September 4
L.A. DAY
This is the birthday of one of the most written-about, talked-about, joked-about cities in the world, Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles was born on this day in 1781. The Mexican Provincial Governor, Felipe de Neve, founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, originally named Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain and Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest, who had noticed the beautiful area as they traveled north from San Diego in 1769. El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles translates into the Village of our Lady, the Queen of the Angels ... L.A. for short.
Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848, and Los Angeles, the capital of Alta California, a Mexican Province, came with it. Once a quiet, little village, the discovery of oil in the 1890s started an expansion that has grown to be the home of more than 8 1/2 million people (approx. 3 1/2 million in the actual city limits). Hollywood, movie stars, Disneyland, freeways, Beverly Hills, earthquakes, fires, floods and drive-by shootings have all managed to keep the City of Angels on the map, so to speak.
As have the more than a million visitors a year ... they come to visit and they often come back to stay ... in L.A.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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