Tanais appears in ancient Greek sources as the name of the river and of a city on it, situated in the Maeotian marshes. The name derives however from Scythian (Iranian) "Dānu" "river", akin to modern Ossetic "don" "river".
At its easternmost point, the Don comes near the Volga, and the Volga-Don Canal (length ca. 105 km (65 miles)), connecting both rivers, has been a major waterway. The Khazar fortress of Sarkel used to dominate this point in the Middle Ages. This part of the river saw Operation Uranus, one of the turning points of the Second World War.
The Don has given its name to the Don Cossacks who settled the fertile valley of the river in the 16th and 17th centuries. In modern literature, the Don figures centrally in the works of Mikhail Sholokhov, a Cossack from the stanitsa of Veshenskaya.
Grace Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper (December 9 1906 – January 1 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer.
Hopper was born in New York, USA. Hopper graduated from Vassar College in 1928 and Yale University in 1934 with a Ph.D degree in mathematics. She joined the US Navy during the World War II in 1943. She worked on computers in the Navy for 43 years. She then worked in other private industry companies after 1949. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and died on January 1, 1992.
She was one of the first people to work with modern digital computers and the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I calculator. She developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.
She had the idea that programs could be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or languages (such as assembly language) close to machine code, which is how it was normally done at that time. She led the work of COBOL language, which was based very much on her philosophy. It was successful since it was not copyrighted, so many programmers could use it. The spread of COBOL led to it becoming the universal language for business coding. It became used in government, industry, and commerce.
Hopper, a mathematician, was on the faculty at Vassar College when World War II began. She joined the Navy.  Hopper was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project to work on missile problems in 1943. The Navy began using one of the first electronic computers in 1944.
Hopper retired from the Navy in 1986. After the war, she was still interested in computers. Hopper worked at Remington Rand. She worked at Sperry Corporation later. She did not return to her teaching career after the war. She continued working on software for the other computers. She also served as an officer in the Naval Reserve. She worked on the UNIVAC, the first large-scale commercial computer. Hopper's work led to the development of the FLOW-MATIC. The  FLOW-MATIC was the first English-language data compiler. Hopper's work on FLOW-MATIC helped her later work with Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL). Hopper’s work translated the computer language into words we use that the computer will also understand.
Grace Murray Hopper died on January 1, 1992. She had retired from the navy six years before.
A park in Arlington, Virginia is named in her honor. The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her.
On December 9, 2013, Google had an animation of Hopper for their Google Doodle.
Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop (born Manhattan, New York, October 16, 1956) is an American conductor.
Alsop went to Yale University and then got a master's degree from the Juilliard School in violin playing. She won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1989, where she studied with famous conductors such as Leonard Bernstein.
Alsop has conducted many of the world’s most famous orchestras. Since 2002 she has been the conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and in 2007 she will become the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony. This will make her the first woman conductor of an important American orchestra.
Alsop has won many prizes and made lots of recordings. She has conducted and recorded many pieces by American composers, including the complete orchestral works of Samuel Barber.
Nevada Solar One
Nevada Solar One is the third biggest solar power plant in the world, generating 64MW. It was built in Boulder City, Nevada.
Nevada Solar One is a solar thermal power station and will use parabolic troughs, heating tubes of liquid (solar receivers). These solar receivers are specially coated tubes made of glass and steel.
Nevada Solar One also uses a technology that collects extra heat by putting it into phase-changing molten salts. This energy can then be drawn on at night.
Nevada Solar One started producing electricity in the June 2007.
Integrated pest management
In agriculture, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a pest control strategy. This strategy uses many different ways to deal with pests: natural predators and parasites, pest-resistant varieties of plants, cultural practices, biological controls, various physical techniques, and pesticides as a last resort.
It is an ecological approach that can reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides.
Serpa solar power plant
Construction of the 11 megawatt Serpa solar power plant in Portugal began in June 2006 and was completed in January 2007. The plant consists of a photovoltaic system that uses silicon solar cell technology to convert sunlight directly into energy.
The Serpa solar power plant uses 52,000 photovoltaic modules manufactured by SunPower, Sanyo, and Sharp. The plant uses a new tracking system that follows the Sun's daily path across the sky.
Generating electricity from the sun with no fuel costs or emissions, the Serpa plant is on a 60-hectare (150-acre) hillside and is a model of clean power generation integrated with agriculture. The project saves more than 30,000 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions compared to equivalent fossil fuel generation.
Indian Solar Loan Programme
The United Nation Environment Programme's Indian Solar Loan Programme has won the "World award for Sustainability" for helping to establish a householder loan program for solar home power systems.
Over the span of three years more than 16,000 solar home systems have been financed through 2,000 bank branches, mainly in areas of South India where the electricity grid does not yet extend.
Clovis I
Clovis I (variously spelled Chlodowech or Chlodwig, giving modern French "Louis" and modern German "Ludwig") (c. 466 – November 27, 511) was the first king of the Franks who united that nation. He succeeded his father Childeric I in 481 as King of the Salian Franks, one of two main groups of Frankish tribes, They were occupying the area west of the lower Rhine at that time, with their centre around Tournai and Cambrai along the modern frontier between France and Belgium. Clovis conquered the neighbouring Frankish tribes and established himself as sole king before his death.
Clovis converted to Catholicism, as opposed to the Arian Christianity that was common among Germanic peoples, because his wife, the Burgundian Clotilde, was a Catholic. He was baptized in the Cathedral of Reims. This act was very important in the following history of France and Western Europe in general, because he expanded his reign over almost all of the old Roman province of Gaul (roughly modern France). He is considered to be the founder both of France (which his state closely resembled geographically at his death) and the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Franks for the next two centuries.
Place of birth : Tournai (Belgium), Place of death : Paris (France).
Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a dynasty of Frankish kings who ruled in the region of ancient Gaul (more or less modern France), from the fifth to the 8th century when the Carolingian dynasty took control.