Snail

Snail is a common name that is applied most often to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs.

However, the common name "snail" is also applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also thousands of species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Occasionally a few other molluscs that are not actually gastropods, such as the Monoplacophora, which superficially resemble small limpets, may also informally be referred to as "snails".

Snail-like animals that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.

Overview

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a polyphyletic group; in other words, snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups. Both snails that have lungs and snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.

Land snail

A land snail is a common name for any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to those that live in salt water and fresh water. Land snails are terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have shells (those without shells are known as slugs). In reality however, it is not always easy to say which species are terrestrial, because some are more or less amphibious between land and freshwater, and others are relatively amphibious between land and saltwater.

The majority of land snails are pulmonates, i.e. they have a lung and breathe air. A minority however belong to much more ancient lineages where their anatomy includes a gill and an operculum. Many of these operculate land snails live in habitats or microhabitats that are sometimes (or often) damp or wet, such as for example in moss.

Land snails have a strong muscular foot; they use mucus to enable them to crawl over rough surfaces, and in order to keep their soft bodies from drying out. Like other mollusks, land snails have a mantle, and they have one or two pairs of tentacles on their head. Their internal anatomy includes a radula and a primitive brain. In terms of reproduction, the majority of land snails are hermaphrodite (have a full set of organs of both sexes) and most lay clutches of eggs in the soil. Tiny snails hatch out of the egg with a small shell in place, and the shell grows spirally as the soft parts gradually increase in size. Most land snails have shells that are right-handed in their coiling.

Waffle House

Waffle House, Inc., is a restaurant chain with more than 2,100 locations in 25 states in the United States. Most of the locations are in the South, where the chain remains as a regional cultural icon. Waffle House is headquartered in an unincorporated part of Gwinnett County, Georgia, near Norcross.

History

The first Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend in 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, Georgia. That restaurant was conceived and founded by Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner, who both continue to own a majority of the company. Rogers started in the restaurant business as a short-order cook in 1947 at the Toddle House in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1949 he became a regional manager with the now-defunct Memphis-based Toddle House chain, then he moved to Atlanta. He met Tom Forkner while buying a house from him in Avondale Estates.

Rogers's concept was to combine the speed of fast food with table service with around-the-clock availability. He told Forkner, "...You build a restaurant, and I’ll show you how to run it," recalls Tom Forkner.