A guy goes to a girl's house for the first time, and she shows him into the living room. She excuses herself to go to the kitchen to make them a few drinks, and as he's standing there alone, he notices a cute little vase on the mantel. He picks it up, and as he's looking at it, she walks back in.
He says "What's this?"
She says, "Oh, my father's ashes are in there."
He says, "Jeez...oooh....I..."
She says, "Yeah, he's too lazy to go to the kitchen to get an ashtray."
First patent lawIn 1474, the Venetian Patent Law, the first of its kind in the world, declared that “each person who will make in this city any new and ingenious contrivance, not made heretofore in our dominion, as soon as it is reduced to perfection... It being forbidden to any other in any territory and place of ours to make any other contrivance in the form and resemblance thereof, without the consent and licence of the author up to ten years.”The law was intended to attract inventors and investors to Venice and stimulate new economic activities.« |
