San Diego

Hotel del Coronado is a beachfront luxury hotel in the city of Coronado, just across the San Diego Bay from San Diego, California. It is one of the... few surviving examples of an American architectural genre: the wooden Victorian beach resort. It is one of the oldest and largest all-wooden buildings in California and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, and is a designated California Historical Landmark. When it opened in 1888, it was the largest resort hotel in the world and the first to use electrical lighting. It has hosted presidents, royalty, and celebrities throughout the years. The hotel has been featured in numerous movies and books. The hotel received the Four Diamond rating from the American Automobile Association, and was once listed by USA Today as one of the "Top 10 Resorts In The World", though it has since been removed from that list. In the mid-1880s, the San Diego region was in the midst of one of its first real estate booms. At that time, it was common for a developer to build a grand hotel as a draw for what would otherwise be a barren landscape.
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The original Point Loma Lighthouse was built on top of Point Loma at the mouth of San Diego Bay in San Diego, California. It is situated in the... Cabrillo National Monument. Construction began on the lighthouse in early 1854 and was completed in November 1855. The light was first lit on November 15, 1855. On March 23, 1891 the flame was permanently extinguished, since occasional fogs rendered the lighthouse useless and the Point Loma Light was built that year. In 1984, the light was re-lit by the National Park Service for the first time in 93 years, in celebration of the site’s 130th birthday. Historical Information from USCG web site Written by Harmon Lougher, Chief Photographer’s Mate, U. S. Coast Guard prior to 1973 "The long neck of land enclosing North San Diego Bay on the West side is known as Point Loma. The origin of the name comes from a legend of a flaxen haired little Russian girl, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, who was found wandering on shore. The local residents took her in and named her Loma and she grew up to become the cynosure of many ardent male eyes.
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The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California that houses a broad collection with particular... strength in Spanish art. The San Diego Museum of Art opened as The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926, and changed its name to the San Diego Museum of Art in 1978. The official Balboa Park website calls the San Diego Museum of Art "the region's oldest and largest art museum". Nearly half a million people visit the museum each year. The museum building was designed by architects William Templeton Johnson and Robert W. Snyder in a plateresque style to harmonize with existing structures from the Panama–California Exposition of 1915. The dominant feature of the façade is a heavily ornamented door inspired by a doorway at the University of Salamanca. The Cathedral of Valladolid also influenced the museum's exterior design, and the architects derived interior motifs from the Santa Cruz Hospital of Toledo, Spain. The original construction took two years. Sponsor Appleton S. Bridges donated the building to the City of San Diego upon its completion.
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Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more... than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages.
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Robin Gayle Wright is an American actress. She first rose to fame on the television series Santa Barbara as Kelly Capwell which earned her three... Daytime Emmy nominations. She went on to star in films such as The Princess Bride and Toys, both of which earned her nominations for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. She then starred as Jenny Curran in Forrest Gump, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture nomination. She has starred in films such as Message in a Bottle, Unbreakable, White Oleander, The Conspirator, Moneyball and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She has also been credited as Robin Wright Penn. Wright was born Robin Gayle Wright in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Gayle , an Independent Executive National Sales Director for Mary Kay cosmetics, and Freddie Gayle Wright, a pharmaceutical executive. She was raised in San Diego, California. She attended La Jolla High School in La Jolla, California. She was listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1986" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 38. [1986].
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Cameron Diaz is an American Award-Winning Actress and one of the highest paid actress in Hollywood. She is best known for her roles in: There's... something about Mary, Being John Malkovich, and Charlie’s Angels.
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Joseph Michael Straczynski , known professionally as J. Michael Straczynski and informally as Joe Straczynski or JMS, is an American writer and... television producer. He works in films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas. He is a playwright, a former journalist, and author of The Complete Book of Scriptwriting. He was the creator and showrunner for the science fiction television series Babylon 5, and its spin-off Crusade, and of Jeremiah. Straczynski wrote 92 out of the 110 Babylon 5 episodes, notably including an unbroken 59-episode run through the third and fourth seasons, and all but one episode of the fifth season. He also wrote the four Babylon 5 TV movies produced alongside the series. From 2001 to 2007, he was the writer for the long-running Marvel comic book series The Amazing Spider-Man. In 2009, Straczynski was nominated for the BAFTA Award for his screenplay for Changeling. Straczynski is a long-time participant in Usenet and other early computer networks, interacting with fans through various online forums since 1984.
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Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s,... including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About Bob?, Poseidon, and Mr. Holland's Opus. Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated in 1995 for Mr. Holland's Opus. He has also won a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and was nominated in 2002 for Screen Actors Guild Awards in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries categories. Dreyfuss was born Richard Stephen Dreyfus in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Norman, an attorney and restaurateur, and Geraldine, a peace activist. Dreyfuss is Jewish. He has commented that he "grew up thinking that Alfred Dreyfus and [he] are of the same family." His father disliked New York City, and moved the family first to Europe, and later to Los Angeles, when Dreyfuss was nine. Dreyfuss attended Beverly Hills High School.
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Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat... on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s. Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, part of the broader social changes the city was experiencing. Milk served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.
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Gregory Dale Bear is an American science fiction and mainstream author. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict , artificial universes ,... consciousness and cultural practices , and accelerated evolution . His most current work is the Forerunner Trilogy, written in the Halo universe. Bear was born in San Diego, California. He sold his first story, "Destroyers," to Famous Science Fiction in 1967. He attended San Diego State University , where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1975, he married Christina M. Nielson; they divorced in 1981. In 1983, he married Astrid Anderson, the daughter of science fiction author Poul Anderson. They have two children, Erik and Alexandra. Erik is currently training in Bartitsu Cane Fighting and German Longsword in Capitol Hill. They live near Seattle, Washington. He is a deist. Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction author, based on the scientific details in his work.
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Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the... course of his career. A veteran character actor, Duvall has starred in some of the most acclaimed and popular films and TV shows of all time, among them The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, To Kill a Mockingbird, THX 1138, Joe Kidd, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, MASH, Network, True Grit, Bullitt, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Tender Mercies, The Natural and Lonesome Dove. He began appearing in theater as a handsome young lead actor during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s in such works as To Kill a Mockingbird and Captain Newman, M.D. . He started to land much larger roles during the early 1970s with films like the blockbuster comedy MASH and the lead in George Lucas's THX 1138 .
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Nicholas Scott "Nick" Cannon is an American actor, comedian, rapper, entrepreneur, record producer, radio, Chairman,and television personality. On... television, Cannon began as a teenage sketch comedian on All That before going on to host The Nick Cannon Show, Wild 'N Out, and America's Got Talent. He acted in the films Drumline, Love Don't Cost a Thing, and Roll Bounce. As a rapper, he released his debut self-titled album in 2003 with the hit single "Gigolo", a collaboration with singer R. Kelly. In 2006, Cannon recorded singles "Dime Piece" and "My Wife" for a planned album Stages, which was never released. Cannon married American R&B/pop singer Mariah Carey on April 30, 2008. Nick Cannon was born in San Diego, to Beth Gardner and James Cannon. His father is a motivational producer and televangelist who hosted a public-access television cable TV ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina, who wrote the book The Calling for which his son wrote the foreword. As a child, Cannon divided his time with his mother and grandmother in San Diego and with his father in Charlotte. He began performing at age nine.
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Emma Caulfield is an American actress best known for her role as ex-demon Anya Jenkins on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as... Susan Keats, a love interest of Brandon Walsh's on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210. Emma Caulfield was born Emma Chukker in San Diego, California. Her mother worked as a professional singer. Emma began her acting career at a young age. In high school while she studied drama, she took parts in plays at the local La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe Theatre. She additionally traveled to The American School In England in London, England, to study drama the summer before her senior year. Her talent for acting was recognized by her fellow thespians, who awarded her the distinguished Excellence in Theatre Arts award at her high school. After graduating from the La Jolla Country Day School, she attended San Francisco State University to study psychology, but left half-way through her freshman year. Her passion for acting continued to drive her, moving her to Los Angeles at 19. Caulfield's first notable role was as Brandon Walsh's girlfriend, Susan Keats, on Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1995.
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Ted Danson is an American actor, author and producer, best known for his role as lead character Sam Malone in the sitcom Cheers, and his role as Dr.... John Becker on the series Becker. He also plays a recurring role on Larry David's HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and starred alongside Glenn Close in legal drama Damages. He was a regular on the HBO comedy series Bored to Death and has begun starring in the CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in September 2011 at the beginning of the twelfth season. In his 30-year career, Danson has been nominated for 15 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning two; ten Golden Globe Awards nominations, winning three; one Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination; one American Comedy Award and a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. He was ranked second in TV Guide's list of the top 25 television stars. Danson has also been a longtime activist in ocean conservation. In March 2011, he published his first book, Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans And What We Can Do To Save Them, written with journalist Michael D'Orso.
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Óscar Gutiérrez is an Mexican American professional wrestler best known by his ring name Rey Mysterio. He is currently signed to WWE where... he performs on the Raw brand. Gutiérrez was trained by his uncle Rey Mysterio and wrestled early on in Mexico where he learned the Lucha Libre high flying style that has been his trademark. Gutiérrez originally worked for Asistencia Asesoría y Administración in Mexico, from 1992 to 1995. He wrestled in Extreme Championship Wrestling from 1995 to 1996 and World Championship Wrestling from 1996 to 2001, as Rey Misterio, Jr./Rey Mysterio, Jr. but dropped the "Junior" from his name when he began working for WWE in 2002. Mysterio is known for having a high flying style, which helped kick-start the cruiserweight wrestling revolution in the United States in the late 1990s during his time in WCW. In WCW, Mysterio won the WCW World Cruiserweight Championship five times, the WCW World Tag Team Championship three times, and the WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship once with Billy Kidman as part of the Filthy Animals.
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