Houston

Houston is a city in southeastern Texas, on Buffalo Bayou near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It is named after Sam Houston, who led the army of Texas to independence and was the first president of the Republic of Texas. Houston was the first word spoken from the surface of the Moon, when Neil Armstrong called Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.

Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen founded the town in 1836 on the bayou and named it after the general. It was the capital of the Republic of Texas for a short time. Cotton and timber moved through it by rail to the coast, and the Houston Ship Channel, opened in 1914, made it a deep-water port. Oil found in East Texas early in the 20th century brought refineries and chemical plants to the channel, and NASA opened its center for human spaceflight in the city in the 1960s.

The Port of Houston handles petrochemicals, containers and steel along the ship channel. ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, explores for and produces oil and natural gas. Sysco, also based in the city, supplies food to restaurants, schools and hospitals. Hewlett Packard Enterprise moved its head office to Houston and sells servers and data storage.

The Rothko Chapel holds a set of large dark paintings by Mark Rothko in a quiet room open to people of all faiths. The Astrodome, opened in the 1960s, was the first domed sports stadium. The Houston Astros, the baseball club of the city, won the World Series in the 2010s and 2020s. The Texas Medical Center, a district of hospitals and medical schools, is where Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley carried out pioneering heart surgery.