Why is California called the Golden State?

California is called the Golden State not because of the gold found at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, but because winter rains make the hills green until the dry air of summer turns them a golden hue.

Few remember Charlie Taylor, a mechanic at the brothers’ bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio. Yet it was Taylor who, by building an internal-combustion engine out of aluminum castings rather than iron ones, created a device both light enough and powerful enough to lift Orville and Wilbur into the sky.