Leicester Square

Leicester Square ⁱ/ˈlɛstər/ is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. It was laid out in 1670 and is named after the contemporary Leicester House, itself named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester.

The square was originally a gentrified residential area, with notable tenants including Frederick, Prince of Wales and artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. It became more down-market in the late 18th century as Leicester House was demolished and retail developments took place, becoming a centre for entertainment. Several major theatres were established in the 19th century, which were converted to cinemas towards the middle of the next. Leicester Square holds a number of nationally important cinemas such as the Odeon Leicester Square, Empire, Leicester Square and Odeon West End, which are frequently used for film premières, The nearby Prince Charles Cinema is popular for showing cult films and marathon film runs. The square remains a popular tourist attraction, including hosting events for the Chinese New Year.

Leicester

Coordinates: 52°38′N 1°8′W / 52.633°N 1.133°W / 52.633; -1.133

Leicester (ⁱ/ˈlɛstər/ LESS-tər,but often locally /ˈlɛstɒ/) is a city and unitary authority area in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest. It is the burial place of King Richard III.

In the 2011 census the population of the Leicester unitary authority was c.330,000 making it the most populous unitary authority in the East Midlands region. The associated urban area is also the 11th largest by population in England and the 13th largest in the United Kingdom.

"Unlike almost every other city in the UK, Leicester has retained a remarkable record of its past in buildings that still stand today". Ancient Roman pavements and baths remain in Leicester from its early settlement as Ratae, a Roman military outpost in a region inhabited by the Celtic Corieltauvi tribe. Following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, the early medieval Ratae is shrouded in obscurity, but when the settlement was captured by the Danes it became one of five fortified towns important to the Danelaw and it appeared in the Domesday Book as "Ledecestre". Leicester continued to grow throughout the Early Modern period as a market town, although it was the Industrial Revolution that facilitated a process of rapid unplanned urbanisation in the area.

Lego

Lego (/ˈlɛɡoʊ/) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct objects such as vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Since then a global Lego subculture has developed. Supporting movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's "world's most powerful brand".

History

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based in part on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample that they received from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that Lego purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.

Square

In geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle in which two adjacent sides have equal length. A square with vertices ABCD would be denoted ABCD.

The square is the n=2 case of the families of n-hypercubes and n-orthoplexes.

A square has Schläfli symbol {4}. A truncated square, t{4}, is an octagon, {8}. An alternated square, h{4}, is a digon, {2}.

Properties

A square is a special case of a rhombus (equal sides, opposite equal angles), a kite (two pairs of adjacent equal sides), a parallelogram (opposite sides parallel), a quadrilateral or tetragon (four-sided polygon), and a rectangle (opposite sides equal, right-angles) and therefore has all the properties of all these shapes, namely:

The Lego Group

Lego A/S (doing business as The Lego Group) is a family-owned company based in Billund, Denmark, which manufactures Lego brand toys.

The company was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. The word "lego" is derived from the Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". The word "lego" also means "I put together" in Latin, and "I connect" or "I tie" in Italian. In the first half of 2015, The Lego Group became the world's largest toy company by revenue, with sales amounting to US$2.1 billion, surpassing Mattel, which had US$1.9 billion in sales.

History

The history of Lego spans nearly 100 years, beginning with the creation of small wooden playthings, such as wooden ducks during the early 20th century. Manufacturing of plastic Lego bricks began in Denmark in 1947, but since has grown to include factories throughout the world. Today, the company is an iconic brand.

Trademark and patents

Since the expiration of the last standing Lego patent in 1989, a number of companies have produced interlocking bricks that are similar to Lego bricks. The toy company Tyco Toys produced such bricks for a time; other competitors include Mega Bloks and Best-Lock. These competitor products are typically compatible with Lego bricks, and are marketed at a lower cost than Lego sets.