San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary that drains water from approximately forty percent of California. Water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and from the Sierra Nevada mountains passes through the Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, both rivers flow into Suisun Bay, which flows through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay. However, the entire group of interconnected bays is often called the San Francisco Bay.

San Francisco Bay is in the U.S. state of California, surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area (often simply "the Bay Area"), dominated by the large cities San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. The waterway entrance to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean is called the Golden Gate. Across the strait spans the Golden Gate Bridge. The bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2, 2013. (more...)

Luis W. Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist and inventor, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968. The American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez (1911–1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K- electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never observed. He produced ³
H
using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron. (more...)

Livermore (formerly Livermores, Livermore Ranch, and Nottingham) is a city in Alameda County. The estimated population as of 2011 was 82,039. Livermore is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisco Bay Area.

Livermore was founded by William Mendenhall and named after Robert Livermore, his friend and a local rancher who settled in the area in the 1840s. Livermore is the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for which the chemical element livermorium is named (and thus, placing the city's name in the periodic table). Livermore is also the California site of Sandia National Laboratories, which is headquartered in Alburquerque, NM. Its south side is home to local vineyards. The city has also redeveloped its downtown district. The city is considered part of the Tri-Valley area, including Amador, Livermore and San Ramon Valleys. (more...)

• Burst of Joy, depicting United States Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, after spending more than five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, is taken at Travis Air Force Base (pictured) in Solano County
• 16 people are killed, during a string of racially motivated attacks, dubbed the Zebra murders, committed by African-American men against mostly white victims, in San Francisco, continuing into 1974
• The Oakland A's win the World Series
• Bill Owens' photoessay Suburbia, featuring images of Livermore, is published by Straight Arrow Press in San Francisco

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that Hood Mountain in California has high canopy mixed oak forests, pygmy forests and expanses of rock outcrop, and also has a vulnerable plant species named for it?
• ... that the soldier in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy reunited with his family after six years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp?
• ... that Acanthomintha duttonii is an endangered wildflower that is found only in a six mile long strip on the San Francisco Peninsula?
• ... that artists of the Mission School, a San Francisco-based contemporary art movement, often make artworks from materials such as house paint, spray paint, correction fluid, ballpoint pens, and scrapboard?
• ... that Santa Rosa Creek (pictured) was the scene of an 1827 baptism of a Pomo maiden, which event led to the naming of the creek and also the city of Santa Rosa, California?
• ... that Sonoma Coast State Beach (pictured) is one of California's longest beaches and has rocks that have evidence of rubbing by mammoths 40,000 years ago?
• ... that Annadel State Park (pictured) is considered by some biologists to have some of the best preserved northern oak woodlands in western North America?

October/November 2006

The traditional Fleet Week celebrations in San Francisco were expanded in 1981, and held in conjunction with Columbus Day Weekend celebrations during the second week of October. The event is estimated to attract over one million people, drawn to the air show along the waterfront, including the Blue Angels (pictured), the United States Navy's flight demonstration squadron.

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