November's History

November's History:

1st November:
1179 – Philip II is crowned King of France.
1604 – William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
1876 – New Zealand's provincial government system is dissolved.
1961 – 50,000 women in 60 cities participate in the inaugural Women Strike for Peace (WSP) against nuclear proliferation.

2nd November:
1889 – North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
1964 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal.
1988 – The Morris worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.

3rd November:
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea.
1812 – Napoleon's armies are defeated at Vyazma.
1911 – Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T.

4th November:
1429 – Joan of Arc liberated Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
1861 – The University of Washington opens in Seattle, Washington as the Territorial University.
1970 – Genie, a 13-year-old feral child is found in Los Angeles, California having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.
5th November:
1780 – French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1872 – Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
2007 – China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon.
6th November:
1856 – The first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot is submitted for publication.
1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1947 – Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
7th November:
1665 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.
1893 – Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote.

8th November:
1889 – Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.
1976 – A series of earthquakes spreads panic in the city of Thessaloniki, which is evacuated.

9th November:
1492 – Peace of Etaples between Henry VII and Charles VIII.
1729 – Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.
1945 – Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan is founded.

10th November:
1938 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, dies.
1997 – WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).

11th November:
1889 – Washington is admitted as the 42nd U.S. state.
1918 – Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power.
2008 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage to Dubai.

12th November:
1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
1936 – In California, the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.
1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.

13th November:
1971 – The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.
2002 – The oil tanker Prestige sinks off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill.
14th November:
1922 – The BBC begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
2002 – Argentina defaults on an $805 million World Bank payment.

15th November:
1854 – In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is given the necessary royal concession.
1971 – Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.

16th November:
1973 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
2000 – Bill Clinton becomes the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.
.
17th November:
1800 – The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.
1905 – The Eulsa Treaty is signed between Japan and Korea.
2005 – Italy's national anthem, Il Canto degli Italiani, becomes official for the first time, almost 60 years after it is provisionally chosen following the birth of the republic.

18th November:
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights what is now Puerto Rico.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.

19th November:
1816 – Warsaw University is established.
1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.

20th November:
1789 – New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1984 – The SETI Institute is founded.
1998 – The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched.

21st November:
1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
2004 – The island of Dominica is hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history. The northern half of the island receives the most damage, especially the town of Portsmouth. It is also felt in neighboring Guadeloupe, where one person is killed.

22nd November:
1858 – Denver, Colorado is founded.
1922 – Egyptology: Howard Carter, assisted by Lord Carnarvon, opens the tomb of Tutankhamun.
2008 – YouTube hosts the largest ever live broadcast, YouTube Live.

23rd November:
1936 – The first edition of Life is published.
1963 – The BBC broadcast the first ever episode of Doctor Who starring William Hartnell which would become the world's longest Science-Fiction Drama to date.

24th November:
1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieged La Charité.
1966 – New York City experiences the smoggiest day in the city's history.

25th November:
1867 – Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
1952 – Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London and eventually becomes the longest continuously-running play in history.
1975 – Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands.

26th November:
1842 – The University of Notre Dame is founded.
1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
1990 – The Delta II rocket makes its maiden flight.

27th November:
1912 – Spain declares a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco.
1924 – In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
2005 – The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.

28th November:
1785 – The Treaty of Hopewell is signed.
1912 – Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1975 – East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.

29th November:
1922 – Howard Carter opens the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the public.
1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.
2007 – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake occurs off the northern coast of Martinique. This affected the Eastern Caribbean as far north as Puerto Rico and as south as Trinidad.

30th November:
1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
1967 – The People's Republic of South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

Charles Dickens (Legendary Author)

Charles Dickens:

Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print. A concern with what he saw as the pressing need for social reform is a theme that runs throughout his work.

Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialised form, a favoured way of publishing fiction at the time. Other writers of the time would complete entire novels before serial publication commenced, but Dickens often wrote his in parts, in the order in which they were meant to appear. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one cliffhanger after another to keep the public eager for the next instalment. Critics and fellow-novelists such as George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton have applauded Dickens for his mastery of prose, and for his teeming gallery of unique characters, many of whom have acquired iconic status in the English-speaking world. Others such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf have accused him of sentimentality and implausibility.

Early Years of Charles Dickens:

Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, in Landport, Portsmouth, in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Barrow, 1789–1863). He was christened at St Mary's Church in Portsea on 4 March 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town, in London.

Birthplace of Dickens: No. 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport (now 393 Commercial Road, Portsmouth)

His early years seem to have been an idyllic time, although he thought himself then a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy".He spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked, later in life, of his extremely poignant memories of childhood, and of his continuing photographic memory of the people and events that helped to bring his fiction to life. His family's early, moderate wealth provided the boy Dickens with some private education at William Giles's School, in Chatham. This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father spent beyond his means in entertaining and in retaining his social position, and was finally imprisoned at Marshalsea debtor's prison. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family joined him in residence at Marshalsea, south of the Thames, (except for Charles, who boarded in Camden Town at the house of family friend Elizabeth Roylance). Sundays became a treat, when with his sister Fanny, allowed out from the Royal Academy of Music, he spent the day at the Marshalsea. The prison provided the setting of one of his works, Little Dorrit, and is where the title character's father is imprisoned.

Just before his father's arrest, 12-year-old Dickens had begun working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on jars of thick shoe polish. This money paid for his lodgings with Mrs. Roylance and helped support his family. Mrs. Roylance, Dickens later wrote, was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family", and whom he eventually immortalized, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs. Pipchin", in Dombey & Son. Later, lodgings were found for him in a "back-attic...at the house of an insolvent-court agent, who lived in Lant Street in The Borough...he was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman...lame, with a quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent grown-up son, who was lame too"; these three were the inspiration for the Garland family in The Old Curiosity Shop.^[10] The mostly unregulated, strenuous—and often cruel—work conditions of the factory employees (especially children) made a deep impression on Dickens. His experiences served to influence later fiction and essays, and were the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor.

Writing Career:

Journalism and early novels

In 1833, Dickens was able to get his very first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk, published in the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. The following year he rented rooms at Furnival's Inn becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz which was published in 1836 and led to the serialization of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, in March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout much of his subsequent literary career. Dickens's keen perceptiveness, intimate knowledge and understanding of the people, and tale-spinning genius were quickly to gain him world renown and wealth.

An 1839 portrait of a young Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise

In 1836, Dickens accepted the job of editor of Bentley's Miscellany, a position that he would hold for three years, when he fell out with the owner. At the same time, his success as a novelist continued, producing Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41)—all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. Dickens had a pet raven named Grip which, when it died in 1841, Dickens had stuffed (it is now at the Free Library of Philadelphia).

On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1816 – 1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they set up home in Bloomsbury. They had ten children:

• Charles Culliford Boz Dickens C. C. B. Dickens, later known as Charles Dickens, Jr, editor for All the Year Round, author of the Dickens's Dictionary of London (1879).
• Mary Dickens
• Kate Macready Dickens
• Walter Landor Dickens
• Francis Jeffrey Dickens
• Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens
• Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens
• Sir Henry Fielding Dickens
• Dora Annie Dickens
• Edward Dickens Emigrated to Australia.

On 25 March 1837, Dickens moved with his family into 48 Doughty Street, London, (on which he had a three year lease at £80 a year) where he would remain until December 1839. A new addition to the household was Dickens's younger brother Frederick. Also, Catherine's 17 year old sister Mary moved with them from Furnival's Inn to offer support to her newly married sister and brother-in-law. It was not unusual for a woman's unwed sister to live with and help a newly married couple. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. She became a character in many of his books, and her death is fictionalized as the death of Little Nell

Death of Charles Dickens:

On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home, after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. The next day, on 9 June, and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, he died at Gad's Hill Place never having regained consciousness. The great author was mourned by all his readers. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner", he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads: "CHARLES DICKENS Born 7th February 1812 Died 9th June 1870." A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, June 9th, 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world."

On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens's interment in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent." Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue."^[41]

Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected to honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891 by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.

Greenland (The world's biggest island)

Greenland (The world's biggest island):

Greenland is an autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically associated with Europe (specifically Denmark) since the 18th century.

In 1979, Denmark granted home rule to Greenland, with a relationship known in Danish as Rigsfællesskabet, and in 2008 Greenland voted to transfer more competencies to the local government. This became effective the following year, with the Danish royal government remaining in charge only of foreign affairs, security and financial policy, and providing a subsidy of DKK 3.4 billion ($633m), or approximately US$11,300 per Greenlander, annually.

Greenland is, by area, the world's largest island that is not a continent, as well as the least densely populated country in the world. However, since the 1950s, scientists have hypothesized that the ice cap covering the country may actually conceal three separate island land masses that have been bridged by glacier.

History of the island (Greenland):

In prehistoric times Greenland was home to several successive Paleo-Eskimo cultures known primarily through archaeological findings. From around 2500 BC to 800 BC southern and western Greenland was inhabited by the Saqqaq culture. Most findings of Saqqaq period archaeological remains have been around Disko Bay. From 2400 BC to 1300 BC the Independence I culture existed in northern Greenland. It was a part of the Arctic small tool tradition.

Around 800 BC the Saqqaq culture disappeared and the Early Dorset culture emerged in western Greenland and the Independence II culture in northern Greenland. The Dorset culture was the first culture to extend throughout the Greenlandic coastal areas, both on the west and east coasts, and it lasted until the arrival of the Thule culture in 1500 AD. The Dorset culture population lived primarily from whale hunting. The Thule culture people are the ancestors of the current Greenlandic population. They started migrating from Alaska around 1000 AD, reaching Greenland around 1300 AD. The Thule culture was the first to introduce to Greenland such technological innovations as dog sleds and toggling harpoons.

From 986 AD, Greenland's west coast was colonised by Icelanders and Norwegians in two settlements on fjords near the southwestern-most tip of the island. They shared the island with the late Dorset culture inhabitants who occupied the northern and eastern parts, and later with the Thule culture arriving from the north. The settlements, such as Brattahlið, thrived for centuries but disappeared some time in the 15th century, perhaps at the onset of the Little Ice Age. It is debated whether data from ice cores indicate that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years - which makes it possible to say that areas of Greenland may have been much warmer during the medieval period than they are now and that the ice sheet contracted significantly.

These Icelandic settlements vanished during the 14th and 15th centuries, probably due to famine and increasing conflicts with the Inuit. The condition of human bones from this period indicates that the Norse population was malnourished, probably because of

• soil erosion resulting from the Norsemen's destruction of natural vegetation in the course of farming, turf-cutting, and wood-cutting,
• a decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age,
• armed conflicts with the Inuit.

Jared Diamond suggests that cultural practices, such as rejecting fish as a source of food and relying solely on livestock ill-adapted to Greenland's (deteriorating) climate, resulted in recurring famine which led to abandonment of the colony.However, isotope analysis of the bones of inhabitants shows that marine food sources supplied more and more of the diet of the Norse Greenlanders, making up between 50% and 80% of their diet by the 1300s.

Greenlanders are of a marriage in 1408 in the church of The last written records of the NorseHvalsey — today the best-preserved Norse ruins in Greenland.

In 1500, King Manuel I of Portugal sent Gaspar Corte-Real to Greenland in search of a Northwest Passage to Asia which, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, was part of the Portuguese area of influence. In 1501 Corte-Real returned with his brother, Miguel Corte-Real. Finding the Sea frozen, they headed South and arrived in Labrador and Newfoundland. It is possible that some Portuguese settlements were created there in that period, as attested in some maps.

In 1721 a joint mercantile and clerical expedition led by Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede was sent to Greenland, not knowing whether a Norse civilization remained there. The expedition can be seen as part of the Danish colonization of the Americas. After 15 years in Greenland, Hans Egede left his son Paul Egede in charge of the mission in Greenland and returned to Denmark where he established a Greenland Seminary. This new colony was centered at Godthåb ("Good Hope") on the southwest coast. Gradually, Greenland was opened up to Danish merchants, and closed to those from other countries.

Norway occupied and claimed parts of the then-uninhabited eastern Greenland (also called Erik the Red's Land) in July 1931, claiming that it constituted terra nullius. Norway and Denmark agreed to submit the matter in 1933 to the Permanent Court of International Justice, which decided against Norway.

Greenland's connection to Denmark was severed on 9 April 1940, early in World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Germany. Greenland was able to buy goods from the United States and Canada by selling cryolite from the mine at Ivittuut. During this war, the system of government changed: Governor Eske Brun ruled the island under a law of 1925 that allowed governors to take control under extreme circumstances; Governor Aksel Svane was transferred to the US to lead the commission to supply Greenland. A sledge patrol (in 1942, named the Sirius Patrol), guarding the northeastern shores of Greenland using dog sleds, detected several German weather stations and alerted American troops who then destroyed them.

Greenland had been a protected and very isolated society until 1940. The Danish government, which governed Greenland as its colony, had been convinced that this society would face exploitation from the outside world or even extinction if the country was opened up. But wartime Greenland developed a sense of self-reliance through self-government and independent communication with the outside world.

However, a commission in 1946 (with the highest Greenlandic council, the Landsrådene, as a participant) recommended patience and no radical reform of the system. Two years later, the first step towards a change of government was initiated when a grand commission was established. A final report (G-50) was presented in 1950: Greenland was to be a modern welfare state with Denmark as sponsor and example. In 1953, Greenland was made an equal part of the Danish Kingdom. Home rule was granted in 1979.

Geography of Greenland:

The total area of Greenland is 2,166,086 km² (836,109 sq mi), of which the Greenland ice sheet covers 1,755,637 km² (677,676 sq mi) (81%) and has a volume of approximately 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (680,000 cu mi). The coastline of Greenland is 39,330 km (24,430 miles) long, about the same length as the Earth's circumference at the Equator. The highest point on Greenland is Mkoliohn at 3,859 metres (12,119 ft). However, the majority of Greenland is under 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) elevation.

Southeast coast of Greenland

Nobel Prize (The Prestigious Prize)

Nobel Prize (Peace) :
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) was one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.

Background of the Prestigious Prize:
According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
Alfred Nobel's will stated that the prize should be awarded by a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Norway and Sweden were at that time still in union, and with Sweden responsible for all foreign policy, Nobel felt that the prize might be less subject to political corruption if awarded by Norway. The Peace Prize is presented annually in Oslo, in the presence of the king, on December 10 (the anniversary of Nobel's death), and is the only Nobel Prize not presented in Stockholm. In Oslo, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway. The Nobel Laureate then receives a diploma, a medal and a document confirming the prize amount.
The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony is held at the Oslo City Hall, followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is broadcast to more than 450 million households in over 150 countries around the world. The concert has received worldwide fame and the participation of top celebrity hosts and performers.Scholars who studied Nobel have said it was Nobel's way to compensate for developing destructive forces (Nobel's inventions included dynamite and ballistite). None of his explosives, except for ballistite, were used in any war during his lifetime,although the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist organization, did carry out dynamite attacks in the 1880sand he was instrumental in turning Bofors from an iron company to an armaments company whilst he owned it.

The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.

Floorball

Floorball, a type of floor hockey, is an indoor team sport which was developed in the 1970s. It is a fast paced sport, with limited physical contact allowed. Floorball is most popular in areas where the sport has developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland.^{[citation needed]} The game is played indoors on a gym floor, making it a year-round sport at the amateur and professional levels. There are professional leagues, such as Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan.

While there are 49 members of the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland have finished in most of the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at the Floorball World Championships.

In addition to those four countries, floorball is gaining popularity in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United States.

Although the history of floorball's origins is unknown, it is believed that North Americans that immigrated to Scandinavia developed the game from ball hockey in the 1970s.^{[citation needed]} The game is believed to have originated in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime at schools, and pre-season training for bandy clubs. After a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden, where the once school pastime was becoming a developed sport. Formal rules soon were developed, and clubs began to form. After some time, several countries developed national associations, and the IFF was founded in 1986.

The game of floorball is also known by many other names, such as salibandy (in Finland), innebandy (in Sweden and Norway), and unihockey (in Switzerland). The names 'salibandy' and 'innebandy' are derived from a sport similar to hockey called bandy. Both of those names literally translate to 'indoor bandy'.

Expansion:

When the IFF was founded in 1986, the sport was played in mostly Scandinavian countries, Japan, and several parts of Europe. By 1990, floorball was recognized in 7 countries, and by the time of the first European Floorball Championships in 1994, that number had risen to 14. That number included the United States, who were the first country outside of Europe and Asia to recognize floorball ^[1]. By the time of the first men's world championships in 1996, 20 nations played floorball, with 12 of them participating at the tournament.

As of 2009, the sport of floorball has been played in almost 80 countries. Of those, 49 have national floorball associations that are recognized by the IFF. With the addition of Sierra Leone, Africa's first floorball nation, the IFF has at least one national association on each continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica.

Thomas Edison

Thomas Elva Edison:

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Early Life of Edison:
Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel "The Iron Shovel" Edison, Jr. (1804–1896) (born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). He considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry. In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother homeschooled him. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections. Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears. Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854, but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still in existence and is one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

^{Death of the Great Scientist:}

Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He is buried behind the home.

Mina died in 1947. Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.

October's History

October in history:
1st october:
1811 – The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orléans, Louisiana.
1814 – Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw the Europe's political map after the defeat of Napoléon the previous spring.
1843 – The News of the World tabloid began publication in London.
1887 – Balochistan conquered by the British Empire. 1908 – Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825.
2nd october:
1789 – George Washington sends the proposed Constitutional amendments (The United States Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.
1889 – In Colorado, Nicholas Creede strikes it rich in silver during the last great silver boom of the American Old West.
1925 – John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system.
1941 – World War II: In Operation Typhoon, Germany begins an all-out offensive against Moscow.
1958 – Guinea declares its independence from France.
3rd october:
1845 – The US Naval Academy is first opened.
1863 – The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by President Abraham Lincoln as are Thursdays, November 30, 1865 and November 29, 1866.
1873 – Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War.
1932 – Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.
4th october:
1209 – Otto IV is crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Innocent III. 1227 – Assassination of Caliph al-Adil.
1537 – The first complete English-language Bible (the Matthew Bible) is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
1777 – Battle of Germantown: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under Sir William Howe.
5th october:
610 – Coronation of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius.
1665 – The University of Kiel is founded. 1864 – The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die.
6th october:
1762 – Seven Years' War: conclusion of the Battle of Manila between Britain and Spain, which resulted in the British occupation of Manila for the rest of the war.
1854 – The Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead starts shortly after midnight, leading to 53 deaths and hundreds injured.
7th october:
1828 – The city of Patras, Greece, is liberated by the French expeditionary force in Peloponnese under General Maison.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War – Siege of Paris: Leon Gambetta flees Paris in a balloon.
8th october:
1813 – The Treaty of Ried was signed between Bayern and Austria.
1956 – New York Yankees's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series; one of only 18 perfect games in MLB history.
9th october:
768 – Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks.
1806 – Prussia declares war on France.
10th october:
680 – Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali by forces under , the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is decapitatedCaliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Muslims as Aashurah.
1957 – The Windscale fire in Cumbria, U.K. is the world's first major nuclear accident.
11th october:
1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia's oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney.
1910 – Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey in a plane built by the Wright Brothers at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri.
12th october:
1792 – First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York.
1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in unison by students in US public schools.
13th october:
1777 – After his defeat on October 7, 1777, General John Burgoyne's Army at The Battles of Saratoga .
1884 – Greenwich is established as universal time meridian of longitude.
14th october:
1789 – George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day. 1888 – Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene.
15th october:
1878 – The Edison Electric Light Company begins operation.
1888 – The "From Hell" letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by the investigators. 1932 – Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.
16th october:
1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.
1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.
17th october:
1888 – Thomas Edison files a patent for the Optical Phonograph (the first movie).
1941 – For the first time in World War II, a German submarine attacks an American ship.
18th october:
1648 – Boston Shoemakers form first U.S. labor organization.
1908 – Belgium annexes the Congo Free State.
1914 – The Schoenstatt Movement is founded in Germany.
19th october:
1914 – The First Battle of Ypres begins.
1917 – Love Field in Dallas, Texas is opened.
20th october:
1944 – The Soviet Army and Yugoslav Partisans liberate Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.
1910 – The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic, is launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
21st october:
1096 – Turkish army annihilates the People's Army of the West, People's Crusade.
1854 – Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
22nd october:
1878 – The first rugby match under floodlights takes place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton.
1924 – Toastmasters International is founded.
1956 – A concrete girder weighing 200 tons kills 48 in Karachi, Pakistan.
23rd october:
1642 – Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1929 – The first North American transcontinental air service begins between New York City and Los Angeles, California.
1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convened for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
24th october:
1901 – Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
1917 – The day of the October revolution, The Red Revolution.
25th october:
1760 – George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1147 – Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
26th october:
1825 – The Erie Canal opens – passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.
1861 – The Pony Express officially ceased operations.
27th october:
939 – Edmund I succeeds Athelstan as King of England.
1524 – Italian Wars: The French troops lay siege to Pavia.
1810 – United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.
1958 – Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed in a bloodless coup d'état by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier.
28th october:
1775 – American Revolutionary War: A British proclamation forbids residents from leaving Boston.
1886 – In New York Harbor, President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty.
29th october:
1658 – Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle).
1863 – Sixteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross.
30th october:
758 – Guangzhou is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates.
1485 – King Henry VII of England is crowned.
1929 – The Stuttgart Cable Car is constructed in Stuttgart, Germany.
31st october:
1864 – Nevada is admitted as the 36th U.S. state.
1876 – A monster cyclone ravages India, resulting in over 200,000 deaths.
1926 – Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured.