San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.44 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world.

The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not use the nine-county definition of the San Francisco Bay Area. The OMB has designated a more extensive 12-county Combined Statistical Area (CSA) titled the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area which also includes the three counties of San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, and San Benito that do not border San Francisco Bay, but are economically tied to the nine counties that do.

San Francisco

San Francisco (/sæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, which makes it the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 18,187 people per square mile (7,022 people per km²), making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 13th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.6 million.

Area

Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional figure or shape, or planar lamina, in the plane. Surface area is its analog on the two-dimensional surface of a three-dimensional object. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat. It is the two-dimensional analog of the length of a curve (a one-dimensional concept) or the volume of a solid (a three-dimensional concept).

The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size. In the International System of Units (SI), the standard unit of area is the square metre (written as m²), which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the same area as three such squares. In mathematics, the unit square is defined to have area one, and the area of any other shape or surface is a dimensionless real number.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a nickname for the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is located in part of the U.S. state of California known as Northern California. It is home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, as well as thousands of startup companies. Geographically, it encompasses all of the Santa Clara Valley, the southern half of the San Francisco Peninsula, and southern portions of the East Bay. It includes parts or most of Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Alameda County.

The word "valley" refers to the Santa Clara Valley, where the region has traditionally been centered, which includes the city of San Jose and surrounding cities and towns. The word "silicon" originally referred to the large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers in the region. The term "Silicon Valley" eventually came to refer to all high tech businesses in the area, and is now generally used as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector. It also became a global synonym for leading high-tech research and enterprises, and thus inspired similar named locations, as well as research parks and technology centers with a comparable structure all around the world.

Irish people

The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or Na hÉireannaigh) are a Celtic nation and ethnic group who originate from the island of Ireland and its associated islands. Ireland has been inhabited for about 9,000 years according to archaeological studies (see Prehistoric Ireland). For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people (see Gaelic Ireland). Anglo-Normans conquered parts of Ireland in the 12th century, while England's 16th/17th century (re)conquest and colonization of Ireland brought a large number of English and Lowland Scots to parts of the island, most notably Northern Ireland, where they form a separate and distinct ethnic group.

There have been many notable Irish people throughout history. The 6th-century Irish monk and missionary Columbanus is regarded as one of the "fathers of Europe", followed by Kilian of Würzburg and Vergilius of Salzburg. The scientist Robert Boyle is considered the "father of chemistry". Famous Irish explorers include Brendan the Navigator, Robert McClure, Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. By some accounts, the first European child born in North America had Irish descent on both sides; and an Irishman was the first European to set foot on American soil in Columbus' expedition of 1492.