SNIA S.p.A. was an Italian firm located in Milan that manufactured defence products, textiles, chemicals, perfumes, and corrugated paper among other products.
The Società di Navigazione Italo-Americana (SNIA) was founded as a shipping company in 1917 by the financier Riccardo Gualino of Turin. Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat was vice-president of SNIA from 1917 to 1926. Gualino and Agnelli became involved in the profitable transport of US aid to Europe in 1917. In the early 1920s SNIA began to manufacture artificial textile fibers. Artificial cellulose fibers had been produced before the war, but SNIA was the first to mass-produce rayon. The company was given the new name of SNIA Viscosa (Società nazionale industria e applicazioni viscosa, National Rayon Manufacturing and Application Company).
Gualino made huge investments in SNIA Viscosa. By the mid-1920s SNIA Viscosa was the largest company in Italy in terms of capital. By 1926 SNIA Viscosa had become the second-largest rayon producer in the world. The United States produced more rayon in total, but Italy was the world's largest rayon exporter. In 1927–28 Courtaulds and Vereinigte Glanzstoff-Fabriken (VGF) gained control of SNIA Viscosa. A German director of VGF, Karl Scherer, replaced Gualino as head of the firm and cut output drastically. The foreign intervention was seen as humiliating by the fascists. In 1930 Gualino was forced sell his share in SNIA Viscosa and many other investments to try to reduce his debt. By this time the company had lost its leadership position, but in 1931 it was the first to manufacture short-fiber flock, and the first to produce cellulose from reeds to eliminate dependence on imported materials.
Píča (Czech pronunciation: [piːtʃa]), sometimes short piča or pyča [pɪtʃa], is a Czech and Slovak profanity that refers to the vagina similar to the English word cunt. It is often represented as a symbol of a spearhead, a rhombus standing on one of its sharper points with a vertical line in the middle, representing a vulva.
The meaning is clear for most Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians. In some other languages it has other spellings (e.g. in the non-Slavic Hungarian language it is written as "picsa"), but has similar pronunciation and carries the same meaning and profanity. Drawing this symbol is considered a taboo, or at least unaccepted by mainstream society.
This symbol has occurred in a few Czech movies, including Bylo nás pět. In the 1969 drama The Blunder (Ptákovina), Milan Kundera describes the havoc, both public and private, that ensues after the Headmaster of a school draws the symbol on a blackboard.
Jaromír Nohavica confessed, in the 1983-song Halelujá, to "drawing short lines and rhombuses on a plaster" (in Czech: tužkou kreslil na omítku čárečky a kosočtverce).
PA, Pa, pA, or pa may refer to:
P&A or P and A may stand for: