The 20th US President James Garfield had this uncanny knack of writing in Latin with one hand and in Ancient Greek with the other. A great show off one must say.

No president ever got married at the White House barring of course one, Grover Cleveland in the year 1886. The president at the age of 49 married a young girl of 21 named Frances Folsom, who was fondly called as “Frank” by the President.

Each president had a code name and the trend continues with the Secret Service. Ronald Regan was named “Rawhide”, George H. W. Bush was called “Timberwolf”, Bill Clinton was called “Eagle”, George W. Bush as “Trailblazer” and Obama is known as “Renegade”.

William Howard Taft happened to be the heaviest among all Presidents and to an extent that he often used to get stuck in the White Hose bath.

Ever since the World War 2 the taller of the two candidates nominated as the president has gone on to win the elections for the presidential seat. Since 1900 no presidents below 5 ft 9 inch have won a presidential election.

Co-authored by: Nayan Basu

1. In 1865 the inauguration of the vice president of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was slightly hampered as Johnson was completely drunk and was hardly able to stand, let alone saying the oath.

2. It is almost a fashion for US President to have a pet animal at the white house. Cats and dogs are the popular choices, but Herbert Hoover and John Quincy Adams housed pet alligators. Calvin Coolidge had a wallaby, a lion and a hippopotamus among others as pets.

3. In 1841 William Henry Harrison made to the presidential ranks for only 31 days before lying dead to pneumonia. This is still the shortest term in office by a US President.

4. Some of the US Presidents had weird nicknames and were called various names by the people. Andrew Jackson was fondly known as “Old Hickory”. “Unconditional Surrender Grant” was a name which belonged to Ulysses S. Grant. There are other people with funny names too, like William Henry Harrison, who didn’t have a long life, was named “Tippecanoe”. Zachary Taylor had the nickname as “Old rough and Ready”, really funny and amazing

Declared Time Magazine Woman of the Year in 1986, she is fondly called “Tita Cory” by the Flipino people. Here are some of her quotes:

“Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things – with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.”
“I am not embarrassed to tell you that I believe in miracles.”
“All the world wondered as they witnessed… a people lift themselves from humiliation to the greatest pride.”
“I just do whatever it is that I believe I should do, regardless of the risks to my life.”
“One must be frank to be relevant.”

Prayers, wishes and thanks continue to pour at the ABS CBN site. For more information, please take time to visit these sites: http://abs-cbn.tv/ and http://www.coryaquino.ph.

French company Alcatel and US company Lucent are merging to become a giant company worth about $25 billion, which will make them the 2nd biggest telecom in the world (behind US-based Cisco).

Some analysts are suggesting that Nokia should now think about merging with German company Siemens. Similarly, Ericsson should consider increasing its fixed-line business so that it can stay competitive.

For now, according to Optically Networked, Alcatel and Lucent are focusing on “the massive job of synchronizing operations on both sides of the Atlantic” and deciding which side will “bear the brunt of the layoffs, which are expected to be about 10 percent of the combined workforce of about 88,000.”

“Keeping alive our dress style is a very important political issue to adhere to specific national cultural traditions at a time when the U.S. imperialists are maneuvering to spread the rotten bourgeois lifestyle inside North Korea,” the Joson Yeosung (Woman) magazine said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency…

Full story here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051104/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_no_pants

If it’s not authorised, there’s implications that the talks have been going on in spurts behind the scenes. There could be partial sales.

Or possibly Dreamworks is looking for a sweetheart deal like Disney got with Pixar? In the fight between Dreamworks and Pixar to create animated movies, they have always used two very divergent models. Pixar made fewer, more tightly animated movies, while Dreamworks went for quanitity.

If NBC Universal does buyout Dreamworks, this could also mean more TV programming moves.

Many people – US lawmakers included – have been pressuring China for years to remove the fixed status of the yuan and have it float on the currency market. It’s been claimed that the Chinese government has undervalued the yuan as much as 40 percent giving Chinese exporters unfair advantages based on conversion.

The dollar is down against the Japanese yen – the bellwether of the Asian economy – on the news.

But now there’s an overseas look into the IPO, and PartyGaming, the largest UK website for poker, is planning an IPO this month on the London Exchange and fully expects to be the largest offering in four years. Add in the fact that the UK has recently passed a gambling law that gives even greater leeway to online gambling operations.

This IPO, however, will not see any new shares. All of the shares that will be sold are being sold by founding shareholders. The painfully-named Anurag Dikshit is the group operations director and largest current shareholder at 40% of all shares, and his stake is estimated to be worth $3 billion once the IPO hits. That’s if he keeps all 40% of his shares, which presumably he won’t.

Currently there’s a slight downward trend in casinos away from poker towards slots, the perennial moneymaker. But online gambling (of all kinds, not just poker) is expected to move from 3.4 percent of all gambling in 2004 to 8.1 percent in 2009; in dollar signs that’s $8.4 billion in worldwide online gambling revenue in 2004 to an expected $22.7 billion in worldwide online gambling revenue in 2009 – 22 percent a year – lofty expectations, but not unimaginable.

Forbes has the scoop:

Software maker Skype said Friday that it was launching two more premium services as the number of downloads of its popular program neared 100 million.

The company also said it was launching SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail, two premium services available in the latest download versions of Skype software for Linux, MAC OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms.

Skype’s signature program lets computer users call each other online for free anywhere in the world.

The new SkypeIn offers users personal numbers and lets them receive inbound calls from the Skype program from land lines or mobile phones without having to pay roaming charges.

Skype Voicemail lets users manage incoming messages.

“Skype is setting new standards for modern communications by expanding premium services that extend Skype portability, mobility and ubiquity across a variety of platforms, including the traditional phone network,” said Niklas Zennstreom, the company’s chief executive and co-founder.

And The Internet Stock Blog’s take:

Voice over IP company Skype announced that its free software had been downloaded 100 million times, and that it was launching two new premium (ie. paid) products: SkypeIn, which offers users personal numbers and lets them receive inbound calls from the Skype program from land lines or mobile phones without having to pay roaming charges, and Skype Voicemail. SkypeIn will cost $13 for three months or $39 for 12-months, and Skype Voicemail $7 for 3 months or $19 for 12 months. Comment: Skype matters to Internet investors for three reasons: (1) VoIP is a killer Internet application; (2) Skype effectively competes with the leading providers of instant messaging software – AOL (owned by Time Warner, ticker: TWX), Yahoo and Microsoft; (3) As communication and personal publishing become tied together, for example with Yahoo 360, instant messaging, video conferencing and VoIP will be an intregral part of the bundle. The upshot? Skype will eventually be acquired by a leading Internet company.

Read more here and here.