If Wal-Mart were its own economy, it would rank 20th in the world, with a GDP between those of Greece and Ukraine. It is the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico and Canada. It holds an 8.9 percent retail store market share, with $8.90 out of every $100 spent in U.S. retail stores being spent at Wal-Mart.

[wikipedia]

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The Gregorian Calendar

November 17, 2008

1 January : the first day of the year in the Gregorian calendar used by most developed countries.

The Gregorian calendar is the calendar that is used nearly everywhere in the world. A modification of the Julian calendar, it was first proposed by the Neapolitan doctor Aloysius Lilius, and was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 (Note: The papal bull Inter gravissimas was signed in the year 1581 for unknown reasons, but printed on 1 March 1582. Although the use of the date 1581 is often attributed to the supposed adoption by the papacy of a reckoning by which the year began on 25 March, other contemporaneous papal bulls have years that do not agree with March years, let alone years since a pope was named or other types of years.)

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The mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute in 1963 after extensive usability testing. It was also called the bug, but eventually this was dropped in favor of mouse. It was one of several experimental pointing devices developed for Engelbart’s on-Line System (NLS), which was both a hardware and software system. The other devices were designed to exploit other body movements; for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose, but ultimately, the mouse won out because of its simplicity and convenience.
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Undulating Numbers

November 16, 2008

An undulating number is any number that has the form ababab… when in the base 10 number system. It is only considered after at least three digits, because otherwise all numbers below 100 would be undulating. The first 20 such numbers are: 101, 111, 121, 131, 141, 151, 161, 171, 181, 191, 202, 212, 222, 232, 242, 252, 262, 272, 282, 292 (sequence A046075 in OEIS)

Some higher undulating numbers are: 99999, 1717171, 6363, 7777, 80808.  Below 10,000 there are exactly 180 undulating numbers.

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Origin of the Word Dollar

November 15, 2008

The United States dollar derives from the Spanish 8 reales coin which was composed of just under one ounce of silver. This coin was popular among American colonists, who called it the Spanish dollar, the name having derived from a German coin of similar size and composition known as the thaler.

[wikipedia]

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