Business history: Ball Corporation
In 1880 Frank and Edmund Ball established the Wooden Jacket Can Company in Buffalo, New York. The Balls soon developed a better and cheaper method of applying the wooden jackets to the tin cans, and Frank obtained orders from throughout the Midwest. In 1883 Frank and Edmund’s three brothers—George, William, and Lucius—joined the business. As the popularity of tin oilcans declined, the brothers began to manufacture glass oil containers. By 1885 they were producing their own glass, and in February 1886 they incorporated as the Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, with Frank as president. In 1884 or 1885 Ball Brothers began manufacturing the threaded-top glass jars for home canning first designed by John Mason.
The Muncie, Indiana natural gas boom began in 1886, and its business leaders, led by James Boyce, raised $120,000 to attract factories to the city. In the summer of 1887 they offered the Ball Brothers company $5,000, free land, free gas, and a private rail link connecting the factory to Muncie’s main rail line. The brothers accepted the offer and opened their plant on Meridian Street in March 1888.
http://www.indianahistory.org/hbr/business_pdf/ball_corp.pdf

Ball Corporation is one of the world's leading suppliers of rigid metal and plastic packaging products and services.
http://www.ball.com/page.jsp?page=1
http://www.ballcorporate.com/page.jsp?page=1

Ball State University history
In the late 19th century, Muncie business leaders envisioned a local college to help boost the city’s development. Among the visionaries were Frank C. Ball and his brothers, young New York industrialists who moved to Muncie looking to expand their glass container business. After the community’s efforts to sustain a small teacher-training school failed, the Ball brothers purchased the land and buildings of the defunct institution and donated them to the State of Indiana. This gift became the Indiana State Normal School Eastern Division, which opened in 1918 to meet Indiana’s need for more and better teachers.
In recognition of the Ball family’s generosity, the school was renamed Ball Teachers College in 1922 and then Ball State Teachers College in 1929. The winged statue Beneficence, last commissioned work of Daniel Chester French, stands on the campus as a tribute to the family.
http://cms.bsu.edu/About/HistoryAndMission.aspx

Treasury Releases Best Practices to Encourage Additional Form of Mortgage Finance
News release: The U.S. Treasury Department took steps to encourage additional sources of mortgage finance and strengthen financial institutions by issuing Best Practices for Residential Covered Bonds...A covered bond is secured debt instrument that provides funding to a depository institution, collateralized by high-quality mortgage loans that remain on the issuer's balance sheet. Covered bonds have the potential to increase funding for mortgages and to strengthen our financial institutions by offering them a new funding source that will diversify their overall funding portfolio...Treasury worked with the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Securities and Exchange Commission when developing the guide. The Department also consulted with market participants, including potential issuers, investors, underwriters, ratings agencies as well as international regulators.
Fact Sheet
US Covered Bond Best Practices
Related postings on the mortgage market and foreclosures

New GAO Reports: Tax Expenditures, Electronic Health Records, Bankruptcy Reform, Prescription Drug Oversight, Financial Audit Manual
Telecommunications: Agencies Are Generally Following Sound Transition Planning Practices, and GSA Is Taking Action to Resolve Challenges, GAO-08-759, June 27, 2008
Tax Expenditures: Available Data Are Insufficient to Determine the Use and Impact of Indian Reservation Depreciation, GAO-08-731, June 26, 2008
Electronic Health Records: DOD and VA Have Increased Their Sharing of Health Information, but More Work Remains, GAO-08-954, July 28, 2008
Bankruptcy Reform: Dollar Costs Associated with the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, GAO-08-697, June 27, 2008
Prescription Drugs: FDA's Oversight of the Promotion of Drugs for Off-Label Uses, GAO-08-835, July 28, 2008
DOD Business Systems Modernization: Key Marine Corps System Acquisition Needs to Be Better Justified, Defined, and Managed, GAO-08-822, July 28, 2008
Financial Audit Manual: Volume 1, July 2008, GAO-08-585G, July 25, 2008
Financial Audit Manual: Volume 2, July 2008, GAO-08-586G, July 25, 2008

Nearly 10 Billion Fewer Miles Driven in May 2008 than May 2007: Seven-Month Decline in Travel Reflected in Highway Trust Fund
News release: New Federal data showing further steep declines in the number of miles Americans are driving is additional proof that the country needs new means - other than the gas tax - to finance the nation's transportation infrastructure, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters said ...Secretary Peters said that Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) in May 2008 than in May 2007, according to the Federal Highway Administration data. This is the largest drop in VMT for any May, which typically reflects increased traffic due to Memorial Day vacations and the beginning of summer, and is the third-largest monthly drop in the 66 years such data have been recorded. Three of the largest single-month declines - each topping 9 billion miles - have occurred since December."
FHWA's Traffic Volume Trends reports for May 2008 (see also PDF and Excel reports)

A 2,100-year-old bronze and iron computer that predicted eclipses and other astronomical events also showed the cycle of the Greek Olympics and the related games that led up to it, researchers reported on July 31. The Antikythera mechanism, so named because it was found in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, is thought to have been made about 100 BC. Its purpose was a mystery for more than 100 years, but in 2006, researchers used a massive X-ray tomography machine, similar to that used to perform CT scans on humans, to examine the heavily encrusted fragments. They concluded that the device originally contained 37 gears that formed an astronomical computer.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci-antikythera31-2008jul31,0,7670144.story

July 31 is the birthday of children's fantasy writer J.K. Rowling, (books by this author) born Joanne Rowling in Yate, England, in 1965. She has written seven novels in the Harry Potter series, a series that has sold nearly 400 million copies. Rowling grew up in rural England. She says that the character of Hermione in her series is "a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." One day on a cross-country train trip, the idea of Harry Potter "came fully formed" into her mind. It took J.K. Rowling a while to find a publisher for her novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (published in the U.S. as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).
In 1997, Bloomsbury published the first Harry Potter book with a print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which went to libraries. It has now sold about 120 million copies. Her publisher thought young boys were her target audience and was worried that they wouldn't buy a novel by a woman, so they encouraged her to use initials instead. Joanne didn't have a middle name, so she took her grandmother's name, Kathleen, and made herself J.K. Rowling. She is now the highest-earning novelist in history.
The Writer’s Almanac