15th February 2017 - Signs of the times

Thought for the day:"I've just bought a new aftershave called 'Breadcrumbs' The birds love it."

So - some signs of the times....

King Harald Blatand, ruled the Denmark in tenth century AD. He is a famous historical figure for making the Danish tribe. The King was often named as the “Bluetooth” because his love for blueberries and there was a permanent blue tint on one of his teeth.
The technology of Bluetooth has been designed for uniting more than one devices with a single connection or network. Two Scandinavian runes represent the symbol of this technology. These are “Hagall”, forming the Latin “H” analog and “Bjarkan” for the Latin “B.” These two initials have formed the name of Harald Blåtand. And the device color of first Bluetooth was blue and resembled the tooth shape.

The symbol ampersand (&) has been derived from the Latin conjunction “et” which means “and” in English. Tiro was a personal secretary of Cicero from the Ancient Rome, and she was the one who invented this ligature. In order to speed up the writing process, an abbreviation system is known as “Tironian Notes” was invented by Tiro.
After many centuries, Europe and America were taken away by the popularity of ampersand and for a very long period of time, English alphabets were concluded by it. It was until the twentieth century that it started to diminish. The word ampersand actually means “and per se and” reflecting a contraction of phrase. Today, the symbol that we use is merged form of the letters “E” and “T”

The medical symbol; a staff with wings and two snakes is known by everyone, but the interesting part is that it was implemented by mistake.
The theory states that Hermes (Greek God) possessed a mystic staff called Caduceus, which precisely looked just like this medical symbol. The fact is that Caduceus had no relation with medicine, he was meant for reconciling enemies and stopping disputes.
The truth how this symbol was adopted is that many many years back, the doctors of US military confused the symbol of Caduceus with Asclepius who is a Greek god of medicine and healing because they were similar looking. The mistake was understandable, but since then medicine is represented by this symbol.

Nobody knows the orgins of power symbol. It was in 1940’s early period, that binary system was used by the engineers for the representation of certain switches. On was represented by 1 and 0 was for off. The power button in the coming years was something like zero and a vertical line featuring a zero and one.

In 1958, during a protest against nuclear weapons this peace symbol was invented. The letters “N” and “D” semaphore signals have made the symbol and means “Nuclear Disarmament”
The letter “N” in this semaphore alphabet is communicated by the two flags in between as inverted ”V,” whereas letter “D” is shaped by one flag holding pointed upwards and the other in the downward direction, hence forming the peace symbol.

So - last day of being 62 - but not ready for the Beatles yet ..
Cheers!