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The Queen's Hamlet

The Queen’s Hamlet is a charming attraction in the park of the Palace of Versailles, built for Marie Antoinette in the 18th century. It consists of a group of rustic cottages and farm buildings, arranged around an artificial lake, that served as a place of leisure and education for the queen and her children. The hamlet was inspired by the naturalistic movement in art and architecture, and by the model farms that were popular among the French aristocracy at the time. The hamlet was also a way for Marie Antoinette to escape the formalities and pressures of the court life, and to enjoy a simpler and more intimate lifestyle. The hamlet was designed by Richard Mique and Hubert Robert, who also modified the landscape of the Petit Trianon, where the hamlet is located. The hamlet has three distinct areas: the reception area, where the queen entertained her guests in the boudoir, the billiard room, and the Queen’s House; the farm area, where the animals and crops were raised and the dair
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Abra Cadabra


Originally, it was an online bookstore called Cadabra.

The story of how Amazon became Amazon is a prime example of how difficult the company-naming process can be. As Brad Stone writes in his 2013 bestseller, "The Everything Store," "Cadabra" was intended as a reference to the word "abracadabra" (as in, magic). 

Yet Stone writes that CEO Jeff Bezos' first lawyer pointed out that the reference was too obscure. Plus, when you were on the phone, people sometimes heard "Cadaver" instead.

It was in the mid-'90s when Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, started exploring other possibilities. They registered the domain names awake.com, browse.com, and bookmall.com. They also registered the domain name relentless.com and kept it (if you type that into your browser today, you'll be redirected to amazon.com).

Bezos then started paging through the "A" section of the dictionary. At the time, website listings were alphabetized, so he wanted a word that started with "A." When he landed on the word "Amazon," the name of the largest river on the planet, he decided that was the perfect name for what would become earth's largest bookstore.
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