Galveston is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of 209.3 square miles (542 km2), with a population of 53,695 in 2020, is the county seat of surrounding Galveston County and second-largest municipality in the county. It is also within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area at its southern end on the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
Charles Joseph Whitman was an American mass murderer who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by Austin police officers. Whitman killed a total of sixteen people; the 16th victim died 35 years later from injuries sustained in the attack.
The University of Houston is a public research university in Houston, Texas. It was established in 1927 as Houston Junior College, one of multiple junior college institutions formed in the first decades of the 20th century. In 1934, HJC was restructured as a four-year degree-granting institution and renamed as the University of Houston. Today, Houston is the third-largest university in Texas, awarding nearly 11,000 degrees annually adding to its worldwide alumni base of approximately 310,000.
Texas Southern University is a public historically black university in Houston, Texas. The university is one of the largest and most comprehensive historically black college or universities in the United States with nearly 8,000 students enrolled and over 100 academic programs. The university is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and it is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The University of Houston–Clear Lake (UHCL) is a public university in Pasadena and Houston, Texas, with branch campuses in Pearland and Texas Medical Center. It is part of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1971, UHCL had an enrollment of more than 9,000 students for fall 2019.
The University of Houston–Victoria (UHV) is a public university in Victoria, Texas. It is part of the University of Houston System. Its campus spans 20 acres (8.1 ha) in Victoria with a satellite location at UHV Katy. Founded in 1971, UHV has an enrollment of over 4,300 students.
The Daily News, formerly the Galveston County Daily News and Galveston Daily News, is a newspaper published in Galveston, Texas, United States. It was first published April 11, 1842, making it the oldest newspaper in the U.S. state of Texas. The newspaper founded The Dallas Morning News on October 1, 1885, as a sister publication. It currently serves as the newspaper of record for the City of Galveston as well as Galveston County.
St. Thomas High School is an all-boys, Catholic college preparatory school in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1900, St. Thomas is the second oldest continuously operating private high school in Houston behind Incarnate Word Academy, which was founded in 1873. The school is operated by the Basilian Fathers in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
O'Connell College Preparatory School is a 4-year coeducational parochial/private high school in Galveston, Texas, United States that offers university-preparatory programs. It was founded in 1968 as a consolidation of Galveston Island's three existing Catholic high schools: Kirwin High School and Dominican High School and Ursuline Academy and is the only Roman Catholic high school in Galveston County.
Tilman Joseph Fertitta is an American billionaire businessman and television personality. He is the chairman, CEO, and owner of Landry's, Inc. He also owns the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Houston Rockets. Fertitta is chairman of the board of regents of the University of Houston System.
William Lewis Moody Jr. was an American financier and entrepreneur from Galveston, Texas, who founded a private bank, an insurance company, and one of the largest charitable foundations in the United States. Moody was active in the day-to-day operations of his companies until two days before his death.
The Free State of Galveston was a satirical name given to the coastal city of Galveston in the U.S. state of Texas during the early-to-mid-20th century. Today, the term is sometimes used to describe the culture and history of that era.
The Shriners Children's Texas is a 30-bed non-profit pediatric burn hospital, research, and teaching center located on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, US. Part of a 22-hospital system, it is one of the three Shriner's Hospitals that specialize exclusively in burn care and consists of an intensive care unit with 15 acute beds and a reconstruction and plastic surgery unit with 15 reconstruction beds along with three operating rooms and beds for orthopedic and spine care. The hospital is verified as a burn center by the American Burn Association and accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. In 2012, the hospital joined the Texas Medical Center as its 50th member institution.
The University of Houston Police Department (UHPD) is the campus police for the University of Houston. The officers of UHPD are peace officers of the State of Texas whose primary jurisdiction is any county in which the University of Houston owns, leases, rents, or controls property. Their authority is derived from the Texas Education Code Sec. 51.203 which allows the University of Houston System Board of Regents to employ and commission peace officers. The University of Houston Police Department serves as a division of the University of Houston Department of Public Safety (UHDPS). Its headquarters are at 4051 Wheeler Street at the southwest corner of the University of Houston campus in the Stadium District.
Fifteen percent of University of Houston students live on campus. UH has several on campus dormitories: Moody Towers, The Quads, Cougar Village I, Cougar Village II, Cougar Place, and University Lofts. UH also has partnerships with three private complexes, Bayou Oaks, Cullen Oaks, and Cambridge Oaks.
The Deadly Tower is a 1975 American made-for-television action drama thriller film directed by Jerry Jameson. It stars Kurt Russell and Richard Yniguez and is based on the University of Texas tower shooting.
The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder which occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public both within the Main Building tower and from the tower's observation deck. He shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire from the observation deck.
Beaumont High School was a public, co-educational secondary school in the Beaumont Independent School District in Beaumont, Texas from 1898 to 1975.
Lynn Cecilia Eusan was an activist and the first black Homecoming queen at the University of Houston, where she studied journalism, and the first black woman to earn the title at any predominantly white college or university in the Southern United States. Only seven years earlier, UH had been an all-white institution, not integrating until the 1962–63 academic year. In 1971, less than three years after that Homecoming ceremony, she was found dead in the back of a stranger's car. Her death was believed to be a murder, and no one was ever found guilty for her death. A park at the university is named in her honor.
On May 18, 2018, a school shooting occurred at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, United States, in the Houston metropolitan area. Ten people – eight students and two teachers – were fatally shot, and thirteen others were wounded. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-old student at the school, was taken into custody. The shooting is the third-deadliest high school shooting in the United States, after the Parkland high school shooting that occurred three months prior, and the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.
