- published: 25 May 2016
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The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football franchise based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Eagles are members of the East division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Eagles have won three NFL championships and made two Super Bowl appearances, losing both. These were in 1980 (to the Oakland Raiders), and in 2004 (to the New England Patriots).
The club was established in 1933 as a replacement for the bankrupt Frankford Yellow Jackets, when a group led by Bert Bell secured the rights to an NFL franchise in Philadelphia. Bell, Chuck Bednarik, Bob Brown, Reggie White, Steve Van Buren, Tommy McDonald, Greasy Neale, Pete Pihos, Sonny Jurgensen, and Norm Van Brocklin have been inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The team has an intense rivalry with the New York Giants. This rivalry is the oldest in the NFC East and is among the oldest in the NFL. It was ranked by NFL Network as the number one (1) rivalry of all-time and Sports Illustrated ranks it amongst the top ten NFL rivalries of all-time at number four (4), and according to ESPN, it is one of the fiercest and most well-known rivalries in the American football community. They also have a historic rivalry with the Washington Redskins, as well as their bitter rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys, which has become more high-profile in the last three decades.
Philadelphia (/ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə/) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the fifth-most-populous in the United States, with an estimated population in 2014 of 1,560,297. In the Northeastern United States, at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill River, Philadelphia is the economic and cultural anchor of the Delaware Valley, a metropolitan area home to 7.2 million people and the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
In 1682, William Penn founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia played an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Philadelphia was one of the nation's capitals in the Revolutionary War, and served as temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial center and railroad hub that grew from an influx of European immigrants. It became a prime destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration and surpassed two million occupants by 1950.