Question: What is the name of the tiger in Life of Pi?

In the novel "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, the Bengal tiger that accompanies the protagonist, Pi Patel, on his 227-day survival ordeal in the Pacific Ocean, is named Richard Parker.

The Animal Planet documentary The Last Leopard (2008) is about the plight of Amur leopards in Russia. The television series "Wild Russia" showed a quick glimpse into the life of Amur leopards. A female Amur leopard and her cub were featured on Planet Earth episodes "Seasonal Forests"[4] and "From Pole to Pole". The female's name is "Skrytnaya", which means 'the secretive one'. The male cub died at the age of around 18 months; he was the result of inbreeding â€” the cub's father was also Skrytnaya's father.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that friendship and responsibility are taught to characters in the novels,[85] while booksforyouths.com had a reviewer who pointed out the idea that, just as Clan cats shun house cats for their soft life, people should realize that it is necessary to experience hardship in life.[106] A Storysnoops review noted that one of the themes was that "it doesn't matter where you come from, only who you are inside".[107] In Dawn, the importance of cooperation is explored. The four Clans, normally hostile to each other, are forced to work together in order to find a new home. Other themes that have been pointed out deal with family, loss, honor, bravery, death, loyalty, and following rules.[103][85]

Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly hulk. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death", a deathly-pale woman, who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue to the mariner's fate: he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross.

In the third book, The First Battle, Clear Sky declares war upon Gray Wing's group. Gray Wing tries to make peace, but Clear Sky is ambitious and wants more territory. Tom arrives to look for Bumble (another housecat) and Turtle Tail. He steals Turtle Tail's kits and brings them to live with him. Cats from Gray Wing's group go to look for and bring them back, but they find Turtle Tail dead by a road. The cats manage to rescue the kittens from Tom, who swears revenge. At the end, Gray Wing's cats fight Clear Sky's. Many cats die, such as the following: Rainswept Flower, Jackdaws Cry and Hawk Swoop. The battle ends in a stalemate. The ghosts of the fallen cats known as 'spirit cats' return to tell the fighting cats to "unite or die". Clear Sky is struck with guilt and grief.

Equiano was lonely at the new plantation and didn’t have anyone to talk to. He did his work by himself. One day, when he was in the kitchen, he saw one of the women slaves with an iron muzzle on, and that shocked him. As he continued looking around the house he saw a watch on the wall and a painting. He was paranoid by both of these objects because he thought they were spying for the Master. This shows just how little he knew about the common technology of the time. On the plantation he was called Jacob, instead of his real name. One day, a man, whose name is Michael Henry Pascal, came to the Master's house and wanted to purchase Equiano. He paid thirty to forty pounds for him and Equiano left to work on a ship. He liked it a lot better on the ship because the other people aboard were nicer to him and he ate better than he did previously. He was renamed again to Gustavus Vassa, which he didn’t like but got used to so he didn’t get punished. On the ship Equiano made a friend whose name was Richard Baker. Richard became a companion and interpreter for Equiano because he didn’t understand the language everyone else was speaking. They became very close. Richard died in 1759 and it was hard on Equiano.[10]

This rhyme was played upon by Lewis Carroll, who incorporated the lion and the unicorn as characters in Through the Looking-Glass. Here, the crown they are fighting for belongs to the White King which, given that they are on the White side as well, makes their rivalry all the more absurd. Carroll subverts the traditional view of a lion being alert and calculating by making this particular one slow and rather stupid, although clearly the better fighter. The role of the Unicorn is likewise reversed by the fact that he sees Alice as a "monster", though he promises to start believing in her if she will believe in him. Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for the section caricature Benjamin Disraeli as the Unicorn, and William Ewart Gladstone as the Lion, alluding to the pair's frequent parliamentary battles, although there is no evidence that this was Carroll's intention.[2]

In the basement, a pipe blows and water leaks rapidly from it. Sasha rescues Hawk and Moth, but Tadpole doesn't make it out of the flooding basement. That night, a devastated Sasha dreams of Tigerstar and asks if Tadpole is with him. Tigerstar says no, but confides that he is safe. Sasha later meets with Pine, a loner she had previously met, and he takes her and the kits to a barn where another she-cat lives.

Tardar Sauce (born April 4, 2012),[1] commonly known as Grumpy Cat, is a cat internet celebrity. She is known for her permanently "grumpy" facial appearance, which is caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism.[2][3][4] She came to prominence when a photograph of her was posted on social news website Reddit by Bryan Bundesen, the brother of her owner Tabatha, in September 2012,[2][5] and lolcats and parodies created from the photograph by Reddit users went viral. She is the subject of a popular internet meme in which negative lolcats (such as "I Had Fun Once... It Was Awful") are made from photographs of her.

Buck comes to love and grow devoted to Thornton as he nurses him back to health. He saves Thornton when the man falls into a river. After Thornton takes him on trips to pan for gold, a bonanza king (someone who hit it rich in a certain area), named Matthewson, wagers Thornton on the dog's strength and devotion. Buck wins by breaking a half-ton (1,000-pound (450 kg)) sled free of the frozen ground, pulling it 100 yards (91 m) and winning US$1,600 in gold dust. A king of the Skookum Benches offers a large sum to buy Buck, but Thornton has grown fond of him and declines.[3] While Thornton and his friends continue their search for gold, Buck explores the wilderness and socializes with a timber wolf from a local pack. One night, he returns from a long hunt with the wolf pack to find that his beloved master and the others in the camp have been killed by a group of Yeehat natives. Buck eventually kills the natives to avenge Thornton, and he then is attacked by an entire pack of wolves. Buck wins the fight, then finds that the same timber wolf he had socialized with is in the pack he fought. Buck then follows the wolf and its pack into the forest, and answers the call of the wild. At the end of the story, Buck returns each year as the Ghost Dog of the Northland Legend, to mourn at the site of Thornton's death.

Lucy's full name (Lucille Esmeralda Ricardo nÃ©e McGillicuddy) is given in the season 1 episodes "Fred and Ethel Fight" and "The Marriage License," and "The Passports" in season 5. Ricky gives his full name in the season 4 episode "Hollywood Anniversary" as Ricardo Alberto Fernando Ricardo y de Acha, but in the season 6 episode "Lucy Raises Tulips" Lucy calls him "Enrique Alberto Fernando Ricardo y de Acha III".[6]


Question: When did the five-day workweek start?

The five-day workweek in the United States originated in 1908 when a New England cotton mill introduced it to accommodate Jewish workers observing the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Henry Ford later popularized the concept in 1926 by closing his factories on weekends. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union became the first to successfully negotiate a five-day workweek in 1929. This trend gradually spread, culminating in the nationwide adoption of the two-day weekend in 1940, following the implementation of a provision in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that limited the workweek to 40 hours.

Abuses of the truck system have, since 1887, been regulated with care. The chief objects of the law of 1887 were to secure payment in full to all workers, other than those in agriculture or domestic service, of wages in legal tender, to prohibit payment of wages in public-houses, and to secure prompt payment of wages. Certain deductions were permitted under careful control for specific customary objects: lodging, use of land, uniforms, food, firing. A royal order of the Loth of October 1903 required use of automatic indicators for estimating wages in certain cases in textile processes. The law of 15 June 1896 regulates the affixing in workplaces, where at least five workers are employed, of a notice of the working rules, the nature and rate of fines, if any, and the mode of their application. Two central services the mines inspectorate and the factory and workshop inspectorate, divide the duties above indicated. There is also a system of local administration of the regulations relating to industries classed as unhealthy, but the tendency has been to give the supreme control in these matters to the factory service, with its expert staff.

The show originally started on Radio 1 in the 1980s where it ran successfully for a number of years until ending in 1993. Steve Wright then worked on other shows for the network before leaving the BBC for several years. In this period, he worked at Talk Radio, and at GWR presenting a networked weekend show. He finally moved back to the BBC at Radio 2 in 1996. He started as a weekend presenter hosting a Saturday morning show (later taken over by Jonathan Ross) and Sunday morning's Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs. Steve Wright in the Afternoon was revived in 1999 following a shake-up at Radio 2 and Wright now presents the show every Monday to Friday from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. It has built up a huge following[citation needed] and was given its own podcast in 2006 as part of a trial period. This is still available every week with highlights from the show.

Before 1883 in the United States, most towns and cities set their own local time to noon when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. Since the sun reaches "high noon" four minutes later for every degree of longitude traveled towards the west, the time in every town was different. In Indiana, local mean time varied from GMT-5:39 in the east to GMT-5:52 in the west. With the emergence of the railroads, hundreds of miles could be traveled in a much shorter time, causing a train passenger to apparently experience several slight changes in time over the course of even a short rail trip. By 1883, the major railroads in the US agreed to coordinate their clocks and begin operating on "standard time" with four "time zones" established across the nation, centered roughly on the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 120th meridians west. On November 18, 1883, telegraph lines transmitted GMT to major cities, where each city was to adjust their official time to their proper zone.[3] The state capital in Indianapolis lies at approximately the 86th meridian (U.S. Census Bureau), closer to the center of the Central Time Zone at the 90th meridian than the center of the Eastern Time Zone at the 75th meridian.

The sewing machine was introduced in 1846, and provided an alternative method for the mechanization of shoemaking. By the late 1850s, the industry was beginning to shift towards the modern factory, mainly in the US and areas of England. A shoe stitching machine was invented by the American Lyman Blake in 1856 and perfected by 1864. Entering into partnership with McKay, his device became known as the McKay stitching machine and was quickly adopted by manufacturers throughout New England.[5] As bottlenecks opened up in the production line due to these innovations, more and more of the manufacturing stages, such as pegging and finishing, became automated. By the 1890s, the process of mechanisation was largely complete.

1 May has long been recognised as Labour Day and almost all workers respect it as a national holiday. As in many other countries, it is common to see rallies by the trade unions in all over the main regional capitals of the country.

Golden Week (ゴールデンウィーク, Gōruden Wīku, Gōruden Uīku) (or GW) is a week from the 29th of April to early May containing a number of Japanese holidays.[1]

In 1971, Hospice, Inc. was founded in the United States, the first organization to introduce the principles of modern hospice care to that country, where medical care had focused on fighting illness through hospital stays.[3] Throughout the 1970s, the philosophies of hospice were being implemented throughout the United States. The hospice movement in the United States became distinguished from that in Britain, according to Stephen Connor's Hospice: Practice, Pitfalls and Promise, by "a greater emphasis on use of volunteers and more focus on psychological preparation for death".[4] In 1982 Medicare, a social insurance program in the United States, added hospice services to its coverage.[3] On September 13, 1982, by request of the senate, US President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the week of November 7 through November 14, 1982, as National Hospice Week.[5]

This labour law for adults was preceded in 1841 by one for children, which prevented their employment in factories before 8 years of age and prohibited night labour for any child under 13. This was strengthened in 1874, particularly as regards employment of girls under 21, but it was not until 1892 that the labour of women was specially regulated by a law, still in force, with certain amendments in 1900. Under this law factory and workshop labour is prohibited for children under 13 years, though they may begin at 12 if qualified by the prescribed educational certificate and medical certificate of fitness. The limit of daily hours of employment is the same as for adult labour, and, similarly, from 1 April 1902 was 102, and two years later became io hours in the 24. Notice of the hours must be affixed, and meal-times or pauses with absolute cessation of work of at least one hour must be specified. By the act of 1892 one day in the week, not necessarily Sunday, had to be given for entire absence from work, in addition to eight recognized annual holidays, but this was modified by a law of 1906 which generally requires Sunday rest, but allows substitution of another day in certain industries and certain circumstances. Night labour - work between 9 P.M. and 5 A.M. - is prohibited for workers under 18, and only exceptionally permitted, under conditions, for girls and women over 18 in specified trades. In mines and underground quarries employment of women and girls is prohibited except at surface works, and at the latter is subject to the same limits as in factories. Boys of 13 may be employed in certain work underground, but under 16 may not be employed more than 8 hours in the 24 from bank to bank. A law of 1905 provided for miners a 9 hours' day and in 1907 an 8 hours' day from the foot of the entrance gallery back to the same point.

In the Second New Deal, the Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. The act laid the groundwork for the modern welfare system in the United States, with its primary focus to provide aid for the elderly, the unemployed, and children. Industrialization and the urbanization in the 19th Century created many new social problems, and transformed ideas of how society and the government should function together because of them. As industry expanded, cities grew quickly to keep up with demand for labor. Tenement houses were built quickly and poorly, cramming new migrants from farms and Southern and Eastern European immigrants into tight and unhealthy spaces. Work spaces were even more unsafe.[2] In 1890, Jacob Riis wrote that “the quick change of economic conditions in the city…often out paces all plans of relief.”[citation needed]

Saturday schooling, when offered, ends at 1 PM after four courses.[9] (As discussed below, Saturday courses were officially done away with in 2002 but many schools have either kept them or are trying to bring them back.)


Question: Where is the location of the North Pole on a world map?

The North Pole, situated at the Earth's northernmost extremity and directly opposite the South Pole, marks the geodetic latitude of 90° North, indicating true north. It is the point where all directions lead southward and all lines of longitude converge, allowing its longitude to be any degree value. In the vicinity of the North Pole, moving counterclockwise denotes east, while clockwise movement indicates west, with the pole being the central point of the Northern Hemisphere.

The map surface of mainland Asia is entirely contained within a Geodetic quadrangle formed from segments of latitude going through its north and south extremes and segments of longitude passing through the east and west extremes. Cape Chelyuskin is at 77° 43′ N; Cape Piai in the Malay Peninsula is at 1° 16′ N; Cape Baba in Turkey is at 26° 4′ E; Cape Dezhnyov is at 169° 40′ W; that is, mainland Asia ranges through about 77° of latitude and 195° of longitude,[5] distances of about 8,560 km (5,320 mi) long by 9,600 km (6,000 mi) wide according to Chambers, or 8,700 km (5,400 mi) long by 9,700 km (6,000 mi) wide according to Pearson's.

Whoever owns the land is responsible or managing it. And the owners of the land differ between the Antarctic and Arctic and also within the polar regions. In the Arctic, there are six nations that own the land about 60Â°N. These nations include: Canada, Russia, Finland, USA, Denmark, Iceland and Norway.[35] There have been international treaties set up so there are no disputes. These nations have also have set their government to manage the land properly. They have set up national parks, land for wilderness, and also land for research. In the polar regions there have been laws set up to manage the number of visitors. There have been rules set up allowing only a certain amount of mining done and other measures to protect the environment from damages.

The borders of ten municipalities (Adrano, Biancavilla, Belpasso, Bronte (from two sides), Castiglione di Sicilia, Maletto, Nicolosi, Randazzo, Sant'Alfio, Zafferana Etnea) meet on the summit of Mount Etna, making this point one of elevenfold complexity, and the most complicated geopolitical multi-point anywhere north of the South Pole.[44][unreliable source?][original research?]

Greenland is the world's largest non-continental island[62] and the third largest country in North America.[63] It lies between latitudes 59째 and 83째N, and longitudes 11째 and 74째W. The Atlantic Ocean borders Greenland's southeast; the Greenland Sea is to the east; the Arctic Ocean is to the north; and Baffin Bay is to the west. The nearest countries are Canada, to the west and southwest across Baffin Bay, and Iceland, east of Greenland in the Atlantic Ocean. Greenland also contains the world's largest national park, and it is the largest dependent territory by area in the world, as well as the fourth largest country subdivision in the world, after Sakha Republic in Russia, Australia's state of Western Australia, and Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai, and the largest in North America.

In the star chart to the right, declination is shown by the radial coordinate, starting at 90° north in the center and decreasing to 30° north at the outer edge. Sidereal hour angle is shown as the angular coordinate, starting at 0° at the left of the chart, and increasing counter-clockwise.

Greenland (/ˈɡriːnlənd/; Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat, pronounced [kalaːɬit nunaːt]; Danish: Grønland, pronounced [ˈɡʁɶnˌlanˀ]) is an autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers, as well as the nearby island of Iceland) for more than a millennium.[9] The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, gradually settling across the island.

The entire cover design is elaborate, with a dense photo collage filling most of the inside cover (along with a maze) designed by Michael Cooper, and a painting by Tony Meeuwissen on the back cover depicting the four elements (Earth, Water, Fire, and Air).  In some editions the blue-and-white wisps on the front cover are used in a red-and-white version on the paper inner sleeve.  The inner-cover collage has dozens of images, taken from reproductions of old master paintings (Ingres, Poussin, da Vinci, among others), Indian mandalas and portraits, astronomy (including a large image of the planet Saturn), flowers, world maps, etc.  The maze on the inside cover of the UK and US releases cannot be completed: a wall at about a half radius in from the lower left corner means one can never arrive at the goal labeled "It's Here" in the centre of the maze.

The demarcation between Asia and Africa is the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. The border with Europe starts with the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, even though Turkey in the Near East extends partly into the Aegean Islands and includes Istanbul on the European side of the Bosphorus. On the north the boundary between the continents of Asia and Europe is commonly regarded as running through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Ural River to its source, and a long border generally following the eastern side of the Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea, Russia. The Arctic Ocean is the northern border. The Bering Straits divide Asia from North America.

Based on the above definition, it can be confidently asserted that the "cores" of the Greco-Roman world were Greece, Cyprus, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Asia Minor (roughly corresponds to modern Turkey), Gaul (modern France), Syria, Egypt and Africa Proper (Tunisia and Libya). Occupying the periphery of this world were "Roman Germany" (the Alpine countries and the so-called Agri Decumates, the territory between the Main, the Rhine and the Danube), Illyria and Pannonia (the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and Hungary), and Moesia (roughly corresponds to modern Bulgaria).

Cartography is the design and production of maps, or visual representations of spatial data. The vast majority of modern cartography is done with the help of computers, usually using GIS but production of quality cartography is also achieved by importing layers into a design program to refine it. Most GISÂ software gives the user substantial control over the appearance of the data.


Question: When did the U.S. cease the draft for the Vietnam War?

On December 1, 1969, the United States Selective Service System conducted a draft lottery for men born between 1944 and 1950, to determine their order of call for military service in the Vietnam War. This event took place during a period of conscription that began just before World War II and lasted until 1973. It marked the first time since 1942 that a lottery system was utilized to select individuals for military service. The draft for the Vietnam War officially ended in 1973, after which the U.S. military transitioned to an all-volunteer force.

It is not clear whether the British acknowledged American honor, because when peace was signed, impressment remained legal. Nevertheless, the practice ended because the Napoleonic wars had ended and the Royal Navy no longer required as many men.

In the United States, a report entitled "Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society (1966)", was published by National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. Better known as "The White Paper" to emergency providers, it revealed that soldiers who were seriously wounded on the battlefields of Vietnam had a better survival rate than those individuals who were seriously injured in motor vehicle accidents on California freeways. Early research attributed these differences in outcome to a number of factors, including comprehensive trauma care, rapid transport to designated trauma facilities, and a new type of medical corpsman, one who was trained to perform certain critical advanced medical procedures such as fluid replacement and airway management, which allowed the victim to survive the journey to definitive care.

1955â€“1975: Vietnam War: U.S. military advisers had been in South Vietnam for a decade, and their numbers had been increased as the military position of the Saigon government became weaker. After citing what he falsely termed were attacks on U.S. destroyers, in what came to be known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, President Johnson asked in August 1964 for a resolution expressing U.S. determination to support "freedom and protect peace in Southeast Asia." Congress responded with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. Following this resolution, and following a communist attack on a U.S. installation in central Vietnam, the United States escalated its participation in the war to a peak of 543,000 military personnel by April 1969.[RL30172]

1975: Evacuation from Vietnam: Operation Frequent Wind, On April 3, 1975, President Ford reported U.S. naval vessels, helicopters, and Marines had been sent to assist in evacuation of refugees and US nationals from Vietnam.[RL30172]

Since the reinstatement of draft registration in 1980, the Supreme Court has heard and decided four cases related to the Military Selective Service Act: Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981), upholding the Constitutionality of requiring men but not women to register for the draft; Selective Service v. Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG), 468 U.S. 841 (1984), upholding the Constitutionality of the first of the federal "Solomon Amendment" laws, which requires applicants for Federal student aid to certify that they have complied with draft registration, either by having registered or by not being required to register; Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598 (1985), upholding the policies and procedures which the Supreme Court thought the government had used to select the "most vocal" nonregistrants for prosecution, after the government refused to comply with discovery orders by the trial court to produce documents and witnesses related to the selection of nonregistrants for prosecution; and Elgin v. Department of the Treasury, 567 U.S. ____ (2012), regarding procedures for judicial review of denial of Federal employment for nonregistrants.[93]

Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam,[265] each serving a one-year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at 50,000 in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973.[266] About 5,099 South Koreans were killed and 10,962 wounded during the war. South Korea claimed to have killed 41,000 Viet Cong fighters.[265] The United States paid South Korean soldiers 236 million dollars for their efforts in Vietnam,[265] and South Korean GNP increased five-fold during the war.[265]

The Production Code was officially scrapped in 1968, to be replaced by the first version of the modern rating system.[98] That year, two horror films came out that heralded directions American cinema would take in the next decade, with major consequences for the B movie. One was a high-budget Paramount production, directed by the celebrated Roman Polanski. Produced by B horror veteran William Castle, Rosemary's Baby was the first upscale Hollywood picture in the genre in three decades.[99] It was a critical success and the year's seventh-biggest hit.[100] The other was George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, produced on weekends in and around Pittsburgh for $114,000. Building on the achievement of B genre predecessors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its subtextual exploration of social and political issues, it doubled as a highly effective thriller and an incisive allegory for both the Vietnam War and domestic racial conflicts. Its greatest influence, though, derived from its clever subversion of genre clichÃ©s and the connection made between its exploitation-style imagery, low-cost, truly independent means of production, and high profitability.[101] With the Code gone and the X rating established, major studio A films like Midnight Cowboy could now show "adult" imagery, while the market for increasingly hardcore pornography exploded. In this transformed commercial context, work like Russ Meyer's gained a new legitimacy. In 1969, for the first time a Meyer film, Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!, was reviewed in The New York Times.[102] Soon, Corman would be putting out nudity-filled sexploitation pictures such as Private Duty Nurses (1971) and Women in Cages (1971).[103]

The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) prohibits the government from denying the right of United States citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age. The drive to lower the voting age was driven in large part by the broader student activism movement protesting the Vietnam War. It gained strength following the Supreme Court's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, which held that Congress may set requirements for voting in federal elections, but not for state or local elections. The measure, which overturns the Mitchell decision, is another in a line of constitutional changes that expanded the right to vote to more citizens.[88]

Rangel introduced versions of his Universal National Service Act in the House in 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2010.[97][101][102] Polls showed 70 percent of Americans opposed a reinstatement of the draft.[100] Rangel emphasized that people could fulfill their draft obligations through non-military services, such as port and airline security.[100] The one time the act came up for a vote in the full House, in 2004, it was defeated 2–402, with Rangel voting against his own bill in protest at the procedural handling of it.[54][103]

Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress…"[346] Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure… The…Vietnam War…legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military…Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam."[148]


Question: When did the U.S. cease the draft for the Vietnam War?

The draft lottery for the Vietnam War continued until 1972, with numbers assigned to those born between 1951 and 1956. However, the final call for induction was made on December 7, 1972, and the authority to draft expired on June 30, 1973, meaning the draft numbers issued in 1972 were never utilized for induction into service the following year.

The war was the central issue of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. Nixon's opponent, George McGovern, campaigned on a platform of withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, continued secret negotiations with North Vietnam's Lê Đức Thọ. In October 1972, they reached an agreement.

In 1981, several men filed lawsuit in the case Rostker v. Goldberg, alleging that the Military Selective Service Act violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment by requiring that men only and not also women register with the Selective Service System. The Supreme Court upheld the act, stating that Congress's "decision to exempt women was not the accidental byproduct of a traditional way of thinking about women", that "since women are excluded from combat service by statute or military policy, men and women are simply not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft, and Congress' decision to authorize the registration of only men therefore does not violate the Due Process Clause", and that "the argument for registering women was based on considerations of equity, but Congress was entitled, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, to focus on the question of military need, rather than 'equity.'"[94]

Vietnam was a major political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. The election was won by Republican party candidate Richard Nixon.

As a result of his testimony, on August 7, Congress passed a joint resolution (H.J. RES 1145), titled the Southeast Asia Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without the benefit of a declaration of war. The resolution gave President Johnson approval "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom."[42]

The draft was universal and included blacks on the same terms as whites, although they served in different units. In all 367,710 black Americans were drafted (13.0% of the total), compared to 2,442,586 white (86.9%). Along with a general opposition to American involvement in a foreign conflict, Southern farmers objected to unfair conscription practices that exempted members of the upper class and industrial workers.

Originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeley's ROTC program was established[71] and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, who graduated with a B.A. in 1922. Both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from Berkeley's ROTC program, earning B.A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, respectively. In 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. During World War II, the military increased its presence on campus to recruit more officers, and by 1944, more than 1,000 Berkeley students were enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program and naval training school for diesel engineering.[72] The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, the practice formally came to an end. An attempt to re-institute it in 1703 was resisted by its Ottoman members who coveted its military and civilian posts. Finally in the early days of Ahmet III's reign, the practice of devshirme was abolished.

Since the 1970s, issues of human rights have become increasingly important in American foreign policy.[110] Congress took the lead in the 1970s.[111] Following the Vietnam War, the feeling that U.S. foreign policy had grown apart from traditional American values was seized upon by Senator Donald M. Fraser (D, MI), leading the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, in criticizing Republican Foreign Policy under the Nixon administration. In the early 1970s, Congress concluded the Vietnam War and passed the War Powers Act. As "part of a growing assertiveness by Congress about many aspects of Foreign Policy,"[112] Human Rights concerns became a battleground between the Legislative and the Executive branches in the formulation of foreign policy. David Forsythe points to three specific, early examples of Congress interjecting its own thoughts on foreign policy:

During the World WarÂ I era, the Supreme Court allowed the government great latitude in suppressing criticism of the draft. Examples include Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)[89] and Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325 (1920).[90] In subsequent decades, however, the Court has taken a much broader view of the extent to which advocacy speech is protected by the First Amendment. Thus, in 1971 the Court held it unconstitutional for a state to punish a man who entered a county courthouse wearing a jacket with the words "Fuck the Draft" visible on it. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).[91] Nevertheless, protesting the draft by the specific means of burning a draft registration card can be constitutionally prohibited, because of the government's interest in prohibiting the "nonspeech" element involved in destroying the card. United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).[92]

Nixon also pursued negotiations. Theater commander Creighton Abrams shifted to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. Nixon also began to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China. This policy helped to decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. But Nixon was disappointed that China and the Soviet Union continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine.[214]


Question: Who performed during the halftime show at Super Bowl 51?

The halftime show for Super Bowl LI, held on February 5, 2017, at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, featured Lady Gaga as the headline performer. She delivered a medley of her hits, incorporating tracks from her latest album, Joanne.

Since 2005, "Imagine" has been played prior to the New Year's Eve ball drop at New York City's Times Square.[71] Beginning in 2010, the song has been performed live; first by Taio Cruz, then in 2011 by CeeLo Green and in 2012 by Train. However, Green received criticism for changing the lyric "and no religion too" to "and all religions true", resulting in an immediate backlash from fans who believed that he had disrespected Lennon's legacy by changing the lyrics of his most iconic song.[72] Green defended the change by saying it meant to represent "a world [where you] could believe what [you] wanted".[72] The event got media attention outside of the US, with Britain's The Guardian stating "Lennon's original lyrics don't praise pluralism or interchangeable religious truths â€“ they damn them".[73]

The first artist to play the Astrodome was Judy Garland on December 17, 1965, where she was paid $43,000 for the one show. The Supremes were her opening act and tickets were priced $1.00 to $7.50. The dome seated 48,000, with another 12,000 seats added for this show. Garland appeared on stage at 10 p.m. and sang for 40 minutes, with her set of songs including: "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands"; "Just In Time"; "My Kind Of Town, Houston Is"/"Houston"; "As Long As He Needs Me"; "Joey, Joey, Joey"; "Do It Again"; "What Now My Love?"; "By Myself"; "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby"; "San Francisco"; "Chicago"; and "Over The Rainbow." Mort Lindsey conducted.[17]

The cold open of the 74th Golden Globe Awards in January 2017 featured a musical parody of "Another Day of Sun", "City of Stars", and "Planetarium" from La La Land, with altered lyrics. The "Another Day of Sun" segment featured limousines in a traffic jam en route to the awards, with the dance routine performed by characters from several works nominated for the awards that year. It was performed by host Jimmy Fallon and featured cameos by Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, John Travolta, Sarah Paulson, Rami Malek, Kit Harington, and others.[15][16]

The Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Award, or Super Bowl MVP, is presented annually to the most valuable player of the Super Bowl, the National Football League's (NFL) championship game. The winner is chosen by a fan vote during the game and by a panel of 16 football writers and broadcasters who vote after the game. The media panel's ballots count for 80 percent of the vote tally, while the viewers' ballots make up the other 20 percent.[1] The game's viewing audience can vote on the Internet or by using cellular phones;[1] Super Bowl XXXV, held in 2001, was the first Super Bowl with fan voting.[2]

The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan's commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria's Secret lingerie.[278] Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade.[279][280] Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII.[281] The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.[282]

Alex Needham of The Guardian gave the "high-octane" performance 4 out of 5 stars, complimenting Elliott's appearance, which he stated almost "[stole] the slot" from Perry until she topped Elliott's appearance with her performance of "Firework." Needham stated that although the performance "didn't know the meaning of 'too much'" at times, Perry never appeared to be overwhelmed.[25] Josh Duboff of Vanity Fair stated that Perry "killed it" and "more than made up for" what she lacked in "dance moves or vocal precision" in "enthusiasm and ingenuity".[26] Daniel D'Addario of Time stated that Perry had "justified the NFL's trust in her with a dynamic, wild show" and stated that she did not "miss a step or a note". D'Addario stated that the only part of the performance that "fell flat" was the inclusion of "I Kissed a Girl" on the setlist, saying that Perry "shouldn't be relying on the cheap titillation of her first single" to get people's attention "this deep into her career". He reacted positively to Elliott's appearance, stating that both Perry and Elliott "deserved 110 million pairs of eyes on them".[27] Amanda Michelle Steiner of People wrote: "Katy Perry fan or not, even the most cynical hater would have to admit that her Super Bowl performance on Sunday was a pop culture masterpiece."[28] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times felt that Perry "benefited far more" from Elliott's appearance than Kravitz, adding that Elliott's songs "easily doubled the energy onstage".[29]

On January 10, 2015, Perry announced that Lenny Kravitz would also appear at the halftime show.[10] On January 30, 2015, it was revealed that Missy Elliott, who previously worked with Perry on "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" (Remix), would be an additional performer.[1] Previously, when teasing her female guest performer, Perry revealed: "I wanted to bring someone back, a throwback of sorts", which would create a "female fun night, a bit of old-school".[11] In preparation for her performance, she watched videos of previous halftime show performances by Diana Ross, Beyoncé, Madonna, and Michael Jackson. Having spent months working on the show, Perry wanted it to be "a whole different show" from her Prismatic World Tour, which she was still embarking on.[11] She also met with previous halftime performer Bruno Mars to seek advice on how to prepare for the performance.[12]

The recording is part of the Belgian/American animated film A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures and the TV show Suburgatory.[40][41] It has been featured on two different commercials for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, both took place one in Illinois.[42] and was used for a Hyundai 's commercial, during the Super Bowl XLVIII’s fourth quarter, entitled “Dad’s Sixth Sense”, that featured the 2016 Hyundai Genesis and Mars' song. It was chosen "for reasons separate and coincidental from Mars’ previously announced Half Time gig".[43] The track was included on the Songs for the Philippines relief album, which was compiled to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan since "all proceeds" were donated to the Philippine Red Cross.[44] It is featured in the film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.[45]

Swift premiered the song at the 40th American Music Awards. Swift traveled to Australia on a promotional tour, which featured performances on Today, followed by a performance at the ARIA Music Awards 2012. She also performed at Times Square on New Year's Eve on Rockin Eve. Swift performed the song live at the 2013 BRIT Awards on February 20, 2013. Aaron Parsley of People magazine compared Swift's performance and look with that of American singer Beyoncé Knowles during the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show.[60] Biley Niles of Hollywood Life gave the performance a positive review, saying "It was her performance of "I Knew You Were Trouble" during the ceremony that's sure to be talked about for days to come!"[61] She also performed the song at The Graham Norton Show two days later.[62] The song was a regular part of the setlist for Swift's Red Tour as well as The 1989 World Tour.

The Super Bowl is an annual American football game that determines the champion of the National Football League (NFL). The game culminates a season that begins in the previous calendar year, and is the conclusion of the NFL playoffs. The contest is held in an American city, chosen three to four years beforehand,[1] usually at warm-weather sites or domed stadiums.[2] Since January 1971, the winner of the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game has faced the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game in the culmination of the NFL playoffs.


Question: What do the films represent in The Man in the High Castle?

In "The Man in the High Castle," the television series introduces several significant characters not found in the source novel, and the plot diverges significantly from the original story. For instance, the planned Nazi preemptive nuclear attack on Japan, "Operation Dandelion," is only being averted due to Hitler's personal refusal to authorize it, leading to a conspiracy to assassinate him by Heydrich and the war-hungry faction. Moreover, in the TV series, Hawthorne Abendsen is absent in the first season, and "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" is not a novel but a series of newsreel films that depict various alternative realities. By the end of Season 1, SS agents like Blake are searching for these films to deliver them to Hitler, with an unknown purpose. This concept of films showing alternate histories may have been inspired by Dick's later novel, "VALIS," which features a mysterious film that portrays yet another dystopian alternate history of the United States.

In the collector's DVD, interviews with the staff and writers concede that Ninja Ninja is indeed imaginary. However, even though Ninja Ninja is "imaginary," he appears to have some form of presence in the real world, as well. When Brother 2 of the Empty Seven spies on Afro, Ninja Ninja can be clearly seen from Brother 2's point of view through the binoculars. Ninja Ninja also interacts with items around him constantly such as catching Afro's spliff in his mouth, moving a hanging pillar inside Otsuru's home, putting Otsuru's comb into Afro's hair, eating the food that was intended for Afro given by Brother 3 (as seen in the Director's cut), and throwing the Afro-Droid's microchip at Afro to cut in two. The idea of Ninja Ninja having at least a partial existence in reality is once again brought into light when he is 'killed' by Kuma. Because Kuma was such a skilled warrior and had the intent to cut down Afro on the sword strike that killed Ninja Ninja, it would seem odd that he would pause from his attack and have a conversation with Afro if there was not a reason to give pause which strengthens the idea that he was taken aback by Ninja Ninja's sacrifice before attacking Afro again. Additionally supporting his real world presence is the scene in the video game in which he knocks the hand of one of the Empty Seven off of a ledge, killing him, as is the scene after Sword Master's death in which one of the many clones of Ninja Ninja grabs Sword Master's mouth and moves it up in down, pretending he is a puppet.

At the turn of the 20th century, films emerged as the new cultural agents, depicting events and showing foreign images to mass audiences in European and American cities. Politics and film began to intertwine with the reconstruction of the Boer War for a film audience and recordings of war in the Balkans. The new medium proved very useful for political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy. They also provided a forceful voice for independent critics of contemporary events.[71]

"Theme from A Summer Place" is frequently used as period background or soundtrack music in films and television programs set between 1959 and the mid-1960s. The theme has also become a ubiquitous representation of "peaceful music" and has been employed frequently in films, television shows and other popular culture to suggest peacefulness or in situations where inoffensive music is common (e.g. as stereotypical "elevator music"). It is also used for intentionally stereotypical comic effect when a show cuts away from a scene deemed to be too violent to display and shows peaceful images instead.[6]

The first adaptation was the 1986 film Manhunter, which was an adaptation of Red Dragon, directed by Michael Mann.

The Great Martian War 1913–1917 is a 2013 made-for-television science fiction film docudrama that adapts The War of the Worlds and unfolds in the style of an episode of the History TV Channel. The film is an alternate history of World War I in which Europe and its allies, including America, fight the Martian invaders instead of Germany and its allies. The docudrama includes both new and digitally altered film footage shot during the War to End All Wars to establish the scope of the interplanetary conflict. The film's original 2013 UK broadcast was during the first year of the World War I centennial; the first US cable TV broadcast came in 2014, almost 10 months later.

Furthermore, the 1943 film "The Negro Soldier", a government produced documentary also directed by Frank Capra, challenged racial stereotypes in the ranks. Its popularity allowed it to pass over into mainstream distribution.[78]

Many great works of cinema that emerged from this period were of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this was possible is that, with so many films being made, not every one had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles and regarded by some as the greatest film of all time, fits that description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Capra battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, Young Mr. Lincoln, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka, Beau Geste, Babes in Arms, Gunga Din, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Roaring Twenties.

While filming, the brothers tried to capture shots that could be seen as homages to many of the 1980s references they recalled. Their goal was not necessarily to fill the work with these references, but instead make the series seem to the viewer as a 1980s film.[39] They spent little time reviewing those works and instead went by memory. Matt further recognized that some of their filming homages were not purposely done but were found to be very comparable, as highlighted by a fan-made video comparing the show to several 1980s works side-by-side.[32][76] Matt commented on the video that "Some were deliberate and some were subconscious."[32] The brothers recognized that many of the iconic scenes from these 1980s films, such as with Poltergeist, was about "taking a very ordinary object that people deal with every day, their television set, and imbuing it with something otherworldly", leading to the idea of using the Christmas light strings for Will to communicate with Joyce.[39]

In the years following the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with the purpose of making propaganda films. The development of Russian cinema in the 1920s by such filmmakers as Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein saw considerable progress in the use of the motion picture as a propaganda tool, yet it also served to develop the art of moviemaking. Eisenstein's films, in particular 1925's The Battleship Potemkin, are seen as masterworks of the cinema, even as they glorify Eisenstein's Communist ideals. In depicting the 1905 Russian Revolution Potemkin sought to create a new history for Russia, one led and triumphed over by the formerly oppressed masses. Eisenstein was heavily influenced by the ideology of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, which results in it providing better insight into the mindset of the later revolution than that which it depicted. Its dual purpose beyond forging a national Russian identity was to bring its revolutionary Communist message to the West. Its influence was feared in Germany to the extent that the government banned the film when it was released in the late 1920s.[71] Another of Eisenstein's films, 1927's October, depicted the Bolshevik perspective on the October Revolution, culminating in the storming of the Winter Palace which provided Soviet viewers with the victory that the workers and peasants lacked in Battleship Potemkin, ending with Lenin (as played by an unknown worker) declaring that the government is overthrown. Because no documentary material existed of the storming of the palace, Eistenstein's re-creation of the event has become the source material for historians and filmmakers, giving it further legitimacy as the accepted historical record, which illustrates its success as a propaganda film.[73]

While not an illustration in itself, Christopher Nevinson’s statement against the slaughter of World War I in his painting Paths of Glory (1917) takes its title from another line in the Elegy, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave”. The title had already been used two years before by Irvin S. Cobb in an account of his journalistic experiences at the start of that war.[102] It was then taken up in the unrelated Humphrey Cobb's 1935 anti-war novel, although in this case the name was suggested for the untitled manuscript in a competition held by the publisher. His book also served in its turn as the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s film Paths of Glory, released in 1957. This example is just one more among many illustrating the imaginative currency that certain lines of the poem continue to have, over and above their original significance.


Question: When was the world's first laptop computer introduced into the market, and by whom?

The world's first true laptop, known as the "Portal," was introduced by the French company R2E Micral in September 1980 at the Sicob exhibition in Paris. The Portal was developed by R2E Micral's studies and developments division for CCMC, a firm specializing in payroll and accounting. This portable microcomputer was powered by an Intel 8085 processor, clocked at 2 MHz, and featured 64K bytes of central Ram, a keyboard with 58 alphanumeric and 11 numeric keys, a 32-character screen, a 140,000-character floppy disk, a thermal printer with a speed of 28 characters per second, two communication channels, and a 220V power supply. Designed for use in temperatures ranging from 15°C to 35°C, the Portal weighed 12 kg and measured 45cm x 45cm x 15cm, providing complete mobility. Its operating system was Prologue.

During the MacWorld Expo keynote on January 6, 2009, Phil Schiller announced a 17-inch MacBook Pro with unibody construction. This version diverged from its 15-inch sibling with an anti-glare "matte" screen option (with the glossy finish standard) and a non user-removable lithium polymer battery.[38] Instead of traditional round cells inside the casing, the lithium-ion polymer batteries are shaped and fitted into each laptop to maximally utilize space. Adaptive charging, which uses a chip to optimize the charge flow to reduce wear and tear, extends the battery's overall life.[38] Battery life for the 17" version is quoted at eight hours, with 80Â percent of this charge remaining after 1,000 charge-discharge cycles.[38]

Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Merritt Singer with New York lawyer Edward Clark. Best known for its sewing machines, it was renamed Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865, then The Singer Company in 1963. It is based in La Vergne, Tennessee, near Nashville. Its first large factory for mass production was built in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1863.[1]

While not originally designed to be portable,[18][87] Linux is now one of the most widely ported operating system kernels, running on a diverse range of systems from the ARM architecture to IBM z/Architecture mainframe computers. The first port beyond Linux's original 386 architecture was performed on the Motorola 68000 platform by Amiga users, who accomplished this by replacing major parts of the kernel. The modifications to the kernel were so fundamental that Torvalds viewed the Motorola version as a fork and a "Linux-like operating system"[87] rather than as an actual port. It was, however, the impetus that Torvalds needed to lead a major restructure of the kernel code to facilitate porting to competing computing architectures. The first Linux endorsed port was to the DEC Alpha AXP 32 bit platform which was demonstrated at DECUS in May, 1995m[88] supporting both 386 and Alpha in a single source tree.[87] DEC was responsible for supplying the hardware necessary to Torvalds to enable a port of Linux to 64 bits[89] that same year.

The IdeaPad Yoga 11S is a compact ultralight hybrid notebook/tablet computer scheduled for release in 2013. Like the Yoga 13 and the Yoga 11 the Yoga 11S gets its name from its ability to take on various form factors due to its screen being mounted on a special two-way hinge. The Yoga 11S runs the full version of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.[29] The Yoga 11s will ship in the United States in June 2013 with a starting price of $799.[28][29]

With limited exceptions, the earliest computers were connected directly to terminals used by individual users, typically in the same building or site. Such networks became known as local area networks (LANs). Networking beyond this scope, known as wide area networks (WANs), emerged during the 1950s and became established during the 1960s.

In 1947, Scottish housewife Valerie Hunter Gordon started developing and making Paddi, a 2-part system consisting of a disposable pad (made of cellulose wadding covered with cotton wool) worn inside an adjustable plastic garment with press-studs/snaps. Initially, she used old parachutes for the garment. She applied for the patent in April 1948, and it was granted for the UK in October 1949. Initially, the big manufacturers were unable to see the commercial possibilities of disposable nappies. In 1948, Gordon made over 400 Paddis herself using her sewing machine at the kitchen table. Her husband had unsuccessfully approached several companies for help until he had a chance meeting with Sir Robert Robinson at a business dinner. In November 1949 Valerie Gordon signed a contract with Robinsons of Chesterfield who then went into full production. In 1950, Boots UK agreed to sell Paddi in all their branches. In 1951 the Paddi patent was granted for the USA and worldwide. Shortly after that, Playtex and several other large international companies tried unsuccessfully to buy out Paddi from Robinsons. Paddi was very successful for many years until the advent of 'all in one' diapers.[8][9]

The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on November 20, 1985, achieved little popularity. The project was briefly codenamed "Interface Manager" before the windowing system was developed - contrary to popular belief that it was the original name for Windows and Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to customers.[11]

The Pentium III[1] (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile microprocessors based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 26, 1999. The brand's initial processors were very similar to the earlier Pentium II-branded microprocessors. The most notable differences were the addition of the SSE instruction set (to accelerate floating point and parallel calculations), and the introduction of a controversial serial number embedded in the chip during the manufacturing process.

By the late 1960s change was coming: as operating systems and programming language compilers evolved, software production costs were dramatically increasing relative to hardware. A growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturers' bundled software products (the cost of bundled products was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs[12] did not want the costs of manufacturer's software to be bundled with hardware product costs. In the United States vs. IBM antitrust suit, filed 17 January 1969, the U.S. government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive.[13] While some software continued to come at no cost, there was a growing amount of software that was for sale only under restrictive licenses.

In the 1950s and into the 1960s almost all software was produced by academics and corporate researchers working in collaboration, often shared as public-domain software. As such, it was generally distributed under the principles of openness and co-operation long established in the fields of academia, and was not seen as a commodity in itself. Such communal behavior later became a central element of the so-called hacking culture (a term with a positive connotation among open-source programmers). At this time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software machine code because users frequently modified the software themselves, because it would not run on different hardware or OS without modification, and also to fix bugs or add new functions.[2][3][not in citation given] The first example of free and open-source software is believed to be the A-2 system, developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand in 1953,[4] which was released to customers with its source code. They were invited to send their improvements back to UNIVAC.[5] Later, almost all IBM mainframe software was also distributed with source code included. User groups such as that of the IBM 701, called SHARE, and that of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), called DECUS were formed to facilitate the exchange of software. The SHARE Operating System, originally developed by General Motors, was distributed by SHARE for the IBM 709 and 7090 computers. Some university computer labs did even have a policy requiring that all programs installed on the computer had to come with published source-code files.[6]


Question: When was the world's first laptop computer introduced to the market and by whom?

The Osborne 1, introduced by Adam Osborne of Osborne Computer in 1981, is often credited as the first true portable computer. This device, despite its large and heavy frame compared to modern laptops, featured a 5-inch screen, modem port, dual 5 1/4 floppy drives, and a suite of software applications. Though the company didn't survive long, the Osborne 1, with its 5" CRT display, had a transformative effect on business by enabling professionals to transport their computers and data. Inspired by the earlier Xerox NoteTaker, which could be considered the first portable computer, the Osborne 1 was roughly the size of a portable sewing machine, making it possible to carry on flights. Weighing approximately 11 kg and priced at $1795, it set the stage for the portable computing revolution.

In addition to many academic and research systems, there were several companies with commercial products in the 1980s: Pencept, Communications Intelligence Corporation, and Linus were among the best known of a crowded field. Later, GO Corp. brought out the PenPoint OS operating system for a tablet computer product: a patent from GO corporation was the subject of an infringement lawsuit concerning the Tablet PC operating system.[4]

Dr. David Canfield Smith first coined the term "icon" in his landmark 1975 PhD thesis "Pygmalion: A Creative Programming Environment".[6][7] In his work, Dr. Smith envisioned a scenario in which "visual entities", called icons, could execute lines of programming code, and save the operation for later re-execution.[8] Dr. Smith later served as one of the principal designers of the Xerox Star, which became the first commercially available personal computing system based on the desktop metaphor when it was released in 1981. "The icons on [the desktop] are visible concrete embodiments of the corresponding physical objects."[9] The desktop and icons displayed in this first desktop model are easily recognizable by users several decades later, and display the main components of the desktop metaphor GUI.

Early color sets were either floor-standing console models or tabletop versions nearly as bulky and heavy, so in practice they remained firmly anchored in one place. The introduction of GE's relatively compact and lightweight Porta-Color set in the spring of 1966 made watching color television a more flexible and convenient proposition. In 1972, sales of color sets finally surpassed sales of black-and-white sets.

The concept of data communication – transmitting data between two different places through an electromagnetic medium such as radio or an electric wire – pre-dates the introduction of the first computers. Such communication systems were typically limited to point to point communication between two end devices. Telegraph systems and telex machines can be considered early precursors of this kind of communication. The Telegraph in the late 19th century was the first fully digital communication system.

Bandai first released the accessory in 1986 as the Family Trainer pack for the Famicom in Japan, and later released in the United States. Nintendo released it in 1988 as the Power Pad,[1] along with the game World Class Track Meet, which was a rebranding of an earlier game.

Though the iPod was released in 2001, its price and Mac-only compatibility caused sales to be relatively slow until 2004.[10] The iPod line came from Apple's "digital hub" category, when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but the company found existing digital music players "big and clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces that were "unbelievably awful,"[11] so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design the iPod line, including hardware engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey,[12] and design engineer Sir Jonathan Ive.[11] Rubinstein had already discovered the Toshiba hard disk drive while meeting with an Apple supplier in Japan, and purchased the rights to it for Apple, and had also already worked out how the screen, battery, and other key elements would work.[13] The aesthetic was inspired by the 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Dieter Rams, while the wheel-based user interface was prompted by Bang & Olufsen's BeoCom 6000 telephone.[14][15] The product ("the Walkman of the twenty-first century" [16]) was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5Â GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your pocket."[17]

The Unix operating system was first presented formally to the outside world at the 1973 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, where Ritchie and Thompson delivered a paper. This led to requests for the system, but under a 1956 consent decree in settlement of an antitrust case, the Bell System (the parent organization of Bell Labs) was forbidden from entering any business other than "common carrier communications services", and was required to license any patents it had upon request.[6] Unix could not, therefore, be turned into a product. Bell Labs instead shipped the system for the cost of media and shipping.[6] Ken Thompson quietly began answering requests by shipping out tapes and disks, each accompanied by –  according to legend –  a note signed, "Love, Ken”.[12]

After electrical disc-playing machines started appearing on the market during the second half of the 1920s, usually sharing the same cabinet with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by users when referring to the device. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs". Portable record players (no radio included), with a latched cover and an integrated power amplifier and loudspeaker, were fairly common as well, especially in schools and for use by children and teenagers.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, computer vendors and software-only companies began routinely charging for software licenses, marketing software as "Program Products" and imposing legal restrictions on new software developments, now seen as assets, through copyrights, trademarks, and leasing contracts. In 1976 Bill Gates wrote an essay entitled Open Letter to Hobbyists, in which he expressed dismay at the widespread sharing of Microsoft's product Altair BASIC by hobbyists without paying its licensing fee. In 1979, AT&T began to enforce its licenses when the company decided it might profit by selling the Unix system.[14] In an announcement letter dated 8 February 1983 IBM inaugurated a policy of no longer distributing sources with purchased software.[15][16]

During the mid to late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM had cooperatively been developing OS/2 as a successor to DOS. OS/2 would take full advantage of the aforementioned protected mode of the Intel 80286 processor and up to 16Â MB of memory. OS/2 1.0, released in 1987, supported swapping and multitasking and allowed running of DOS executables.


Question: When was the world's first laptop computer introduced into the market, and by whom?

The Grid Compass 1101, the first modern laptop, was designed by Bill Moggridge from 1979 to 1980 and released in 1983. This innovative device featured a clamshell design, with a folding flat display that covered the keyboard when closed. The laptop was encased in magnesium, had a 320x200-pixel electroluminescent display, and 384 kilobyte bubble memory. Despite not being IBM-compatible and its high price tag of $8,000 to $10,000, the Grid Compass 1101 found a niche in specialized markets, notably with the U.S. military and NASA, which used it extensively on Space Shuttle missions during the 1980s. The success of the Grid Compass 1101 led to substantial patent rights revenues for its manufacturer, GRiD Systems Corp., which was later acquired by Tandy Corporation, now known as RadioShack.

Game & Watch is a line of handheld electronic games produced by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, each Game & Watch features a single game to be played on an LCD screen in addition to a clock, an alarm, or both.[103] It was the earliest Nintendo product to garner major success.[104]

In the USSR, Leonid Kupriyanovich, an engineer from Moscow, in 1957-1961 developed and presented a number of experimental models of handheld mobile phones. The weight of one model, presented in 19kdn61, was only 70 g and could fit on a palm.[7][8] However, in the USSR the decision at first to develop the system of the automobile "Altai" phone was made.[9]

The device received primarily positive reviews from various technology blogs and publications. Reviewers praised the device for its wide range of capabilities and labelled it as a competitor to laptops and netbooks. Some aspects were criticized, including the closed nature of the operating system and the lack of support for the Adobe Flash multimedia format. During the first 80 days, three million iPads were sold. By the launch of the iPad 2, Apple sold more than 15 million iPads.

The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on November 20, 1985, achieved little popularity. The project was briefly codenamed "Interface Manager" before the windowing system was developed - contrary to popular belief that it was the original name for Windows and Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to customers.[11]

Before the devices existed that are now referred to as mobile phones or cell phones, there were some precursors. In 1908, a Professor Albert Jahnke and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not seem to have proceeded with production.[2] Beginning in 1918, the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen.[3] In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie A. G. was founded to supply train telephony equipment and, in 1926, telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to first-class travelers.[4]

In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to talk and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about 80 lb.[11]

The Yoga 300 is a basic convertible Ultrabook-class device. In some countries, it is renamed as Flex 3. The yoga 300 is budget version for Yoga class. It become the most affordable Yoga Series. With only 11.6 inch display, it is also known as the smallest Yoga laptop but it is quiet heavy with 1.39 kilograms of weight. It uses Intel Celeron processors, integrated graphics, 500-gigabyte or 1-terabyte hard disk drives, and up to 8 gigabytes of RAM. It uses a 30 watt-hour battery which can stand until 5 hours. For connectivity, it has one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, one full-sized HDMI port. This device has High Definition display with 1366 x 768 pixel.

During the MacWorld Expo keynote on January 6, 2009, Phil Schiller announced a 17-inch MacBook Pro with unibody construction. This version diverged from its 15-inch sibling with an anti-glare "matte" screen option (with the glossy finish standard) and a non user-removable lithium polymer battery.[38] Instead of traditional round cells inside the casing, the lithium-ion polymer batteries are shaped and fitted into each laptop to maximally utilize space. Adaptive charging, which uses a chip to optimize the charge flow to reduce wear and tear, extends the battery's overall life.[38] Battery life for the 17" version is quoted at eight hours, with 80Â percent of this charge remaining after 1,000 charge-discharge cycles.[38]

While all modernized economies were rapidly moving to computerization after 1965, the USSR fell further and further behind. Moscow's decision to copy the IBM 360 of 1965 proved a decisive mistake for it locked scientists into an antiquated system they were unable to improve. They had enormous difficulties in manufacturing the necessary chips reliably and in quantity, in programming workable and efficient programs, in coordinating entirely separate operations, and in providing support to computer users.[50][51][52]

Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2000. Trek Technology sold a model under the brand name "ThumbDrive", and IBM marketed the first such drives in North America with its product named the "DiskOnKey", which was developed and manufactured by the Israeli company M-Systems.[21] IBM's USB flash drive became available on December 15, 2000,[22] and had a storage capacity of 8 MB, more than five times the capacity of the then-common 3½-inch floppy disks (of 1440 KB).


Question: Who is the narrator in the story "Shooting an Elephant"?

In "Shooting an Elephant," the speaker is an English narrator, potentially a reflection of Orwell, who recounts his experience as a police officer in Burma. The narrator is compelled to shoot an aggressive elephant due to the expectations of the locals, despite his reservations. The incident serves as a metaphor for British imperialism and highlights the narrator's realization that tyranny leads to the destruction of one's own freedom.

A Shropshire Lad contains several repeated themes. It is not a connected narrative; though the "I" of the poems is in two cases named as Terence (VIII, LXII), the "Shropshire Lad" of the title, he is not to be identified with Housman himself. Not all the poems are in the same voice and there are various kinds of dialogue between the speaker and others, including conversations beyond the grave.

"A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty is a short story about an elderly African-American woman who undertakes a familiar journey on a road in a rural area to acquire medicine for her grandson. She expresses herself, both to her surroundings and in short spurts of spoken monologue, warning away animals and expressing the pain she feels in her weary bones. At its heart, "A Worn Path" is a tale of undying love and devotion that pushes us toward a goal.

The next day they thankfully discover a camel doctor, Dr. Sam Snell, who diagnoses their camel with a bad case of gleeks and orders him to go to bed for at least twenty weeks. The driver makes it up to the protagonist by telling him he can catch the 4:42 bus to Solla Sollew at the nearest bus stop, but when the protagonist gets to the bus stop he learns from a sign tacked on a stick that the Solla Sollew bound bus is out of service (the driver, Butch Myers, apparently destroyed all his tires from accidentally running over four nails), leaving him to hike for one hundred miles. Soon, the poor protagonist is caught in a storm. A kindly stranger tells him that the storm is the infamous "Midwinter Jicker" and allows the protagonist to take shelter in his house, where a family of mice and a family of owls are also taking shelter.

While working on their story, Sudhir and Vinod decide to enter a photography contest that carries a prize money of Rs. 5000/-, and take a number of photographs all over the city. On developing their pictures, in one of the photographs they see a man shooting someone. Upon enlarging it, they realize that the killer is none other than Tarneja. They immediately return to the park where they had shot that picture and realize that the body is lying behind the bushes. Before the duo get to the body, it disappears, but they manage to retrieve one of a pair of gold cuff links. Sometime later, they attend the inauguration of a bridge dedicated to the memory of late Municipal Commissioner D'Mello who is supposed to have died of a terminal disease. It is there that they discover the other cuff link. They return at night and dig up that area and unearth a coffin containing the dead body of D'Mello.

Pride and Prejudice, like most of Austen's other works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech, which has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke".[21] Austen creates her characters with fully developed personalities and unique voices. Though Darcy and Elizabeth are very alike, they are also considerably different.[22] By using narrative that adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essentialÂ ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."[21] The few times the reader is allowed to gain further knowledge of another character's feelings, is through the letters exchanged in this novel. Darcy's first letter to Elizabeth is an example of this as through his letter, the reader and Elizabeth are both given knowledge of Wickham's true character. Austen is known to use irony throughout the novel especially from viewpoint of the character of Elizabeth Bennet. She conveys the "oppressive rules of femininity that actually dominate her life and work, and are covered by her beautifully carved trojan horse of ironic distance.".[4] Beginning with a historical investigation of the development of a particular literary form and then transitioning into empirical verifications, it reveals Free Indirect Discourse as a tool that emerged over time as practical means for addressing the physical distinctness of minds. Seen in this way, Free Indirect Discourse is a distinctly literary response to an environmental concern, providing a scientific justification that does not reduce literature to a mechanical extension of biology, but takes its value to be its own original form.[23]

More than a millennium later, the narrator finishes the manuscript and finds Hank on his deathbed having a dream about Sandy. He attempts to make one last "effect", but dies before he can finish it.

Critics such as Harry Ricketts have observed that Kipling returns repeatedly to the theme of the abandoned and fostered child, recalling his own childhood feelings of abandonment. In his view, the enemy, Shere Khan, represents the "malevolent would-be foster-parent" who Mowgli in the end outwits and destroys, just as Kipling as a boy had to face Mrs Holloway in place of his parents. Ricketts writes that in "Mowgli's Brothers", the hero loses his human parents at the outset, and his wolf fosterers at the conclusion; and Mowgli is again rejected at the end of "Tiger! Tiger!", but each time is compensated by "a queue of would-be foster-parents" including the wolves, Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa. In Ricketts's view, the power that Mowgli has over all these characters who compete for his affection is part of the book's appeal to children.[19] The historian of India Philip Mason similarly emphasises the Mowgli myth, where the fostered hero, "the odd man out among wolves and men alike", eventually triumphs over his enemies. Mason notes that both Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal do much the same.[20]

There are two unpublished stories that reveal Red Horn’s sagittary nature. The first is “Chief of the Horok’a”, and the other is its variant, “The Red Man”. In “Chief of the Herok’a”, a great hunter lived with his wife and two small children. He told his wife to avoid his deer traps, but she ignored him, and whenever she went out, she was caught in one of the traps. No trap in which she was caught ever worked again. Finally, he had to shoot his own wife to save his family from starvation. He sent his two children to where his other sons lived, and on the way, the children saw the signs in the sky that their father had been overcome by their mother’s brothers. On the way, the little boy was kidnapped by a group of berdaches who had the power to change their size. He made good his escape and joined his sister and brothers. In time the little boy grew up and married a beautiful woman. His mother-in-law would send him on impossibly dangerous missions in order to kill him, but every time he emerged victorious. Among the spirits participating in the feasts that were held afterwards were Turtle and the Forked Man, who had two bodies joined at the waist. The young man allowed his sister to choose her husband from among the assembled spirits, and she picked the Forked Man. The old woman had a nightmare, and when she awoke, she said that the young man must play the game wegodiwa with them.[20] He agreed. The young man with his spirit friends sat on the edge of a cliff while the old woman walked out into the thin air. She and her daughters gave a loud shout, and a gale force wind issued from above, yet the young man and the good spirits held fast. After four such attacks, the good spirits triumphed. The sons of the old woman were the ones who were making the wind. The young man, now in the form of Without Horns (Herok'aga), stood on the water and told his brothers to make the “herok'a breathings.” They uttered, ahahe, ahahe, and as they pulled their empty bow strings back and forth, their opponents fell over dead. The young man, Herok'aga, became chief over the village that was once ruled by the slain brothers. In time Herok'aga had a daughter, and when it was time for her to be married, he set up an ordeal designed to test the worth of her suitors. Finally, a Forked Man succeeded, and the couple set out for his home up above where he lived with his grandfather. One day as she was looking into the fire, she saw a head that was made red by the heat, yet it had tears rolling down its cheeks. The head explained that she was his granddaughter and that the old man there had beheaded him and placed him in the fire. She lifted the head out of the fire and put it in a white deerskin. When the Forked Man returned home, the head explained to him all that had happened. The husband demanded that his grandfather tell him where the headless body was, and they went out and found the body wandering around Red Hill. They brought it back and made a sweat bath in which the head was reattached to the body. Once he emerged whole again, he cursed the old man to become an owl. The grandfather whose head was reattached, is the chief of the herok'a. His son is the chief of the little children spirits who have the same power as the herok'a.[21]

Equiano opens his Narrative by explaining the struggle that comes with writing a memoir. He is very passionate about the hardships that memoir writers go through. He explains that they often have to defend themselves from those who remain critical about the truth of their work. He apologizes to his readers in advance for not having the most exciting story, but hopes that it serves to be helpful to other slaves in his position. He states, "I am neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant." He begins his story with a description of his homeland and the district in which he was born. He was born in the kingdom of Benin. Benin was a part of Guinea. The specific district that he represented was Eboe, which is in the same area as what is now Nigeria. Within the district, Equiano was born in Essake, a small province, in 1745. He goes into detail concerning his district and the isolation of his province.[6]

At the beginning of Book Two the narrator and the curate are plundering houses in search of food. During this excursion the men witness a Martian fighting-machine enter Kew, seizing any person it finds and tossing them into a "great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder",[8] and the narrator realises that the Martian invaders may have "a purpose other than destruction" for their victims.[8] At a house in Sheen "a blinding glare of green light" and a loud concussion attend the arrival of the fifth Martian cylinder,[8] and both men are trapped beneath the ruins for two weeks. The narrator's relations with the curate deteriorate over time, and he eventually is forced to knock him unconscious to silence his now loud ranting; but the curate is overheard outside by a Martian, who finally removes his unconscious body with one of its handling machine tentacles. The reader is then led to believe the Martians will perform a fatal transfusion of the curate's blood to nourish themselves, as they have done with other captured victims viewed by the narrator through a small slot in the house's ruins. The narrator just barely escapes detection from the returned foraging tentacle by hiding in the adjacent coal-cellar.


Question: Who is the narrator in the story "Shooting an Elephant"?

In "Shooting an Elephant," the narrator, who is also the protagonist and is assumed to be George Orwell, is a police officer in Moulmein during a time of strong anti-European sentiment. Despite his personal sympathies for the Burmese people, his official position as a representative of the British Empire makes him a target of their scorn and ridicule. This dual identity creates a complex internal conflict for the narrator, who struggles with the expectations of his role and his own moral convictions.

The song is superficially about the protagonist mocking a woman with a severe hangover for her intoxicated escapades around town, making numerous social and verbal faux pas while high on alcohol and drugs ("But now you just can't remember / All the things you said / And you're not sure you want to know / I'll give you one hint, honey / You sure did put on a show!") The song makes late 1970s cultural references to such nouveaux riche fads as Elaine's Restaurant and Halston. At one point, Joel said in an interview that the song was actually about himself (that he was the one who "had to be a big shot".)

The Home and the World' (in the original Bengali, ঘরে বাইরে Ghôre Baire or Ghare Baire, lit. "At home and outside") is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and revolution against the Western culture. These two ideas are portrayed in two of the main characters, Nikhil, who is rational and opposes violence, and Sandip, who will let nothing stand in his way from reaching his goals. These two opposing ideals are very important in understanding the history of the Bengal region and its contemporary problems.

The tale is set in Flanders at an indeterminate time, and opens with three young men drinking, gambling and blaspheming in a tavern. The Pardoner condemns each of these "tavern sins" in turn—gluttony, drinking, gambling, and swearing—with support from the Christian scriptures, before proceeding with the tale. The rioters hear a bell signalling a burial; their friend has been killed by a "privee theef" known as Death, who has also killed a thousand others. The men set out to avenge them and kill Death. An old man they brusquely query tells them that he has asked Death to take him but has failed. He then says they can find death at the foot of an oak tree. When the men arrive at the tree, they find a large amount of gold coins and forget about their quest to kill Death. They decide to sleep at the oak tree over night, so they can take the coins in the morning. The three men draw straws to see who among them should fetch wine and food while the other two wait under the tree. The youngest of the three men draws the shortest straw and departs; while he is away, the remaining two plot to overpower and stab him upon his return. However, the one who leaves for town plots to kill the other two: he purchases rat poison and laces the wine. When he returns with the food and drink, the other two kill him and then consume the poisoned wine, dying slow and painful deaths.

The story is told through limited third person point of view, with most of the story concerning a single Roxolani captain. During a routine journey of conquest, they happen upon Earth. The Roxolani anticipate a simple and rewarding campaign, as they can detect no use of gravity manipulation, the cornerstone of their civilization. Humanity is awed by the invaders, as the maneuverability granted by that technology suggests the rest of their civilization is equally impressive. But as they begin their assault, things take a turn for the absurdâ€”the Roxolani attack with matchlock weapons and black powder explosives. Humans retaliate with automatic weapons and missiles. The battle is short, and most of the invaders are killed. A few are captured alive.

Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899 â€“ October 1, 1985)[1] was an American writer and a world federalist.[2] For more than fifty years, he was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine. He was also a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as Strunk & White. In addition, he wrote books for children, including Stuart Little (c. 1945), Charlotte's Web (c. 1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (c. 1970). In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel.[3]

Throughout the book, Napoleon and Squealer broke the Seven Commandments, the tenets on which governance of the farm is based. To prevent the animals from suspecting them, Squealer preys on the animals' confusion and alters the Commandments from time to time as the need arises. Squealer falls off a ladder while trying to change one of the commandments in the night. A few days later it is discovered that Squealer was altering the commandment regarding alcohol which suggests the reason he fell off the ladder was because he was drunk at the time. Orwell uses Squealer mainly to show how the increasingly totalitarian and corrupt regime uses propaganda and deceit to get its ideas accepted and implemented by the people. In the end, Squealer reduces the Seven Commandments into one commandment, that "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

In describing the narrator's analysis of his surroundings, Gray employed John Locke's philosophy of the sensations, which argued that the senses were the origin of ideas. Information described in the beginning of the poem is reused by the narrator as he contemplates life near the end. The description of death and obscurity adopts Locke's political philosophy as it emphasises the inevitability and finality of death. The end of the poem is connected to Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in that the beginning of the poem deals with the senses and the ending describes how we are limited in our ability to understand the world. The poem takes the ideas and transforms them into a discussion of blissful ignorance by adopting Locke's resolution to be content with our limited understanding. Unlike Locke, the narrator of the poem knows that he is unable to fathom the universe, but still questions the matter.[44]

The short story also discusses racism and the arrogance it breeds by marginalizing other people and being cruel to them. However, another theme of the story is the ability of the human spirit to endure conflict and poor circumstances within nature and society.[3]

While Fridolin and Albertina, the protagonist couple of Dream Story, are sometimes implied to be Jewish, there is nothing in the novella which justifies this assumption, and neither Fridolin nor Albertina are typical Jewish names; whereas Nachtigall (Nightingale) is overtly identified as Jewish. Kubrick (himself of Jewish descent) frequently removed references to the Jewishness of characters in the novels he adapted.[9] In the case of Eyes Wide Shut, Frederic Raphael (who is also Jewish) wanted to keep the Jewish background of the protagonists, but Kubrick insisted that they should be "vanilla" Americans, without any details that would arouse any presumptions. The director added that Bill should be a "Harrison Ford-ish goy" (though Ford's mother was Jewish), and created the surname of Harford as an allusion to the actor.[10] This is reflected in the way the film's Bill Harford is taunted by college students when going home in the morning. In the film, Bill is taunted with homophobic slurs. In the novella, these boys are recognized to be members of an anti-Semitic college fraternity.[9][11] Kubrick's co-screenwriter, Frederic Raphael, in an introduction to a Penguin Classics edition of Dream Story, writes "Fridolin is not declared to be a Jew, but his feelings of cowardice, for failing to challenge his aggressor, echo the uneasiness of Austrian Jews in the face of Gentile provocation."[12]

The Martians eventually abandon the cylinder's crater, and the narrator emerges from the collapsed house where he had observed the Martians up close during his ordeal; he then approaches West London. En route, he finds the Martian red weed everywhere, a prickly vegetation spreading wherever there is abundant water. On Putney Heath, he once again encounters the artilleryman, who briefly persuades him of a grandiose plan to rebuild civilisation by living underground; but, after a few hours, the narrator perceives the laziness of his companion and abandons him. Now in a deserted and silent London, he begins to slowly go mad from his accumulated trauma, finally attempting to end it all by openly approaching a stationary fighting-machine. To his surprise, he quickly discovers that all the Martians have been killed by an onslaught of earthly pathogens, to which they had no immunity: "slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth".[9] The narrator continues on, finally suffering a brief but complete nervous breakdown, which affects him for days; he is finally nursed back to health by a kind family. Eventually, he is able to return by train to Woking via a patchwork of newly repaired tracks. At his home, he discovers that his beloved wife has miraculously survived. The last chapter reflects on the significance of the Martian invasion and the "abiding sense of doubt and insecurity" it has left in the narrator's mind.