Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2016 census recorded 631,486 people in the city, up from 603,502 in 2011; the Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2,463,431 in 2016, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada with over 5,400 people per square kilometre, which makes it the fifth-most densely populated city with over 250,000 residents in North America behind New York City, San Francisco, Mexico City according to the 2011 census. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada according to that census. 30% of the city's inhabitants are of Chinese heritage. Vancouver is classed as a Beta global city. Vancouver is named as one of the top five worldwide cities for livability and quality of life, the Economist Intelligence Unit acknowledged it as the first city ranked among the top-ten of the world's most well-living cities for five consecutive years.
Vancouver has hosted many international conferences and events, including the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, UN Habitat I, Expo 86, the World Police and Fire Games in 1989 and 2009. In 2014, following thirty years in California, the TED conference made Vancouver its indefinite home. Several matches of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup were played in Vancouver, including the final at BC Place; the original settlement, named Gastown, grew up on clearcuts on the west edge of the Hastings Mill logging sawmill's property, where a makeshift tavern had been set up on a plank between two stumps and the proprietor, Gassy Jack, persuaded the curious millworkers to build him a tavern, on July 1, 1867. From that first enterprise, other stores and some hotels appeared along the waterfront to the west. Gastown became formally laid out as a registered townsite dubbed Granville, B. I.. As part of the land and political deal whereby the area of the townsite was made the railhead of the Canadian Pacific Railway, it was renamed "Vancouver" and incorporated shortly thereafter as a city, in 1886.
By 1887, the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway was extended westward to the city to take advantage of its large natural seaport to the Pacific Ocean, which soon became a vital link in a trade route between the Orient / East Asia, Eastern Canada, Europe. As of 2014, Port Metro Vancouver is the third-largest port by tonnage in the Americas, 27th in the world, the busiest and largest in Canada, the most diversified port in North America. While forestry remains its largest industry, Vancouver is well known as an urban centre surrounded by nature, making tourism its second-largest industry. Major film production studios in Vancouver and nearby Burnaby have turned Greater Vancouver and nearby areas into one of the largest film production centres in North America, earning it the nickname "Hollywood North"; the city takes its name from George Vancouver, who explored the inner harbour of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British names. The family name "Vancouver" itself originates from the Dutch "Van Coevorden", denoting somebody from the city of Coevorden, Netherlands.
The explorer's ancestors came to England "from Coevorden", the origin of the name that became "Vancouver". Archaeological records indicate that Aboriginal people were living in the "Vancouver" area from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago; the city is located in the traditional and presently unceded territories of the Squamish and Tseil-Waututh peoples of the Coast Salish group. They had villages in various parts of present-day Vancouver, such as Stanley Park, False Creek, Point Grey and near the mouth of the Fraser River. Europeans became acquainted with the area of the future Vancouver when José María Narváez of Spain explored the coast of present-day Point Grey and parts of Burrard Inlet in 1791—although one author contends that Francis Drake may have visited the area in 1579; the explorer and North West Company trader Simon Fraser and his crew became the first-known Europeans to set foot on the site of the present-day city. In 1808, they travelled from the east down the Fraser River as far as Point Grey.
The Fraser Gold Rush of 1858 brought over 25,000 men from California, to nearby New Westminster on the Fraser River, on their way to the Fraser Canyon, bypassing what would become Vancouver. Vancouver is among British Columbia's youngest cities. A sawmill established at Moodyville in 1863, began the city's long relationship with logging, it was followed by mills owned by Captain Edward Stamp on the south shore of the inlet. Stamp, who had begun logging in the Port Alberni area, first attempted to run a mill at Brockton Point, but difficult currents and reefs forced the relocation of the operation in 1867 to a point near the foot of Dunlevy Street; this mill, known as the Hastings Mill, became the nucleus. The mill's central role in the city waned after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s, it remained important to the local economy until it closed in the 1920s. The settlement which came to be called Gastown grew around
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a public research university in British Columbia, with three campuses: Burnaby and Vancouver. The 1.7 km2 main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located 20 km from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 30,000 students and 950 faculty members. The Burnaby campus is on the territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem First Nations. Undergraduate and graduate programs at SFU operate on a year-round, three-semester schedule, it is the only Canadian university which competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. SFU was the first Canadian research university with U. S. is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. To date, SFU faculty and alumni have won 43 fellowships to the Royal Society of Canada, three Rhodes Scholarships and one Pulitzer Prize. Simon Fraser University was founded upon the recommendation of a 1962 report entitled Higher Education in British Columbia and a Plan for the Future, by John B.
Macdonald. He recommended the creation of a new university in the Lower Mainland and the British Columbia Legislature gave formal assent on March 1, 1963 for the establishment of the university in Burnaby; the university was named after a North West Company fur trader and explorer. The original name of the school was Fraser University, but was changed because the initials "FU" evoked the profane phrase "fuck you". In May of the same year, Gordon M. Shrum was appointed as the university's first chancellor. From a variety of sites that were offered, Shrum recommended to the provincial government that the summit of Burnaby Mountain, 365 meters above sea level, be chosen for the new university. Architects Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey won a competition to design the university, construction began in the spring of 1964; the campus faces northwest over Burrard Inlet. Eighteen months on September 9, 1965, the university began its first semester with 2,500 students; the campus was noted in the 1960s and early 1970s as a hotbed of political activism, culminating in a crisis in the Department of Political Science and Anthropology in a dispute involving ideological differences among faculty.
The resolution to the crisis included the dismantling of the department into today's separate departments. The school's original coat of arms was used from the university's inception until 2006, at which point the Board of Governors voted to adapt the old coat of arms and thereby register a second coat of arms; the adaptation replaced two crosslets with books after some in the university asserted the crosses had misled prospective foreign students into believing SFU was a private, religious institution rather than a public, secular one. In 2007, the university decided to register both the old coat of arms and the revised coat of arms featuring the books. In 2007, a new marketing logo was unveiled. SFU's president is Andrew Petter, whose term began on September 1, 2010. Petter succeeded Dr. Michael Stevenson, who held a decade-long post as president from 2000 to 2010. In 2009, SFU became the first Canadian university to be accepted into the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Starting in the 2011-2012 season, SFU competed in the NCAA's Division II Great Northwest Athletic Conference and has now transitioned all 19 Simon Fraser Clan teams into the NCAA.
SFU has the highest publication impact among Canadian comprehensive universities and the highest success rates per faculty member in competitions for federal research council funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. In 2007, the University began offering dual and double degree programs by partnering with international universities, such as a dual computing-science degree through partnership with Zhejiang University in China and a double Bachelor of Arts degree in conjunction with Australia's Monash University. On September 9, 2015, SFU celebrated its 50th anniversary. Over its 50 years, the university educated over 130,000 graduates. There are eight faculties at Simon Fraser University: In the academic year 2010–11, SFU had 29,697 undergraduates, with 14,911 of them being full-time and 14,786 part-time; the university has grown in recent years achieving an alumni population of over 100,000. It had 3,403 staff.
In fall semester 2012, 4,269 International students enrolled, making up 17% of the undergraduate student body, one of the highest among Canadian universities. The majority of these international students come from South Korea. SFU's undergraduate student union is known as the Simon Fraser Student Society; the university enrolls over 5,000 graduate students in a wide range of full-time and part-time academic programs. International students constitute 20% of the graduate student population as a whole and 30–40% in science and technology areas. A Graduate Student Society advocates for graduate students at the university. SFU offers non-credit programs and courses to adult students; as of 2016, SFU Continuing Studies offers more than 300 courses and 27 certificate and diploma programs delivered either online or part-time from SFU's downtown Vancouver or Surrey campus. Continuing Studies manages a part-time degree completion program, called SFU NOW: Nights or Weekends, for wo
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private research university in Washington, D. C, it was chartered in 1821 by an act of the United States Congress. The university is organized into 14 colleges and schools, including the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the Elliott School of International Affairs, the GW School of Business, the School of Media and Public Affairs, the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, the GW Law School and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. George Washington's main Foggy Bottom Campus is located in the heart of Washington, D. C. with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank located on campus and the White House and the U. S. Department of State within blocks of campus. GWU hosts numerous research centers and institutes, including the National Security Archive and the Institute for International Economic Policy. GWU has two satellite campuses: the Mount Vernon Campus, located in D. C.'s the Virginia Science and Technology Campus.
It is the largest institution of higher education in the District of Columbia. George Washington, the first President of the United States, advocated the establishment of a national university in the U. S. capital in his first State of the Union address in 1790 and continued to promote this idea throughout his career and until his death. In his will, Washington left shares in the Potomac Company to endow the university. However, due to the company's financial difficulties, funds were raised independently. On 9 February 1821, the university was founded by an Act of Congress, making it one of only five universities in the United States with a Congressional charter. George Washington offers degree programs in seventy-one disciplines, enrolling an average of 11,000 undergraduate and 15,500 post-graduate students from more than 130 countries; the Princeton Review ranked GWU 1st for Top Universities for Internship Opportunities. As of 2015, George Washington had over 1,100 active alumni in the U. S. Foreign Service, the nation's diplomatic corps.
GWU is ranked by The Princeton Review in the top "Most Politically Active" Schools. George Washington is home to extensive student life programs, as well as a strong Greek culture, over 450 other student organizations; the school's athletic teams, the George Washington Colonials, play in the Atlantic 10 Conference. GW is known for the numerous prominent events it holds yearly, from hosting U. S. presidential debates and academic symposiums to the being the host of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Annual Meetings in DC, since 2013. George Washington alumni and affiliates include numerous prominent politicians, including the current U. S. Attorney General, heads of state and government, CEOs of major corporations, Nobel laureates, MacArthur fellows, Olympic athletes, Academy Award and Golden Globe winners and Time 100 notables. Historical records have shown that the first president of the United States, President George Washington, had made indications to Congress that he aspired to have a university established in the capital of the United States.
He included the subject in his last will and testament. Baptist missionary and leading minister Luther Rice raised funds to purchase a site in Washington, D. C. for a college to educate citizens from throughout the young nation. A large building was constructed on College Hill, now known as Meridian Hill, on February 9, 1821, President James Monroe approved the congressional charter creating the non-denominational Columbian College; the first commencement in 1824 was considered an important event for the young city of Washington, D. C. In attendance were President Monroe, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Marquis de Lafayette and other dignitaries; the George Washington University, like much of Washington, D. C. traces many of its origins back to the Freemasons. The Bible that the President of the George Washington University use to swear an oath on upon inauguration is the Bible of Freemason George Washington. Freemasonry symbols are prominently displayed throughout the campus including the foundation stones of many of the university buildings.
During the Civil War, most students left to join the Confederacy and the college's buildings were used as a hospital and barracks. Walt Whitman was among many of the volunteers to work on the campus. Following the war, in 1873, Columbian College became the Columbian University and moved to an urban downtown location centered on 15th and H streets, NW. In 1904, Columbian University changed its name to the George Washington University in an agreement with the George Washington Memorial Association to build a campus building in honor of the first U. S. President. Neither the university nor the association were able to raise enough funds for the proposed building near the National Mall; the university moved its principal operations to the D. C. neighborhood of Foggy Bottom in 1912. Many of the Colleges of the George Washington University stand out for their history; the Law School is the oldest law school in the District of Columbia. The School of Medicine and Health Sciences is the 11th oldest medical school in the nation.
The Columbian College was founded in 1821, is the oldest unit of the university. The Elliott School of International Affairs was formalized in 1898; the majority of the present infrastructure and financial stability at GW is due to the tenures of GW Presidents Cloyd Heck Marvin, Lloyd Hartman Elliott and Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. In the 1930s, the university was a major center for theoretical physics; the cosmologist George Gamow produced critica
University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo, abbreviated as Todai or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyo, Japan. Established in 1877 as the first imperial university, it is one of Japan's most prestigious universities; the university has 10 faculties and enrolls about 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are international students. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Kashiwa and Nakano, it is among the top type of the select Japanese universities assigned additional funding under the MEXT's Top Global University Project to enhance Japan's global educational competitiveness. The university has graduated many notable alumni, including 17 Prime Ministers, 9 Nobel Prize laureates, 3 Pritzker Prize laureates, 3 astronauts, 1 Fields Medalist; the university was chartered by the Meiji government in 1877 under its current name by amalgamating older government schools for medicine, various traditional scholars and modern learning. It was renamed "the Imperial University" in 1886, Tokyo Imperial University in 1897 when the Imperial University system was created.
In September 1923, an earthquake and the following fires destroyed about 700,000 volumes of the Imperial University Library. The books lost included the Hoshino Library, a collection of about 10,000 books; the books were the former possessions of Hoshino Hisashi before becoming part of the library of the university and were about Chinese philosophy and history. In 1947, after Japan's defeat in World War II, it re-assumed its original name. With the start of the new university system in 1949, Todai swallowed up the former First Higher School and the former Tokyo Higher School, which thenceforth assumed the duty of teaching first- and second-year undergraduates, while the faculties on Hongo main campus took care of third- and fourth-year students. Although the university was founded during the Meiji period, it has earlier roots in the Astronomy Agency, Shoheizaka Study Office, the Western Books Translation Agency; these institutions were government offices established by the 徳川幕府 Tokugawa shogunate, played an important role in the importation and translation of books from Europe.
Kikuchi Dairoku, an important figure in Japanese education, served as president of Tokyo Imperial University. For the 1964 Summer Olympics, the university hosted the running portion of the modern pentathlon event. On 20 January 2012, Todai announced that it would shift the beginning of its academic year from April to September to align its calendar with the international standard; the shift would be phased in over five years. But this unilateral announcement by the president was received badly and the university abandoned the plans. According to the Japan Times, the university had 1,282 professors in February 2012. Of those, 58 were women. In the fall of 2012 and for the first time, the University of Tokyo started two undergraduate programs taught in English and geared toward international students — Programs in English at Komaba — the International Program on Japan in East Asia and the International Program on Environmental Sciences. In 2014, the School of Science at the University of Tokyo introduced an all-English undergraduate transfer program called Global Science Course.
The University of Tokyo is organized into 15 graduate schools. Todai Law School is considered as one of the top Law schools in Japan, ranking top in the number of successful candidates of Japanese Bar Examination in 2009 and 2010. Eduniversal ranked Japanese business schools, the Faculty of Economics in Todai is placed 4th in Japan; the University of Tokyo is considered a top research institution of Japan. It receives the largest amount of national grants for research institutions, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, receiving 40% more than the University with 2nd largest grants and 90% more than the University with 3rd largest grants; this massive financial investment from the Japanese government directly affects Todai's research outcomes. According to Thomson Reuters, Todai is the best research university in Japan, its research excellence is distinctive in Physics, Biology & Biochemistry, Pharmacology & Toxicology, Materials Science and Immunology. In another ranking, Nikkei Shimbun on 2004/2/16 surveyed about the research standards in Engineering studies based on Thomson Reuters, Grants in Aid for Scientific Research and questionnaires to heads of 93 leading Japanese Research Centers, Todai was placed 4th in this ranking.
Weekly Diamond reported that Todai has the 3rd highest research standard in Japan in terms of research fundings per researchers in COE Program. In the same article, it's ranked 21st in terms of the quality of education by GP funds per student. Todai has been recognized for its research in the social sciences and humanities. In January 2011, Repec ranked Todai's Economics department as Japan's best economics research university, and it is the only Japanese university within world top 100. Todai has produced 9 presidents of the Japanese Economic Association, the largest number in the association. Asahi Shimbun summarized the amount of academic papers in Japanese major legal journals by university, Todai was ranked top during 2005-2009; the University's School of Science and the Earthquake Research Institute are both r
Montreal
Montreal is the most populous municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec and the second-most populous municipality in Canada. Called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city; the city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of, Île Bizard. It has a distinct four-season continental climate with cold, snowy winters. In 2016, the city had a population of 1,704,694, with a population of 1,942,044 in the urban agglomeration, including all of the other municipalities on the Island of Montreal; the broader metropolitan area had a population of 4,098,927. French is the city's official language and is the language spoken at home by 49.8% of the population of the city, followed by English at 22.8% and 18.3% other languages. In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 65.8% of the population speaks French at home, compared to 15.3% who speak English.
The agglomeration Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with over 59% of the population able to speak both English and French. Montreal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, it is situated 258 kilometres south-west of Quebec City. The commercial capital of Canada, Montreal was surpassed in population and in economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s, it remains an important centre of commerce, transport, pharmaceuticals, design, art, tourism, fashion, gaming and world affairs. Montreal has the second-highest number of consulates in North America, serves as the location of the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization, was named a UNESCO City of Design in 2006. In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th most liveable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Global Liveability Ranking, the best city in the world to be a university student in the QS World University Rankings. Montreal has hosted multiple international conferences and events, including the 1967 International and Universal Exposition and the 1976 Summer Olympics.
It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics. In 2018, Montreal was ranked as an Alpha− world city; as of 2016 the city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One, the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Just for Laughs festival. In the Mohawk language, the island is called Tiohtià:ke Tsi, it is a name referring to the Lachine Rapids to the island's Ka-wé-no-te. It means "a place where nations and rivers unite and divide". In the Ojibwe language, the land is called Mooniyaang which means "the first stopping place" and is part of the seven fires prophecy; the city was first named Ville Marie by European settlers from La Flèche, or "City of Mary", named for the Virgin Mary. Its current name comes from the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. According to one theory, the name derives from mont Réal,. A possibility by the Government of Canada on its web site concerning Canadian place names, is that the name was adopted as it is written nowadays because an early map of 1556 used the Italian name of the mountain, Monte Real.
Archaeological evidence demonstrates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages; the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, an ethnically and culturally distinct group from the Iroquois nations of the Haudenosaunee based in present-day New York, established the village of Hochelaga at the foot of Mount Royal two centuries before the French arrived. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at other locations in the valley since at least the 14th century; the French explorer Jacques Cartier visited Hochelaga on October 2, 1535, estimated the population of the native people at Hochelaga to be "over a thousand people". Evidence of earlier occupation of the island, such as those uncovered in 1642 during the construction of Fort Ville-Marie, have been removed. Seventy years the French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported that the St Lawrence Iroquoians and their settlements had disappeared altogether from the St Lawrence valley.
This is believed to be due to epidemics of European diseases, or intertribal wars. In 1611 Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site named La Place Royale. At the confluence of Petite Riviere and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands. On his 1616 map, Samuel de Champlain named the island Lille de Villemenon, in honour of the sieur de Villemenon, a French dignitary, seeking the viceroyship of New France. In 1639 Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Notre Dame Society of Montreal to establish a Roman Catholic mission to evangelize natives. Dauversiere hired Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve 30, to lead a group of colonists to build a mission on his new seigneury; the colonists left France in 1641 for Quebec, arrived on the island the following year. On May 17, 1642, Ville-Marie was founded on the southern shore of Montreal is
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a public research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885, the UA was the first university in the Arizona Territory; as of 2017, the university enrolls 44,831 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law, is affiliated with two academic medical centers; the University of Arizona is governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. The University of Arizona is one of the elected members of the Association of American Universities and is the only representative from the state of Arizona to this group. Known as the Arizona Wildcats, the UA's intercollegiate athletic teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. UA athletes have won national titles in several sports, most notably men's basketball and softball; the official colors of the university and its athletic teams are navy blue. After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew.
The Arizona Territory's "Thieving Thirteenth" Legislature approved the University of Arizona in 1885 and selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson hoped to receive the appropriation for the territory's mental hospital, which carried a $100,000 allocation instead of the $25,000 allotted to the territory's only university. Flooding on the Salt River delayed Tucson's legislators, by they time they reached Prescott, back-room deals allocating the most desirable territorial institutions had been made. Tucson was disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize. With no parties willing to provide land for the new institution, the citizens of Tucson prepared to return the money to the Territorial Legislature until two gamblers and a saloon keeper decided to donate the land to build the school. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27, 1887, classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, still in use today.
Because there were no high schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation. The University of Arizona offers bachelor's, master's, professional degrees. Grades are given on a strict 4-point scale with "A" worth 4, "B" worth 3, "C" worth 2, "D" worth 1 and "E" worth zero points; the Center for World University Rankings in 2017 ranked Arizona No. 52 in the world and 34 in the U. S; the 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings rated University of Arizona 161st in the world and the 2017/18 QS World University Rankings ranked it 230th. The University of Arizona was ranked tied for 77th in the "National Universities" category by U. S. News & World Report for 2018; the James E. Rogers College of Law Graduate School was ranked tied for 41st nationally; the College of Medicine was rated No. 7 among the nation's medical schools for Hispanic students, according to Hispanic Business Magazine. In 2017, the Eller MBA program was ranked 24th among public institutions and 49th nationally by U.
S. News & World Report, which placed the school's Management Information Systems program as 2nd, the Entrepreneurship program as 5th and the Part-time MBA 30th among U. S public schools. U. S. News & World Report rated UA as tied for 33rd for online MBA programs, tied for 49th for best online graduate nursing programs, tied for 33rd for best online graduate engineering programs nationally. UA graduate programs ranked in the top 25 in the nation by U. S. News & World Report for 2017 include Information Science, Geology and Seismology, Speech Pathology, Rehabilitation Counseling, Earth Sciences, Analytical Chemistry, Atomic/Molecular/Optical Sciences and Photography; the Council for Aid to Education ranked UA 12th among public universities and 24th overall in financial support and gifts. Campaign Arizona, an effort to raise over $1 billion for the school, exceeded that goal by $200 million a year earlier than projected. In April 2014, the "Arizona Now" campaign launched with a target of $1.5 billion.
As of 31 December 2016, the campaign has raised $1.59 Billion, two years ahead of schedule. In 2015, Design Intelligence ranked the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture's undergraduate program in architecture 10th in the nation for all universities and private; the same publication ranked. The School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona is one of the most ranked area studies programs focusing on the Middle East in the United States. In addition to offering language training in Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish, it is collocated with the Middle East Studies Association; the School of Geography and Development is ranked as one of the top geography graduate programs in the US. The UA is considered a "selective" university by U. S. News & World Report. In the 2014-2015 academic year, 68 freshman students were National Merit Scholars. UA students hail from all states in the U. S. While nearly 69% of students are from Arizona, nearly 11% are from California, 8% are international, followed by a significant student presence from Texas, Washington and New York..
Tuition at the University o
