1.
Barbados
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Barbados is a sovereign island country in the Lesser Antilles, in the Americas. It is 34 kilometres in length and up to 23 km in width, Barbados is outside of the principal Atlantic hurricane belt. Inhabited by Kalinago people since the 13th century, and prior to that by other Amerindians, Barbados was visited by Spanish navigators in the late 15th century and it first appeared in a Spanish map in 1511. The Portuguese visited the island in 1536, but they left it unclaimed, an English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados in 1625, its men took possession of it in the name of King James I. In 1627, the first permanent settlers arrived from England, and it became an English, in 1966, Barbados became an independent state and Commonwealth realm with the British Monarch as hereditary head of state. It has a population of 280,121 people, predominantly of African descent, despite being classified as an Atlantic island, Barbados is considered to be a part of the Caribbean, where it is ranked as a leading tourist destination. Forty percent of the come from the UK, with the US. In 2014, Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Barbados joint second in the Americas, the name Barbados is either the Portuguese word Barbados or the Spanish equivalent los Barbados, both meaning the bearded ones. In 1519, a map produced by the Genoese mapmaker Visconte Maggiolo showed and named Barbados in its correct position, furthermore, the island of Barbuda in the Leewards is very similar in name and was once named Las Barbudas by the Spanish. It is uncertain which European nation arrived first in Barbados, one lesser known source points to earlier-revealed works predating contemporary sources indicating it could have been the Spanish. Others believe the Portuguese, en route to Brazil, were the first Europeans to come upon the island, colloquially Barbadians refer to their home island as Bim or other nicknames associated with Barbados includes Bimshire. The origin is uncertain but several theories exist, the name could have arisen due to the relatively large percentage of enslaved Igbo people from modern-day southeastern Nigeria arriving in Barbados in the 18th century. The words Bim and Bimshire are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, another possible source for Bim is reported to be in the Agricultural Reporter of 25 April 1868, where the Rev. N. Greenidge suggested the listing of Bimshire as a county of England. Expressly named were Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire and Bimshire, lastly, in the Daily Argosy of 1652 there is a reference to Bim as a possible corruption of Byam, the name of a Royalist leader against the Parliamentarians. That source suggested the followers of Byam became known as Bims, amerindian settlement of Barbados dates to about the 4th to 7th centuries AD, by a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid. In the 13th century, the Kalinago arrived from South America, the Spanish and Portuguese briefly claimed Barbados from the late 16th to the 17th centuries. The Arawaks are believed to have fled to neighbouring islands, apart from possibly displacing the Caribs, the Spanish and Portuguese made little impact and left the island uninhabited. Some Arawaks migrated from British Guiana in the 19th century and continue to live in Barbados, during the Cromwellian era this included a large number of prisoners-of-war, vagrants and people who were illicitly kidnapped, who were forcibly transported to the island and sold as servants
2.
Central bank
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A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a states currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries, Central banks in most developed nations are institutionally designed to be independent from political interference. Still, limited control by the executive and legislative bodies usually exists, prior to the 17th century most money was commodity money, typically gold or silver. However, promises to pay were widely circulated and accepted as value at least five hundred years earlier in both Europe and Asia. The Song dynasty was the first to issue generally circulating paper currency, in 1455, in an effort to control inflation, the succeeding Ming Dynasty ended the use of paper money and closed much of Chinese trade. The Bank of Amsterdam, established in the Dutch Republic in 1609, is considered to be the forerunner to modern central banks. The Wisselbanks innovations helped lay the foundations for the birth and development of the banking system that now plays a vital role in the worlds economy. Along with a number of local banks, it performed many functions of a central banking system. Lucien Gillard calls it the European guilder, and Adam Smith devotes many pages to explaining how the bank guilder works, the model of the Wisselbank as a state bank was adapted throughout Europe, including the Bank of Sweden and the Bank of England. Established by Dutch-Latvian Johan Palmstruch in 1668, Sveriges Riksbank is often considered by many as the worlds oldest central bank, the lenders would give the government cash and also issue notes against the government bonds, which could be lent again. A Royal Charter was granted on 27 July through the passage of the Tonnage Act 1694, the bank was given exclusive possession of the governments balances, and was the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue banknotes. The £1. 2M was raised in 12 days, half of this was used to rebuild the Navy and these modern central banking functions evolved slowly through the 18th and 19th centuries. The currency crisis of 1797, caused by panicked depositors withdrawing from the Bank led to the government suspending convertibility of notes into specie payment. The bank was accused by the bullionists of causing the exchange rate to fall from over issuing banknotes. Nevertheless, it was clear that the Bank was being treated as an organ of the state, henry Thornton, a merchant banker and monetary theorist has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the real bills doctrine, he was a defender of the bullionist position, thorntons process of monetary expansion anticipated the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form. Until the mid-nineteenth century, commercial banks were able to issue their own banknotes, many consider the origins of the central bank to lie with the passage of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. Under this law, authorisation to issue new banknotes was restricted to the Bank of England, at the same time, the Bank of England was restricted to issue new banknotes only if they were 100% backed by gold or up to £14 million in government debt
3.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
4.
Spanish dollar
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Its purpose was to correspond to the German thaler. The Spanish dollar was used by many countries as the first international currency because of its uniformity in standard. Some countries countersigned the Spanish dollar so it could be used as their local currency, the Spanish dollar was the coin upon which the original United States dollar was based, and it remained legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857. Because it was used in Europe, the Americas. Diverse theories link the origin of the $ symbol to the columns, millions of Spanish dollars were minted over the course of several centuries. They were among the most widely circulating coins of the period in the Americas. In the 16th century, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins known as Joachimsthalers, named for Joachimsthal, the Joachimsthalers weighed 451 Troy grains of silver. So successful were these coins that similar thalers were minted in Burgundy, the Burgundian Cross Thaler depicted the Cross of Burgundy and was prevalent in the Burgundian Netherlands that were revolting against the Spanish king and Duke of Burgundy Philip II. After 1575, the Dutch revolting provinces replaced the currency with a daalder depicting a lion, specifically to facilitate export trade, the leeuwendaalder was authorized to contain 427.16 grains of.750 fine silver, lighter than the large denomination coins then in circulation. Clearly it was advantageous for a Dutch merchant to pay a foreign debt in leeuwendaalders rather than in other heavier. Thus, the leeuwendaalder or lion dollar became the coin of choice for foreign trade and it became popular in the Middle East, and colonies in the east and west. They also circulated throughout the English colonies during the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries, from New Netherland the lion dollar spread to all thirteen colonies in the west. After the introduction of the Guldengroschen in Austria in 1486, the concept of a silver coin with high purity eventually spread throughout the rest of Europe. Monetary reform in Spain brought about the introduction of an 8-real coin in 1497, in 1537 the Spanish escudo gold coin was introduced, which was worth 16 reales. The later Gold Doubloon was worth 32 reales or 2 escudos and it is this divisibility into 8 which caused the silver coins to be named pieces of eight. In the following centuries, the coin was minted with different designs at various mints in Spain. In the 19th century, the denomination was changed to 20 reales. Spains adoption of the peseta in 1869 and its joining the Latin Monetary Union meant the end of the last vestiges of the Spanish dollar in Spain itself
5.
Mexican peso
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The Mexican peso is the currency of Mexico. Modern peso and dollar currencies have a origin in the 15th–19th century Spanish dollar, most continuing to use its sign. The Mexican peso is the 8th most traded currency in the world, the third most traded currency originating from the Americas, the current ISO4217 code for the peso is MXN, prior to the 1993 revaluation, the code MXP was used. The peso is subdivided into 100 centavos, represented by ¢, as of March 31,2017, the pesos exchange rate was $19.94 per Euro and $18.71 per U. S. dollar. The name was used in reference to pesos oro or pesos plata. The Spanish word peso means weight, the peso was originally the name of the eight-real coins issued in Mexico by Spain. These were the so-called Spanish dollars or pieces of eight in wide circulation in the Americas, in 1863, the first issue was made of coins denominated in centavos, worth one hundredth of the peso. This was followed in 1866 by coins denominated one peso, coins denominated in reales continued to be issued until 1897. In 1905, the content of the peso was reduced by 49. 3%. However, from 1918 onward, the weight and fineness of all the coins declined, until 1977. On January 1,1993 the Bank of Mexico introduced a new currency, one new peso, or N$1.00, was equal to 1000 of the obsolete MXP pesos. The ISO4217 code, however, remained unchanged as MXN, thanks to the stability of the Mexican economy and the growth in foreign investment, the Mexican peso is now among the 15 most traded currency units in recent years. The first coins of the currency were 1 centavo pieces minted in 1863. Emperor Maximilian, ruler of the Second Mexican Empire from 1864–1867 and his portrait was on the obverse, with the legend Maximiliano Emperador, the reverse shows the imperial arms and the legends Imperio Mexicano and 1 Peso and the date. They were struck from 1866 to 1867, the New Mexican republic continued to strike the 8 reales piece, but also began minting coins denominated in centavos and pesos. In addition to copper 1 centavo coins, silver coins of 5,10,25 and 50 centavos and 1 peso were introduced between 1867 and 1869, gold 1, 2½,5,10 and 20-peso coins were introduced in 1870. The obverses featured the Mexican eagle and the legend Republica Mexicana, the reverses of the larger coins showed a pair of scales, those of the smaller coins, the denomination. One-peso coins were made from 1865 to 1873, when 8 reales coins resumed production, in 1882, cupro-nickel 1,2 and 5 centavos coins were issued but they were only minted for two years
6.
Penny
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A penny is a coin or a unit of currency in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius, it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system, presently, it is the formal name of the British penny and the informal name of one American cent as well as the informal Irish designation of 1 cent euro coin. It is the name of the cent unit of account in Canada. The name is used in reference to various historical currencies also derived from the Carolingian system, such as the French denier. It may also be used to refer to any similar smallest-denomination coin. The Carolingian penny was originally a. 940-fine silver coin weighing 1/240 pound, the British penny remained a silver coin until the expense of the Napoleonic Wars prompted the use of base metals in 1797. Despite the decimalization of currencies in the United States and, later, throughout the British Commonwealth, no penny is currently formally subdivided, although farthings, halfpennies, and half cents have previously been minted and the mill remains in use as a unit of account in some contexts. Penny is first attested in a 1394 Scots text, a variant of Old English peni, a development of numerous variations including pennig, penning, and pending. The etymology of the penny is uncertain, although cognates are common across almost all Germanic languages and suggest a base *pan-, *pann-. Recently, it has proposed that it may represent an early borrowing of Punic PN. Following decimalization, the British and Irish coins were marked new penny until 1982 and 1985, the regular plural pennies fell out of use in England from the 16th century, except in reference to coins considered individually. The informal name for the American cent seems to have spread from New York, in British English, prior to decimalization, values from two to eleven pence and of twenty pence are often written and spoken as a single word, as twopence, threepence, &c. Where a single coin represented a number of pence, it was treated as a single noun, thus, a threepence would be single coin of that value whereas three pence would be its value and three pennies would be three penny coins. In British English, divisions of a penny were added to such combinations without a conjunction, as sixpence-farthing, adjectival use of such coins used the ending -penny, as sixpenny. The British abbreviation d. derived from the Latin denarius and it followed the amount after a space. It has been replaced since decimalization by p, usually written without a space or period, from this abbreviation, it is common to speak of pennies and values in pence as p. In North America, it is common to abbreviate cents with the currency symbol ¢, elsewhere, it is usually written with a simple c. The medieval silver penny was modeled on similar coins in antiquity, such as the Greek drachma, the Carthaginian shekel, forms of these seem to have reached as far as Norway and Sweden
7.
Zinc
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Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table, in some respects zinc is chemically similar to magnesium, both elements exhibit only one normal oxidation state, and the Zn2+ and Mg2+ ions are of similar size. Zinc is the 24th most abundant element in Earths crust and has five stable isotopes, the most common zinc ore is sphalerite, a zinc sulfide mineral. The largest workable lodes are in Australia, Asia, and the United States, Zinc is refined by froth flotation of the ore, roasting, and final extraction using electricity. Zinc metal was not produced on a large scale until the 12th century in India and was unknown to Europe until the end of the 16th century, the mines of Rajasthan have given definite evidence of zinc production going back to the 6th century BC. To date, the oldest evidence of pure zinc comes from Zawar, in Rajasthan, alchemists burned zinc in air to form what they called philosophers wool or white snow. The element was named by the alchemist Paracelsus after the German word Zinke. German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf is credited with discovering pure metallic zinc in 1746, work by Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta uncovered the electrochemical properties of zinc by 1800. Corrosion-resistant zinc plating of iron is the application for zinc. Other applications are in batteries, small non-structural castings. A variety of compounds are commonly used, such as zinc carbonate and zinc gluconate, zinc chloride, zinc pyrithione, zinc sulfide. Zinc is an essential mineral perceived by the public today as being of exceptional biologic and public health importance, Zinc deficiency affects about two billion people in the developing world and is associated with many diseases. In children, deficiency causes growth retardation, delayed sexual maturation, infection susceptibility, enzymes with a zinc atom in the reactive center are widespread in biochemistry, such as alcohol dehydrogenase in humans. Consumption of excess zinc can cause ataxia, lethargy and copper deficiency, Zinc is a bluish-white, lustrous, diamagnetic metal, though most common commercial grades of the metal have a dull finish.6 pm. The metal is hard and brittle at most temperatures but becomes malleable between 100 and 150 °C, above 210 °C, the metal becomes brittle again and can be pulverized by beating. Zinc is a conductor of electricity. For a metal, zinc has relatively low melting and boiling points, the melting point is the lowest of all the transition metals aside from mercury and cadmium. Many alloys contain zinc, including brass, Other metals long known to form binary alloys with zinc are aluminium, antimony, bismuth, gold, iron, lead, mercury, silver, tin, magnesium, cobalt, nickel, tellurium, and sodium
8.
Brass
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Brass is a metal alloy made of copper and zinc, the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties. It is an alloy, atoms of the two constituents may replace each other within the same crystal structure. By comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin, however, bronze and brass may also include small proportions of a range of other elements including arsenic, phosphorus, aluminium, manganese, and silicon. The term is applied to a variety of brasses. Modern practice in museums and archaeology increasingly avoids both terms for objects in favour of the all-embracing copper alloy. It is also used in zippers, Brass is often used in situations in which it is important that sparks not be struck, such as in fittings and tools used near flammable or explosive materials. Brass has higher malleability than bronze or zinc, the relatively low melting point of brass and its flow characteristics make it a relatively easy material to cast. By varying the proportions of copper and zinc, the properties of the brass can be changed, allowing hard, the density of brass is 8.4 to 8.73 grams per cubic centimetre. Today, almost 90% of all alloys are recycled. Because brass is not ferromagnetic, it can be separated from ferrous scrap by passing the scrap near a powerful magnet, Brass scrap is collected and transported to the foundry where it is melted and recast into billets. Billets are heated and extruded into the form and size. The general softness of brass means that it can often be machined without the use of cutting fluid, aluminium makes brass stronger and more corrosion-resistant. Aluminium also causes a highly beneficial hard layer of oxide to be formed on the surface that is thin, transparent. Tin has an effect and finds its use especially in seawater applications. Combinations of iron, aluminium, silicon and manganese make brass wear and tear resistant, to enhance the machinability of brass, lead is often added in concentrations of around 2%. Since lead has a melting point than the other constituents of the brass. The pattern the globules form on the surface of the brass increases the available surface area which in turn affects the degree of leaching. In addition, cutting operations can smear the lead globules over the surface and these effects can lead to significant lead leaching from brasses of comparatively low lead content
9.
Reuleaux triangle
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A Reuleaux triangle is a shape formed from the intersection of three circular disks, each having its center on the boundary of the other two. It is a curve of constant width, the simplest and best known such curve other than the circle itself, Constant width means that the separation of every two parallel supporting lines is the same, independent of their orientation. Because all its diameters are the same, the Reuleaux triangle is one answer to the question Other than a circle, Reuleaux triangles have also been called spherical triangles, but that term more properly refers to triangles on the curved surface of a sphere. Among constant-width shapes with a width, the Reuleaux triangle has the minimum area. By several numerical measures it is the farthest from being centrally symmetric and it provides the largest constant-width shape avoiding the points of an integer lattice, and is closely related to the shape of the quadrilateral maximizing the ratio of perimeter to diameter. It can perform a rotation within a square while at all times touching all four sides of the square. However, although it covers most of the square in this process, it fails to cover a small fraction of the squares area. Because of this property of rotating within a square, the Reuleaux triangle is sometimes known as the Reuleaux rotor. The Reuleaux triangle is the first of a sequence of Reuleaux polygons, some of these curves have been used as the shapes of coins. Alternatively, the surface of revolution of the Reuleaux triangle also has constant width, the Reuleaux triangle may be constructed either directly from three circles, or by rounding the sides of an equilateral triangle. The three-circle construction may be performed with a compass alone, not even needing a straightedge, by the Mohr–Mascheroni theorem the same is true more generally of any compass-and-straightedge construction, but the construction for the Reuleaux triangle is particularly simple. The first step is to mark two points of the plane, and use the compass to draw a circle centered at one of the marked points. Next, one draws a circle, of the same radius, centered at the other marked point. Finally, one draws a circle, again of the same radius. The central region in the arrangement of three circles will be a Reuleaux triangle. Alternatively, a Reuleaux triangle may be constructed from an equilateral triangle T by drawing three arcs of circles, each centered at one vertex of T and connecting the two vertices. Or, equivalently, it may be constructed as the intersection of three disks centered at the vertices of T, with equal to the side length of T. In any pair of parallel supporting lines, one of the two lines will necessarily touch the triangle at one of its vertices, the other supporting line may touch the triangle at any point on the opposite arc, and their distance equals the radius of this arc
10.
Barclays
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Barclays /ˈbɑːrkliz/ is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London. It is a bank with operations in retail, wholesale and investment banking, as well as wealth management, mortgage lending. It has operations in over 50 countries and territories and has around 48 million customers, Barclays is organised into four core businesses, Personal & Corporate, Barclaycard, Investment Banking and Africa. Barclays traces its origins to a banking business established in the City of London in 1690. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736, in 1896 several banks in London and the English provinces, including Backhouses Bank and Gurneys Bank, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank, in 1967, Barclays deployed the worlds first cash dispenser. Barclays has a listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE100 Index. It has a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. According to a 2011 paper by Vitali et al, Barclays traces its origins back to 1690 when John Freame, a Quaker, and Thomas Gould started trading as goldsmith bankers in Lombard Street, London. The name Barclays became associated with the business in 1736, when James Barclay, in 1728 the bank moved to 54 Lombard Street, identified by the Sign of the Black Spread Eagle, which in subsequent years would become a core part of the banks visual identity. In 1896 several banks in London and the English provinces, notably Backhouses Bank of Darlington and Gurneys Bank of Norwich, united under the banner of Barclays, between 1905 and 1916 Barclays extended its branch network by making acquisitions of small English banks. In 1925 the Colonial Bank, National Bank of South Africa, in 1938 Barclays acquired the first Indian exchange bank, the Central Exchange Bank of India, which had opened in London in 1936 with the sponsorship of Central Bank of India. In May 1958, Barclays was the first UK bank to appoint a female bank manager, hilda Harding managed Barclays Hanover Square branch in London until her retirement in 1970. In 1965, Barclays established a US affiliate, Barclays Bank of California in San Francisco, Barclays launched the first credit card in the UK, Barclaycard, in 1966. On 27 June 1967, Barclays deployed the worlds first cash machine, the British actor Reg Varney was the first person to use the machine. In 1969, a merger with Martins Bank and Lloyds Bank was blocked by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Also that year, the British Linen Bank subsidiary was sold to the Bank of Scotland in exchange for a 25% stake, Barclays DCO changed its name to Barclays Bank International in 1971. In August 1975, following the secondary banking crash, Barclays acquired Mercantile Credit Company, in 1980, Barclays Bank International expanded its business to include commercial credit and took over American Credit Corporation, renaming it Barclays American Corporation
11.
Royal Bank of Canada
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The Royal Bank of Canada is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada. The bank serves over 16 million clients and has 80,000 employees worldwide, the company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto, Ontario. The bank was founded in 1864 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, RBC Bank was the U. S. banking subsidiary with 439 branches across six states in the Southeast, which served more than a million customers. RBC also has 127 branches across seventeen countries in the Caribbean, RBC Capital Markets is RBCs worldwide investment and corporate banking subsidiary, while the investment brokerage firm is known as RBC Dominion Securities. Investment banking services are provided through RBC Bank and the focus is on middle market clients. In 2011, RBC was the largest Canadian company by revenue, and was ranked at #50 in the 2013 Forbes Global 2000 listing. The company has operations in Canada, and 40 other countries and had US$673.2 billion of assets under management in 2014, by 1869 the Merchants Bank was officially incorporated and received its federal charter in the same year. During the 1870s and 1880s the bank expanded into the other Maritime Provinces, when both the Newfoundland Commercial Bank and Union Bank of Newfoundland collapsed on 10 December 1894, the Merchants Bank expanded to Newfoundland in 31 January 1895. As the bank grew executives changed its name to reflect its growth, in 1901, the Merchants Bank of Halifax changed its name to the Royal Bank of Canada. The centre of the Canadian financial industry had moved from Halifax to Montreal, in 1910, RBC merged with the Union Bank of Halifax. In the same year it built a branch in Winnipeg, Manitoba—designed by Carrère and Hastings. To improve its position in Ontario, RBC merged with Traders Bank of Canada in 1912 and in 1917 RBC merged with Quebec Bank, Union Bank of Canada had moved its headquarters to Winnipeg in 1912, and had built a strong presence in the Prairies. In 1935, RBC merged with Crown Saving, s and Loan Co. merged with Industrial Mortgage & Trust Co, RBC installed its first computer in 1961, the first in Canadian banking. In the 1960s, RBC Insurance was created, in 1968, it merged with Ontario Loan and Debenture Company. In 1993, RBC merged with Royal Trust, in 1998, RBC acquired Security First Network Bank in Atlanta—the first pure Internet bank. In 2000, RBC merged merchant credit/debit card acquiring business with BMO Bank of Montreals to form Moneris Solutions, in 2013, RBC completed the acquisition of the Canadian subsidiary of Ally Financial. RBC Insurance is the largest Canadian bank-owned insurance organization, with services to five million people. It provides life, health, travel, home and auto and reinsurance products as well as creditor,1882 - Merchants Bank of Halifax opened an office in Bermuda
12.
George VI
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George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death. He was the last Emperor of India and the first Head of the Commonwealth, known as Albert until his accession, George VI was born in the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria, and was named after his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort. As the second son of King George V, he was not expected to inherit the throne and spent his life in the shadow of his elder brother. He attended naval college as a teenager, and served in the Royal Navy, in 1920, he was made Duke of York. He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923 and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, in the mid-1920s, he had speech therapy for a stammer, which he never fully overcame. Georges elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII upon the death of their father in 1936, however, later that year Edward revealed his desire to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin advised Edward that for political and religious reasons he could not marry a divorced woman, Edward abdicated in order to marry, and George ascended the throne as the third monarch of the House of Windsor. During Georges reign, the break-up of the British Empire and its transition into the Commonwealth of Nations accelerated, the parliament of the Irish Free State removed direct mention of the monarch from the countrys constitution on the day of his accession. The following year, a new Irish constitution changed the name of the state to Ireland, from 1939, the Empire and Commonwealth – except Ireland – was at war with Nazi Germany. War with Italy and Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively, though Britain and its allies were ultimately victorious in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union rose as pre-eminent world powers and the British Empire declined. After the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, George remained king of countries, but relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948. Ireland formally declared itself a republic and left the Commonwealth in 1949, George adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth. He was beset by problems in the later years of his reign. He was succeeded by his eldest daughter, Elizabeth II, George was born at York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. His father was Prince George, Duke of York, the second and eldest-surviving son of the Prince and his mother was the Duchess of York, the eldest child and only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck. His birthday was the 34th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather, Albert, uncertain of how the Prince Consorts widow, Queen Victoria, would take the news of the birth, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Duke of York that the Queen had been rather distressed. Two days later, he again, I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name Albert to her. Consequently, he was baptised Albert Frederick Arthur George at St. Mary Magdalenes Church near Sandringham three months later, within the family, he was known informally as Bertie
Barbados