Phillips disaster of 1989

At approximately 1:22 p.m. CT on March 27, 2000, an explosion and fire responsible for one death and 71 injuries occurred at Phillips Petroleum's Houston Chemical Complex at 1400 Jefferson Road in Pasadena, Texas. The fire produced huge plumes of black smoke that spread over the heavily industrialized Houston Ship Channel and neighboring residential areas.The explosion occurred at the K-Resin facility, which made styrene-butadiene, a type of synthetic rubber. At the time of the explosion, the tank was out of service for cleaning and had no pressure or temperature gauges that would have provided the workers with an alert to the approaching crisis. Ultimately, this explosion resulted in one fatality, while 32 Phillips Petroleum employees and 39 subcontractors were taken to local hospitals for sustaining burns, smoke inhalation, and cuts from debris.It took search crews five hours to locate the body of a missing employee in the rubble. The dead man was Rodney Gott, a 45-year-old supervisor, who barely survived the Phillips Disaster of 1989. At that time, Gott was in a building whose roof collapsed but he remained in the blazing plant to save a woman and attend to the injured.The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's six-month investigation concluded that failure to train workers properly was a key factor in the explosion and fire, and it proposed that Phillips Petroleum be fined $2.5 million in penalties for 50 alleged violations of safety standards at the facility.

The Brown Shipbuilding Company was founded in Houston, Texas, in 1942 as a subsidiary of Brown and Root (now KBR) by brothers Herman and George R. Brown to build ships for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Brown Shipbuilding Company ranked 68th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.In 1941, Navy officials asked the Brown brothers to build four submarine chasers. The brothers had no shipbuilding experience, but had helped build Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. In 1942, the brothers formed Brown Shipbuilding and, with $9 million in Navy funding, built the Green's Bayou Fabrication Yard at the juncture of the Houston Ship Channel and Green's Bayou. After delivering the ships, Brown received orders for landing craft and more sub chasers, and eventually won an order for destroyer escorts at $3.3 million per ship. Between May 1943 and August 1944, Brown turned out 61 destroyer escorts, an average of one per week. Perhaps the most famous was USS Samuel B. Roberts, part of the outgunned Taffy 3 unit that turned back a Japanese battleship force during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Brown also built 254 amphibious assault ships, known as LSMs, between May 1944 and March 1946. By the end of the war, it had produced over 350 Navy warships in contracts totaling over $500 million. After the war, the shipyard was sold to Todd Shipyards. After Todd's Houston division closed in 1985, the yard was once again used by Brown and Root, this time for barge construction and repair. The property was sold piecemeal to multiple buyers in 2004. In 1961, the company won the $200 million contract to build the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.

Chevron Pasadena Refinery is a refinery located in Pasadena, Texas, United States.

The Washburn Tunnel is a two-lane underwater motor-vehicle tunnel connecting Galena Park and Pasadena, two suburbs of Houston, Texas. Completed in 1950, it travels north-south underneath the Houston Ship Channel. It was named after Harris County, Texas Auditor Harry L. Washburn. It is the largest and first toll-free vehicular tunnel in the Southern United States.

Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge (formerly known as the Jesse H. Jones Memorial Bridge) is a span in Harris County, Texas. It was acquired from the then–Texas Turnpike Authority (TTA) (now North Texas Tollway Authority) on May 5, 1994, and is now a part of the Harris County Toll Road Authority system. The bridge opened to traffic in May 1982 and carries four lanes of the Sam Houston Tollway over the Houston Ship Channel with a clearance of 175 feet (53 m).

Pasadena High School is the first established high school in Pasadena, Texas, located along Texas State Highway 225. It serves grades 9th through 12 and is part of the Pasadena Independent School District. The principal (as of June 26, 2019) is Mrs. Laura Gomez. Pasadena High School's mascot is an eagle named "Baldy". The school colors are green and white.

Macroplaza Mall, formerly Pasadena Town Square Mall and Plaza Paseo Mall, is a regional shopping mall in Pasadena, Texas, southeast of Houston. Developed by Federated Department Stores Realty and attached to an existing Foley's Department store, it opened March 1982. The mall originally featured Joske's, Foley's, and Palais Royal (Houston-based department store) as its anchor stores. At the time it was built, its location was unusual as it was one of only a few malls in the Houston area not near a highway. Joske's was rebranded as Dillard's in 1987 following the purchase of the Joske's chain. Sears was added as the fourth anchor in 1997 in an effort to increase traffic; and allow the mall to be seen as a larger regional mall. All four Anchor Stores Dillard's, Sears, Macy's, and Palais Royal (department store) currently sit vacant. A little more than a year after opening, mall developer Federated Department Stores Realty sold the mall, and three others, to mall manager JMB Realty Corporation for $112 millionl. In 2002, the mall was purchased from American General by a local developer. Foley's converted to Macy's in 2006, the same year Dillard's closed. Macy's closed on March 27, 2017. In 2015 the mall was purchased by Guardian Equity, which planned to remodel the common spaces. In 2016 it was renamed Plaza Paseo Mall.In mid-2018, its name was again changed to Macroplaza Mall, to allude to it being a gathering place like the plaza of the same name to the south in Monterrey, Mexico, and to emphasize a new focus on the area's Mexican American community. Palais Royal closed in 2020 when its parent company Stage Stores filed for bankruptcy.On November 9, 2020, it was announced that Sears would close on January 24, 2021, as part of a plan to close seven Sears stores nationwide, leaving the mall with no anchor stores. It was revealed afterward the store would be converted and reopened as the smaller-format Sears Hometown store., but closed in May 2022.The Mall's official social media pages are not active as of 2023.

There has been quite a bit of confusion about Vince's Bridge ever since the famous Battle of San Jacinto. Different accounts from that time disagreed about where the bridge was located and who actually destroyed it. This confusion was partly because two brothers, William and Allen Vince, owned lands near each other, which were crossed by two separate streams, Vince's Bayou and Sims Bayou. There has been quite a bit of confusion about Vince's Bridge ever since the famous Battle of San Jacinto. Different accounts from that time disagreed about where the bridge was located and who actually destroyed it. This confusion was partly because two brothers, William and Allen Vince, owned lands near each other, which were crossed by two separate streams, Vince's Bayou and Sims Bayou. William Vince owned property along Buffalo Bayou and named a nearby stream Vince’s Bayou. He built a bridge over this stream to make it easier to move across his land. His brother, Allen, owned land adjacent to William's but never built anything significant there. He chose instead to live in William’s cabin and use William's bridge. Historical documents and narratives mainly confirm that the bridge destroyed during the battle was indeed on Vince's Bayou, part of William's property. General Sam Houston, the leader of the Texian forces, ordered the destruction of this bridge not to stop reinforcements but to prevent the Mexican army from escaping, effectively trapping them. The destruction of Vince’s Bridge was crucial strategically. Once the bridge was destroyed, the retreating Mexican troops were forced into a narrow area where they had to either surrender or try to escape by swimming across the swollen bayou, which was nearly impossible. This strategic move played a significant role in Texas winning its independence from Mexico, as it led to the capture of General Santa Anna, the Mexican commander. name="YPAL" /> The bridge appears on the reverse of the state Seal of Texas.

Texas's 29th congressional district of the United States House of Representatives covers the eastern portion of the Greater Houston area in the state of Texas. The current Representative from the 29th district is Democrat Sylvia Garcia. The Texas State Legislature established the district as a majority-Hispanic or Latino district. Democrat Gene Green, a non-Hispanic white, won the first election for the district in 1992 and held it for 18 terms. In November 2017, Green announced that he would retire from Congress and would not run for re-election in 2018. Garcia won the election to succeed him.

Sam Rayburn High School is a public high school located in Pasadena, Texas in the United States. The school is a part of the Pasadena Independent School District.