Rubik’s Brand Ltd.holds the registered trademarks for the word Rubik and Rubik’s and for the 2D and 3D visualisations of the Rubik’s cube puzzle. The trademarks have been upheld by a ruling of the General Court of the European Union in a successful defence against a German toy manufacturer seeking to invalidate them. However, European toy manufacturers are allowed to create differently shaped puzzles that have a similar rotating or twisting functionality of component parts such as for example Pyraminx (triangular shaped) or Impossiball (spherical shaped). Several toy companies also make octagonal shaped puzzles.
Rubik’s Cube lost a ten-year battle over a key trademark issue. The European Union’s highest court, the Court of Justice ruled that the puzzle’s shape was not sufficient to grant it trademark protection.
The first legislative act concerning trademarks was passed in England in 1266 under the reign of Henry III, requiring all bakers to use a distinctive mark for the bread they sold. In the United States, the first attempt at trademark legislation occurred in 1870, but the Supreme Court later struck down that statute. In 1881, Congress passed a new trademark act.
The oldest U.S. registered trademark still in use is a depiction of the Biblical figure Samson wrestling a lion, registered in the United States on May 27, 1884 by the J.P. Tolman Company (now Samson Rope Technologies, Inc.), a rope-making company.
Samson in the Bible is in the Old Testament. Samson was the last of the judges mentioned in the Book of Judges, in chapters 13 to 16. In the NIV Bible translation, Samson is first mentioned by name at Judges 13:24: “The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him,”
Recent Christian commentators have viewed Samson as a type of Jesus Christ, based on similarities between Samson’s story and the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Samson’s and Jesus’ births were both foretold by angels, who predicted that they would save their people. Samson was born to a barren woman, and Jesus was born of a virgin. Samson defeated a lion; Jesus defeated Satan, whom the First Epistle of Peter describes as a “roaring lion looking for someone to devour”. Samson’s betrayal by Delilah has also been compared to Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot; both Delilah and Judas were paid in pieces of silver for their respective deeds. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer notes in his A Guide to Scripture History: The Old Testament that Samson was “blinded, insulted [and] enslaved” prior to his death, and that Jesus was “blindfolded, insulted, and treated as a slave” prior to his crucifixion. Brewer also compares Samson’s death among “the wicked” with Christ being crucified between two thieves. They were both the subject of many movies and operas. And they both had long hair.
In the 1700s, John Milton was regarded as the greatest English author. In comparison to Milton’s learning, refinement and focus on Biblical subjects, Shakespeare was regarded as coarse, violent and crude. Milton is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. His dramatic poem Samson Agonistes was meant as a “closet drama”, i.e. not for performance; however, recent productions include a 2008 radio play by the BBC and stagings at the University of Notre Dame and University of Alabama.
In the 1700s, John Milton was regarded as the greatest English author. In comparison to Milton’s learning, refinement and focus on Biblical subjects, Shakespeare was regarded as coarse and crude. Milton is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. His dramatic poem Samson Agonistes was meant as a “closet drama”, i.e. not for performance; however, recent productions include a 2008 radio play by the BBC and stagings at the University of Notre Dame and University of Alabama.
In 1860, the Milton Bradley Company created and began marketing its first board game, which was called The Checkered Game of Life. It was an instant best seller, and, by the 1870s, the company was producing dozens of games. It was the first to manufacture croquet sets. These sets included wickets, mallets, balls, stakes, and a set of rules to play by that Bradley himself created.
Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut is home to the USAF’s 103d Airlift Wing (103 AW) of the Connecticut Air National Guard. BDL, Bradley International Airport, was named after 24-year-old 2nd Lt. Eugene M. Bradley of Antlers, Oklahoma, who was assigned to the 64th Pursuit Squadron of the 57th Fighter group and died on August 21, 1941 when his P-40 Curtiss Warhawk crashed at what was then Windsor Locks Army Air Field during a dogfight training drill. Lt. Bradley crashed about a mile west of Windsor Locks Airfield. Eugene Bradley was born in Dela, Oklahoma, July 15, 1917, and was 24-years-old at the time of his death. He’s buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, in San Antonio, Texas, Section E, Site 67. He was survived by his wife and unborn child. Windsor Locks Army Air Field came under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army in 1941 after acquiring the land from the State of Connecticut. On January 20, 1942 the air field was re-named to honor Lt. Bradley.
According to airport-technology.com, the world’s oldest airport still in operation is located in College Park, Maryland. College Park Airport was established in 1909 when Wilbur Wright arrived at the field to train two military officers in the US Army.
The airport, sometimes referred to as the ‘cradle of aviation’, features a single runway measuring 2,600 feet long and 60 feet wide.
In 1825, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, S.J., a Jesuit from Maryland, became the second Bishop of Boston. He was the first to articulate a vision for a “College in the City of Boston” that would raise a new generation of leaders to serve both the civic and spiritual needs of his fledgling diocese. In 1827, Bishop Fenwick opened a school in the basement of his cathedral and took to the personal instruction of the city’s youth. His efforts to attract other Jesuits to the faculty were hampered both by Boston’s distance from the center of Jesuit activity in Maryland and by suspicion on the part of the city’s Protestant elite. On March 31, 1863, more than three decades after its initial inception, Boston College’s charter was formally approved by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Cradle of Aviation Museum is located on Charles Lindbergh Blvd, in East Garden City, NY. It commemorates Long Island’s part in the history of aviation. It is located on land once part of Mitchel Air Force Base which, together with nearby Roosevelt Field (named for Quentin Roosevelt, killed in WWI, age 20) and other airfields on the Hempstead Plains, was the site of many historic flights. So many seminal flights occurred in the area that, by the mid-1920s, even before Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 transatlantic flight from Roosevelt Field, the cluster of airfields was already called the “Cradle of Aviation”.
Unlike the airfield in College Park, Maryland, none of the old airfields in the vicinity are operational.
Is anybody else having issues accessing this thread? Or is it just me and my five-year-old computer?
In play: Because Australia is a continent, it is not technically considered an island. Thus, Greenland is the world’s largest island, followed by New Guinea, Borneo, and Madagascar.
Come from Away is a Canadian musical with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. It is set in the week following the September 11 attacks and tells the true story of what transpired when 38 planes were ordered to land unexpectedly in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon. The characters in the musical are based on (and in most cases share the names of) real Gander residents as well as some of the 7,000 stranded travellers they housed and fed.
As the musical states “In a day of darkness, they gave the world a beacon o light.”
“Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” is a song recorded by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Released in 1973, it reached number one on both the US and UK charts for four weeks in April of that year. It was the top-selling single in 1973 in both countries.
The opposition to Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in the mid 1980s wore yellow ribbons, T-shirts and other clothing, inspired by the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”. The song was connected with the 1983 return of Senator Benigno Aquino from exile in the US and yellow ribbons were prepared to welcome him, but he never saw them, as he was assassinated by Marcos’s soldiers as he disembarked from his flight at the airport.