9. What You Need to Know about Aleatraz and San Francisco

What You Need to Know about Alcatraz and San Francisco The word alcatraz means "strange bird" or pelican. The island "de los alcatraces" was named by Spanish explorer Lt. Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. Al Capone played the banjo in the Alcatraz prison band, the Rock Islanders, which gave concerts for other inmates.

Thirty-six inmates put the "escape-proof" Alcatraz to the test. But there were no confirmed prisoner escapes from Alcatraz. Alcatraz was home to the Pacific Coast's first lighthouse, activated in 1854. In 1849, San Francisco's harbor was filled with abandoned ships. The crews had deserted the ships to head inland for the gold fields. The Golden Gate Bridge was not supposed to be red. The steel beams used to build the bridge were coated in a red-and-orange color to protect it from corrosive elements. The night before the 1906 earthquake, world-famous Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso performed in San Francisco. President Millard Fillmore made Alcatraz a military fortress in 1850.

When the Golden Gate Bridge was finished in May 1937, Chief Engineer Joseph B. Strauss wrote a poem called "The Mighty Task is Done." The cable car is a national historic monument, the only one in the world that moves! It was built in 1873 and today transports 9.7 million people around the city each year. In 1914, Makoto Hagiwara made the first fortune cookie in San Francisco. He was a Japanese immigrant and the designer of Golden Gate Park's famous Japanese Tea Garden. San Francisco has some weird laws: it is illegal to clean your rug by beating it outside, to walk an elephant down Market Street without a leash, and to wipe your windshield using your underwear.

Denim jeans were invented in San Francisco for Gold Rush miners in California. The denim was tough enough to last and protect their skin. James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848. His discovery caused many immigrants to come into the city to seek their fortune. Irish coffee was first invented in San Francisco. And there are now more than 300 coffee shops in San Francisco.