1960 Winter Olympics
The 1960 Winter Olympics known as the VIII Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event held between February 18–28, 1960 in Squaw Valley, United States. Squaw Valley was chosen to host the Games at the 1956 meeting of the International Olympic Committee, it was an undeveloped resort in 1955, so from 1956 to 1960 the infrastructure and all of the venues were built at a cost of US$80,000,000. It was designed to be intimate, allowing spectators and competitors to walk to nearly all the venues. Squaw Valley hosted athletes from thirty nations who competed in four sports and twenty-seven events. Women's speed skating and biathlon made their Olympic debuts. After a poll was taken indicating that only nine countries would send a bobsled team, the organizers decided the bobsled events did not warrant the cost to build a venue, so for the first and only time bobsled was not on the Winter Olympic program. Cold War politics forced the IOC to debate the participation of Taiwan; the United States supported Taiwan.
Given the fact that the 1960 Games were to be held in America, there was concern among IOC members that the United States would not allow China or any other Communist country to participate. In 1957, IOC president Avery Brundage, himself an American, announced that if the United States refused entry to any country recognized by the IOC they would revoke Squaw Valley's invitation to host the Games and he would resign the presidency. Bowing to international pressure, the United States allowed athletes from Communist countries to participate. China continued to demand that Taiwan be expelled from the IOC, demands that were refused until China broke off relations ending any hope that they would participate in 1960. Squaw Valley was a struggling ski resort with minimal facilities, which made its selection to host the 1960 Winter Olympics a surprise. Wayne Poulsen and Alexander Cushing, who were inspired to an Olympic bid by a newspaper article mentioning that Reno and Anchorage, had expressed interest in the Games.
Poulsen, president of the Squaw Valley Development Company, petitioned California Governor Goodwin Knight to support a bid to host the Olympic Games. Knight's administration agreed and recommended that the California Legislature appropriate $1,000,000 to the effort. Based on the financial support received from the State of California, the United States Olympic Committee approved the bid on January 7, 1955. Cushing and the USOC received a resolution passed by the United States Congress and signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, calling on the International Olympic Committee to consider Squaw Valley's bid for the 1960 Games. Preliminary reports were drafted and submitted to the IOC, considering bids from Innsbruck, Austria, St. Moritz and Chamonix, France. Squaw Valley was provisionally awarded the right to host the Games, but IOC president Avery Brundage warned the Organizing Committee that unless more funds were secured by April 1956, the bid would be awarded to Innsbruck. Another $4,000,000 were committed by the State Legislature.
On April 4, 1956, the right to host the 1960 Winter Olympics was awarded to Squaw Valley. Competitors and officials from European nations were angered by the selection. Squaw Valley in 1956 consisted of one chair lift, two rope tows, a fifty-room lodge. Cushing presented the site as a blank canvas of unspoiled environment, where a world-class ski resort could be constructed; the obscurity of the location was underscored at the closing ceremonies of the 1956 Winter Olympics. Traditionally the mayor of the current host city passes a flag to the mayor of the next host city signalling the transfer of the Games. Since Squaw Valley was an unincorporated village it had no city government. John Garland, an IOC member from California, was asked to stand in and received the flag from the mayor of Cortina d'Ampezzo. After winning the right to host the Games, the California Olympic Commission was formed, they were given four years to build venues, an Olympic Village, expand infrastructure. With the expansion of roads, bridges and electrical capacity the resort of Squaw Valley became the city of Squaw Valley.
Hotels, administration buildings, a Sheriff's office and a sewage pumping and treatment plant were all constructed to support the influx of visitors for the Games. Organizers wanted the Olympics to be intimate with the venues close to one another; the Blyth Memorial Ice Arena was built along with three outdoor skating rinks, a 400-meter speed skating oval and four dormitories to house athletes. One venue deemed impractical to build was the bobsled run. Organizers felt the lack of possible entrants and the high cost of building the run were sufficient deterrents to leave the bobsled events off the 1960 Olympic program. Several design innovations and new technologies were used for the 1960 Games; the speed skating, figure skating and ice hockey events were held on artificial ice for the first time in Olympic history. A refrigeration plant capable of heating 4,800 homes had to be built to generate and maintain the ice; the heat generated from the refrigeration plant was used to warm spectators, provide hot water, melt the snow off of roofs.
New timing equipment provided by Longines was installed that used a quartz clock to measure to the hundredths of a second. IBM provided a computer, capable of tabulating results and printing them in English and French. Blyth Arena, site of the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the figure skating and ice hockey competitions, was built with a 22 in
Banyoles
Banyoles is a city of 17,309 inhabitants located in the province of Girona in northeastern Catalonia, Spain. The town is the capital of the Catalan comarca "Pla de l'Estany". Although an established industrial centre many of the inhabitants commute to nearby Girona. Banyoles is most famous for the Lake of a natural lake located in a tectonic depression, it was the venue for the rowing events in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as well as the "negro of Banyoles", a controversial piece of taxidermy. With a superb natural environment for the practice of sport, each year a triathlon Premium European Cup is held in Banyoles, the hometown of the Spanish 2011 Champion Carolina Routier. National and regional events take place as well throughout the year, such as the Spanish triathlon championship and the Championship of Catalonia. Official Website of Banyoles Banyoles and culture Government data pages
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event, held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, United States. This was the second time that Los Angeles had hosted the Games, the first being in 1932. California was the home state of the incumbent U. S. President Ronald Reagan, who opened the Games; the logo for the 1984 Games, branded "Stars in Motion", featured red and blue stars arranged horizontally and struck through with alternating streaks. The official mascot of the Games was Sam the Olympic Eagle; these were the first Summer Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch. The 1984 Games were boycotted by a total of fourteen Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union and East Germany, in response to the American-led boycott of the previous 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Iran and Libya chose to boycott the Games for unrelated reasons. Despite the field being depleted in certain sports due to the boycott, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, a record at the time.
The 1984 Summer Olympics are considered to be the most financially successful modern Olympics and serve as an example of how to run the model Olympic Games. As a result of low construction costs, coupled with a reliance on private corporate funding, the 1984 Olympic Games generated a profit of more than $250 million. On July 18, 2009, a 25th anniversary celebration was held in the main Olympic Stadium; the celebration included a speech by the former president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Peter Ueberroth, a re-creation of the lighting of the cauldron. Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2028. After the murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists in Munich and the significant financial debts of Montreal, few cities by the late 1970s were willing to bid for the Summer Olympics. Only two cities made serious bids for the 1984 Summer Games, but before the final selection of a "winning" city in 1978, the bid from Tehran was withdrawn as a result of Iran's policy changes following the Iranian Revolution and a change in the country's ruling system.
Hence, the selection process for the 1984 Summer Olympics consisted of a single finalized bid from Los Angeles, which the International Olympic Committee accepted. The selection was made at the 80th IOC Session in Athens on 18 May 1978. Los Angeles had unsuccessfully bid for the two previous Summer Olympics, for 1976 and 1980; the United States Olympic Committee had submitted at least one bid for every Olympics since 1944, but had not succeeded since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, the previous time only a single bid had been issued for the Summer Olympics. The 1984 Olympic Torch Relay began in New York City and ended in Los Angeles, traversing 33 states and the District of Columbia. Unlike torch relays, the torch was continuously carried by runners on foot; the route involved 3,636 runners. Noted athlete O. J. Simpson was among the runners. Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, carried the torch into the Coliseum, completed a lap around the track handed it off to the final runner, Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
With the torch, he touched off the flame which passed through a specially designed flammable Olympic logo, igniting all five rings. The flame passed up to cauldron atop the peristyle and remained aflame for the duration of the Games. John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, "Olympic Fanfare and Theme"; this piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games, along with Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream". Composer Bill Conti wrote a song to inspire the weightlifters called "Power". An album, The Official Music of the XXIII Olympiad—Los Angeles 1984, featured three of those tracks along with sports themes written for the occasion by popular musical artists including Foreigner, Loverboy, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Christopher Cross, Philip Glass and Giorgio Moroder; the Brazilian composer Sérgio Mendes produced a special song for the 1984 Olympic Games, "Olympia," from his 1984 album Confetti. A choir of one thousand voices was assembled of singers in the region.
All were volunteers from nearby churches and universities. Etta James performed ``. Vicki McClure along with the International Children's Choir of Long Beach sang "Reach Out and Touch". Lionel Richie performed a 9-minute version of his hit single "All Night Long" at the closing ceremonies; the 1984 Summer Olympics was preceded by the 10-week-long adjunct Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, which opened on June 2 and ended on August 12. It provided more than 400 performances by 146 theater and music companies, representing every continent and 18 countries, it was organized by then-CalArts President Robert Fitzpatrick. The opening ceremony featured the arrival of Bill Suitor by means of the Bell Aerosystems rocket pack; the United States Army Band formed the Olympic rings to start the opening ceremony. The United States topped the medal count for the first time since 1968, winning a record 83 gold medals and surpassing the Soviet Union’s total of 80 golds at the 1980 Summer Olympics; as a result of an IOC agreement designating the Republic of China in the name of Chinese Taipei, the Peo
Federal Correctional Institution, Ray Brook
The Federal Correctional Institution, Ray Brook is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. FCI Ray Brook is located in Essex County, New York, midway between the villages of Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. Although constructed as a prison, it served as the Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Olympics, which were held in Lake Placid; the prison became operational following the conclusion of the Olympics and accepted its first inmates that same year. In 2010, FCI Ray Brook commemorated its thirtieth anniversary. In 2016, the institution became host to a pilot Pell grant program offering college coursework through North Country Community College; the Bureau of Prisons has received numerous complaints regarding conditions at FCI Ray Brook. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated a dismissed lawsuit filed against the Bureau of Prisons on behalf of six inmates who were housed in an hot and cramped single room without adequate ventilation and cleaning supplies.
The Court found that the evidence justified a claim of unusual punishment. The lawsuit is pending. † Temporarily transferred to Brooklyn pending an appeal. List of U. S. federal prisons Federal Bureau of Prisons Incarceration in the United States Official website
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university in Los Angeles. It became the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the third-oldest undergraduate campus of the 10-campus University of California system, it offers 337 graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. UCLA enrolls about 31,000 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate students and had 119,000 applicants for Fall 2016, including transfer applicants, making the school the most applied-to of any American university; the university is organized into six undergraduate colleges, seven professional schools, four professional health science schools. The undergraduate colleges are the College of Science; as of 2017, 24 Nobel laureates, three Fields Medalists, five Turing Award winners, two Chief Scientists of the U. S. Air Force have been affiliated with UCLA as researchers, or alumni. Among the current faculty members, 55 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 28 to the National Academy of Engineering, 39 to the Institute of Medicine, 124 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1974. UCLA is considered one of the country's Public Ivies, meaning that it is a public university thought to provide a quality of education comparable with that of the Ivy League. In 2018, US News & World Report named UCLA the best public university in the United States. UCLA student-athletes compete as the Bruins in the Pac-12 Conference; the Bruins have won 126 national championships, including 116 NCAA team championships, more than any other university except Stanford, who has won 117. UCLA student-athletes and staff won 251 Olympic medals: 126 gold, 65 silver, 60 bronze. UCLA student-athletes competed in every Olympics since 1920 with one exception and won a gold medal in every Olympics the U. S. participated in since 1932. In March 1881, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California.
The Los Angeles branch of the California State Normal School opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their technique with children; that elementary school is related to the present day UCLA Lab School. In 1887, the branch campus became independent and changed its name to Los Angeles State Normal School. In 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward Augustus Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began to lobby the State Legislature to enable the school to become the second University of California campus, after UC Berkeley, they met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern California members of the state legislature, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919, who were all vigorously opposed to the idea of a southern campus.
However, David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California, did not share Wheeler's objections. On May 23, 1919, the Southern Californians' efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which transformed the Los Angeles Normal School into the Southern Branch of the University of California; the same legislation added the College of Letters and Science. The Southern Branch campus opened on September 15 of that year, offering two-year undergraduate programs to 250 Letters and Science students and 1,250 students in the Teachers College, under Moore's continued direction. Under University of California President William Wallace Campbell, enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25 acre Vermont Avenue location; the Regents searched for a new location and announced their selection of the so-called "Beverly Site"—just west of Beverly Hills—on March 21, 1925 edging out the panoramic hills of the still-empty Palos Verdes Peninsula.
After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname "Bruins", a name offered by the student council at UC Berkeley. In 1927, the Regents renamed the Southern Branch the University of California at Los Angeles. In the same year, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, for whom the Janss Steps are named; the campus in Westwood opened to students in 1929. The original four buildings were the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, the Chemistry Building, arrayed around a quadrangular courtyard on the 400 acre campus; the first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. After lobbying by alumni, faculty and community leaders, UCLA was permitted to award the master's degree in 1933, the doctorate in 1936, against continued resistance from UC Berkeley. A timeline of the history can be found on its website, as well
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