Laurel

Laurel may refer to:

Plants

Laurel particularly refers to plants used for laurel wreaths:

It may also refer to:

Arrow

An arrow is a shafted projectile that is shot with a bow. It predates recorded history and is common to most cultures. An arrow usually consists of a shaft with an arrowhead attached to the front end, with fletchings and a nock at the other.

History

The oldest evidence of stone-tipped projectiles, which may or may not have been propelled by a bow (c.f. atlatl), dating to c. 64,000 years ago, were found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. The oldest evidence of the use of bows to shoot arrows dates to about 10,000 years ago; it is based on pinewood arrows found in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg. They had shallow grooves on the base, indicating that they were shot from a bow. The oldest bow so far recovered is about 8,000 years old, found in the Holmegård swamp in Denmark. Archery seems to have arrived in the Americas with the Arctic small tool tradition, about 4,500 years ago.

Size

Arrow sizes vary greatly across cultures, ranging from eighteen inches to five feet (45 cm to 150 cm). However, most modern arrows are 75 centimetres (30 in) to 96 centimetres (38 in); most war arrows from an English ship sunk in 1545 were 76 centimetres (30 in). Very short arrows have been used, shot through a guide attached either to the bow (an "overdraw") or to the archer's wrist (the Turkish "siper"). These may fly farther than heavier arrows, and an enemy without suitable equipment may find himself unable to return them.

Season

A season is a division of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight. Seasons result from the yearly orbit of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's rotational axis relative to the plane of the orbit. In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to go into hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant.

During May, June, and July, the northern hemisphere is exposed to more direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the sun. The same is true of the southern hemisphere in November, December, and January. It is the tilt of the Earth that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the summer months which increases the solar flux. However, due to seasonal lag, June, July, and August are the hottest months in the northern hemisphere and December, January, and February are the hottest months in the southern hemisphere.

WHOIS

WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase who is) is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The WHOIS protocol is documented in RFC 3912.

History

When the Internet was emerging out of the ARPANET, there was only one organization that handled all domain registrations, which was DARPA itself. The process of registration was established in RFC 920. WHOIS was standardized in the early 1980s to look up domains, people and other resources related to domain and number registrations. As all registration was done by one organization at that time, one centralized server was used for WHOIS queries. This made looking up such information very easy.

Responsibility of domain registration remained with DARPA as the ARPANET became the Internet during the 1980s. UUNET began offering domain registration service; however they simply handled the paperwork which they forwarded to the DARPA Network Information Center (NIC). Then the National Science Foundation directed that management of Internet domain registration would be handled by commercial, third-party entities. InterNIC was formed in 1993 under contract with the NSF, consisting of Network Solutions, Inc., General Atomics and AT&T. The General Atomics contract was canceled after several years due to performance issues.

Black Canary

Black Canary is a fictional superheroine in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by the writer-artist team of Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino, the character debuted in Flash Comics #86 (August 1947). One of DC's earliest super-heroines, Black Canary has appeared in many of the company's flagship team-up titles including Justice Society of America and Justice League of America. Since the late 1960s, the character has frequently been paired with archer superhero Green Arrow professionally and romantically, and they eventually married.

At her Golden Age of Comic Books debut, Black Canary was the alter ego of Dinah Drake and participated in crime-fighting adventures with her love interest (and eventual husband), Gotham City detective Larry Lance. Although she did not have superpowers, the character was a hand-to-hand fighter who frequently posed as a criminal to infiltrate organized crime. Black Canary was a member of the Justice Society of America, the first comic-book superhero team. The character was revived after a number of years during one of the annual Justice League/Justice Society team-ups. At the end of one, her husband Larry Lance is killed. Dinah then crossed dimensions from what DC called Earth-2, to Earth-1. Later, Silver Age of Comic Books stories depicted her as a world-class martial artist with a superpower: the "Canary Cry", a high-powered sonic scream which could shatter objects and incapacitate enemies. The crossing from Earth-1 to Earth-2 was given as the reason for the development of her Canary Cry. DC Comics adjusted its continuity, explained that Black Canary was two characters: mother and daughter Dinah Drake and Dinah Laurel Lance. Stories since the Silver Age have focused on the younger Black Canary, ascribing her superhuman abilities to a genetic mutation. In 2011, DC Comics again reset its continuity, establishing Black Canary as a singular super-powered heroine and former Team 7 agent, Dinah Lance (née Drake).