Seven Sisters

1. The Seven Sisters is another term for the Pleiades.

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2. Following the break up by the US Government of Standard Oil, several new companies were created, 3 of which, along with 4 other major oil companies, were once referred to as the seven sisters, these were:

• Standard Oil of New Jersey which became Exxon, now ExxonMobil
• Royal Dutch Shell Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell
• British Anglo-Persian Oil Company which became British Petroleum then BPAmoco following a merger with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana). It has now reverted to its old name of British Petroleum.
• Standard Oil of New York which became Mobil which merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil
• Texaco America -- later merged with Chevron to form ChevronTexaco.
• Standard Oil of California (Socal) which became Chevron, and now ChevronTexaco
• Gulf Oil, most of which became part of Chevron. A network of stations in the northeastern United States now bears this name.

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3. The Seven Sisters also refer to the group of distinguished women's colleges in the U.S. which are:

• Barnard College (New York, New York) adjacent to Columbia University.
• Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania)
• Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Massachusetts)
• Radcliffe College (Cambridge, Massachusetts) (merged with Harvard University)
• Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts)
• Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, New York)
• Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts[?])

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4. The Seven Sisters, a mistranslation of Qi Qiao Jie (七姐誕) -- the Seventh Sister, is a holiday celebrated by Chinese and related cultures on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (usually early August).

The festival originates in a Chinese folk tale concerning a weaver maid (with six older sisters) whose father allowed her to marry a cowherder from across the Milky Way. After the wedding, however, she neglected her duties and her father ordered her to return to work and visit her husband only once a year -- on the seventh day of the seventh moon. The spinster maid and the cowherd carrying two children are immortalized as stars on opposite side of the Milky Way (Vega and Altair respectively.)

Celebrations include needlework competitions as well as religious rites. Young women make offerings to the two stars that symbolize the cowherder and the maid.

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The Seven Sisters are seven famous chalk cliffs that form part of the South Downs[?] in Sussex, near the town of Eastbourne in southern England.

External links: Seven Sisters cliffs (http://www.sevensisters.org.uk/)

Roger Beckwith's picture of the Seven Sisters (http://www.roger.beckwith.btinternet.co.uk/Sussex/SevenSisters.htm)