Turquoise (horse)

Turquoise (1825–1846) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and broodmare who won the classic Oaks Stakes at Epsom Downs Racecourse in 1828. In a racing career which lasted from April 1828 until April 1830 she ran eighteen times, winning eleven races and finishing second on five occasions. As a three-year-old in 1828 she failed to attract a bid after winning a claiming race at Newmarket but then created an upset by winning the Oaks at odds of 25/1. She went on to prove herself a leading stayer, winning three more races before the end of the season. In 1829 she won five more races including three walkovers when no horses appeared to challenge her. She was retired after a single unsuccessful run in 1830.

Background

Turquoise was a small, lightly-built brown mare with white socks on her hind feet bred by her owner the 4th Duke of Grafton at his stud at Euston Hall in Suffolk. Her sire Selim won the Craven Stakes and the Oatlands Stakes at Newmarket and went on to have a successful stud career, siring the classic winners Azor (Epsom Derby), Medora (Oaks), Nicolo (2000 Guineas), Turcoman (2000 Guineas) and the filly by Selim (1000 Guineas) as well as the British Champion sire Sultan. Selim was British champion sire in 1814.

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 (disambiguation)

A horse is a hoofed mammal of the species Equus ferus caballus.

Horse or Horses may also refer to:

Animals

Arts and entertainment

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.

Turquoise

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl₆(PO
4)₄(OH)₈·4H
2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue. In recent times, turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market.

The substance has been known by many names, but the word turquoise, which dates to the 17th century, is derived from the French turques for "Turks", because the mineral was first brought to Europe from Turkey, from mines in the historical Khorasan Province of Persia.Pliny the Elder referred to the mineral as callais and the Aztecs knew it as chalchihuitl.

Properties of turquoise

The finest of turquoise reaches a maximum hardness of just under 6, or slightly more than window glass. Characteristically a cryptocrystalline mineral, turquoise almost never forms single crystals and all of its properties are highly variable. Its crystal system is proven to be triclinic via X-ray diffraction testing. With lower hardness comes lower specific gravity (2.60–2.90) and greater porosity: These properties are dependent on grain size. The lustre of turquoise is typically waxy to subvitreous, and transparency is usually opaque, but may be semitranslucent in thin sections. Colour is as variable as the mineral's other properties, ranging from white to a powder blue to a sky blue, and from a blue-green to a yellowish green. The blue is attributed to idiochromatic copper while the green may be the result of either iron impurities (replacing aluminium) or dehydration.

Turquoise (trading platform)

Turquoise is an equities trading platform (Multilateral trading facility or MTF), created by nine major investment banks in 2008. The aim was to provide dealing services at a 50% discount to traditional exchanges. It is a hybrid system that allows trading both on and off traditional exchanges. The system was advertised as a "pan-European platform based in London".

History

It was set up by a consortium of banks made up of BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale and UBS. The group selected EuroCCP to provide clearing and settlement services. The group selected Sweden's Cinnober as its trading platform. Turquoise developed a real-time market surveillance system "to capture breaches of trading rules and root out market irregularities". The system is based on the Progress Apama complex event processing platform. Turquoise was successfully launched on 15 August 2008.

On 21 December 2009, the London Stock Exchange Group agreed to take a 60% stake in trading platform Turquoise, which had a 7% share of the market. Turquoise was merged with the LSE's trading facility Baikal Global.