November 30: Merger of Exxon and Mobil (1999)

Standard Oil's Refinery No.1

The merger of Exxon and Mobil was completed to form ExxonMobil, which is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization and became the largest oil refinery in the world. Both Exxon and Mobil were direct descendents of John Davison Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, which was the largest oil refinery in the world and was broken up by the United States Supreme Court in 1911. In less than a century after the court ordered break-up, the descendants of Rockefeller's oil company formed the largest oil refinery again. Quite an impressive resilience. Is it a result of fortunate succession of good management team over years or a well-planned long-term survival plan or just a good business model?

November 29: Chosun Dynasty moved its capital to Seoul (1394)

Seoul, South Korea

Yi Seong-Gye, the founder and the first king of the Chosun Dynasty of Korea, moved its capital from Kaesŏng to Hanyang, which is now called Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. This was the beginning of Seoul as the capital city of the Korean Peninsula. Since then, Seoul has been grown significantly. The Seoul National Capital Area is the second largest metropolitan area in the world, next to Tokyo, with over 25 million residents. Seoul is a very dynamic, fast-pacing and fascinating city indeed.

November 28: Claude Lévi-Strauss was born (1908)

Claude Lévi-Strauss

 Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist and ethnologiest, was born. Lévi-Strauss was called the father of modern anthropology along with James Frazer. Structuralist searching for the underlying patterns of thoughts in all forms of human activity. Tristes Trophiques (Sad Tropics or A World on the Wane). "The savage mind has the same structure as the civilized mind and the human characteristics are the same everywhere."  

November 27: Nobel signed his last will to establish the Nobel Prize (1895)

A Nobel prize medal

Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a Swedish chemist and the inventor of dynamite, signed his last will at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, France. The will set aside his estate to institute the Nobel Prize after his death. He died of a stroke on December 10, 1896 at Sanremo, Italy . The Nobel prizes are awarded for eminence in three science areas including physical science, chemistry, and medical science or physiology. The prizes are also awarded for excellence in literary work and for contributions to the world peace. In 1968, Sveriges Riskbank instituted an award for distinguished economists, which is often associated with the Nobel prizes. The Nobel prizes are recognized as one of the most prestigious in science and literature. Peace prizes often become controversial. Receiving the prize for the contribution is glorious, however, excessive competition over the prize to attract the attention of the awarding committees is often neither necessarily beautiful nor constructive.

November 26: Concorde made the final flight (2003)

Supersonic airliner "Concorde"

Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner developed and manufactured by Britain (British Aircraft Corporation) and France (Aérospatiale). First flown in 1969, entered service in 1976. The commercial service was continued for 27 years until 2003. Primary operators were British Airways and Air France. Major routes were transatlantic: London (Heathrow)-New York (JFK) and Paris (Charles de Gaulle)-New York (JFK). Only 20 aircraft were built. After the only crash on July 25, 2000, Concorde made its final flight from London Heathrow to Bristol on November 26, 2003. Financially it was not profitable. Technologically, it was regarded as an engineering gem.

November 25: Band Aid - Do they know it's Christmas? (1984)

British and Irish pop musicians gathered and recorded the song "Do they know it's Christmas?" to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Band Aid was founded by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. The recording was done in 8 hours in a studio in Notting Hill on November 25, 1984 and released on November 29, 1984. It became a fastest selling single of all time in the UK and was sold a million copies in the first week. Band Aid was a massively successful charity supergroup.   


Participated artists: Adam Clayton, Phil Collins, Bob Geldof, Steve Norman, Chris Cross, John Taylor, Paul Young, Tony Hadley, Glenn Gregory, Simon Le Bon, Jim Kerr, Simon Crowe, Marilyn, Keren Woddward, Martin Kemp, Nik Kershaw, Jody Watley, Bono, Paul Weller, James Taylor, Mark Knopfler, John Illsley, Terry Williams, George Michael, Midge Ure, Martyn Ware, John Keeble, Gary Kemp, Curt Smith, Roland Orzabal, Sting, Pete Briquette, Francis Rossi, Robert Kool Bell, Andy Taylor, Jon Moss, Rick Parfitt, Nick Rhodes, Johnny Fingers, David Bowie, Boy George, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney, Stuart Adamson, Bruce Watson, Tony Butler and Mark Brzezicki.

November 24: Charles Darwin - Evolution Day (1859)

British naturalist Charles Robert Darwin published his seminal book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", which became the foundation of evolutionary biology. An introduction of the provoking theory of evolutionism that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection for the races fit the best for the environment. Written based on the evidence collected through the Beagle expedition. The book was unexpected popular and the entire stock of 1,250 copies was oversubscribed when it was on sale. Since then, the book has influenced us in many aspects such as idea, human and social behaviour, way of life as well as science to name a few.

November 23: LIFE magazine re-launched (1936)

A cover of LIFE magazine

A weekly news magazine LIFE was re-launched by Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, with a strong emphasis on photojournalism in 1936. Henry Luce bought the Life magazine to own the brand, which was originally founded in 1883. LIFE magazine had been published until 1972 as a weekly magazine. The first all-photographic American news magazine. A photo tells a story. Wildly successful for over 30 years. At one point, sold more than 13.5 million copies a week. Later it was published intermittently and then monthly for a while. Google began hosting an archive of the magazines photographs as a joint efforts with LIFE - LIFE photo archive hosted by Google.  LIFE.com was launched in March 2009 as a joint venture of Getty Images and LIFE magazine.

November 22: John F. Kennedy assassinated (1963)

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, aka JFK. 35th President of the United States between 1961 and 1963. Democrat. Roman Catholic. Pulitzer Prize winner. Cold War. Cuban Missile Crisis against USSR. Space Race - "We choose to go to the moon." Berlin Wall - "Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a citizen of Berlin.)" Liberal, flexible, courageous, bright, young mind. Assassinated in Dallas, Texas at age 46.

November 21: Einstein's equation E = mc² (1905)

E = mc² statue in Berlin, Germany

Albert Einstein's seminal paper Does the inertia of the body depend upon its energy content? was published in the journal Annalen der Physik, which was one of the four Annus Mirabilis papers. This paper led to the famous mass-energy equivalence equation  E = mc². This equation implies that energy of a body at rest (E) equals its mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. It can be used to calculate how much mass goes along with the the removed energy, in fact, it was used to predict how much energy will be released or consumed by nuclear reactions.

November 20: Release of Microsoft Windows 1.0 (1985)

A Windows 1.0 screenshot

Microsoft released Windows 1.0, its first operating system with a windows-based 16-bit graphical user interface. Succeeded by Windows 2.0 in November 1987. Criticized by Steve Jobs of Apple for copying Macintosh graphical user interface though Windows 1.0 was not as slick as Macintosh, not even close. Anyway, both were conceptual children of the graphical user interfaces used in Xerox Alto and Star. Both Mac and PC operating systems were eventually moving into graphical user interfaces. The slick Windows 8 would not exist without Windows 1.0.

November 19: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (1863)

US President Abraham Lincoln's speech at the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the American Civil War in 1863. human equality. declaration of independence. a new birth of freedom... whether it is because of his political agenda to win the war or a genuine declaration of human equality and freedom, the speech made a great step forward to the human equality.

November 18: Birthday of Mickey Mouse (1928)

Mickey Mouse

The release day of Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. This day is also regarded as the birthday of Mickey Mouse by the Disney Corporation. A big milestone of the animation movie industry.

November 17: August Möbius came (1790)

Möbius strip

August Ferdinand Möbius. German mathematician. Möbius strip - a surface with one side and one boundary component. Homogeneous coordinates in projective geometry. Möbius function μ(n). Studied mathematics under Carl Friedrich Gauss.

November 16: UNESCO was founded (1945)

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). 66th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of UNESCO. 195 member states and 8 associate members. human rights watchdog. promoter of sciences and education. not only natural sciences but also human and social sciences. children's advocate. preservation and recovery of world heritage. supporter of culture and multiculturalism... one of the real benefits of having the United Nations as an organization promoting global collaboration to improve the quality of our lives.

November 15: Intel 4004 released (1971)

Intel microprocessor 4004

The world-first commercial single-chip microprocessor by Intel with a 4-bit central processing unit and 16-pin ceramic dual in-line package... an early moment of the microprocessor era.

November 14: Claude Monet came (1840)

Water lilies, 1906

A founder of the French impressionist painting. Monet left great works such as Impression, soleil levant and a series of Water lilies. Light and the painter's perception were the key of his painting and philosophy. Monet was baptized as Oscar-Claude and was simply called Oscar by his parents. In 1883, Monet moved to Giverny of Normandy and had spent the rest of his life there. Monet died of lung cancer on December 5, 1926. He stayed here for 86 years... and opened up our eyes to the new world forever.

November 13: Soviet Union’s AK-47 development (1947)

AK-47

One of the first modern assault rifles – a symbol of the cold war. endless competition. a fixture of the conflict…over 75 million units built. still counting with its variants.

November 12: Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal for the World Wide Web (1990)

Tim Berners-Lee

The Internet was originated from the development of a packet switching network ARPANET funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense. It is the network of networks based on the communication protocol TCP/IP. In the early days, the Internet was mainly for military and academics. The biggest trigger of transforming the Internet from a medium for limited academics and researchers to a public medium was the development of the World Wide Web (WWW), which implemented the concept of hypertext for resources available on the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) proposed World Wide Web and then released the first web browser and web editor WorldWideWeb.  It was the beginning of the Internet for the public.

November 11: Remembrance Day

Rain. war. justice. honour. sacrifice. respect. poppies. guns. greed. hatred. misery. pain. forgiveness. longing. hope. home… peace.