How Big Names Started

GM

General Motors Corp the world's largest vehicle manufacturer, employs about 325,000 people globally. Founded in 1908, GM has been the global automotive sales leader since 1931. GM today has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 192 countries.

In 2003, GM sold nearly 8.6 million cars and trucks, about 15 percent of the global vehicle market. GM's global headquarters are at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit.

The GM Group of global partners includes Fiat Auto SpA of Italy, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., IsuzuMotors Ltd. and Suzuki Motor Corp. of Japan, which are involved in various product, powertrain and purchasing collaborations. In addition, GM is the largest shareholder in GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. of South Korea. GM also has technology collaborations with BMW AG of Germany.

Porsche

In 1931, Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche Engineering Office in Stuttgart. Porsche's production operations are housed in a collection of established buildings on a mixed industrial estate in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.

The Carrera GT and the Cayenne models are produced at the Porsche factory in Leipzig. In 1944, the engineering arm was moved from Stuttgart.



Air Deccan

Bangalore-based Air Deccan has struck a deal with R K Laxman, India's most famous artoonist, to use his legendary 'Common Man' character as the airline's mascot. The mascot exemplifies the fact that air fares are so low now that air travel is no longer the privilege of the elite few but is very much within the reach of the 'common people'.



Sun Microsystems

The correct answer is Stanford University Network. In 1981, Bavarian-born Andreas Bechtolsheim was licensing rights to a computer he designed. Named Sun for Stanford University Network and using off-the-shelf parts, it was an affordable workstation forengineers and scientists. In that year, he met Vinod Khosla, who convinced him to form a company and expand. Khosla, Bechtolsheim and Scott McNeally, all Stanford MBAs, founded Sun in 1982.



Duracell

The story of Duracell begins in the early 1920's with an inventive scientist named Samuel Ruben and an eager manufacturer of tungsten filament wire named Philip Rogers Mallory. Duracell is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of high-performance alkalinebatteries. Duracell also markets primary lithium and zinc air batteries as well as rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries.

HMV Dog

Nipper the dog was born in Bristol in Gloucester, England in 1884 and was so named because of his tendency to nip at visitors' legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger brotherFrancis, a painter. In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud 'often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from.'

Three years after Nipper died Francis committed that memory to canvas.

Adidas

When the founders of the German sports shoe business 'Dassler Brothers' went their separate ways in 1949, no one would have guessed that they would start two of the biggest global brands of the century.

Rudolph founded Puma, while Adolph started Adidas - a combination of his nickname, Adi, and the start of his last name. The famous three stripes were introduced to the shoes in 1949.

Nike

Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track & field coach, and Phil Knight, a University of Oregon business student and middle-distance runner under Bowerman, founded Nike.

Nike, when it came into being in 1962, was known as Blue Ribbon Sports. Its first-year sales totaled $8,000. In 1972, BRS changed its name to Nike, named for the Greek winged goddess of victory.

Reebok

In the 1890s, Joseph William Foster made some of the first known running shoes with spikes in them. By 1895, he was in business making shoes by hand for top runners; and before long his fledgling company, J.W. Foster and Sons, developed an international clientele ofdistinguished athletes.

The family-owned business made the running shoes worn in the 1924 Summer Games by the athletes celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire. In 1958, two of the founder's grandsons started a companion company that came to be known as Reebok, named after an African gazelle.

Bata

Bata was established on August 24, 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomas Bata. The company first established itself in India in 1931 and commenced manufacturing shoes in Batanagar in 1936.

The Batanagar factory is the first Indian shoe manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.

Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc has been known for generations as the maker of the best writing instruments the world has known. The German company, over the last couple of years, has expanded its range to include writing accessories, luxury leather goods and belts, jewellery items and eveneye wear and watches.

The correct answer is Simplo FillerPen Company. The company was originally called Simplo FillerPen Company.

The company expanded its presence to Paris, London, and Barcelona three years after it was founded and was present in most of the fashionable capitals of Europe.

In 1934, the company's name was changed to Mont Blanc Simplo GmbH, after the tallest peak in Europe.

Three Germans founded the company in 1906 - Hamburg-based stationer Claus-Johannes Voss, Hamburg banker Christian Lausen and a Berlin engineer, Wilhelm Dziambor. The company's international headquarter is in Hamburg.

TCS

TCS was founded in 1968 as an internal arm of the Tata conglomerate. The company, which has locations in 32 countries - employed some 30,000 workers at the end of 200.



Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, is universally regarded as the father of the Indian software industry. He has been instrumental inscripting the success story of company. Kohli has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India 's highest civilian honours, for his contribution to the Indian software industry. Kohli currently serves on the TCS' executive committee.

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Interesting Comparison

Look At The Food They Bought For One Week and The Number Of Persons In The Family

GERMANY: The Melander family of Bargteheide - 2 adults, 2 teenagers

Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07

UNITED STATES: The Revis family of North Carolina - 2 adults, 2 teenagers

Food expenditure for one week: $341.98



JAPAN: The Ukita family of Kodaira City - 2 adults, 2 teenagers

Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25



ITALY: The Manzo family of Sicily - 2 adults, 3 kids

Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

MEXICO: The Casales family of Cuernavaca - 2 adults, 3 kids

Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09

POLAND: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna - 4 adults, 1 teenager

Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27

EGYPT: The Ahmed family of Cairo - 7 adults, 5 kids

Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53

ECUADOR: The Ayme family of Tingo - 4 adults, 5 teenagers

Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

BHUTAN: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village - 7 adults, 6 kids

Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 Ngultrum or $5.03

CHAD: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp - 3 adults, 3 kids

Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

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Rebirth Of A Eagle

The eagle has the longest life-span of its’ species.

It can live up to 70 years...
But to reach this age, the eagle must make a hard decision.


In its’ 40’s
Its’ long and flexible talons can no longer grab prey which serves as food.


Its’ long and sharp beaks, becomes bent.

Its’ old-aged and heavy wings, due to their thick feathers, become stuck to its’ chest and make it difficult to fly.

Then, the eagle is left with only two options: DIE or go through a painful process of change which lasts 150 DAYS.

The process requires that the eagle fly to a mountain top and sit on its’ nest.

There the eagle knocks its’ beak against a rock until it plucks it out.

After plucking it out, the eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back and then it will pluck out its’ talons.

When its’ new talons grow back, the eagle starts plucking its’ old-aged feathers.

And after FIVE MONHS, the eagle takes its’ famous flight of rebirth and lives for 30 MORE YEARS...

Why is change needed?

Many times, in order to survive we have to start a change process.

We sometimes need to get rid of old memories, habits and other past traditions.

Only freed from past burdens, can we take advantage of the present.

The World's Oddest Collections

Pennies

Riddle: How can 301 pennies equal $10.7 million? Ask Walter Husak. He recently sold his collection of 301 rare American pennies for that staggering sum, according to the Los Angeles Times. Highlights of the collection include two large antique coppers from 1793 and 1814, valued at $632,500 each.

Tractors

Tractors belong in the field. But apparently, according to city officials in Clovis, N.M., 30 tractors in a field is too many. Wayne Martin, the owner of these 30 rogue tractors, will take the antique tractors to auction later this month in order to avoid fines. Martin remains ambivalent: "Collecting tractors is not profitable," he says. "But didn't cost us nothing either."

Oz

Many collectors are fanatical about The Wizard of Oz. Take Joseph Maddalena, who would like to add the Wicked Witch's broomstick to his already impressive collection. He searched for many years before finally catching the scent. Turns out it was in his backyard all along.

Pop Culture

Real estate mogul Anthony Pugliese recently auctioned his pop culture memorabilia collection because he wanted money to start a green community in Florida. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, bargains were a cigar stub smoked by Elvis, Mel Gibson's sword from Braveheart and a Superman costume, going for $1,200, $25,000 and $45,000, respectively. For those with deeper pockets, Odd Job's derby from Goldfinger and the Wicked Witch's hat from The Wizard of Oz sold for $110,000 and $170,000, respectively.

Barf Bags

Sweden's Rune Tapper has a vast collection of airsickness bags. Tapper's favorite is from Linjeflyg, a defunct Swedish carrier. It reminds Tapper of his first airplane ride when he was 10. He needed a bag then, not for a collection, but for its intended use. Virgin Atlantic took things to new heights when it issued four special edition Star Wars bags, complete with instructions for Jedi combat.

Dog Collars

Last year's Bonhams Dog Art auction featured an impressive 70-piece collection from an American collector, including a spiked iron collar to guard against wolf attacks, five leather collars once worn by pugs owned by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and collars that carried encoded messages behind enemy lines during WWII. According to the Times of London, the collection is valued at more than $75,000.

Odd Art

British artist Damien Hirst decided to auction his recent works instead of displaying them in a gallery. The collection shattered sales records, and buyers walked away with some bizarre pieces. "The Dream," for example, composed of a horse fitted with a narwhal's horn to give the appearance of a unicorn, raked in $6.3 million. Hirst is indisputably popular with the wealthy: Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen once spent $8 million on "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," or, in layman's terms, tiger shark in formaldehyde.

Calling Cards

Once a formality from a different era, calling cards are now valuable collectibles. According to the Houston Chronicle, Gerald Burg started his collection at age 15 and has snatched up cards from the likes of Napoleon and Hemingway. He even has a card from Mrs. Frank E. Bulter, better known as Annie Oakley, complete with a bullet hole in the corner.

From Bead to Pearl in Malaysia

Quality shell beads imported from the Mississippi River bed in America that will be inserted into the oysters as a nucleus for the pearls to form.

At the seeding station, a skilled grafter cuts an incision on the oyster with a scalpel and inserts a shell bead as well as a small piece of mantle tissue from donor native oysters.

The nylon nets containing the seeded oysters are strung from wooden rafts and placed over calm, sheltered waters.

The oysters are hauled up regularly for cleaning so that barnacles, algae and parasites can be scraped from their shells before being re-submerged.

After four to six years, upon maturity, the oysters are brought up fro harvesting at the Silumpat Selatan (at Southern part of Malaysia) station.

Workers deftly split open the two halves of an oyster with a knife and pries the shells apart to gather the pearl inside.

...the reveal a perfectly formed pearl. This will be sold but inferior pearls will cast into the sea.