Google tried to sell itself for 1 million dollar
Dumbest business decision in history
Back in 1999 Google tried to sell itself to Excite.com for only 1$ million.
Turning down that deal probably is one of the dumbest decisions ever made in business. In 2010 Google was worth around $180 billion, 180 thousand times as much as they asked for it in 1999.
Selling Google
In 1999, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were still students at that time, decided that Google, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Excite.com and offered it to them for $1 million, but the CEO at that time, Bell, rejected the offer. He even threw one of Excite’s venture capitalists out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to just $750,000.
Source: Wikipedia
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Categories: History Tags:
10 fun halloween facts and trivia
10 fun facts about Halloween history and Halloween in general
Halloween fact 1: The history of Halloween
Halloween in the way we celebrate it today is a combination of traditions borrowed from 4 different festivals from history;
- The Roman Feralia festival, commemorating the dead
- The Roman Pomona festival, honoring the godess of fruit & trees
- The Celtic festival Samuin, which means “summer’s end”. This is the festival most resembling to Halloween and is generally considered to be the origin of Halloween itself.
- The Catholic Hallowmas period of “All souls’ day” & “All saints’ day”, which was instigated around 800 by the church in an attempt to replace Samuin.
Halloween fact 2: Origin of the word Halloween
The word Halloween originally came from the Middle English “Alholowmesse”, which means “All Saint’s Day”. The night before Alholowmesse was called “All Hallows Even (evening)” which was eventually shortened and became “Hallowe’en” and it became “Halloween” in the 20th century.
Halloween fact 3: Halloween Jack O’ Lanterns
About 99% of pumpkins marketed domestically are used as Jack O’Lanterns at Halloween.
Halloween fact 4: Waring costumes during Halloween
The custom of wearing costumes or masks comes from the Celtic tradition where boys would impersonate evil spirits by dressing up in white costumes with blackened faces or masks in order to try to placate these spirits.
Halloween fact 5: Dressing up
50% of all adults will dress up for Halloween, with 67% taking part in Halloween activities (parties, trick or treating and decorating the house)
Over 10% of people who own a pet will dress up their pet for Halloween!
Halloween fact 6: Trick or treating
Trick or treating comes originally from Britain and Ireland.
Trick or treating comes from the Middle Ages and it resembles the late medieval practice of “souling”. Poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas asking for food in return for prayers for the dead on ‘all souls day’.
Halloween fact 7: Children trick or treating
With Halloween, over 90% of the children between 5 and 13 years old will go trick or treating. This is around 35 million children in the US which results in candy sales with Halloween of $2 billion in the United States.
Halloween fact 8: Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday.
With over $2 billion in candy sales, $1.5 billion spent on costumes and another 2.5$ billion on other Halloween paraphernalia, Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday. Christmas remains first.
Halloween fact 9: History of pumpkin carving at Halloween
Pumkin carving for Halloween is another custom originating from the Celtic festival Samuin. They used it to ward off evil spirits. The Celts would hollow out turnips and then carve faces in them and place candles inside. The turnips were then placed in the windows to prevent evil spirits from entering the home or they would be carried around as lanterns.
This tradition eventually merged with the North American tradition of carving pumpkins. And now we all are carving pumpkins with Halloween..
Halloween fact 10: The fastest pumpkin carver in the world
The record for the fastest pumpkin carver in the world is Jerry Ayers of Baltimore, Ohio. He carved a pumpkin in just 37 seconds!
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Ayatollah Khomeini was voted Time Magazine man of the year in 1979
Ayatollah Khomeini was voted Time Magazine man of the year in 1979. After Hitler was chosen Time Magazine’s man of the year in 1938, and Stalin in 1939 and 1942, the election of Ayatollah Khomeini as Time Magazine’s man of the year was another very controversial choice.
Time received a lot of public backlash in the United States for naming the Ayatollah Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979 and they have shied away from using figures that are controversial ever since. In 2001 the Time’s Person of the Year was Rudolph Giuliani the city mayor of New York, although the stated criteria of selection, the person(s) who have had the most significant effect on that year’s news, made Osama bin Laden a more likely choice because of the september 11 attacks.
Likewise they chose Einstein to be the man of the century instead if Hitler in 1999.
Source: Wikipedia.org
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Charlie Chaplin once lost a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest
The story is widely circulated on the internet that Charlie Chaplin came in third in a look-alike contest, but the truth is he didn’t even make the finals!
Around 1915 there were a lot of Charlie Chaplin look-alike contests. Charlie Chaplin himself once entered such a competition, and lost.
It was a competition in San Francisco and it is noted that Charlie Chaplin “failed even to make the finals”.
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The full name of Pablo Picasso is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso is the full name of the famous Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso.
Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad, a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law.
Source: Wikipedia
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