Historiagram

The Nissan Skyline GT-R 日産・スカイラインGT-R, Nissan Sukairain GT-R) is a sports car based on the Nissan Skyline range. The first cars named “Skyline GT-R” were produced between 1969 and 1972 under the model code KPGC10, and enjoyed legendary success in local Japanese touring car racing. This model was followed by a brief production run of second-generation cars, under model code KPGC110, in 1973. After a 16-year hiatus, the GT-R name was revived in 1989 as the BNR32 (“R32”) Skyline GT-R. This model GT-R proceeded to win the Japanese JTCC Group A series championship four years in a row. The R32 GT-R also had success in the Australian Touring Car Championship helping the R31 Skyline GTS-R to victory in 1990 and winning alone in 1991 and 1992, until a regulation change excluded the GT-R in 1993.

The Skyline GT-R became the flagship of Nissan performance, showcasing many advanced technologies including the ATTESA E-TS All-wheel drive system and the Super-HICAS four-wheel steering. Today, the car is popular for import drag racing, circuit track, time attack and events hosted by tuning magazines. Production of the Skyline GT-R ended in August 2002. The car was replaced by the R35 GT-R, an all-new vehicle based on the V36 Skyline platform. Although visibly different, the two vehicles share similar design features and are manufactured in the same factory.

The technology and performance of the R32 GT-R prompted the Australian motoring publication Wheels to nickname the GT-R “Godzilla” in its July 1989 edition.Wheels then carried the name through all the generations of Skyline GT-Rs, most notably the R34 GT-R, “Godzilla Returns” was described as “The best handling car we have ever driven” and further ran a 12.2 quarter mile time and a 4.0 second 0-100 km/h (62 mph) time. 

Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number, various groupings of numbers, the colors red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19–36) or low (1–18).

To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of 37 (single zero French/European style roulette) or 38 (double zero American style roulette) colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. The winnings are then paid to anyone who has placed successful bet.

History:

The first form of roulette was devised in 18th century France. Many historians believe Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of roulette in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine.The roulette mechanism is a hybrid of a gaming wheel invented in 1720 and the Italian game Biribi.

The game has been played in its present form since as early as 1796 in Paris. An early description of the roulette game in its current form is found in a French novel La Roulette, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The description included the house pockets, “There are exactly two slots reserved for the bank, whence it derives its sole mathematical advantage.” It then goes on to describe the layout with, “…two betting spaces containing the bank’s two numbers, zero and double zero”. The book was published in 1801. An even earlier reference to a game of this name was published in regulations for New France (Québec) in 1758, which banned the games of “dice, hoca, faro, and roulette”.

Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. (Italian pronunciation: [duˈkaːti]) is the motorcycle-manufacturing division of Italian company Ducati, headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is owned by German automotive manufacturer Audi through its Italian subsidiary Lamborghini, which is in turn owned by the Volkswagen Group.

Founded:In 1926 Antonio Cavalieri Ducati and his three sons, Adriano, Marcello, and Bruno Cavalieri Ducati founded Società Scientifica Radio Brevetti Ducati in Bologna to produce vacuum tubes, condensers and other radio components. In 1935 they had become successful enough to enable construction of a new factory in the Borgo Panigale area of the city. Production was maintained during World War II, despite the Ducati factory being a repeated target of Allied bombing.

Ducati 996R

card game

Poker, card game, played in various forms throughout the world, in which a player must call (i.e., match) the bet, raise (i.e., increase) the bet, or concede (i.e., fold). Its popularity is greatest in North America, where it originated. It is played in private homes, in poker clubs, in casinos, and over the Internet. Poker has been called the national card game of the United States, and its play and jargon permeate American culture.

Although countless variants of poker are described in the literature of the game, they all share certain essential features. A poker hand comprises five cards. The value of the hand is in inverse proportion to its mathematical frequency; that is, the more unusual the combination of cards, the higher the hand ranks. Players may bet that they have the best hand, and other players must either call (i.e., match) the bet or concede. Players may bluff by betting that they have the best hand when in fact they do not, and they may win by bluffing if players holding superior hands do not call the bet.

General Principles

There are forms of poker suitable to any number of players from 2 to 14, but in most forms the ideal number is 6, 7, or 8 players. The object is to win the “pot,” which is the aggregate of all bets made by all players in any one deal. The pot may be won either by having the highest-ranking poker hand or by making a bet that no other player calls. The following principles apply to nearly all forms of poker.

Cards

Poker is almost always played with the standard 52-card deck, the playing cards in each of the four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs) ranking A (high), K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A (low only in the straight [a series of five cards numbered consecutively] or straight flush [a series of five cards numbered consecutively within the same suit] 5-4-3-2-A and in certain variants described below).

In social play, especially in “dealer’s choice” (i.e., a card-playing session in which each player takes a turn at dealing the cards and selecting the game), certain cards may be designated wild cards. A wild card stands for any other card its holder wishes to name. There are many methods of introducing wild cards into the game. The most popular are:

1. Joker. A 53-card pack is used, including the joker as a wild card.
2. Bug. The same 53-card pack including the joker is used, but the joker—here called the bug—counts only as a fifth ace or to fill a flush [a series of five cards of the same suit], a straight, or certain special hands.
3. Deuces wild. All four deuces (2s) are wild cards.
4. One-eyes. In the standard pack the king of diamonds, jack of spades, and jack of hearts are the only cards shown in profile. They are often designated as wild cards.

British mathematician and logician.

Alan Turing , in full Alan Mathison Turing, (born June 23, 1912, London, England—died June 7, 1954, Wilmslow, Cheshire), British mathematician and logician, who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.

In 1945, the war over, Turing was recruited to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London to create an electronic computer. His design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first complete specification of an electronic stored-program all-purpose digital computer. Had Turing’s ACE been built as he planned, it would have had vastly more memory than any of the other early computers, as well as being faster. However, his colleagues at NPL thought the engineering too difficult to attempt, and a much smaller machine was built, the Pilot Model ACE (1950)

The Parthenon (/ˈpɑːrθəˌnɒn, -nən/; Ancient Greek: Παρθενών; Greek: Παρθενώνας, Parthenónas, [parθeˈnonas]) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order^{[by whom?]}. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and Western civilization, and one of the world’s greatest cultural monuments. To the Athenians who built it, the Parthenon and other Periclean monuments of the Acropolis were seen fundamentally as a celebration of Hellenic victory over the Persian invaders and as a thanksgiving to the gods for that victory.

The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon served a practical purpose as the city treasury.^[8][9] For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the 6th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The mid- engine 550 Spyder was the first production Porsche specially developed for racing.Wind- tunnel testing honed thevSpyder’s aluminium body ,which with a tubular chassis reduced weight and the 110bhp four-cam flat-four provided race-winning performance.

Aston Martin has used the Vantage name on a number of vehicles, normally indicating a high-performance version of another model. In one case, during 1972–1973, the Vantage was a distinct model, being a straight-6 powered version of the DBS, a car that had been launched as a straight-6 but was by that time V8-powered (as the DBS V8).

Visual cues include a unique 2-headlight front clip with DB6-like grille. It was also the last Aston Martin to come equipped with wire wheels. Just 71 examples were built.

The Vantage was the last straight-6 Aston Martin until the 1993 DB7.

Aston Martin was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford.The two had joined forces as Bamford & Martin the previous year to sell cars made by Singer from premises in Callow Street, London where they also serviced GWK and Calthorpe vehicles. Martin raced specials at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton, and the pair decided to make their own vehicles. The first car to be named Aston Martin was created by Martin by fitting a four-cylinder Coventry-Simplex engine to the chassis of a 1908 Isotta Fraschini.

They acquired premises at Henniker Mews in Kensington and produced their first car in March 1915. Production could not start because of the outbreak of the first World War, and Martin joined the Admiralty and Bamford joined the Army Service Corps. it became associated with expensive grand touring cars in the 1950s and 1960s, and with the fictional character James Bond following his use of a DB5 model in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The Aston Martin DB5 is a British luxury grand tourer (GT) that was made by Aston Martin and designed by the Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera. Released in 1963, it was an evolution of the final series of DB4. The DB series was named honouring Sir David Brown (the owner of Aston Martin from 1947 to 1972).

source:Wikipedia

A cape cart is a two-wheeled four-seater carriage drawn by two horses and formerly used in South Africa. Equipped with a bowed canvas or leather hood, it was used to carry passengers and mail in the days before railways and was one of the fastest means of transport available in the region. Cape carts were developed during the Boer War as a safe way to travel across even rough terrain .

The name comes from the Cape of Good Hope.