1.
Walt Disney
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Walter Elias Walt Disney was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor and film producer. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons, as a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors, several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing and he took art classes as a boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to California in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio with his brother Roy, with Ub Iwerks, Walt developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success, he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio grew, Disney became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound, full-color three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons, the results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi, furthered the development of animated film. New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including the critically successful Cinderella and Mary Poppins, in the 1950s, Disney expanded into the amusement park industry, and in 1955 he opened Disneyland. In 1965, he began development of theme park, Disney World, the heart of which was to be a new type of city. Disney was a smoker throughout his life, and died of lung cancer in December 1966 before either the park or the EPCOT project were completed. Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private and he had high standards and high expectations of those with whom he worked. Although there have been accusations that he was racist or anti-semitic and his reputation changed in the years after his death, from a purveyor of homely patriotic values to a representative of American imperialism. Nevertheless, Disney is considered an icon, particularly in the United States. Walt Disney was born on December 5,1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue and he was the fourth son of Elias Disney—born in the Province of Canada, to Irish parents—and Flora, an American of German and English descent. Aside from Disney, Elias and Calls sons were Herbert, Raymond and Roy, in 1906, when Disney was four, the family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, where his uncle Robert had just purchased land. In Marceline, Disney developed his interest in drawing when he was paid to draw the horse of a neighborhood doctor. Elias was a subscriber to the Appeal to Reason newspaper, Disney also began to develop an ability to work with watercolors and crayons. He lived near the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway line and he and his younger sister Ruth started school at the same time at the Park School in Marceline in late 1909. In 1911, the Disneys moved to Kansas City, Missouri, before long, he was spending more time at the Pfeiffers house than at home
2.
Walt Disney Animation Studios
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Founded on October 16,1923, it is a division of The Walt Disney Studios. The studio has produced 56 feature films, from Snow White and it was founded as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923 and incorporated as Walt Disney Productions in 1929. The studio was dedicated to producing short films until it expanded into feature production in 1934. In 1983, Walt Disney Productions named its film studio Walt Disney Pictures. In 2006, Walt Disney Feature Animation took on its current name, the studio also pioneered the art of storyboarding, which is now a standard technique used in both animated and live-action filmmaking. Walt Disney Animation Studios continues to produce films using both traditional animation and computer-generated imagery, at the present, Andrew Millstein is the general manager of the studio for day-to-day business affairs, under the direction of Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter who also oversee Pixar. Kansas City, Missouri, natives Walt Disney and Roy O, in February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. Disney refused, and as Universal owned the rights to Oswald rather than Disney, most of Disneys staff was hired away by Mintz to move over, once Disneys Oswald contract was done in mid-1928. The first two Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, were previewed in limited engagements during the summer of 1928, the Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons, distributed by Powers through Celebrity Productions, quickly became the most popular cartoon series in the United States. A second Disney series of cartoons, the Silly Symphonies. Powers in return signed away Ub Iwerks, who began producing cartoons at his own studio, columbia distributed Disneys shorts for two years before the Disney studio entered a new distribution deal with United Artists in 1932. The result was the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees, the first film released in full Technicolor. Flowers and Trees was a success, and all Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. In 1934, Walt Disney gathered several key members and announced his plans to make his first feature animated film. In the course of teaching the classes, Graham and the created or formalized many of the techniques and processes that became the key tenets. During the production of Snow White, work had continued on the Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935, by which time the series had added several major supporting characters, among them Mickeys dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy. Donald, Goofy, and Pluto would all be appearing in series of their own by 1940, the Silly Symphonies, which garnered seven Academy Awards, ended in 1939. The success of Snow White allowed Disney to build a new, larger studio on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, Walt Disney Productions had its initial public offering on April 2,1940, with Walt Disney as president and chairman and Roy Disney as CEO
3.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
4.
Xerox
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Xerox Corporation /ˈzɪərɒks/ is an American global corporation that sells document solutions and services, and document technology products in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, though its largest population of employees is based around Rochester, New York, the company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. As a large developed company, it is placed in the list of Fortune 500 companies. Xerox completed the separation of Conduent Incorporated effective on Dec.31,2016, creating two market-leading, publicly- traded companies. In connection with the spin-off, Xerox received a transfer from Conduent of $1.8 billion. Xerox continues to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “XRX”, researchers at Xerox and its Palo Alto Research Center invented several important elements of personal computing, such as the desktop metaphor GUI, the computer mouse and desktop computing. These concepts were frowned upon by the board of directors. The concepts were adopted by Apple and, later, Microsoft, with the help of these innovations, Apple and Microsoft came to dominate the personal computing revolution of the 1980s, whereas Xerox was not a major player. Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester as The Haloid Photographic Company, in 1938 Chester Carlson, a physicist working independently, invented a process for printing images using an electrically charged photoconductor-coated metal plate and dry powder toner. However, it would more than 20 years of refinement before the first automated machine to make copies was commercialized, using a document feeder, scanning light. Wilson, credited as the founder of Xerox, took over Haloid from his father and he saw the promise of Carlsons invention and, in 1946, signed an agreement to develop it as a commercial product. Wilson remained as President/CEO of Xerox until 1967 and served as Chairman until his death in 1971, looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid coined the term Xerography from two Greek roots meaning dry writing. Haloid subsequently changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958 and then Xerox Corporation in 1961, before releasing the 914, Xerox tested the market by introducing a developed version of the prototype hand-operated equipment known as the Flat-plate 1385. The 1385 was not actually a viable copier because of its speed of operation and it was little more than a high quality, commercially available plate camera mounted as a horizontal rostrum camera, complete with photo-flood lighting and timer. The glass film/plate had been replaced with an aluminum plate. Clever electrics turned this into a developing and reusable substitute for film. A skilled user could produce fast, paper and metal printing plates of a higher quality than almost any other method, having started as a supplier to the offset lithography duplicating industry, Xerox now set its sights on capturing some of offsets market share. The 1385 was followed by the first automatic xerographic printer, the Copyflo, the Copyflo was a large microfilm printer which could produce positive prints on roll paper from any type of microfilm negative
5.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
6.
Serbo-Croatian
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It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties. South Slavic dialects historically formed a continuum, the turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread in the western Balkans, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, from the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The breakup of Yugoslavia affected language attitudes, so that social conceptions of the language separated on ethnic, since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify a separate Montenegrin standard. Serbo-Croatian thus generally goes by the ethnic names Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a simple phonology, with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in Serbian Cyrillic or Gajs Latin alphabet, whose thirty letters mutually map one-to-one, throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called Illyric, Slavic, at that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires. Officially, the language was called variously Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian, today, use of the term Serbo-Croatian is controversial due to the prejudice that nation and language must match. Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy and this language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the middle of the 19th century, the earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the Glagolita Clozianus and the Vienna Folia from the 11th century. Serbo-Croatian competed with the established literary languages of Latin and Old Slavonic in the west and Persian. Old Slavonic developed into the Serbo-Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries, the Baška tablet from the late 11th century was written in Glagolitic. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy
7.
Indian elephant
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The Indian elephant is one of three recognized subspecies of the Asian elephant and native to mainland Asia. Since 1986, Elephas maximus has been listed as Endangered by IUCN as the population has declined by at least 50% over the last 60 to 75 years or three generations, Asian elephants are threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. In general, Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants and have the highest body point on the head, the tip of their trunk has one finger-like process. Their back is convex or level, Indian elephants reach a shoulder height of between 2 and 3.5 m, weigh between 2,000 and 5,000 kg, and have 19 pairs of ribs. Their skin color is lighter than of maximus with smaller patches of depigmentation, females are usually smaller than males, and have short or no tusks. The largest Indian elephant was 3.43 metres high at the shoulder, in 1985, two large elephant bulls were spotted for the first time in Bardia National Park, and named Raja Gaj and Kanchha. They roamed the area together and made occasional visits to the females. Raja Gaj stood 11.3 ft tall at the shoulder and had a body weight. His appearance has been compared to that of a due to his high bi-domed shaped head. His forehead and domes were more prominent than in other Asian bull elephants, Indian elephants have smaller ears, but relatively broader skulls and larger trunks than African elephants. Unlike their African cousins, their abdomen is proportionate with their body weight, Indian elephants are native to mainland Asia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Malay Peninsular, Laos, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. They are regionally extinct from Pakistan and they inhabit grasslands, dry deciduous, moist deciduous, evergreen and semi-evergreen forests. Elephants are classified as megaherbivores and consume up to 150 kg of plant matter per day and they are generalist feeders, and both grazers and browsers. They graze on the grasses, but the portion consumed varies with season. When the new flush appears in April, they remove the tender blades in small clumps, later, when grasses are higher than 0.5 m, they uproot entire clumps, dust them skilfully and consume the fresh leave tops, but discard the roots. When grasses are mature in autumn, they clean and consume the succulent basal portions with the roots, from the bamboos, they eat seedlings, culms and lateral shoots. They feed on the bark of white thorn and other flowering plants, in Nepals Bardia National Park, elephants consume large amounts of the floodplain grass, particularly during the monsoon season. They browse more in the dry season with bark constituting a part of their diet in the cool part of that season
8.
Tiger
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The tiger is the largest cat species, most recognisable for their pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside. The species is classified in the genus Panthera with the lion, leopard, jaguar, Tigers are apex predators, primarily preying on ungulates such as deer and bovids. They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, often requiring large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey requirements and this, coupled with the fact that they are indigenous to some of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans. Tigers once ranged widely across eastern Eurasia, from the Black Sea in the west, to the Indian Ocean in the south, today, they range from the Siberian taiga to open grasslands and tropical mangrove swamps. The remaining six tiger subspecies have been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a 2016 global census estimated the population of wild tigers at approximately 3,890 individuals. Major reasons for decline include habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation. The extent of area occupied by tigers is estimated at less than 1,184,911 km2, in 2016, wildlife conservation group at WWF declared that worlds count of wild tigers has risen for the first time in a century. Tigers are among the most recognisable and popular of the charismatic megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films and they appear on many flags, coats of arms, and as mascots for sporting teams. The tiger is the animal of Bangladesh, India, Malaysia. In 1758, Linnaeus described the tiger in his work Systema Naturae, in 1929, the British taxonomist Reginald Innes Pocock subordinated the species under the genus Panthera using the scientific name Panthera tigris. The derivation from Greek pan- and ther may be folk etymology, the specific epithet, tigris, as well as the common name, tiger, come from the Middle English tigre and the Old English tigras, both used for the animal. These derive from the Old French tigre, itself a derivative of the Latin word tigris and the Greek word tigris. The original source may have been the Persian tigra meaning pointed or sharp, the tigers closest living relatives were previously thought to be the lion, leopard and jaguar, all of which are classified under the genus Panthera. The oldest remains of an extinct relative, called Panthera zdanskyi or the Longdan tiger, have been found in the Gansu province of northwestern China. This species is considered to be a taxon to the extant tiger and lived about 2 million years ago. It was smaller than the tiger, being the size of a jaguar. Despite being considered more primitive, the Longdan tiger was functionally and possibly ecologically similar to its modern cousin, as Panthera zdanskyi lived in northwestern China, that may have been where the tiger lineage originated
9.
Crocodile
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Crocodiles or true crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodylinae, all of whose members are considered true crocodiles, is classified as a biological subfamily, a broader sense of the term crocodile, Crocodylidae that includes Tomistoma, is not used in this article. The term crocodile here applies only to the species within the subfamily of Crocodylinae, although they appear to be similar to the untrained eye, crocodiles, alligators and the gharial belong to separate biological families. The gharial having a narrow snout is easier to distinguish, while morphological differences are more difficult to spot in crocodiles and alligators. The most obvious differences are visible in the head with crocodiles having narrower and longer heads, with a more V-shaped than a U-shaped snout compared to alligators. Also, when the mouth is closed, the large fourth tooth in the lower jaw fits into a constriction in the upper jaw. For hard-to-distinguish specimens, the tooth is the most reliable feature to define the family that the species belongs to. Crocodiles have more webbing on the toes of the feet and can better tolerate saltwater due to specialized salt glands for filtering out salt. Another trait that separates crocodiles from other crocodilians is their higher levels of aggression. Crocodile size, morphology, behaviour and ecology somewhat differs between species, however, they have many similarities in these areas as well. All crocodiles are semiaquatic and tend to congregate in freshwater such as rivers, lakes, wetlands. They are carnivorous animals, feeding mostly on such as fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. All crocodiles are tropical species that, unlike alligators, are sensitive to cold. They separated from other crocodilians during the Eocene epoch, about 55 million years ago, many species are at the risk of extinction, some being classified as critically endangered. The word crocodile comes from the Ancient Greek κροκόδιλος, lizard, used in the phrase ho krokódilos tou potamoú, there are several variant Greek forms of the word attested, including the later form κροκόδειλος found cited in many English reference works. In the Koine Greek of Roman times, crocodilos and crocodeilos would have been pronounced identically, crocodilos or crocodeilos is a compound of krokè, and drilos/dreilos, although drilos is only attested as a colloquial term for penis. It is ascribed to Herodotus, and supposedly describes the habits of the Egyptian crocodile. The form crocodrillus is attested in Medieval Latin and it is not clear whether this is a medieval corruption or derives from alternative Greco-Latin forms
10.
Jungle
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A jungle is land covered with dense vegetation dominated by trees. Application of the term has varied greatly during the last several centuries, jungles in Western literature can represent a less civilised or unruly space outside the control of civilization, attributed to the jungles association in colonial discourse in the British Raj. Therefore, the nearest equivalent scientific term is probably monsoon and seasonal tropical forest, the word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala, meaning uncultivated land. One of the most common meanings of jungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by humans, requiring that travelers cut their way through. Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, tropical forests in areas where the forest has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, the successional vegetation that springs up following such disturbance of rainforest is dense and impenetrable and is a ‘typical’ jungle. Jungle also typically forms along forest margins and along stream banks, Tropical seasonal forests and mangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. As a result, it was assumed that the entire forest was impenetrable jungle. This in turn appears to have given rise to the popular usage of jungle as virtually any humid tropical forest. The word Tropical forest has largely replaced Jungle as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, rainforest, a specific type of tropical forest that does not occur in the Indian sub-continent, itself did not appear in English dictionaries before the 1970s. As a metaphor, jungle often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless and this reflects the view of city people that forests are such places. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak compared Israel to a villa in the jungle - a comparison which had been quoted in Israeli political debates. Baraks critics on the side of Israeli politics strongly criticised the comparison
11.
Snail
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Snail is a common name that is applied most often to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word snail is used in this most general sense, it not just land snails but also thousands of species of sea snails. Occasionally a few other molluscs that are not actually gastropods, such as the Monoplacophora, snail-like animals that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell are often called semi-slugs. Even a few species have lungs. Snails can be found in a wide range of environments, including ditches, deserts. Although land snails may be familiar to laymen, marine snails constitute the majority of snail species, and have much greater diversity. Numerous kinds of snail can also be found in fresh water, most snails have thousands of microscopic tooth-like structures located on a banded ribbon-like tongue called a radula. The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces, many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores. Several species of the genus Achatina and related genera are known as giant African land snails, some grow to 15 in from snout to tail, and weigh 1 kg. The largest living species of sea snail is Syrinx aruanus, its shell can measure up to 90 cm in length, and the whole animal with the shell can weigh up to 18 kg. The snail Lymnaea makes decisions by using two types of neuron, one deciding whether the snail is hungry, and the other deciding whether there is food in the vicinity. Named Gee Geronimo, this snail was owned by Christopher Hudson of Hove, East Sussex, UK, gastropods that lack a conspicuous shell are commonly called slugs rather than snails. Some species of slug have a red shell, some have only a vestige that serves mainly as a calcium repository. Other than that there is little difference between slugs and snails. There are however important differences in habitats and behavior, slugs squeeze themselves into confined spaces such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground. In such retreats they are in danger from either predators or desiccation. Slugs as a group are far from monophyletic, biologically speaking slug is a term of convenience with little taxonomic significance, the reduction or loss of the shell has evolved many times independently within several very different lineages of gastropods
12.
Tug of war
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The Oxford English Dictionary says that the phrase tug of war originally meant the decisive contest, the real struggle or tussle, a severe contest for supremacy. Only in the 19th century was it used as a term for an athletic contest between two teams who haul at the ends of a rope. During the Tang dynasty, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang promoted large-scale tug of war games, using ropes of up to 167 metres with shorter ropes attached, each side also had its own team of drummers to encourage the participants. In ancient Greece the sport was called helkustinda, efelkustinda and dielkustinda, helkustinda and efelkustinda seem to have been ordinary versions of tug of war, while dielkustinda had no rope, according to Julius Pollux. It is possible that the teams held hands when pulling, which would have increased difficulty, Tug of war games in ancient Greece were among the most popular games used for strength and would help build strength needed for battle in full armor. Archeological evidence shows that tug of war was popular in India in the 12th century, There is no specific time. The contest of pulling on the rope originates from ancient ceremonies, evidence is found in countries like Egypt, India, Myanmar, New Guinea. The origin of the game in India has strong archaeological roots going back at least to the 12th century AD in the area what is today the State of Orissa on the east coast. The famous Sun Temple of Konark has a relief on the west wing of the structure clearly showing the game of Tug of War in progress. The Mohave people occasionally used tug-of-war matches as means of settling disputes, There are tug of war clubs in many countries, and both men and women participate. The sport was part of the Olympic Games from 1900 until 1920, the sport is part of the World Games. The Tug of War International Federation, organises World Championships for nation teams biannually, in England the sport is catered for by the Tug of War Association, and the Tug of War Federation of Great Britain. In Scotland, the Scottish Tug of War Association was formed in 1980, the sport also features in Highland Games there. Between 1976 and 1988 Tug of War was an event during the television series Battle of the Network Stars. Teams of celebrities representing each major network competed in different sporting events culminating into the final event, lou Ferrignos epic tug-o-war performance in May 1979 is considered the greatest feat in Battle history. The sport is played almost in every country in the world, however, a small selection of countries have set up a national body to govern the sport. Most of these bodies are associated then with the International governing body call TWIF which stands for The Tug of War International Federation. As of 2008 there are 53 countries associated with TWIF, among which are Scotland, Ireland, England, India, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, in the Basque Country, this sport is considered a popular rural sport, with many associations and clubs
