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The United States spent the most money on the war, an estimated $341 billion, including $50 billion for lend-lease supplies, of which $31 billion went to Britain, $11 billion to the Soviet Union, $5 billion to China, and $3 billion to 35 other countries. Germany was next, with $272 billion; followed by the Soviet Union, $192 billion; and then Britain, $120 billion; Italy, $94 billion; and Japan, $56 billion. Except for the United States, however, and some of the less militarily active Allies, the money spent does not come close to being the war’s true cost. The Soviet government has calculated that the USSR lost 30 percent of its national wealth, while Nazi exactions and looting were of incalculable amounts in the occupied countries. The full cost to Japan has been estimated at $562 billion.

World War II's basic statistics qualify it as by far the most costly war in history in terms of human casualties and material resources expended.

Borneo’s rainforests are home to thousands of endemic species of animal, reptile, and insect. These include rhinos, hornbills, macaques, gibbons, tarsiers, and slow lorises. It also has some of the world’s strangest creatures, like flying lizards and frogs (they actually glide using webs of skin). New creatures are still being discovered. In 2005, for example, scientists discovered a large cat-fox mammal in Borneo’s rainforest. Orangutans: Borneo’s Most Famous Animal

Borneo’s hilly terrain, rivers, and thick forests have made it difficult to develop until recently. But in the late 1940’s, machines, trucks, and chainsaws were brought to Borneo. These made it possible for settlers from the coastal areas to cut their way into the interior of the island.

More than half the species on Earth are found in tropical rainforests. Many species living in these forests have never before been seen or studied by scientists. Most of these unknown species are insects, like moths.

Tropical rainforests are wet nearly all the time. They get lots of rain all year long, but they also help make rain through evaporation. Tropical rainforests help regulate weather all over the world.

Tropical rainforests are found in a narrow region around the equator that is known as the tropics. The climate is rainy and the temperatures are warm and nearly the same every day. The sun and the rain combine to create an environment that is very humid. This climate is ideal for the growth of many kinds of green plants.

Many different frog species live in the canopy of the rainforest. Most spend their entire lives in the canopy. They lay their eggs in little pools of water held in leaves instead of in ponds or streams.

Tropical rainforest plants have many adaptations for living in the forest. Some collect all their water from the air. For this reason, many of them have very large leaves. Others have flexible stems that allow them to bend and follow the sunlight so they can carry out photosynthesis all day.

which is part of a conservation effort known as ecotourism. People also are trying to help wildlife survive by creating protected areas and rehabilitation centers.

Decomposers like leaf-cutter ants, termites, bacteria, and fungi live on the forest floor. These decomposers quickly turn fallen leaves and dead organisms into nutrients. This creates food for trees and other plants and animals.

(One hectare is equivalent to the area covered by two football pitches). More than a hectare of rainforest is lost every two seconds,

there will be no rainforest at all in just 40 years.

Logging only began in Indonesia ten years ago. It is estimated that in just ten more years, the timber stock will have been totally destroyed. In Thailand, 80% of the country's original forest has been cut down in the last 40 years.

Since the end of the Second World War about half the world's rainforest has been felled.

Forests are destroyed for a number of reasons:-Population GrowthTropical HardwoodCattle Grazing

A shortage of money prevents these countries from carrying out suitable conservation programmes.

It is estimated that every minute, 80 football pitches of rainforest are destroyed!

oung male elephants leave to join a bachelor herd when they are about 11-years-old. Female elephants, however, stay with their mother’s herd for life. Elephants keep growing their whole lives. A male may grow to be twice as large as a female of the same age. In the wild, elephants live to be about 60-years-old.

People have always been amazed at the great size and strength of elephants. Long ago, elephants were sometimes used on the battlefield. Soldiers riding atop them would charge at the enemy. The sight of a giant elephant in armor could terrify the enemy soldiers into running away. In Asia, elephants are trained to work for people. They carry people and supplies through tropical forests and help with logging by moving giant logs from place to place. Asian elephants have even been used as taxis to carry people through slow traffic. In India, Thailand, and other Asian countries, elephants are honored as symbols of good fortune. People sometimes decorate elephants and include them as part of traditional religious ceremonies.

In the early 1900s, there were more than 5 million elephants in Africa and Asia. Today, there are fewer than 500,000, as a result of hunting (legal and illegal) and habitat destruction. People are the biggest threat to the survival of elephants both in Africa and Asia.

Fundraise for the rainforest! Raising money to help protect rainforest land is easy and important.

Write a letter.Writing letters to the presidents of companies, or corporations, that destroy the rainforest is a very powerful thing to do.

Educate yourself and others. Rainforests are magical places that are important to every living thing on earth. Whether we live in the city, country, mountains, or deserts, rainforests affect all of us. Learn more about the rainforests and why they are so magical and important.

Traditionally, the plural of dwarf was "dwarfs", especially when referring to actual humans with dwarfism, but ever since J. R. R. Tolkien used Dwarves in his fantasy novel The Hobbit, the subsequent The Lord of the Rings (often published in three volumes), and the posthumously published The Silmarillion, the plural forms "dwarfs" has been replaced by "Dwarves". Tolkien, who was fond of low philological jests, also suggested two other plural forms, Dwarrows and Dwerrows; but he never used them in his writings, apart from the name 'Dwarrowdelf', the Western name for Khazad-dûm or Moria, which was, inside his fiction, a calque of the Westron name Phurunargian. His Dwarves' name for themselves was Khazâd, singular probably Khuzd. 'Dwarrows' is the Middle English plural of 'Dwerg' or 'Dwerf' ('Dwarf'), and derives from the Old English 'Dweorgas', plural of 'Dweorh' or 'Dweorg'.

Dwarves in Tolkien are long-lived, living nearly four times the age of man (about 250 years), but are not prolific breeders, having children rarely and spaced far apart, and having few women among them. Dwarvish children are cherished by their parents, and are defended at all costs from their traditional enemies, such as Orcs. A longstanding enmity between normal Dwarves and Elves is also a staple of the racial conception.

A long standing source of interest (and humour) comes from the allusion of Tolkien to female Dwarves having beards, which was borrowed by other writers. Essentially, Tolkien developed a rational explanation for why female Dwarves are never encountered in the story, by elaborating that female Dwarves never travel abroad, and look so much like Dwarf men that visitors to Dwarf cities cannot immediately spot them. In addition to being rare creatures they are perhaps not often featured in many fantasy milieu for this reason. Tolkien writes his Dwarf-women are "in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of the other peoples cannot tell them apart." This, he writes, leads to the belief that Dwarves grow out of stone[15]. In The Chronicles of Narnia, in fact, C. S. Lewis, who was a friend of Tolkien, describes his Dwarfs as doing just this, and it is possible that Tolkien was ribbing Lewis in making this point. Interestingly, though, Lewis' all-male Dwarfs are capable of mixing with humans to make half-Dwarfs, such as Doctor Cornelius, the tutor of Prince Caspian (In the 2008 adaption of Prince Caspian, female Dwarfs are shown as archers along with the males, though these female Dwarfs are shown to be beardless). In later writings, Tolkien directly states that his female Dwarves have beards "from the beginning of their lives", as do the males[16].

The tradition of wall painting in Greece goes back at least to the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age, with the lavish fresco decoration of sites like Knossos, Tiryns and Mycenae. It is not clear, whether there is any continuity between these antecedents and later Greek wall paintings. Wall paintings are frequently described in Pausanias, and many appear to have been produced in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Due to the lack of architecture surviving intact, not many are preserved. The most notable examples are a monumental Archaic 7th century BC scene of hoplite combat from inside a temple at Kalapodi (near Thebes), and the elaborate frescoes from the 4th century "Grave of Phillipp" and the "Tomb of Persephone" at Vergina in Macedonia[1], sometimes suggested to be closely linked to the high-quality panel paintings mentioned above. Greek wall painting tradition is also reflected in contemporary grave decorations in the Greek colonies in Italy, e.g. the famous Tomb of the Diver at Paestum. Some scholars suggest that the celebrated Roman frescoes at sites like Pompeii are the direct descendants of Greek tradition, and that some of them copy famous panel paintings.

There were several interconnected traditions of painting in ancient Greece. Due to their technical differences, they underwent somewhat differentiated developments. Not all painting techniques are equally well represented in the archaeological record. [edit] Panel painting [show] List of known Ancient Greek painters One of the Pitsa panels, the only surviving panel paintings from Archaic Greece.   Agatharchus Antiphilus Apelles Apollodorus (painter) Aristides of Thebes Cimon of Cleonae Echion (painter) Euphranor Eupompus Melanthius Nicomachus of Thebes Panaenus Parrhasius Pausias Polyeidos (poet) Polygnotus Protogenes Theon of Samos Timarete Timomachus Zeuxis and Parrhasius The most respected form of art, according to authors like Pliny or Pausanias , were individual, mobile paintings on wooden boards, technically described as panel paintings . The techniques used were encaustic (wax) painting and tempera . Such paintings normally depicted figural scenes, including portraits and still-lifes ; we have descriptions of many compositions. They were collected and often displayed in public spaces. Pausanias describes such exhibitions at Athens and Delphi . We know the names of many famous painters, mainly of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, from literature (see expandable list to the right). Unfortunately, due to the perishable nature of the materials used and the major upheavals at the end of antiquity, not one of the famous works of Greek panel painting has survived, nor even any of the copies that doubtlessly existed, and which give us most of our knowledge of Greek sculpture. The most important surviving Greek examples are the fairly low-quality Pitsa panels from circa 530 BC, and a large group of much later Graeco-Roman archaeological survivals from the dry conditions of Egypt, the Fayum mummy portraits , together with the similar Severan Tondo . Byzantine icons are also derived from the encaustic panel painting tradition. [edit] Wall painting Symposium scene in the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum, circa 480 BC. The tradition of wall painting in Greece goes back at least to the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age , with the lavish fresco decoration of sites like Knossos , Tiryns and Mycenae . It is not clear, whether there is any continuity between these antecedents and later Greek wall paintings. Wall paintings are frequently described in Pausanias, and many appear to have been produced in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Due to the lack of architecture surviving intact, not many are preserved. The most notable examples are a monumental Archaic 7th century BC scene of hoplite combat from inside a temple at Kalapodi (near Thebes ), and the elaborate frescoes from the 4th century "Grave of Phillipp" and the "Tomb of Persephone" at Verg in a in Macedonia http://en.wikipedia.org