitan Statistical Area population of 466,891, making it the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. The North Bay is the section of the Bay Area that is not currently served by a commuter rail service. The area from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley, geographically part of the San Francisco Peninsula, is known locally as The Peninsula, many of these families are of foreign background and have significantly contributed to the diversity of the area. Whereas the term peninsula technically refers to the entire geographical San Franciscan Peninsula, in local terms, San Francisco is surrounded by water on three sides, the north, east, and west. The city squeezes roughly 870,000 people in under 47 square miles, on any given day, there can be as many as 1 million people in the city because of the commuting population and tourism
26.
Carquinez Strait
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The Carquinez Strait is a narrow tidal strait in northern California. It is part of the estuary of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers as they drain into the San Francisco Bay. The strait connects Suisun Bay, which receives the waters of the rivers, with San Pablo Bay. The strait forms part of the border between Solano and Contra Costa counties, and is approximately 15 mi north of Oakland, the cities of Benicia and Vallejo lie on the north side of the strait, while Martinez, Port Costa, and Crockett sit on the southern coast. The Napa River joins the strait, via the short Mare Island Strait, the strait is named after the Karkin, a linguistic division of the Ohlone Native Americans who resided on both sides of the strait. The California Maritime Academy is at the end of the strait on the northern waterfront. The C&H Sugar refinery is located on the shore in the small town of Crockett. The strait is crossed by two bridges, the Carquinez Bridge on Interstate 80 and the Benicia-Martinez Bridge on Interstate 680. Each highway bridge consists of two spans, Interstate 780 connects the two highways on the northern slope of the strait. State Route 4 connects these highways south of and inland from the strait, a rail bridge just east of the Benicia-Martinez bridge is used by the Capitol Corridor, California Zephyr, and Coast Starlight trains. A rail ferry, with the ferries Contra Costa and Solano provided service across the strait near the location of the current rail bridge until the bridge was built in 1930. Tall pylons carrying power lines cross the strait as well, the Carquinez Strait Powerline Crossing was the worlds first powerline crossing of a large river. The channel is navigable and is used for commercial and military shipping, deep water ship traffic bound for both the Port of Sacramento and the Port of Stockton traverse the strait. The narrow gap in the Coast Range that forms the strait has led to the formation of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, a river delta, upstream of it. The strait is too small to allow the passage of huge amounts of floodwaters created during years with heavy rainfall/snowmelt events. Because the Delta area is the first to fill and last to drain in an event, silt and soil have more time to drop out of suspension
27.
Benicia, California
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Benicia is a waterside city in Solano County, California, United States. It served as the capital for nearly thirteen months from 1853 to 1854. The population was 26,997 at the 2010 census, the city is located in the San Francisco Bay Area along the north bank of the Carquinez Strait. Benicia is just east of Vallejo and across the strait from Martinez, elizabeth Patterson has served as Mayor of Benicia since 2007. The town is divided into four areas, the East Side, the West Side, Southampton, most of the towns older homes are on the east and west sides. Southampton contains primarily single-family housing developments and condominiums, most of which were built between 1970 and 2000. The East Side includes the Benicia Arsenal, a former United States Army armory, the Arsenal is home to several historic landmark buildings such as The Clock Tower, the Camel Barn, and the Jefferson Street Mansion. The industrial park lies to the northeast of the areas of the city. The Benicia State Recreation Area is on the far west edge of the city, the main retail area in Benicia is First Street, which attracts out-of-town antique and boutique shoppers and those seeking small-town, historic charm. In 1987 Benicia was selected to participate in the California Main Street Program, connections to Benicia include Interstate 680 from Martinez to the south and Cordelia Junction to the north, and Interstate 780, Columbus Parkway, and other local roads from Vallejo to the west. Amtrak also runs past the city north towards Sacramento, but the nearest train station lies in Martinez across the Carquinez Strait, Railroad tracks carrying Amtrak and Union Pacific Railroad lines cross the strait alongside the Benicia–Martinez Bridge. The City of Benicia was founded on May 19,1847, by Dr. Robert Semple, Thomas O. Larkin and it was named for the Generals wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. The General intended that the city be named Francisca after his wife, vallejos second given name was used instead. In his memoirs, William Tecumseh Sherman contended that Benicia was the best natural site for a city in the region. Benicia was the site selected to serve as the California state capital. Soon after the legislature was moved to the courthouse in Sacramento, the restored capitol is part of the Benicia Capitol State Historic Park, and is the only building remaining of the states early capitols, which were in San Jose and Vallejo. Benicia was also the county seat of Solano County until 1858, the original campus of Mills College was founded in Benicia in 1852 as the Young Ladies Seminary, and was the first womens college west of the Rockies. Before moving to Oakland in 1871, it was located on West I Street, on June 5,1889, the legendary prize fight between James J. Corbett and Joe Choynski was held on a barge off the coast of Benicia
28.
Vallejo, California
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Vallejo is a waterfront port city in Solano County, California, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 115,942 at the 2010 census and it is the tenth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest in Solano County. Vallejo sits on the shore of San Pablo Bay,30 miles north of San Francisco. Vallejo is home to the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom theme park, the now-defunct Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the colleges and universities in Vallejo are California Maritime Academy, the Vallejo Center campus of Solano Community College, and Touro University California. Ferry service runs from a terminal on Mare Island Strait to San Francisco, Vallejo has twice served as the capital of the state of California, once in 1852 and again in 1853, both periods being brief. The State Capitol building burned to the ground in the 1880s, as there were no bridges at that time, the Mare Island Fire Department had to be ferried across the Napa River, arriving to find only the foundation remaining. This was the first recorded mutual aid response in the state of California, some of the first Europeans drawn to the Vallejo area were attracted by the sulfur springs, in the year 1902 the area was named Blue Rock Springs. It was also known as White Sulfur Springs and that was the name of the leading to it from town. Vallejo is best known for the Zodiac Killer and being the hometown of Bay Area rappers E-40, according to United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 49.5 square miles. Land area is 30.7 square miles, and 18.9 square miles is water, the Napa River flows until it changes into the Mare Island Strait in Vallejo which then flows into the San Pablo Bay. Vallejo is located on the edge of Solano County, California in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. Vallejo is accessible by Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento, and is the location for the half of the Carquinez Bridge. It is also accessible by Interstate 780 from neighboring Benicia to the east, Route 29 begins in the city near the Carquinez Bridge and travels north through the heart of the city and beyond into Napa County, entering neighboring American Canyon and eventually Napa. Several faults have been mapped in the vicinity of Vallejo, the San Andreas Fault and Hayward Faults are the most active faults, although the San Andreas is at some distance. Locally, the Sulphur Springs Valley Thrust Fault and Southampton Fault are found, no quaternary seismic activity along these minor faults has been observed with the possible exception of a slight offset revealed by trenching. The Sulphur Mountain and Green Valley faults have been associated with the Concord Fault to the south, the Concord Fault is considered active. Historically there have been local cinnabar mines in the Vallejo area, the Hastings Mine and St. Johns Mine contribute ongoing water contamination for mercury, furthermore, mine shaft development has depleted much of this areas spring water. Both Rindler Creek and Blue Rock Springs Creek have been affected, the city of Vallejo is located 24 miles northeast of San Francisco,20 miles north of Oakland,56 miles north of San Jose and 52 miles south of Sacramento
29.
Alhambra Creek
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Alhambra Creek is a stream in Contra Costa County, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California. The creek drains into the Carquinez Strait at Martinez, via the historical Arroyo del Hambre, Alhambra Creek and its valley take their name from Cañada del Hambre, Spanish for valley of hunger, apparently because of some unknown incident involving starving Spanish soldiers. The name appears on diseños repeatedly and appears on an 1842 land grant, John Strentzel, John Muirs mother-in-law, did not like the name and renamed the lower creek also as Alhambra Creek. Currently the entire creek is called the Alhambra Creek, and Arroyo del Hambre Creek. The Alhambra Creek Watershed covers approximately 16.5 square miles in north central Contra Costa County, Alhambra Creek originates in the Briones Hills, within Briones Regional Park. The water flows from a tunnel in the side of the hill and this tunnel was made years ago to try to tap into what the speculators thought was a vast underground river that came from the Sierras. The thought was that the lagoons on Briones Crest represented a vast underground store of water and this “aqueous mother lode” turned out to be illusory, so the tunnel was abandoned. The linear distance from the source to the mouth of Alhambra Creek is about 6 miles, for the first 2 miles, Alhambra creek descends from about 1,100 feet elevation to 200 feet. At this point, it is joined by Arroyo del Hambre Creek, Arroyo del Hambre Creek is joined by several tributaries, among them Vaca Creek, on its way to join Alhambra Creek. Franklin Creek joins Alhambra Creek about 2 miles below the confluence of Alhambra, Franklin Creek drains a subwatershed of roughly the same size as the combined Upper Alhambra and del Hambre basins. There are no reservoirs and no industry in the watershed. An oil refinery is located just over the ridge to the east, in 2006, a male and female California golden beaver arrived in Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez. The City Council wanted to remove the beavers because of fears of flooding, ironically, as the worst flood since the flood control project was in 2005, local residents organized to protect them, forming an organization called Worth a Dam. Resolution included installing a flow device pipe through the dam so that the ponds water level could not become excessive. The beaver parents have produced babies every year since their 2006 arrival, however, in June,2010, after birthing and successfully weaning triplets this year, Mom Beaver died of natural causes. In November,2009 the Martinez City Council approved the placement of an 81 tile wildlife mural on the Escobar Street bridge, the mural was created by schoolchildren and donated by Worth a Dam to memorialize the beavers and other fauna in Alhambra Creek. The Martinez beavers probably originated from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, historically, before the California Fur Rush of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Delta probably held the largest concentration of beaver in North America. It was Californias early fur trade, more than any single factor, that opened up the West
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California Gold Rush
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The California Gold Rush began on January 24,1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutters Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States, the Gold Rush initiated the California Genocide, with 100,000 Native Californians dying between 1848 and 1868. By the time it ended, California had gone from a thinly populated ex-Mexican territory to the state of the first nominee for the Republican Party. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial, whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called forty-niners. The first to hear confirmed information of the rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Latin America. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. San Francisco grew from a settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California, in 1849 a state constitution was written. The new constitution was adopted by vote, and the future states interim first governor. In September,1850, California became a state, at the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields and a system of staking claims was developed. Prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, although the mining caused environmental harm, more sophisticated methods of gold recovery were developed and later adopted around the world. New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service, by 1869 railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, Gold worth tens of billions of todays dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few. However, many returned home with more than they had started with. The Mexican–American War ended on February 3,1848, although California was firmly in American hands before that, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided for, among other things, the formal transfer of Upper California to the United States. The California Gold Rush began at Sutters Mill, near Coloma, on January 24,1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two tested the metal. However, rumors started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher
31.
John Muir
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His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism has helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park, the Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile John Muir Trail, a trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor. Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, in Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130-mile-long route, was named in honor of him. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests and he petitioned the U. S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, today Muir is referred to as the Father of the National Parks and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life. John Muir has been considered an inspiration to both Scots and Americans, Muirs biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity, both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are discussed in books and journals. Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world, on April 21,2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist. John Muirs Birthplace is a stone house in Dunbar, East Lothian. His parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye and he was the third of eight children, Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary, and the American-born Joanna. His earliest recollections were of taking short walks with his grandfather when he was three, author Amy Marquis notes that he began his love affair with nature while young, and implies that it may have been in reaction to his strict religious upbringing. His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous, but the young Muir was a restless spirit and especially prone to lashings. As a young boy, Muir became fascinated with the East Lothian landscape and it was during this time that he became interested in natural history and the works of Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson. Although he spent the majority of his life in America, Muir never forgot his roots in Scotland and he held a strong connection with his birthplace and Scottish identity throughout his life and was frequently heard talking about his childhood spent amid the East Lothian countryside. He greatly admired the works of Thomas Carlyle and poetry of Robert Burns and he returned to Scotland on a trip in 1893, where he met one of his Dunbar schoolmates and visited the places of his youth that were etched in his memory. He also never lost his strong Scottish accent after many years living in America, in 1849, Muirs family immigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, by age 11, young Muir had learned to recite by heart and by sore flesh all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament
32.
John Muir National Historic Site
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The John Muir National Historic Site is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Martinez, Contra Costa County, California. The main site is on the edge of town, in the shadow of State Route 4, the mansion was built in 1883 by Dr. John Strentzel, Muirs father-in-law, with whom Muir went into partnership, managing his 2, 600-acre fruit ranch. Muir and his wife, Louisa, moved into the house in 1890, the home contains Muir’s scribble den, as he called his study, and his original desk, where he wrote about many of the ideas that are the bedrock of the modern conservation movement. The Muir house was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1960 and it became a National Historic Site in 1964, is a California Historical Landmark #312 and National Historic Landmark, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1988 nearby Mount Wanda Nature Preserve was added to the Historic Site, the John Muir National Historic Site offers a biographical film, tours of the house and nature walks on Mount Wanda. CA-1890, John Muir House, Alhambra Boulevard, Martinez, Contra Costa County, CA John Muir National Historic Site
33.
Main Street
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Main Street is a generic phrase used to denote a primary retail street of a village, town or small city in many parts of the world. It is usually a point for shops and retailers in the central business district. The term is used in Ireland, Scotland, the United States, Canada. In most of the United Kingdom the common description is High Street though Fore Street or Front Street is commonplace in some regions, in Jamaica the term is Front Street. The Main Street of America branding was used to promote U. S. Route 66 in its heyday, in the general sense, the term Main Street refers to a place of traditional values. Social realists from 1870 to 1930 used the name as a symbol of stifling conformity, sherwood Anderson, for example, wrote Winesburg, Ohio, A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life in 1919. The best-selling 1920 novel Main Street was a critique of small town life, the locale was Gopher Prairie, presented as an ideal type of the Midwestern town, and the heroine, Carol Kennicott, was a more urbane, ideal-typical Progressive. Thus, in the 1949 movie adaptation of On The Town, Main Street Republicans, for example, see themselves as supporting those values as against urbane or Wall Street tendencies. Main Street is part of the iconography of American life, for example, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the outfit that operates the PX and BX stores on military bases, chose the name Main Street USA for its food courts. Main Street was a popular term during the crises in 2008 and 2009, the proposed bailout of U. S. financial system, the 2008 US presidential campaign. One widely reviewed book was Bailout, An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky, a slang term popularized in the early 20th century, main drag, is also used to refer to a towns main street. These areas, which are designed to look like the street of a small town, house gift shops, restaurants and various services. While the architecture of these appears to be turn-of-the-20th-century, in fact these are decorative false-fronts on industrial-style buildings. Main Street, U. S. A. is also present at Disneyland Paris, at Tokyo Disneyland the area is named World Bazaar, but has the same look as Main Street, albeit housed under a decorative glass roof for protection from Japans unpredictable weather. Disneys design copied visual elements of small-town America seen in films by Frank Capra and others, disney wanted to embed the values and memories associated with life in small towns into an entertainment experience for tourists. Main Street Inc. is the name of a community revitalization program begun by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the late 1970s, the core of the Main Street philosophy is the preservation of the historic built environment by engaging in historic preservation. Main Street focuses on an approach to revitalization based on the 4-point approach of design, promotion, economic restructuring. Originally targeted at small, traditional downtowns, the program has expanded to include towns of various sizes, in many communities, a merchants association or business improvement district serves a promotional role on behalf of the merchants of a downtown Main Street
34.
Pony Express
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The Pony Express was a mail service delivering messages, newspapers, and mail. Waddell, all of whom were notable in the freighting business, during its 19 months of operation, it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about 10 days. The idea of a fast mail route to the Pacific coast was prompted largely by Californias newfound prominence, after gold was discovered there in 1848, thousands of prospectors, investors and businessmen made their way to California, at that time a new territory of the U. S. By 1850, California entered the Union as a free state, by 1860, the population had grown to 380,000. The demand for a way to get mail and other communications to. In the late 1850s, William Russell, Alexander Majors, and they were already in the freighting and drayage business. At the peak of the operations, they employed 6,000 men, owned 75,000 oxen, thousands of wagons, and warehouses plus a sawmill, a plant, a bank. Russell was a prominent businessman, well respected among his peers, Waddell was co-owner of the firm Morehead, Waddell & Co. After Morehead was bought out and retired, Waddell merged his company with Russells, in 1855 they took on a new partner, Alexander Majors, and founded the company of Russell, Majors & Waddell. They held government contracts for delivering supplies to the western frontier. The initial price was set at $5 per 1⁄2 ounce, then $2.50, the founders of the Pony Express hoped to win an exclusive government mail contract, but that did not come about. Russell, Majors, and Waddell organized and put together the Pony Express in two months in the winter of 1860, the undertaking assembled 120 riders,184 stations,400 horses, and several hundred personnel during January and February 1861. Alexander Majors was a man and resolved by the help of God to overcome all difficulties. He presented each rider with a special edition Bible and required this oath, the Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism of the Frontier times. From 1866 until 1889, the Pony Express logo was used by stagecoach and freight company Wells Fargo, the United States Postal Service used Pony Express as a trademark for postal services in the US. Freight Link international courier services, based in Russia, adopted the Pony Express trademark, in 1860, there were about 157 Pony Express stations that were about 10 miles apart along the Pony Express route. At each station stop the rider would change to a fresh horse
35.
Oil refinery
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Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the technology of, the crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products, an oil refinery is considered an essential part of the downstream side of the petroleum industry. The lighter elements, however, form explosive vapors in the tanks and are therefore hazardous. Petroleum fossil fuels are burned in internal combustion engines to power for ships, automobiles, aircraft engines, lawn mowers, dirt bikes. Different boiling points allow the hydrocarbons to be separated by distillation, Oil can be used in a variety of ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying molecular masses, forms and lengths such as paraffins, aromatics, naphthenes, alkenes, dienes, and alkynes. Once separated and purified of any contaminants and impurities, the fuel or lubricant can be sold without further processing, smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can be recombined to meet specific octane requirements by processes such as alkylation, or more commonly, dimerization. The octane grade of gasoline can also be improved by catalytic reforming, the final step in gasoline production is the blending of fuels with different octane ratings, vapor pressures, and other properties to meet product specifications. Another method for reprocessing and upgrading these intermediate products uses a process to separate usable oil from the waste asphaltene material. Oil refineries are large plants, processing about a hundred thousand to several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil a day. Because of the capacity, many of the units operate continuously, as opposed to processing in batches. The high capacity also makes process optimization and advanced process control very desirable, petroleum products are usually grouped into four categories, light distillates, middle distillates, heavy distillates and residuum. This classification is based on the way crude oil is distilled and separated into fractions as in the above drawing and these are not usually transported but instead are blended or processed further on-site. Chemical plants are often adjacent to oil refineries or a number of further chemical processes are integrated into it. For example, light hydrocarbons are steam-cracked in a plant. Using the Claus process, hydrogen sulfide is afterwards transformed to elementary sulfur to be sold to the chemical industry, the rather large heat energy freed by this process is directly used in the other parts of the refinery. Often an electrical plant is combined into the whole refinery process to take up the excess heat. Desalter unit washes out salt from the oil before it enters the atmospheric distillation unit
36.
Royal Dutch Shell
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Royal Dutch Shell plc, commonly known as Shell, is a British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in the Netherlands and incorporated in the United Kingdom. It is one of the six oil and gas supermajors and the sixth-largest company in the world measured by 2016 revenues. Shell was first in the 2013 Fortune Global 500 list of the worlds largest companies and it also has renewable energy activities in the form of biofuels and wind. Shell has operations in over 70 countries, produces around 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has 44,000 service stations worldwide, as of 31 December 2014, Shell had total proved reserves of 13.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Shell Oil Company, its subsidiary in the United States, is one of its largest businesses. Shell holds 50% of Raízen, a joint venture with Cosan, which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company by revenues, Shell was formed in 1907 through the amalgamation of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and the Shell Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom. Shell first entered the industry in 1929. In 1970 Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it sold in 1994. In recent decades gas exploration and production has become an important part of Shells business. Shell acquired BG Group in 2016, making it the worlds largest producer of liquefied natural gas, Shell has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE100 Index. It has secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange, as of January 2013, Shells largest shareholder was Capital Research Global Investors with 9. 85% ahead of BlackRock in second with 6. 89%. Shells logo, known as the pecten, is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world and it was a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with Standard Oil. The Shell Transport and Trading Company was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel. Their father had owned a company in Houndsditch, London. For various reasons, the new firm operated as a company, whereby the merging companies maintained their legal existence. The terms of the merger gave 60 percent ownership of the new group to the Dutch arm and 40 percent to the British, national patriotic sensibilities would not permit a full-scale merger or takeover of either of the two companies. The Dutch company, Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij at The Hague, was in charge of production, the British Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company was based in London, to direct the transport and storage of the products. During the First World War, Shell was the supplier of fuel to the British Expeditionary Force
37.
Andeavor
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Tesoro Corporation is a Fortune 100 and a Fortune Global 500 company headquartered in Texas at San Antonio, with 2013 annual revenues of $37 billion, and over 5,700 employees worldwide. Tesoro was founded in 1968 by Dr. Robert V, west Jr, primarily engaged in petroleum exploration and production. In 1969, Tesoro began operating its first refinery, near Kenai, Alaska, in the late 1990s, Tesoro grew through a series of acquisitions and initiatives that created Tesoro Corporation, the company focusing on a single core business, petroleum refining and marketing. Acquisitions expanded refining capacity from 72,000 barrels per day to approximately 664,000 barrels per day,2016 Tesoro purchased Dakota Prairie Refining in Dickinson, North Dakota from WBI Energy. Construction of the refinery was completed in the spring of 2015,2016, Tesoro Corp has agreed to buy Western Refining for $4.1 billion. 2016/17 Par Pacific Inc. rebrands its Tesoro and 76 gas stations as Hele, Tesoro Corporations executive management team comprises, Greg J. Goff – President and CEO Keith Casey – Executive Vice President, Operations Kim K. Major pollutants emitted annually by the corporation more than 400,000 lb of sulfuric acid. Following which the Environmental Protection Agency named Tesoro a potentially responsible party for at least four superfund toxic waste sites, Tesoro has settled and/or closed each of the superfund sites for which it has been named as one of many responsible parties. Tesoro was listed as a de minimis contributor to a site in Abbeville, LA. Tesoro has given over $1 million in support of California Proposition 23, defenders of the Amazon forest in South America cite Tesoro for sourcing some of their crude oil from the Amazon. Three of Tesoros refineries- Anacortes, LA and Golden Eagle, are known to process Amazonian crude oil, on April 2,2010, there was an explosion at the Anacortes refinery with seven deaths. After the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi, Tesoro bought Libyan crude oil in early April 2011 from the Vitol Group to supply its then-Hawaiian refinery
38.
Martini (cocktail)
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The martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with an olive or a lemon twist. Over the years, the martini has become one of the best-known mixed alcoholic beverages, H. L. Mencken called the martini the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet and E. B. White called it the elixir of quietude, over time the generally expected garnish became the drinkers choice of a green olive or a twist of lemon peel. A dry Martini is made dry, white vermouth. By the Roaring Twenties, it common to ask for them. Over the course of the century, the amount of vermouth steadily dropped, during the 1930s the ratio was 3,1, and during the 1940s the ratio was 4,1. During the latter part of the 20th century,6,1,8,1,12,1,15,1, a dirty Martini contains a splash of olive brine or olive juice and is typically garnished with an olive. A perfect Martini uses equal amounts of sweet and dry vermouth, some Martinis were prepared by filling a cocktail glass with gin, then rubbing a finger of vermouth along the rim. There are those who advocated the elimination of vermouth altogether, according to Noël Coward, A perfect Martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy, Italy being a major producer of vermouth. Luis Buñuel used the dry Martini as part of his creative process and he offers his own recipe, involving Angostura bitters, in his memoir. In 1966, the American Standards Association released K100. 1-1966, Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis, a humorous account of how to make a standard dry martini. The latest revision of this document, K100. 1-1974, was published by American National Standards Institute, there are a number of variations on the traditional Martini. The fictional spy James Bond sometimes asked for his vodka Martinis to be shaken, not stirred, following Harry Craddocks The Savoy Cocktail Book, the proper name for a shaken Martini is a Bradford. However, Somerset Maugham is often quoted as saying that a Martini should always be stirred, not shaken, a Martini may also be served on the rocks, that is, with the ingredients poured over ice cubes and served in an Old-Fashioned glass. The exact origin of the martini is unclear, in 1863, an Italian vermouth maker started marketing their product under the brand name of Martini, after its director Alessandro Martini, and the brand name may be the source of the cocktails name. Alternatively, the people of Martinez say the drink was first created by a bartender in their town, put a quarter of a slice of lemon in the glass, and serve. If the guest prefers it very sweet, add two dashes of gum syrup, numerous cocktails with names and ingredients similar to the modern-day martini were seen in other bartending guides of the late 19th century. For example, in the 1888 Bartenders Manual there was a recipe for a drink that consisted in part of half a glass of Old Tom Gin
39.
United States Census Bureau
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The United States Census Bureau is a principal agency of the U. S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureaus primary mission is conducting the U. S. Census every ten years, in addition to the decennial census, the Census Bureau continually conducts dozens of other censuses and surveys, including the American Community Survey, the U. S. Economic Census, and the Current Population Survey, furthermore, economic and foreign trade indicators released by the federal government typically contain data produced by the Census Bureau. The Bureaus various censuses and surveys help allocate over $400 billion in federal funds every year and help states, local communities, the Census Bureau is part of the U. S. Department of Commerce and its director is appointed by the President of the United States. The Census Bureau now conducts a population count every 10 years in years ending with a 0. Between censuses, the Census Bureau makes population estimates and projections, the Census Bureau is mandated with fulfilling these obligations, the collecting of statistics about the nation, its people, and economy. The Census Bureaus legal authority is codified in Title 13 of the United States Code, the Census Bureau also conducts surveys on behalf of various federal government and local government agencies on topics such as employment, crime, health, consumer expenditures, and housing. Within the bureau, these are known as surveys and are conducted perpetually between and during decennial population counts. The Census Bureau also conducts surveys of manufacturing, retail, service. Between 1790 and 1840, the census was taken by marshals of the judicial districts, the Census Act of 1840 established a central office which became known as the Census Office. Several acts followed that revised and authorized new censuses, typically at the 10-year intervals, in 1902, the temporary Census Office was moved under the Department of Interior, and in 1903 it was renamed the Census Bureau under the new Department of Commerce and Labor. The department was intended to consolidate overlapping statistical agencies, but Census Bureau officials were hindered by their role in the department. An act in 1920 changed the date and authorized manufacturing censuses every 2 years, in 1929, a bill was passed mandating the House of Representatives be reapportioned based on the results of the 1930 Census. In 1954, various acts were codified into Title 13 of the US Code, by law, the Census Bureau must count everyone and submit state population totals to the U. S. President by December 31 of any year ending in a zero. States within the Union receive the results in the spring of the following year, the United States Census Bureau defines four statistical regions, with nine divisions. The Census Bureau regions are widely used. for data collection, the Census Bureau definition is pervasive. Title 13 of the U. S. Code establishes penalties for the disclosure of this information, all Census employees must sign an affidavit of non-disclosure prior to employment. The Bureau cannot share responses, addresses or personal information with anyone including United States or foreign government, only after 72 years does the information collected become available to other agencies or the general public
40.
Solano County, California
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Solano County is a county located in the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 413,344, Solano County comprises the Vallejo-Fairfield, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area. Solano County is the county in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area region. A portion of the South Campus at the University of California, Solano County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. Chief Solano at one time led the tribes between the Petaluma River and the Sacramento River, the chief was also called Sem-Yeto, which signifies brave or fierce hand. The Chief was given the Spanish name Francisco Solano during baptism at the Catholic Mission, Solano is a common surname in the north of Spain, especially in Navarra, Zaragoza and La Rioja. Travis Air Force Base is located just east of Fairfield, Solano County is the easternmost county of the North Bay. As such, it is reported by news agencies as being in the East Bay. Additionally, a portion of the county extends into the Sacramento Valley, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 906 square miles, of which 822 square miles is land and 84 square miles is water. Service also connects with BART stations in Contra Costa County, transit links are provided to Napa, Yolo and Sacramento counties as well. Greyhound and Amtrak provide long-distance intercity service, general aviation airports in Solano County which are open to the public are the Nut Tree Airport and Rio Vista Municipal Airport. The following table includes the number of reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense. The 2010 United States Census reported that Solano County had a population of 413,344. The racial makeup of Solano County was 210,751 White,60,750 African American,3,212 Native American,60,473 Asian,3,564 Pacific Islander,43,236 from other races, and 31,358 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 99,356 persons, at 52,641 Filipinos in the County making up 12% of the population, Solano County has the largest percentage Filipino population of any County in all of the United States. As of the census of 2000, there were 394,542 people,130,403 households, the population density was 476 people per square mile. There were 134,513 housing units at a density of 162 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 56. 4% White,14. 9% Black or African American,0. 8% Native American,12. 8% Asian,0. 8% Pacific Islander,8. 0% from other races, and 6. 4% from two or more races
United States
California
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