Ammonites have been known to mankind for thousands of years. They are the source of many stories and myths. The name of this spiral-shelled cephalopod comes from the Egyptian god Ammon. Ammon was pictured as a man with the horns of a ram protruding from his head. The curled ammonite shells resembled the horns and were called Ammon’s Stones or ammonites.

Ammonite Myths
Many cultures throughout history have attributed special powers to this fossil.

In ancient Greece, it was said that if you put an ammonite under your pillow it would cure insomnia and bring good dreams.

The Romans believed that if you put a golden ammonite (pryritized) under your pillow you would have prophetic dreams.

A Brief History of Ammonites
Ammonites first appeared in the Devonian Period. Early curled species had simple septa with a single arc like the members of the class orthocerida. Ammonites of later periods developed septa that had intricate folds called lobes and saddles. They also developed delicate lacey patterns on the outer shell. These patterns along with the shape of the shell and the structure of the septa are how this cephalopod is classified.


Since all living cephalopods (octopus, squid, and nautilus) are predators, we can assume that ammonites were as well. The only living cephalopod with an external shell is the chambered nautilus. It can swim and control its depth. It does this by using the siphuncle. The siphuncle is a tube that connects all the chambers in the shell with the living animal. The nautilus can add or subtract gas in these chambers to control buoyancy.

Ammonite Size
Ammonites have a wide range of size. Specimens have been found ranging from less than a centimeter to 2 meters in diameter. Early ammonites, until the middle Jurassic, were smaller, usually less than 9 inches or 23 centimeters. During the upper Jurassic and lower Cretaceous larger varieties can be found. Titanites found in the south of England can be over 50 centimeters, 2 feet in diameter.

Biostratigraphy
The hard shell of the ammonite was easily fossilized. This, combined with the sheer abundance of this group of cephalopods and its evolutionary duration through several geologic periods, make it a good index fossil. Index fossils help paleontologists and geologists to determine the age of rock layers. This is called biostratigraphy. It works like this. If you find an ammonite from a genus known to be from the Triassic Period, then the rock layer it came from must be Triassic. To be a good index fossil:

It must have wide distribution.

There must be a lot of them.

It must belong to a group that evolves rapidly.

They must be easy to recognize.

Ammonites satisfy all of the above criteria easily.

Extinction of The Ammonites
The end of the Cretaceous Period was also the end of the ammonites. This was about 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs and many other species of plants and animals died out at about this same time. It is thought that a huge meteor colliding with earth caused these mass extinctions.

In recent years, two organizations have been formed to combat the deadly menace of drunk drivers. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) was formed to stop drunk driving, support the victims of it and prevent underage drinking. SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) was created to provide students with the best prevention and tools to deal with underage drinking, drug use, impaired driving and other destructive decisions. The two organizations take different approaches to drunk driving and each is succeeding in its own way.

MADD was founded in 1980 by Cindy Lightner, following the death of her 13 year old daughter who was killed by a drunk driver out of bail for a hit and run accident only two days earlier. Lightner and other mothers who had lost children to drunk drivers formed MADD in an effort to stop the more than 30,000 alcohol related driving deaths each year. They worked, not only to educate the public about the dangers of drunk driving, but to change societal attitudes about drinking and driving.

By 1982, MADD had established 100 chapters across the nation. MADD appeared in newspapers and on TV. It addressed lawmakers, presenting not just statistics, but the faces of the victims of drunk drivers. Thanks to their efforts, President Reagan signed into law the Uniform Drinking Age Act in 1984. MADD expanded its campaign from “Don’t Drive Drunk” to “Don’t Drink and Drive.”

To accomplish this, it has recommended higher beverage taxes, lower drunk driving arrest thresholds, and roadblocks designed to frighten people out of social drinking. It has also created Victim Impact Panels, where people convicted of driving while intoxicated hear the stories of parents, relatives and friends of victims of drunk driving accidents.

Twenty-six years after the founding of MADD, alcohol related driving deaths in the United States have been reduced to about 17,000 annually. Today MADD has 600 chapters, community action teams and offices in the United States.

SADD was founded by Robert Anastas of Wayland High School in Massachusetts as Students Against Driving Drunk in 1981. SADD emerged as a response to more than 6,000 young people being killed in alcohol related accidents each year. Anastas and 15 other students wrote the Contract for Life to facilitate communication between young people and their parents about potentially destructive decisions related to alcohol.

SADD’s approach to the problem was to develop peer-to-peer educational programs in school chapters ranging from middle schools to colleges. In 1997, SADD expanded its mission to include underage drinking, substance abuse, impaired driving, violence, and suicide. SADD’s programs are keyed to the needs of individual school locations. These include peer-led classes, forums, workshops, conferences and rallies, and other awareness-raising activities.

Over its first decade, SADD has worked with many federal and state agencies, nonprofit groups and foundations to get its message across. By 1990, due in part to the work of SADD, the number of young people killed in alcohol related accidents fell to 2,000 per year.

Both MADD and SADD have been influential in reducing the number of alcohol related deaths in the United States.

We should all have a proper wallet. It is a necessity in our personal and professional lives. Avoid frustration by picking the proper wallet for your needs. It should be able to hold your business cards, credit cards, license, receipts, certificates, and oh yes, money. Yes, a wallet is a must. Do not ever leave home without one. With that in mind, you should pick a wallet that you would like to pull out throughout the course of your day. The wallet should make a statement because it shows how you value your appearance and your presentation.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Style and functionality are something that you can have in a wallet. Do not settle just for one or the other. Having a place for all your stuff can make a world of difference. One way to go is to buy a high-end designer wallet. If you can afford it, the intrinsic elegance of such items will immediately give you a lot of style points. These wallets have certain styles that make them stand out from the crowd.

But most people really cannot afford to pull out lots of cash from their wallet to, well, buy a wallet. And purchasing replica wallets is not really going to boost your image any. So what can you get? The magic wallet is something that is once again gaining popularity these days. Offering function as well as style, it is very handy and can hold all your credit cards, receipts, bills, and papers. You can rest that all your stuff will be secure. The magic wallet is so named because of the seemingly marvelous construction inside. A magic wallet will have elastic straps that hold everything inside it. No matter how you shake it, the contents will stay in place. Is a magic wallet really magic? No, but it will seem like it!

Magic In Many Forms

Some models are “upgrades.” They are called “plus” models or “professional” models. These magic wallets have extra pockets in a second fold. They can also have full length bill holders. Other additional features might include clear ID and coin holders. So there are actually options for the discerning buyer. As with anything, caveat emptor. Shop around and find the best bargains. Make sure you get exactly what you are looking for. Remember that you will use this item a lot throughout the course of your day. You should be confident in the appearance and utility of your wallet.

The bottom line is that you should get a wallet that you are comfortable with and that will serve your needs. Magic wallet or otherwise, it should offer both style and functionality. And you should be comfortable with both of these aspects of the wallet that you own. You do not want to be fumbling around at a cash register. You want to whip out your wallet with practiced ease and confidence. It is the perfect complement to your sartorial grandeur. It completes your image, so you had better shop around and pick the perfect wallet for you!

Many people could not enter the almost hidden world of online savings if they did not own a personal computer. The computer that is used on a daily basis by many online shoppers probably had many deep discounts attached to it at the time of purchase and shoppers found additional bargains through online savings outlets and through other places too.

The world of online savings can be quite dark and mysterious to people who are not in tune with they clever mechanisms that make the internet work so well for millions of people at one time. Some people do not know about manufacturer rebates or discounted coupon codes and have no idea how to navigate the internet to find them. Some computer users learn about such discounts in internet chat rooms.

Many online savings are never discussed in open retail management channels on the internet. Retailers would never think to advertise online savings on a website where deep discounts were already being applied to an item. Many online retailers might prefer to sell extended warranties of their own branding for the various items that are already covered under a standard manufacturer warranty somewhere.

The online savings world gets even darker when consumers learn that they have paid for a warranty that was unneeded at the time of sale but the warranty did serve as a safety net for the customer and that netting eventually cemented a sale. Many electronics are protected by a limited warranty and the online savings are further realized by a consumer when they are afforded the opportunity to purchase an extended warranty by the manufacturer for two years or more at one low price after they have filled out a registration card and mailed it in one time.

Consumers can find all types of online savings by using the internet search engine tools to their fullest capabilities. Online savings can occur during the check-out phase of many retail sites with the entry of coupon codes or codes provided by a retailer for a certain type of discount. Shipping is one of the most common online savings that a retailer can offer a consumer to entice them to buy products.

These online savings are not readily apparent on every retail site and consumers will have to do a bit of comparison shopping to realize which sales offer true discounts. The hidden discounts can be found discounted retailer directories and in retail site reviews. A good place to check for discounts and online savings is through rebate websites that litter the internet. People can use spreadsheets to compare offer validity dates against sales that are in progress and gain online savings that are simply amazing.

According to world history, with the fast development of the New World, slavery served as the perfect solution to the labor crisis. Lands were expanding quickly and economies of that time were based on trade. Land owners needed vast amounts of labor for crops such as sugar cane, tobacco, indigo, rice and cotton. So ideally they sought the cheapest labor they could find. Slavery, around the world as in America was a booming industry. The Africans along the West coast of Africa were known for their strength and ability to work assiduously under harsh weather conditions. Thus slaves were exported from these areas of Africa.

Europeans would visit slave auctions, and often even kidnap Africans for slave trade. In exchange for these laborers they accepted glass, whiskey, ivory and guns as payment. The first Africans in America arrived as Indentured Servants via Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. As the world economies strengthened and the demand for crop produce became greater, African American slaves soon outnumbered the existing ‘white’ population. In order to keep the slaves suppressed, the slave masters would ill treat them by means of starvation, floggings and sometimes even by killing them. However these African American slaves had much mettle in them and could not remain subdued forever, thus they took to different methods of revolting.

Many African American slaves fled into the hills to escape the brutality they were treated with. These became known as Maroons, who lived like nomads and fed off what nature would provide them. However, the nation was groaning for liberty for these inhumanely treated slaves. Freedom, liberty and democracy became the mantra of African American slaves who had vigorously started to fight the system for their rights.

The word spread quickly and little by little the slave rebellions began. Attempts by great men such as Gabriel Prosser of Virginia, Denmark Vesey of South Carolina, and Nat Turner also of Virginia to fight for freedom of his fellow brothers and shake the shackles of enslavement forever are still remembered today. It was due to men such as these that African Americans can now live with their heads held high, practicing their own culture and religion. The struggle for freedom was indeed a long and bitter one. In fact many people have speculated that historians have deliberately failed to note the struggle that African American slaves faced.

Today, America prides itself on being a free nation…. A nation that accepts different races, religions and creeds, one that is free and democratic in all forms. African Americans are now allowed to enjoy the freedoms their forefathers didn’t; such as that of an education, the dream of being a business owner, or even a house owner. Many African Americans have excelled in academia and continue to help lead the nation from strength to strength today in various boardrooms across this great nation.