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The top of the Empire State Building in New York was buit to be a mooring place for dirigibles (Blimps).

The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is over 9.5 million square feet, or the size of 78 football fields.
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City History
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City History

European exploration of the area had begun nearly a century before the city was founded. In 1678 La Salle claimed the entire Mississippi River valley for France. He called it "Louisiana" after King Louis XIV. In 1703, Catholic priests established a small mission at what is now St. Louis.

In 1763 Laclede sent Chouteau and thirty men to begin construction, laid out in a grid pattern as an imitation of New Orleans. St. Louis was a river city, and it therefore developed in response to its relationship to the river. Development, particularly economic development, clustered around the settlement's Mississippi River bank on what was called "the levee" and is now called "the landing."

The settlement began to grow quickly after word arrived that the 1763 Treaty of Paris had given Britain all the land east of the Mississippi, and in 1765, St. Louis was made the capital of Upper Louisiana. From 1766 to 1768, St. Louis was governed by the French lieutenant governor Louis de Bellerive, who was not appointed by French or Spanish authorities, but by the leading residents of St. Louis. After 1768, St. Louis was governed by a series of governors appointed by Spanish authorities, whose administration continued even after Louisiana was secretly returned to France in 1800 by the Treaty of San Ildefonso.

St. Louis was acquired from France by the United States in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The transfer of power from Spain was made official in a ceremony called "Three Flags Day." French continued, along with English, to be one of the major spoken and written languages in St. Louis until the 1820s. St. Louis first became legally incorporated as a town on November 9, 1809, though it elected its first municipal legislators (called trustees) in 1808.Missouri became a state in 1820. St. Louis was incorporated as a city on December 9, 1822 and a U. S. arsenal was constructed at St. Louis in 1827.

The steamboat era began in St. Louis on July 27, 1817, with the arrival of the Zebulon M. Pike. Steamboats signified significant progress in river trade, as steam power permitted much more efficient and dependable river transportation. Rapids north of the city made St. Louis the northernmost navigable port for many large boats, and Pike and her sisters soon transformed St. Louis into a bustling boom town. By the 1850s St. Louis had become the largest U. S. city west of Pittsburgh, and the second-largest port in the country, with a commercial tonnage exceeded only by New York. 1836 The St. Louis Chamber of Commerce was founded according to the current Chamber's literature. This would make it one of the oldest Chambers of Commerce in the United States. 1874 Eads Bridge was completed, the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River.

As St. Louis grew and prospered during the late 19th and early 20th Century, the city produced a number of notable people in the fields of business and literature. The Ralston-Purina CO., Anheuser-Busch the world's largest brewery, International Shoe and the Brown Shoe CO. Also, in the field of literature such as poets Sara Teasdale and Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, William Burroughs, and Kate Chopin, as well as playwright Tennessee Williams. St. Louis is one of several cities that claims to have the world's first skyscraper. The Wainwright Building, a 10-story structure designed by Louis Sullivan and built in 1892. Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication here in 1893. In 1896, one of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes in U. S. history struck St. Louis and East St. Louis. In 1904, the city hosted a World's Fair and the first English-speaking country to host the Olympic Games. The Gateway Arch was built in the mid-1960s. Recently, there has been a significant upturn in construction in Downtown St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals' new Busch Stadium , rehabilitation of other downtown areas, such as around the Old Post Office, Cupples warehouses, and St. Louis Centre. The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood north of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the old Gaslight Square district are also going through extensive renovations today. Here in the 21st century, St. Louis has transformed from a manufacturing and industrial economy into a globally known locus for research in medicine, biotechnology, and other sciences.

Historic Figures

Mound Builders (300 BCE-1500 AD)



Mound Builders (300 BCE-1500 AD)
The area that would become St. Louis was a major center of the Mississippian mound builders. The presence of numerous mounds, now almost all destroyed, earned the later city the nickname of "Mound City". Mound Builder is a general term referring to the Native North American peoples who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential, and ceremonial purposes. These included Archaic, and Woodland period, and Mississippian period Pre-Columbian cultures dating from roughly 3000 BCE to the 1500s, and living in the Great Lakes region, the Ohio River region, and the Mississippi River region.

March 28, 2024

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