San José is a major city in the U.S. state of California and is the county seat of Santa Clara County. The city is located at the south end of the San Francisco Bay, within the informal boundaries of Silicon Valley, and is the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area. As of 2003, it reported an estimated population of 925,000, making it the most populous city in Northern California and overtaking Detroit as the United States' tenth most populous city. San Jose, founded in 1777 as a farming community to provide food for nearby military installations, was the first town in the Spanish colony of California. It served as the first capital of California after statehood was granted in 1850. Aggressive expansion during the 1950s and 1960s led first to San Jose being a bedroom community for Silicon Valley in the 1970s, then attracting businesses to the city; by 1990 the city was calling itself the Capital of Silicon Valley.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%2C_California

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1862: Ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Monitor)

1916: General Pancho Villa led 1,500 Mexicans in a cross-border attack against Columbus, New Mexico, prompting a punitive expedition from the U.S. military. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa)

1932: Eamon de Valera became President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_de_Valera)

1945: A bomb raid on Tokyo started a firestorm, killing 100,000. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II)

1959: The world's best-selling doll, Barbie, was first sold in New York City. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!" -- Yuri Gagarin (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)