Fiat SpA bought a stake in most of Chrysler LLC’s assets, creating the world’s sixth-largest carmaker in Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne’s plan to survive the recession by setting up a global alliance. Fiat, Italy’s biggest manufacturer, will own 20 percent of the newly formed Chrysler Group LLC and is aiming for a 35 percent stake if certain operational goals are achieved, the companies said today in a statement. The United Auto Workers’ union retiree health-care trust fund will be the biggest owner, with 55 percent when Fiat reaches its target holding. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned objections to the transaction by Indiana state pension funds and U.S. consumer advocates, ruling that the challenges didn’t meet the legal standard for an emergency stay of the deal. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aUwZOCifLsZM

America’s top public schools according to Newsweek
Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 6 percent of public schools measured this way. http://www.newsweek.com/id/201160

A descendant of the onetime owner of a famed Van Gogh painting has sued Yale University in an effort to reclaim the artwork from the Ivy League school.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., Pierre Konowaloff alleged that the university should have known the painting—"The Night Café"—had been confiscated from his great-grandfather, Ivan Morozov, a Russian industrialist and aristocrat, during the Communist takeover of Russia in the early 1900s. The 1888 painting was subsequently sold by the Soviet government to a European gallery. Stephen Carlton Clark, a Yale alumnus, bought the painting from a gallery in New York in the early 1930s and bequeathed it to Yale in 1961.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124406037069082321.html

You won't have to leave your chair to see the Gutenberg Bible (1455) anymore.
That and the first printed edition of Homer's works are among ancient books being published online by Cambridge University Library over the next five years.
The money for the project has come from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.

NYX is the resident cat at the Chesterfield County Public Library in Virginia. You may know her through Ann Chambers Theis' wonderful website, Overbooked where of course she has her own page. Nyx was born without eyeballs in May of 2008. She also has a stubby tail, possibly due to an injury. Nyx gets around by echolocation, meaning she produces sounds and is aware of how far they travel when they bounce back. Even when she is still, she has a loud purr. Nyx seems very happy at the library.

Library cats map
http://www.ironfrog.com/catsmap.html

Asterisms are sub- or supersets of constellations which build a constellation itself, or a group of stars, physically related or not. Best known is the Big Dipper as a part of the Great Bear. But there are more than just this one. Full article>>>
An asterism is a distinctive pattern of stars in the sky but not including any of the 88 recognized constellations. Full article>>> http://en.mimi.hu/astronomy/asterism.html

In a way we’re all Big Dippers, part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Sail, a novel by James Patterson and Howard Roughan

List of the 88 constellations as defined by the International Astronomical Union:
http://www.cosmobrain.com/cosmobrain/res/constellations.html

Q. What city has about 90 islands connected with about 500 stone bridges? It has 50 museums, the largest number of museums per square mile than any city in the world.
A. Forthcoming

June 10 is the birthday of Saul Bellow, (books by this author) born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, in 1915, two years after his parents emigrated from Russia.
June 10 is the birthday of Judy Garland, born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where her father operated the only movie theater in town.
June 10 is the birthday of the children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, (books by this author) born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1928. Maurice Sendak has illustrated more than 90 books. He said: "You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them."
June 11 is the birthday of poet David Lehman, (books by this author) born in New York City in 1948. One day in 1987, he had a sudden inspiration: to create a yearly anthology that would feature the best poems that had been published that year, and each year a different poet would select the poems. Publishers were hesitant because they thought that poetry would automatically lose money. But Scribner finally agreed to publish it, and The Best American Poetry 1988, edited by John Ashbery, was a huge success. David Lehman has served as the series editor ever since, and the Best American Poetry books continue to come out every September and are very popular.
On June 11, 1935 listeners first heard FM radio, when the American inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong gave a demonstration in Alpine, New Jersey. FM was much clearer than AM. Armstrong demonstrated it by playing classical music and the sound of water being poured. The Writer’s Almanac