1.
Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
2.
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
3.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
4.
La Brea Tar Pits
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The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed in urban Los Angeles. Natural asphalt has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years, the tar is often covered with dust, leaves, or water. Over many centuries, the bones of animals that were trapped in the tar were preserved, Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. The La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark, the modern name is an example of a tautological place name, the La Brea Tar Pits literally means the the tar tar pits. The tar pits visible today are actually from human excavation, the lake pit was originally an asphalt mine. The other pits visible today were produced between 1913 and 1915, when over 100 pits were excavated in search of large mammal bones, various combinations of asphaltum and waggler have since filled in these holes. Normally, the asphalt appears in vents, hardening as it oozes out and these can be seen in several areas of the park. Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called gilsonite, which seeped from the Earth as oil, in Hancock Park, crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of the park. The oil reaches the surface and forms pools at several locations in the park and this seepage has been happening for tens of thousands of years. From time to time, the asphalt would form a thick enough to trap animals. Animals would wander in, become trapped, and eventually die, predators would enter to eat the trapped animals and also become stuck. As the bones of dead animals sink into the asphalt, it soaks into them, lighter fractions of petroleum evaporate from the asphalt, leaving a more solid substance, which encases the bones. Examples of some of these are on display in the George C, radiometric dating of preserved wood and bones has given an age of 38,000 years for the oldest known material from the La Brea seeps. The pits still ensnare organisms today, so most of the pits are fenced to protect humans, the Native American Chumash and Tongva people living in the area built boats unlike any others in North America prior to contact by settlers. This innovative form of transportation allowed access up and down the coastline, the Portolá expedition, a group of Spanish explorers led by Gaspar de Portolá, made the first written record of the tar pits in 1769. The scouts reported that they had come across many of these springs and had seen large swamps of them, enough, they said, to caulk many vessels. We were not so lucky ourselves as to see these tar geysers, much though we wished it, as it was some distance out of the way we were to take and we christened them Los Volcanes de Brea. The original Rancho La Brea land grant stipulated that the tar pits be open to the public for the use of the local Pueblo, initially, they mistook the bones in the pits for the remains of pronghorn antelope or cattle that had become mired
5.
William S. Hart
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William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered as a foremost western star of the silent era who imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity. During the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was one of the most consistently popular movie stars, Hart was born in Newburgh, New York, to Nicholas Hart and Rosanna Hart. William had two brothers, who died young, and four sisters. His father was born in England, and his mother was born in Ireland and he was a distant cousin of the western star Neal Hart. He began his career on stage in his 20s, and in film when he was 49. Hart’s stage debut came in 1888 as a member of a company headed by Daniel E. Bandmann, the following year he joined Lawrence Barrett’s company in New York and later spent several seasons with Mlle. He toured and traveled extensively while trying to make a name for himself as an actor and he had some success as a Shakespearean actor on Broadway, working with Margaret Mather and other stars, he appeared in the original 1899 stage production of Ben-Hur. His family had moved to Asheville but, after his youngest sister Lotta died of fever in 1901. Hart went on to one of the first great stars of the motion picture western. Fascinated by the Old West, he acquired Billy the Kids six shooters and was a friend of legendary lawmen Wyatt Earp and he entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in two short films, he achieved stardom as the lead in the feature The Bargain. Hart was particularly interested in making western films. His films are noted for their costumes and props, as well as Harts acting ability, honed on Shakespearean theater stages in the United States. Beginning in 1915, Hart starred in his own series of two-reel western short subjects for producer Thomas Ince, many of Harts early films continued to play in theaters, under new titles, for another decade. In 1915 and 1916 exhibitors voted him the biggest money making star in the US, in 1917 Hart accepted a lucrative offer from Adolph Zukor to join Famous Players-Lasky, which merged into Paramount Pictures. In the films Hart began to ride a brown and white pinto he called Fritz, Fritz was the forerunner of later famous movie horses known by their own name, e. g. horses like Tom Mixs Tony, Roy Rogerss Trigger and Clayton Moores Silver. Hart was now making feature films exclusively, and films like Square Deal Sanderson, Hart married young Hollywood actress Winifred Westover. Although their marriage was short-lived, they had one child, William S. Hart, by the early 1920s, however, Harts brand of gritty, rugged westerns with drab costumes and moralistic themes gradually fell out of fashion
6.
Santa Clarita, California
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Santa Clarita, officially the City of Santa Clarita, is the third largest city in Los Angeles County, California, and the seventeenth largest in the state of California. The city has annexed a number of unincorporated areas, contributing to the population increase. It is located about 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles and it is a notable example of a U. S. edge city or boomburb. Santa Clarita was ranked by Money magazine in 2006 as 18th of the top 100 places to live, the four communities retain separate identities, and it is common for residents to refer to a specific neighborhood when asked where they are from. Santa Clarita is bounded on the west by the Golden State Freeway, the Antelope Valley Freeway runs northeast-southwest through an irregular east border, and the Newhall Pass is the citys southernmost point. Santa Clarita was incorporated in December 1987, but its history stretches back several centuries, about AD450, the Tataviam arrived, numbering around 2,000 at their zenith. The Santa Clara River was named by Spanish explorers for Clare of Assisi, the valley and the settlement later became known as little Santa Clara in deference to the Northern California mission and city of Santa Clara, California. In time, little Santa Clara became Santa Clarita, in 1842, Francisco Lopez made the first documented discovery of gold in California. The event is memorialized in an 1842 mining claim issued by Gov. Juan B, the discovery was made in Placerita Canyon, an area later used as Hollywoods original back lot. Newhalls next business interest was railroads and he invested in rail companies that would connect San Francisco to other cities and became president of the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad. In 1870, he and his partners sold the company to Southern Pacific Railroad, after railroads, Newhall turned to real estate and ranching. He purchased a number of the old Spanish and Mexican land grants in the state for a total of 143,000 acres between Monterey and Los Angeles counties. The most significant portion was the 46,460 acres Rancho San Francisco in northern Los Angeles County, which he purchased for $2/acre, the first station built on the line he named for his hometown, Saugus, Massachusetts. After his death, Newhalls heirs incorporated the Newhall Land and Farming Company, on September 26,1876, Charles Alexander Mentry brought in the states first productive oil well at Mentryville, giving rise to the California oil industry. The oil was brought to a refinery at Newhall, now the oldest existing petroleum refinery in the world, it was operational from 1874 to 1888. A few days earlier, on September 5,1876, Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford joined their railroads in Canyon Country, linking Los Angeles with the rest of the nation for the first time. The Saugus Cafe, on Railroad Avenue in Saugus, was established in 1887 and appears to be, by far, the oldest still-operating restaurant in Los Angeles County. Filming in Santa Clarita began shortly after the turn of the 20th century with a veritable Whos Who of actors, including William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Harry Carey and a young John Wayne
7.
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
8.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually and it holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, howard F. Ahmanson, Sr. Anna Bing Arnold and Bart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the museum. Ahmanson made the donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art. The museum, built in a similar to Lincoln Center. The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings. According to a 1965 Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million, at the time, the Los Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, in the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museums four buildings. The museums Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1999, the Hancock Park Improvement Project was complete, kohlhaas edged out French architect Jean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities. The list of candidates had narrowed to five in May 2001, Koolhaas, Nouvel, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind. However, the project stalled after the museum failed to secure funding. In 2004 LACMAs Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, the planned transformation consisted of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008, the renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Pianos plan to unify LACMAs sprawling, the BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum comprise the $191 million first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign
9.
Triceratops
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It is one of the last known non-avian dinosaur genera, and became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The term Triceratops, which literally means three-horned face, is derived from the Greek τρί- meaning three, κέρας meaning horn, and ὤψ meaning face, the exact placement of the Triceratops genus within the ceratopsid group has been debated by paleontologists. Two species, T. horridus and T. prorsus, are considered valid, research published in 2010 suggested that the contemporaneous Torosaurus, a ceratopsid long regarded as a separate genus, represents Triceratops in its mature form. The view was disputed and examination of more fossil evidence is expected to settle the debate. Triceratops has been documented by numerous remains collected since the genus was first described in 1889, Paleontologist John Scannella observed, It is hard to walk out into the Hell Creek Formation and not stumble upon a Triceratops weathering out of a hillside. Forty-seven complete or partial skulls were discovered in just that area from 2000 to 2010, specimens representing life stages from hatchling to adult have been found. The functions of the frills and three distinctive facial horns on its head have long inspired debate, traditionally, these have been viewed as defensive weapons against predators. Individual Triceratops are estimated to have reached about 7.9 to 9.0 m in length,2.9 to 3.0 m in height, the most distinctive feature is their large skull, among the largest of all land animals. The largest known skull is estimated to have been 2.5 metres in length when complete, and could reach almost a third of the length of the entire animal. A specimen of T. horridus named Kelsey measured 7.3 metres long with a 1.98 metres skull, stood about 2.3 metres tall, a Triceratops 8 metres long has been estimated by Gregory S. Paul to have massed 9.3 tonnes. It bore a single horn on the snout, above the nostrils, in 2010, paleontologists revealed a fossil with 115-centimetre-long horn cores, housed and displayed at the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. To the rear of the skull was a short, bony frill. Most other ceratopsids had large fenestrae in their frills, while those of Triceratops were noticeably solid, T. horridus can be distinguished from T. prorsus by having a shallower snout. Triceratops species possessed a sturdy build, with limbs, short hands with three hooves each, and short feet with four hooves each. Although certainly quadrupedal, the posture of these dinosaurs has long been the subject of some debate, originally, it was believed that the front legs of the animal had to be sprawling at angles from the thorax in order to better bear the weight of the head. This stance can be seen in paintings by Charles Knight and Rudolph Zallinger, the hands and forearms of Triceratops retained a fairly primitive structure compared to other quadrupedal dinosaurs such as thyreophorans and many sauropods. In those two groups, the forelimbs of quadrupedal species were usually rotated so that the hands faced forward with palms backward as the animals walked. In Triceratops, the weight of the body was carried by only the first three fingers of the hand, while digits 4 and 5 were vestigial and lacked claws or hooves
Expo Park/USC 
