eBay Inc. (stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. Sales occur either via online auctions or “buy it now” instant sales, and the company charges commissions to…
Keanu Reeves (born September 2, 1964) is a Canadian actor and musician. The recipient of numerous accolades in a career on screen spanning four decades, he is known for his leading roles in action films, his amiable public image, and his philanthropic efforts. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him as the fourth-greatest…
George Herman “Babe” Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed “the Bambino” and “the Sultan of Swat”, he began his MLB career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox…
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. It allows documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer…
NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) platform, and telecommunications equipment and software to business enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies. NEC has…
An early patent for a parking meter, U.S. patent, was filed by Roger W. Babson, on August 30, 1928. The meter was intended to operate on power from the battery of the parking vehicle and required a connection from the car to the meter. Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale designed the first…
The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek.…
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. Regarded as a cinematic cultural icon, he has starred in many notable films over seven decades, and is one of the highest-grossing actors in the world.[a] Ford’s accolades include nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Screen Actors Guild awards,…
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American British animator and special effects creator who is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of both fields. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he built upon the techniques of his mentor, Willis H. O’Brien,…
The rainbow flag or pride flag (formerly gay pride flag) is a symbol of LGBTQ pride and LGBTQ social movements. The colours reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender. Using a rainbow flag as a symbol of LGBTQ pride began in San Francisco, California, but eventually…
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectively against the paper with a type of element. Thereby, the machine produces a legible written document…
Garfield is an American comic strip created by Jim Davis. Originally published locally as Jon in 1976 (later changed to Garfield in 1977), then in nationwide syndication from 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character Garfield the cat, Odie the dog, and their owner Jon Arbuckle. As of 2013, it was syndicated…
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Set in 1936, the film stars Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, a globetrotting archaeologist vying with Nazi German forces to recover the long-lost…
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson’s paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding…
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership in 1931 and was bought by the Western Cartridge Company, a forerunner of the Olin Corporation. The Winchester brand…
Howard Carter (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun in November 1922, the best-preserved pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. In 1914, Lord Carnarvon received the concession to dig in the Valley of…
Edwin Herbert Land, (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision, among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went…
Felix Baumgartner (born 20 April 1969) is an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper. He is widely known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon from the stratosphere on 14 October 2012 and landing in New Mexico, United States, as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. Doing so, he set world records…
McDonald’s Corporation, doing business as McDonald’s, is an American multinational fast-food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hamburger stand and later turned the company into a franchise, with the Golden Arches logo being introduced in…
Garry Kasparov (born on 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. From 1984 until his retirement from regular competitive chess in 2005,…
The 1896 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad and commonly known as Athens 1896, were the first international Olympic Games held in modern history. Organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had been created by French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, the event was held in Athens, Greece, from…
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952) was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known as the creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy developed into a “trilogy” of five books which sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime.…
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice at a second device. This instrument was further developed by many others, and became rapidly indispensable in business, government, and in households. The essential elements of a…
Time has been based in New York City since its first issue published on March 3, 1923, by Briton Hadden (1898–1929) and Henry Luce (1898–1967). It was the first weekly news magazine in the United States. The two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor, respectively, of the Yale Daily News. They…
Daniel Craig CMG (born 2 March 1968) is an English actor. He gained international fame by playing the fictional secret agent James Bond for five instalments in the film series: Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), and No Time to Die (2021). He gained prominence for his supporting roles…
Levi Strauss was born to a Jewish family in Buttenheim on February 26, 1829, in Germany. In 1847, aged 18, Strauss travelled with his mother and two sisters to the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss…
Samuel Colt received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835, and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 (U.S. patent 1,304). That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company…
Twosday is the name given to Tuesday (2nd day of the week), February 22, 2022, and an unofficial one-time secular observance held on that day, characterized as a fad. The name is a portmanteau of two and Tuesday, deriving from the fact that the digits of the date form a numeral palindrome marked by…