1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
General knowledge
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General knowledge has been defined in differential psychology as culturally valued knowledge communicated by a range of non-specialist media and encompassing a wide subject range. This definition excludes highly specialized learning that can only be obtained with extensive training, general knowledge is an important component of crystallized intelligence and is strongly associated with general intelligence, and with openness to experience. Studies have found people who are highly knowledgeable in a particular domain tend to be knowledgeable in many. General knowledge is thought to be supported by long-term semantic memory ability, a number of studies have found that males tend to have greater general knowledge than females, perhaps due to gender differences in interests rather than memory ability. Recent studies have found that knowledge is associated with exam performance in schoolchildren. Differential psychology researchers define general knowledge as culturally valued knowledge communicated by a range of non-specialist media, the scope of this definition includes all areas of knowledge available to laypersons without requiring extensive training. The definition excludes ephemera, or information confined to a single medium, Researchers have identified 20 domains of knowledge that meet the above criteria, Researchers have acknowledged that other domains of general knowledge may exist. Factor analysis suggested that the 20 domains could be categorised into six factors, current affairs, fashion, family, physical health and recreation, arts, all six of these factors were highly intercorrelated and were all related to a single higher-order general knowledge factor. High scorers on tests of general knowledge tend to score highly on intelligence tests. IQ has been found to predict general knowledge scores even after accounting for differences in age, sex. In the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory of intelligence, general knowledge is considered a component of crystallized intelligence, standardized IQ tests may therefore include measures of general knowledge, such as in the information subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. General knowledge is also associated with verbal ability, though only weakly or not at all with numerical and spatial ability. As with crystallized intelligence, general knowledge has been found to increase with age, due to the positive intercorrelations between knowledge domains, individual differences in general knowledge may reflect differences in ability to retrieve information from long-term semantic memory. A general factor of long-term semantic memory could be explained by the existence of an underlying neurophysiological process responsible for retaining information in long-term memory, individual differences in the efficiency of such processes might explain why all domains of semantic memory appear to be intercorrelated. People high in general tend to be highly open to new experiences. The relationship between openness to experience and general knowledge remains robust even when IQ is taken into account, people high in openness may be more motivated to engage in intellectual pursuits that increase their knowledge. Relationships between general knowledge and other five factor model traits tend to be weak and inconsistent, though one study found that extraversion and neuroticism were negatively correlated with general knowledge, others found that they were unrelated. Inconsistent results have also found for conscientiousness
3.
Scott Fetzer Company
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The Kirby Company is a manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and home cleaning accessories, based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is a division of The Scott Fetzer Company which in turn is part of Berkshire Hathaway, dealers are located in over 50 countries throughout the world. Kirbys products are sold via in-home door-to-door demonstrations. The Kirby Company is a member of the Direct Selling Association, the first Kirby vacuums were designed by James B. Kirby for George Scott and Carl Fetzer after World War I, although the Kirby name was not used on a vacuum cleaner until the 1930s. James Kirby invented the vacuette circa 1920, the Vacuette Electric, introduced in 1925 with its removable floor nozzle and handle, became the forerunner of todays multi-attachment Kirby vacuum models. In 1935, the introduced the Kirby Model C, the first product to carry Jim Kirbys name. From 1935 through the 1960s, continuous improvements and refinements were made to the Kirby home care system, the last model of this first generation, the Dual Sanitronic 80, was produced in 1967 and still resembled the original. In 1970, input from Kirby distributors, dealers, management, the model was an instant success, with soaring sales, forcing the company to expand its manufacturing facilities outside of Cleveland for the first time. In 1972, Kirby West began operations in Andrews, Texas, the facility doubled the companys manufacturing capabilities. Berkshire Hathaway bought Kirby parent Scott Fetzer in 1986 for $315 million, two years prior, Ivan Boesky had offered to buy Scott Fetzer for $60 a share, or $420 million. Warren Buffett has singled out Scott Fetzer to Berkshires shareholders as the prototype for the kind of company —, according to Berkshire managers, absolutely no changes were made to the existing Scott Fetzer business or management, and the entire business was preserved. Beginning in the 1990s, the Generation series, starting with the Generation 3, the addition of TechDrive variable power assist eliminated 90% of the effort required to move the unit back and forth. As of 2003, Kirby is the largest source of revenue and profit for Scott Fetzer, with approximately 500,000 sales per year, in 2003, Scott Fetzer sold the vacuums to about 835 factory distributors, who in turn sell the vacuums door-to-door. The Kirby Company generally produces one model at a time. Kirbys vacuums made until 1919 were made by Frantz Premier and those made from 1919 to 1934 are branded and made by The Scott & Fetzer Company. After 1934 all machines have made by Scott & Fetzer. The current model, the Avalir, is a system that converts into several different units and is sold by Kirbys independent distributors, the Avalir can be converted and used as a canister vacuum, hand portable vacuum, air pump, floor polisher, and more. It can also be converted into a system for carpets
4.
Berkshire Hathaway
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The company wholly owns GEICO, BNSF Railway, Lubrizol, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, FlightSafety International, Pampered Chef, and NetJets, and also owns 43. Berkshire Hathaway averaged a growth in book value of 19. 7% to its shareholders for the last 49 years, while employing large amounts of capital. In the early part of Buffetts career at Berkshire, he focused on investments in publicly traded companies. According to the Forbes Global 2000 list and formula, Berkshire Hathaway is the fourth largest public company in the world, Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to a textile manufacturing company established by Oliver Chace in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the founder of the first successful textile mill in America, Chace founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929 the Valley Falls Company merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company established in 1889, in Adams, the combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. Hathaway had been successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression, after the merger Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, in 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway after noticing a pattern in the price direction of its stock whenever the company closed a mill. Eventually, Buffett acknowledged that the business was waning and the companys financial situation was not going to improve. In 1964, Stanton made a tender offer of $11 1⁄2 per share for the company to buy back Buffetts shares. A few weeks later, Warren Buffett received the offer in writing. Buffett later admitted that this lower, undercutting offer made him angry, instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett decided to buy more of the stock to take control of the company and fire Stanton. However, this put Buffett in a situation where he was now majority owner of a business that was failing. Buffett initially maintained Berkshires core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry, Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company, in 1985, the last textile operations were shut down. Buffett claimed that had he invested that money directly in insurance businesses instead of buying out Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshires class A shares sold for $258,000
5.
Dewey Decimal Classification
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The Dewey Decimal Classification, or Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. It has been revised and expanded through 23 major editions, the latest issued in 2011 and it is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. It is currently maintained by the Online Computer Library Center, a cooperative that serves libraries. OCLC licenses access to a version for catalogers called WebDewey. The Decimal Classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index which allow new books to be added to a library in their location based on subject. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic, the classifications notation makes use of three-digit Arabic numerals for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Using Arabic numerals for symbols, it is flexible to the degree that numbers can be expanded in linear fashion to cover aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries, the major competing classification system to the Dewey Decimal system is the Library of Congress Classification system created by the U. S. Melvil Dewey was an American librarian and self-declared reformer and he was a founding member of the American Library Association and can be credited with the promotion of card systems in libraries and business. He developed the ideas for his classification system in 1873 while working at Amherst College library. He applied the classification to the books in library, until in 1876 he had a first version of the classification. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and he used the pamphlet, published in more than one version during the year, to solicit comments from other librarians. It is not known who received copies or how many commented as only one copy with comments has survived, in March 1876, he applied for, and received copyright on the first edition of the index. The edition was 44 pages in length, with 2,000 index entries, comprised 314 pages, with 10,000 index entries. Editions 3–14, published between 1888 and 1942, used a variant of this same title, Dewey modified and expanded his system considerably for the second edition. In an introduction to that edition Dewey states that nearly 100 persons hav contributed criticisms, one of the innovations of the Dewey Decimal system was that of positioning books on the shelves in relation to other books on similar topics
6.
Library of Congress Classification
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The Library of Congress Classification is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress. It is used by most research and academic libraries in the U. S. the Classification is also distinct from Library of Congress Subject Headings, the system of labels such as Boarding schools and Boarding schools—Fiction that describe contents systematically. The classification was invented by Herbert Putnam in 1897, just before he assumed the librarianship of Congress, with advice from Charles Ammi Cutter, it was influenced by his Cutter Expansive Classification, the Dewey Decimal System, and the Putnam Classification System. It was designed specifically for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson, by the time Putnam departed from his post in 1939, all the classes except K and parts of B were well developed. LCC has been criticized for lacking a theoretical basis, many of the classification decisions were driven by the practical needs of that library rather than epistemological considerations. Although it divides subjects into broad categories, it is essentially enumerative in nature and that is, it provides a guide to the books actually in one librarys collections, not a classification of the world. In 2007 the Wall Street Journal reported that in the countries it surveyed most public libraries, the National Library of Medicine classification system uses the initial letters W and QS–QZ, which are not used by LCC. Some libraries use NLM in conjunction with LCC, eschewing LCCs R for Medicine, others use LCCs QP–QR schedules and include Medicine R. Subclass AC – Collections. Collected works Subclass AE – Encyclopedias Subclass AG – Dictionaries and other reference works Subclass AI – Indexes Subclass AM – Museums. Collectors and collecting Subclass AN – Newspapers Subclass AP – Periodicals Subclass AS – Academies, directories Subclass AZ – History of scholarship and learning. The humanities Subclass B – Philosophy Subclass BC – Logic Subclass BD – Speculative philosophy Subclass BF – Psychology Subclass BH – Aesthetics Subclass BJ – Ethics Subclass BL – Religions, rationalism Subclass BM – Judaism Subclass BP – Islam. Seals Subclass CE – Technical Chronology, calendar Subclass CJ – Numismatics Subclass CN – Inscriptions. Former Soviet Republics – Poland Subclass DL – Northern Europe, maps Subclass GA – Mathematical geography. Cartography Subclass GB – Physical geography Subclass GC – Oceanography Subclass GE – Environmental Sciences Subclass GF – Human ecology, anthropogeography Subclass GN – Anthropology Subclass GR – Folklore Subclass GT – Manners and customs Subclass GV – Recreation. Leisure Subclass H – Social sciences Subclass HA – Statistics Subclass HB – Economic theory, demography Subclass HC – Economic history and conditions Subclass HD – Industries. Labor Subclass HE – Transportation and communications Subclass HF – Commerce Subclass HG – Finance Subclass HJ – Public finance Subclass HM – Sociology Subclass HN – Social history, Social reform Subclass HQ – The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality Subclass HS – Societies, secret, benevolent, races Subclass HV – Social pathology. Municipal government Subclass JV – Colonies and colonization, International migration Subclass JX – International law, see JZ and KZ Subclass JZ – International relations Subclass K – Law in general
7.
Encyclopedia
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An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia is a type of reference work or compendium holding a comprehensive summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by article name, Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years, the oldest still in existence, AD77 by Pliny the Elder and was not fully revised at the time of his death in AD79. The modern encyclopedia evolved out of dictionaries around the 17th century, some modern encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, are often electronic and freely available. Together, the phrase literally translates as complete instruction or complete knowledge, one of the oldest vernacular uses was by François Rabelais in his Pantagruel in 1532. Several encyclopedias have names that include the suffix -pedia, e. g. Banglapedia, in British usage, the spellings encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are both current. In American usage, only the former is commonly used, the spelling encyclopædia—with the æ ligature—was frequently used in the 19th century and is increasingly rare, although it is retained in product titles such as Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The Oxford English Dictionary records encyclopædia and encyclopaedia as equal alternatives, websters Third New International Dictionary features encyclopedia as the main headword and encyclopaedia as a minor variant. In addition, cyclopedia and cyclopaedia are now rarely used shortened forms of the word originating in the 17th century, the modern encyclopedia was developed from the dictionary in the 18th century. Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been researched and written by well-educated, well-informed content experts, a dictionary is a linguistic work which primarily focuses on alphabetical listing of words and their definitions. Synonymous words and those related by the matter are to be found scattered around the dictionary. Thus, a dictionary typically provides limited information, analysis or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave the reader lacking in understanding the meaning, significance or limitations of a term, and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge. An encyclopedia is, allegedly, not written in order to convince, an encyclopedia article also often includes many maps and illustrations, as well as bibliography and statistics. General encyclopedias often contain guides on how to do a variety of things, as well as embedded dictionaries and gazetteers. There are also encyclopedias that cover a variety of topics but from a particular cultural, ethnic, or national perspective. Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their domain, such as an encyclopedia of medicine, philosophy. Works vary in the breadth of material and the depth of discussion, some systematic method of organization is essential to making an encyclopedia usable as a work of reference
8.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
9.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
10.
President of the United States
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The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be one of the worlds most powerful political figures, the role includes being the commander-in-chief of the worlds most expensive military with the second largest nuclear arsenal and leading the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP. The office of President holds significant hard and soft power both in the United States and abroad, Constitution vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The president is empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves. The president is responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of the party to which the president is a member. The president also directs the foreign and domestic policy of the United States, since the office of President was established in 1789, its power has grown substantially, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. However, nine vice presidents have assumed the presidency without having elected to the office. The Twenty-second Amendment prohibits anyone from being elected president for a third term, in all,44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. On January 20,2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th, in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution. The new states, though independent of each other as nation states, desiring to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy, Congress negotiated the Articles of Confederation to establish a weak alliance between the states. Out from under any monarchy, the states assigned some formerly royal prerogatives to Congress, only after all the states agreed to a resolution settling competing western land claims did the Articles take effect on March 1,1781, when Maryland became the final state to ratify them. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies, with peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. Prospects for the convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washingtons attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. It was through the negotiations at Philadelphia that the presidency framed in the U. S. The first power the Constitution confers upon the president is the veto, the Presentment Clause requires any bill passed by Congress to be presented to the president before it can become law. Once the legislation has been presented, the president has three options, Sign the legislation, the bill becomes law. Veto the legislation and return it to Congress, expressing any objections, in this instance, the president neither signs nor vetoes the legislation
11.
Braille
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Braille /ˈbreɪl/ is a tactile writing system used by people who are blind or visually impaired. It is traditionally written with embossed paper, braille-users can read computer screens and other electronic supports thanks to refreshable braille displays. They can write braille with the slate and stylus or type it on a braille writer, such as a portable braille note-taker. Braille is named after its creator, Frenchman Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight due to a childhood accident, in 1824, at the age of 15, Braille developed his code for the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837, was the first binary form of writing developed in the modern era, Braille characters are small rectangular blocks called cells that contain tiny palpable bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another, since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes of printed writing systems, the mappings vary from language to language. Braille cells are not the thing to appear in braille text. There may be embossed illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows, bullets that are larger than braille dots, a full Braille cell includes six raised dots arranged in two lateral rows each having three dots. The dot positions are identified by numbers from one through six,64 solutions are possible from using one or more dots. A single cell can be used to represent a letter, number, punctuation mark. In the face of screen-reader software, braille usage has declined, in Barbiers system, sets of 12 embossed dots encoded 36 different sounds. It proved to be too difficult for soldiers to recognize by touch, in 1821 Barbier visited the Royal Institute for the Blind in Paris, where he met Louis Braille. Brailles solution was to use 6-dot cells and to assign a specific pattern to each letter of the alphabet. At first, braille was a transliteration of French orthography, but soon various abbreviations, contractions. The expanded English system, called Grade-2 Braille, was complete by 1905, for blind readers, Braille is an independent writing system, rather than a code of printed orthography. Braille is derived from the Latin alphabet, albeit indirectly, in Brailles original system, the dot patterns were assigned to letters according to their position within the alphabetic order of the French alphabet, with accented letters and w sorted at the end. The first ten letters of the alphabet, a–j, use the upper four dot positions and these stand for the ten digits 1–9 and 0 in a system parallel to Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy
12.
English-speaking world
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Approximately 330 to 360 million people speak English as their first language. More than half of live in the United States, followed by some 55 million in England. English is the third largest language by number of speakers, after Mandarin. Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly, from 470 million to more than 1 billion, david Crystal calculates that non-native speakers as of 2003 outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. When combining native and non-native speakers, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide, there are six large countries with a majority of native English speakers that are sometimes grouped under the term Anglosphere. They are, in descending order of English speakers, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, other substantial communities of native speakers are found in South Africa, and Nigeria. Also there are countries where in a part of the territory English became a language, e. g. Colombias San Andrés y Providencia. This was a result of the influence of British colonization in the area, English is one of the eleven official languages that are given equal status in South Africa. It is also the language in current dependent territories of Australia and of the United States. Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been official status by 32 of the 50 state governments. It is, by treaty, the official language for aeronautical. English is one of the languages of the United Nations and many other international organizations. In 2012, excluding native speakers,38 percent of Europeans consider that they can speak English, in publishing, English literature predominates considerably with 28 percent of all books published in the world and 30 percent of web content in 2011. This increasing use of the English language globally has had a impact on many other languages, leading to language shift and even language death. English itself has more open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole. Variation in Nonnative Varieties of English, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Census 2011, Key Statistics for Northern Ireland December 2012, language in England and Wales,2011. Language Use in the United States,2011, Population by mother tongue and age groups,2011 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories
13.
CD-ROM
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A CD-ROM /ˌsiːˌdiːˈrɒm/ is a pre-pressed optical compact disc which contains data. The name is an acronym which stands for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory, computers can read CD-ROMs, but cannot write to CD-ROMs which are not writable or erasable. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, CD-ROMs were popularly used to distribute software for computers, some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data is only usable on a computer. An early CD-ROM format was developed by Sony and Denon, introduced at a Japanese computer show in 1984 and it was an extension of Compact Disc Digital Audio, and adapted the format to hold any form of digital data, with a capacity of 540 MiB. The Yellow Book is the standard that defines the format of CD-ROMs. One of a set of books that contain the technical specifications for all CD formats. CD-ROMs are identical in appearance to audio CDs, and data are stored and retrieved in a similar manner. Discs are made from a 1.2 mm thick disc of polycarbonate plastic, data is stored on the disc as a series of microscopic indentations. A laser is shone onto the surface of the disc to read the pattern of pits. This pattern of changing intensity of the beam is converted into binary data. Several formats are used for data stored on discs, known as the Rainbow Books. The Yellow Book, published in 1988, defines the specifications for CD-ROMs, the CD-ROM standard builds on top of the original Red Book CD-DA standard for CD audio. Other standards, such as the White Book for Video CDs, the Yellow Book itself is not freely available, but the standards with the corresponding content can be downloaded for free from ISO or ECMA. There are several standards that define how to structure data files on a CD-ROM, ISO9660 defines the standard file system for a CD-ROM. ISO13490 is an improvement on this standard which adds support for non-sequential write-once and re-writeable discs such as CD-R and CD-RW, as well as multiple sessions. The ISO13346 standard was designed to address most of the shortcomings of ISO9660, and a subset of it evolved into the UDF format, which was adopted for DVDs. The bootable CD specification was issued in January 1995, to make a CD emulate a hard disk or floppy disk, is called El Torito, data stored on CD-ROMs follows the standard CD data encoding techniques described in the Red Book specification. This includes cross-interleaved Reed–Solomon coding, eight-to-fourteen modulation, and the use of pits, the structures used to group data on a CD-ROM are also derived from the Red Book
14.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
15.
MacOS
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Within the market of desktop, laptop and home computers, and by web usage, it is the second most widely used desktop OS after Microsoft Windows. Launched in 2001 as Mac OS X, the series is the latest in the family of Macintosh operating systems, Mac OS X succeeded classic Mac OS, which was introduced in 1984, and the final release of which was Mac OS9 in 1999. An initial, early version of the system, Mac OS X Server 1.0, was released in 1999, the first desktop version, Mac OS X10.0, followed in March 2001. In 2012, Apple rebranded Mac OS X to OS X. Releases were code named after big cats from the release up until OS X10.8 Mountain Lion. Beginning in 2013 with OS X10.9 Mavericks, releases have been named after landmarks in California, in 2016, Apple rebranded OS X to macOS, adopting the nomenclature that it uses for their other operating systems, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The latest version of macOS is macOS10.12 Sierra, macOS is based on technologies developed at NeXT between 1985 and 1997, when Apple acquired the company. The X in Mac OS X and OS X is pronounced ten, macOS shares its Unix-based core, named Darwin, and many of its frameworks with iOS, tvOS and watchOS. A heavily modified version of Mac OS X10.4 Tiger was used for the first-generation Apple TV, Apple also used to have a separate line of releases of Mac OS X designed for servers. Beginning with Mac OS X10.7 Lion, the functions were made available as a separate package on the Mac App Store. Releases of Mac OS X from 1999 to 2005 can run only on the PowerPC-based Macs from the time period, Mac OS X10.5 Leopard was released as a Universal binary, meaning the installer disc supported both Intel and PowerPC processors. In 2009, Apple released Mac OS X10.6 Snow Leopard, in 2011, Apple released Mac OS X10.7 Lion, which no longer supported 32-bit Intel processors and also did not include Rosetta. All versions of the system released since then run exclusively on 64-bit Intel CPUs, the heritage of what would become macOS had originated at NeXT, a company founded by Steve Jobs following his departure from Apple in 1985. There, the Unix-like NeXTSTEP operating system was developed, and then launched in 1989 and its graphical user interface was built on top of an object-oriented GUI toolkit using the Objective-C programming language. This led Apple to purchase NeXT in 1996, allowing NeXTSTEP, then called OPENSTEP, previous Macintosh operating systems were named using Arabic numerals, e. g. Mac OS8 and Mac OS9. The letter X in Mac OS Xs name refers to the number 10 and it is therefore correctly pronounced ten /ˈtɛn/ in this context. However, a common mispronunciation is X /ˈɛks/, consumer releases of Mac OS X included more backward compatibility. Mac OS applications could be rewritten to run natively via the Carbon API, the consumer version of Mac OS X was launched in 2001 with Mac OS X10.0. Reviews were variable, with praise for its sophisticated, glossy Aqua interface
16.
Bonjour (software)
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Bonjour is Apples implementation of zero-configuration networking, a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and hostname resolution. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a network using multicast Domain Name System service records. The software comes built-in with Apples macOS and iOS operating systems, Bonjour can also be installed onto computers running Microsoft Windows. Bonjour components may also be included within other software such as iTunes, after its introduction in 2002 with Mac OS X10.2 as Rendezvous, the software was renamed in 2005 to Bonjour following an out-of-court trademark dispute settlement. Bonjour provides a method to discover services on a local area network. The software is used throughout macOS, and allows users to set up a network without any configuration. As of 2010 it is used to find printers and file-sharing servers, Software such as Bonjour Browser or iStumbler, both for macOS, or Zeroconf Neighborhood Explorer for Windows, can be used to view all services declared by these applications. Apples Remote application for iPhone and iPod Touch also uses Bonjour to establish connection to iTunes libraries via Wi-Fi, Bonjour only works within a single broadcast domain, which is usually a small area, without special DNS configuration. MacOS, Bonjour for Windows and AirPort Base Stations may be configured to use Wide Area Bonjour which allows for wide area service discovery via an appropriately configured DNS server, applications generally implement Bonjour services using standard TCP/IP calls, rather than in the operating system. Although macOS provides various Bonjour services, Bonjour also works on other operating systems, Apple has made the source code of the Bonjour multicast DNS responder, the core component of service discovery, available as a Darwin open source project. The project provides source code to build the responder daemon for a range of platforms, including Mac OS9, macOS, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, VxWorks. Apple also provides a set of services called Bonjour for Windows. Bonjour is released under a license by Apple. It is freeware for clients, though developers and software companies who wish to redistribute it as part of a package or use the Bonjour logo may need a licensing agreement. The source code for mDNSResponder is available under the Apache License, Apple originally introduced the Bonjour software in August 2002 as part of Mac OS X10.2 under the name Rendezvous. On August 27,2003 Tibco Software Inc announced that it had filed a lawsuit for trademark infringement, Tibco had an enterprise application integration product called TIBCO Rendezvous on the market since 1994 and stated that it had tried to come to an agreement with Apple Computer. In July 2004 Apple Computer and Tibco reached an out-of-court settlement, on April 12,2005, Apple announced the renaming of Rendezvous to Bonjour. The current name Bonjour is French for the morning or afternoon greeting, the previous name Rendezvous is French for meeting, appointment or date
17.
Dashboard (macOS)
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Dashboard is an application for Apple Inc. s Mac OS X operating systems, used as a secondary desktop for hosting mini-applications known as widgets. These are intended to be simple applications that do not take time to launch, Dashboard applications supplied with Mac OS X include a stock ticker, weather report, calculator and notepad, users can create or download their own. Before Mac OS X10.7 Lion, when Dashboard is activated, like application windows, they can be moved around, rearranged, deleted, and recreated. New widgets can be opened, via a bar on the bottom of the layer. After loading, the widget is ready for use, Dashboard was first introduced in Mac OS X10.4 Tiger. It can be activated as an application, from the Dock and it can also be accessed by a dashboard key. Alternatively, the user can choose to make Dashboard open on moving the cursor into a hot corner or keyboard shortcut. Starting with Mac OS X10.7 Lion, the Dashboard can be configured as a space, in Mac OS X10.10 Yosemite, the Dashboard is disabled by default, as the Notification Center is now the primary method of displaying widgets. Dashboard widgets, like web pages, are capable of different things. One example is the Google Search widget, which opens up the users browser. Other widgets, like Wikipedia, grab the contents of web pages, some widgets can also serve as games, using Adobe Flash to create games just as if they were in a browser. It is also possible for Mac users to create their own widgets using built-in software, Dashboard uses a variety of graphical effects for displaying, opening, and using widgets. On sufficiently powered Macs, widgets will produce an effect when they are opened. As with Exposé, Front Row and the effect, holding shift down while calling the Dashboard or opening the Dashboard menu bar will display the effect in slow motion. Dashboard widgets are created using Hypertext Markup Language, Cascading Style Sheets, because the same languages are used for creating websites, many web developers can already build them. There is widget API allows the widgets to use Mac-specific interface elements such as the Apple Slider. wdgt, more complex widgets may also include a Cocoa widget plugin, one or more JavaScript files or multiple images. Mac OS X10.5 Leopard includes an application called Dashcode, another new feature of Mac OS X10.5 Leopard is called Web Clip which lets users easily create widgets from parts of a webpage. The user can customize the border to further personalize the widgets
18.
Childcraft
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Childcraft is a multi-volume illustrated anthology for children, which originated in the late 1930s. The Childcraft series was created in the 1930s by W. F. Quarrie & Company. The series title was Childcraft – The How and Why Library, Childcraft was created as a sort of encyclopedia for young children. With simple texts and illustrations, the volumes were designed to make learning fun, each volume addressed different subjects, including literature — such as short stories and poetry, including fairy tales and nursery rhymes — as well as mathematics and the sciences. Starting out as seven volumes in the late 1930s, the series was re-issued in a new edition every few years, sometimes incorporating new volumes and it grew to 15 volumes in the 1950s, and remained there, though further changes were made in later editions. The Childcraft set also added a separate, optional, special annual volume each year, some of these were later incorporated as regular volumes. In addition, by the 1980s the series had broadened its reach to a foreign language editions. The 15 volumes of Childcraft, published by World Book, Inc. currently consist of, Once Upon a Time- short stories, art Around Us Poems and Rhymes - poetry How Things Work How Does it Happen. Our Earth Our Universe Shapes and Numbers The World of Animals The World of Plants About You Celebrate, see The World Who We Are Guide to Childcraft The 1973 edition consisted of the following,1. Guide for Parents The 1954 edition consisted of the following,1, great Men and Famous Deeds 7. Exploring the World Around Us 8 and your Child Goes to School 15. Your Child in Todays World The following Childcraft Annual volumes were released, World of Color/People to Know 1990. Tales of Mystery and the Unknown 2007, insects, Spiders, and Creepy Crawlers 2008. Dogs, from Woofs to Wags 2009, code Red, Animals in Peril 2012. The Secret Files of Professor L. Otto Funn World Book Encyclopedia World Book, international Directory of Company Histories, The Gale Group, Inc.2006 Childcraft – The How & Why Library Official site
19.
HathiTrust
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HathiTrust was founded in October 2008 by the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California. The partnership includes over 60 research libraries across the United States, Canada, and Europe, costs are shared by the participating libraries and library consortia. The repository is administered by Indiana University and the University of Michigan, the Executive Director of HathiTrust is Mike Furlough. In October 2015, HathiTrust comprised over 13.7 million volumes, HathiTrust provides a number of discovery and access services, notably, full-text search across the entire repository. In 2016 over 6.17 million users located in the United States, in September 2011, the Authors Guild sued HathiTrust, alleging massive copyright violation. A federal court ruled against the Authors Guild in October 2012, Hathi, pronounced hah-tee, is the Hindi word for elephant, an animal famed for its long-term memory. Hathi is also the name of an elephant in Rudyard Kiplings The Second Jungle Book, an Elephant Backs Up Googles Library. HathiTrust, A Research Library at Web Scale, matthew Miller, Gilok Choi, and Lindsay Chell. Comparison of three digital library interfaces, open library, Google books, and Hathi Trust, in Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, pp. 367–368. Official website HathiTrust adds new members, goes global Major Library Partners Launch HathiTrust Shared Digital Repository
20.
Board of directors
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A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a corporation or organization, which can include a non-profit organization or a government agency. A board of directors activities are determined by the powers, duties and responsibilities conferred on it by an authority outside itself and these matters are typically detailed in regulations or in the organizations constitution and bylaws. These authorities may specify the number of members of the board, how they are to be chosen, and how often they are to meet. In an organization with voting members, the board is accountable to, and might be subordinate to, the full membership. In a stock corporation, non-executive directors are voted for by the shareholders, the board of directors appoints the chief executive officer of the corporation and sets out the overall strategic direction. In corporations with dispersed ownership, the identification and nomination of directors are often done by the board itself, in a non-stock corporation with no general voting membership, the board is the supreme governing body of the institution, its members are sometimes chosen by the board itself. Other names include Board of directors and advisors, board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees and it may also be called the executive board and is often simply referred to as the board. For companies with publicly trading stock, these responsibilities are typically much more rigorous, typically, the board chooses one of its members to be the chairman, who holds whatever title is specified in the bylaws or articles of association. However, in organizations, the members elect the president of the organization. The directors of an organization are the persons who are members of its board, several specific terms categorize directors by the presence or absence of their other relationships to the organization. An inside director is a director who is also an employee, officer, chief executive, major shareholder, inside directors represent the interests of the entitys stakeholders, and often have special knowledge of its inner workings, its financial or market position, and so on. Executive directors often have an area of responsibility in the organization, such as finance, marketing, human resources. An outside director is a member of the board who is not otherwise employed by or engaged with the organization, a typical example is a director who is president of a firm in a different industry. Outside directors are not employees of the company or affiliated with it in any other way, outside directors bring outside experience and perspectives to the board. One of the arguments for having outside directors is that they can keep a eye on the inside directors. Outside directors are unlikely to tolerate insider dealing between insider directors, as outside directors do not benefit from the company or organization, outside directors are often useful in handling disputes between inside directors, or between shareholders and the board. They are thought to be advantageous because they can be objective, director - a person appointed to serve on the board of an organization, such as an institution or business. This practice results in an interlocking directorate, where a small number of individuals have significant influence over a large number of important entities
21.
Warren Buffett
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Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is considered by some to be one of the most successful investors in the world and he attended New York Institute of Finance to specialize his economics background and soon after began various business partnerships, including one with Graham. After meeting Charlie Munger, Buffett created the Buffett Partnership and his firm would eventually acquire a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway and assume its name to create a diversified holding company. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth, Buffett is a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska and he was the second of three children and the only son of Leila and Congressman Howard Buffett, Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, after finishing high school and finding success with his side entrepreneurial and investment ventures, Buffett wanted to skip college to go directly into business, but was overruled by his father. Buffett displayed an interest in business and investing at a young age, much of Buffetts early childhood years were enlivened with entrepreneurial ventures. One of his first business ventures, Buffett sold chewing gum, Coca-Cola bottles and he worked in his grandfathers grocery store. While still in school, he made money delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps. On his first income tax return in 1944, Buffett took a $35 deduction for the use of his bicycle, in 1945, as a high school sophomore, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in three different barber shops across Omaha, the business was sold later in the year for $1,200 to a war veteran. Buffetts interest in the market and investing dated to schoolboy days he spent in the customers lounge of a regional stock brokerage near his fathers own brokerage office. On a trip to New York City at age ten, he made a point to visit the New York Stock Exchange, at 11, he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for himself, and three for his sister Doris Buffett. At the age of 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly delivering Washington Post newspapers, in high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. He bought the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 of his savings, by the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated $9,800 in savings. In 1947, Buffett entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and he would have preferred to focus on his business ventures, however, he enrolled due to pressure from his father. Warren studied there for two years and joined the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity and he then transferred to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln where at 19, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. After being rejected by Harvard Business School, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School of Columbia University upon learning that Benjamin Graham taught there and he earned a Master of Science in Economics from Columbia in 1951
22.
Charlie Munger
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Charles Thomas Munger is an American investor, businessman, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the controlled by Warren Buffett. Buffett has described Munger as “ partner, Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska. As a teenager he worked at Buffett & Son, a store owned by Warren Buffetts grandfather. After enrolling in the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics, in early 1943, a few days after his 19th birthday, he dropped out of college to serve in the U. S. Army Air Corps, where he became Second Lieutenant. He continued his studies in meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena, California, through the GI Bill he took a number of advanced courses through several universities, without an undergraduate degree, he entered Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude with a J. D. in 1948. At Harvard he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, in college and the Army he developed an important skill, card playing. “What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you dont get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesnt come often, so seize it when it does come. ”He moved with his family to California, in 1962 he founded and worked as a real estate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He then gave up the practice of law to concentrate on managing investments and he then partnered with Jack Wheeler to form Wheeler, Munger, and Company, an investment firm with a seat on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. He wound up Wheeler, Munger, and Co. in 1976, after losses of 32% in 1973, although Munger is better known for his association with Buffett, he ran an investment partnership of his own from 1962 to 1975. Munger was previously the chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and it began as a savings and loan association, but eventually grew to control Precision Steel Corp. CORT Furniture Leasing, Kansas Bankers Surety Company, and other ventures, Wesco Financial also held a concentrated equity portfolio of over US$1.5 billion in companies such as Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, US Bancorp, and Goldman Sachs. Munger believes that holding a number of stocks, that he knows extremely well, will in the long term produce superior returns. Wesco is based in Pasadena, California, Mungers adopted hometown, Pasadena was also the site of the companys annual shareholders meeting, which were typically held on the Wednesday or Thursday after the more famous Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Mungers meetings were nearly as legendary in the investment community as those he co-hosts with Buffett in Omaha, meeting notes have been posted on the Futile Finance. Website, but no updates exist beyond 2011, in multiple speeches, and in the book Poor Charlies Almanack, Munger has introduced the concept of Elementary, Worldly Wisdom as it relates to business and finance
23.
Howard Graham Buffett
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Howard Graham Buffett is an American businessman, former politician, philanthropist, photographer, farmer, and conservationist. He is the child of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. He is named after Howard Buffett, his grandfather, and Benjamin Graham, Howard G. Buffett grew up in Omaha, Nebraska with two siblings, sister Susan and brother Peter. He has been active in business, politics, agriculture, conservation, photography, in August 1977, he married Marcia Sue Duncan. Also in 1977, he began farming in Tekamah, Nebraska and his father purchased the property for $760,000 and charged him rent. He later married Devon Morse, and they had a son and he is an advocate of no-till conservation agriculture. Until October 26,2006, and Director at Sloan Implement and he became a Lindsay Corporation director in 1995, served as Chairman for a year from 2002 to 2003. and in 2008, announced he would let his term as a director expire in January 2010. He is, as of 1992, a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Howard G. Buffett has been a Director of The Coca-Cola Company since December 9,2010. From 1993 to 2004 he was a director of Coca Cola Enterprises, in December 2011, Warren Buffett told CBS News that he would like his son Howard to succeed him as Berkshire Hathaways non-executive chairman. Buffett was a County Commissioner of Douglas County, Nebraska, from 1989 to 1992 and he is a member of the Board of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Buffett has published eight books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, in 1996, Harvard published his thesis, The Partnership of Biodiversity and High-Yield Agricultural Production. The April 2014 edition of The Rotarian magazine featured an 8-page article covering a brief history of Buffetts organization and touching upon some past successes, current projects and future goals. In 2000, Buffett co-produced a book of photography with Colin Mead, Images of the Wild, in 2001, he wrote On The Edge, Balancing Earths Resources which focused on preserving world biodiversity, species and habitats. Former Senator Paul Simon authored the foreword, in 2002, Buffett wrote Tapestry of Life, a compilation of portraits taken in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and other countries with deep poverty and human need. Also in 2002, he published Taking Care of Our World, in 2003, he co-wrote Spots Before Your Eyes with Ann van Dyk. The foreword was authored by Dr. Jane Goodall, Spots Before Your Eyes presents history and facts about the cheetah species. In 2005, he published Threatened Kingdom, The Story of the Mountain Gorilla which provides information about the mountain gorillas habitat, in 2009, he wrote Fragile, The Human Condition with the support of National Geographic. The foreword was authored by Shakira Mebarak, Fragile, The Human Condition is the documentation of life stories in sixty-five countries
24.
Susan Decker
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Susan Lynne Decker is an American businesswoman. Inc in 2007 and 2008, leading the operations of the company while Jerry Yang was chief executive officer, Decker received her Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and economics from Tufts University, and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. She is also a Chartered Financial Analyst, prior to joining Yahoo, she worked at the U. S. investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette for 14 years. She spent 12 years as an equity research analyst, providing coverage to institutional investors on more than 30 media, publishing, in this capacity, she was listed by Institutional Investor magazine as a top rated analyst for ten consecutive years. She subsequently became the director of equity research, a $300 million operation. Decker was chief officer and executive vice-president of finance and administration of Yahoo from 2000 to 2007. Decker was under consideration as CEO during Jerry Yangs CEO leadership, Decker drove a proposed search deal with Google as an alternative to a transaction with Microsoft, but this was rejected by the U. S. Justice Department as a breach of United States antitrust law. The company asked Yang to resign, and for the board to select a candidate for the CEO position. Decker and Yang were unable to resolve shareholder concerns as Yahoos share price fell in 2007 and 2008 during Googles ascendency and she was named a Trustee of Save The Children in March 2010. On September 30,2010, Decker received Harvard Business Schools Alumni Achievement Award, Decker has three children and lives in Marin County. She enjoys skiing and grew up in Denver, Colorado
25.
Bill Gates
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William Henry Bill Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, author, and philanthropist. In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the worlds largest PC software company, during his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books, since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the worlds wealthiest people and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, again in 2009, and has been since 2014. Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to more than US$82 billion, between 2013 and 2014, his wealth increased by US$15 billion. Gates is currently the richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$85.6 billion as of February 2017. Gates is one of the entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and he gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as adviser to support the then newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28,1955 and he is the son of William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His ancestry includes English, German, Irish, and Scots-Irish and his father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a bank president. Gates has one sister, Kristi, and one younger sister. He is the fourth of his name in his family, but is known as William Gates III or Trey because his father had the II suffix, early on in his life, Gates parents had a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, his family attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches. The family encouraged competition, one reported that it didnt matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock. There was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing, at 13, he enrolled in the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school
26.
Donald Keough
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Donald Raymond Keough was an Irish-American businessman and Chairman of the Board of Allen & Company LLC, a New York investment banking firm. He was elected to position in April 1993. Keough retired as president, chief operating officer and a director of The Coca-Cola Company in April 1993, positions he had held since early 1981, from 1986 to 1993 he served as Chairman of the Board of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. the world’s largest bottling system. In addition, he served for years as a member of the Boards of McDonald’s Corporation, The Washington Post Company, H. J. Heinz Company, Convera Corporation. He was chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees and a Life Trustee of the University of Notre Dame and he was also a trustee of several other educational, charitable and civic organizations. Keough was born in Maurice, Iowa, the University of Notre Dame’s highest honor, the Laetare Medal, was presented to Keough in May 1993, and he was Irish America magazines first Irish-American of the Year, also in 1993. Keough was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2002 and was inducted into the Junior Achievement National Business Hall of Fame in 2003, in 2007 he was presented with honorary citizenship by the then President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. In November 2010, he was the first honoree inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame, in March 2013, he received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award from Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland. Keough Hall at the University of Notre Dame is named after his wife of 65 years, Marilyn Keough, Keough died in Atlanta, Georgia at the age of 88 on February 24,2015. The Ten Commandments for Business Failure, USA Today interview with Don Keough
27.
Walter Scott Jr.
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Walter Scott Jr. is an American civil engineer, philanthropist, and former CEO of Peter Kiewit Sons Incorporated. He graduated from Colorado State University in 1953 with a degree in civil engineering. Scott was first elected to the Peter Kiewit Sons Incorporated board in 1964, in 1979, he was elected president. When Peter Kiewit died later that year, Scott was selected to succeed him as chairman. He sits on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, and is a friend of Warren Buffett. He is also on the board of directors of Burlington Resources, Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises, midAmerican Energy Holdings, RCN Corporation, Valmont Industries, and Peter Kiewit Sons Inc, and is the chairman of the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress. He is a director of the Joslyn Art Museum, Nebraska Game and Parks Foundation, nationally, he is a director of the Horatio Alger Association and the National Forest Association. Scott is chairman of Level 3 Communications, the corporation is one of the firms created by the 1998 separation of the two operating divisions of Peter Kiewit Sons Inc. Since the split-off, Scott now serves as chairman Emeritus of Peter Kiewit Sons, in June 2010, when Warren Buffett appealed to him to join the Giving Pledge, he partially accepted, stating that after his death his remaining estate will go into his eponymous foundation. College of Engineering, becoming the only named college of engineering in the state of Colorado, in 1996 Scott acquired the original sales document of the Louisiana Purchase for his private collection. Scott was the 1997 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award and he became an Eagle Scout in 1946 and is a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Scotts second wife Sue Scott had been a friend of his first wife, Carolyn, who died in 1983. They married in 1987 at their place of worship, Countryside Community Church
28.
GEICO
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The Government Employees Insurance Company is an American auto insurance company headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is the second largest auto insurer in the United States and it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that as of 2015 provided coverage for more than 22 million motor vehicles owned by more than 14 million policy holders. GEICO writes private passenger automobile insurance in all 50 U. S. states, GEICO sells its policies through local agents, called GEICO Field Representatives, and over the phone directly to the consumer, and through their website. Its mascot is a gold dust day gecko with a Cockney accent, GEICO is well known in popular culture for its advertising, having made a large number of commercials intended to entertain viewers. GEICO was founded in 1936 by Leo Goodwin Sr. and his wife Lillian Goodwin to provide insurance directly to federal government employees. Despite the presence of the government in its name, GEICO has always been a private corporation not affiliated with any government organization. An important figure in GEICOs history is David Lloyd Kreeger, who became president of the company in 1964, in 1948, he formed a group of investors who bought into GEICO right before it went public that year. He became senior vice president and general counsel of the company, six years after becoming president of GEICO in 1964, he was named chairman and chief executive officer. He retained those titles until he retired in 1975 and he continued as chairman of the executive committee until 1979, when he was named honorary chairman. S. auto insurer. By 1975, it was clear that GEICO had expanded far too rapidly when it reported a $126.5 million loss. To prevent GEICO from collapsing, a consortium of 45 insurance companies agreed to take over a quarter of its policies and it took five years and a massive reorganization to set GEICO on the path to recovery. GEICO has also offered other types of insurance besides auto, including homeowners insurance from 1962 to 1996, a sister company, the Government Employees Life Insurance Company, offered life insurance from 1975 to 1985. In 1996, after years as a publicly traded firm. GEICO generally deals directly with consumers via telephone and internet, however, GEICO is now the second largest writer of private auto insurance in the United States. The policy, which is issued through GEICOs commercial department, has received praise from insurance experts, in 2016, J. D. Power rated the company #20 out of 24 for overall purchase experience, with a 2/5 score. Presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a boycott of the company, GEICO has many well-known ad campaigns. In 2012 GEICO spent over $1.1 billion in advertising, all are made and produced by The Martin Agency, which is based in Richmond, Virginia. GEICO ads have featured several well-known mascots, including, The GEICO Gecko is the most prevalent spokesperson mascot, Maxwell, the GEICO Piggy who shouts a long Whee and appears in more radio and TV commercials
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Gen Re
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General Reinsurance Corporation is an American multinational property/casualty and life/health reinsurance company offering a range of reinsurance products and services. The company is a direct reinsurer and is represented in all major markets worldwide through a network of more than 40 offices. Gen Re is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc group of companies, financial strength ratings of Gen Res reinsurance operations, A. M. Best, A++ Standard & Poors Claims Paying Ability Rating, AA+ General Re Corporation is the company for Gen Res global reinsurance. It owns General Reinsurance Corporation, General Re Life Corporation and General Reinsurance AG, in addition, the insurance, reinsurance and investment management companies in the General Re group include, Gen Re Intermediaries, GR-NEAM, General Star, Genesis, USAU and Faraday. In 1923, American investors acquired the company and changed the name to General Reinsurance Corporation, in 1929, the General Alliance Corporation owned all the stock of General Reinsurance Corporation, and jointly with the Royal Exchange Group, a controlling interest in the United British. The United British Insurance Co. Ltd. established a U. S. branch that transacted casualty reinsurance as a mate for the General. The two companies transact practically all forms of casualty and surety reinsurance and constitute the first example of a Group in the history of American casualty reinsurance, also in 1929, General Reinsurance affirmed that it would be only a direct reinsurer. In 1945, General Reinsurance merged with Mellon Indemnity Corporation, in 1954, the company created the first professional casualty facultative reinsurance department. Property facultative followed, beginning in 1956, North America branch offices were opened during this time. In the 1950s, General Reinsurance began writing reinsurance internationally, expanding in this area during the 1960s and 1970s, the company continued to grow through the next two decades, opening more U. S. and Canada branch offices and making various acquisitions. The company moved its headquarters from New York City to Greenwich, Connecticut in 1974, in 1980, General Re Corporation, the parent holding company, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1994, General Reinsurance Corporation formed an alliance with what was then Cologne Re, in 1998, General Re Corporation was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and in 2003 General Reinsurance Corporation and Cologne Re began marketing under the brand name of Gen Re. In 2009, General Reinsurance Corporation completed its purchase of Cologne Re, the company continues to market globally as Gen Re. In October 2000, some Wall Street analysts questioned the decline in American International Group loss reserves, in 2005, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into the two reinsurance transactions. Soon afterwards, AIG came under pressure, and admitted it had undertaken what could be construed as securities fraud. The staff admitted that the two reinsurance transactions had inflated AIG’s balance sheet and propped up AIG’s stock price, in the resultant stock crash, investors lost $500 million in investments. Cologne Re Dublins CEO, John Houldsworth, agreed to turn states witness for the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, in agreement for a plea bargain
30.
Acme Brick
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Acme Brick Company is an American manufacturer and distributor of brick and masonry-related construction products and materials. Founder, George E. Bennett, chartered the company in Alton, the company grew to become the largest American-owned brick manufacturer by the mid-20th century and was the first of its type to offer a 100-year limited guarantee to its customers. Acme Brick Company was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. on August 1,2000, in 1890, Acme Pressed Brick Company was established fifteen miles southwest of Weatherford, Texas near present-day Farm Road 113, in southwestern Parker County, Texas. The company town that evolved from the establishment of the plant was called Bennett. The community included Acme Brick homes, a church, a school. In 1916, Acme Pressed Brick stockholders elected new officers, applied for a Texas charter, began doing business as Acme Brick Company, walter R. Bennett was elected the first president of the newly renamed Acme Brick Company. In 1968, a merger of the Acme Brick Company and the Justin Boot Company resulted in the formation of the First Worth Corporation. In 1972, First Worth Corp. changed its name to Justin Industries, Featherlite began as a Texas-based, privately held company in 1949. In 1981, as housing starts hit a 35-year low, Acme built inventory,400 million brick were manufactured by the years end, in 1984, record housing starts propelled Acme to record sales years in 1983 and 1984. In 1987, Acme began stamping its logo on one end of select residential brick and this tradition in brand recognition continues today. In 1993, Troy Aikman, Hall of Fame quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys football team, became an Acme Brick spokesperson - initially in radio and print advertising, in 1994, American Tile Supply, a tile distributor and retailer in Texas, was acquired. In 1997, Fort Worth-based Innovative Building Products, developer and manufacturer of an installation system for glass block windows, skylights, shower enclosures. In 2000, the Justin Industries Board of Directors approved the sale of the publicly traded company to Warren Buffett, the boot companies and the building companies were split to form Justin Brands and Acme Building Brands as separate entities. At the time of the acquisition, Acme Building Brands was parent to the following four child companies, Acme Brick Company, Featherlite Building Products Corporation, the leading Southwest producer of concrete masonry products. American Tile Supply Company, a major Texas distributor of ceramic and marble floor, Justin Brands - Justin Boot Company, Nocona Boot Company, Tony Lama Company, and Chippewa Shoe Company. In 2001, Acme Brick set a new record for shipments - exceeding 1 billion company-manufactured bricks shipped. In 2003, Acme Bricks residential products started carrying the Good Housekeeping Seal, on October 6,2006, Acme Brick broke ground for the companys new headquarters building to be located in southwest Fort Worth. The 77, 000-square-foot, three-story building was completed in 2007, on January 24,2011, Acme Brick agreed to purchase Jenkins Brick headquartered in Alabama with stores in four southeastern states
31.
Benjamin Moore & Co.
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Benjamin Moore & Co. also known as Benjamin Moore Paints or simply Benjamin Moore, is an American company that produces paint. It is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, founded in 1883, Benjamin Moore is based in Montvale, New Jersey. The Moore Brothers founded the company in Brooklyn, New York, with one product, Moores Prepared Calsom Finish, reviews of Benjamin Moore products have generally been favorable and note their high-end quality. They have also noted for their use in traditional indoor settings. Other products have been reviewed favorably in The New York Times and Good Housekeeping
United States
