1.
Van Ness Avenue
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Van Ness Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, running from Market St north to the Bay. Originally named Marlette Street, the street was renamed Van Ness Avenue in honor of the seventh mayor. Van Ness Avenue begins at Market Street near the Civic Center, of the more striking landmarks along the route are the San Francisco City Hall, the War Memorial Opera House, and Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. South Van Ness Avenue is the portion of Van Ness south of Market Street, continuing through the citys South of Market and it was formerly a continuation of Howard Street, having been renamed by resolution of the Board of Supervisors on August 22,1932. The route is designated US101 from the Central Freeway at the convergence of South Van Ness, Howard Street, and 13th Street, north to Lombard Street. Originally a quiet neighborhood of mansions, the street was used as a firebreak by the U. S. Army during the 1906 earthquake. Many of the buildings were dynamited along the street by soldiers in a successful attempt to prevent the firestorm from spreading west to the entire city. It still remains an upscale area with large and grand apartment buildings, restaurants. Streetcar service started on Van Ness in 1915 for the opening of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, the rail lines were removed in the 1950s and replaced with a tree-lined median. The entire route is within the borders of the City and County of San Francisco
2.
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
3.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
4.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
Opera house
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An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other houses are part of larger performing arts centers. In contrast, there was no house in London when Henry Purcell was composing. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, with the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theatre companies raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples introduces the plant horseshoe, the oldest in the world, a model for the Italian theater. On this model were built following theaters of Italy and Europe, among others, the theater of the Palace of Caserta. Given the popularity of opera in 18th and 19th century Europe, opera houses are large, with generally more than 1,000 seats. Modern opera houses of the century such as New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Many operas are better suited to being presented in smaller theatres, in a traditional opera house, the auditorium is U-shaped, with the length of the sides determining the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer to the stage, are boxes and this is especially true of Wagners Bayreuth Festspielhaus where the pit is almost completely covered. The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be large, for some romantic period works. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers, therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, major opera houses throughout the world often have highly mechanized stages, with large stage elevators permitting heavy sets to be changed rapidly. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, sets are changed during the action, as the audience watches. This occurs in the Mets productions of such as Aida. Much the same happened in the remodeling of Milans La Scala opera house between 2002 and 2004, since the 1990s, however, many opera houses have begun using a subtle form of sound reinforcement called acoustic enhancement. Often, operas are presented in their languages, which may be different from the first language of the audience. For example, a Wagnerian opera presented in London may be in German, therefore, since the 1980s modern opera houses have assisted the audience by providing translated supertitles, projections of the words above or near to the stage
7.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
8.
Arthur Brown Jr.
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Arthur Brown Jr. was a prominent American architect, based in San Francisco and designer of many of its landmarks. Brown went to Paris and graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in 1901, attending the atelier of Victor Laloux, Brown also designed the citys War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, the former in collaboration with G. Albert Lansburgh. Brown was meticulously trained in the rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, and in the City Hall project his attention extended to the smallest details of fixtures, floor patterning. In addition to their well-known monumental works, Bakewell and Brown designed several homes in the Arts and Crafts style championed by Maybeck. Early among them were two redwood framed double houses for Stanford University in 1908, and the fraternity house they designed de novo. They later designed additions to Ernest Coxheads 1893 Beta Theta Pi house they had lived in as undergraduates, the firm went on to design a series of familiar San Francisco landmarks, and many buildings at Stanford University, before Brown dissolved the partnership in 1927. For contractual reasons many buildings at Stanford through the 1930s continued to be credited to both, Bakewell and Brown also designed the Byzantine-inspired Temple Emmanuel at Lake St. and Arguello Blvd. in San Francisco, and the Pasadena City Hall. Most of Browns later San Francisco works employed a stripped-down classicism, the poured-concrete Art Moderne Coit Tower, that crowns Telegraph Hill is an important Modernist landmark in the Bay Area. Coit Tower was the site of some of the first public works murals executed under the Public Works Administration, the primitive nature of Coit Tower would lend itself better to that sort of thing than other public buildings, was Arthur Browns first reaction to the project. Diego Rivera included Brown among the designers and craftsmen in his mural of The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City. In Washington, D. C. Brown designed the Interstate Commerce Commission Building, its near-twin the Customs Department building, all three form part of the Federal Triangle, the largest construction project undertaken by the US Federal government prior to The Pentagon. Preliminary designs were begun in 1927, with construction in the Depression years between 1932 and 1934, the new buildings were to be designed to reflect the dignity and power of the nation. Browns last works were primarily at UC Berkeley, where Brown served as campus planner and his principal buildings there include Sproul Hall, the Bancroft Library, and the Cyclotron Building, commissioned by Ernest Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Brown was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1930, among the draftsmen in his office was Clarence W. W. Mayhew. In 1943, Brown was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, online guide to the Arthur Brown Jr. Papers, The Bancroft Library Diego Riveras mural at the SFAI Coit tower Arthur Brown Papers
9.
G. Albert Lansburgh
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Gustave Albert Lansburgh was an American architect, largely known for his work on luxury cinemas and theatres. He was the architect of theaters on the West Coast from 1900–1930. Lansburgh was born in Panama and raised largely in San Francisco, after graduating from that citys Boys High School in 1894, Lansburgh enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley. While a student there, he worked part-time in the offices of prominent San Francisco architect Bernard Maybeck. Upon graduation from Berkeley, he moved to Paris, France where, in 1901, he was enrolled in the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, from which he earned a diploma in March,1906. Lansburgh returned to the Bay Area in May,1906, one month after the region had been devastated by the San Francisco earthquake, first in partnership with Bernard Julius Joseph for two years, then in his own practice, Lansburgh designed numerous buildings in the recovering city. Among these was his first theater, for the San Francisco-based Orpheum Theater Circuit, in his long career thereafter, Lansburgh become known primarily as a theater architect, designing more than 50 of them, many for the Orpheum Circuit and its successor firm, RKO. He continued to other buildings, including Oaklands Temple Sinai in 1914. He also collaborated with local architects A. M. Edelman and John C. Austin on the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, and with Arthur Brown Jr. on the War Memorial Opera House. Though many of Lansburghs best known works, including El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, were on the west coast, his personal favorite was said to have been the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in New York City
10.
San Francisco City Hall
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San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco, California. The structures dome is taller than that of the United States Capitol by 42 feet, the present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was two blocks from the present one. It was bounded by Larkin Street, McAllister Street, and City Hall Avenue, largely where the current Public Library and U. N. Plaza stand today. The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr. of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs, browns blueprints of the building are preserved at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Brown also designed the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower, the buildings vast open space is more than 500,000 square feet and occupying two full city blocks. It is 390 ft between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street, and 273 ft between Grove and McAllister Streets and its dome, which owes much to Mansarts Baroque domes of the Val-de-Grâce and Les Invalides in Paris, rises 307.5 ft above the Civic Center Historic District. It is 19 ft higher than the United States Capitol, and has a diameter of 112 ft, resting upon 4 x 50 ton and 4 x 20 ton girders, each 9 ft deep and 60 ft. The building as a whole contains 7,900 tons of steel from the American Bridge Company of Ambridge. It is faced with Madera County granite on the exterior, and Indiana sandstone within, together with finish marbles from Alabama, Colorado, Vermont, much of the statuary is by Henri Crenier. The Rotunda is a space and the upper levels are public. Opposite the grand staircase, on the floor, is the office of the Mayor. A bust of former county supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in the building was unveiled on May 22,2008, MAYOR1931 The words were written by the previous Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor, and dedicated by Mayor James Rolph. The medallions in the vaults of the Rotunda are of Equality, Liberty, Strength, Learning and, as memorialized in the South Light Court display, Progress. The current City Hall building is a replacement for a building which was completed in 1899 after 27 years of planning. The original city hall was a larger building which also contained a smaller extension which contained the citys Hall of Records. The building was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, after Arthur Brown Juniors design was selected, construction started in 1913 and was completed by 1915, in time for the Exposition. The main rotunda had also served as the location of prominent state funerals. General Fredrick Funston, hero of the Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were married at City Hall in 1954
11.
San Francisco Opera
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San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, in fact, Merolas initial visits to the city were as conductor of some of these troupes—the first in 1909 with the International Opera Company of Montreal. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable, while it was a popular and critical triumph, the five-day season was not a financial success. It was clear to Merola that a solid financial base was needed. Appealing to more than the elite, Merola raised 2441 contributions of $50 each from many founding members. After the opening of La bohème, the first 1923/24 season included productions of Andrea Chénier, Mefistofele, Tosca (with Giuseppe de Luca and Martinelli, during the nine years following the opening season, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House was conceived. The building was designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. the architect who also created San Franciscos Coit Tower, the company inaugurated the new opera house with a performance of Tosca on 15 October 1932 with Claudia Muzio in the title role. However, until well after Merolas death, the main San Francisco season rarely extended beyond late October and he died while conducting an open-air concert at Stern Grove on 30 August 1953. Edwin MacArthur led the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in several 78-rpm recordings for RCA Victor in the late 1930s, some of these were later reissued by RCA on LP and CD. Short versions of all the works in the season were broadcast on about 30 California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia radio stations, starting about 1941. Kurt Herbert Adler came to the United States in 1938 after early experience and training in aspects of music and theatre in Austria, Germany. For five years, he worked to build the chorus of the Chicago Opera Company, Merola heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to San Francisco opera in 1943 as chorus director. Adler was often regarded as a difficult, sometimes tyrannical person to work for, however, as Chatfield-Taylor notes, singers, conductors, directors, and designers came back season after season…. Among those who were offered new and exciting challenges were Geraint Evans, the Welsh baritone, Leontyne Price, and Luciano Pavarotti. He took on more and more details as Merolas health and energy diminished. After three months of acting as Artistic Director, and with the assistance of its president, Robert Watt Miller, Adler was confirmed as General Director, Adlers aims Adlers aims in taking over the company were several. Eventually, as seen in the 1961 SFO season, eleven operas were given five or six performances each on average while the season ran to late November. He heard Leontyne Price on the radio, and offered her a role in Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1957, thus providing her with her the first performance on a major operatic stage
12.
United Nations
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The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict, at its founding, the UN had 51 member states, there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, the UNs mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in actions in Korea and the Congo. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military, the UN has six principal organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council. UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, the UNs most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese António Guterres since 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UNs work, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UNs effectiveness have been mixed, some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France, four Policemen was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries, the term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, by 1 March 1945,21 additional states had signed. Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto, the foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. During the war, the United Nations became the term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis, at the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, the General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General
13.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and he is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U. S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County and he attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and he entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt was presidential candidate James M. Coxs running mate and he was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting the enactment of programs to combat the depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency, Roosevelt took office while in the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. Energized by his victory over polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to labor union growth while more closely regulating business. His support for the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, the economy improved rapidly from 1933–37, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, when the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business, along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. His goal was to make America the Arsenal of Democracy, which would supply munitions to the Allies, in March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. He supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort, as an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and initiate the development of the worlds first atomic bomb. His work also influenced the creation of the United Nations. Roosevelts physical health declined during the war years, and he died 11 weeks into his fourth term. One of the oldest Dutch families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in other than politics. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York militia during the American Revolution, Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was president
14.
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
15.
League of Nations
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The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, at its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, however, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them, after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years, the United Nations replaced it after the end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League. As historians William H. Harbaugh and Ronald E. Powaski point out, the organisation was international in scope, with a third of the members of parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were held to help refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure consisted of a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League, at the start of the 20th century, two power blocs emerged from alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that, at the start of the First World War in 1914 and this was the first major war in Europe between industrialised countries, and the first time in Western Europe that the results of industrialisation had been dedicated to war. By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had an impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world, the First World War was described as the war to end all wars, the causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term League of Nations in 1914, together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In Dickinsons 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his League of Peace as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation
16.
Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties, although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919 and this article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, in 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently, although it is often referred to as the Versailles Conference, only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the Big Four meetings taking place generally at the Quai dOrsay, the First World War was fought across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Countries beyond the war zones were also affected by the disruption of trade, finance. In 1917, two revolutions occurred within the Russian Empire, which led to the collapse of the Imperial Government, the American war aim was to detach the war from nationalistic disputes and ambitions after the Bolshevik disclosure of secret treaties between the Allies. The existence of these treaties tended to discredit Allied claims that Germany was the power with aggressive ambitions. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points and this speech outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. After the Central Powers launched Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front and this treaty ended the war between Russia and the Central powers and annexed 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 62 million people. During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive, sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, the terms of the armistice called for an immediate evacuation of German troops from occupied Belgium, France, and Luxembourg within fifteen days. In addition, it established that Allied forces would occupy the Rhineland, in late 1918, Allied troops entered Germany and began the occupation. Both the German Empire and Great Britain were dependent on imports of food and raw materials, primarily from the Americas, the Blockade of Germany was a naval operation conducted by the Allied Powers to stop the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs reaching the Central Powers
17.
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
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It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and this provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for the expensive reparations Germany was intended to pay. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, the conference opened on 18 January 1919. Key recommendations were folded into the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, the five major powers controlled the Conference. Amongst the Big Five, in practice Japan played a small role, the four met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by other attendees. The open meetings of all the approved the decisions made by the Big Four. The conference came to an end on 21 January 1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations, the main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and her allies. This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay, republican Germany was not invited to attend the conference at Versailles. Representatives of White Russia were present, a central issue of the Conference was the disposition of the overseas colonies of Germany. The British dominions wanted their reward for their sacrifice, Australia wanted New Guinea, New Zealand wanted Samoa, and South Africa wanted South West Africa. Wilson wanted the League of Nations to administer all the German colonies until such time as they were ready for independence, Lloyd George realized he needed to support his dominions, and he proposed a compromise that there be three types of mandates. Mandates for the Turkish provinces were one category, they would be divided up between Britain and France, Wilson and the others finally went along with the solution. The dominions received Class C Mandates to the colonies they wanted, Japan obtained mandates over German possessions north of the equator. Wilson wanted no mandates for the United States, his top advisor Colonel House was deeply involved in awarding the others, Wilson was especially offended by Australian demands. He and Hughes had some clashes, with the most famous being, Wilson, But after all. Hughes, I represent sixty thousand dead, prior to Wilsons arrival in Europe in December 1918, no American president had ever visited Europe while in office. High hopes and expectations were placed on him to deliver what he had promised for the post-war era, in doing so, Wilson ultimately began to lead the foreign policy of the United States toward interventionism, a move strongly resisted in some domestic circles. Once Wilson arrived, however, he found rivalries, and conflicting claims previously submerged and he worked mostly trying to sway the direction that the French and British delegations were taking towards Germany and its allies in Europe, as well as the former Ottoman lands in the Middle East
18.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
19.
Woodrow Wilson
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia. In 1910, he was the New Jersey Democratic Partys gubernatorial candidate and was elected the 34th Governor of New Jersey, while in office, Wilson reintroduced the spoken State of the Union, which had been out of use since 1801. Leading the Congress that was now in Democratic hands, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. The Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, through passage of the Adamson Act that imposed an 8-hour workday for railroads, he averted a railroad strike and an ensuing economic crisis. Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality, Wilson faced former New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes in the presidential election of 1916. By a narrow margin, he became the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson elected to two consecutive terms, Wilsons second term was dominated by American entry into World War I. In April 1917, when Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and sent the Zimmermann Telegram, the United States conducted military operations alongside the Allies, although without a formal alliance. During the war, Wilson focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving military strategy to the generals, loaning billions of dollars to Britain, France, and other Allies, the United States aided their finance of the war effort. On the home front, he raised taxes, borrowing billions of dollars through the publics purchase of Liberty Bonds. In his 1915 State of the Union Address, Wilson asked Congress for what became the Espionage Act of 1917, the crackdown was intensified by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to include expulsion of non-citizen radicals during the First Red Scare of 1919–1920. Wilson staffed his government with Southern Democrats who implemented racial segregation at the Treasury, Navy and he gave department heads greater autonomy in their management. Following his return from Europe, Wilson embarked on a tour in 1919 to campaign for the treaty. The treaty was met with concern by Senate Republicans, and Wilson rejected a compromise effort led by Henry Cabot Lodge. Due to his stroke, Wilson secluded himself in the White House, disability having diminished his power, forming a strategy for re-election, Wilson deadlocked the 1920 Democratic National Convention, but his bid for a third-term nomination was overlooked. Wilson was a devoted Presbyterian and Georgist, and he infused his views of morality into his domestic and he appointed several well known radically progressive single taxers to prominent positions in his administration. His ideology of internationalism is now referred to as Wilsonian, an activist foreign policy calling on the nation to promote global democracy and he was the third of four children of Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jessie Janet Woodrow. Wilsons paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland and his mother was born in Carlisle, England, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Thomas Woodrow from Paisley, Scotland, and Marion Williamson from Glasgow
20.
Shrine Auditorium
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The Shrine Auditorium is a landmark large-event venue in Los Angeles, California. It is also the headquarters of the Al Malaikah Temple, a division of the Shriners and it was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1975. Opened in 1926, the current Shrine Auditorium replaced an earlier 1906 Al Malaikah Temple which had destroyed by a fire on January 11,1920. The fire gutted the building in just 30 minutes. The new auditorium was designed in the Moorish Revival style by San Francisco-based theater architect G. Albert Lansburgh, with local architects John C. Austin, when built, the auditorium could hold 1,200 people on stage and seat an audience of 6,442. An engineer who consulted on the said that the steel truss supporting the balcony was the largest ever constructed. The entire complex follows a Moroccan architectural motif, the Shrine Auditorium seats approximately 6,300 people and has a stage 194 feet wide and 69 feet deep. The Auditorium features two boxes above the orchestra level holding 40 people each and seven loges on the balcony holding between 36 and 47 seats each, of the remaining seats,2,964 are on the orchestra level and 2,982 on the balcony level. The Shrine Auditorium has hosted a number of events, mainly for entertainment, the Academy Awards were held at the Shrine from 1947 to 1948 and eight times between 1988 and 2001 until it moved to the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The Shrine hosted several Grammy ceremonies until 2000 when the Grammys moved to the nearby Staples Center, the Primetime Emmy Awards were also held at the venue for a decade beginning in 1998. However, the Primetime ceremony moved to the nearby Microsoft Theater, for 33 years, the Shrine Auditorium was home to the University of Southern California Trojans basketball team. The Trojans home court was on the Shrines stage, the Los Angeles Lakers also briefly played some playoff games in the theatre, when the nearby Los Angeles Sports Arena was unavailable. The Shrine Circus, concerts, stage shows and other events are held here. The Shrine Auditorium was also the venue for the 55th Miss Universe beauty pageant, the 1933 movie King Kong filmed the audience in the Shrine Auditorium for the scenes where Kong was displayed manacled on stage. In 1953, segments of Judy Garlands movie classic A Star Is Born were filmed at the Shrine, in 1955, The Great Shrine Auditorium Concert took place, which is considered a major event in the histories of both American gospel and secular music. The event also featured a young Sam Cooke who was at the time performing with the gospel group The Soul Stirrers. Ray Charles recorded his landmark Live in Concert album at the Shrine in 1964, in the late 1960s, the Shrine was referred to as The Pinnacle by the audiences of rock concerts. On August 24,1968, The Grateful Dead performed there and recorded their show, on January 24,1975, Genesis, then led by singer Peter Gabriel, gave a live performance of the conceptual progressive rock show, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway at the Shrine
21.
Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
22.
Beaux-Arts architecture
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Beaux-Arts architecture expresses the academic neoclassical architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The style of instruction that produced Beaux-Arts architecture continued without interruption until 1968. The Beaux-Arts style heavily influenced the architecture of the United States in the period from 1880 to 1920, in contrast, many European architects of the period 1860–1914 outside France gravitated away from Beaux-Arts and towards their own national academic centers. American architects of the Beaux-Arts generation often returned to Greek models, for the first time, repertories of photographs supplemented meticulous scale drawings and on-site renderings of details. Beaux-Arts training emphasized the production of quick conceptual sketches, highly finished perspective presentation drawings, close attention to the program, site considerations tended toward social and urbane contexts. In the façade shown to the right, Diana grasps the cornice she sits on in an action typical of Beaux-Arts integration of sculpture with architecture. A sense of appropriate idiom at the craftsman level supported the teams of the first truly modern architectural offices. The prestige of the École gave the style Beaux-Arts a second wind in combining the new manner with the traditional training and they were followed by an entire generation. Henry Hobson Richardson absorbed Beaux-Arts lessons in massing and spatial planning and his Beaux-Arts training taught him to transcend slavish copying and recreate in the essential fully digested and idiomatic manner of his models. Richardson evolved a personal style freed of historicism that was influential in early Modernism. The White City of the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago was a triumph of the movement, the Beaux-Arts curriculum was subsequently begun at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. From 1916, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City schooled architects, painters, bosworth, Carnegie Mellon University, designed by Henry Hornbostel, and the University of Texas, designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Beaux-Arts architecture also brought a civic face to the railroad, two of the best American examples of the Beaux-Arts tradition stand within a few blocks of each other, Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. Another prominent U. S. example of the style is the largest academic dormitory in the world, in the late 1800s, during the years when Beaux-Arts architecture was at a peak in France, Americans were one of the largest groups of foreigners in Paris. Many of them were architects and students of architecture who brought this back to America. Beaux-Arts was very prominent in public buildings in Canada in the early 20th century, notably all three prairie provinces legislative buildings are in this style. Buenos Aires is a center of Beaux-Arts architecture which continued to be built as late as the 1950s, national Theatre, Melbourne General Post Office building, Forrest Place, Perth Argus Building. Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York, A Photographic Guide United States, sixteenth Street Architecture – profiles of Beaux-Arts architecture in Washington D. C
23.
Neoclassical architecture
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Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was also detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s
24.
Doric order
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The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture, the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognised by the simple circular capitals at the top of columns and it was the earliest and in its essence the simplest of the orders, though still with complex details in the entablature above. The Greek Doric column was fluted or smooth-surfaced, and had no base, the capital was a simple circular form, with some mouldings, under a square cushion that is very wide in early versions, but later more restrained. In stone they are purely ornamental, the relatively uncommon Roman and Renaissance Doric retained these, and often introduced thin layers of moulding or further ornament, as well as often using plain columns. The Doric order was used in Greek Revival architecture from the 18th century onwards, often earlier Greek versions were used, with wider columns. Since at least Vitruvius it has been customary for writers to associate the Doric with masculine virtues and it is also normally the cheapest of the orders to use. In their original Greek version, Doric columns stood directly on the pavement of a temple without a base. The Parthenon has the Doric design columns and it was most popular in the Archaic Period in mainland Greece, and also found in Magna Graecia, as in the three temples at Paestum. These are in the Archaic Doric, where the capitals spread wide from the column compared to later Classical forms, pronounced features of both Greek and Roman versions of the Doric order are the alternating triglyphs and metopes. The triglyphs are decoratively grooved with two vertical grooves and represent the original wooden end-beams, which rest on the plain architrave that occupies the half of the entablature. Under each triglyph are peglike stagons or guttae that appear as if they were hammered in from below to stabilize the post-and-beam construction and they also served to organize rainwater runoff from above. The spaces between the triglyphs are the metopes and they may be left plain, or they may be carved in low relief. The spacing of the triglyphs caused problems which some time to resolve. The architecture followed rules of harmony, since the original design probably came from wooden temples and the triglyphs were real heads of wooden beams, every column had to bear a beam which lay across the centre of the column. Triglyphs were arranged regularly, the last triglyph was centred upon the last column and this was regarded as the ideal solution which had to be reached. Changing to stone instead of wooden beams required full support of the architrave load at the last column. At the first temples the final triglyph was moved, still terminating the sequence, even worse, the last triglyph was not centered with the corresponding column. That “archaic” manner was not regarded as a harmonious design, the resulting problem is called the doric corner conflict
25.
Rustication (architecture)
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The visible face of each individual block is cut back around the edges to make its size and placing very clear. In addition the central part of the face of each block may be given a rough or patterned surface. Rusticated masonry is usually dressed, or squared off neatly, on all sides of the stones except the face that will be visible when the stone is put in place. This is given wide joints that emphasize the edges of block, by angling the edges. The main part of the face may worked flat and smooth or left or worked with a more or less rough or patterned surface. Rustication is often used to give weight to the ground floor in contrast to smooth ashlar above. Though intended to convey a rustic simplicity, the finish is highly artificial, and it remains in use in some modern architecture. Rough finishes on stone are very common in architecture outside the European tradition. For example, the bases of Japanese castles and other fortifications usually use rough stone, probably the earliest and most influential example is the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence, built between 1444 and 1484, with two contrasting rusticated finishes. The ground floor has an irregular and genuinely rugged appearance, with a variation in the degree to which parts of the faces of blocks project from the wall that is rarely equalled later. Above, the rustication is merely to emphasize the blocks. Also in Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, begun 1489, with large oblong rounded cushions, and these facades only used the classical orders in mullions and aedicules, with arched forms in rustication the main relief from the massive flat walls. The Palazzo Rucellai, probably of the 1460s, begins to classicize such facades, using smooth-faced rustication throughout, in Rome, Donato Bramantes Palazzo Caprini provided a standard model for the integration of rustication with the orders. The first major Renaissance building in Spain, the Palace of Charles V in Granada, had a deeply rusticated ground floor facade with regular rounded cushions, the technique was enthusiatically taken up by the next generation of Mannerist architects, with Giulio Romano in the lead. Most early examples of rustic style are therefore built for sophisticated patrons in the leading centres of taste. The Mannerist architectural writer Sebastiano Serlio and others of his generation enjoyed the play between rusticated and finished architectural elements, the Italians brought in to expand the Palace of Fontainebleau introduced the technique to France. Its spread to Germany and England took longer, but by about the end of the 16th century it had reached all parts of Europe. In his Banqueting House in London, Inigo Jones gave a lightly rusticated surface texture to emphasize the blocks on both storeys, and to them behind his orders of pilasters and columns
26.
Claude Perrault
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Claude Perrault was a French architect, best known for his participation in the design of the east façade of the Louvre in Paris. He also achieved success as a physician and anatomist, and as an author, Perrault was born and died in Paris. His treatise on the five orders of architecture followed in 1683. As physician and natural philosopher with a degree from the University of Paris. A committee commissioned by Louis XIV, the Petit Conseil, comprising Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun and it was begun in 1668 and was almost completed in 1680, by which time Louis XIV had abandoned the Louvre and focused his attention on the Palace of Versailles. The wing behind the east façade was not finished until the 19th century with the advent of Napoleon, the definitive design of the east façade is attributed to Perrault, who made the final alterations needed to accommodate a decision to double the width of the south wing. The east façade, divided in five parts, is a solution of the French classicism. The simple character of the ground floor basement sets off the paired Corinthian columns, modeled according to Vitruvius, against a shadowed void. Little that could be called Baroque can be identified in its cool classicism that looks back to the 16th century, perraults participation in its design established his reputation as an architect. Perrault also built an Observatory, the church of St-Benoît-le-Bétourné, designed a new church of Ste-Geneviève, perraults design for a triumphal arch on Rue St-Antoine was preferred to competing designs of Le Brun and Le Vau, but was only partly executed in stone. When the arch was taken down in the 19th century, it was found that the master had devised a means of so interlocking the stones, without mortar. In addition, he made a contribution in acoustics. His treatise on sound was a part of the book Oeuvres diverses de Physique et de Mecanique, in his later book, he treats such subjects as sound media, sources of sound and sound receivers. In musical acoustics, he noted the importance of vibration on consonance and dissonance and his study De la Musique des Anciens in the Oeuvres diverses discussed how combinations of notes yields harmony. It also contains critical examinations of old manuscripts on European music and his brother, Charles Perrault, is remembered as the classic reteller of the old story of Cinderella among other fables. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire N=naturelle des animaux, introduction by Alberto Pérez-Gómez to Indra Kagis McEwens translation of Perrault’s Ordonnance for the five kinds of columns after the method of the Ancients. Santa Monica, CA, Getty Center for the History of Art, media related to Claude Perrault at Wikimedia Commons Works by Claude Perrault at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Claude Perrault at Internet Archive
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Perrault's Colonnade
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Claude Perraults Colonnade is the easternmost façade of the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It has been celebrated as the foremost masterpiece of French Architectural Classicism since its construction, cast in a restrained classicizing baroque manner, it interprets rules laid down by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose works Perrault had translated into French. Architect Louis Le Vau and artist Charles Le Brun also contributed to the realization of Perraults work, little that could be called Baroque can be identified in Perrault’s cool classicism that looks back to the 16th century. The façade, divided into five parts, is a solution of French classicism. The simple character of the ground floor basement sets off the paired Corinthian columns, modeled according to Vitruvius, against a shadowed void. This idea of coupled columns on a high podium goes back as far as Bramante and those rhythmical columns form a shadowed colonnade with a central pedimented triumphal arch entrance raised on a high, rather defensive base. Crowned by an uncompromising Italian balustrade along its distinctly non-French flat roof, Perrault won the competition held by Louis XIV for a design for the eastern façade of the Louvre Palace, beating out even Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who had traveled from Italy expressly for the purpose. In 1964, the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, the moat may have been filled in around 1674 to facilitate construction and not restored due to lack of funds to build the contrescarpe after Louis XIVs attention shifted to the Palace of Versailles. However, in 1981 Germain Bazin argued that the reconstruction of the moat was misguided, Le Monde,20 August 1981, p.2. The Palace of the Sun, The Louvre of Louis XIV, University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press. Les soubassements de laile orientale du Louvre
28.
Coffered ceiling
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A coffer in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault. For centuries, it was thought that wooden coffers were first made by crossing the wooden beams of a ceiling in the Loire Valley châteaux of the early Renaissance. In 2012, however, archaeologists working under Andrew Wallace-Hadrill at the House of the Telephus in Herculaneum discovered that wooden coffered ceilings were constructed in Roman times. Experimentation with the shapes in coffering, which solve problems of mathematical tiling. The more complicated problems of diminishing the scale of the coffers were presented by the requirements of curved surfaces of vaults. A prominent example of Roman coffering, employed to lighten the weight of the dome, can be found in the ceiling of the dome in the Pantheon. In ancient Chinese wooden architecture, coffering is known as zaojing, dome Dropped ceiling Cove ceiling Beam ceiling U. S. National Capitol
29.
San Francisco Symphony
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The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the Citys Hayes Valley neighborhood, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization. Its current music director is Michael Tilson Thomas, who has held the position since September 1995, among various awards and honors for the orchestra are an Emmy Award and 15 Grammy Awards in the past 25 years. The orchestras first concerts were led by conductor composer Henry Hadley, there were sixty musicians in the Orchestra at the beginning of their first season. The first concert included music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, there were thirteen concerts in the 1911–1912 season, five of which were popular music. Hertz helped to refine the orchestra and arranged for the Victor Talking Machine Company to record it at their new studio in Oakland in early 1925. Hertz also led the orchestra during a number of broadcasts, including on the The Standard Hour. The series began in 1926 when the orchestra faced bankruptcy, Standard Oil of California paid the orchestras debts, the first broadcast aired on the NBC Pacific Network, on October 24,1926. and the broadcasts continued for more than 30 years. After Hertzs retirement in 1930, the orchestra was led by two conductors, Basil Cameron and Issay Dobrowen, the French maestro Pierre Monteux, who had conducted the world premiere of Igor Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, was hired to restore the orchestra. Monteux succeeded to the point where NBC began broadcasting some of its concerts, in 1949, Monteux invited Arthur Fiedler to lead summer pops concerts in the Civic Auditorium. Fiedler also conducted the orchestra at concerts in Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco. Fiedlers relationship with the orchestra continued until the mid-1970s, stokowski made a series of RCA Victor recordings with the orchestra in 1952 and 1953. In 1954 the board hired the young Spanish maestro Enrique Jordá as music director, surviving eyewitness and newspaper accounts describe him as having youthful enthusiasm, energy, and charm. Jordá sometimes conducted so vigorously that his baton flew from his hand, szells comments, along with growing dissatisfaction among musicians and the public, led the symphony board to dismiss Jordá. In the fall of 1963, the Austrian conductor Josef Krips became music director and he quickly became known as a benevolent autocrat, and would not tolerate sloppy playing. He soon began to refine the performance of the musicians, particularly of the standard German-Austrian repertoire. One of his innovations was a tradition on New Years Eve, A Night in Old Vienna. Similar concerts continued into the 2000s, though the format has changed in recent years, Krips would not make recordings with the orchestra, insisting they werent ready
30.
RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the initials of the labels former parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. It is the second oldest recording company in US history, after sister label Columbia Records, RCAs Canadian unit is Sonys oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression, kelly, Enrique Iglesias, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Giorgio Moroder, Jennifer Hudson, DAngelo, Pink, Tinashe, G-Eazy, Pitbull, Zayn and Wizkid. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor but retained use of the Victor Records name on their labels until the beginning of 1946 when the labels were finally switched over to RCA Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper His Masters Voice trademark, in Shanghai, China, in 1931, RCA Victors British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board, in September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm records sold to the public, calling them Program Transcriptions. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a commercial failure, during the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the dime store labels. The first was the short-lived Timely Tunes label in 1931 sold at Montgomery Ward, in 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8-inch record with a blue label. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10-inch label, another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced. The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels and Bluebird Records still survives eight decades after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued, RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward label during the 1930s. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for independent record labels, RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Readers Digest Association. RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings in the UK, RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the RCA and HMV labels in North America. During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed, the Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary. From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period
31.
Pierre Monteux
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Pierre Benjamin Monteux was a French conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as a player and occasional conductor. Thereafter he directed orchestras around the world for more than half a century, from 1917 to 1919 Monteux was the principal conductor of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, in 1961, aged eighty-six, he accepted the chief conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra, a post which he held until his death three years later. Although known for his performances of the French repertoire, his love was the music of German composers. He disliked recording, finding it incompatible with spontaneity, but he made a substantial number of records. Monteux was well known as a teacher, in 1932 he began a conducting class in Paris, which he developed into a summer school that was later moved to his summer home in Les Baux in the south of France. After moving permanently to the US in 1942, and taking American citizenship, he founded a school for conductors and orchestral musicians in Hancock, Maine. Among his students in France and America who went on to fame were Igor Markevitch, Neville Marriner, André Previn, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa. The school in Hancock has continued since Monteuxs death, Pierre Monteux was born in Paris, the third son and the fifth of six children of Gustave Élie Monteux, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Clémence Rebecca née Brisac. The Monteux family was descended from Sephardic Jews who settled in the south of France, the Monteux ancestors included at least one rabbi, but Gustave Monteux and his family were not religious. Among Monteuxs brothers were Henri, who became an actor, and Paul, Gustave Monteux was not musical, but his wife was a graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille and gave piano lessons. Pierre took violin lessons from the age of six, when he was nine years old Monteux was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris. He studied the violin with Jules Garcin and Henri Berthelier, composition with Charles Lenepveu and his fellow violin students included George Enescu, Carl Flesch, Fritz Kreisler and Jacques Thibaud. Among the piano students at the Conservatoire was Alfred Cortot, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship, at the age of twelve, Monteux organised and conducted a small orchestra of Conservatoire students to accompany Cortot in performances of concertos in and around Paris. He attended the premiere of César Francks Symphony in February 1889. At the age of fifteen, while continuing his violin studies and he studied privately with Benjamin Godard, with whom he performed in the premiere of Saint-Saënss Septet, with the composer at the keyboard. Monteux joined the Geloso Quartet as violist, he played concerts with them
32.
Ludwig van Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he one of the most famous. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies,5 piano concertos,1 violin concerto,32 piano sonatas,16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant in the Flemish region of what is now Belgium, who at the age of twenty moved to Bonn. Ludwig was employed as a singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained proudly displayed in his grandsons rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann, who worked as a tenor in the musical establishment and gave keyboard. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767, she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no record of the date of his birth, however. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776. Beethovens first music teacher was his father and he later had other local teachers, the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, and Franz Rovantini. Beethovens musical talent was obvious at a young age, some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Courts Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition, Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, and then as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi. His first three piano sonatas, named Kurfürst for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783, Maximilian Frederick noticed Beethovens talent early, and subsidised and encouraged the young mans musical studies. Maximilian Fredericks successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts
33.
Leonard Slatkin
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Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor, author and composer. Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father, Felix Slatkin, was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet and his brother, Frederick, now a cellist, traced the familys original name as Zlotkin, and adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally. Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the lineage as follows, The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian-Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felixs father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin and he probably came from the town of Mogilev, from a shtetl. The Altschuler side of the family is really rife with musicians. Grishas uncle, Modest Altschuler, was a cellist and he had quite a career, among other things, he did the St. Petersburg premiere of Tchaikovskys Souvenir de Florence Sextet. When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony Orchestra, Slatkin studied at Indiana University and Los Angeles City College before attending the Juilliard School where he studied conducting under Jean Morel. He also studied with Walter Susskind at the Aspen Music Festival, while in St. Louis, Slatkin hosted for three years a weekly KDNA radio station program called The Slatkin Project. He left St. Louis in 1977 to become director of the New Orleans Symphony. He led a series of Beethoven festivals with the San Francisco Symphony during the late 1970s and these annual concerts, held during June, included the orchestras final concert in San Franciscos War Memorial Opera House in 1980, which featured a performance of Beethovens ninth symphony. Slatkin returned to Saint Louis in 1979 as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the national profile of the orchestra increased notably under his tenure, and the SLSO became one of the most acclaimed orchestras in the country. The ensemble toured and recorded frequently, and impressed critics and audiences alike with its fine musicianship, in 1985, he recorded the first digital stereo version of Tchaikovskys The Nutcracker with the SLSO. Upon the conclusion of his tenure in 1996, he became the SLSOs conductor laureate and his recorded work with that orchestra was represented on RCA Victor Red Seal, EMI, Vox Records, and Telarc. Slatkin became a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team during his tenure in St Louis. Slatkin was the director of the Blossom Festival of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1990 to 1999, Slatkin was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. from 1996 to 2008. In 2000, Slatkin became the conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2001, he was only the second person to conduct the Last Night of the Proms. He held this post until September 11,2004, the 110th Last Night, in 2005, he became the principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London
34.
Empire of Japan
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The Empire of Japan was the historical Japanese nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the enactment of the 1947 constitution of modern Japan. Imperial Japans rapid industrialization and militarization under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei led to its emergence as a world power, after several large-scale military successes during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, the Empire also gained notoriety for its war crimes against the peoples it conquered. A period of occupation by the Allies followed the surrender, Occupation and reconstruction continued well into the 1950s, eventually forming the current nation-state whose full title is the State of Japan or simply rendered Japan in English. The historical state is referred to as the Empire of Japan or the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan in English. In Japanese it is referred to as Dai Nippon Teikoku, which translates to Greater Japanese Empire and this is analogous to Großdeutsches Reich, a term that translates to Greater German Empire in English and Dai Doitsu Teikoku in Japanese. This meaning is significant in terms of geography, encompassing Japan, due to its name in kanji characters and its flag, it was also given the exonym Empire of the Sun. After two centuries, the policy, or Sakoku, under the shoguns of the Edo period came to an end when the country was forced open to trade by the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. The following years saw increased trade and interaction, commercial treaties between the Tokugawa shogunate and Western countries were signed. In large part due to the terms of these Unequal Treaties, the Shogunate soon faced internal hostility, which materialized into a radical, xenophobic movement. In March 1863, the Emperor issued the order to expel barbarians, although the Shogunate had no intention of enforcing the order, it nevertheless inspired attacks against the Shogunate itself and against foreigners in Japan. The Namamugi Incident during 1862 led to the murder of an Englishman, Charles Lennox Richardson, the British demanded reparations but were denied. While attempting to exact payment, the Royal Navy was fired on from coastal batteries near the town of Kagoshima and they responded by bombarding the port of Kagoshima in 1863. For Richardsons death, the Tokugawa government agreed to pay an indemnity, shelling of foreign shipping in Shimonoseki and attacks against foreign property led to the Bombardment of Shimonoseki by a multinational force in 1864. The Chōshū clan also launched the coup known as the Kinmon incident. The Satsuma-Chōshū alliance was established in 1866 to combine their efforts to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu, in early 1867, Emperor Kōmei died of smallpox and was replaced by his son, Crown Prince Mutsuhito. On November 9,1867, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned from his post and authorities to the Emperor, however, while Yoshinobus resignation had created a nominal void at the highest level of government, his apparatus of state continued to exist. On January 3,1868, Satsuma-Chōshū forces seized the palace in Kyoto. On January 17,1868, Yoshinobu declared that he would not be bound by the proclamation of the Restoration, on January 24, Yoshinobu decided to prepare an attack on Kyoto, occupied by Satsuma and Chōshū forces
35.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
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The attack, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, led to the United States entry into World War II. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U. S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions they planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the next seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U. S. -held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, the attack commenced at 7,48 a. m. The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese fighter planes, bombers, all eight U. S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but the USS Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service, the Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 188 U. S. aircraft were destroyed,2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the station, shipyard, maintenance. Japanese losses were light,29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, one Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured. The surprise attack came as a shock to the American people. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan, the U. S. responded with a declaration of war against Germany and Italy. Domestic support for non-interventionism, which had been fading since the Fall of France in 1940, Roosevelt to proclaim December 7,1941, a date which will live in infamy. Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, over the next decade, Japan continued to expand into China, leading to all-out war between those countries in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China and achieve sufficient resource independence to attain victory on the mainland, from December 1937, events such as the Japanese attack on USS Panay, the Allison incident, and the Nanking Massacre swung public opinion in the West sharply against Japan. Fearing Japanese expansion, the United States, the United Kingdom, in 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to control supplies reaching China. The United States halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline to Japan, an invasion of the Philippines was also considered necessary by Japanese war planners. War Plan Orange had envisioned defending the Philippines with a 40 and this was opposed by Douglas MacArthur, who felt that he would need a force ten times that size, and was never implemented. By 1941, U. S. planners anticipated abandonment of the Philippines at the outbreak of war and orders to that effect were given in late 1941 to Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet
36.
Hawaii
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Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States of America, having received statehood on August 21,1959. Hawaii is the only U. S. state located in Oceania and it is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is the only U. S. state not located in the Americas, the state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian archipelago, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are—in order from northwest to southeast, Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the Island of Hawaiʻi. The last is the largest island in the group, it is called the Big Island or Hawaiʻi Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania, Hawaii has over a million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U. S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii is the 8th-smallest and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the fifty U. S. states. It is the state with an Asian plurality. The states coastline is about 750 miles long, the fourth longest in the U. S. after the coastlines of Alaska, Florida, the state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that was named for Hawaiʻiloa and he is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled. The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian *Sawaiki, cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori, Rarotongan and Samoan. According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, lsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the home, but in Hawaii. A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as an official state language. The title of the constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii, diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949, predates the use of the okina and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography. The exact spelling of the name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications, department and office titles, and the Seal of Hawaii use the spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length
37.
Treaty of San Francisco
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It came into force on April 28,1952. This treaty made extensive use of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to enunciate the Allies goals, disagreement over Chinese participation, neither North nor South Korea was invited. Italy was not invited either, notwithstanding the fact that the government had issued a declaration of war to Japan on July 14,1945. Pakistan as a state had not existed at the time of the war but was invited anyway since it was a state to British India. Portugal was also not invited—even though its territory of East Timor had been invaded by Japan, the Soviet Union took part in the San Francisco conference, and the Soviet delegation was led by the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. From the start of the conference the Soviet Union expressed vigorous and vocal opposition to the treaty text prepared by the United States. The Soviet delegation made several unsuccessful attempts to stall the proceedings. The Soviet Unions objections were detailed in a lengthy September 8,1951 statement by Gromyko. S and it was not until October 19,1956, that Japan and the Soviet Union signed a Joint Declaration ending the war and reestablishing diplomatic relations. The ongoing Chinese Civil War and thus the question of which Chinese government was presented a dilemma to conference organizers. As a compromise, neither government was invited, on August 15,1951 and September 18,1951 the PRC published statements denouncing the treaty, stating that it was illegal and should not be recognized. Besides their general exclusion from the process, the PRC claimed that Xisha, Nansha and Dongsha in the South China Sea were actually part of China. The treaty either did not address these islands, or in the case of the Pratas Islands turned them over to the United Nations, a major player in providing support for a post-war free Japan was the delegation from Ceylon. R. Jayawardene spoke in defence of a free Japan and informed the conference of Ceylons refusal to accept the payment of reparations that would harm Japans economy. We do not intend to do so for we believe in the words of the Great Teacher whose message has ennobled the lives of millions in Asia. He ended the speech by saying This treaty is as magnanimous as it is just to a defeated foe. Minister Jayewardenes speech was received with resounding applause, afterwards the New York Times stated, The voice of free Asia, eloquent, melancholy and still strong with the lilt of an Oxford accent, dominated the Japanese peace treaty conference today. Of the 51 participating countries,48 signed the treaty, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Philippines ratified the San Francisco Treaty on July 16,1956, after the signing of a reparations agreement between both countries in May of that year. Indonesia did not ratify the San Francisco Peace Treaty, instead, it signed with Japan a bilateral reparations agreement and peace treaty on January 20,1958
38.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
39.
Kurt Herbert Adler
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Kurt Herbert Adler was an Austrian-born American conductor and opera house director. Adler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family and his work in the field of music led him to become the assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival in 1936 and he also worked in Italy. Following the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, as a Jew he was forced to leave, gaetano Merola, then General Director of the San Francisco Opera, heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to the San Francisco Opera in 1943 as chorus director. In the following ten years, he took on more and more details as Merolas health. Adlers aims in taking over the company were several, one was to expand the season and, by the 1969 season, eleven operas were given five or six performances each on average while the season ran to late November. He was tireless in seeking out up-and-coming new singers, whether American or European and he retired in late December 1981 and continued to conduct and be involved with music until his death in Ross, California in 1988. The Adler Fellowship program was started in his name by Terence A. McEwen to support young singers managed by the San Francisco Opera and his son Ronald H. Adler is an opera director and has been artistic director at the Bavarian State Opera and the Berlin State Opera. Tradition is what you resort to when you dont have the time and money to do it right
40.
The Pointer Sisters
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The Pointer Sisters are an American R&B singing group from Oakland, California, that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Spanning over four decades, their repertoire has included such genres as pop, disco, jazz, electronic music, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country. The Pointer Sisters have won three Grammy Awards and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994, the group had 13 US top 20 hits between 1973 and 1985. The group had its origins when sisters June and Bonnie Pointer began performing in clubs in 1969 as Pointers, the line-up grew to a trio when sister Anita Pointer joined them. They scored a deal with Atlantic Records and released several unsuccessful singles. The trio grew to a quartet when sister Ruth joined in December 1972 and they then signed with Blue Thumb Records, recorded their debut album, and began seeing more success, winning a Grammy Award in 1975 for Best Country Vocal Performance for Fairytale. Bonnie left the group in 1978 to commence a career with only modest success. The group achieved its greatest commercial success as a trio during the 1980s consisting of the line-up of June, Ruth, and Anita, winning two more Grammys for the top 10 hits Jump and Automatic. The groups other U. S. top 10 hits are Fire, Hes So Shy, Slow Hand, the remixed version of Im So Excited and Neutron Dance. June Pointer, the youngest sister, struggled with addiction for much of her career, leaving the group in April 2004 and dying from extensive cancer in April 2006. She was replaced by Ruths daughter Issa Pointer and this trio had a number two hit in Belgium in 2005, covering Sisters Are Doin It for Themselves with Belgian singer Natalia. Since 2009, the group has consisted of Anita, Ruth, Issa, while all four women remain in the group, they most often perform as a trio rotating the lineup as needed. In December 2016, Billboard magazine ranked them as the 80th most successful artists of all-time. As children in West Oakland, the Pointer sisters and brothers were encouraged to listen to and sing music by their parents Reverend Elton Pointer. However, they were rock and roll and the blues were the devils music. They regularly sang at a local Church of God in Christ congregation in West Oakland, the sisters graduated from Oakland Technical High School, Ruth in 1963, Anita in 1965, and Bonnie in 1968. After leaving school Ruth, the oldest sister, was married with two children Faun and Malik, Anita, the second oldest sister, also was married with a child Jada. Bonnie, the third oldest sister, and June sought a business career and they formed a duo, Pointers
41.
Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
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Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2, 743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco Symphony a permanent home, previously, the symphony shared the neighboring War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. The construction of Davies Hall allowed the symphony to expand to a full-time, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Pietro Belluschi along with acoustical consultants Bolt, Beranek and Newman, its modern design is visually elegant both inside and out. Architects created acoustic isolation of the space by constructing a building within a building. The outer building uses one inch thick structural glass as a curtain wall, passing through a door leads to a hallway, bounded on one side by the lobby wall and on the other by the structural wall of the inner building. This continuous hallway acts as an acoustical isolator and is surfaced with sound absorbing material, however, the halls large volume and seating capacity initially resulted in less than ideal results. Kirkegaard Associates completed acoustical renovations in 1992 at a cost of $10 million which resulted in substantial improvement, in addition, risers were installed on stage to allow the musicians to both see and hear each other better. These and other improvements enhanced not only the acoustics but also the halls beauty, the Fratelli Ruffatti electro-pneumatic pipe organ with 147 ranks was added in 1984. It is designed to accommodate repertory from the pre-baroque to the present, the console can be electronically reprogrammed to correspond to the two major schools of organ keyboard organization - the German and the French. In addition to the hall itself, an adjoining building contains the Harold L. Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall. The largest of these was designed to be the size as the stage of the Opera House across the street to accommodate Opera. A proposed recital hall was never built, that portion of the site remains empty, a Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Large Four Piece Reclining Figure 1972–73, is displayed outside the hall at the corner of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue. Davies Hall also occasionally hosts non-orchestral performances by contemporary musicians, list of concert halls Robert Commanday. Davies Hall Renovation Applauded - Symphony Opens With Glorious Sound, archived from the original on 2006-10-31. The Davies Symphony Acoustical Canopy Control System, archived from the original on 2007-03-11. Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall Panoramic view Davies Symphony Hall
42.
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
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The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred in Northern California on October 17 at 5,04 p. m. local time. With a moment magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX, no surface faulting occurred, though a large number of other ground failures and landslides were present, especially in the Summit area of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Due to the coverage of the 1989 World Series, it became the first major earthquake in the United States that was broadcast live on national television. Andrew Lawson, a geologist from the University of California, Berkeley, had named the fault after the San Andreas Lake and later led an investigation into that event. The San Andreas Fault ruptured for a length of 290 mi during the 1906 shock, several long term forecasts for a large shock along the San Andreas Fault in that area had been made public prior to 1989 but the earthquake that transpired was not what had been anticipated. The 1989 Loma Prieta event originated on an undiscovered oblique-slip reverse fault that is located adjacent to the San Andreas Fault, since many forecasts had been presented for the region near Loma Prieta, seismologists were not taken by surprise by the October 1989 event. Two moderate shocks, referred to as the Lake Elsman earthquakes by the USGS, occurred in the Santa Cruz Mountains region in June 1988, each events aftershock sequence and effect on stress drop was closely examined, and their study indicated that the shocks affected the mainshocks rupture process. The June 27,1988, shock occurred with an intensity of VI. Its effects included broken windows in Los Gatos, and other damage in Holy City. Farther away from the Santa Cruz Mountains, pieces of concrete fell from a structure at the Sunnyvale Town Center. More moderate damage resulted from the August 8,1989, shock when chimneys were toppled in Cupertino, Los Gatos, other damage included cracked walls and foundations and broken underground pipes. At the office of the Los Gatos City Manager, a window that was cracked had also broken in the earlier shock. Also in Los Gatos, one man died when he exited a building through a window, the Loma Prieta earthquake was named for Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which lies just to the east of the mainshock epicenter. At sites with rocky terrain, the duration was shorter and the shaking was much less intense, the strong motion records also allowed for the causative fault to be determined – the rupture was related to the San Andreas Fault System. While a Mercalli Intensity of VIII covered a large swath of territory relatively close to the further to the north. At more than 44 miles distant, the San Francisco Bay Area recorded peak horizontal accelerations that were as high as 0. 26g, in a general way, the location of aftershocks of the event delineated the extent of the faulting, which extended about 24 miles in length. Because the rupture took place bilaterally, the duration of strong shaking was about half of what it would have been had it ruptured in one direction only, the duration of a typical M6.9 shock with a comparable rupture length would have been about twice as long. Gregory Beroza, a seismologist with Stanford University, made several distinctions regarding the 1906 and 1989 events, near Loma Prieta, the 1906 rupture was more shallow, had more strike-slip, and occurred on a fault that was near vertical
43.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
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Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP is an American architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings, with a portfolio spanning thousands of projects across 50 countries, SOM is one of the largest architectural firms in the world. Their primary expertise is in commercial buildings, as it was SOM that led the way to the widespread use of the modern international-style or glass box skyscraper. They have designed several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the John Hancock Center, Willis Tower, due to their faithful following of Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohes ideas, Frank Lloyd Wright nicknamed them The Three Blind Mies. Notable SOM architects include, Edward Charles Bassett, Natalie de Blois, Gordon Bunshaft, David Childs, Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, Gertrude Kerbis, Fazlur Rahman Khan. Lucien Lagrange, Walter Netsch, Larry Oltmanns, Brigitte Peterhans, Adrian Smith, indeed, Khan is responsible for developing the algorithms that made the Hancock building and many subsequent skyscrapers possible. Another notable SOM engineer is Bill Baker, who is best known as the engineer of Burj Khalifa, to support the towers record heights and slim footprint, he developed the buttressed core structural system, consisting of a hexagonal core reinforced by three buttresses that form a Y shape. Davis Allen, a pioneer in corporate interior design, had a tenure at SOM. Throughout its history, SOM has been recognized more than 1,700 awards for quality. More than 900 of these awards have received since 1998. In 1996 and 1962, SOM received the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects, SOM is the only firm to have received this honor twic13 R+D Awards from Architect Magazine. In addition, a collaboration between SOM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology, was honored with a fifth award. SOM has completed over 10,000 projects around the United States and in more than 50 other countries around the world, london, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Abu Dhabi. Smaller field offices supplement these in such as the Philippines. Burj Khalifa is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 829.8 m, construction began on 21 September 2004, and the building officially opened on 4 January 2010. The towers architect and engineer was Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, george J. Efstathiou was the Managing Partner for the project. Bill Baker, the Chief Structural Engineer for the project, invented the buttressed core structural system in order to enable the tower to achieve such heights economically, Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill until 2006, was the Consulting Design Partner. The primary builder is a joint venture of South Korean Samsung C&T, one World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, is located in Manhattan, New York City, and is 1,776 ft high, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere
44.
Seismic retrofit
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Seismic retrofitting is the modification of existing structures to make them more resistant to seismic activity, ground motion, or soil failure due to earthquakes. With better understanding of demand on structures and with our recent experiences with large earthquakes near urban centers. In view of the imminent problem, various research work has been carried out and these codes must be regularly updated, the 1994 Northridge earthquake brought to light the brittleness of welded steel frames, for example. The retrofit techniques outlined here are also applicable for other natural hazards such as cyclones, tornadoes. Seismic retrofit strategies have developed in the past few decades following the introduction of new seismic provisions. This is typically done by the addition of cross braces or new structural walls, reduction of the seismic demand by means of supplementary damping and/or use of base isolation systems. Increasing the local capacity of structural elements and this is a counter intuitive strategy to change the inelastic mechanism of the structure, while recognising the inherent capacity of the structure. Allowing sliding connections such as bridges to accommodate additional movement between seismically independent structures. Addition of seismic friction dampers to brace weak structures and provide damping, in the past, seismic retrofit was primarily applied to achieve public safety, with engineering solutions limited by economic and political considerations. However, with the development of Performance based earthquake engineering, several levels of objectives are gradually recognised. The goal is to human life, ensuring that the structure will not collapse upon its occupants or passersby. Under severe seismic conditions the structure may be a total economic write-off, requiring tear-down, the goal is that the structure, while remaining safe for exit, may require extensive repair before it is generally useful or considered safe for occupation. This is typically the lowest level of retrofit applied to bridges, primary structure undamaged and the structure is undiminished in utility for its primary application. A high level of retrofit, this ensures that any required repairs are only cosmetic – for example, minor cracks in plaster, drywall and this is the minimum acceptable level of retrofit for hospitals. This level of retrofit is preferred for historic structures of cultural significance. Common seismic retrofitting techniques fall into categories, The use of external post-tensioning for new structural systems have been developed in the past decade. Pre-stressing can increase the capacity of structural elements such as beam and it should be noted that external pre-stressing has been used for structural upgrade for gravity/live loading since the 1970s. This earthquake engineering technology, which is a kind of vibration control
45.
Davies Symphony Hall
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Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2, 743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francisco Symphony a permanent home, previously, the symphony shared the neighboring War Memorial Opera House with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet. The construction of Davies Hall allowed the symphony to expand to a full-time, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Pietro Belluschi along with acoustical consultants Bolt, Beranek and Newman, its modern design is visually elegant both inside and out. Architects created acoustic isolation of the space by constructing a building within a building. The outer building uses one inch thick structural glass as a curtain wall, passing through a door leads to a hallway, bounded on one side by the lobby wall and on the other by the structural wall of the inner building. This continuous hallway acts as an acoustical isolator and is surfaced with sound absorbing material, however, the halls large volume and seating capacity initially resulted in less than ideal results. Kirkegaard Associates completed acoustical renovations in 1992 at a cost of $10 million which resulted in substantial improvement, in addition, risers were installed on stage to allow the musicians to both see and hear each other better. These and other improvements enhanced not only the acoustics but also the halls beauty, the Fratelli Ruffatti electro-pneumatic pipe organ with 147 ranks was added in 1984. It is designed to accommodate repertory from the pre-baroque to the present, the console can be electronically reprogrammed to correspond to the two major schools of organ keyboard organization - the German and the French. In addition to the hall itself, an adjoining building contains the Harold L. Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall. The largest of these was designed to be the size as the stage of the Opera House across the street to accommodate Opera. A proposed recital hall was never built, that portion of the site remains empty, a Henry Moore bronze sculpture, Large Four Piece Reclining Figure 1972–73, is displayed outside the hall at the corner of Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue. Davies Hall also occasionally hosts non-orchestral performances by contemporary musicians, list of concert halls Robert Commanday. Davies Hall Renovation Applauded - Symphony Opens With Glorious Sound, archived from the original on 2006-10-31. The Davies Symphony Acoustical Canopy Control System, archived from the original on 2007-03-11. Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall Panoramic view Davies Symphony Hall
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