1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, 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, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and 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, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, 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 fabulous riches 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 approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
2.
The Ed Sullivan Show
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The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that ran on CBS from Sunday June 20,1948, to Sunday June 6,1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the CBS Sunday Night Movie, in 2002, The Ed Sullivan Show was ranked #15 on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the series finished No.31 in TV Guide Magazines 60 Best Series of All Time, the format was essentially the same as vaudeville, and although vaudeville had died a generation earlier, Sullivan presented many ex-vaudevillians on his show. The last original Sullivan show telecast was on March 28,1971, with guests Melanie, Joanna Simon, Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass, repeats were scheduled through June 6,1971. While most of the episodes aired live from New York City, the show aired live on occasion from other nations, such as the United Kingdom, Australia. For many years, Ed Sullivan was an event each Sunday evening. In those days, we had six acts. Then, each of our acts would do a leisurely ten minutes or so, Now they do two or three minutes. And in those early days I talked too much, I look up at me talking away and I say You fool. But I just keep on talking, Ive learned how to keep my mouth shut. The show enjoyed phenomenal popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s and he was regarded as a kingmaker, and performers considered an appearance on his program as a guarantee of stardom, although this sometimes did not turn out to be the case. The shows iconic status is illustrated by the song Hymn for a Sunday Evening from the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie, in the song, a family of viewers expresses their regard for the program in worshipful tones. In September 1965, CBS started televising the program in compatible color, CBS had once backed its own color system, developed by Peter Goldmark, and resisted using RCAs compatible process until 1954. At that time, it built its first New York City color TV studio, Studio 72, in a former RKO movie theater at 2248 Broadway. One Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast on August 22,1954, from the new studio, CBS Studio 72 was demolished in 1986 and replaced by an apartment house. CBS Studio 50 was finally colorized in 1965, the 1965–66 season premiere starred the Beatles in an episode airing on September 12, which was the last episode to air in black and white. In the late 1960s, Sullivan remarked that his program was waning as the decade went on and he realized that to keep viewers, the best and brightest in entertainment had to be seen, or else the viewers were going to keep on changing the channel. Along with declining viewership, Ed Sullivan attracted a higher age for the average viewer as the seasons went on
3.
Sesame Street
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Sesame Street is a long-running American childrens television series, produced by Sesame Workshop and created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its content, and images communicated through the use of Jim Hensons Muppets, animation, short films, humor. The show has undergone significant changes throughout its history, with the creation of Sesame Street, producers and writers of a childrens television show used, for the first time, educational goals and a curriculum to shape its content. It was also the first time a shows educational effects were studied, the show was initially funded by government and private foundations but has become somewhat self-supporting due to revenues from licensing arrangements, international sales, and other media. By 2006, there were independently produced versions, or co-productions, in 2001 there were over 120 million viewers of various international versions of Sesame Street, and by the shows 40th anniversary in 2009, it was broadcast in more than 140 countries. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was the childrens television show in the United States. A1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old, in 2008, it was estimated that 77 million Americans had watched the series as children. As of 2014, Sesame Street has won 167 Emmy Awards and 8 Grammy Awards—more than any other childrens show, Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a television show that would master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them. The program premiered on television stations on November 10,1969. It was the first preschool educational television program to base its contents and production values on laboratory, initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy, and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, Sesame Street has evolved from its initial inception. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become an American institution, the cast and crew expanded during this time, with emphasis on the hiring of women crew members and the addition of minorities to the cast. The shows success continued into the 1980s, Sesame Streets curriculum has expanded to include more affective topics such as relationships, ethics, and emotions. After the turn of the 21st century, Sesame Street made major structural changes, for example, starting in 2002, its format became more narrative and included ongoing storylines. After its thirtieth anniversary in 1999 and due to the popularity of the Muppet Elmo, upon its fortieth anniversary in 2009, the show received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy at the 36th Daytime Emmy Awards. In April 2017, Sesame Street will introduce a new puppet called Julia with Autism to the show, and will be voiced by Stacey Gordon, who started Puppet Pie and has a son on the autism spectrum. From its first episode, Sesame Street has structured its format by using a visual style, fast-moving action, humor
4.
Carnegie Hall
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Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own programming, development, and marketing departments. It is also rented out to performing groups, the hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Centers Philharmonic Hall. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among its three auditoriums, Carnegie Hall presented about 200 concerts in the 2008–2009 season, up 3 percent from the previous year. Its stages were rented for an additional 600 events in the 2008–2009 season, Carnegie Hall contains three distinct, separate performance spaces. The Isaac Stern Auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels and was named after violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 to recognize his efforts to save the hall from demolition in the 1960s, the hall is enormously high, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 137 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator, the main hall was home to the performances of the New York Philharmonic from 1892 until 1962. Known as the most prestigious concert stage in the U. S. almost all of the classical music. After years of wear and tear, the hall was extensively renovated in 1986. The Ronald O. Perelman Stage is 42 feet deep, the First Tier and Second Tier consist of sixty-five boxes, the First Tier has 264 seats at eight seats per box and the Second Tier seats 238, with boxes ranging from six to eight seats each. Second from the top is the Dress Circle, seating 444 in six rows, at the top, the balcony seats 837. Although seats with obstructed views exist throughout the auditorium, only the Dress Circle level has structural columns, Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named after Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply Recital Hall, this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April 1891, following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. The completely reconstructed Zankel Hall is flexible in design and can be reconfigured in several different arrangements to suit the needs of the performers, the 599 seats in Zankel Hall are arranged in two levels. The Parterre level seats a total of 463 and the Mezzanine level seats 136, each level has a number of seats which are situated along the side walls, perpendicular to the stage. These seats are designated as boxes, there are 54 seats in six boxes on the Parterre level and 48 seats in four boxes on the Mezzanine level, the boxes on the Parterre level are raised above the level of the stage. Zankel Hall is accessible and its stage is 44 feet wide and 25 feet deep — the stage occupies approximately one fifth of the performance space, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall seats 268 and is named after Sanford I. Weill, a chairman of the board, and his wife Joan
5.
Columbia Records
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Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. the United States division of Sony Corporation. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an enterprise named the American Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the sound business. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of singers, instrumentalists. It is one of Sony Musics three flagship record labels alongside RCA Records and Epic Records, rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, a broadcasting media company which had purchased the company in 1938, and had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista Records was sold to Bertelsmann Music Group, it would become a sister label of Columbia Records through its mutual connection to Sony Music. The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward Easton and it derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington. As was the custom of some of the regional companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own. Columbias ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Companys breakup, thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the XP record, a brown wax record. According to Gracyk, the molded brown waxes may have sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their Toy Graphophone of 1899. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its catalog of artists. The firm also introduced the internal-horn Grafonola to compete with the extremely popular Victrola sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company, during this era, Columbia used the famous Magic Notes logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to make players, Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation, in late 1923, Columbia went into receivership
6.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
7.
Find a Grave
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Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry. com, the worlds largest for-profit genealogy company, the site was created in 1995 by Salt Lake City resident Jim Tipton to support his hobby of visiting the burial sites of celebrities. He later added an online forum, Find a Grave was launched as a commercial entity in 1998, first as a trade name and then incorporated in 2000. The site later expanded to include graves of non-celebrities, in order to allow visitors to pay respect to their deceased relatives or friends. In 2013, Tipton sold Find a Grave to Ancestry. com, burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history. In a September 30,2013, press release, Ancestry, as of March 2017, Find a Grave contained over 159 million burial records and 75 million photos. The website contains listings of cemeteries and graves from around the world, american cemeteries are organized by state and county, and many cemetery records contain Google Maps and photographs of the cemeteries and gravesites. Individual grave records may contain dates and places of birth and death, biographical information, cemetery and plot information, photographs, Interment listings are added by individuals, genealogical societies, and other institutions such as the International Wargraves Photography Project. Contributors must register as members to submit listings, called memorials, the submitter becomes the manager of the listing but may transfer management. Only the current manager of a listing may edit it, although any member may use the features to send correction requests to the listings manager. Managers may add links to other listings of deceased spouses, parents, members may post requests for photos of a specific grave, these requests will be automatically sent to other members who have registered their location as being near that grave. Find a Grave also maintains lists of memorials of famous persons by their claim to fame, such as Medal of Honor recipients, religious figures, Find a Grave exercises editorial control over these listings. Canadian Headstones Interment. net National Cemetery Administrations Nationwide Gravesite Locator Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Tombstone tourist Colker, web site answers grave concerns about stars. Web site attracts millions of grave-seekers, Find VIPs who R. I. P. through online cemetery. Genealogy, Find a Grave tremendous on many different levels, terre Haute, Indiana, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. Archived from the original on May 14,2011, tip, Find a Grave has info youre dying to know. Tracking Down Relatives, Visiting Graves Virtually, media related to Images from Find A Grave at Wikimedia Commons Official website
8.
Dixieland
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Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The first use of the term Dixieland with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, at that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so Dixieland referred to the band and not the music. That reflected the fact that all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. Dixieland may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets. The Jim Crow associations of the name Dixieland also did little to attract younger coloured musicians to the revival, well-known jazz standard tunes such as Basin Street Blues and When the Saints Go Marching In are known even to non-jazz fans thanks to the enduring popularity of traditional jazz. The Vietnam-era protest song Feel Like Im Fixin to Die Rag is based on tonal centers, Traditional jazz is a major tourist attraction for New Orleans to the present day. It has been an influence on the styles of modern players such as Charles Mingus. New Orleans music combined earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, the Dixieland sound is created when one instrument plays the melody or a variation on it, and the other instruments improvise around that melody. This creates a more sound than the heavily arranged big band sound of the 1930s or the straight melodies of bebop in the 1940s. The West Coast revival began in the late 1930s in San Francisco which used banjo, the Dutch old-style jazz was played with trumpets, trombones and saxophones accompanied by a single clarinet, sousaphone and a section of Marching percussion usually including a washboard. Dixieland is the given to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists. The name is a reference to the Old South, specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line, the term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. Louis Armstrongs All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s and this creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight head melodies of bebop. During the 1930s and 1940s, the earlier group-improvisation style fell out of favor with the majority of black players. Though younger musicians developed new forms, many beboppers revered Armstrong, many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create innovative performances and new tunes, for example, in the 1950s a style called Progressive Dixieland sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones & His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands and this style is sometimes called Dixie-bop
9.
Bunk Johnson
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Willie Gary Bunk Johnson was a prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a decade, Johnson received lessons from Adam Olivier and began playing professionally in Oliviers orchestra. Johnson probably played a few adolescent jobs with Buddy Bolden, but was not a member of Boldens Band. Johnson was regarded as one of the top trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in 1931 he lost his trumpet and front teeth when a fight broke out at a dance in Rayne, Louisiana, putting an end to his playing. He thereafter worked in labor, occasionally giving music lessons. The writers tracked down Johnsons address, and traded several letters with him, Johnson stated that he could play again if he only had new teeth and a new trumpet. A collection was taken up by writers and musicians, and he was fitted with a set of dentures by Bechets dentist brother, Leonard and he made his first recordings in 1942, for Jazz Man Records. These first recordings propelled Johnson into public attention, attracting a cult following, Johnson and his band played in New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston, and New York City and made many more recordings. Johnson suffered from a stroke in late 1948 and died in New Iberia the following year, Jazz fans and historians still debate Johnsons legacy, and the extent to which his colorful reminiscences of his early career were accurate, misremembered, exaggerated, or untrue. The majority of his recordings remain in print on CD reissues, Johnson plays a small, but significant, role in Alan Schroeders picture book Satchmos Blues. In that book, Johnson serves as a source of inspiration to the young Louis Armstrong. Detailed discussion of research on Bunks early life and possible birthdates Willie Johnsons WWI Draft Registration Card and essay
10.
Ward Kimball
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Ward Walrath Kimball, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. He was one of Walt Disneys team of animators, known as Disneys Nine Old Men and he was also a jazz trombonist. He founded and led the seven-piece Dixieland band Firehouse Five Plus Two, while Kimball was a brilliant draftsman, he preferred to work on comical characters rather than realistic human designs. Animating came easily to him and he was looking to do things differently. Because of this, Walt Disney called Ward a genius in the book The Story of Walt Disney, while there were many talented animators at Disney, Wards efforts stand out as unique. According to Jeff Lenburgs assessment of him, Kimball was a pioneer animator and his work had been honored with the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. He served as one of Disneys Nine Old Men and he instilled life to diverse Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Kimball attended the Santa Barbara School of the Arts in order to become a painter, Kimballs instructor at the school suggested to him that his work should be submitted to Walt Disney Productions, and that he should pursue a career in animation. In March 1934, a 20-year-old Kimball applied for a job at the Disney studio, in April 1934, he was hired as an inbetweener. He was then promoted to an assistant animator and he served as an assistant to animator Hamilton Luske. Kimball worked primarily in the Silly Symphony series, where his credits include the animated short films The Wise Little Hen, The Goddess of Spring, and The Tortoise. He also worked on the Mickey Mouse series, where his credits include the short film Orphans Benefit. In 1936, Kimball was promoted to an animator in his own right and he continued to work in the Silly Symphony series. Some of his credits in this position include the animated short films Toby Tortoise Returns, More Kittens. His first solo effort as an animator was animating a grasshopper turned musician in Woodland Café, Kimball was included in the team of animators known later as Disneys Nine Old Men, whose original task was animating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film was the first full-length animated feature film by the Disney studio, Kimball spend months working on the sequence animation for a scene where the Seven Dwarfs are eating soup, prepared for them by Snow White. Following the release of Snow White, Kimball was promoted to a supervising or directing animator and he would remain in this position until his retirement in the 1970s. His employer Walt Disney was sufficiently satisfied with Kimballs work that he entrusted him with designing new character Jiminy Cricket, the character was intended for use in the Disney studios next feature film, Pinocchio
