How do I stop the 'beach ball'?

I opened safari about ten minutes ago and it went to my home page and the beach ball started spinning. it's been hung up for ten minutes now, I can't get the macbook to do anything.

any ideas?

actually, I can get a cursor in the dock and start app's from there. but nothing across the menu bar. I guess it's safari that's hung up.

never mind, I just learned the keyboard shortcut for 'force quit'.

I have that problem with Safari, also, and I've found that if I clear the history after restarting Safari after a "Force Quit," Safari behaves a bit better.

Claire