Oregon has been home to many indigenous nations for thousands of years. The first European traders, explorers, and settlers began exploring what is now Oregon's Pacific coast in the early to mid-16th century. As early as 1564, the Spanish began sending vessels northeast from the Philippines, riding the Kuroshio Current in a sweeping circular route across the northern part of the Pacific. In 1592, Juan de Fuca undertook detailed mapping and studies of ocean currents in the Pacific Northwest, including the Oregon coast as well as the strait now bearing his name. The Lewis and Clark Expedition traversed Oregon in the early 1800s, and the first permanent European settlements in Oregon were established by fur trappers and traders. In 1843, an autonomous government was formed in the Oregon Country, and the Oregon Territory was created in 1848. Oregon became the 33rd state of the U.S. on February 14, 1859.
Today, with 4.2 million people over 98,000 square miles (250,000 km2), Oregon is the ninth largest and 27th most populous U.S. state. The capital, Salem, is the third-most populous city in Oregon, with 175,535 residents. Portland, with 652,503, ranks as the 26th among U.S. cities. The Portland metropolitan area, which includes neighboring counties in Washington, is the 25th largest metro area in the nation, with a population of 2,512,859. Oregon is also one of the most geographically diverse states in the U.S., marked by volcanoes, abundant bodies of water, dense evergreen and mixed forests, as well as high deserts and semi-arid shrublands. At 11,249 feet (3,429 m), Mount Hood is the state's highest point. Oregon's only national park, Crater Lake National Park, comprises the caldera surrounding Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States. The state is also home to the single largest organism in the world, Armillaria ostoyae, a fungus that runs beneath 2,200 acres (8.9 km2) of the Malheur National Forest. (Full article...)
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in south-central Washington operated by the United States government. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, it was home to the B-Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Government documents have since confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials to the air and to the Columbia River, which threatened the health of residents and ecosystems. The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m³) of high-levelradioactive waste that remains at the site. This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S. and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup. While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
Gus Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an AmericanAcademy Award-nominated film director, photographer, musician, and author. Born in Kentucky, the family moved around with Van Sant living in a variety of cities, but he graduated from The Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon before attending the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970. He started as a painter, but later changed his major to cinema. After school he went to Europe and then Los Angeles where in 1976 he got a job working for Ken Shapiro. His experiences in LA led to a 1981 film he filmed titled Alice in Hollywood which was never released. He would move to New York and work in advertising for a time, using the money he earned for film projects. Van Sant would return to Portland where he would work as an independent film maker and produce films such as Drugstore Cowboy. Later works include Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, and Finding Forrester. As an actor, Van Sant has appeared in a cameo on screen in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back playing himself. He has written the screenplays for most of his early movies, and has written one novel, Pink. As a musician, Van Sant has released two albums: Gus Van Sant and 18 Songs About Golf. The openly gay writer, director, and musician lives in Portland.
I believe I'll turn out for baseball this year and skip spring football. I'll really give my pitching arm a chance to develop. Then I'll decide if I'm a prospect for the big leagues, and if I think I'll make it, then I may quit football.
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