San Jose, California

1939 Hewlett-Packard Founded: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded their electronics company in a small garage in nearby Palo Alto, creating the prototype for the Silicon Valley startup and launching the region's technology revolution.

1777 First Civilian Settlement in California: Spanish colonists established El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe as California's first civilian town, serving as an agricultural community to supply the nearby military presidios.

1969 Silicon Valley Named: Journalist Don Hoefler coined the term 'Silicon Valley' to describe the concentration of semiconductor and technology companies centered around San Jose, giving a name to the most consequential tech hub in history.

1906 1906 Earthquake Strikes San Jose: The massive earthquake that devastated San Francisco also severely damaged San Jose, destroying the county courthouse and many downtown buildings. The disaster prompted a rebuilding that modernized the city.

1849 San Jose Becomes First State Capital: When California achieved statehood, San Jose served as the first state capital. The legislature met there for two sessions before moving to Vallejo, then Sacramento.

1960 Suburban Explosion: Under City Manager Dutch Hamann's aggressive annexation policy, San Jose grew from 17 to 137 square miles in a decade, swallowing orchards and farmland to become the Bay Area's largest city by land area.

1976 Apple Computer Founded: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in Los Altos, near San Jose, creating the personal computer revolution that would transform daily life worldwide.

1943 IBM Opens San Jose Lab: IBM established its first West Coast research laboratory in San Jose. The lab later invented the hard disk drive and DRAM memory, foundational technologies of the computing age.

2000 Dot-Com Bust: The collapse of the dot-com bubble devastated Silicon Valley's economy, wiping out hundreds of startups and sending unemployment soaring in San Jose.

2017 Coyote Creek Flood: Heavy rains caused Coyote Creek to overflow, flooding thousands of homes in downtown San Jose and displacing 14,000 residents in the worst flooding the city had seen in decades.