A shed is typically a simple, single-story roofed structure in a back garden or on an allotment that is used for storage. Some sheds are large structures framed by wood and others are made out of plastic or metal. At times, people use their shed to do hobbies or as a workshop.
Pixiebay
The word 'shed' is recorded in English since 1481, as 'shadde,' possibly a variant of
'shade'. In Anglo-Saxon times a 'scead' was a place of rest in a shady place.
Depending on the region and type of use, a shed may also be called an "outhouse", "outbuilding" or "shack".
George Bernard Shaw called his writing shed. It was located in his garden at Shaw’s Corner in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. The idea was that unwanted visitors to his home could be honestly told by staff that he was in London.
George Bernard Shaw's writing shed. By PaulSkin from UK - Shaw's Corner7,
A shed the English composer Benjamin Britten owned is now a Grade 2 listed building.
In 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, to handle post for the army, the British Post office put up a wooden structure in Regents Park, London, which has been described as "the world's largest shed".
US engineer Wilson Greatbatch built the first reliable implantable pacemaker in his garden shed. He tested a prototype on a dog in 1958 and, in 1960, 77-year-old Henry Hannafield, became the first human recipient.
26 per cent of male shed owners say they spend time in their sheds to get away from their partner.
Garden shed with gambrel roof. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright and critic who had a major influence on Western theater, culture and politics.
Shaw in 1914 aged 57
EARLY LIFE
George Bernard Shaw was born July 26, 1856 at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, Dublin.
He was the youngest of three children and only son of retail corn merchant George Carr Shaw (1814–1885) and Lucinda Elizabeth (Bessie) Shaw (née Gurly; 1830–1913)
George attended four schools in Dublin between 1865 and 1871, all of which he hated. He was lazy in class and disliked games, but the Irish youngster was an early reader, (Shaw was readingShakespeare before he was 10). He left school aged 15.
In the summer of 1873, Shaw's mother left Dublin for London; his two sisters joined her, leaving George with his father.
"I must have been an insufferable child," he quipped. "Most children are."
CAREER
George Bernard Shaw began work aged 15 as a junior clerk in a Dublin land agency at a salary of £18 a year. He later described the work as a “damnable waste of human life”.
In early 1876 Shaw learned from his mother that his sister Agnes was dying of tuberculosis. He resigned from the land agents, and in March traveled to England to join his mother and other sister Lucy at Agnes's funeral.
After moving to London, Shaw spent many years as a struggling writer and novelist, supported by his mother. Questioned on why he allowed his aged parent to support him while he wrote unpublishable novels, Shaw responded "I did not throw myself into the battle of life. I threw my mother into it."
Shaw in 1879
Shaw first found fame in the 1880s as a socialist speaker and debater, originally in open air meetings and eventually to well bred, posh audiences in fashionable halls.
Shaw's financial situation did not improve until the mid-1880s when he began a career writing book and music criticism for London newspapers.
A great advocate of Henrik Ibsen, before he started writing plays himself, Shaw devoted a lot of time in the 1880s to persuading theatre managers to put on the Norwegian's works without success.
After serving as deputy in 1888, Shaw became musical critic of The Star in February 1889, writing under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto and earning two guineas a week.
In May 1890 Shaw moved to The World, where he wrote a weekly column as "G.B.S." for more than four years.
From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the theatre critic for The Saturday Review. By this time he had embarked in earnest on a career as a playwright.
Shaw's first stage success was Arms and the Man in 1894; a mock-Ruritanian comedy, it satirized conventions of love, military honor and class.
Shaw in 1894 at the time of Arms and the Man
Shaw was regarded as the leading dramatist of his generation, and was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Shaw wrote prolifically until shortly before his death, aged 94.
He won an Oscar for the screenplay of his play Pygmalion in 1938.
WORKS
Under the influence of Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw brought a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his often contentious political, social and religious ideas.
Gertrude Elliott & Johnston Forbes-Robertson in Caesar and Cleopatra, New York, 1906
Widowers' Houses, the first play of George Bernard Shaw to be staged, premiered on December 9, 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society. The drama attacked slum landlords and placed Shaw as the spearhead of a new political movement in the theatre aimed at the intellect rather than the emotions.
Shaw's plays were not regularly performed in public until he was 40. His first real earnings from the stage came in 1897 with the opening run of The Devil's Disciple in New York which bought him £2000 in royalties.
Following The Devil's Disciple, many of Shaw's plays were critical and commercial successes, including Caesar and Cleopatra (which treated a historic subject in a humorous way thus influencing subsequent historical drama, 1898), Man and Superman (a retelling of Mozart's Don Giovanni 1903), Major Barbara (depicting the contrasting morality of arms manufacturers and the Salvation Army, 1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (Shaw's revenge for maltreatment by doctors in the past, 1906) and Androcles and the Lion (about the persecution of the early Christians, 1912).
Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion was based on a Greek myth. Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved, which then came to life when he kissed it. The play was later filmed as My Fair Lady.
George Bernard Shaw wrote St Joan (1923), a play about the failure of the world to make itself a place for saints, on the occasion of Joan of Arc's canonization.
Wikipedia
After the success of St. Joan, George Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the only person to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar (for the screenplay of his play Pygmalion).
By the late 1920s Shaw was as famous as a movie star and was treated as such. The success of his dramas was an embarrassment to his socialist ideals.
MUSIC
Shaw's mother had a fine mezzo-soprano voice and when he was growing up in Ireland, Shaw's home was often filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players.
As a music critic, Shaw was a passionate admirer of Wagner and Mozart. The latter's "The Magic Flute" said the Irish writer is his own "private church."
Once whilst a music critic, Shaw was being entertained by a mediocre orchestra at a restaurant. The leader recognized the Irishman and asked him what he would like the orchestra to play next. "Dominoes" was Shaw's reply.
BELIEFS
Shaw was a member of the gradualist Fabian Society (which aimed to bring about Socialism by gradual and peaceful means.), a socialist pamphleteer and polemicist for over 50 years, and was instrumental in the foundation of the modern Labour Party.
Despite the fact that he was a democratic socialist, Shaw approved of the dictatorship of Stalin, who according to the Irish playwright , "... made good by doing things better and much more promptly than parliaments."
After the Second World War, Shaw visited the Soviet Union and spoke highly of the good things that were happening over there to the fury of the anti-communist English hierarchy.
A pacifist, Shaw opposed British involvement in the First World War. In Common Sense about the War, written in late 1914, he proposed that soldiers of both sides shoot their officers and go home. Because of his anti-war pamphlets and speeches Shaw was expelled from the Dramatists’ Club.
Shaw's experiences as a schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education. He said that Eton, Harrow, Winchester and other lesser public schools should be "razed to the ground and their foundations sown with salt."
An apostate rebel from Christian upbringing, Shaw believed that God is a fiction for a weak brain. Critical of hypocritical Christians, he wrote, "The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm." He also quipped, "Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it."
A lifelong vegetarian, George Bernard Shaw said he didn't eat meat or fish as "a man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."
George Bernard Shaw always ate small meals. At 70-years-old, after nearly 60 years, he switched from a diet of macaroni with beans and lentils in soups and porridges to one with more fresh fruit and vegetables, which benefited him healthwise.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
A tall red-headed man, Shaw never weighed more than ten stone.
Shaw in 1911, by Alvin Langdon Coburn
At the age of five young George Bernard Shaw was watching his father shave, the Irish youngster asked him "Daddy, why do you shave"? His father looked at him for a full minute, then threw the razor out of his window saying "Why do I?" He never did again.
Shaw grew a beard as an adult as well, to hide a facial scar left by smallpox.
Shaw wore either woollen suits or tweed plus fours. He was famous for his Norfolk Jacket.
A witty egotist, Shaw once quipped, "I often quote myself; It adds spice to my conversation."
Shaw was once sent an invitation reading "Lady... will be at home on Tuesday between 4.00 and 6.00". Shaw returned the card annotated "Mr Bernard Shaw likewise."
RELATIONSHIPS
In 1897 Charlotte Payne Townshend (January 20, 1857–September 12, 1943), an Anglo-Irish woman of wealth and socialist ideals, proposed that she and Shaw should marry. He declined but the following year, as a result of overwork, Shaw's health broke down and Charlotte insisted on nursing him in a house in the country, Shaw, concerned that this might cause scandal, agreed to their marriage.
The marriage ceremony between the two 41-year-olds took place on June 1, 1898, in the register office in Covent Garden, London.
There were no children of the marriage, which it is generally believed was never consummated.
Charlotte and Bernard Shaw (centre) with friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Sigmund Freud said: "Shaw has not the remotest conception of love. There is no real love affair in any of his plays. He makes a jest of Caesar's love affair-perhaps the greatest passion in history.
Deliberately not to say maliciously, he divests Cleopatra of all grandeur and degrades her into an insignificant flapper."
Shaw had a long time friendship with Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the Catholic writer, and there are many humorous stories about their complicated relationship.
He was also a close friend of Edward Elgar. However, despite his high regard for the English composer, Shaw turned down his request for an opera libretto, but was the dedicatee of The Severn Suite (1930).
Shaw formed a friendship with boxer Gene Tunney, despite the world heavyweight champion being some 40 years younger than him. The two men, along with their wives, spent a month long holiday together in 1929 in Brioni, the Adriatic resort.
Oscar Wilde said of Shaw, "He hasn't an enemy in the world and none of his friends like him."
He hated the name George and always preferred to be called simply Bernard Shaw.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Shaw was concerned about the inconsistency of English spelling and backed the idea of a new phonemic alphabet. He illustrated his campaign for spelling reform by using the word "ghoti" as a respelling of "fish." "Gh" (f) as in cough, "o"(i) as in women, "ti" (sh) as in nation. Shaw willed a portion of his wealth to aid the cause.
He wrote more than 250,000 letters in his lifetime - assuming he didn't write any in his first 10 years -that is over eight a day.
Shaw was very fond of flowers. When asked why he didn't have a single vase in his house he replied "Yes I am fond of flowers, but I'm very fond of children too, but I don't chop their heads off and stand them in pots about the house."
Shaw was an authority on photography, amassing about 10,000 prints and more than 10,000 negatives from 1898 until his death. They documentated his friends, travels, politics, plays, films and home life.
Shaw liked prize fighting boxing, going as far as to write a novel about it, Cashel Byron's Profession. Heeven took up the sport himself. In 1883 Shaw entered the Queensberry amateur boxing championships in London, as both a heavyweight and a middleweight, but there is no record that he actually got as far as the ring.
He regularly frequented Cafe Royal, 68 Regent Street, London.
HOMES
When George Bernard Shaw was born, his family was living at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of Dublin.
Shaw's birthplace (2012 ) J.-H. Janßen -
Shaw's mother was close to George John Lee, a flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. In 1862, the Shaws agreed to share with Lee, a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, and a country cottage on Dalkey Hill, overlooking Killiney Bay,
He moved to London 1876 where his mother had gone years earlier having separated from her husband. Shaw never again lived in Ireland, and did not return to visit his home country for twenty-nine years
Shaw lived at Shaw's Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire from 1906 until his death in 1950. He chose to live in Ayot St Lawrence after reading inscribed on a gravestone of a woman who died aged 70, "Her time was short." Thinking if 70 years was a short time span for citizens of Ayot it's the place for me, Shaw decided to move there. The house is preserved as it was in his lifetime.
Shaw wrote much of his work in a rotating hut, located in his Ayot St Lawrence garden.
During his later years, Shaw enjoyed tending the gardens at Shaw's Corner.
Garden of Shaw's Corner. By Jason Ballard
LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Shaw suffered monthly from excruciating headaches, which left him surprised to be alive after each disabling bout.
Shaw died on November 2, 1950 aged 94 of kidney problems caused by a fall from a ladder while pruning a tree.
He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and Shaw's ashes mixed with his wife's were scattered over the garden of Shaw's Corner.
Shaw left the bulk of his fortune for establishing "a Fit alphabet containing at least 42 letters and thereby capable of noting with sufficient accuracy for recognition all the sounds of spoken English without having to use more than one letter for each sound."
Shaw left a third of his royalties to the National Gallery of Ireland in recognition of the education he gained there as a young man.
The history of shaving dates back to the Stone Age, when Neanderthal man first started pulling hair from his body. Ancient cavepaintings indicate that early man removed hair from his face, by simply plucking them out using two seashells as tweezers.
Permanent shaving razors were developed around 3000 BC, thanks to the invention of metalworking. Copper razors have been found in both India and Egypt.
Shaven heads and smooth, hair-free bodies were signs of nobility in Ancient Egypt from about 3000 BC.
In Ancient Greece, it was popular for men to crop hair very short and shave their face. The Greeks considered it an aesthetic approach to personal hygiene, like the Middle Eastern cultures.
Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to shave their beards to avoid having them seized in hand-to-hand combat.
Alexander the Great's shaven image on the Alexander Mosaic,
Some Republican Roman men had a skilled live-in servant to shave them; others started their day with a trip to the tonsor, or barber, who would shave his customer's faces with an iron novacila, or Roman razor.
In 296 B.C Publicus Ticinius Maenas, a wealthy Greek businessman, brought professional barbers from Sicily to Rome. These barbers used thin-bladed iron razors, which were sharpened with water and a whetstone. They didn't always use soap or oil, which was probably why it took so long to shave a patron's face.
During Julius Caesar's expedition to the British Isles, he noted that "the Britons shave every part of their body except their head and upper lip."
The tonsure, that is to say the shaving of part of the head, became the convention among the western monks and the Catholic clergy in the sixth century. The intention behind the tonsure was to symbolize the crown of thorns.
During the Middle Ages, Muslim men attended the hammams (public baths), where they were shaved (sometimes the whole head except for the long topknot) and their beards were trimmed.
The Aztec Indians of North and Central America shaved with razors made from the volcanic glass obsidian.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the wealthy had servants to shave them or they would frequent barber shops. Daily shaving was not a widespread practice, so many of the common people grew beards.
"A barber getting ready to shave the face of a seated customer", c. 1801
London dandy George Bryan "Beau" Brummell was known for his impeccable grooming and style of dress, Brummell was said to shave his face several times a day and plucked out leftover hairs with tweezers.
By the second half of the 19th century, many European men had become very particular about personal grooming. They had started to use shaving soaps and after-shave lotions, which were often made at home in the kitchen from cherry laurel water.
Shaving Soap ad, 1851
The custom of daily shaving among American men was a 20th-century innovation which started as a result of World War I. Men were required to shave daily so their gas masks would fit properly and this became much easier with the advent of the safety razor, which was standard issue during the war.
The modern concept of women shaving their armpits began in 1915. However, it wasn't until World War II, when there was a shortage of silk stockings, that it became an actual trend for women to shave their legs.
FUN SHAVING FACTS
A fancy way to say shaving is "pogonotomy." which means the cutting or shaving of a beard.
Among the 750 poems that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote was an elegy to his broken shaving pot.
Because audiences only saw one side of his face during a piano recital, Frederic Chopin would sometimes shave only half of his face.
The 5-year-old George Bernard Shaw was watching his father shave. Young George asked him "Daddy, why do you shave"? His father looked at him for a full minute, then threw the razor out of his window saying "Why do I?" He never did again and Shaw grew a beard as an adult as well.
Albert Einstein used to wash and shave with the same soap as he claimed using two kinds would needlessly complicate life.
During the 1970 Aspen's sheriff's election, the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson shaved his head bald so he could refer to the crew-cut, ex-army, Republican incumbent as "My long-haired opponent."
An average man spends around five months of his life shaving if he starts at the age of 14 — assuming that he lives until he's 75 years old.
A man shaving his neck using a shavette. By Andrew Dyer
A British survey estimates that women spend 72 days of their lives shaving their legs.
The harmless Whale Shark holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59 footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
Pixibay
The smallest shark in the world is the dwarf lantern shark, which is about 8 inches long.
Sharks do not have a single bone in their bodies. Instead they have a skeleton made up of cartilage which is the same type of tough, flexible tissue that makes up human ears and noses.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
Sharks are the only fish that can’t swim backwards. If you pull a shark backward by the tail, it will die.
The skin of a female shark is much thicker than that of a male because males bite females during mating.
The thresher shark was named for its thresher-like tail, which can be as long as its entire body. It uses its tail as a weapon to stun prey.
Small purple colored thresher caught at Pacifica Pier, California. By Paul E Ester
A great white shark's liver can weigh up to be 24 percent of its body weight.
The great white shark is the only shark that can lift its head above the water to look for prey.
The great white has several rows of sharp, serrated teeth that can number into the thousands. As teeth fall out, they are rapidly replaced by those in the row behind them.
SENSES
A Shark can sense a drop of blood from 2.5 miles away and can detect one part of blood in"100 million" parts of water (i.e 1:100000000).
Sharks have outstanding hearing. They can hear a fish thrashing in the water from as far as 500 metres away.
Sharks can see up to 10 times better than humans in clear water.
Grey reef shark. The original author is Fbattail
40% of a shark's brain is dedicated to its sense of smell.
Sharks smell in "stereo," meaning they can detect the tiny delays in the time it takes for a scent to reach one nostril compared to the other and use it to determine the direction from where the scent is coming. This helps them in tracking their prey.
Most species of sharks do not produce sounds. The majority of sharks rely on their other senses, particularly their exceptional sense of smell and electroreception, to navigate and locate prey. They do not possess vocal cords or a specialized organ for producing sound like some other animals do.
BEHAVIOR
A pup (baby shark) is born ready to take care of itself. The mother shark leaves the pup to fend for itself and the pup usually makes a fast getaway before the mother tries to eat it!
The mating and birth of whale sharks are mysteries. Neither has ever been observed.
A Great White Shark can fast for as long as three months after a big meal.
Every winter, great white sharks swim for 40 days to meet up between Mexico and Hawaii, and nobody knows why.
When a shark is flipped on its back it enters a state of paralysis that lasts for up to fifteen minutes. The phenomenon is known as "Tonic Immobility." In some cases orcas have been seen maneuvering a shark upside down to induce this paralyzed state.
An Orca killed a Great White Shark near California’s Farallon Islands in 2000. The smell of the dead shark's carcass caused all nearby great whites to vanish. A great white with a satellite tag in the area was seen to immediately dive to a depth of 500 meters and then swam to Hawaii.
RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANS
In 2004, California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium became the first to keep a great white shark captive for longer than 16 days — 198 days in all. The female — which was accidentally caught in fishing nets — was kept in a 1.2 million-gallon tank before being released after she attacked other sharks in the exhibit.
Between 50 and 70 people are attacked by sharks every year. On average, five people die of a shark attack per annum.
93% of shark attacks between 1580 and 2010 worldwide were on men.
The world’s most deadly shark is the great white, responsible for 251 of the 1,860 confirmed unprovoked attacks on humans in the 20th century.
Great white sharks don't like the taste of humans as they are bony and low in fat and protein, unlike they're preferred food: seals. They often attack humans only because of low visibility.
Great white shark By Brocken Inaglory
It is estimated that 100 million sharks are killed by humans every year. Many of these were driven by the demand for shark fin soup by Chinese consumers. Usually only the fins are taken, while the rest of the shark is discarded, generally into the sea.
In recent years, 85% of Chinese consumers have given up shark fin soup, largely as a result of campaigning by ex-NBA player Yao Ming.
Sharks fin soup By Arthur Hungry - From Arthur Hungry
For every human killed by a shark, humans kill two million sharks.
If you are attacked, punch at the shark's eyes, snout and gills (on the sides of the head, ahead of the pectoral fins). Play dead and the shark will think you are a free lunch.
HABITAT
Sharks generally do not live in freshwater although there are a few known exceptions, such as the bull shark and the river shark, which can survive and be found in both seawater and freshwater.
Scientists discovered sharks that are living in an active underwater volcano - the Pacific Ocean’s violent Kavachi volcano, which lies 20 miles off the coast of the Solomon Islands. Divers cannot investigate because they would get burns from the acidity and heat.
St Helena is the only place on this planet where the mating of whale sharks has been seen by humans.
Great white sharks rarely survive in captivity. Experts suspect being surrounded by glass might either confuse or overload the shark's electroreception system, which is used to sense the electrical signals given off by fish in the open ocean, not necessarily inside a glass box.
LIFE HISTORY
Shark lifespans vary by species. Most live 20 to 30 years. The spiny dogfish and Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) both live over 100 years.
The Greenland shark is currently believed to be the longest-lived vertebrate species on Earth. A recent examination of 28 specimens in one study determined by radiocarbon dating that the oldest of the animals that they sampled had lived for about 392 ± 120 years (a minimum of 272 years and a maximum of 512 years). The authors further concluded that the species reaches maturity at about 150 years of age.
Scientists believe female Greenland sharks don't reach sexual maturity until they are 156 years old.
A share is a unit of account for various investments. It often means the stock of a corporation, but the term is also used for collective investments such as mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts.
In the United Kingdom and Australia, the word share is used the same way as stock is described in the United States.
Dividends are payments made by a company to its shareholders. When a company earns more money than it spends, the extra money can either be spent on making the company better or it can be given to the people who own stock in the company as a dividend. In the financial history of the world, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the first recorded (public) company ever to pay regular dividends in 1602.
The VOC invented the idea of investing in the company rather than in a specific venture governed by the company. The VOC was also the first company to use a fully-fledged capital market (including the bond market and the stock market) as a crucial channel to raise medium-term and long-term funds. The VOC paid annual dividends worth around 18 percent of the value of the shares for almost 200 years of existence (1602–1800).
Bond from the Dutch East India Company dating from 7 November 1623
In 1719, the South Sea Company proposed to convert £30,981,712 of the British national debt. At the time, government bonds were extremely difficult to trade due to unrealistic restrictions; for example, it was not permitted to redeem certain bonds unless the original debtor was still alive. Each bond represented a very large sum, and could not be divided and sold. Thus, the South Sea Company sought to convert high-interest, untradeable bonds to low-interest, easily-tradeable ones. The Company bribed Lord Stanhope to support their plan; they were also supported by Lord Sunderland. Company prices rose rapidly; the shares had cost £128 in January 1720, but were valued at £550 when Parliament accepted the scheme in May. The price reached £1000 by August. Uncontrolled selling, however, caused the stock to plummet to £150 by the end of September. Many individuals—including aristocrats—were completely ruined. The economic crisis, known as the South Sea Bubble, made King George I and his ministers extremely unpopular and resulted in the rise of power of Britain's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
1720 "South Sea Bubble" from the mid-19th century, by Edward Matthew Ward
On July 3, 1884, Dow Jones and Company published its first stock average index. The inaugural index was published as part of the "Customer's Afternoon Letter" and consisted of 11 stocks, nine of which were railroad stocks, since railroads were considered the largest and sturdiest companies in the U.S. at the time.
In 1887 Irishman John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. Commercial production began in late 1890 in Belfast. Dunlop assigned his patent to William Harvey Du Cros, in return for 1,500 shares in the resultant company.
Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company founder Charles Dow published the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on May 26, 1896. There are 30 companies, all from the USA, and traded on either the NYSE or the NASDAQ, that make up the Industrial Average.
Historical logarithmic graph of the DJIA from 1896 to July 2011.
When he was UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George was caught buying American shares in Marconi on basis of inside information that they had just secured a government contract.
October 24, 1929, a day known now as "Black Thursday," saw the stock markets take an 11% tumble that shook investors to their core. Markets dropped by another 13% on "Black Monday" after the weekend and then another 12% on "Black Tuesday." The losses continued and saw the markets crash hard in front of the broader economic crash that would become the Great Depression.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22 on July 8, 1932.
When the Ford company went public in 1956, the Ford family, through special Class B shares, retained 40 percent voting rights.
Immediately after the 1986 Challenger explosion, shares of every corporation involved in the Space Shuttle dropped. But by the end of the day, most had rebounded; only Morton Thiokol remained low. This was months before the official investigation found Thiokol to be responsible for the disaster.
Google's initial public offering of stock was on August 18, 2004. The initial price was set at $85 and ended the day at $100.34 with more than 22 million shares traded.
In 2005, Facebook hired graffiti artist David Choe to paint murals in their new office space. Choe accepted Facebook shares instead of a cash payment, and when Facebook went public in 2012, his shares were valued at $200 million.
In 2018, Mark Charles Barnett of Ocala, Florida plotted to plant small bombs in Target stores along the Eastern seaboard disguised in food packages. He hoped to create bad publicity for Target, which would lower stock prices and allow him to buy cheap shares before they rebounded. Barnett was caught after paying someone else to plant the bombs.
Following concerns over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,997 points – nearly 13 percent – on March 16, 2020, the largest single-day point loss in its history
Statistics show September is the only month when share prices are likelier to fall than rise.
Shanghai is the largest city in China. Sitting on the south edge of the estuary of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the East China coast, it is the world's busiest container port.
The Lujiazui skyline in Shanghai. By J. Patrick Fischer
The Mandarin Chinese name of Shanghai is Shànghǎi, which is written as 上海 in Chinese characters. This name means "On-the-Sea" because Shanghai used to be next to the East China Sea.
HISTORY
For most of China's history, Shanghai was a small fishing village. The big cities nearby were Suzhou and Hangzhou.
Shanghai was upgraded in status from a village to a market town in 1074, and in 1172 a second sea wall was built to stabilize the ocean coastline, supplementing an earlier dike.
Under the Ming, Shanghai had a big city wall built in 1554 to protect the town from raids by Japanese pirates. It measured 10 metres (33 feet) high and 5 kilometres (3 miles) in circumference.
The walled Old City of Shanghai in the 17th century
The city started to grow and Shanghai became one of the most important sea ports in the Yangtze Delta region, but it only became truly important after the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Shanghai was one of five ports opened for foreign trade alongside Canton (Shameen Island from 1859 until 1943): Amoy (Xiamen until 1930), Foochowfoo (Fuzhou) and Ningpo (Ningbo).
Between 1860–1862, the Taiping rebels twice attacked Shanghai and destroyed the city's eastern and southern suburbs, but failed to take the city. In 1863 British Army officer Charles Gordon was placed in command of the "Ever-Victorious Army" - a 3,500 strong European officered rabble raised by the Shanghai merchants to defend the city against the Taiping rebels. He transformed the rabble into an effective force and by careful planning Gordon was able to lead the Ever Victorious Army to victory of the rebels.
The international settlement of Shanghai developed throughout the remainder of the 19th century. It remains the commercial centre of this city after the departure of European interests following the Second World War.
Shanghai in the 1930s
By 1932, Shanghai had become the world's fifth largest city and home to 70,000 foreigners. However, the Japanese captured Shanghai on January 28, 1932, as they invaded China. Shanghai remained occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945, during which time many war crimes were committed.
Between 1933 and 1941, Shanghai accepted unconditionally over 18,000 Jewish people escaping Europe during World War II. This was more than Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and British India combined.
Several Jews fled Germany to Shanghai before the outbreak of the Second World War as it was the only city in the world you could legally land without a visa.
With the Communist Party's takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries, and Shanghai's global influence declined.
In the 1990s, the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of Shanghai, aiding the return of finance and foreign investment to the city.
Shanghai has a subway system with 7 million daily riders. The metro in this port city opened in 1995.
A $12.5 million theme park based on Hans Christian Andersen's tales and life opened in Shanghai at the end of 2006.
FUN SHANGHAI FACTS
The 2010 census put Shanghai's total population at 23,019,148. More people live in Shanghai than in all of Australia, but Shanghai is physically about half the size of Sydney, Australia.
Mission: Impossible III dropped a shot of Shanghai clothes lines from the Chinese cut because it made China look like a developing country.
Shanghai is sinking by about 1.5 centimeters a year due to the weight of rapid building expansion on what was once a drained swamp.
Famous buildings include the Jade Buddha temple, the former home of the revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen; The City God Temple or Temple of the City Gods, a folk temple located in the old city of Shanghai, which is the site of the veneration of three Chinese figures honored as the city gods of the town; the Yu Garden, an extensive Chinese garden located beside the City God Temple: and the house, museum and tomb of the writer Lu Fun.
Another tourist attraction is the house where the first national Congress of the Communist Party of China met secretly in 1921. It is a typical shikumen building in the former French Concession (see below).
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The Shanghai Tower is a 632-metre (2,073 ft), 128-story megatall skyscraper. It is the world's tallest building, by height to highest usable floor (Observation Deck Level 121: 561.25m). It also has the world's fastest elevators at a top speed of 20.5 m/s (74 km/h; 46 mph).
Pupils in Shanghai spend more than 14 hours a week doing homework. In the UK it is 4.9 hours.
Technically, there is no such thing as a shamrock. It’s just a word used to refer to several varieties of clover, mainly trifolium repens.
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The word "shamrock" was first seen in English in 1571 in the work of the English Elizabethan scholar Edmund Campion. In his work Boke of the Histories of Irelande, Campion states that the Irish ate shamrock: "Shamrotes, watercresses, rootes, and other herbes they feed upon."
"Shamrock" is derived from Irish seamróg, which is the diminutive version of the Irish word for clover, seamair. It means simply "little clover" or "young clover."
The shamrock was originally associated with the mythical Celtic Mother goddess Ana (or Anu). Ana was worshipped in the three aspects of her life, maiden, mother and crone, corresponding to the three leaves of the plant.
In the fifth century St Patrick used the shamrock to explain the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. He utilised the three-leafed plant to illustrate to the Irish people the Christian teaching of three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are connected in one God: three leaves on one stem.
St. Patrick with shamrock in St. Benin's Church, Wicklow, Ireland Andreas F. Borchert
Today, Shamrocks symbolize St Patrick's Day. Some people wear sprigs of shamrock in a buttonhole on the holiday. They are also Ireland's national flower.
The tradition of presenting a bowl of Shamrocks to the US President began in 1952 during the Presidency of Harry Truman as a means of strengthening ties. But Truman was not hand to receive the gift that year, so the Irish ambassador John Joseph Hearne simply dropped off a box of shamrocks at the White House.
In 2002, Australia classified shamrock as a weed and banned it as a possible carrier of foot and mouth disease. It is still illegal to send shamrock plants and seeds by mail to Australia.
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The official call-sign for the Irish airline Aer Lingus is “shamrock”.
The phrase, "Drowning The Shamrock" is from the custom of floating the shamrock on the top of whiskey before drinking it. The Irish say that if you keep the custom, then you will have a prosperous year.
The ancient Egyptians used a mixture of water and citrus juice to wash their hair.
Moses gave the Israelites detailed laws governing personal cleanliness. He also related cleanliness to health and religious purification. Biblical accounts suggest that the Israelites knew that mixing ashes and oil produced a kind of hair gel.
Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing the same naturally derived surfactants, a type of detergent. Indded a physician in 385 AD recommended soap as good for shampooing.
A detergent shampoo that appeared in the Middle Ages involved boiling water and soap with soda or potash. This produced a mixture with a high concentration of negatively charged hydroxllons, the basis of modern day shampoo.
By the 1300s some European women were conditioning their hair with dead lizards boiled in olive oil. Egg whites were used to give hair body and stiffness.
The word shampoo entered the English language from India during the colonial era. It dates to 1762, and is derived from Hindi chāmpo, itself derived from the Sanskrit root capayati, which means to press, knead, soothe.
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Sake Dean Mahomed, a Bengali traveller, surgeon, and entrepreneur, is credited with introducing the practice of champooi or "shampooing" to Britain when he opened some baths on Brighton sea front in 1821. He claimed he was "the inventor of the Indian Medicated Vapour Baths…by whom the Art of Shampooing was first introduced into England in 1784." King George IV gave Mahomed a royal warrant and appointed him Shampooing Surgeon to The King.
Before the invention of mass-marketed hair care products, households were pretty much on their own concocting family shampoos and conditioners. This suggestion was published in The New England Economical Housekeeper and Family Receipt Book in 1847: "Perhaps the best of all shampoos is the yolk of an egg beaten up with a pint of soft warm water. Apply at once and rinse off with castille or other hard white soap."
Hair salons in Britain in the 1870s concocted their own shampoos from varying amounts of water, soda, and bar soap.
In 1898, Hans Schwarzkopf, a qualified chemist in Berlin, opened a tiny drugstore with a perfume section. Schwarzkopf disliked the expensive oils and harsh soaps used to wash hair and his solution was a violet-scented powder shampoo that dissolves in water. He started selling it in 1903 and the shampoo was an instant hit with his customers.
In 1927, the first liquid shampoo was invented by Hans Schwarzkopf in Berlin, whose name created a shampoo brand sold in Europe.
Picture below shows bottles of shampoo and lotions manufactured in the early 20th century by the C.L. Hamilton Co. of Washington, D.C.
The first successful retail shampoo was created in 1930 by Dr. John H. Breck, Sr in Springfield, Massachusetts. Thought to be the first pH-balanced shampoo in history, Breck was initially sold only in local New England beauty salons.
In 1936, son Edward J. Breck (1907–1993) assumed management of Breck Shampoo. He immediately collaborated with portrait painter Charles Sheldon to bring a new form of advertising to the company. Their "Breck Girls" pastel portraits started running in 1936 and eventually became one of the country's longest-running advertising campaigns. Breck girls have included Patti Boyd, Cheryl Tiegs, Cybill Shepherd, Jaclyn Smith, Kim Basinger, Brooke Shields and Farrah Fawcett.
Breck was the first manufacturer to present the public with a shampoo line for dry and oily hair. Advertising that "every woman is different," by the 1950s, the shampoo was available in three expressions, color-coded for easy identity.
Though synthetic shampoos were introduced in the 1930s, daily shampooing only becoming the norm in the 1970s and 1980s.
FUN SHAMPOO FACTS
In order to become a Shampoo Technician in Tennessee, you must obtain 300 hours of instruction in the practice and theory of shampooing.
A Q-Tip dipped in shampoo and rubbed into the area where a zipper is caught on a jacket can get it unstuck.
The instruction "rinse and repeat" on the shampoo bottle is not a gimmick to sell more shampoo. In fact, to get the same lather on one attempt requires more shampoo than using a small amount on the first application to rid the dirt without lather and then achieving lather on the second.
The suds of shampoo and many other foaming products are often artificially added to the product to help convince us that it is working.
