Spanish Advent at Manila

Spanish colonizers first came to the Manila Bay area and its settlements in June 1570, while Governor-General Legazpi was searching for a suitable place to establish a capital for the new territory. Having heard of a prosperous Muslim settlement on the island of Luzon, Legaspi had sent Martin de Goiti to investigate. When Maynilad's ruler, Rajah Soliman, refused to submit to Spanish sovereignty, De Goiti attacked. De Goiti eventually defeated Soliman, claimed Maynilad in the name of the King of Spain, then returned to report his success to Legazpi, who was then based on the island of Panay.

Legazpi himself returned to take the settlement on June 19, 1591. When the Spanish forces approached the natives burned Maynilad down and fled to Tondo and other neighboring towns.

Legaspi began constructing a fort on the ashes of Maynilad and made overtures of friendship to Rajah Lakandula of Tondo, who accepted. The defeated Soliman refused to submit to the Spaniards, but failed to get the support of Lakandula or of the Pampangan and Pangasinan settlements to the north. When Soliman and a force of Tagalog warriors attacked the Spaniards in the battle of Bangcusay, he was finally defeated and killed.

This defeat marked the end of rebellion against the Spanish amongst the Pasig river settlements, and Lakandula's Tondo surrendered its sovereignty, submitting to the authority of the new Spanish capital, Manila.

Ateneo de Manila University

The Ateneo de Manila University operates from several campuses in Metro Manila, with each campus housing different academic and research units. Several thousand faculty members serve a diverse student body of different ages in different academic levels, from elementary to postgraduate. The Loyola Schools have around 8,000 undergraduate students and around 3,000 graduate students making the Ateneo small, in terms of population, relative to many other Philippine universities.

The University began in 1859 when the City of Manila turned over the Escuela Municipal de Manila, a public primary school in Intramuros, to Spanish Jesuits. The school took the name Ateneo when it began offering secondary education in 1865, and has since grown into a university engaged in teaching, research, and social outreach. Its academic programs are geared towards research coupled with praxis and real-world output through which the university and its community engage social problems, especially in areas of national development and addressing poverty.

Daniel Burnham

Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition and designed several famous buildings, including the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington D.C.

Almost as a tribute to his urban planning ethos, Burnham's final resting spot is given special attention, being located on the only island in the park-like Graceland Cemetery, situated in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. Burnham's personal and professional papers are held in the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago. Because he was the planner and architect of Baguio City in the Philippines, the city's Burnham Park was named after him. In his honor, the American Planning Association named a major annual prize the Daniel Burnham Award for a Comprehensive Plan.

Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea

Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea - common names: "nilad" (Filipino); "chengam" (Singapore) - is a shrub that is about 3 meters tall. It is often found in mangrove forests or sandy beaches. Its leaves are opposite. The leaf blades are broad and drop-shaped. Its terminal buds and young leaves are coated with a varnish-like substance. The flowers have four white lobes that are tinged in pink. They are arranged in dense clusters.

The fruits are elliptic and deeply ridged, becoming light brown and buoyant when ripe.

Its dark brown wood can be used to craft small objects. Leaf extracts are known to be helpful for stomach aches. The flowers can be used as a cleansing or whitening laundry agent.

Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, got its name from the nilad since the shores of Manila Bay that are teeming with this shrub. The place was called "Maynilad" which means "There is nilad".