Ferdinand (horse)

Ferdinand (March 12, 1983 – 2002) was a Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 1986 Kentucky Derby and 1987 Breeders' Cup Classic. He was voted the 1987 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year.

He entered stud in 1989 and was later sold to a breeding farm in Japan in 1994.

Much to the outrage of many horse racing enthusiasts, reports indicate that in 2002 Ferdinand was sent to slaughter in Japan with no fanfare or notice to previous owners. He likely became either pet food or steaks for human consumption. Ferdinand's death was the catalyst for the Ferdinand Fee, an optional donation program to fund keeping old racehorses alive, and Friends of Ferdinand, a nonprofit group formed in 2005 with the goal of transitioning retired racehorses into second careers.

In September 2006, the United States House of Representatives approved H.R. 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which would ban the slaughter of horses in the United States. The bill did not make it out of committee in the Senate, however. In January 2007, the bill was re-introduced. As of 2012, the act has not been passed into law.

Horse

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Hyracotherium, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response. Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months, and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training under saddle or in harness between the ages of two and four. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years.

Horse (1941 film)

Uma (馬, also known as Horse) is a 1941 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Kajiro Yamamoto and starring Hideko Takamine, whom Yamamoto had directed in his film Composition Class (Tsuzurikata Kyōshitsu) three years before. Uma was actually completed by assistant director Akira Kurosawa. It follows the story of Ine Onoda, the eldest daughter of a poor family of farmers, who raises a colt from birth and comes to love the horse dearly. When the horse is grown, the government orders it auctioned and sold to the army. Ine struggles to prevent the sale.

Overview

The film is a tale about a young girl and the colt she raises from its birth. But it is also about the struggle of farmers existing on the edge of poverty. Akira Kurosawa is credited as the film's production coordinator, which is equivalent to first assistant director. But Kurosawa's signature is all over this work and is the last film he was to work on as an assistant before starting his own directing career. The film took three years to plan and a year to film. Kajiro Yamamoto had to commute to the far mountainous location but had to turn his attention to his money making comedies in Tokyo and so he left production in the hands of his assistant, Kurosawa.

Horse (zodiac)

The Horse (馬 午) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. There is a long tradition of the horse in Chinese mythology. Certain characteristics of the Horse nature are supposed to be typical of or to be associated with either a year of the Horse and its events, or in regard to the personality of someone born in such a year. Horse aspects can also enter by other chronomantic factors or measures, such as hourly.

Years and the Five Elements

People born within these date ranges can be said to have been born in the "Year of the Horse", while also bearing the following elemental sign:

Basic astrology elements

Relationship compatibility

Horses are thought to be particularly incompatible with Rat and Ox personalities; and to be particularly compatible with people of the Tiger and Dog type.

See also

Ferdinand

Ferdinand is a Germanic name composed of the elements frith "protection" , frið "peace" (PIE pri to love, to make peace) or alternatively farð "journey, travel", Proto-Germanic *farthi, abstract noun from root *far- "to fare, travel" (PIE par "to lead, pass over"), and nanth "courage" or nand "ready, prepared" related to Old Spanish , Old High German nendan "to risk, venture."

The name was adopted in Romance languages from its use in the Visigothic Kingdom. It is reconstructed as either Gothic Ferdinanths or Frithunanths. It became popular in German-speaking Europe only from the 16th century, with Habsburg rule over Spain. Variants of the name include Fernán, Fernando, Hernando, and Hernán in Spanish, Ferran in Catalan, and Fernando and Fernão in Portuguese. The French forms are Ferrand, Fernand, and Fernandel, and it is Ferdinando and Fernando in Italian. In Hungarian both Ferdinánd and Nándor are used equally.

There are numerous hypocorisms or short forms in many languages, such as Finnish version is Veeti.

Kasakela Chimpanzee Community

The Kasakela chimpanzee community is a habituated community of wild eastern chimpanzees that lives in Gombe National Park near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The community was the subject of Dr Jane Goodall's pioneering study that began in 1960, and studies have continued ever since. As a result, the community has been instrumental in the study of chimpanzees, and has been popularized in several books and documentaries. The community's popularity was enhanced by Dr Goodall's practice of giving names to the chimpanzees she was observing, in contrast to the typical scientific practice of identifying the subjects by number. Dr Goodall generally used a naming convention in which infants were given names starting with the same letter as their mother, allowing the recognition of matrilineal lines.

Elefant

The Elefant (German for "elephant") was a Schwerer Panzerjäger (German: "heavy tank-hunter")—a tank destroyer—of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. It was built in small numbers in 1943 under the name Ferdinand after its designer Ferdinand Porsche, using tank hulls that had been produced for the Tiger I tank requirement which was rejected in favour of a Henschel design.

In 1944, after modification of the existing vehicles, they were renamed Elefant. The official German designation was Panzerjäger Tiger (P) and the ordnance inventory designation was Sd. Kfz. 184.

Development history

Porsche GmbH had manufactured about one hundred chassis for their unsuccessful proposal for the Tiger tank, the "Porsche Tiger", in the Nibelungenwerk factory in Sankt Valentin, Austria. Both the successful Henschel proposal and the Porsche design used the same Krupp-designed turret—the Henschel design had its turret more-or-less centrally located on its hull, while the Porsche design placed the turret much closer to the front of the superstructure. Since the competing Henschel Tiger design was chosen for production, the Porsche chassis were no longer required for the Tiger tank project. It was therefore decided that the Porsche chassis were to be used as the basis of a new heavy tank destroyer, Ferdinand, mounting Krupp's newly developed 88 mm (3.5 in) Pak 43/2 anti-tank gun. This precise long-range weapon was intended to destroy enemy tanks before they came within their own range of effective fire.