San Francisco was founded in 1776, when colonists from Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Saint Francis of Assisi.

Yerba Buena was the original name of the settlement that eventually became San Francisco. The name comes from a plant (Yerba Buena or "good herb") that was plentiful in the area.

The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners"), raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.

Many of the first prospectors arrived by ship. Within months, San Francisco's port was teeming with boats that had been abandoned after their passengers and crew headed inland to hunt for gold. As the formerly tiny town began to boom, demand for lumber skyrocketed, and the ships were dismantled and sold as construction material. Hundreds of houses, banks, saloons, hotels, jails and other structures were built out of the abandoned ships. Today, more than 150 years after the Gold Rush began, archeologists and preservationists continue to find relics, sometimes even entire ships, buried beneath the streets of the City by the Bay.

Fortune cookies may be served in Chinese restaurants, but they are not Chinese in origin. Makoto Hagiwara of San Francisco is reported to have served the first modern fortune cookie at Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden in the 1890s.

San Francisco banned burials in the city in 1900 because the cemeteries were out of room, were considered a health hazard, and--more than anything--sat on prime real estate. Most San Francisco cemeteries are actually located in Colma, California, where the dead outnumber the living by more than 1000 to 1.

In 1859, Joshua Abraham Norton proclaimed himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States." In 1863 he took the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico." Although Norton had no formal political power, citizens of San Francisco nevertheless celebrated his imperial presence and his proclamations, and currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments that he frequented.

Alcatraz Island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and a federal prison from 1934 to 1963. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape all but impossible. Today, it is a major tourist attraction.

The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 young people converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to celebrate hippie music, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, and free-love. Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir later commented: "Yes there was LSD. But Haight Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one's existence."

For years it was claimed that Filbert Street was the steepest in the city, with a sharp 31% grade. David Letterman once released 100 watermelons down the block in the name of science and late-night ratings. But a modest, one-block, dead-end stretch of Bradford Street, near where the 101 and 280 freeways converge, actually reigns supreme with a vertigo-inducing 41% grade.