A** penny **stock typically trades outside of the major market exchanges at a relatively low price and has a small market capitalization. These stocks are generally considered highly speculative and high risk. In the past, penny stocks were stocks that traded for less than a dollar per share. The SEC, however, has modified the definition to include all shares trading below $5.
In the old English coinage system, there were four quarter-farthings in a farthing, four farthings in a penny, four pennies in a groat, and six groats in a florin. In 1300 A.D., the average wage was about 2 pennies per day, but a pound of bread cost less than a farthing. By the mid 19th-century bread was still just two pennies per pound; quarter-farthing coins were still being minted (at least for use in the colonies). In terms of wages, a quarter-farthing in 1860 was about the equivalent of a dime in present-day U.S.A.
John o’Groats is one of the northern-most points on the island of Great Britain.
Land’s End to John o’ Groats is the traversal of the whole length of the island of Great Britain between two extremities; from Cornwall in the southwest to Caithness in northeastern Scotland. The traditional distance by road is 874 miles (1,407 km) and takes most cyclists ten to fourteen days; the record for running the route is nine days. The youngest person to have completed the distance was Henry Cole in June 2006; he was aged 4 and cycled over 31 days.
Last month, 105 year old Frenchman Robert Marchand set a new one-hour cycling record for his age group, 105+, which had been created just for him. Marchand pedaled for 22.547 kilometers (14.01 miles) in the national velodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines west of Paris to the cheers of hundreds of spectators—and when he had finished he said he could have gone faster.
off topic: elvisL1ves, cool stuff.
in play:
Nancy Marchand was an American actress. She was perhaps most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on **Lou Grant **and Livia Soprano on The Sopranos.
On November 28, 1919, Nancy Astor, the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons, was elected in a by-election. Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, CH, was an American-born English socialite who made a second marriage to Waldorf Astor as a young woman in England. After he succeeded to the peerage and entered the House of Lords, she entered politics and won his former seat. She served in Parliament as a representative of the Conservative Party for Plymouth Sutton until 1945, when she was persuaded to step down.
Astoria, Queens, New York, was originally named Hallett’s Cove. In the 1840s the area was renamed for John Jacob Astor, then the wealthiest man in America with a net worth of over $40 million, in order to persuade him to invest in the neighborhood. He only invested $500, but the name stayed, as a battle over naming the village finally was won by Astor’s supporters and friends. From Astor’s summer home in Manhattan—on what is now East 87th Street near York Avenue—he could see across the East River the new Long Island village named in his honor. Astor, however, never actually set foot in Astoria. While Astoria is geographically on Long Island, the area is now part of the borough of Queens, one of the five New York City boroughs.
Although Nancy Astor was the first woman to serve in the British House of Commons, she was not the first woman elected. That was Constance Markievicz, who was elected in the general election of 1918. However, as a member of Seinn Feinn, Marcievicz never took her seat.
Constance Markievicz was born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth at Buckingham Gate in London, the elder daughter of the Arctic explorer and adventurer Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet, an Anglo-Irish landlord who administered a 100 km2 (39 sq mi) estate. She and her sister Eva were childhood friends of poet William Butler Yeats, who wrote a poem, “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz”, describing the sisters as “two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle” (the gazelle being Constance).
Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written in the aftermath of the Great War. This poem, especially its ominous final couplet, is quoted with increasing frequency as the 21st century unfolds.
[QUOTE=William Butler Yeats]
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
[/QUOTE]
Ninja’d!
The German Peasants’ War was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of the intense opposition of the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. It is considered to be Europe’s largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789.
Peasant foods are often one-dish stews or soups that use readily available vegetables or legumes, and, sometimes, chunks of leftover meat. Some common examples are minestrone, Feijoada, pea soup, baked beans, gazpacho and ratatouile.
Peasant foods are often considered the unofficial ‘national dish’ of many countries, including feijoada (Brazil), bigos (Poland), goulash/paprikash (Hungary), cozido (Portugal), etc.
The England/Portugal alliance is the oldest existing military alliance in the world, established in 1373.
The Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts built in secrecy to defend Lisbon, Portugal during the Peninsular War. The English and their Portuguese allies used these lines in 1810 to fend off the French offensive led by Marshal André Masséna.
“La Belle Alliance” is the name of an inn a few miles south of Brussels; it is known for its role after the Battle of Waterloo as a meeting-place for the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blucher, who suggested that the battle be named “La Belle Alliance” to commemorate the coalition of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Portugal and many other European states who had combined against Napoleon and the French. The inn already bore this name before the battle and it is unclear as to whether it was named for a military or personal alliance.
[off game]BLUCHER! ::whinny::[off game/]
“Napoleon at Waterloo” was one of the starter games by SPI, with its system of hex-based maps and counters.
One weakness in the game is that the farm La Haye-Sainte, defended by British and German troops, held out against all odds throughout the day of the battle. In the game, the French player usually capture it in the first move.