Seth Green
Seth Benjamin Green is an American actor, voice artist, producer and director. He is best known as the co-creator, executive producer and most frequent voice on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken and has directed the Robot Chicken Star Wars and DC Comics specials, he has appeared in the films Radio Days, My Stepmother Is an Alien, the Austin Powers series, Can't Hardly Wait, The Italian Job, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Batman Movie. He is known for his roles as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chris Griffin on Fox's Family Guy and Jeff "Joker" Moreau in the Mass Effect video games. Seth Benjamin Gesshel-Green was born in Overbrook Park, Pennsylvania, the son of Barbara and Herbert Green, he has two sisters and Doreen. Green legally changed his name to Seth Benjamin Green "to reflect my professional stage name." The actor is of Russian and Polish descent. He had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Green started acting at the age of 7, his early comic influences included Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Porky's and Caddyshack.
Green's first movie roles were in the 1984 films Billions for Boris and The Hotel New Hampshire, the second film cast him alongside Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe. He appeared in the 1987 film Can't Buy Me Love, playing Patrick Dempsey's character's little brother, Chuckie Miller, he starred in Woody Allen's Radio Days as Joe, a 1930s–1940s boy based on Allen, appeared in Big Business and, in the same year, in My Stepmother Is an Alien, which starred Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star Alyson Hannigan. In 1984, Green portrayed Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer in the Jell-O Gelatin Pops commercials featuring The Little Rascals. In 1991, Green rose to fame in a Rally's "Cha Ching" commercial, which earned him an appearance at a New Orleans Saints game. Green was given a key to New Orleans in honor of his role in the popular commercial. Green appeared in the horror films It and Ticks, all three Austin Powers movies as Dr. Evil's son and Enemy of the State and The Italian Job as a computer specialist, he was in the films Can't Hardly Wait, Rat Race, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Without a Paddle, Idle Hands, Party Monster and Old Dogs.
Green had a role in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 1994, he starred alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt in the short-lived series The Byrds of Paradise, he worked. Seth is not related to Bruce Seth Green. On occasion, some sources have credited Seth as the director; as an actor in the series, he was close to co-star Alyson Hannigan because they were lovers in the show. He played mild-mannered band member who gets turned into a werewolf, he is popular among fans of the series. Green has starred on Fox's Greg the Bunny and guest-starred on The X-Files, That'70s Show, Will & Grace, MADtv, Reno 911!, Grey's Anatomy, The Wonder Years, The Facts of Life, The Drew Carey Show, My Name Is Earl. Green provides the voice of Chris for the animated television sitcom Family Guy, created by Seth MacFarlane for Fox Broadcasting Company; the series centers on the dysfunctional Griffin family and stars Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Mike Henry. Green voices Chris Griffin, the teenage son, overweight, unintelligent and, in many respects, a younger version of his father, Neil Goldman, a neighbor of the Griffins.
Green did an impression of the Buffalo Bill character from the thriller film The Silence of the Lambs during his audition. His main inspiration for Chris' voice came from envisioning how "Buffalo Bill" would sound if he were speaking through a PA system at a McDonald's. Green is a co-creator, co-producer, writer and most frequent voice of the Emmy-winning stop-motion sketch comedy TV series Robot Chicken, for which he does many voices and has appeared in animated form. Green is friends with the band Fall Out Boy, making a cameo in their music video, "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race." He appeared in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "White & Nerdy" music video. He made two appearances on The Soup in 2007 and 2008, using his first appearance to lampoon Internet celebrity Chris Crocker, he voiced the character Jeff "Joker" Moreau, pilot of the SSV Normandy and the Normandy SR2, in the video games Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3. He is a producer of The 1 Second Film and appears in the "making of" documentary that accompanies its feature-length credits.
Green is the co-creator of the comic Freshmen, published by Top Cow Productions. Green, along with Robot Chicken co-producer Breckin Meyer, appeared in the NBC show Heroes during the 2008–09 season. In January 2009, Green worked with David Faustino for an episode of Faustino's show Star-ving – Faustino is mistaken for Green. In the same year, he worked with one of his idols, Robin Williams in comedy film Old Dogs, which starred John Travolta. On July 13, World Wrestling Entertainment's official website announced Green as the special guest host for the July 13 episode of WWE Raw, on that night, Green competed in the main event, a six-man tag team match, which his team won by disqualification, he was in attendance for WWE's biggest event of the year, WrestleMania XXVI on March 28, 2010. Green guest-starred in the third season of the acclaimed sitcom Husbands. Green became the new voice of Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beginning in its third season (following J
Lars Ulrich
Lars Ulrich is a Danish musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the co-founder of the American heavy metal band Metallica; the son of tennis player Torben Ulrich and grandson of tennis player Einer Ulrich, he played tennis in his youth and moved to Los Angeles at age 16 to train professionally. However, rather than playing tennis, Ulrich began playing drums. After publishing an advertisement in The Recycler, Ulrich met vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and formed Metallica. Ulrich was born into an upper-middle-class family in Denmark, his paternal grandfather was professional tennis player Einer Ulrich. His paternal grandmother, Ulla Meyer, was from a Jewish family. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon was Ulrich's godfather, he is a childhood friend of musician Neneh Cherry. In February 1973, Ulrich's father obtained passes for five of his friends to a Deep Purple concert held in the same Copenhagen stadium as one of his tennis tournaments; when one of the friends could not go, they gave their ticket to the nine-year-old Ulrich, mesmerized by the performance and bought the band's album Fireball the next day.
The concert and album had a considerable impact on Ulrich. As a result of his newfound interest in music, he received his first drum kit, a Ludwig, from his grandmother around the age of 12 or 13. Ulrich intended to follow in his father's footsteps and play tennis, he moved to Newport Beach, California, in the summer of 1980. Despite being ranked in the top ten tennis players of his age group in Denmark, Ulrich failed to make it into the 7 man Corona del Mar High School tennis team, contributing to his decision to focus on music. In the documentary Anvil! The story of Anvil, Ulrich states that witnessing a Y&T show was his defining moment in deciding to become a musician. In 1981, he discovered British heavy metal band Diamond Head, he was excited about the band's style of music after purchasing their debut album Lightning to the Nations, traveled from San Francisco to London to see the band perform live at the Woolwich Odeon. Ulrich remains a fan of Diamond Head and would go on to mix their album The Best of Diamond Head.
Upon returning to America, Ulrich placed an advert in a local classifieds newspaper looking for musicians to start a band with him. James Hetfield replied to the ad, Metallica was formed. In 1981, Ulrich met James Hetfield in Downey and they formed the heavy metal band Metallica, he got the band name from a friend, Ron Quintana, brainstorming names for a heavy metal fanzine he was creating, Metallica was one of the options, the other being "Metal Mania." Ulrich encouraged him to choose Metal Mania, used the name Metallica for himself. He became known as a pioneer of fast thrash drum beats, featured on many of Metallica's early songs, such as "Metal Militia" from Kill'Em All, "Fight Fire with Fire" from Ride the Lightning, "Battery" and "Damage Inc." from Master of Puppets and "Dyers Eve" from... And Justice for All, he has since been influential due to both the popularity of his band, as well as his drum techniques, such as the double bass drum in the song "One" and "Dyer's Eve". Since the release of Metallica, Ulrich adopted a less focused and simplified style of drumming, reduced his kit from a 9-piece to a 7-piece.
Between 1998 and 2002, Ulrich tried running the Music Company. The company was a joint venture with Metallica accountant Tim Duffy, it failed to catch on and folded in the spring 2002. His voice can be heard in the opening seconds of "Leper Messiah" and he counts to four in his native Danish on the "St. Anger" music video. To unwind after certain gigs, Ulrich listens to jazz, he made his acting debut in the HBO original film Hemingway & Gellhorn, which began filming in March 2011 and was released on 28 May 2012. Ulrich made a brief cameo appearance as himself in the film Get Him to the Greek, as the partner of the character Jackie Q. In 2012, Ulrich was the focus of the documentary film, "Mission to Lars"; the film by Kate and Will Spicer concerns their journey with their brother Tom, who lives in a care home in Devon and who has Fragile X syndrome, to try to meet Ulrich at one of Metallica's 2009 gigs in California. Ulrich's drumming style has changed throughout his career. During the 1980s he was known for his aggressive thrash beats.
He would utilize the double bass technique in Latin breakbeats, which became popular among heavy metal drummers. The best examples of this are found in songs such as "Metal Militia", "Fight Fire with Fire", "Battery", "Damage, Inc.", "Blackened", "One", "Dyers Eve", "That Was Just Your Life", "All Nightmare Long" and "My Apocalypse". Though "Hardwired", "Moth Into Flame" and "Spit Out the Bone" have the same double bass technique, the 2016 release of Metallica's Hardwired... to Self-Destruct saw a more aggressive and experimental drumming style from Ulrich. Ulrich uses groove in his drum style, including clean and fast double bass beats in many songs and heavy drum fills, he has been known to drum in sync with the rhythm guitar played by James Hetfield. Ulrich has been married three times, his first marriage was in 1988 to Debbie Jones, a British woman he met on tour, but they divorced in 1990 due to Ulrich's constant absence during the recording of the 1991 album Metallica. His second marriage was to Skylar Satenstein, an emergency medicine physician, fro
Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Ashton Kutcher is an American actor and entrepreneur. He began his acting career portraying Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That'70s Show, he made his film debut in the romantic comedy Coming Soon, followed by the comedy film Dude, Where's My Car?, a box office hit. In 2003, Kutcher moved into romantic comedies, appearing in that year's Just Married and My Boss's Daughter. In 2003, he created and produced the television series Punk'd serving as host for the first eight of its ten seasons. In 2004, Kutcher starred in the lead role of the psychological film The Butterfly Effect. Kutcher subsequently appeared in more romantic comedies, including Guess Who, A Lot Like Love, What Happens in Vegas, No Strings Attached, he starred as Walden Schmidt on a Half Men. In 2013, Kutcher portrayed Steve Jobs in the biographical film Jobs. Since 2016, he has starred as Colt Bennett in the Netflix series The Ranch. Beyond entertainment, Kutcher is a venture capitalist, he is a co-founder of the venture capital firm A-Grade Investments.
At SXSW on March 14, 2015, Kutcher announced Sound Ventures, the successor to A-Grade Investments managing a fund backed by institutional funding. Kutcher has successfully invested in several high technology startups. Kutcher has investments in over 60 companies, the most prominent of which include Skype, Airbnb and Fab.com. Kutcher has invested in five startups as of August 2017 -- Neighborly, ResearchGate, Kopari Beauty, Lemonade -- marking his foray into the "insurtech" sector. Kutcher was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Diane, a Procter & Gamble employee, Larry M. Kutcher, a factory worker, he has Czech and Irish ancestry. Kutcher was raised in a "relatively conservative" Catholic family, he has an older sister named Tausha and a fraternal twin brother named Michael, who had a heart transplant when the brothers were young children. Michael has cerebral palsy and is a spokesperson for the advocacy organization Reaching for the Stars. Michael's cardiomyopathy caused Kutcher's home life to become stressful.
He has said he "didn't want to come home and find more bad news" about his brother, stating, "I kept myself so busy that I didn't allow myself to feel."Kutcher attended Washington High School in Cedar Rapids for his freshman year, before his family moved to Homestead, where he attended Clear Creek Amana High School. During high school, he appeared in school plays, his home life worsened when his parents divorced when he was 16. During his senior year, he broke into his high school at midnight with his cousin in an attempt to steal money. Kutcher was convicted of third-degree burglary and sentenced to three years of probation and 180 hours of community service. Kutcher stated that although the experience "straightened him out", he lost his girlfriend and anticipated college scholarships, was ostracized at school and in his community. Kutcher enrolled at the University of Iowa in August 1996, where his planned major was biochemical engineering, motivated to the desire to find a cure for his brother's heart ailment.
At college, Kutcher was kicked out of his apartment for being too "noisy" and "wild". Kutcher stated, "I thought I knew everything but I didn't have a clue. I was partying, I woke up many mornings not knowing what I had done the night before. I played way too hard. I am amazed I am not dead." To earn money for his tuition, Kutcher worked as a college summer hire in the cereal department for the General Mills plant in Cedar Rapids, sometimes sold his blood. While at the University of Iowa, he was approached by a model scout at a bar called The Airliner in Iowa City and was recruited to enter the "Fresh Faces of Iowa" modeling competition. After placing first, he dropped out of college and won a trip to New York City to the International Modeling and Talent Association Convention. After his stay in New York City, Kutcher returned to Cedar Rapids, before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. After participating in an IMTA competition in 1998, Kutcher signed with Next modeling agency in New York, appeared in commercials for Calvin Klein, modelled in Paris and Milan.
Following his success in modeling, Kutcher moved to Los Angeles after his first audition. He was cast as Michael Kelso in the television series That'70s Show, from 1998 to 2006. Kutcher was cast in a series of film roles, he appeared in the 2003 family film Cheaper By The Dozen as a self-obsessed actor. In the 2004 drama film The Butterfly Effect, Kutcher played a conflicted young man; the film received mixed to negative reviews, but was a box office success. In 2003, Kutcher produced and starred as the host in his own series, MTV's Punk'd, that involved hidden camera tricks performed on celebrities, he is an executive producer of the reality television shows Beauty and the Geek, Adventures in Hollyhood, The Real Wedding Crashers, the game show Opportunity Knocks. Many of his production credits, including Punk'd, come through Katalyst Films, a production company he runs with partner Jason Goldberg. A 2004 interviewer described Kutcher as a "hunky young actor is heading in all different directions at once", including "the hot L.
A. restaurant Dolce": "If anything, I'm a trier," says Kutcher between puffs of filtered Lucky Strikes. "I
Facebook
Facebook, Inc. is an American online social media and social networking service company. It is based in California, it was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies along with Amazon and Google; the founders limited the website's membership to Harvard students and subsequently Columbia and Yale students. Membership was expanded to the remaining Ivy League schools, MIT, higher education institutions in the Boston area. Facebook added support for students at various other universities, to high school students. Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in this requirement, depending on local laws; the name comes from the face book directories given to American university students. Facebook held its initial public offering in February 2012, valuing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company.
It began selling stock to the public three months later. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements; the Facebook service can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers and smartphones. After registering, users can create a customized profile revealing information about themselves. Users can post text and multimedia of their own devising and share it with other users as "friends". Users can use various embedded apps, receive notifications of their friends' activities. Users may join common-interest groups. Facebook had more than 2.3 billion monthly active users as of December 2018. It receives prominent media coverage, including many controversies such as user privacy and psychological effects; the company has faced intense pressure over censorship and over content that some users find objectionable. Facebook offers other services, it independently developed Facebook Messenger. Zuckerberg built; the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used "photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the "hotter" person".
Facemash attracted 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours. The site was sent to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days by Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy; the charges were dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam, he uploaded all art images to a website, each of, accompanied by a comments section shared the site with his classmates. A "face book" is a student directory featuring personal information. In 2003, Harvard had only a paper version along with private online directories. Zuckerberg told the Crimson, "Everyone's been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard.... I think. I can do it better than they can, I can do it in a week." In January 2004, Zuckerberg coded a new website, known as "TheFacebook", inspired by a Crimson editorial about Facemash, stating, "It is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized Website is available... the benefits are many."
Zuckerberg met with Harvard student Eduardo Saverin, each of them agreed to invest $1,000 in the site. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook" located at thefacebook.com. Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed; the three complained to the Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They sued Zuckerberg, settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares. Membership was restricted to students of Harvard College. Within a month, more than half the undergraduates had registered. Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help manage the growth of the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Columbia and Yale. and to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, New York University, MIT, Washington and successively most universities in the United States and Canada.
In mid-2004, Napster co-founder and entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became company president. In June 2004, the company moved to California, it received its first investment that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. In 2005, the company dropped "the" from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000. The domain had belonged to AboutFace Corporation. In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site launched in September 2005. Eligibility expanded to include employees including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. On September 26, 2006, Facebook opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address. By late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 pages. Organization pages began rolling out in May 2009. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced th
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance or voice part of a known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are small, many of them non-speaking ones, are either appearances in a work in which they hold some special significance or renowned people making uncredited appearances. Short appearances by celebrities, film directors, athletes or musicians are common. A crew member of the movie or show playing a minor role can be referred to as a cameo as well, such as Alfred Hitchcock's performed cameos. "cameo role" meant "a small character part that stands out from the other minor parts". The Oxford English Dictionary connects this with the meaning "a short literary sketch or portrait", based on the literal meaning of "cameo", a miniature carving on a gemstone. More "cameo" has come to refer to any short appearances, as a character, such as the examples below. Cameos are not credited because of their brevity, or a perceived mismatch between the celebrity's stature and the film or television series in which they are appearing.
Many are publicity stunts. Others are acknowledgments of an actor's contribution to an earlier work, as in the case of many film adaptations of television series, or of remakes of earlier films. Others honour celebrities known for work in a particular field; the best-known series of cameos was by Alfred Hitchcock, who made brief appearances in most of his films. Cameos occur in novels and other literary works. "Literary cameos" involve an established character from another work who makes a brief appearance to establish a shared universe setting, to make a point, or to offer homage. Balzac employed this practice, as in his Comédie humaine. Sometimes a cameo features a historical person who "drops in" on fictional characters in a historical novel, as when Benjamin Franklin shares a beer with Phillipe Charboneau in The Bastard by John Jakes. A cameo appearance can be made by the author of a work to put a sort of personal "signature" on a story. Vladimir Nabokov put himself in his novels, for instance as the minor character Vivian Darkbloom in Lolita.
Quentin Tarantino provides small roles in at least 10 of his movies. Peter Jackson has made brief cameos in all of his movies, except for his first feature-length film Bad Taste in which he plays a main character, as well as The Battle of the Five Armies, though a portrait of him appears in the film. For example, he plays a peasant eating a carrot in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Desolation of Smaug. All four were non-speaking "blink and you miss him" appearances, although in the Extended Release of The Return of the King, his character was given more screen time and his reprise of the carrot eating peasant in The Desolation of Smaug was featured in the foreground in reference to The Fellowship of the Ring - last seen twelve years earlier. Director Martin Scorsese appears in the background of his films as a bystander or an unseen character. In Who's That Knocking at My Door, he appears as one of the gangsters, he opens up his film The Color of Money with a monologue on the art of playing pool.
In addition, he appears with his wife and daughter as wealthy New Yorkers in Gangs of New York, he appears as a theatre-goer and is heard as a movie projectionist in The Aviator. In a same way, Roman Polanski appears as a hired hoodlum in his film Chinatown, slitting Jack Nicholson's nose with the blade of his clasp knife. Directors sometimes cast well-known lead actors with whom they have worked in the past in other films. Mike Todd's film Around the World in 80 Days was filled with cameo roles: John Gielgud as an English butler, Frank Sinatra playing piano in a saloon, others; the stars in cameo roles were pictured in oval insets in posters for the film, gave the term wide circulation outside the theatrical profession. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World, an "epic comedy" features cameos from nearly every popular American comedian alive at the time, including The Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis, a silent appearance by Buster Keaton and a voice-only cameo by Selma Diamond. Aaron Sorkin had cameos in some works he wrote: as a bar customer speaking about law in his debut film screenplay A Few Good Men, as an advertising executive in The Social Network and as a guest at the inauguration of President Matt Santos in the final episode of The West Wing.
Franco Nero, the actor who portrayed the Django character in the original 1966 film appears in a bar scene of the Tarantino film Django Unchained. Many cameos featured in Maverick, directed by Richard Donner. Among them, Danny Glover – Mel Gibson's co-star in the Lethal Weapon franchise directed by Donner – appears as the lead bank robber, he and Maverick share a scene where they look as if they knew each other, but shake it off. As Glover makes his escape with the money, he mutters "I'm too old for this shit", his character's catchphrase in the Lethal Weapon films. In addition, a strain of the main theme from Lethal Weapon plays in the score when Glover is revealed. Actress Margot Kidder made a cameo appearance in the same film as a robbed villager: she had starred as Lois Lane in Donner's Superman. Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and
Dave Morin
Dave Morin is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, the CEO and co-founder of the social network Path. A former manager at Facebook, he co-created the Facebook Facebook Connect. Morin is a member of the board of directors for the United States Ski and Snowboard Association and Dwell Media. Morin grew up in Montana. Morin skied for the northern division of the U. S. Junior Olympic team, he attended the University of Colorado Boulder where he received a B. A. in Economics in 2003. He was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Morin began his career at Apple in 2003. In 2006, Morin joined Facebook as senior platform manager. Morin co-created Facebook Platform, a software environment allowing third-party developers to create applications within Facebook, Facebook Connect, a technology for Facebook members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external web sites. In 2010, Morin left Facebook to co-found Path. Morin has helped to raise capital for startups such as Hipcamp through AngelList.
He had founded the venture capital firm, Slow Ventures. It is based in San Francisco. Path announced its termination of service on September 17, 2018 and confirmed that as of October 18, 2018, existing users will no longer be able to access the Path service. In 2013, Morin and several technological innovators, creators, or business owners launched Fwd.us, a Silicon Valley-based 501 lobbying group. Morin lives in San Francisco, California with his wife Brit Morin and their two sons
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.
US$124 million (2019)[1]
