Archive for December, 2009
Timex Group is an American watch company. Timex’s U.S. headquarters is in Middlebury, Connecticut. It has substantial operations in China, the Philippines, and India, with full-scale sales companies in Canada, the UK, France, and Mexico.
The company began in 1854 as Waterbury Clock in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley, known during the nineteenth century as the “Switzerland of America.” Their sister company, Waterbury Watch, manufactured the first inexpensive mechanical pocket watch in 1880. During World War I, Waterbury began making wristwatches, which had only just become popular, and in 1933 it made history by creating the first Mickey Mouse clock under license from Walt Disney, with Mickey’s hands pointing the time. This was made under the Ingersoll brand. In 1879 the company introduced a wristwatch called the “Timex” for the UK market.
It did not sell under the name Timex in the U.S until 1950. Over the next three decades, Timex watches were sold through a series of advertisements which emphasized their durability by putting the watches through “torture tests,” such as falling over the Grand Coulee Dam or being strapped to the propeller of an outboard motor, with the slogan “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
MMA stands for mixed martial arts, which is a full-contact combat sport allowing a variety of fighting techniques in their competitions. The techniques used in MMA come from established martial arts traditions, but include other fighting methods as well. In recent years MMA has grown their fan base from a small, cult following to millions of devout fans around the world and transformed into a brand name with MMA shirts and merchandise
Modern MMA competition became known in United States mainstream culture when the Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded in 1993. Skilled practitioners of various fighting arts were matched against one another in no-holds-barred competitions, in theory to find the most effective martial arts techniques for real-life unarmed combat situations. As the years went by, MMA promoters incorporated additional rules into official competition–not only to increase athlete safety, but to promote widespread acceptance of the sport. Following these alterations to the sport’s guidelines, Pay-Per-View television ratings generated by MMA fans have grown to levels achieved by other popular sports such as boxing and professional wrestling.