-The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

-Our eyes never grow, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

-A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.

-The most common blood type in the world is type O.

-The rarest blood type in the world is type A-H, less than 12 people have it.

-Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

-You consume 1/10 of a calorie every time you lick a stamp.

-It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery provides you with.

-Many people think eating fish makes you more intelligent.(sorry - it doesn't)

-Some lions mate 50 times a day.

-No word rhymes with month, purple, orange or silver.

-The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

-Hummingbirds are the only animals that can fly backwards.

-Red does not make bulls angry, bulls are colour blind.

-The longest one-syllable word is "screeched."

-Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.

-In the Scottish language Gaidhlig (Gaelic), there is no word for 'yes' or 'no'.

-The French words 'eau' [water] and 'oui' [yes] have no consonants.

-The word 'rhythm' has no vowels.

-It is commonly believed that acne is caused or made worse by poor diet or poor hygiene.

-Number of lottery combinations (6 numbers from 49): 13,983,816 The first million decimal places of pi!

-"Almost" is the longest word with all the letters in alphabetical order.
-Satan is an anagram of Santa.

-All polar bears are left-handed.

-Dreamt is the only word ending in "mt."

-Crocodiles have 2 penises...

-A pig's orgasm can last 30 minutes..

-The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.

-Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

-111,111,111 multiplied by 111,111,111 equals 12,345,678,987,654,321.

-The number 9,876,543,210 has 72 factors.

-An ant can lift 50 times its own weight & can pull 30 times its own weight.

-Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.

-The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. (Relative to size)

-It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

-It's impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath.

-The human brain is about 85% water.

-Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.

-Human thighbones are as strong as concrete.

-Smokers need twice as much vitamin C (80mg) as non-smokers (40mg) daily.

-Almonds are a member of the peach family.

-You blink about 25,000 times a day.

-Blonds have more hair than dark haired people do.

-The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30ft.

-When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop, even your heart.

-The average human eats 8 spiders in his/ her lifetime at night.

-Flies are deaf.

-Slugs have 4 noses.

-Starfish have no brains.

-Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

-Pencils contain graphite or carbon, NOT lead.

-If you had a lead pencil you would have great difficulty writing with it.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.

-Bananas don’t grow on trees.

-There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

-There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

-The 'you are here arrow' on a map is called the IDEO locater.

-A person who practises karate is called a karateka.

-A person who practices judo is called a judoka.

-Dolphins and humans are the only mammals that have sex for pleasure.

-Giraffes & rats can go without water longer than a camel can.

- ..-40 degrees Celsius equals -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

-The gas methane can be found from Uranus.

-From space, the brightest man-made place is Las Vegas, Nevada.

-The earth rotates east on its axis.

-Saturn is the only planet that could float on water.

-The 21st century started in 2001, not 2000.

-On AOL, women outnumber men.

-Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow the film down so you could see his moves.

-The lightning that we see actually goes from the ground to the sky.

-There are approximately ten million bricks in the Empire State Building.

-A dentist invented the electric chair.

-The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

-A watched clock never boils..

-In the constellation of Pisces, 100 million light-years from Earth, two galaxies are smashing together in a dramatic demonstration of our far future: when the Milky Way collides with the Andromeda Galaxy.

-Lightening is 3 times hotter than the surface of the sun. The surface temperature of our sun is around 10,000 degrees Farenheit, while lightening is 30,000 degrees.

-A light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a year..about 9.46 million million kilometers.

-For North America the Earth is actually closer to the Sun in the Winter.

-Stars twinkle because the light we see coming from the stars travels through the atmosphere around the earth and there is turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.

-If you were to drive a car at 100 kilometers an hour, 24 hours a day then you could reach the sun in about 3 years.

-If we could travel in a space ship at a speed of 50,000 kilometers per hour, it would take over 88,000 years to reach the nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri.

-Our sun is moving at 12 miles-per-second towards the constellation Hercules.
-If the sun were the size of the dot over a letter "i", the nearest star would be a dot 10 miles away.

-Every square yard of the sun's surface sends out energy equal to the power of 700 automobiles. About one two-billionth of this energy actually reaches us.

-A pulsar is a neutron star that emits pulsed radio signals. The first pulsar was discovered in 1967.

-A protostar is a portion of a nebula that is about to form into a new star.

-A faculae is an area on the surface of a star that appears brighter by comparison to surrounding regions.

-Some stars are 600,000 times as bright as our own sun.

-Of the 92 "natural" elements on Earth, 2/3 have been found in the sun. The rest are probably present as well.

-The evening star is actually a planet, usually Mercury or Venus, when seen in the western sky just after sunset.

-Mercury is more dense than any object in the solar system, save Earth.

-Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with temperatures reaching 860 degrees Fahrenheit! It is so hot, that it can melt lead!

-Venus has an extensive atmosphere with the high albedo of 76%, which completely covers and hides the surface.

-The canals of Mars, now known to be an optical illusion, were once touted as evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

-The Martian "day" is only slightly longer than a day on Earth. On Mars, a day is 24 hours, 37 minutes, 23 seconds long whereas on Earth, a day is 23 hours 56 minutes, 04 seconds long.

-Uranus is unique among the planets in that its equitorial plane is almost perpendicular to the orbital plane.

-Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal - Henry Ford (1863-1947)

-I'll sleep when I'm dead - Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

-There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

-When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

-While we are postponing, life speeds by - Seneca (3BC - 65AD)

-First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

-Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die - Mel Brooks

-Wit is educated insolence - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

-The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is actually redshifted towards us. That means that the Milky Way and Andromeda are rushing towards each other.

-Quasars are the most distant objects in the known universe.

-If you could fly across our Galaxy from one side to the other at light speed, it would take 100,000 years to make the trip.

-The largest galaxy discovered yet is over 137 Million light years across.

-The formula for determining magnification is M= FT / FE where M = Magnification, FT - Focal Length of telescope, and FE = Focal Length of eyepiece. Be sure to convert all numbers to similar convention; metric or otherwise.

-The first telescope was put to practical use in 1609 by Galileo. It was a simple refractor.

-Death is more universal the life, everyone dies, not everyone lives.

-Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

-War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased god to afflict men.

-It is well war is terrible, or we should get to fond of it.

-Was is a series of disasters which results in a winner.

-It is not that i am afraid to die, i just don't want to be there when it happens.

-Once the game is over, the king and pawn go back in the same box.

-The 200-inch mirror for the telescope on Palomar Mountain weights over 14 tons and is 27-inches thick. The telescope gathers 640,000 times as much light as the human eye.

-Astronomy is considered a "passive" science compared to most others because knowledge is based mostly upon observation rather than experimentation.

-Absolute Magnitude is the magnitude that any star would have if it were placed exactly 10 parsecs from the observer.

-Light from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth. The light we see today from the next nearest star was emitted about four years ago. -Light from the nearest galaxy like our own, Andromeda, takes over 2 million years to reach us.

-By studying the properties of galaxies at different epochs, we can map the evolution of the universe.

-Almost any valid C program is also a valid C++ program and, in fact, the addition of about 12 keywords is the only reason that some C programs will not compile and execute as a C++ program.

-Intel temporarily cut its chip set production to focus on mobile products such as Centrino.

-Avoid touching the card-edge-connectors on Ram modules or expansion boards and the top of your cpu before you install the heat sink.

-Biometric fingerprint readers make it easier to log into your pc.

-A survey showed half of all US firms dealt with computer porn last year, and offenders were fired in 44% of the cases.

-Paper was made in the second century BC in China. The process was a closely guarded secret until the 7th century where it spread to Japan, and later to Arabia. It reached Europe when the Arabs invaded Spain in 711.

-Simple dobsonian telescopes are cheap, practical telescopes for beginner and intermediate observers. -Many seasoned observers also use large dobsonians.
-One parsec is equal to 19.2 million million miles.

-Plasma is an ionized gas.

-Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs make actual and important contributions to the science.

-In general the left and right hemispheres of your brain process information in different ways. We tend to process information using our dominant side. However, the learning process is enhanced when all of our senses are used. This includes using your less dominate hemisphere.

-If you are left-brained, you would enjoy making a master schedule and doing daily planning. You complete tasks in order and take pleasure in checking them off when they are accomplished. Likewise, learning things in sequence is relatively easy for you ie spelling.

-If you are right-brained,you may flit from one task to another. You will get just as much done if not more but perhaps without having addressed priorities. An assignment may be late or incomplete, not because you weren't working, but because you were working on something else.

-The left brain has no trouble processing symbols. Many academic pursuits deal with symbols such as letters, words, and mathematical notations. The left-brained person tends to be comfortable with linguistic and mathematical endeavors.

-The right brain, on the other hand, wants things to be concrete. The right-brained person wants to see, feel, or touch the real object. -Right-brained people may have had trouble learning to read using phonics. They prefer to see words in context and to see how the formula works.

-The first family of viruses for windows Vista were unleashed after it was in beta for only a week, subsequently microsoft will cut the potential target, the Monad scripting shell, from Vista's first general release.

-Mirrors, your body and chicken wire in the walls can block wifi radio signals.

-A study has shown most blog visitors are young wealthy people.

-Microsofts proposed new RFID postal system will allow both the sender an receiver to track the exact location of the package.

-Left-brained people have little trouble expressing themselves in words. Right-brained people may know what they mean but often have trouble finding the right words.

-The pencil was invented independently around 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Contre of France and Joseph Hardtmuth of Austria.

-Radio waves travel at the speed of light (approx.186,000mps). The frequency of a wave is measured in hertz, the terms for thousands and millions of cycles per seconds are 'kilohertz' and 'megahertz'.

-Radio waves consist of two components, a varying magnetic field and a varying electric field, which lie @ right angles to each other, the fields need no supporting medium, such as air, and can be transmitted through space.

-Vaccine, from the latin 'vacca', which means cow.

-The oldest known watch was made in 1504 by Peter Henlein of Nuremburg, Germany, and is now in the Imperial Hall, Philadelphia.

-Random facts are well known for stimulating your brain. They help keep your brain younger, sharper, and generally more pleasant to be around.

-The average person spends 1 - 2 months during a lifetime looking aimlessly into the fridge for something to eat.

-If a man watches a woman undress in front of a window, he can be arrested as a peeping tom, if a woman watches a man undress in front of a window, she can have him arrested for indecent exposure.

-In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."

-Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.

-The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.

-You are a cosmic thought manifested into form to play the game of life..

-No president of the United States was an only child.

-An axiom is a statement universally accepted as true, like an established principal or law of science.

-A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.

-Experience: A name we give to our mistakes.

-Happiness can't buy money.

-You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.

-Laughter is the closest distance between two people.

-The only difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is your point of view.

-Inflation is a result of legalized counterfeiting.

-The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

-It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one...

-Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

-Money can't buy happiness, but allows a choice of misery.

-The chances of your dying on the trip to buy your Lotto ticket is greater than your chance of winning..

-If you sit around anywhere long enough, you'll die.

-Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you've made it again.

-Bride in the old english means 'cook', a groom on the other hand means 'Child', make of that what you will..

-"Maturity is knowing when and where to be immature."

-"People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them."

-"God loves stupid people, that's why he made so many."

-"The mind is like a parachute, it works best when it's open."

-"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page."

-"Achievement is a balance between desire to win and fear of failure."

-"It's so easy to let the fear of failure to get the upper hand and to shrink into passivity and negative thinking."

-"If you can't imagine it, you can't do it."

-"People may not remember what you said or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel!"

-"The Sanskrit word 'Namaste' means 'I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you of love, of truth, of peace, and of light, and when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. <<>>"

-"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."

-"To live a creative life, we must face our fear of being wrong."

-"Aim for success, not perfection. It is by being wrong often that we learn new things and move forward with our lives."

-"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them."

-"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends."

-"Man cannot discover new lands without losing sight of the shore."

-"One ounce of action is worth more than a ton of theory."

-"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do"

-"Tell me and I may forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand."

-"The Dictionary is the only place where success comes before work."

-"Age is relative - when you're over the hill, you pick up speed."

-"Tell the truth, there's less to remember."

-"An error only becomes a mistake, when you choose to ignore it."

-"There are two ways to be rich - make more or desire less."

-"Every day is a great a day, just some are greater than others."

-"Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can't, you are right !"

-"The man who smiles when everything goes wrong, has just thought of someone to blame it on"

-"Never put off until tomorrow, that which can be completely avoided."

-"There can be no rainbow without rain."

-"You're not a failure because you didn't make it, you're a success because you tried."

-"Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday, and all is well."

-"If life gives you lemons, then make lemonade."

-"If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't more people happy?"

-"Your mind is like a parachute - It works best when open."

-"Happiness isn't getting what you want, it's wanting what you've already got."

-"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."

-"Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

-"Ability is what you're capable of doing, motivation determines what you do, attitude determines how well you do it."

-"Leadership is doing what is right when no-one is watching."

-"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."

-"The bad news is time flies, the good news is you're the pilot."

-"He who asks questions is a fool for a minute, he who doesn't is a fool for life."

-"Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress."

-"The greatest mistake a man can ever make is to be afraid of making one."

-"No man is smart, except by comparison to those who know less Edgar Watson Howe"

-"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it, boldness has genius, power, and magic"

-"Even if you are on the right track, you'll still get run over if you just sit there."

-"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling"

-"Heaven isn't a place, it's a feeling"

-"Our enemies are sacred because they make us strong"

-"What you are is what you have been, and what you will be is what you do now"

-"If you try you may fail, if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail"

-"The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can't, but in the things you've never considered"

-"You can not prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair"

-"When you want to be honored by others, you learn to honor them first."

-"Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important"

-"To a shaman imagination is a vehicle that sends thoughts and feelings to make real changes in the physical world"

-"When we judge something we only prove that we have an incomplete view of it"

-"You are not your thoughts!"

-"Reality is where your consciousness is located"

-"The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth"

-"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us."

-"Judge people less on their mistakes than on how they handle their mistakes"

-"Government is like gravity, it doesn't matter whether you believe in it or not, accept it"

-"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect"

-"Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature can not be changed"

-"Success is not fame or money or the power to bewitch. it is to have created something valuable from your own individuality and skill"

-"Some things have to be believed to be seen"

-"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital"

-"A word to the wise is... unnecessary"

-"Dreams are pictures of feelings."

-"Fortune knocks but once, misfortune has much more patience"

-"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice."

<<< "I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with" >>> Plato...427-347 bc

-"The faults of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive"

-"Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself."

-"Do you know at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity if you so desire?"

-"God does not play dice with the universe."

-"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

-"Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary."

-"I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research."

-"Why does this applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."

-"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."

-"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

-"The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder."

-"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. "

-"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

-"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

-"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science"

-"When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Never the less, no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact perdiction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature."

-"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being."

-"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them hither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside"

-"I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."

-"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."

-"Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality".

-"I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up."

-"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."

-"When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of the globe, he doesn't realize that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it."

-"I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive."

-"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer."

-"If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber."

-"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music."

-"What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck," for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

-"My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary."

-"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue."

-"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

-"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."

-"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

-"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." or sometimes quoted as "God does not play dice with the universe."

-"When the solution is simple, God is answering."

-"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism...."

-"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

-"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

-"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

-"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."

-"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."

-"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

-"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

-"What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck," for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

-"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

-"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."

-"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

-"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy."

-"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

-"The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle."

-"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ."

-"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others ."

-"Only a life lived for others is a life worth while ."

-"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within ."

-"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible."

-"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

-"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism"

-"It is only to the individual that a soul is given."

-"In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself."

-"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them."

-"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

-"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom."

---When asked how World War III would be fought, Einstein replied that he didn't know. But he knew how World War IV would be fought: With sticks and stones!---

-"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable loce-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

-"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."

-"Unless Americans come to realize that they are not stronger in the world because they have the bomb but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic attack, they are not likely to conduct their policy at Lake Success [the United Nations] or in their relations with Russia in a spirit that furthers the arrival at an understanding. "

-"The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational organization, equipped with a sufficiently strong executive power, can protect us."

-"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."

-"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty ."

-"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge ."

-"The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?"

-"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life.The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community." (So True)

-"One should guard against inculcating a young man {or woman} with the idea that success is the aim of life, for a successful man normally receives from his peers an incomparibly greater portion than than the services he has been able to render them deserve. The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving. The most important motive for study at school, at the university, and in life is the pleasure of working and thereby obtaining results which will serve the community. The most important task for our educators is to awaken and encourage these psychological forces in a young man {or woman}. Such a basis alone can lead to the joy of possessing one of the most precious assets in the world - knowledge or artistic skill."

-"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love"

-"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."

-"If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world."

-"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. "

-"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."

-"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." (1929)

-"Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become in jurious for the individual and for the community. "

-Experience is a tough teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards

-War isn't about who is right, it is about who is left.

-A man who wont die for something is not fit to live.

-You might as well fall flat on your face, as lean over too far backwards.

-In war there is no substitute for victory.

-Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.

-A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic..

-The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.

-Death is a very dull, drairy affair, my advice is to have nothing what-so-ever to do with it.

-The object is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.. G.C.Patton

-Every war we find a new way to kill.

-I don't believe in a fate that falls on men, however i believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

-Much good work is lost for lack of a little more.

-Man must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

-War is a game played with a smile, if you cant smile, grin, if you cant grin, stay out of the way till you can.

-Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

-Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

-Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

-Don't be so humble - you are not that great - Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

-This book fills a much-needed gap - Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

-The full use of your powers along lines of excellence - definition of"happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

-I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart - e e cummings (1894-1962)

-Give me a museum and I'll fill it - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

-In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

-I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

-Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems - Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"

-In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

-Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right - Henry Ford (1863-1947)

-Do or do not, there is no 'try' - Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

-The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

-Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed - George Burns (1896-1996)

-I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

-The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense - Edsgar Dijkstra

-A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems - Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

-Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back - Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

-The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

-If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

-Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws - Plato (427-347 B.C.)

-The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

-Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego' - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

-Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

-I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song.

-Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

-Talent does what it can; genius does what it must - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

-The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed' - Unknown

-Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship - Sharon Stone

-If you are going through hell, keep going - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

-He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how' - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

-I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

-Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

-God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh - Voltaire (1694-1778)

-He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

-I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

-I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them - Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

-When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world - George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

-How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself - Anais Nin (1903-1977)

-I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

-Maybe this world is another planet's Hell - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

-Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth - Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

-Black holes are where God divided by zero - Steven Wright

-It's kind of fun to do the impossible - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

-The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true - James Branch Cabell

-All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

-You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it - Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

-I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth - Umberto Eco

-People that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

-The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

-Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working - Albert Giacometti (sculptor)

-There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life - Frank Zappa

-Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away - Antoine de Saint Exupery

-It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts - G. B. Burgin

-Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action - Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

-To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

-Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. ) - Jimi Hendrix

-It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

-If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough - Mario Andretti.

-I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means - Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925

-My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher - Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

-It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

-The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

-In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience - W.B. Prescott

-It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

-A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

-Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

-From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

-In the end, everything is a gag - Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

-I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

-If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

-An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out - Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

-Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug - Jon Lithgow

-Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories - John Wilmot

-There's nothing that keeps its youth,So far as I know, but a tree and truth - Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Deacon's Masterpiece, 1858

-It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself - Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

-Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'The Tempest'

-A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward - Jean Paul Richter (1763 - 1825)

-By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher - Socrates

-The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance - Socrates

-I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either - Jack Benny (1894 - 1974)

-Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.

-Among the Abipone people of Paraguay, individuals who abstain from alcohol are thought to be "cowardly, degenerate and stupid."

-An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

-The hummingbird, the loon, the swift, the kingfisher, and the grebe are all birds that cannot walk.

-A Cornish game hen is really a young chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.

-An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.

-Strychnine was in Hitler's anti-gas pills which he took daily. It was suspected his doctor was trying to assassinate him slowly..

-In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

-Random facts have always made for good conversation starters. Have an ample supply of random facts to grease your social interactions. Careful, however, not to be overdo it, as Confucious says, "Man who tell too many light bulb jokes soon burn out."

-In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase, "Goodnight, sleep tight."

-Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air.

-Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

-10 percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.

-In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to Mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That's why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.

-The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

-American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

-A battalion is about 5,000 men.

-China has more English speakers than the United States.

-A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.

-Beaver teeth are so sharp that Native Americans once used them as knife blades.

-The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930.

-The anaconda, one of the world's largest snakes, gives birth to its young instead of laying eggs.

-The US Navy submarine have been using active sonar technology, a deafening burst of noise that is dangerous even 300 miles from it's source. Some mid-frequency sonar systems can put out over 235 decibels, about as loud as a rocket launch.Animals for hundreds of miles literally jump out of the water to try to avoid the sound. The effects vary, causing internal bleeding and bursting organs including lungs and eardrums. Next time you see news about beached dolphins, now you know why.

-Cat's urine glows under a black light.

-Thai researchers have succeeded in generating electricity from natural gas made from elephant dung.

-Can't see the morons for the trees Illinois State University has cleared away the trees in front of Stevenson Hall so they can begin construction of the sculptured centerpiece of its Fell Arboretum, an area set aside for the preservation and study of trees. -- Bonehead of the Millennium Award

-When the U.S. began the occupation of Iraq 72% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein ORDERED the September 11th attacks, despite the fact that none of these people ever saw any evidence to support it. In the realm of the uniformed, having a leader is more important than having facts.

-Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

-The largest blue whale caught was a 110-foot female. It is not known how the angler got this beast home or how he (we can assume it's a he, can't we?) fit it in the freezer.

-The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

-In the ant kingdom some ants are soldiers, or army ants. These soldier ants are so genetically designed to fight, pinch, clamp and sting their giant pincers prevent them from feeding themselves. They must rely on other ants to feed them.

-It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.

-An ostrich does not stick it's head in a hole to hide.

-Although bourbon is Kentucky's leading export and its production directly employs thousands of people, it is illegal to buy the product in the very counties in which it is produced. They are all, to this day, still dry.

-BEIJING, July 22(Xinhuanet)-A young monkey at an Israeli zoo has started walking on its hind legs only, like humans, after a near death experience. Natasha, a 5-year-old black macaque at the Safari Park near Tel Aviv, was diagnosed with severe stomach flu with three other monkeys and slipped into critical condition two weeks ago. CRIENGLISH.com reported Thursday. After intensive treatment, her condition stabilized. But to everyone's surprise, when she was released from the clinic, she began walking upright like a human. Her veterinarian says the only possible explanation is that the monkey suffered brain damage from the illness.

-A tortoise can live up to 140 years old. Amazingly some do despite the fact that a tortoise must never fall on it's back, because a tortoise on it's back is a dead tortoise.

-Siamese fighting fish must be kept isolated because they will fight, immediately, often to the death. In an experiment, 2 fish were dropped in a lake. Would this be enough space? Were these tiny fish interested in exploring? No, immediately started fighting.

-A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.

-A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.

-Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine.

-Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

-Hitler slept in and could not be woken when the beaches of Normandy (10 years of Parkinson causes mental inflexibility in all patients) were stormed. and refused to send reinforcements for over 48 hours.

-A cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum (storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices).

-Scientists revealed that the world's oceans have soaked up half of the carbon dioxide pumped into the air by human activities since the beginning of the industrial age, according to two new studies.

-His ignorance is encyclopedic - Abba Eban (1915-2002)

-If a man does his best, what else is there? - General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

-I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better - A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

-People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

-Give me chastity and continence, but not yet - Saint Augustine (354-430)

-Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

-Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

-A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use - Galileo Galilei

-The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work - Emile Zola (1840-1902)

-Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.

-In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.

-The Chinese, during the reign of Kublai Khan, used lions on hunting expeditions. They trained the big cats to pursue and drag down massive animals - from wild bulls to bears - and to stay with the kill until the hunter arrived.

-The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows.

-The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in 17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats and dogs" and led to the current expression.

-The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly. It lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind, and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 70 million years.

-Health regulators estimated that up to 93 percent of silicone breast implants ruptured within 10 years.

-A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.

-Why don't humans get along? Principled people with high 'morals' or 'values', plenty of 'devotion', 'passion' etc., and limited information. Those with heavy 'emotional' investments in a particular point of view are most troublesome.

-The Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years, its entire life-span.

-The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can't retract its claws.

-The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building(they may have fixed the problem by now..)

-The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

-A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.

-A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.

-The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

-Chicha, an alcohol beverage which has been made for thousands of years in Central and South America, begins with people chewing grain and spitting into a vat. An enzyme in saliva changes starch in the grain to sugar, which then ferments.
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-ABN AMRO- In the 1960s, the Nederlandse Handelmaatschappij (Dutch Trading Society 1824) and the Twentsche Bank merged to form the Algemene Bank Nederland ( ABN General Bank of the Netherlands). In 1966, the Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank merged to form the Amro Bank. In 1991, ABNand Amro Bank merged to form ABN AMRO.

-Acccenture- Accent on the Future. Greater-than 'accent' over the logo's t points forward towards the future. The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norwayas part of a internal name finding process (BrandStorming). Prior to January 1, 2001 the company was called Andersen Consulting.

-Adidas- from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.

-Adobe- came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.

-AltaVista- Spanish for "high view".

-Amazon.com- Founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company to Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online bookstore as opposed to the then prevalent bookstores. (Alternative: It is said that Jeff Bezos named his book store Amazon simply to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo at the time. Yahoo listed entries alphabetically, and thus Amazon would always appear above its competitors in the relevant categories it was listed in).

-AMD- Advanced Micro Devices.

-Apache- The name was chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance. Secondarily, and more popularly (though incorrectly) accepted, it's considered a cute name that stuck: its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'a patchy' server â€" thus the name Apache.

-Apple- For the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computer if his colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple's Macintosh is named after a popular variety of apple sold in the US. Apple also wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by the other computer companies at the time had names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems, SAP, PSDI, Syncsort and Tesseract. The new company sought to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that was unlike the names of traditional computer companies, a name that also supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh', known now as just 'Mac'.

-AT&T- American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation officially changed its name to AT&T in the 1990s.

-Bauknecht- Founded as an electro technical workshop in 1919 by Gottlob Bauknecht.

-BBC- Stands for British Broadcasting Corporation.

-BenQ- Bringing ENjoyment and Quality to life.

-Blaupunkt- Blaupunkt (Blue dot) was founded in 1923 under the name Ideal. Their core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark, and the trademark would become the company name in 1938.

-BMW- Abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories).

-Borealis- The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, is the celestial phenomenon that features bursts of light in colorful patterns dancing across the night skies of the north. Borealis, inspired from the shining brilliance of the Northern Lights, was formed in 1994 out of the merger between two northern oil companies, Norway's Statoil and Finland's Neste.

-BP- Formerly British Petroleum, now "BP" (The slogan "Beyond Petroleum" has incorrectly been taken to refer to the company's new name following its re-branding effort in 2000).

-BRAC- Abbreviation for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, world's largest NGO (non governmental organization). It works in development programs around the world.

-Bridgestone- Named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (??) means "stone bridge", i.e. "bridge of stone".

-Bull- Compagnie des machines Bull was founded in Paristo exploit the patents for punched card machines taken out by a Norwegian engineer, Fredrik Rosing Bull.

-Cadillac- Cadillac was named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe , sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France.

-Canon- Originally (1933) Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

-CGI- From the first letter of Information Management Consultant in french (Conseiller en Gestion et Informatique).

-Cisco- Short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co" -- Computer Information Services was the department at StanfordUniversitythat the founders worked in.

-COBRA- Computadores Brasileiros, "Brazilian Computers", electronics and services company, was the first state-owned designer and producer of computers in the 1970s, later acquired by the Banco do Brazil.

-Coca-Cola- Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better.

-Colgate-Palmolive- Formed from a merger of soap manufacturers Colgate & Company and Palmolive-Peet. Peet was dropped in 1953. Colgate was named after WilliamColgate, an English immigrant, who set up a starch, soap and candle business in New York Cityin 1806. Palmolive was named for the two oils (Palm and Olive) used in its manufacture.

-Compaq- From "comp" for computer, and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable.

-Comsat- An American digital te