Blue House

The Blue House (Korean: 청와대; Hanja: 靑瓦臺; Cheong Wa Dae; literally "pavilion of blue tiles") is the executive office and official residence of the South Korean head of state, the President of the Republic of Korea and located in the capital city of Seoul. The Blue House is in fact a complex of buildings, built largely in the traditional Korean architectural style with some modern elements.

Built upon the site of the royal garden of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), the Blue House now consists of the Main Office Hall (Korean: 본관; Hanja: 本館), the Presidential Residence, the State Reception House (Korean: 영빈관; Hanja: 迎賓館), the Chunchugwan (Korean: 춘추관; Hanja: 春秋館) Press Hall, and the Secretariat Buildings. The entire complex covers approximately 250,000 square metres or 62 acres.

History

The location of Cheong Wa Dae was the site of a royal villa in what was then Hanyang, the southern capital of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392). It was built by King Sukjong (r. 1095–1105) in 1104. Goryeo's principal capital was at Kaesŏng, and it also maintained a western capital at Pyongyang and an eastern capital at Gyeongju.

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation (commonly referred to as IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation, with corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) through the consolidation of The Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Company and the Bundy Manufacturing Company. CTR was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924, a name which Thomas J. Watson first used for a CTR Canadian subsidiary. The initialism IBM followed. Securities analysts nicknamed the company Big Blue for its size and common use of the color in products, packaging and its logo.

In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the second largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees (435,000 worldwide), the fourth largest in terms of market capitalization, the ninth most profitable, and the nineteenth largest firm in terms of revenue. Globally, the company was ranked the 31st largest in terms of revenue by Forbes for 2011. Other rankings for 2011/2012 include №1 company for leaders (Fortune), №1 green company in the United States (Newsweek), №2 best global brand (Interbrand), №2 most respected company (Barron's), №5 most admired company (Fortune), and №18 most innovative company (Fast Company).

Blue

Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres. Blues with a higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometres. In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments, along with red and yellow, which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Blue is also a primary colour in the RGB colour model, used to create all the colours on the screen of a television or computer monitor.

The modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word blao. The clear sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. Rayleigh scattering also explains blue eyes; there is no blue pigment in blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective.

The Big Blue

The Big Blue (released in some countries under the French title Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 English-language film in the French Cinéma du look visual style, made by French director Luc Besson. The film is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol (played by Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed to "Enzo Molinari" and played by Jean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played by Rosanna Arquette).

The film, which covers their childhood in 1960s Greece to their deaths in a 1980s Sicilian diving competition, is a cult-classic in the diving fraternity, and became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). President of France, Jacques Chirac, referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as having been an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation.

Eiffel 65

Eiffel 65 is an Italian musical group consisting of Jeffrey Jey, Gabry Ponte, and Maurizio Lobina. They are known chiefly for their high-charting singles, "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", and their 1999 studio album Europop. Their next two albums, Contact! (2001) and their 2003 self-titled album, did not have much international success but still managed to chart in Italy.

History

Formation

Randone, Ponte and Lobina met each other at Bliss Corporation, which was founded in 1992 by Massimo Gabutti. A computer chose the name Eiffel randomly from a group of words the three liked. The number 65 was added mistakenly to an early pressing of their first single, Blue (Da Ba Dee). Jeffrey Jey explained:

1998–2005

Eiffel 65 is best known for using pitch correction and Auto-Tune and for their international chart-topping hits "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", which appeared on their album Europop, released in late 1999.

Eiffel 65 achieved considerable success in Italy, the rest of Europe, United States, and Canada. Europop peaked in the top five on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million units. "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.