St. Louis

The city, which is named after Louis IX of France, borders, but is not a part of, Saint Louis County, Missouri

The settlement that would become the city of Saint Louis was founded by French explorers in 1763.

Saint Louis was acquired from France by the United States under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition left the Saint Louis area in May 1804, reached the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 1805, and returned on Sept. 23, 1806.

Missouri became a state in 1820. Saint Louis was incorporated as a city on December 9, 1822

Immigrants flooded into Saint Louis after 1840, particularly from Germany, Bohemia and Ireland, the latter driven by an Old World potato famine. The population of Saint Louis grew from fewer than 20,000 in 1840, to 77,860 in 1850, to just over 160,000 by 1860.

Militarily, the Civil War (1861-1865) barely touched St. Louis; the area saw only a few skirmishes in which Union forces prevailed

Saint Louis is one of several cities that claims to have the world's first skyscraper

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 the World's Fair and the Olympic Games, making the United States the first English-speaking country to host the Olympics.

The uranium used in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb was refined in Saint Louis by Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., starting in 1942.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, built in 1955 and demolished in 1972, is one of the most infamous failures of urban planning. (The buildings were the first major work by Minoru Yamasaki, who later designed the World Trade Center.)

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is the region's major daily newspaper. Founded by Joseph Pulitzer in the 1800s,

St. Louis has long been associated with ragtime, jazz and blues. Early rock and roll singer/guitarist Chuck Berry is a native St. Louisan and continues to perform there several times a year. Soul music artists Ike Turner and Tina Turner and jazz innovator Miles Davis began their careers in nearby East St. Louis, Illinois.

Forest Park, located on the western edge of the central corridor of the City of St. Louis, is one of the largest urban parks in the world, outsizing Central Park in New York City by 500 acres.

The Missouri Botanical Garden, also known as "Shaw's Garden", is one of the world's leading botanical research center

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, better known as the Gateway Arch, is perhaps the most recognizable structure of the city. It is located near the riverfront in downtown Saint Louis, and was designed by noted architect Eero Saarinen. The Arch is the centerpiece of a national park that also includes the nearby Old Courthouse, where the famous Dred Scott case was tried. This area is also the location of the annual July 4th festival, Fair Saint Louis, widely regarded as America's largest birthday celebration.

Enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans give the city a reputation as, "a top-notch sports town" and being dubbed as, "Baseball City USA." The Sporting News rated St. Louis the nation's, "Best Sports City."

Beer commercials have made the city well known as the home of Anheuser-Busch Breweries.

St. Louis once had a moderately extensive streetcar system, but service began to erode in the 1950s and ended for good in 1966.

Historically, Saint Louis has been a de facto segregated city.

The city of Saint Louis has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the United States, with 111 murders and 7,059 burglaries in 2002

Effective July 1, 2005, the city of St. Louis has quietly extended healthcare benefits to the domestic partners of all city employees, including same-sex partners and others living in committed but unmarried relationships, as well as children of such families.

Saint Louis has eleven sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International, Inc. (SCI): Bologna (Italy), Galway (Ireland), Bogor (Indonesia), Georgetown (Guyana), Lyon (France), Nanjing (People's Republic of China), Saint-Louis (Senegal), Samara (Russia), Stuttgart (Germany), Suwa (Japan), and Szczecin (Poland).

Maybe the best website in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis

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