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Nine Cool SoCal History Facts We Learned This Year

Men and women raising their glasses at a bar | Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, University of Southern California Libraries
By Carren Jao
December 23, 2019
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Southern California may have a reputation for being a place to forget one's past, but its neighborhoods and streets are teeming with history. Here are nine pivotal moments that unfolded here.

Shindana Toy Company changed the toy industry by showing how black dolls should really be made.

Griffith Park has been the site of the state’s first gay rodeo, a municipal prison farm and the largest veteran’s housing project in the country, among many others.

Without Roz Wyman, the Dodgers might never have come to L.A.

Rosalind Wyman checks home base and the general view at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in preparation to receive the Dodgers for Opening Day. | Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images
Learn more about Roz Wyman's amazing life and pivotal role in bringing the Dodgers to L.A. in this article. | Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images

The country's largest native palm trees can be found in California.

Palm trees surrounding water at Thousand Palms Oasis
Most palm trees are purely ornamental, but the country’s largest native palm trees can be found only here in California. Read this "SoCal Wanderer" article to find out where to find them.  | Nicolas/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Pío Pico was an Afro-Mexican politician whose name is emblazoned all across the region. His life was a rollercoaster ride that changed L.A. forever.

Pico Boulevard, Pico-Rivera, Pío Pico State Historic Park. These places wouldn’t have their names were it not for the Afro-Mexican politician, land baron and entrepreneur, Pío Pico, who climbed to the highest reaches of the political realm and was one of the wealthiest men of his time. He also held three different nationalities without ever leaving present-day Southern California, thanks to the tumultuous political movements of the time. Find out more about this dramatic figure in this article. | Courtesy of the Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Catalina was once home to a seafaring Tongva people.

Los Angeles is just as important in gospel music history as Chicago and Detroit.

One of NASA's longest-serving female employees started out as a human computer, and she continues to work today.

Windsurfing owes its birth to the aerospace industry.

Top Image:  Men and women raising their glasses at a bar | Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, University of Southern California Libraries 

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