We Made It To San Francisco

Did You Know? - 1. Marconi was half-Italian and half-Irish. His father was a landed gentleman from Bologna, where Marconi was born and grew up, but his mother was a member of the Jameson Whiskey family. Annie Jameson's family business connections in London were crucial to the launch of Marconi's global company in 1897, when he was 23.

2. Marconi had no formal higher education. He did poorly in school as a child and his parents hired private teachers to tutor him in chemistry, math, and physics. His most important mentor was a high school physics teacher in Livorno by the name of Vincenzo Rosa. He was an avid, self-guided reader of popular scientific journals, where he learned of the discovery of radio waves by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz.

3. Marconi was twice engaged to American feminists: Josephine B. Holman, a graduate of the Indianapolis Classical School for Girls as well as Bryn Mawr, and Inez Milholland, a Greenwich Village social activist who famously led a 1913 suffragist parade riding a white horse. Marconi's two wives were more conventional women but Marconi was forever becoming romantically involved with artists, film stars, opera singers, and journalists.

4. Marconi was the first inventor-entrepreneur to win a Nobel Prize, for Physics, in 1909 (he shared the prize with German physicist Ferdinand Braun). The Nobel Committee had never before awarded the prize for a practical application rather than theoretical accomplishments. In 1909, it considered giving the prize to the Wright brothers, but decided on Marconi because of public concern about the safety of airplanes.

Did You Know? - The name emerald is from the Ancient Greek word "smaragdos" meaning green stone and was originally for a variety of green colored minerals.

Did You Know? - The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is an American confectioner, wholly owned by Swiss confectioner Lindt & Sprüngli. The company was founded by and is named after Italian chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, who, after working in South America, moved to California.

Did You Know? - The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km) strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula—to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. It also carries pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and is designated as part of U.S. Bicycle Route 95. Recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Wonders of the Modern World, the bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco and California.

The idea of a fixed link between San Francisco and Marin had gained increasing popularity during the late 19th century, but it was not until the early 20th century that such a link became feasible. Joseph Strauss served as chief engineer for the project, with Leon Moisseiff, Irving Morrow and Charles Ellis making significant contributions to its design. The bridge opened to the public in 1937 and has undergone various retrofits and other improvement projects in the decades since.

The Golden Gate Bridge is described in Frommer's travel guide as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world." At the time of its opening in 1937, it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, titles it held until 1964 and 1998 respectively. Its main span is 4,200 feet (1,280 m) and its total height is 746 feet (227 m).

Did You Know? - The Golden Gate Bridge is closely monitored to make sure it does not exceed its stress limits due to traffic, wind and seismic loads. We can look forward to at least another 80 years of this engineering masterpiece.

Did You Know? - Until 1964, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet (1,300 m). Since 1964 its main span length has been surpassed by seventeen bridges; it now has the second-longest main span in the Americas, after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. The total length of the Golden Gate Bridge from abutment to abutment is 8,981 feet (2,737 m).

The Golden Gate Bridge's clearance above high water averages 220 feet (67 m) while its towers, at 746 feet (227 m) above the water, were the world's tallest on a suspension bridge until 1993 when it was surpassed by the Mezcala Bridge, in Mexico.

The weight of the roadway is hung from 250 pairs of vertical suspender ropes, which are attached to two main cables. The main cables pass over the two main towers and are fixed in concrete at each end. Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. The total length of galvanized steel wire used to fabricate both main cables is estimated to be 80,000 miles (130,000 km). Each of the bridge's two towers has approximately 600,000 rivets.

Did You Know? - The Port of San Francisco is the premier gateway to the world, hosting over 100 cruise ship calls and more than 400,000 passengers every year at Pier 27 James R. Herman Cruise Terminal and Pier 35 on The Embarcadero.