Wind-up toy

A wind-up toy is a toy powered by a clockwork motor.

History

In the late 15th century, Karel Grod , a German inventor, created some of the first wind-up toys, including a metal fly and a mechanical eagle. In 1509, Leonardo da Vinci created a wind-up lion as a greeting for Louis XII in Italy. Wind-up toys were at first for only royalty, and were more elaborate, with complex systems of gears and springs. In support of his theory that all animals are complex machines, René Descartes may have attempted to build some automata. According to legend, a life-sized wind-up human girl was discovered in his luggage aboard a ship in which he was traveling to Sweden, and was thrown overboard by order of the ship's Captain.

After the larger, elaborate wind-up machine art declined in interest, wind-up toys were created cheaply in large numbers by the 1800s. Wind-up machines became known as wind-up toys, and were designed in different forms to move around.

European toy makers created and mass-produced the first windup tin toys during the late 1880s. Over the next 60 to 70 years, more manufacturers created more intricate designs. The trend stopped with the introduction of the small and inexpensive Alkaline battery in the 1960s, which allowed motors to run without a wind up mechanism. Over the next 20 years, wind up toys lost popularity.

American International Toy Fair

The American International Toy Fair (stylized as TOY FAIR) is an annual toy industry trade show held in mid-February in New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and at toy showrooms around the city. The event is open to the toy trade only - toy industry professionals, retailers, and press representatives. It is owned and managed by the Toy Industry Association. Toy Fair's promoters describe it as the largest toy trade show in the Western hemisphere.

History

Toy Fair began in February 1903. The first event featured less than ten toy companies with Lionel trains among the featured products. As the event expanded, more space was needed which led to toy companies occupying 200 Fifth Avenue, a former hotel site, in 1910. By 1925, it was renamed the International Toy Center.

The 110th annual Toy Fair, held February 10-13, 2013, attracted more than 1,500 manufacturers, distributors, importers, and sales agents from 30 countries in over 300,000 square feet (28,000 m²) of exhibit space. Nearly 9,500 buyers from 5,000 retail outlets attended. Overall, there were an estimated 30,000 attendees from 92 countries.

Wind

Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the Sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space. Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the regions in which they occur, and their effect. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System occur on Neptune and Saturn. Winds have various aspects, an important one being its velocity; another the density of the gas involved; another is the energy content or wind energy of a wind.

In meteorology, winds are often referred to according to their strength, and the direction from which the wind is blowing. Short bursts of high speed wind are termed gusts. Strong winds of intermediate duration (around one minute) are termed squalls. Long-duration winds have various names associated with their average strength, such as breeze, gale, storm, and hurricane. Wind occurs on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hours, to global winds resulting from the difference in absorption of solar energy between the climate zones on Earth. The two main causes of large-scale atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect). Within the tropics, thermal low circulations over terrain and high plateaus can drive monsoon circulations. In coastal areas the sea breeze/land breeze cycle can define local winds; in areas that have variable terrain, mountain and valley breezes can dominate local winds.

Lucky Penny

"Lucky Penny" is the 15th episode in the second season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 37th overall. It originally aired on February 12, 2007.

Plot

Ted and Robin are running through the airport, trying to catch a plane to Chicago, where Ted has an interview with a large architecture firm for the job of running the company's New York branch. As they reach their gate, the attendant tells them they cannot get on the flight. They explain that Ted had to attend a court date that morning for jumping a subway turnstile, and she asks them to wait while she talks with the flight. While they wait, Robin suggests that their lateness was in fact Barney's fault.

The show then flashbacks a few months to when Marshall had just broken his toe. He is especially disappointed, as he had been training hard to run the New York City Marathon. Barney complains about his moaning, and states that running a marathon is easy, even without training. Marshall then bets Barney he cannot complete the marathon, and Barney—who has a gambling addiction—accepts the wager.

The Katie Melua Collection

The Katie Melua Collection is a compilation album by Georgian-born British singer/songwriter Katie Melua. The album is a two disc set with 17 songs, 3 of which are previously unreleased, and a DVD filmed in Rotterdam.

The songs on the album include the main singles from Melua's three previous albums, "When You Taught Me How to Dance" from the film Miss Potter, "What a Wonderful World" performed with a recording of the late Eva Cassidy and three new songs recorded for the album - "Toy Collection" (written by Melua for the MySpace film Faintheart), "Two Bare Feet" and "Somewhere in the Same Hotel".

Track listing

Disc 1