Products native to Latin America--unknown in Europe, Asia and Africa during the Middle Ages: Bean, Cacao, chocolate , Corn or maize , Peanut, Hot or chilli pepper, capsicum or sweet or bell pepper, Pineapple, Potato, Squash or marrow, zucchini, pumpkin, Tomato, Turkey, Vanilla http://www.oldcook.com/en/history-products_america

Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic (painkilling), anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. Quinine is an effective muscle relaxant, long used by the Quechua Indians of Peru to halt shivering due to low temperatures. The Peruvians would mix the ground bark of cinchona trees with sweetened water to offset the bark's bitter taste, thus producing tonic water. Quinine has been used in unextracted form by Europeans since at least the early 17th century. Quinine was first used to treat malaria in Rome in 1631. During the 17th century, malaria was endemic to the swamps and marshes surrounding the city of Rome. Malaria was responsible for the death of several popes, many cardinals and countless common Roman citizens. Most of the priests trained in Rome had seen malaria victims and were familiar with the shivering brought on by the febrile phase of the disease. The Jesuit brother Agostino Salumbrino (1561–1642), an apothecary by training who lived in Lima, observed the Quechua using the bark of the cinchona tree for that purpose. At the first opportunity, Salumbrino sent a small quantity to Rome to test as a malaria treatment. In the years that followed, cinchona bark was known as Jesuit's bark or Peruvian Bark and became one of the most valuable commodities shipped from Peru to Europe. The form of quinine most effective in treating malaria was found by Charles Marie de La Condamine in 1737. Quinine was isolated and named in 1820 by French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou. The name was derived from the original Quechua (Inca) word for the cinchona tree bark, "quina" or "quina-quina", which roughly means "bark of bark" or "holy bark". Prior to 1820, the bark was first dried, ground to a fine powder and then mixed into a liquid (commonly wine) which was then drunk. To maintain their monopoly on cinchona bark, Peru and surrounding countries began outlawing the export of cinchona seeds and saplings beginning in the early 19th century. The Dutch government persisted in its attempt to smuggle the seeds, and by the 1930s Dutch plantations in Java were producing 22 million pounds of cinchona bark, or 97% of the world's quinine production. During World War II, Allied powers were cut off from their supply of quinine when the Germans conquered The Netherlands and the Japanese controlled the Philippines and Indonesia. The United States, however, had managed to obtain four million cinchona seeds from the Philippines and began operation of cinchona plantations in Costa Rica. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine

Learn how about foods and how to pronounce them: quinoa, achiote, clafouti, and fregola. http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Sounds-Weird-Tastes-Good

Facebook, in a proposed settlement with the FTC, has agreed to get users' permission before changing privacy settings. It would also have privacy audits every other year for 20 years. According to an eight-count complaint, the FTC alleged that Facebook told users that third-party apps they installed would have access to only as much information as the apps needed to operate but took far more. It also alleged that personal information labeled as to be shared only with friends had been shared with third-party apps when a friend installed the apps. The FTC also accused Facebook of sharing personal information with advertisers. Facebook did not admit to violating any law. The proposed settlement notes that the company denies the FTC's allegations. But Facebook has agreed to get express consent from users before changing how it shares their information. An issue of growing concern at the FTC is facial recognition, which Facebook rolled out last year. The FTC said it would hold a workshop on facial recognition next week. "If they unveil a new product that uses facial recognition technology, they would have to address the privacy concerns," said Maneesha Mithal, associate director in the FTC's division of privacy and identity protection. The proposed settlement is open to public comment until Dec. 30 and requires a final vote by the FTC's commissioners.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-privacy-20111130,0,74780.story

News release from FTC, Facebook Settles FTC Charges That It Deceived Consumers By Failing To Keep Privacy Promises, 11/29/11 http://ftc.gov/opa/2011/11/privacysettlement.shtm

Nutcracker follow-up due to reader interest
The Imperial Mariinsky Theatre and its predecessor, the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, hosted the premieres of many of the operas of Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. At the behest of the theatre director Ivan Vsevolozhsky, both the Imperial Ballet and the Imperial Opera were relocated to the Mariinsky Theatre in 1886, as the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre was considered unsafe. It was there that the renowned choreographer Marius Petipa presented many of his masterpieces, including such staples of the ballet repertory as The Sleeping Beauty in 1890, The Nutcracker in 1892, Raymonda in 1898, and the definitive revival of Swan Lake (with Lev Ivanov) in 1895. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariinsky_Theatre

Earlier this year Amazon worked out a deal with California delay a start to collecting sales taxes until September 2012, after the state passed a law to require it. http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202513941879 More states – possibly all of them – are expected to follow its example. Currently, Amazon and other online sellers take advantage of a loophole in national sales-tax policy that requires a “physical presence” in the state for tax collection. Amazon had claimed its operations didn’t constitute a physical presence in California, and therefore, the “use tax” applied, which means customers are supposed to keep track of their purchases where sales tax isn’t collected and pay tax each year to their state. The Marketplace Fairness Act http://enzi.senate.gov/uploads/marketplacebill.pdf has been proposed in the Senate by a bipartisan group, and would close loopholes everywhere. However, critics point out that Amazon could benefit from the legislation, as it will offer to handle sales-tax chores for merchants selling through its site for a fee, according to MultiChannel Merchant, a marketing industry site.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/11/30/amazon-sales-tax-loopholes-likely-to-end-next-year/

New York City rang in the holiday season November 30 lighting the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree during a ceremony. The tree with its 30,000 lights (5 miles worth), will be on until Jan. 7. The first Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center was set up in 1931.

December 1: World AIDS Day; Great Union Day in Romania (1918)
1822 Pedro I was crowned the first Emperor of Brazil, less than two months after he actually began his reign on October 12.
1913 Ford Motor Company began operating the world's first moving assembly line for the mass production of automobiles.
1925 The Locarno Treaties were formally signed in London, establishing post-First World War territorial settlements.
1955 In a key event in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About