The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC in old-spelling Dutch, literally "United East Indian Company") was established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock. It remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years, until it became bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1800, its possessions and the debt being taken over by the government of the Batavian Republic.

Organization

History
In the late sixteenth century, considerable pressure was upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands to expand overseas.

Background
At the time, it was customary for a company to be set up only for the duration of a single voyage, and to be liquidated right after the return of the fleet. As the competition between companies intensified, the profitability of the new trade was threatened, but consolidation was not possible as the merchants of different provinces were unwilling to cooperate. In 1602, the Dutch government forced the issue, sponsoring the creation of a single "United East Indies Company" that was granted a monopoly over the Asian trade. In 1603, the first permanent Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Banten, West Java and in 1611, another was established at Jayakarta (later 'Batavia' and then 'Jakarta'). Although this caused outrage in Europe and a diplomatic crisis, the English quietly withdrew from most of their Indonesian activities (except trading in Bantam) and focused on other Asian interests.
In 1619, Jan Pieterszoon Coen was appointed Governor-General of the VOC. He was not afraid to use brute force to put the VOC on a firm footing. On 30 May that year, Coen, backed by a force of nineteen ships, stormed Jayakarta driving out the Banten forces, and from the ashes, established Batavia as the VOC headquarters. In the 1620s, almost the entire native population of Banda Islands, the source of nutmeg was deported, driven away, starved to death or killed in an attempt to replace them with Dutch colonial slave labour.
The VOC traded throughout Asia. Ships coming into Batavia from the Netherlands carried silver from Spanish mines in Peru and supplies for VOC settlements in Asia. Silver, combined with copper from Japan, was used to trade with India and China for textiles. These products, such as cotton, silk and ceramics, were either traded within Asia for the coveted spices or brought back to Europe. The VOC was also instrumental in introducing European ideas and technology to Asia. The Company supported Christian missionaries and traded modern technology with China and Japan.
A more peaceful VOC trade post on Dejima, an artificial island off the coast of Nagasaki, was for a long time the only place where Europeans could trade with Japan.
In 1640, the VOC obtained the port of Galle, Sri Lanka, from the Portuguese and broke the latter's monopoly of the cinnamon trade. In 1658, Gerard Hulft laid siege to Colombo, which was captured with the help of King Rajasinghe II of Kandy. By 1659, the Portuguese had been expelled from the coastal regions, which were then occupied by the VOC, securing for it the monopoly over cinnamon.
In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established an outpost at the Cape of Good Hope (the southwestern tip of Africa, currently in South Africa) to re-supply VOC ships on their journey to East Asia. This post later became a fully-fledged colony, the Cape Colony, when more Dutch and other Europeans started to settle there. VOC outposts were also established in Persia (now Iran), Bengal (now Bangladesh, but then part of India), Malacca (Melaka, now in Malaysia), Siam (now Thailand), mainland China (Canton), Formosa (now Taiwan) and southern India. In 1662, Koxinga expelled the Dutch from Taiwan (see History of Taiwan).
By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40%.

Formation
From 1720 on, the market for sugar from Indonesia declined as the competition from cheap sugar from Brazil increased and European markets became saturated. Dozens of Chinese sugar traders went bankrupt which led to massive unemployment, which in turn led to gangs of unemployed coolies. The Dutch government in Batavia did not adequately respond to these problems. In 1740, rumours of deportation of the gangs from the Batavia area led to widespread rioting. The Dutch military searched houses of Chinese in Batavia searching for weapons. When a house accidentally burnt down, military and impoverished citizens started slaughtering and pillaging the Chinese community. This incident was deemed sufficiently serious for the board of the VOC to start an official investigation into the Government of the Dutch East Indies for the first time in its history the company was dissolved, four years after the States-General were replaced by the French supported Batavian Republic. This was soon replaced by French occupation. After the defeat of the French empire, the previously privately owned East Indies territories were granted to the newly created Kingdom of the Netherlands by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

Decline

Replicas have been constructed of several VOC ships, marked with an (R)

Amsterdam (R)
Arnhem
Batavia (R)
Braek
Duyfken ("Little Dove") (R)
Eendracht (1615) ("Unity")
Galias
Grooten Broeck ("Great Brook")
Gulden Zeepaert ("Golden Seahorse")
Halve Maen ("Half moon") (R)
Heemskerck
Hollandia
Klein Amsterdam ("Small Amsterdam")
Leeuwerik ("Lark")
Leyden
Limmen
Pera
Prins Willem (R)
Ridderschap van Holland ("Knighthood of Holland")
Rooswijk
Sardam
Texel
Utrecht
Vergulde Draeck ("Gilded Dragon")
Vianen
Vliegende Hollander ("Flying Dutchman")
Vliegende Swaan ("Flying Swan")
Wapen van Hoorn ("Arms of Hoorn")
Wezel ("Weasel")
Zeehaen ("Sea Cock")
Zeemeeuw ("Seagull")
Zuytdorp ("South Village") Notable VOC ships

Jan Pieterszoon Coen
Chartered companies
The British East India Company, founded in 1600
The Danish East India Company, founded in 1616
The Dutch West India Company, founded in 1621
The French East India Company, founded in 1664
The Swedish East India Company, founded in 1731
Spice wars
Engelbert Kaempfer
Carl Peter Thunberg
Isaac Titsingh
Philipp Franz von Siebold

The Megyeri Bridge, previously known as the Northern M0 Danube bridge, is a new cable-stayed road bridge currently under construction that will span the River Danube between Buda and Pest, respectively the west and east sides of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. As a continuation of the M0 motorway, it will be the last section to complete the M0 ringroad around Budapest. The bridge will be 4 km long and will cost 61.9 billion forints (approx. US$300M). It is due to open in August 2008. It has received much media attention due to the naming poll started to name the bridge.

Results
On September 28, 2006, it was announced that the bridge will be named "Megyeri Bridge", even though that name did not make it to the second round. The Hungarian Geographical Name Committee justified the final name by explaining that the bridge connects Káposztásmegyer and Békásmegyer.

SD may refer to:
South Dakota, United States postal abbreviation
San Diego

• The San Diego Padres, or San Diego Chargers
  Sales and Distribution, business
  SanDisk, US-based multinational corporation which designs and markets flash memory card products
  SafeDisc, a CD/DVD copy protection solution by Macrovision Corporation
  Secure Digital card, flash memory card format used in portable device, including digital cameras and handheld computers
  Self Destruct, in some video games.
  Siamese Dream, a rock music album from the band The Smashing Pumpkins
  Sicherheitsdienst, Security Police, the intelligence service of the Nazi SS
  Sindhi language
  Snare drum
  Social Democrats (Slovenia), a left-wing Slovenian political party
  Software Distributor, an HP-UX software package management system
  Standard-definition television
  Standard Deviation, statistics
  Stronnictwo Demokratyczne, a defunct Polish party
  Structured design, a computer programming concept
  Sub-Divisions of India, an administrative unit of certain states of India
  Sudan, ISO country code
  Sudan Airways, IATA airline designator
  Super Dave Osborne, an alter-ego of comedian Bob Einstein
  Super deformed, an exaggerated drawing style used in anime and manga
  Super Dollfie, a doll by Japanese company Volks
  Suppressed, a suffix placed at the end of a firearm's model name to note it is fitted with a suppressor.
  Sustainable Development, Environmental, economic and social development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations
  Significant digits, a method of expressing error in measurement
  SharpDevelop, a free and open source IDE for the C# Visual Basic .NET programming languages
  Snoop Dog (famous rapper)
  Scooby Doo

John Russell (January 3, 1921 – January 19, 1991) was an American actor most noted for playing Marshal Dan Troop in the western television series Lawman from 1958 to 1962.
Born John Lawrence Russell in Los Angeles, California, he fit the Hollywood image of tall, dark, and handsome. He attended the University of California as a student athlete. Following the outbreak of World War II, he joined the United States Marines, received a battlefield commission as lieutenant at Guadalcanal, and returned home after the war, a highly decorated veteran.
He was discovered by a talent agent while in a Beverly Hills restaurant and made his film debut in 1945. Russell was contracted to 20th Century Fox in several supporting roles, and later was signed with Republic Pictures. He primarily played secondary roles, often in western films, but in 1952 starred opposite Judy Canova in Oklahoma Annie. In 1955 Russell was given the lead role in a television drama called "Soldiers of Fortune." The half-hour adventure show placed him and his sidekick, played by Chick Chandler, in a dangerous jungle setting. While the show proved popular with young boys, it did not draw enough adult viewers to its prime slot and was canceled in 1957.
A year later, Russell was cast in his most memorable role as Marshal Dan Troop, the lead character in Lawman, an ABC western series that ran for five years. Co-starring with Peter Brown, who played Deputy Johnny McKay, Russell played a U.S. frontier peace officer mentoring his younger compatriot.
Russell appeared in other motion pictures, notably as a supporting player in the Howard Hawks 1959 western, Rio Bravo, which starred John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Walter Brennan. Through the 1960s to the 1980s, he returned to secondary roles, appearing in more than twenty films including three directed by his friend Clint Eastwood.
Russell appeared in the second season of the Filmation childrens science fiction series Jason of Star Command. He played the role of Commander Stone, a blue skinned alien from Alpha Centauri. He replaced James Doohan who played the Commander in the previous season but left to start working on Star Trek The Motion Picture.
John Russell died from emphysema in 1991 and was interred in the Los Angeles National Cemetery, a former U.S. Veterans Administration cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Paul Underwood is a British television presenter who famously won a six week CBBC presenting contract on Gaby Roslin's BBC television show Whatever You Want. He had previously made it to the last four in interviews for the Blue Peter vacancy subsequently filled by Simon Thomas. Michael graduated from Plymouth University's Rolle College, Exmouth with a BEd (Hons) Drama & Performance.

Curtis Martin (born May 1, 1973 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a former American football running back. He is an alumnus of Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh. Martin played in the National Football League (NFL) for the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. He officially announced his retirement from the NFL on July 26, 2007, [1] ranking fourth overall among NFL rushing backs in rushing yards all-time.

New England Patriots (1995-1997)
New York Jets (1998-2006)
Pro Bowl (x5)
3,518 career rushing attempts (3rd all-time)
14,101 career rushing yards (4th all-time)
17,430 career yards from scrimmage (7th all-time)
90 career rushing touchdowns (12th all-time)
100 career rushing/receiving touchdowns (19th all-time)
Led league in Rushing Yards 1 time
Led league in Rushing Attempts 1 time New England Patriots
Following the 1997 season, Martin was a restricted free agent, and signed an offer sheet with the New York Jets for $36 million over six years. The Patriots, who had the opportunity to match the offer, declined to do so and instead received a first and third round draft pick from the Jets[2] This reunited Martin with his former Patriot coach Bill Parcells. In his first seven seasons with the Jets, Martin missed only one game, in Week 6 of the 1998 season, and earned three more Pro Bowl selections. In 1998, Martin led the Jets to the AFC Championship Game, gaining 182 yards from scrimmage and scoring two touchdowns against the Jacksonville Jaguars in a Jets playoff win. Martin won the NFL rushing title in the 2004 NFL season with 1,697 yards (one more than runner-up Shaun Alexander, the closest margin in NFL history). He also won the FedEx Ground Player of the Year Award in 2004.
In 2005, Martin failed in his quest to become the first running back in NFL history to start his career with 11 straight 1,000 rushing yard seasons. He missed the December 11th game vs. the Oakland Raiders with a knee injury and was placed on injured reserve shortly thereafter, meaning that he also missed the final three games of the regular season. Martin finished with 735 rushing yards, giving him a career total of 14,101 rushing yards. Martin began the 2006 campaign on the Physically Unable to Perform list due to complications from the injury. On November 1, 2006, it was announced that he would miss the rest of the regular season with a bone-on-bone condition in his right knee. Curtis officially announced his retirement on July 26, 2007. He will be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011.

New York Jets
Martin rushed for over 1,000 yards in his first 10 professional seasons, a feat previously accomplished only by Barry Sanders. On November 6, 2005, he scored his 100th career touchdown, joining an elite group of only 16 players to do so. Martin is currently 4th on the all-time rushing yardage list, and on November 27, 2005, in the first quarter against the New Orleans Saints, he became the 4th running back in NFL history, behind Emmitt Smith, Walter Payton, and Barry Sanders, to pass the 14,000-yard rushing mark. He is the all-time Jets leader with 10,302 rushing yards with the team.[3] He is also fourth in the same category for the Patriots with 3799 yards.[4] Additionally, Martin happens to have a 'perfect' passer rating of 158.3: 2 completions on 2 pass attempts, 2 TD passes, and an average of 18.0 yards per attempt. The New York Jets will honor Curtis Martin at half time against the Steelers on November 18th.

"The Will to Believe" is the title of William James's classic lecture (published in 1897) defending the adoption of beliefs as hypotheses and self-fulfilling prophecies even without prior evidence of their truth. James' idea that people have a right to do so is an uncontroversial part of his doctrine since many philosophers would agree with him that we have a right to hypothesize and adopt self-fulfilling beliefs without evidence. However, James extends this idea to argue that, using this doctrine, adopting beliefs like God, freewill, possibility, and morality would cause evidence to come, thus verifying beliefs that could not have been verified otherwise. James' rationale for this more controversial idea is in combining it with his pragmatic theory of truth, the idea that a belief is verified if it causes better interaction with the world. For example, while no evidence can justify the initial adoption of a belief in God, the adoption of such a belief as a hypothesis without evidence would cause one to succeed better in the world, thus verifying the belief. This does not entail that it will be verified for everyone, but rather, for many, that it would cause their lives to be better, thus making it true for them (see James' pluralism regarding truth).

See also