Americans Divided Over Appropriate Holiday Greetings

Despite busier stores on Friday, retail experts are predicting a slower overall holiday sales season, with shoppers tapping into savings, credit cards and home-equity loans to fund their annual spree.

Retailers are trying to offload excess inventory as well as drum up excitement and growth over the holiday shopping season as Americans are having to pay more in other parts of their lives for items such as groceries, gas and housing, Pandya said.

The Crack No one recorded when or why the Liberty Bell first cracked, but the most likely explanation is that a narrow split developed in the early 1840s after nearly 90 years of hard use. In 1846, when the city decided to repair the bell prior to George Washington's birthday holiday (February 23), metal workers widened the thin crack to prevent its farther spread and restore the tone of the bell using a technique called "stop drilling". The wide "crack" in the Liberty Bell is actually the repair job! Look carefully and you'll see over 40 drill bit marks in that wide "crack". But, the repair was not successful. The Public Ledger newspaper reported that the repair failed when another fissure developed. This second crack, running from the abbreviation for "Philadelphia" up through the word "Liberty", silenced the bell forever. No one living today has heard the bell ring freely with its clapper, but computer modeling provides some clues into the sound of the Liberty Bell. 2b1af7f3a8