Free Cartoonist Software

If you want to add a touch of humour to your photos, then this free Cartoonist software is for you. This compact and easy-to-use graphics software enables even a computer novice to create funny caricatures or realistic images applying creative warping effects in a matter of minutes. Cartoonist has a simple, easy-to-grasp interface so that the user can easily and quickly operate the program.
Cartoonist lets you watch the results of each operation in real time, allowing you to undo any operation at any time or jump to the original image, if you don't like the results. So, with Cartoonist you can make the best use of your creativity or just relieve stress by warping images of your friends and celebrities!

Get Cartoonist at this link.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD) is a parodic holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur ("Ol' Chumbucket") and Mark Summers ("Cap'n Slappy"), of the United States, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate. For example, an observer of this holiday would greet friends not with "Hello," but with "Ahoy, me haarrty!" The date was selected because it was the birthday of Summers' ex-wife and consequently would be easy for him to remember. The holiday, and its observance, springs from a romanticized view of the Golden Age of Piracy.
At first an inside joke between two friends, the holiday gained exposure when John Baur and Mark Summers sent a letter about their invented holiday to the American syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry in 2002. Dave Barry liked the idea and promoted the day. Growing media coverage of the holiday after Dave Barry's column has ensured that this event is now celebrated internationally. Although it is harmless, the day is very much a money making exercise. For example, Baur and Summers use it to sell books and T shirts on their website related to the theme.
Read more about this here.

Millau Viaduct - the tallest vehicular bridge in the world

I got an email with the heading of the 'tallest bridge in the world' and the attached presentation was very interesting. I then did a further search in Wikipedia, and found this entry.
Some brief highlights:
The Millau Viaduct (French: le Viaduc de Millau) is a large cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn near Millau in southern France, it is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one mast's summit at 343 metres (1,125 ft) — slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 38 m (125 ft) shorter than the Empire State Building. It was formally dedicated on 14 December 2004 and opened to traffic two days later.
The bridge’s construction broke three world records:
* The highest pylons in the world: pylons P2 and P3, 244.96 and 221.05 metres in height respectively, broke the French record previously held by the Tulle and Verrières Viaducts (141 m), and the world record previously held by the Kochertal Viaduct (Germany), which is 181 metres at its highest;
* The highest mast in the world: the mast atop pylon P2 peaks at 343 m.
* The highest road bridge deck in the world, 270 m above the Tarn River at its highest point. It is nearly twice as tall as the previous tallest vehicular bridge in Europe, the Europabrücke in Austria. It is slightly higher than the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia in the United States, which is 267 m above the New River. Only the bridge deck of the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado, United States (mainly a pedestrian bridge over the Arkansas River, occasionally also used by motor vehicles) is higher with 321 m, and is considered the highest bridge in the world.

Software: Earth Alerts

What is EARTH ALERTS?

Earth Alerts (link) is a Windows-based application that provides alert notifications, reports, and imagery on many types of natural phenomenon that are occurring real-time both worldwide as well as in specific locations within the United States (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Earth Alerts also lets you track weather and earthquake activity for Global locations!

Earth Alerts makes use of the resources from organizations such as the National Weather Service, U.S. Geological Survey and numerous other agencies to identify what sort of things "Mother Earth" is currently doing.

To use Earth Alerts, you simply select the specific activity types (earthquakes, tsunamis, weather, etc.) and the specific locations you are interested in. The application will then automatically retrieve the latest information from various live data feeds on the Internet, and then present it to you. Earth Alerts is a tool to provide you with a way to be notified immediately whenever events such as tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes/typhoons, floods, wildfires, landslides, etc. occur near you as well as elsewhere in the world. Earth Alerts gives you all this AND weather related alerts and information!

Mac Office: Art of Office

In a push by Microsoft to showcase the potential of the Office Suite, there is a website called TheArtOfOffice.com that showcases documents built using Microsoft Office on Mac.
From the site itself: "Art of Office is for Mac users pushing the boundaries of what can be done in Mac Office. Explore. Contribute. Reuse. Remix. Add your best work. Take what you like (giving credit where it's due) and make it yours."
This is meant for users of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

The top 10 languages spoken in the world

The top 10 languages spoken in the world

10. French -- Number of speakers: 129 million

Often called the most romantic language in the world, French is spoken in tons of countries, including Belgium,
Canada, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Haiti. Oh, and France too. We're actually very lucky that French is so popular, because without it, we might have been stuck with Dutch Toast, Dutch Fries, and Dutch kissing (ew!).

To say "hello" in French, say "Bonjour" (bone-JOOR).

9. Malay-- IndonesianNumber of speakers: 159 million

Malay-Indonesian is spoken - surprise - in Malaysia and Indonesia. Actually, we kinda fudged the numbers on this one because there are many dialects of Malay, the most popular of which is Indonesian. But they're all pretty much based on the same root language, which makes it the ninth most-spoken in the world.
Indonesia is a fascinating place; a nation made up of over 13,000 islands it is the sixth most populated country in the world.
Malaysia borders on two of the larger parts of Indonesia (including the island of Borneo), and is mostly known for its capital city of
Kuala Lumpur.

To say "hello" in Indonesian, say "Selamat pagi" (se-LA-maht PA-gee).

8. Portuguese -- Number of speakers: 191 million

Think of Portuguese as the little language that could. In the 12th Century, Portugal won its independence from Spain and expanded all over the world with the help of its famous explorers like Vasco da Gama and Prince Henry the Navigator. (Good thing Henry became a navigator . . . could you imagine if a guy named "Prince Henry the Navigator" became a florist?) Because Portugal got in so early on the exploring game, the language established itself all over the world, especially in Brazil
(where it's the national language), Macau, Angola, Venezuela, and
Mozambique.

To say "hello" in Portuguese, say "Bom dia" (bohn DEE-ah).

7. Bengali -- Number of speakers: 211 million

In Bangladesh, a country of 120+ million people, just about everybody speaks Bengali. And because Bangladesh is virtually surrounded by India (where the population is growing so fast, just breathing the air can get you pregnant), the number of Bengali speakers in the world is much higher than most people would expect.

To say "hello" in Bengali, say "Ei Je" (EYE-jay).

6. Arabic -- Number of speakers: 246 million

Arabic, one of the world's oldest languages, is spoken in the Middle East, with speakers found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Jordan,
Lebanon, and Egypt. Furthermore, because Arabic is the language of the Koran, millions of Moslems in other countries speak Arabic as well. So many people have a working knowledge of Arabic, in fact, that in 1974 it was made the sixth official language of the United Nations.

To say "hello" in Arabic, say "Al salaam a'alaykum" (Ahl sah-LAHM ah ah-LAY-koom) .

5. Russian -- Number of speakers: 277 million

Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Yakov Smirnoff are among the millions of Russian speakers out there. Sure, we used to think of them as our Commie enemies. Now we think of them as our Commie friends. One of the six languages in the UN, Russian is spoken not only in the Mother Country, but also in
Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the U.S. (to name just a few places).

To say "hello" in Russian, say "Zdravstvuite" (ZDRAST-vet- yah).

4. Spanish -- Number of speakers: 392 million

Aside from all of those kids who take it in high school, Spanish is spoken in just about every South American and Central American country, not to mention Spain
, Cuba, and the U.S. There is a particular interest in Spanish in the U.S., as many English words are borrowed from the language, including: tornado, bonanza, patio, quesadilla, enchilada, and taco grande supreme.

To say "hello" in Spanish, say "Hola" (OH-la).

3. Hindustani -- Number of speakers: 497 million

Hindustani is the primary language of India's crowded population, and it encompasses a huge number of dialects (of which the most commonly spoken is Hindi). While many predict that the population of India will soon surpass that of China, the prominence of English in India prevents Hindustani from surpassing the most popular language in the world. If you're interested in learning a little Hindi, there's a very easy way: rent an Indian movie. The film industry in India is the most prolific in the world, making thousands of action/romance/ musicals every year.

To say "hello" in Hindustani, say "Namaste" (Nah-MAH-stay) .

2. English -- Number of speakers: 508 million

While English doesn't have the most speakers, it is the official language of more countries than any other language. Its speakers hail from all around the world, including the U.S., Australia, England, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Hong Kong
, South Africa, and Canada. We'd tell you more about English, but you probably feel pretty comfortable with the language already. Let's just move on to the most popular language in the world.

To say "hello" in English, say "What's up, freak?" (watz-UP-freek) .

1. Mandarin -- Number of speakers: 1 billion+

Surprise, surprise, the most widely spoken language on the planet is based in the most populated country on the planet, China. Beating second-place English by a 2 to 1 ratio, but don't let that lull you into thinking that Mandarin is easy to learn. Speaking Mandarin can be really tough, because each word can be pronounced in four ways (or "tones"), and a beginner will invariably have trouble distinguishing one tone from another. But if over a billion people could do it, so could you. Try saying hello!

To say "hello" in Mandarin, say "Ni hao" (Nee HaOW). ("Hao" is pronounced as one syllable, but the tone requires that you let your voice drop midway, and then raise it again at the end.)

Origins of the Himalyas

" In a hundred ages of the gods, I could not tell thee of the glories of the Himalaya"... . Thus does tradition call down to us from the Puranas. The Himalaya, is a spectacle of awesome dimensions.. . ranges upon ranges, tiers of rock, sharp sky piercing peaks and canyons, deep beyond measure..... ..how did this come about, whence rose these citadels of ice...how did this three thousand kilometer long mountain range come into existence?, for the Himalaya is not only the most impressive of all the mountain chains, but also the youngest.

You have to stretch your imagination a bit to comprehend the cataclysmic events that led to the formation of the Himalayan ranges.

According to the most accepted geological theories, India once belonged to an Island continent called Gondwanaland and was separated from the Eurasian continent by the primordial Tethyan ocean. One billion years ago, the Aravallis, whose eroded remnants are visible around Delhi, formed a chain higher than the Himalayas today. Over millions of years these mountains suffered the forces of erosion and their sediments were deposited in the Tethyan ocean. Then 140 million years ago, India began it's northward movement, on a collision course with the Eurasian continent.

The point where the two continents were joined is known, appropriately, as the Indus- Yarlung Suture zone, marked by the courses of these two greatest rivers of the Kailash. After 60 million years, the Indian and Asian plates became closely welded along this suture zone. The northward movement of India continued but at a slower rate - 2-3 centimeters per year.

And what birth pangs.... as a result of the collision itself, and the related contraction of the Tethyan ocean, all the rocks of this area, from the mountains of then northern India to the oceanic crust, and the deep sea sediments of the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, joined in the formation of the Himalayas.

This then is the result of those ancient events ..... each layer tells the story of the play of millions of years of brute force by nature.

The Himalayas as we see them today went through some distinct epochs of uplift. First came the Trans. Himalaya. South of this is the high Himalayan region, where the range reaches it's highest points. Here we find old crystalline rock, the oldest core material in the entire Himalayas, almost 2 billion years old, the bottom layers of the compacted Tethyan sediments. This is known as the main central thrust.

As the Himalayas rose the forces of erosion kept pace, leading to the formation of a contiguous lower range of hills known as the Shivaliks. Made of erosion material from the still rising Himalayas, their sediments reflect the history of the up thrust of the emergent Himalayas. Numerous fossil finds allow the Shivaliks to be dated with accuracy and provide evidence of the comparative youth of the Himalayas.

In the second phase of upheaval, further uplift of the central axis took place. It was now that the great peaks of the Garhwal himalaya..Nanda devi etc achieved their present eminences. In this period, intrusions of young granites, known as leucogranites because of their whitish colour, took place in the highest peaks.. such as the Bhagirathi sisters and Shivling.

The last up thrust affected not only the Himalayas, Transhimalaya and the Karakorum, but also the whole of the Tibetan region. With an area of 2.5 million square kilometers, this region is the highest land mass on earth and in the last 1 million years it has risen by nearly 5,000 meters, an average of 4-5 millimeters per year.

The uplift continues even today at a measurable 10 meters every hundred years. Mount Everest has itself risen 8.2 meters in the last 100 years.

Very little is known about the start, duration and extent of the Ice ages in the Himalayas. Geologists have however determined that the second last was the most severe. The period after this major ice age saw a marked retreat of the glaciers and this was also the period that most Himalayan lakes came into being, amidst the ice polished rock landscape. The Pangong and the Chandratal are classic examples of such glacial remnants.

Large lakes were also formed as rising rivers were blocked by the emergent ranges. As the rising Pir panjal blocked the Jhelum it turned, what we know as The Vale of Kashmir, into a lake. This primeaval lake, called the Karewa, drained, and from it's sediments, pieces of primitive tools have been recovered - our only evidence of a pre ice- age culture in the Himalayas.

All the major rivers of the Himalayas have their source in the holy Kailash region. The Indus to the north, the Yarlung -Brahmaputra in the east, the Sutluj in the west and the Ganga, Karnali streams to the south and southwest. This amazing situation, making Mt. Kailash the literal lynchpin of the Himalaya, is the result of a 30 million year old upthrust of the Kailash range at a time when the Himalayas were in the slow, initial phase of their formation.

Two of these great rivers, the Indus and the Yarlung-Brahmaputra , were forced to flow along the lines of the suture zone in an east west direction, only penetrating the range at it's eastern and western extremities.

To further confound matters, this penetration takes place at points of highest uplift, Nanga Parbat in the west and Namche Barwa in the east. The cutting action of the other rivers kept pace with the rising Himalaya and they come right through the range at some of the highest points.

In the East, the Yarlung Tsangpo parallels the Himalaya till it comes to the great axial bend at Namche Barwa. Then, cutting one of the deepest gorges on earth, three times as deep as the Grand canyon, it enters the plains of Assam.

The sources of all major Himalayan rivers lie, therefore, on the north side of the great range and besides the Kailash group, include most larger Himalayan rivers.

These rivers are the principal architects of the Himalayan landscape and each river system has created it's own unique geomorphology. The Indus and it's tributaries like the Zanskar and the Suru in the transhimalaya. It's major Himalayan tributaries which are river systems in their own right ... the Chenab, Ravi, Beas and the Sutlej. Further east the Garwhal himalaya is the domain of the Ganga and it's feeder streams while the Teesta drains the Sikkimese himalaya. Beyond, in Arunachal is the true lower catchement of the great Brahmaputra river system.

The gradual rise of the Himalaya took place in a series of long, curvilinear, parallel folds, and in this stupendous upthrust of the earth's crust, was created a mountain range that contains all the worlds mountains over 7,000 meters in height, and constitutes the line of demarcation between two of the world's great faunal realms - the Oriental to the south and the Palearctic to the north. Here we find compressed into a few tens of kilometers, the most abrupt environmental changes in the terrestrial world.

Geographically the range has been traditionally divided into :-
The Punjab Himalaya.... ... consisting of the catchement basins of the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutluj.

The Garhwal Himalaya ...... consisting of the catchement basins of the the Yamuna and the Ganga.

The Kumaon Himalaya

The Nepal Himalaya

Sikkim ..... the basin of the teesta

&

The Eastern Himalaya.... the Brahmaputra and it's left bank tributaries.

Broadly they are classified into western, central and eastern Himalaya.

The Western Himalaya, from Himachal Pradesh onwards, has a much greater depth or width, than the Eastern Himalaya. A transverse section drawn from the plains of Punjab, through Kashmir, onto the Karakorums is three times longer than anywhere in the Eastern Himalaya.

The Eastern Himalaya is also climatically very different. High rainfall and gentler conditions make the eastern Himalaya a recognised haven for biodiversity.

Although we tend to talk of the Himalaya as a monolith, nevertheless the fact remains that in their 3000 kilometer length, they present endless variation in terms of climate, geomorphology, flora and fauna. From the tropical jungles of Arunachal to the cold desert of the Nubra.. ..primulas and rare orchids to the equally rare edelweiss... frozen waterfalls and verdant forest ......bare rock and glacial wastes ...the Himalaya have it all.....

Why is the International Date Line not straight

Why is the International Date Line not straight like the Greenwich Meridian - here is a concise answer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line

An extract from this page: "For a large part, the International Date Line follows the meridian of 180° longitude, roughly down the middle of the Pacific Ocean. However, because the date to the east of the line is one day earlier than that to the west of the line, the line deviates to pass around the far east of Russia and various island groups in the Pacific. Thus, the two largest deviations from this meridian both occur to keep the date line from crossing nations internally."

A great time zone map:
http://www3.shastacollege.edu/dscollon/images/Figures,%20Diagrams%20and%20Maps.htm

Geographic Midpoint Calculator With Maps

Suppose you want to find the midpoint between 2 geographic locations. And you want to find the closest town or habitation nearest to this midpoint, then this link is the one for you. This can be useful if you are planning a trip (especially a bike or car trip and want to determine trip break points). And it is very easy to use, with options of either selecting a location after drilling down into the region, country and state; or by searching for the locations; or by entering the lattitude and longitudes.

Some possible uses for the calculator:

* You can select all cities and towns that you have lived in, then view all of those places on a map along with a marker pointing at the exact midpoint for all of those places.
* You can determine the midpoint of an airline flight between two cities. Note that the flight paths of commercial flights may vary somewhat, and may not pass directly over the true midpoint.
* Trip planning--find a central hub for places you are going to visit.
* Find a location for a convention, family reunion or other gathering that will minimize overall travel distance.
* Find a central place for a new business or facility that will serve surrounding population centers.

If you want to know the method used for calculation, it is available at this link.

Reduce number of key clicks: QuicKeys

If there are several actions on your computer that you do on a regular basis and they take several steps to complete, at some point, there will be a lot of irritation about the time spent on doing these steps. It could be as simple as doing an operation that involved clicking on the start menu, then clicking on Programs, then launching notepad, then launching a browser, going to a web site, copying information, pasting in notepad. Now imagine you have a software that can do operations like these with a single click, and do this for many other such key combinations. Would it not be a useful software to have ?
Well, then welcome to QuicKeys for Windows. It is slightly expensive, but is extremely useful and will pay for itself many times over in terms of saved time, convenience and reduced irritation. A trial version is available at this link.

Some of the features of this software are:
Triggers: hot keys, toolbars, timers & quickeys menu
• Use hot keys, which can be virtually any key combination, to trigger your QuicKeys shortcuts.
• Hot Key Chaining lets users string a series of hot keys together allowing for virtually an unlimited number of hot key triggering key combinations. For example use F1->I->E to launch Internet Explorer and F1->E->M to launch your e-mail application.
• Create toolbars that contain buttons for any or all of your shortcuts. Like other triggers, toolbars can be for all applications or application specific (the toolbar will only appear when the specified application is open).
• Set timers to activate shortcuts at a specified time on any day of the week. Timed triggers can repeat at an interval which you define.
• Launch shortcuts, view your QuickReference Card (a listing of all of your shortcuts) and open the QuicKeys Editor from the QuicKeys menu.
• Use Event Triggers to launch actions and sequences when programs start, shutdown, gain focus or lose focus.
• With the recording feature, QuicKeys will watch and record your actions so you can play them back at any time. This feature is great for quickly automating longer, multi-step tasks.
• Transfer your shortcuts to another computer or user. Great for utilizing the same shortcuts on multiple computers or for sharing your favorite shortcuts with friends or co-workers.
• By sharing and connecting to Action Folders, QuicKeys users can easily benefit from actions and sequences created by others giving a whole office the ability to be efficient together. Plus, any changes made to these Action Folders will be updated for each QuicKeys user automatically whenever QuicKeys is launched or refreshed.

For the entire rich feature list, refer to this feature page

Virtual Drive for your machine

If you are a software developer, then there are chances that you will want the ability to be able to use programs that assume a CD/DVD exists on the system, and you don't have one. So, here is this useful software called Virtual CloneDrive available at this link. It also enables you to mount image files and use them, something that can be extremely useful.

Some of the things that it can do and where all it can be used:
- Supports all common image formats such as ISO, BIN, CCD
- Supports up to 8 virtual drives at the same time
- Easy to use - just double-click an image file to mount as a drive
- Virtual CloneDrive is freeware, you may use it at no cost.

It works on Windows versions from Win98 onwards.

Hard Disk Visualizer - Sequoia Viewer

If you have a hard disk that seems to be forever full, then maybe this free tool can help you. It is a hard disk visualizer that represents the hard disk in visual form, giving a good representation of the size of individual sections of the hard disk, with the capacity utilization by different files and folders represented in graphical form. The bigger the size of the file, the bigger is the space shown in the hard disk.

http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ (Called the Sequoia Viewer)



Couple of tips:

1. You can see how sometimes temp folders can be huge

2. If you don't turn off hibernation option in XP, it has an unused file the size of your installed RAM (I never use hibernation, so turing off the option in Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate > Enable hibernation saved me 1.5GB)

3. Lots of old stuff lying around that never got deleted

China building new Great Wall against rats

China is building a new Great Wall-a relative miniature at 1 meter high-to guard against hordes of pillaging mice. Lujiao, a town in central Hunan province that was overrun by field mice last month, is erecting a 40 km barrier around Dongting Lake to keep the rodents away. About 2 billion mice nesting on the shores of China's second largest freshwater lake gnawed their way through 5,20,000 hectares of crop land when rising water drove them from their burrows. Such plagues underline China's growing struggle to maintain a stable environment, said Yang Hualin, director of the Chinese Pest Control Association in Beijing.

"These are alarm bells amid China's economic development," Yang said. "Ultimately, the original ecological balance needs to be restored, but at the moment that's going to be hard." The country must build up the population of predators, such as owls, snakes and weasels, which have dwindled because of farming and the use of poison to contain pests, he said. "At the moment, this is the only thing that can be done," Yang said of the wall.

However, walls won't shield farmers from the next mouse plague, said Wen Bo, director of the China programme at Pacific Environment, a conservation group in San Francisco. Mice will find holes in the cement-and-rock fortification and resume their assault, he said. "The wall is a symbolic gesture to quiet public concern," Wen said. "It's not going to work in the long run." In Binhu, a hamlet administered by Lujiao, Zhang Shouliang said she and her neighbours used bamboo sticks to kill thousands of mice that invaded their homes and crops.

Her extended family of 13 lost its entire harvest of corn, peanuts and watermelon, worth 10,000 yuan ($1,300). Climatic conditions aggravated this year's plague, said Zhang Meiwen, a Hunanbased researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dongting's waters receded to lower- than-usual levels after a dry winter, giving mice more room to breed. After authorities at the Three Gorges Dam opened sluices to alleviate flooding upstream in the Yangtze River in mid-June, the lake began rising by as much as half a meter a day, driving mice into 22 surrounding communities, Zhang said.

"This is the prelude of a battle between mice and men," the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture said about Hunan's plague. The Lujiao government is raising 6 million yuan for its wall, the state-run Xinhua news service reported. China's Great Wall, built from about 220 B.C. to fend off pillaging tribes from the north, extends more than 6,400 km. The wall, which stands 8 m tall in some parts, didn't halt Genghis Khan, who sacked what is now Beijing in the early 13th century. But optimistic Zhang said: "Once they get the wall built, we'll be better off.

Origin of term Good-Bye

Seems a very straight-forward term, rolls easily off the tongue. Very convenient. But the term has a bigger meaning. It is derived from the ancient wish: God be with you. Seems feasible, right ? Well, read on:

Sometimes we are so familiar with a word that we forget what we are saying. We might imagine that good-bye might be related to bye-ways and bye-laws but that is not the case. The good of good-bye is identical to the good of Good Friday. That it is, it is not "good" at all but "God". Good-bye is a shortened form of "God be with ye/you" which dates from Shakespeare's time. Godspeed, a 15th century way of saying "good-bye", comes from God speed, meaning "may God prosper one".

"In the Spanish adios and French adieu 'farewell, good-bye', we see an explicit wish that the person addressed should be in the care of God (dios, dieu). The same sentiment lies at the origin of good-bye, which comes from the phrase God be with you. The phrase gradually eroded over time, appearing in such versions as God be wy you (in the sixteenth century), God b'y you (in the seventeenth), and numerous other versions before settling on good-bye in the nineteenth century, the final form buttressed by the example of good night and good day. In time good-bye was further shortened simply to bye, at which point reduction could scarcely proceed further. To some speakers, indeed, this meager monosyllable seemed in need of fattening, so they produced the reduplicaton bye-bye.

History of Wall Street

In March, 1792, twenty-four of New York City's leading merchants met secretly at Corre's Hotel to discuss ways to bring order to the securities business and to wrest it from their competitors, the auctioneers. Two months later, on May 17, 1792, these merchants signed a document named the Buttonwood Agreement, named after their traditional meeting place, a buttonwood tree. The agreement called for the signers to trade securities only among themselves, to set trading fees, and not to participate in other auctions of securities. These twenty-four men had founded what was to become the New York Stock Exchange. The Exchange would later be located at 11 Wall Street.

A century before, Dutch settlers had built a wall to protect themselves from Indians, priates, and other dangers. The path had become a bustling commercial thoroughfare because it joined the banks of the East River with those of the Hudson River on the west. The path was named Wall Street. Early merchants built their warehouses and shops on this path, along with a city hall and a church. New York was the U.S. national capitol from 1785 until 1790 and Federal Hall was built on Wall Street. George Washington was inaugurated on the steps of this building.

The first stock exchange in America was actually founded in Philadelphia in 1790. The New York merchant group, realizing that their stock exchange was now in decline after the early tumult of revolutionary war bonds and stock in the Bank of the United States, sent an observer to Philadelphia in early 1817. Upon his return, bearing news of the thriving Philadelphia exchange, the New York Stock and Exchange Board was formally organized on March 8, 1817.

The exchange rented a room at 40 Wall street and every morning the president, Anthony Stockholm, read the stocks to be traded. The exchange was an exclusive organization, new members were required to be voted in, and a candidate could be black-balled by three negative votes. In 1817 a seat on the exchange cost $25, in 1827 it increased to $100, and in 1848 the price was $400. Members wore top hats and swallowtail coats.

The early 1900s saw the rise of huge fortunes made on Wall Street. In 1901 J.P. Morgan astounded Wall Street by creating a billion dollar merger resulting in the U.S. Steel Corporation. In 1907 a wave of panic hit Wall Street. Eight hundred million dollars in securities were unloaded within a few months. Stock prices plummeted and runs on banks became a daily occurence. When the Knickerbocker Trust Company was forced to close its doors a panic swept banks throughout the country. Morgan pressured the leading New York bankers to forestall a total financial collapse of the country. They set up a single banking trust, with most large banks across the U.S. contributing to its financing. Morgan's own group, as you might imagine, had controlling interest.

The first of the two largest Wall Street panics occurred in 1929. The Wall Street con game, already working full tilt, had convinced millions of Americans that the country was riding on an upward spiraling wave of financial glory. Both rich and poor put their money into stocks and bonds. The Wall Street myth, broadcast by the Insiders' newspapers and magazines, spotlighted stories of shopkeepers and workers making fortunes in the stock market overnight.

Stock prices were pushed up beyond any relationship with the actual worth of the companies. In 1929 stock prices were 400% higher than they had been in 1924. The Insiders had made their fortunes and could no longer sustain the con, so on October 23, 1929, the market fell 31 points. Stock prices fell an additional 49 points on October 28 and on the 29th the entire market fell apart. Some brokers and investors jumped out of their office windows. The 1929 crash hit the U.S. even harder than the one that was to come in 1987. The fallout from the '29 crash devastated the country, leading to a long-time economic collapse and depression that was to continue until the start of the Second World War in 1941.

The Wall Street crash of 1987 - "Black Monday" - occurred on October 19th. The Dow Jones fell an astounding 508 points, largest one-day loss in the stock market's history. The Insiders running the con game landed on their feet and quickly misdirected the public's attention, laying the blame on computerized (program) trading. Though the cascade of sell orders from large institutions had clogged the system, leaving many individual investors stranded while prices fell, the '87 crash was created by the same Insider specialist group who control every facet of the stock market for their own profit.

Blackle - Black Version of Google

Blackle is nothing but a black version of google .

"A few months ago, TreeHugger Mark Ontkush wrote a post on his blog EcoIron titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year . The post lays out the following train of thought. "An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts." Google, which has a white background and gets about "200 million queries a day" could reduce global energy use by 750 Megawatt-hours a year by simply changing the color of its homepage to black.

In response to this post a black version of Google emerged called Blackle.com . According to Blackle's homepage at publication time, 4,408.917 Watt hours have been saved by. Nice ideas. But how does the search measure up? Very well indeed. Give it a whirl yourself and start saving energy one search at a time. :: Blackle.com

Story of tulip mania in Holland from centuries back

Tulip Mania : In 1559 when the first tulip bulbs arrived in Holland and Germany, people fell in love with the exotic Turkish flowers. Soon speculators entered tulip market purely for monetary gain and trading tulips became popular.
Speculation led to high trading volumes by merchants and shopkeepers. At the height of the tulip mania, in 1635, single tulip bulbs were being exchanged for as much as four tons of wheat, silver cups, two casks of wine and four oxen.
People sold homes, livestock, everything for the privilege of owning tulips, on the expectation that prices would continue to rise. By 1636, tulips were being traded like stocks on the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Now comes the peak :
Smart players began to liquidate their tulip holdings as prices rose. Tulip prices weakened rapidly. Panic seized the market. Within six weeks, tulip prices crashed by 90 per cent.
Obviously tulips have little practical value. So, what could cause people to behave so irrationally? Nobody knows but over centuries, we've seen collective insanity time and again. It's herd mentality where everybody rushes off to buy something and then suddenly,
everybody stampedes in the opposite direction.
This story is now used as a warning to investors to be careful.

Coincidence about Lincoln and Kennedy

I have seen this numerous times, and not sure how much it is true, but here goes:

What a coincidence! No history teacher told us the following (I suppose) ....

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a child while living in the WhiteHouse.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln 's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born 1839
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born 1939

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat !

Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford."
Kennedy was shot in a car called " Lincoln" made by "Ford."
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here's the "kicker":

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theater.

Is this the definition of COINCIDENCE?

Some more interesting facts

- The builders of the great pyramids of Egypt were paid onions, radishes and garlic by the Pharaoh.
- It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.And it is impossible to yawn with your eyes closed!.
- Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
- Believe it or not, Abraham Lincoln, the first U.S. president to sport a beard, grew it at the suggestion of eleven-year old girl, Grace Bedell. This young girl from Westfield New York sent a letter to Lincoln saying: ``you would look a great deal better, for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president.’’ Lincoln took this little girl’s advice and grew a beard. And yes, he did become president soon after! When Lincoln met Grace later on, he kissed her and said: ‘You see, the whiskers grow for you Grace.’’
- The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
- If you add together all the numbers on a roulette wheel (1 to 36), the
total is the number 666.
- Scientists believe that Africa and South America were once joined but the earth’s movement separated them. If you look at the coastlines of each continent they look as though they would fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
- Sound at the right vibration can bore holes through a solid object.
- The Earth gets heavier each day by tons, as meteoric dust settles on it.

Some useless facts

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.

In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath

Earth is the only planet not named after a god.

You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.

Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man