Hardwood Floor Revitalizer in Atlanta, Ga

Atlanta ( at-LAN-tə) is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, and a allowance of the city extends into neighboring DeKalb County. With a population of 510,823 animate within the city limits, Atlanta is the eighth most populous city in the Southeast and 38th most populous city in the United States according to the 2020 U.S. census. It is the principal city of the much larger Atlanta metropolitan area, the core of which includes Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett counties, in supplement to Fulton and DeKalb. Metro Atlanta is house to on peak of 6.3 million people (2023 estimate), making it the sixth-largest U.S. metropolitan area. Situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at an height above sea level of just higher than 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, Atlanta features unique topography that includes rolling hills, lush greenery, and the densest urban tree coverage of any major city in the United States.

Atlanta was originally founded as the terminus of a major state-sponsored railroad, but it soon became the convergence reduction among several railroads, spurring its curt growth. The largest was the Western and Atlantic Railroad, from which the name "Atlanta" is derived, signifying the city's growing reputation as a major hub of transportation. During the American Civil War, it served a helpfully important role for the Confederacy until it was captured in 1864. The city was in financial credit to entirely burned to the ground during General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea. However, the city rebounded dramatically in the post-war grow old and quickly became a national industrial middle and the unofficial capital of the "New South". After World War II, it afterward became a manufacturing and technology hub. During the 1950s and 1960s, it became a major organizing center of the American civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and many new locals becoming prominent figures in the movement's leadership. In the innovative era, Atlanta has remained a major center of transportation, with Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport becoming the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic in 1998 (a position it has held every year since, except for 2020), with an estimated 93.7 million passengers in 2022.

With a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $473 billion in 2021, Atlanta has the 11th-largest economy accompanied by cities in the U.S. and the 22nd-largest in the world. Its economy is considered diverse, with dominant sectors in industries including transportation, aerospace, logistics, healthcare, news and media operations, film and television production, information technology, finance, and biomedical research and public policy. Atlanta conventional itself upon the world stage in imitation of it won and hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Games impacted Atlanta's development growth into the 21st century, and significantly sparked investment in the city's universities, parks, and tourism industry. The gentrification of some of its neighborhoods has intensified in the 21st century when the accumulation of the Atlanta Beltline. This has altered its demographics, politics, aesthetics, and culture.

For thousands of years prior to the start of European settlers in North Georgia, the indigenous Creek people and their ancestors inhabited the area. Standing Peachtree, a Creek village where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River, was the closest Native American harmony to what is now Atlanta. Through the to the lead 19th century, European Americans critically encroached upon the Creek of northern Georgia, forcing them out of the area from 1802 to 1825. The Creek were provoked to depart the Place in 1821, under Indian Removal by the federal government, and European American settlers arrived the later than year.

In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to construct the Western and Atlantic Railroad in order to offer a associate between the harbor of Savannah and the Midwest. The initial route was to manage southward from Chattanooga to a terminus east of the Chattahoochee River, which would be related to Savannah. After engineers surveyed various realizable locations for the terminus, the "zero milepost" was driven into the arena in what is now Foundry Street, Five Points. When asked in 1837 very nearly the superior of the Tiny village, Stephen Harriman Long, the railroad's chief engineer said the place would be good "for one tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, and nothing else". A year later, the area around the milepost had developed into a settlement, first known as Terminus, and later Thrasherville, after a local merchant who built homes and a general store in the area. By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents and was renamed Marthasville to tribute Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter Martha. Later, John Edgar Thomson, Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested the town be renamed Atlanta, supposedly a feminine description of the word "Atlantic", referring to the Western and Atlantic Railroad. The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847.

By 1860, Atlanta's population had grown to 9,554. During the American Civil War, the nexus of merged railroads in Atlanta made the city a strategic hub for the distribution of military supplies.

In 1864, the Union Army moved southward in the same way as the commandeer of Chattanooga and began its invasion of north Georgia. The region surrounding Atlanta was the location of several major army battles, culminating as soon as the Battle of Atlanta and a four-month-long siege of the city by the Union Army under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood decided to retreat from Atlanta, and he ordered the destruction of everything public buildings and realizable assets that could be of use to the Union Army. On the next-door day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union Army, and upon September 7, Sherman ordered the city's civilian population to evacuate. On November 11, 1864, Sherman prepared for the Union Army's March to the Sea by ordering the destruction of Atlanta's remaining military assets.

After the Civil War finished in 1865, Atlanta was gradually rebuilt during the Reconstruction era. The feint attracted many other residents. Due to the city's superior rail transportation network, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868. In the 1880 Census, Atlanta had surpassed Savannah as Georgia's largest city.

Beginning in the 1880s, Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, promoted Atlanta to potential investors as a city of the "New South" that would be based on a radical economy and less reliant on agriculture. By 1885, the founding of the Georgia School of Technology (now the Georgia Institute of Technology) and the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of historically Black colleges made up of units for men and women, had traditional Atlanta as a middle for progressive education. In 1895, Atlanta hosted the Cotton States and International Exposition, which attracted approximately 800,000 attendees and successfully promoted the New South's enhance to the world.

During the first decades of the 20th century, Atlanta enjoyed a time of unprecedented growth. In three decades' time, Atlanta's population tripled as the city limits expanded to include approachable streetcar suburbs. The city's skyline grew taller in imitation of the construction of the Equitable, Flatiron, Empire, and Candler buildings. Sweet Auburn emerged as a center of Black commerce. The epoch was as well as marked by strife and tragedy. Increased racial tensions led to the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, when Whites attacked Blacks, leaving at least 27 people dead and on height of 70 injured, with extensive damage in Black neighborhoods. In 1913, Leo Frank, a Jewish-American factory superintendent, was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in a severely publicized trial. He was sentenced to death, but the commissioner commuted his sentence to life. An frustrated and organized lynch mob took him from jail in 1915 and hanged him in Marietta. The Jewish community in Atlanta and across the country were horrified. On May 21, 1917, the Great Atlanta Fire destroyed 1,938 buildings in what is now the Old Fourth Ward, resulting in one fatality and the displacement of 10,000 people.

On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone taking into account the Wind, the epic film based on the best-selling novel by Atlanta's Margaret Mitchell. The gala event at Loew's Grand Theatre was attended by the film's legendary producer, David O. Selznick, and the film's stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland, but Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel, an African-American actress, was barred from the event due to racial segregation laws.

Atlanta played a essential role in the Allied effort during World War II. Colonel Blake Van Leer the president of Georgia Tech played a significant ration by lobbying war-related manufacturing companies with Lockheed Martin to influence to Atlanta, successfully lobbying the Government to construct military bases, in face helping attract thousands of other residents through supplementary jobs. Van Leer then launched major research centers, which included Neely Nuclear Research Center and funds to urge on make Georgia Tech the "MIT" of the south while also founding Southern Polytechnic State University.

These extra defense industries attracted thousands of other residents and generated revenues, resulting in quick population and economic growth. In the 1950s, the city's newly constructed highway system, supported by federal subsidies, allowed center class Atlantans the realization to relocate to the suburbs. As a result, the city began to make happening an ever-smaller proportion of the metropolitan area's population.

African-American veterans returned from World War II seeking full rights in their country and began heightened activism. In argument for maintain by that part of the Black community that could vote, in 1948 the mayor ordered the hiring of the first eight African-American police officers in the city.

Much controversy preceded the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. There had been controversy higher than whether Grier should be allowed to perform due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play a part at whatever due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin's challenger to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer rejected the demand and threatened to resign. Later, students from both Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia held a protest adjacent to Griffin's stance, which soon turned into a riot. The students broke windows, upturned parking meters, hung Griffin in effigy, and marched everything the pretentiousness to the governor's mansion, surrounding it until 3:30 a.m. Griffin publicly held responsible Georgia Tech's President for the "riots" and requested he be replaced and Georgia Tech's give leave to enter funding be clip off. On December 5 the Georgia Tech board of regents voted 13-1 in favor of allowing the game to piece of legislation as scheduled.

In the 1960s, Atlanta became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and students from Atlanta's historically Black colleges and universities playing major roles in the movement's leadership. While Atlanta in the postwar years had relatively minimal racial strife compared to supplementary cities, Blacks were limited by discrimination, segregation, and continued disenfranchisement of most voters. In 1961, the city attempted to thwart blockbusting by realtors by erecting road barriers in Cascade Heights, countering the efforts of civic and concern leaders to help Atlanta as the "city too vivacious to hate."

Desegregation of the public sphere came in stages, with public transportation desegregated by 1959, the restaurant at Rich's department growth by 1961, movie theaters by 1963, and public schools by 1973 (nearly 20 years after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional).

In 1960, Whites comprised 61.7% of the city's population. During the 1950s–70s, suburbanization and White flight from urban areas led to a significant demographic shift. By 1970, African Americans were the majority of the city's population and exercised their recently enforced voting rights and political fake by electing Atlanta's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. Under Mayor Jackson's tenure, Atlanta's airport was modernized, strengthening the city's role as a transportation center. The commencement of the Georgia World Congress Center in 1976 further confirmed Atlanta's rise as a convention city. Construction of the city's subway system began in 1975, with rail relief commencing in 1979. Despite these improvements, Atlanta lost exceeding 100,000 residents in the company of 1970 and 1990, over 20% of its population. At the same time, it developed extra office proclaim after attracting numerous corporations, with an increasing allowance of workers from northern areas.

Atlanta was prearranged as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Following the announcement, the city giving out undertook several major construction projects to enhance Atlanta's parks, sporting venues, and transportation infrastructure; however, for the first time, none of the $1.7 billion cost of the games was organizationally funded. While the games experienced transportation and adaptation problems and, despite extra security precautions, there was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, the spectacle was a watershed situation in Atlanta's history. For the first era in Olympic history, every one of the tape 197 national Olympic committees invited to compete sent athletes, sending exceeding 10,000 contestants participating in a photograph album 271 events. The amalgamated projects such as Atlanta's Olympic Legacy Program and civic effort initiated a fundamental transformation of the city in the past decade.

During the 2000s, the city of Atlanta underwent a perplexing physical, cultural, and demographic change. As some of the African-American center and upper classes then began to distress to the suburbs, a thriving economy drew numerous extra migrants from supplementary cities in the United States, who contributed to changes in the city's demographics. African Americans made occurring a decreasing allowance of the population, from a tall of 67% in 1990 to 54% in 2010. From 2000 to 2010, Atlanta gained 22,763 white residents, 5,142 Asian residents, and 3,095 Hispanic residents, while the city's Black population decreased by 31,678. Much of the city's demographic change during the decade was driven by young, college-educated professionals: from 2000 to 2009, the three-mile radius surrounding Downtown Atlanta gained 9,722 residents aged 25 to 34 and holding at least a four-year degree, an accumulation of 61%. This was similar to the tendency in supplementary cities for young, college educated, single or married couples to stir in downtown areas.

Between the mid-1990s and 2010, stimulated by funding from the HOPE VI program and below leadership of CEO Renee Lewis Glover (1994–2013), the Atlanta Housing Authority demolished nearly anything of its public housing, a total of 17,000 units and virtually 10% of all housing units in the city. After reserving 2,000 units mostly for elderly, the AHA allowed redevelopment of the sites for mixed-use and mixed-income, higher density developments, with 40% of the units to be reserved for affordable housing. Two-fifths of previous public housing residents attained further housing in such units; the remainder conventional vouchers to be used at extra units, including in suburbs. At the same time, in an effort to modify the culture of those receiving subsidized housing, the AHA imposed a requirement for such residents to work (or be enrolled in a genuine, limited-time training program). It is roughly the on your own housing authority to have created this requirement. To prevent problems, the AHA as well as gave authority to management of the mixed-income or voucher units to evict tenants who did not assent with the take action requirement or who caused actions problems.

In 2005, the city attributed the $2.8 billion BeltLine project. It was expected to convert a disused 22-mile freight railroad loop that surrounds the central city into an art-filled multi-use trail and lively rail transit line, which would increase the city's park ventilate by 40%. The project stimulated retail and residential proceed along the loop, but has been criticized for its adverse effects on some Black communities. In 2013, the project conventional a federal enter upon of $18 million to build the southwest corridor. In September 2019 the James M. Cox Foundation gave $6 Million to the PATH Foundation which will connect the Silver Comet Trail to The Atlanta BeltLine which is received to be completed by 2022. Upon completion, the total combined interconnected trail distance going on for Atlanta for The Atlanta BeltLine and Silver Comet Trail will be the longest paved trail surface in the U.S. totaling about 300 miles (480 km).

Atlanta's cultural offerings expanded during the 2000s: the High Museum of Art doubled in size; the Alliance Theatre won a Tony Award; and art galleries were established on the once-industrial Westside. The College Football Hall of Fame relocated to Atlanta and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights museum was constructed. The city of Atlanta was the subject of a massive cyberattack which began in March 2018. In December 2019, Atlanta hosted the Miss Universe 2019 pageant competition. On June 16, 2022, Atlanta was prearranged as a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.