Happy Birthday UNICEF!

UNICEF – the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund — was created on December 11, 1946.

Since then, the acronym jhas remained the same by the name has changed to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Originally, UNICEF provided food, clothes and medical care for children in countries devastated by World War II.    Read more »

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From Whom Gilroy Gets Its Name

Gilroy is named for California’s first non-Spanish permanent settler, John Gilroy.

The Scottish seaman from Inverness was actually born John Cameron. Gilroy was his mother’s maiden name, which he substituted for Cameron presumably to avoid detection.

The History of Santa Clara County published in 1881 by Alley, Bowen & Co. of San Francisco describes Gilroy as “six feet in his stockings, as straight as an arrow, broad in the shoulders, a well-proportioned frame, with a keen eye, wide forehead, and lowering brow.    Read more »

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Mike Kahl, Influential and Respected Sacramento Lobbyist, Dead at 71

Mike Kahl, one of Sacramento’s most effective and influential lobbyists for more than a quarter century died November 18 of Parkinson’s disease. He was 71.

Principled, strategic and tenacious, Kahl and his partner Fred Pownall, built one of the most respected and one of the biggest grossing lobbying firms in Sacramento, representing the oil industry, water districts, and timber concerns, among many other clients.    Read more »

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Seven Score and Nine Years Ago…

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered two-minutes of remarks — around 270 words — to some 15,000 listeners at the dedication of a new national military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Although the morning was foggy and bleak, by noon the sun broke through bathing the crowd that gathered on a hill overlooking the battlefield where, from July 1 to July 3 Confederate and Union forces met in a bloody confrontation that generated the most casualties of any battle in the war and made the South’s eventual defeat certain.    Read more »

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Happy Birthday Governor Gillett!

James Norris Gillett — born on September 20, 1860 – became the GOP nominee for governor in 1906 through a deal cut between party bosses and Southern Pacific Railroad. 

As a consequence, the imposing six foot four, 240-pound lawyer was dogged throughout his four-year term as being the railroad’s vassal. He was the last governor politically anointed by the seemingly all-powerful railroad.      Read more »

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Happy Belated Birthday Governor Stoneman!

George Stoneman was a Civil War general and cavalry commander, who enjoyed national celebrity before being elected California’s 15th governor in 1882.

The highest-ranking Union officer captured by the Confederates, Stoneman is immortalized in The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Levon Helm sings:

“Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train, ‘til Stoneman’s cavalry came and they tore up the tracks again….”    Read more »

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Happy Birthday Governor Johnson!

Although at times it can seem a more common occurrence, the “Know-Nothings” only held California’s statehouse form 1856 to 1858.

The Know-Nothings – officially the American Party — rose from the ashes of the Whigs and the growing division in the Democratic Party between what were known as the Lecomptons and Anti-Lecomptons after a proposed constitution for the new state of Kansas drafted in that city to allow slavery.    Read more »

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Culver City

This west Los Angeles city boasting the ‘smallest Main Street in the world” is named for its creator, Harry H. Culver, a Nebraska native who moved to California in 1910 after stints as a customs agent and reporter in the Philippines following enlisting in the Spanish-American War.

Culver took a job in real estate with developer Isaac Newton Van Nuys — yes, that Van Nuys —  then went out on his own.    Read more »

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Happy Birthday Governor Pardee!

Republican George Cooper Pardee – born July 25, 1857 in San Francisco –probably couldn’t be elected governor today.

At least not as a Republican.

The political progenitor of the progressive agenda that bloomed under his successor Hiram Johnson, Pardee was a Republican in the Teddy Roosevelt mold.

His “liberalism” and willingness to increase taxes would almost certainly doom any chances of his nomination in 2012’s Republican party.    Read more »

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“A Highway that Will Serve as a Model for the Future Development of Freeways in California”

 On July 20, 1940, a 3.7-mile section of the Arroyo Seco Parkway opened to vehicle traffic.

It was not only California’s first “freeway” – a high-speed divided road with onramps and off-ramps – but also the first to be built in the urban Western United States and a prototype for future super highways.    Read more »

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