History of Facebook...must read....!

Facebook is a popular social networking website, whose name originated as the nickname of directories handed out to university students that aided in their getting to know their fellow students.
  

 

Hot or Not?

Facebook was invented by Harvard computer science student Mark Zuckerberg, along with classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The origins to the name hints as to the history of Facebook, however, the website was originally and briefly called Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg was a second year student, when he wrote the software for the Facemash website. Perhaps, it was Zuckerberg's sophomoric sense of humor that led him to create the site as a type of "hot or not" game for Harvard students, where website visitors could compare two student photos side-by-side and let viewers decide who was "hot" and who was "not". Mark Zuckerberg put his computer science skills to good use by hacking into Harvard's security network and where he copied the student ID images used by the dormitories and used them to populate his Facemash website.
Fashmash opened on October 28, 2003,and closed a few days later, shut down by Harvard execs. Mark Zuckerberg faced charges of breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy for stealing the student photos he used to populate the site. He also faced expulsion from Harvard University for his actions. However, all charges were eventually dropped.

TheFacebook

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg relaunched with a new website "Thefacebook". Six days later, Mark Zuckerberg again faced trouble when three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of stealing their ideas for an intended social network website called HarvardConnection, and of using their ideas for TheFacebook. Winklevoss, Winklevoss, and Narendra later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, however, the matter was settled out of court.
Membership to the website was at first restricted to Harvard College students. Zuckerberg enlisted a few of his fellow students to help grow the website: Eduardo Saverin worked on business, Dustin Moskovitz as a programmer, Andrew McCollum as a graphic artist, and Chris Hughes. Together the team expanded the site to additional universities and colleges.

Facebook

In 2004, an angel investor, Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president. The company changed the name from TheFacebook to just Facebook after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.
Mark Zuckerberg's antics finally did pay off when profits from Facebook made him the world's youngest multi-billionaire. Kudos goes to Zuckerberg for spreading the wealth around, according to the NYTimes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million dollars to the Newark, New Jersey public school system, which has long been underfunded.


Source- www.inventors.about.com

The Moon Landings were fake...?

This mystery hasn’t ended up still.But certain doubts raised from the fact file has subsequently raised eye brows and insist to question “Did Man really landed on Moon?”
Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program, and the third human voyage to the moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.
The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the 1960s.

Primary crew of the mission :

• Neil Armstrong, commander
• Michael Collins, command module pilot
• Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, lunar module pilot

Image 1

Buzz Aldrin poses on the Moon allowing Neil Armstrong to photograph both of them using the visor’s reflection.
Image 2

L-R: Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin
Image3

The historical plaque on the ladder of Apollo 11′s lunar module “Eagle”, still remaining on the Moon.
Image4

Neil Armstrong works at the LM in one of the few photos taken of him from the lunar surface.
So now the discussion starts…, protuding certain real proofs that the mission is FAKE and no men landed on moon yet.
Proof 1

Proof 2

Proof 3

Proof 4

Proof 5

Proof 6

Proof 7

Have u got the right answer now ????

Source - www.lovethyall.wordpress.com

Valentine's Day.......History....U must Know

The history of Valentine's Day--and the story of its patron saint--is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?



The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first "valentine" greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl--possibly his jailor's daughter--who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed "From your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and--most importantly--romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.

Origins of Valentine's Day: A Pagan Festival in February

While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial--which probably occurred around A.D. 270--others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to "Christianize" the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat's hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Valentine's Day: A Day of Romance

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”--at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds' mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine's Day should be a day for romance.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine's didn't begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

Typical Valentine's Day Greetings

In addition to the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings.

Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as "scrap." Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.