California

Coit Tower is a 210-foot tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in... 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco; Coit bequeathed one-third of her estate to the city "to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved". The art deco tower, made of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard, with fresco murals by 27 different on-site artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation off-site. The tower was not designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle, despite Coit's affinity with the San Francisco firefighters of the day, in particular with Knickerbocker Engine Company Number 5. Coit Tower was paid for with money left by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a wealthy socialite who loved to chase fires in the early days of the city's history. The tower took five years to construct.
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The San Francisco Ferry Building is a terminal for ferries that travel across the San Francisco Bay and a shopping center located on The Embarcadero... in San Francisco, California. On top of the building is a large clock tower, which can be seen from Market Street, a main thoroughfare of the city. Architecturally, the clock tower was modeled after the 12th century Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain. During daylight, on every full and half-hour, the clock bell chime portions of the Westminster Quarters. The chimes are a recording and play through several sets of very large speakers in the tower and are not connected to the tower clock mechanism. The present structure, designed by local San Francisco architect A. Page Brown, opened in 1898, replacing its wooden predecessor, and survived both the 1906 earthquake and the 1989 earthquake with little damage. Until the completion of the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s it was the second busiest transit terminal in the world, second only to London's Charing Cross Station. It served as the embarcation point for commuters to San Francisco from the East Bay who rode the ferry fleets of the Southern Pacific and the Key System.
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Pier 39 is a shopping center and popular tourist attraction built on a pier in San Francisco, California. At Pier 39, there are shops, restaurants, a... video arcade, street performances, an interpretive center for the Marine Mammal Center, the Aquarium of the Bay, virtual 3D rides, and views of California sea lions hauled out on docks on Pier 39's marina. The marina is also home to the floating Forbes Island restaurant. A two-story carousel is one of the pier's more dominant features, although it is not directly visible from the street and sits towards the end of the pier. The family-oriented entertainment and presence of marine mammals make this a popular tourist location for families with kids. The pier is located at the edge of the Fisherman's Wharf district and is close to North Beach, Chinatown, and the Embarcadero. The area is easily accessible via the historic F Market streetcars. From the pier one can see Angel Island, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Bridge. Blue & Gold Fleet's bay cruises leave from Pier 39. Pier 39 was first developed by entrepreneur Warren Simmons and opened October 4, 1978. California Sea Lions have been always present in San Francisco Bay.
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The Camera Obscura in San Francisco is a large-scale camera obscura and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is located near the... Cliff House restaurant perched on the headlands on the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach on the western side of San Francisco, California. The Camera and restaurant are currently owned by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Cameras obscura, devices which project an image of the surroundings onto a surface using only existing exterior light sources, usually sunlight, have a long history in San Francisco. The first recorded reference to one in the city is from the 1860s in an attraction called Woodward's Gardens. A previous incarnation of the Cliff House was noted to have had a camera obscura on its fourth floor in 1896. This camera obscura was destroyed when the restaurant burned down in 1907. When the fourth Cliff House opened in 1937, the owner was approached by businessman Floyd Jennings with the idea of adding a camera obscura to the cliffs behind the restaurant. It was installed on the site in 1946 and has been in continuous operation since then.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger is the 38th and current governor of the US State of California.  He is also known as a famous Bodybuilder, actor and businessman. Born in Thal Austria to Aurelia Jardny and Gustav Schwarzenegger, Schwarzenegger had a strong interest in sports and weight training at a... young age. In 1968 at the age of 21, Schwarzenegger moved to the United States even though he spoke very little English. He would continue to weight train and lift competitively to eventually gain his first Mr. Olympia title in New York in 1970. Schwarzenegger became active as an actor in 1970 with his debut in Hercules in New York.  He would continue to act professionally until 2004. In 2003 he was elected to his current position as the Governor of California in the 2003 recall elections and won re-election in 2006.
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Billy Bob Thornton is an American actor, screenwriter, director and musician. Thornton gained early recognition as a cast member on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire and in several early 1990s films including On Deadly Ground and Tombstone. In the mid-1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the... independent film Sling Blade, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He appeared in several major film roles following Sling Blade 's success, including 1998's Armageddon and A Simple Plan. During the late 1990s, Thornton began a career as a singer-songwriter. He has released three albums and was the singer of a blues rock band. Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the son of Virginia Roberta , a psychic, and William Raymond "Billy Ray" Thornton , a high school history teacher and basketball coach who died when Thornton was 18. He has two younger brothers, Jimmy Don , who died abruptly of a heart attack at 30, and John David , who resides in California.
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Tara Leigh Patrick , professionally known as Carmen Electra, is an American glamour model, actress, television personality, singer, and dancer. She gained fame for her appearances in Playboy magazine, on the MTV game show Singled Out, on the TV series Baywatch, and dancing with the Pussycat Dolls,... and has since had roles in the parody films Scary Movie , Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie. Electra was born in Sharonville, Ohio, the daughter of Patricia, a singer, and Harry, a guitarist and entertainer. She attended Ann Weigel Elementary School and then studied dance at Dance Artists dance studio under Gloria J. Simpson, in Western Hills, a neighborhood of Cincinnati. Her mother died of a brain tumor in 1998. Her older sister Debbie died from a heart attack, also in 1998. Carmen graduated from Princeton High School in Sharonville. She also attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts in the Cincinnati Public School District . She has Irish, German, and Cherokee ancestry.
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Henry Rollins is an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor, and radio DJ. After performing for the short-lived Washington D.C.-based band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore punk band Black Flag from August 1981 until... mid-1986. Following the band's breakup, Rollins soon established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, as well as forming the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 until 2003, and during 2006. Since Black Flag disbanded, Rollins has embarked on projects covering a variety of media. He has hosted numerous radio shows, such as Harmony in My Head on Indie 103, and television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show, MTV's 120 Minutes, and Jackass. He had a recurring dramatic role in the second season of Sons of Anarchy and has also had roles in several films.
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Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 35th most... populous, and the 9th least densely populated of the 50 United States. It is the most extensive U.S. state that does not border Canada, Mexico, or an ocean. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its three largest incorporated cities. Nevada's capital is Carson City. Nevada is largely desert and semiarid, with much of it located within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are located within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada mountains lie on the western edge. Approximately 86% of the state's land is owned by the US government under various jurisdictions, both civilian and military. The name Nevada is derived from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, which means "snow-capped mountain range" in Spanish. The land comprising the modern state was inhabited by Native Americans of the Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe tribes prior to European contact.
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Arizona is a state of the United States, located in the southwestern region of the country. Arizona is also part of the Western United States and... of the Mountain West states. Arizona is the sixth most extensive and the 16th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. The second largest city is Tucson, followed in population by eight cities of the Phoenix metropolitan area: Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, Scottsdale, Gilbert, Tempe, Peoria, and Surprise. These are followed next by Yuma in Yuma County. Arizona is the 48th state and last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the Union, and it achieved statehood on February 14, 1912. Arizona is noted for its desert climate in its southern half, where there are very hot summers and quite mild winters. The northern half of Arizona also features forests of pine, Douglas fir, and spruce trees, a very large, high plateau and some mountain ranges—such as the San Francisco Mountains—as well as large, deep canyons, where there is much more moderate weather for three seasons of the year, plus significant snowfalls.
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