Fresno

Bulldog Stadium at Jim Sweeney Field is an outdoor football stadium on the campus of California State University, Fresno in Fresno, California. It is... the home field of the Fresno State Bulldogs of the Western Athletic Conference. The stadium opened in 1980 with a capacity of 30,000 and has a current seating capacity of 41,031. It hosted the California Bowl from 1981-91 and friendly matches prior to the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The playing field is FieldTurf and sits at an elevation of 335 feet above sea level. For Fresno State football games, both endzones are designed in a red and white checkerboard pattern in a style similar to the endzones in The University of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium. Fresno State's Bulldog mascot is depicted at midfield in an enlarged style. The field was also notable for having numerical markers every five yards rather than every ten yards, as is typical. The field went back to the normal 10 yard markings in 2009. Bulldog Stadium enjoys a reputation of having one of the premiere home football environments among universities outside of the so-called "power conferences".
more

Warnors Theatre is an historic theater in downtown Fresno, California. The two thousand seat venue opened in 1928 as the Pantages Theater, after the... name of its then owner, Alexander Pantages, and later, the Warner Theater in 1929 after it was purchased by Warner Brothers. The name was changed again in the 1960s to "Warnors" to avoid trademark issues. The theater was designed by B. Marcus Priteca, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The theater has a pipe organ, which was manufactured by the Robert Morton Organ Company of Van Nuys, California and installed in 1928. The organ boasts 14 ranks built with 1,035 pipes and a four-manual console with 720 keys, pedals and combination pistons. The organ was used primarily for motion pictures until 1973. Because of the cost of paying orchestra members, most accompanying orchestras were replaced with pipe organs.
more

Chukchansi Park, formerly Grizzlies Stadium, is a city-owned baseball stadium located in Fresno, California, completed in 2002 as the home for the... Pacific Coast League, Fresno Grizzlies. In September 2006, Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino, affiliated with the Chukchansi tribe, announced it would be the premier corporate sponsor for Grizzlies Stadium, in a 15-year, US$16 million deal. The first game was May 1, 2002. Located in downtown Fresno, it is to be an anchor in the rehabilitation of the area, as other commercial development is planned in the Central Business District Loop. The stadium was designed by Populous , the firm responsible for many of today's sports stadiums like Oriole Park at Camden Yards, PETCO Park and Comerica Park. The US$46 million facility seats 12,500, with left field dimensions of 324 ft ; center field, 402 ft ; and right field, 335 ft . The stadium's current tenants are the Pacific Coast League: Fresno Grizzlies , and the USL Premier Development League: Fresno Fuego , and is also used for soccer, music concerts, motocross events, and high school football.
more

Pete Beiden Field, formerly Varsity Park, is a baseball stadium on the campus of the California State University, Fresno in Fresno, California,... United States. It was built in 1966. The field is the home of the Fresno State Bulldogs baseball team and named after former Fresno State baseball coach Pete Beiden. The park was redesigned in 1983 and now holds 5,757 people. Prior to the 2002 opening of Grizzlies Stadium, the park also was the home of the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team of the triple-A Pacific Coast League. Originally known as Varsity Park, the field was dedicated in 1972 to Pete Beiden, Fresno State baseball coach from 1948-1969. Beiden, who led the program to 600 wins in his 21 seasons, was inducted in 1972 into the College Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Stadium lighting was installed in 1969 and updated in 1996. In 1983, the venue underwent a $2.2 million redesign. In 1998, a new scoreboard, PA system, and bleacher sections along both foul lines were added. In 1999, the natural grass infield was renovated. In 2004, the left field bleacher section was removed to allow for indoor batting cages and a clubhouse to be built.
more

William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life... in California in his native Fresno. Saroyan was born in Fresno, California to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis in the Ottoman Empire. At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan was placed in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described in his writing. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi, secured work at a cannery. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco Telegraph Company. Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father's writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s. Among these was "The Broken Wheel", written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933.
more

Phil Austin is a comedian and writer. He was born in Denver, Colorado and later grew up in Fresno, California, attending Fresno High School. He... attended Bowdoin College and UCLA, joining the staff of KPFK radio in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Austin is best known for his work as part of The Firesign Theatre , where he plays the group's best-known creation, Nick Danger. Other prominent roles are as Harry Cox, the narrator of Everything You Know Is Wrong and Bebop Loco/Lobo on Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death. He is also serves as the troupe's musician and record producer. His collection of short stories, Tales of the Old Detective and Other Big Fat Lies, is published by Audio Editions. Two of his stories appear in the third volume of Mirth of a Nation. Austin also wrote a solo work, Roller Maidens From Outer Space, and directed Eat Or Be Eaten.
more

Franklin M. "Frank" Thomas was an American animator. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as the Nine Old Men. Born in Fresno,... California, Frank Thomas attended Stanford University, where he was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity and worked on campus humor magazine The Stanford Chaparral with Ollie Johnston. After graduating from Stanford, he attended Chouinard Art Institute, then joined The Walt Disney Company on September 24, 1934 as employee number 224. There he animated dozens of feature films and shorts, and also was a member of the Dixieland band Firehouse Five Plus Two, playing the piano. His work in animated cartoon shorts included The Brave Little Tailor, in which he animated scenes of Mickey Mouse and the king; Mickey and the bear in The Pointer, and German dialogue scenes in the World War II propaganda short Education for Death .
more

Kevin Earl Federline is an American dancer, rapper, fashion model, and actor. Previously engaged to actress Shar Jackson, Federline is best known... for his two-year marriage to pop singer Britney Spears. The couple's divorce was highly publicized and was followed by an ongoing legal battle for the custody of their two sons, Sean Preston Federline and Jayden James Federline. Federline was born to parents Mike, a car mechanic, and Julie, a former bank teller from Oregon; the name Federline is of German origin. Federline has one brother, Chris. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. When Federline was eleven, he and Chris moved back to his father's Fresno house. Federline dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and soon started dancing with a nonprofit organization called Dance Empowerment. Federline later earned a GED. Federline was a backup dancer for a number of years for Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Destiny's Child, Pink, and LFO. Federline initially released two singles, "Y'all Ain't Ready" and "PopoZão," shortly after his marriage to Spears. Following poor critical reaction, neither song was included on his debut album.
more

Rostom Sipan "Ross" Bagdasarian was an American pianist, singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. He was better known by the stage name David... Seville, Bagdasarian was born in Fresno, California, the youngest child of Dick and Virginia Bagdasarian, immigrants from Armenia. He enlisted in the United States Army one month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and served until the end of World War II. Bagdasarian performed in the Broadway cast of The Time of Your Life, written by his famous cousin, William Saroyan. Bagdasarian's first musical success was the song he wrote with Saroyan, "Come on-a My House", recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1951. The lyrics are based on dialogue from Saroyan's novel The Human Comedy. They wrote the song on the post-Broadway tour bus of The Time of Your Life in 1939, and recorded it under their own names as a duet for Coral Records.
more

Carson Palmer is an American professional football quarterback for the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League . He was drafted by the... Cincinnati Bengals first overall in the 2003 NFL Draft. He played college football for the University of Southern California and won the Heisman Trophy in 2002. He has been selected to two Pro Bowls. Palmer was born in Fresno, California. He attended Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. By the time he was in seventh grade, Palmer had remarkable size and arm strength for his age. His father, Bill Palmer, enrolled him in private classes in Orange County taught by quarterback guru Bob Johnson. Palmer's father was working on the East Coast when Palmer was scheduled to enroll in Santa Margarita Catholic High School as a freshman. Initially, the plan was to move the family to the East Coast but after careful consideration, Bill Palmer realized that the level of competition in California was best for Palmer. Palmer enrolled at Santa Margarita and Bill Palmer commuted home on weekends via airplane.
more

William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life... in California in his native Fresno. Saroyan was born in Fresno, California to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis in the Ottoman Empire. At the age of three, after his father's death, Saroyan was placed in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister, an experience he later described in his writing. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother, Takoohi, secured work at a cannery. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs, such as working as an office manager for the San Francisco Telegraph Company. Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father's writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s. Among these was "The Broken Wheel", written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933.
more

Barbara Radding Morgan is an American teacher and a former NASA astronaut. She participated in the Teacher in Space program as the backup to Christa... McAuliffe for the ill-fated STS-51L mission of Space Shuttle Challenger. She then trained as a Mission Specialist, and flew on STS-118 in August 2007. Leading up to STS-118, Morgan joined Sally Ride and Shannon Lucid as female astronauts widely covered by the media. Morgan was born to Dr. and Mrs. Jerry Radding in 1951 and raised in Fresno, California, where she attended Hoover High School. Following graduation in 1969, she was accepted to Stanford University in Palo Alto, where she graduated with distinction in 1973 with a B.A. in Human Biology. She obtained her teaching credential from Notre Dame de Namur University in nearby Belmont in 1974. Morgan began her teaching career in 1974 on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary School in Arlee, Montana, where she taught remedial reading and math. From 1975 to 1978, she taught remedial reading/math and second grade at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, Idaho.
more

William Webster Hansen was a U.S. physicist who was one of the founders of the technology of microwave electronics. Hansen's father, an immigrant... from Denmark, was a hardware store owner in Fresno, California and encouraged his son's early talent in mathematics and enthusiasm for electronics. Entering Stanford University at the age of 16, he received his doctorate in 1933. He went on to become interested in the problem of accelerating electrons for X-ray experiments, using oscillating fields, rather than large static voltages. At the University of California, Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence and David H. Sloan had worked on an accelerator driven by a resonant coil. Hansen proposed replacing the coil with a cavity resonator. However, in 1937, the brothers Russel H. Varian and Sigurd F. Varian came to Stanford to work on the foundations of what was to become radar. Hansen exploited some of the Varians' work to develop the klystron and during the years 1937 to 1940, along with collaborators such as John R. Woodyard, founded the field of microwave electronics.
more

Franklin M. "Frank" Thomas was an American animator. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as the Nine Old Men. Born in Fresno,... California, Frank Thomas attended Stanford University, where he was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity and worked on campus humor magazine The Stanford Chaparral with Ollie Johnston. After graduating from Stanford, he attended Chouinard Art Institute, then joined The Walt Disney Company on September 24, 1934 as employee number 224. There he animated dozens of feature films and shorts, and also was a member of the Dixieland band Firehouse Five Plus Two, playing the piano. His work in animated cartoon shorts included The Brave Little Tailor, in which he animated scenes of Mickey Mouse and the king; Mickey and the bear in The Pointer, and German dialogue scenes in the World War II propaganda short Education for Death .
more

Kevin Earl Federline is an American dancer, rapper, fashion model, and actor. Previously engaged to actress Shar Jackson, Federline is best known... for his two-year marriage to pop singer Britney Spears. The couple's divorce was highly publicized and was followed by an ongoing legal battle for the custody of their two sons, Sean Preston Federline and Jayden James Federline. Federline was born to parents Mike, a car mechanic, and Julie, a former bank teller from Oregon; the name Federline is of German origin. Federline has one brother, Chris. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. When Federline was eleven, he and Chris moved back to his father's Fresno house. Federline dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and soon started dancing with a nonprofit organization called Dance Empowerment. Federline later earned a GED. Federline was a backup dancer for a number of years for Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Destiny's Child, Pink, and LFO. Federline initially released two singles, "Y'all Ain't Ready" and "PopoZão," shortly after his marriage to Spears. Following poor critical reaction, neither song was included on his debut album.
more

Rostom Sipan "Ross" Bagdasarian was an American pianist, singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. He was better known by the stage name David... Seville, Bagdasarian was born in Fresno, California, the youngest child of Dick and Virginia Bagdasarian, immigrants from Armenia. He enlisted in the United States Army one month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and served until the end of World War II. Bagdasarian performed in the Broadway cast of The Time of Your Life, written by his famous cousin, William Saroyan. Bagdasarian's first musical success was the song he wrote with Saroyan, "Come on-a My House", recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1951. The lyrics are based on dialogue from Saroyan's novel The Human Comedy. They wrote the song on the post-Broadway tour bus of The Time of Your Life in 1939, and recorded it under their own names as a duet for Coral Records.
more