Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. Ruby uses garbage collection, it supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, functional programming. According to the creator, Ruby was influenced by Perl, Eiffel, Ada and Lisp. Matsumoto has said that Ruby was conceived in 1993. In a 1999 post to the ruby-talk mailing list, he describes some of his early ideas about the language: I was talking with my colleague about the possibility of an object-oriented scripting language. I knew Perl, but I didn't like it because it had the smell of a toy language; the object-oriented language seemed promising. I knew Python then, but I didn't like it, because I didn't think it was a true object-oriented language – OO features appeared to be add-on to the language. As a language maniac and OO fan for 15 years, I wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use scripting language. I couldn't find one.

So I decided to make it. Matsumoto describes the design of Ruby as being like a simple Lisp language at its core, with an object system like that of Smalltalk, blocks inspired by higher-order functions, practical utility like that of Perl; the name "Ruby" originated during an online chat session between Matsumoto and Keiju Ishitsuka on February 24, 1993, before any code had been written for the language. Two names were proposed: "Coral" and "Ruby". Matsumoto chose the latter in a e-mail to Ishitsuka. Matsumoto noted a factor in choosing the name "Ruby" – it was the birthstone of one of his colleagues; the first public release of Ruby 0.95 was announced on Japanese domestic newsgroups on December 21, 1995. Subsequently, three more versions of Ruby were released in two days; the release coincided with the launch of the Japanese-language ruby-list mailing list, the first mailing list for the new language. Present at this stage of development were many of the features familiar in releases of Ruby, including object-oriented design, classes with inheritance, iterators, exception handling and garbage collection.

Following the release of Ruby 0.95 in 1995, several stable versions of Ruby were released in the following years: Ruby 1.0: December 25, 1996 Ruby 1.2: December 1998 Ruby 1.4: August 1999 Ruby 1.6: September 2000In 1997, the first article about Ruby was published on the Web. In the same year, Matsumoto was hired by netlab.jp to work on Ruby as a full-time developer. In 1998, the Ruby Application Archive was launched by Matsumoto, along with a simple English-language homepage for Ruby. In 1999, the first English language mailing list ruby-talk began, which signaled a growing interest in the language outside Japan. In this same year and Keiju Ishitsuka wrote the first book on Ruby, The Object-oriented Scripting Language Ruby, published in Japan in October 1999, it would be followed in the early 2000s by around 20 books on Ruby published in Japanese. By 2000, Ruby was more popular than Python in Japan. In September 2000, the first English language book Programming Ruby was printed, freely released to the public, further widening the adoption of Ruby amongst English speakers.

In early 2002, the English-language ruby-talk mailing list was receiving more messages than the Japanese-language ruby-list, demonstrating Ruby's increasing popularity in the non-Japanese speaking world. Ruby 1.8 was released August 2003, was stable for a long time, was retired June 2013. Although deprecated, there is still code based on it. Ruby 1.8 is only compatible with Ruby 1.9. Ruby 1.8 has been the subject of several industry standards. The language specifications for Ruby were developed by the Open Standards Promotion Center of the Information-Technology Promotion Agency for submission to the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee and to the International Organization for Standardization, it was accepted as a Japanese Industrial Standard in 2011 and an international standard in 2012. Around 2005, interest in the Ruby language surged in tandem with Ruby on Rails, a web framework written in Ruby. Rails is credited with increasing awareness of Ruby. Ruby 1.9 was released on Christmas Day in 2007.

Effective with Ruby 1.9.3, released October 31, 2011, Ruby switched from being dual-licensed under the Ruby License and the GPL to being dual-licensed under the Ruby License and the two-clause BSD license. Adoption of 1.9 was slowed by changes from 1.8 that required many popular third party gems to be rewritten. Ruby 1.9 introduces many significant changes over the 1.8 series. Examples: block local variables an additional lambda syntax: f = -> an additional Hash literal syntax using colons for symbol keys: == per-string character encodings are supported new socket API require_relative import securityRuby 1.9 has been obsolete since February 23, 2015, it will no longer receive bug and security fixes. Users are advised to upgrade to a more recent version. Ruby 2.0 added several new features, including: method keyword arguments, a new method, Module#prepend, for extending a class, a new literal for creating an array of symbols, new API for the lazy evaluation of Enumerables, a new convention of using #to_h to convert objects to Hashes.

Ruby 2.0 is intended to be backward compatible with Ruby 1.9.3. As of the official 2.0.0 release on February 24, 2013, there were only five known incompa

HMS Pembroke was a 60-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched at Deptford on 22 November 1694. Pembroke was captured by French warships in the Mediterranean in 1709, recaptured in 1711, sold to Spain in Genoa in 1713 and renamed Lanfranco, she saw action in the Siege of Barcelona under D. Andrés del Pez and participated in the expeditions to Genoa in 1714, to Majorca in 1715, to South America in 1716. In 1718 she captured two French privateer frigates off Montevideo, she sank shortly after in Buenos Aires. Since the 1960s, the bell from Pembroke has served as a church bell at St. Bride's Anglican church in the town of Otorohanga, New Zealand, it was given to the church on its construction by a local family, the Westmacotts, it was used for every service. The bell, which weighs 150 kg, was reported stolen from the church in the week beginning 13 June 2011; the bell's clapper, removed between uses is still in the church's possession. The bell was returned. List of ships captured in the 18th century

The Hearth and Eagle is a historical novel by Anya Seton. Set in the old New England fishing village of Marblehead, the story centers on strong-willed, passionate Hesper Honeywood and her search for love and fulfillment at a time when women had few options and the stormy Atlantic claimed the lives of poor fishermen. Seton started researching her ancestors in the mid-1940s, which led her to Marblehead and the setting for her fourth novel. For generations, Hesper Honeywood's family have run the Hearth and Eagle, the finest inn in Marblehead. Hesper grows up listening to stories about the patient and religious women in her family's past. All of them put their husband's dreams ahead of their own. Outwardly Hesper copies the stoic, pious demeanor of her grim and unloving mother, but the excitable, red-haired Hesper secretly dreams of a life of passion and romance; as she enters adolescence, Hesper idolizes Johnny Peach, a neighbor boy, cheerful, good-natured, protective of the oddly excitable red-head.

Hesper is teased by the other children, Johnny is the one person in Marblehead she genuinely likes and trusts. She is crushed when he is killed at sea in the Civil War. Not long after the war is over, Hesper, by now a beautiful and voluptuous young woman, is spotted walking on the beach by artist Evan Redlake, sketching among the dunes. Evan is an avant-garde painter from a prominent family, his fiercely passionate nature and reckless ways captivate Hesper; the two of them marry and move to New York City, where they move in a set of early Bohemians, including the painters Homer Martin and John La Farge. Evan neglects Hesper for his painting, after she has a miscarriage, their relationship breaks down for good. Evan leaves for Europe and Hesper returns to Marblehead, assisted in her journey by Amos Porterman, a wealthy factory owner who has just relocated his business to Marblehead. Although cool to the idea of marriage for quite some time, Hesper obtains a divorce from Evan and marries the stolid Amos.

While the marriage is not a passionate one, Amos is utterly besotted with his statuesque, flame-haired wife. He spends on Hesper's every whim, buying her the latest clothes and sending her to the most fashionable spas and resorts. Hesper soon becomes a lady of leisure who enjoys a life of luxurious comfort, though she has moments of dissatisfaction and her hard-bitten mother says bluntly that Honeywood women are built for work, not for pleasure; the years of lazy contentment end abruptly with a terrible fire in the village of Marblehead. Amos' factory is utterly destroyed and he is ruined. Overnight he goes from being the richest man in town to a mere shadow of his former self. Destitute, he can not adjust to his new role. Hesper, has taken over management of the Hearth and Eagle from her aging mother; the inn soon becomes more successful than and Hesper emerges as the main breadwinner of her family. Despairing and utterly crushed, Amos soon dies, leaving Hesper to raise her children alone and to become the wise head of the family.

At the end of her long life, she reflects that while men draw strength from money or power or acts of heroism, a woman's strength always comes from within