title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The gang culture prevalent in the older, central areas of the city such as the Gorbals which became overcrowded and substandard in living conditions, did not disappear when these areas were cleared and redeveloped following World War II with many of the inhabitants rehoused either in clusters of tower blocks or in large peripheral overspill estates like Easterhouse; instead, as the job opportunities became limited in the post-industrial age, the structural flaws, planning mistakes and related social issues became apparent in the schemes as the years passed, and heroin addiction spread throughout the city, new gangs (in addition to some which remained in the original areas) formed in the modern environments and remained prominent for decades, particularly in Glasgow's many areas of deprivation and poor health where generations of young people suffered in childhood and found themselves with little to occupy their lives as teenagers other than a cycle of thrilling but pointless collective recreational violence (usually fuelled by alcohol) against similar groups from neighbouring districts. This lifestyle was depicted years later in movies such as Small Faces and Neds. Some of these young men moved into other criminal enterprises, including the operation of lucrative van routes in the city's East End "schemes" during the 1980s trading in stolen property and drugs, which were controlled by gangsters such as Tam McGraw, with the resulting "ice cream" turf war eventually culminating in the deaths of a family.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: An "Evening Times" report in 2008 stated that there were 170 gangs in Glasgow whilst an earlier report in 2006 included a map showing the location and a list of Glasgow gangs. Along with incidents from other origins including domestic violence and organised crime, the street gangs' behaviour contributed to Glasgow being declared the "murder capital of Europe" in the mid-2000s. Gangs in Glasgow – some involved in the supply of drugs, housebreakings and other illegal activity but most simply a mob with minimal leadership structure, focused on enhancing their local reputation for notoriety and defending their "bit" (territory) – marked their territory with tags or graffiti, and adopted a particular style of dress and speech in each era, being defined as 'ned culture'. The majority of large-scale fights were organised in advance by phone calls, text messages and later by online contact, but at all times of the day rival neighbourhoods became "no-go areas" for gang members as well those young people who were not involved in the violence but could be identified as residing in another area.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The habitual carrying of knives and other weapons was common wherever the fear of attack was present, with serious and tragic consequences often resulting from confrontations when they did occur. Several campaigns were launched by law enforcement and government agencies to discourage the possession of weapons, including a 2009 programme of checks on buses heading to the city centre, where the gangs would meet to fight when they left their own territory. An earlier campaign of the 1990s, "Operation Blade", had initially appeared to produce results before the levels of weapon use and violence soon returned to previous levels and thereafter increased. Not all murders were gang-related, but the prevailing culture in the city caused weapons to be carried as a matter of course and, in combination with the abuse of alcohol, serious incidents to result from often trivial disputes.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The latter years of the 20th century saw an increase in Pakistani gangs, particularity in the South of Glasgow (e.g. Pollokshields). Pakistani gangs came to wider attention following the racially motivated murder of Kriss Donald by local men of Pakistani origin in 2004. During that period, in the wake of the Donald murder, as well as a perception that asylum seekers who had been housed in empty properties in some of Glasgow's most run-down areas were being given priority over locals, some of the teenage gangs in those areas styled themselves as "nazis".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In the decade following the publication of the "Evening Times" reports, the number of young people involved in "young teams" in Glasgow and the number of serious violent incidents recorded as a result of their activities reduced substantially;


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: However, it was recognised by the VRU that only around half of all violent incidents which occurred were reported to the police (as compared with figures from hospital admissions and other research), while violence related to organised crime in parts of the city (many of those involved having "graduated" from the local street gangs) remained a significant issue. A 2020 Graeme Armstrong novel, "The Young Team", narrated by a gang member in the local dialect, focuses on the "ned culture" of the region in the early 21st century (albeit set in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire a few miles east of Glasgow rather than the in the city itself).


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Street gangs in Liverpool have been in existence since the mid-19th century. There were also various sectarian "political" gangs based in and around Liverpool during this period. Dr Michael Macilwee of Liverpool John Moores University and author of "The Gangs of Liverpool" states, "You can learn lessons from the past and it's fascinating to compare the newspaper headlines of today with those from the late 1800s. The issues are exactly the same. People were worried about rising youth crime and the influence of 'penny dreadfuls' on people's behaviour. Like today, some commentators demanded longer prison sentences and even flogging while others called for better education and more youth clubs."


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In the early 1980s Liverpool was tagged by the media as "Smack City" or "Skag City" after it experienced an explosion in organised gang crime and heroin abuse, especially within the city's more deprived areas. At the same time several criminal gangs began developing into drug dealing cartels in the city, including the Liverpool Mafia, which was the first such cartel to develop in the UK. As drugs became increasingly valuable, large distribution networks were developed with cocaine producers in South America, including the Cali cartel. Over time, several Liverpool gangsters became increasingly wealthy, including Colin 'Smigger' Smith, who had an estimated fortune of £200m and Curtis 'Cocky' Warren, whose estimated wealth once saw him listed on the "Sunday Times Rich List".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: It has also been suggested that distribution networks for illicit drugs within Ireland and the UK, and even allegedly some Mediterranean holiday resorts, are today controlled by various Liverpool gangs.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: A report in the "Observer newspaper" written by journalist Peter Beaumont entitled "Gangsters put Liverpool top of gun league" (28 May 1995), observed that turf wars had erupted within Liverpool. The high levels of violence in the city came to a head in 1996 when, following the shooting of gangster David Ungi, six shootings occurred in seven days, prompting Merseyside Police to become one of the first police forces in the country to openly carry weapons in the fight against gun crime. Official Home Office statistics revealed a total of 3,387 offences involving firearms had occurred in the Merseyside region during a four-year period between 1997 and 2001. It was revealed that Liverpool was the main centre for organised crime in the North of England.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In August 2007 the ongoing war between two rival gangs caused nationwide outrage, when innocent 11-year-old Rhys Jones was shot in the neck and died in his mother's arms in the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Liverpool. On 16 December 2008, Sean Mercer was convicted of the murder and ordered to serve a minimum tariff of 22 years by trial judge Mr Justice Irwin.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: London was the first city noted to have a major problem with criminal gangs, followed thereafter by American cities such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. A number of street gangs were present in London during the 20th century, many in the East End, often referred to as Mobs, including The Yiddishers, Hoxton Mob, Watney Streeters, Aldgate Mob, Whitechapel Mob, Bethnal Green Mob and the organised Italian Mob headed by Charles Sabini. The history of these gangs is well documented in "London's Underworld: Three centuries of vice and crime".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The Pall Mall Gazette released a research report on gangs and crime in England in 1888, they discuss the downfall and dissolution of a gang called the Skeleton Army a few years before hand, and include a collection of 9 gangs and their respective territories, gathered from contemporary police reports, which are as follows:


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: On 21 February 2007, the BBC reported on an unpublished Metropolitan Police report on London's gang culture, identifying 169 separate groups (see Ghetto Boys, Tottenham Mandem and Peckham Boys), with more than a quarter said to have been involved in murders. The report's accuracy has been questioned by some London Boroughs for being inaccurate in places and the existence of certain gangs on the list could not be substantiated. The Centre for Social Justice identifies the Gangs in London website as a useful tool in creating an overall picture of London gangs, as highlighted in the report "Dying to Belong: An in depth review of street gangs in Britain", which was led by Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith in 2009.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In February 2007, criminologist Dr John Pitts, from the University of Bedfordshire, said: "There are probably no more than 1,500 to 2,000 young people in gangs in all of London, but their impact is enormous". There is no methodology to suggest where this number came from and how it was obtained. Furthermore, in December 2007 in a report written by Pitts on Lambeth gangs, he claims that the dominant gang (PDC from Angell Town) "boasts 2,500 members". Probably a more accurate estimation for gang membership, although dated, can be found in the 2004 Home Office document "Delinquent Youth Groups and Offending Behaviour". The report, using a methodology developed by American gang experts and practitioners, estimated that 6% of young people aged 10–19 were classified as belonging to a delinquent youth group, although based on the most stringent criteria this was 4%.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: There is a modern history of London gangs dating from the 1970s although many of them emerged from sub-cultures such as punks, Rastas and football hooligans. Two well known subcultures involved in violent clashes during the Notting Hill riots in the 1950s, Teddy Boys and Rudeboys, could well be labelled gangs by today's media. Amongst the current London gangs whose history does go back to the 1970s are the Peckham Boys and Tottenham Mandem, both predominantly or entirely black. Native British gangs remain active while there are several Asian gangs in London, such as the Brick Lane Massive whom are of predominantly Bangladeshi descent, initially formed to protect their local communities from racist attacks from the native white population. Since 2000, Tamil gangs in Croydon and Wembley have been active such as the "Wembley Boys" and the "Tamil Snake Gang. Tamil Hindu gangs in London are also featured as one of the many major ethnic gangs in Ross Kemp's documentary on London Gangs. A gang database for London estimated that 78.2% of members were Black, 12.8% were white, 6.5% were Asian (Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshis), 2.2% were Middle Eastern/Arabs and under 1% were East Asian or of unknown-ethnicity.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: London gangs are increasingly marking their territory with gang graffiti, usually a gang name and the Post Code area or housing estate they identify with. In some cases they may tag the street road signs in their area with an identified gang colour, as can be seen in Edmonton. This is not a new phenomenon and has been practised by many London gangs in the past although today it is a more integral part of the gang culture. Many gangs have a strong sense of belonging to their local areas and often take their names from the housing estates, districts and postal code areas where they are located. In some areas the post codes act as rival gang boundaries, although this is not a general rule as there can be rival gangs present within the same postal area as well as gangs that occupy multiple postal areas.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In 2018, researchers from London South Bank University found that gangs in the London borough of Waltham Forest that used to be organised around post code rivalries had moved beyond territorial disputes to focus on profit-making activities like drug dealing. They cite James Densley's gang evolution model, which details how gangs progress from recreational goals and activities like defending post codes to financial goals and activities like drug dealing. Densley concludes that fully evolved gangs "resemble not just crime that is organized, but organized crime". Densley also found that gangs in London also used handsigns and gang tattoos to denote gang membership. Some gangs in London are motivated by religion, as is the case with Muslim Patrol. However, profits arising from drugs and other criminal activity is a significant motivator for many gangs.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The first recorded gangs in Manchester were "Scuttlers", which were youth gangs that recruited boys and girls between 14 and 21 years of age. They became prominent amongst the slums during the second half of the 19th century, but had mostly disappeared by the beginning of the 20th century. In the mid-1980s, a growth in violence amongst Black British youths from the west side of the Alexandra Park Estate in South Manchester and their rivals, West Indians living to the north of the city, in Cheetham Hill began to gain media attention. The city has sometimes been dubbed in the media as "Gangchester" and "Gunchester".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The gang culture spread into many deprived areas in South Manchester. A gang-related crime occurred on 9 September 2006, in Moss Side, where Jessie James, a 15-year-old schoolboy was shot dead in the early hours of the morning. His shooting is said to have been the result of a mistaken identity for a rival gang member. To this day his murderer(s) have not been found.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In April 2009, eleven members of the Gooch Gang were found guilty of a number of charges ranging from murder to drugs offences. The Gooch Gang had a long-standing rivalry with the equally well known Doddington gang. The Gooch gang operated with a tiered structure. On the top were the gang's leaders, Colin Joyce and Lee Amos, and below them were members controlling the supply and distribution of drugs to the street dealers at the bottom. The gang was earning an estimated £2,000 a day, with street dealers allowed to keep £100 a day for themselves. After 2001 when Joyce and Amos were sent to prison on firearms charges, there followed a 92% drop in gun crime in central Manchester. Official gun enabled crime figures show a 17% reduction in Manchester when comparing 2005/06 (1,200 offences) and 2006/07 (993 offences). However, this was followed by an increase of 17% in 2007/08 (1,160 offences) compared to 2006/07. In 2009 shootings were reported as falling by 82% compared with the previous year.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In addition to this, many ethnic gangs can be found within Manchester as well, Black and Pakistani gangs being the most prominent, founded in areas such as Rochdale and Oldham where criminal charges range from carrying firearms to murder. Manchester is also home to the Inter City Jibbers, an element within the city's main hooligan gang that uses football hooliganism as a cover for acquisitive forms of crime. According to former Manchester United hooligan Colin Blaney in his autobiography "Undesirables," members of the gang have been involved in serious forms of crime, such as drug smuggling from Latin America and the Caribbean, carrying out armed robberies and committing robberies on drug dealers. In an interview with "Vice," members of the gang spoke of connections with Liberian drug smuggling cartels and convictions for offences including armed robbery, credit card fraud and sale of class A drugs.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: A number of the criminal gangs in the United Kingdom specialise in the importation, production and sale of illicit drugs. Of the 2,800 gangs identified within the United Kingdom it is estimated that 60% are involved in drugs. Amongst them are the Yardies, also known as Posses in America, who are generally associated with crack cocaine. In 2003, it was reported that Yardie drug gangs were present in 36 of the 43 police force areas in England and Wales. One of the more prominent were the Aggi Crew in Bristol.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In 1998, six members of the Aggi Crew were imprisoned after being found in possession of over £1 million worth of crack-cocaine.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: There were raids across the city which was the latest phase of Operation Atrium, launched in 2001 to clamp down on drug-related crime in Bristol by disrupting organised gangs. More than 960 people have been arrested in the past 18 months. In 2009 Olympian and judo expert James Waithe was convicted of drugs offences, having been an enforcer for drug ring that made £50 million annually.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Asian drug gangs, usually of Pakistani and Tamil descent are also present in the United Kingdom. Notable Tamil gangs include Harrow Tamils and Wembley Tamils. Pakistani gangs have been recorded to be associated with the importation and distribution of heroin and can be found in Luton, Bradford, Birmingham, Manchester, Huddersfield, Slough, Bedford, and Middlesbrough. Drug squad officers in 2003 claimed that Asian gangs were actively seeking to corner the heroin market.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In other reports it has been suggested that Turkey replaced Pakistan and Afghanistan as the most important transit point for heroin, and it is estimated that 80% of heroin intercepted by British authorities belongs to Turkish gangs, which previously belonged to Pakistani and Afghan gangs A recent spate of murders in London in 2009 have been linked to a heroin drugs war involving rival Turkish and Kurdish gangs in north London. It is believed that the feud is between two organised drug gangs, the Turkish "Tottenham Boys" and the "Bombarcilar" or "Bombers" from Hackney. The Bombers were led by Abdullah Babysin who was said to be Britain's largest importer of heroin, he was convicted in 2006.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Although most assumptions surrounding gang culture in the UK surround male-dominated narratives, females also played a role in gangs in Britain in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Society saw women as conspirators, supporters, and even perpetuators of gang crime in the late nineteenth century. In 1898, the "Manchester Guardian" wrote an article that said, “Girls incited conflicts between the gangs and were thus responsible for the majority of scuttling affrays.” This article reflects how women were viewed as sexual objects, causing a lot of the fights and violence that occurred between gangs. While historians such as Stephen Humphries support this claim that women played a supporting role in gangs, Andrew Davies argues that women played a much more active one. One of the most famous gangs of the early 20th century was an all-female gang in London called the Forty Elephants. By 1890, the Forty Elephants chose their first "queen" and established themselves as free from male control. Led by Alice Diamond during its height in 1915, the gang was notorious for stealing expensive clothing, partying among the wealthy, engaging in violent robberies, and for being romantically involved with other gang leaders around London.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: When it came to court, magistrates treated women's involvement in gangs differently to that of men.  The concern over female crime related to the deviation from typical notions of femininity and morality, thus women typically received lesser sentences than men. Due to the conventional idea of femininity that saw women as weaker than men, many courts would have believed it impossible to view women as orchestrators of such crime. Most women were assumed to have played a supporting role.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Britain has a number of traditional organised crime firms or local British crime families. Some of the most well known include the Kray twins, The Richardson Gang and Terry Adams Clerkenwell crime syndicate in London. Outside the capital there are the Noonans in Manchester, Thomas McGraw from Glasgow and Curtis Warren from Liverpool who are amongst some of the most infamous..


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: By the 1980s the Irish Republican Army had capitalised on long established Irish Organised Crime in the UK to effectively gain control of organised crime, the druge trade and even copyright piracy to fund its terrorism. With the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement many former IRA and other Northern Irish paramilitaries moved into organised crime. However, they would come to largely displaced even in Northern Ireland by organised criminal gangs from Eastern Europe and the Balkans in the 2000s. The more established British and Irish organised criminal gangs were no longer able to compete in the intense rival for the drug trade in the UK major cities, moved to smaller towns establishing the so called county lines. In 2018 there were 4,629 criminal gangs and syndicates in Britain, employing 33,598 professional gangsters. The figure of 4,629 means there are more gangs in Britain than staff members of the NCA; 33,598 career criminals translates to more gangsters in Britain than belong to all three big Italian mafias. Organised crime in the UK generates annual revenues of £37bn, or 1.8% of GDP.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Sectarian, or "political" gangs have featured in British cities such as Liverpool in England, Glasgow in Scotland and Belfast in Northern Ireland. Belfast has been the capital of Northern Ireland since its establishment in 1921 following the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Since its emergence as a major city, it had been the scene of various episodes of sectarian conflict between its Roman Catholic and Protestant populations. The Ulster Protestant Association is said to have provided many members of the murder gangs active in Belfast during 1921–22. Other Protestant gangs active at that time were: the Imperial Guards, Crawford's Tigers and the Cromwell Clubs. These opposing groups in this conflict are now often termed republican and loyalist respectively, although they are also referred to as "nationalist" and "unionist".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The most recent example of this is known as the Troubles - a civil conflict that raged from c.1969 to the late 1990s. Belfast saw some of the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, particularly in the 1970s, with rival paramilitary groups forming on both sides. Bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life throughout the Troubles. The Provisional IRA detonated twenty-two bombs, all in a confined area in the city centre in 1972, on what is known as "Bloody Friday", killing nine people.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: The IRA also killed hundreds of other civilians and members of the security forces. Loyalist paramilitaries the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) claimed that the killings they carried out were in retaliation to the PIRA campaign. Most of their victims were Roman Catholic civilians unconnected to the Provisional IRA. A particularly notorious group, based on the Shankill Road in the mid-1970s became known as the Shankill Butchers. In all, over one thousand five hundred people were killed in political violence in the city from 1969 until 2001. Part of the legacy of the Troubles is that both republican and loyalist paramilitary groups in Belfast have become involved in organised crime and racketeering.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Historically, societal fears of gangs have centered around frameworks which argue that effects like increased mass production, consumption, democracy, and communication lead to the rise of organised crime groups.  There was a general consensus among the middle classes that there was increasing violence among working-class men due to these forces during the late 19th century. Newspapers used inflammatory language to convey a sense of lawlessness and excessive violence among working-class towns which added to these growing assumptions. The widely held belief of British intellectuals in the 20th century was that gangs reflected the working-class rejection of middle-class traditional values and norms. This view contributed to the way experts studied gangs throughout the 20th century and served as proof of innate immorality around working-class citizens.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Two historians have done extensive research in this field and represent two different views of the underlying causes of the rise in gang culture between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Stephen Humphries argues that these early groups can be seen as results of “social crime”.  For the working class, they viewed these crimes as righteous and justified against a society that had left them to struggle. It was therefore fair for them to steal what they had been deprived of.  According to Humphries, gangs were a way for the working-class youth to respond to feelings of insignificance that came with living in a large, uniform industrial town with no way of escape.  Petty crimes were thus a way to respond to all of the top-down authority they were receiving from factory managers, teachers, the police, and the government. His analysis of interviews with former gang members led him to the idea that gangs allowed working-class youths to feel rebellious and also express a need to resist the monotonous nature of industrial towns.  Building on this idea, Andrew Davies argues that the concept of masculinity among working-class men prompted this behaviour, and was a way for members to prove themselves to their peers. He connects acts of violence committed in the household to idealised criminals in popular culture at the time that would have contributed to the working-class idea of masculinity. However, in other works he notes how many women took part in organised crimes, thus proving that this idea was not the only motive of gang crime.


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: In 2014, the Runnymede Trust suggested that despite the well-rehearsed public discourse around modern youth gangs and "gang culture":


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: "We actually know very little about 'gangs' in the UK: about how 'a gang' might be defined or understood, about what being in 'a gang' means... We know still less about how 'the gang' links to levels of youth violence."


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Professor Simon Hallsworth argues that where they exist, gangs in the UK are "far more fluid, volatile and amorphous than the myth of the organised group with a corporate structure". This assertion is supported by a field study conducted by Manchester University, which found that, "most within- and between-gang disputes... emanated from interpersonal disputes regarding friends, family and romantic relationships", as opposed to territorial rivalries, and that criminal enterprises were "rarely gang-coordinated... most involved gang members operating as individuals or in small groups".


title: Gangs in the United Kingdom

text: Cottrell-Boyce, writing in the Youth Justice journal, argues that gangs have been constructed as a "suitable enemy" by politicians and the media, obscuring the wider, structural roots of youth violence. At the level of enforcement, a focus on gang membership may be counterproductive; creating confusion and resulting in a drag-net approach which can criminalise innocent young people rather than focusing resources on serious violent crime.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Charlotte Rae Lubotsky (April 22, 1926 – August 5, 2018), known professionally as Charlotte Rae, was an American character actress and singer whose career spanned six decades.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Rae was known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms "Diff'rent Strokes" and its spin-off, "The Facts of Life" (in which she had the starring role from 1979 to 1986). She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy in 1982. She also appeared in two "Facts of Life" television films: "The Facts of Life Goes to Paris" in 1982 and "The Facts of Life Reunion" in 2001. She voiced the character of "Nanny" in "" and Aunt Pristine Figg in "". She also appeared as Gammy Hart in "Girl Meets World".


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 2015, she returned to film in the feature film "Ricki and the Flash", with Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Rick Springfield. In November 2015, Rae released her autobiography, "The Facts of My Life", which was co-written with her son, Larry Strauss.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Charlotte Rae Lubotsky was born April 22, 1926, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her parents, Esther ("née" Ottenstein) and Meyer Lubotsky, were Russian Jewish immigrants. Mr. Lubotsky was a retail tire business owner. Rae's mother, Esther Lubotsky, had been childhood friends with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Rae was the second of three sisters, in between Beverly and Miriam (called "Mimi"). For the first ten years of her life, Rae's family lived in an apartment built for them above her father's Milwaukee tire store. In 1936, her parents purchased a home for the family in nearby Shorewood, Wisconsin. She graduated from Shorewood High School in 1944.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Rae attended Northwestern University, although she did not complete her studies. While there, she met friend Cloris Leachman. Many years later, Leachman succeeded Rae on "The Facts of Life" for the show's last two seasons. At Northwestern she met several then unknown stars and producers, including Agnes Nixon, Charlton Heston, Paul Lynde, Gerald Freedman, Claude Akins and songwriter Sheldon Harnick. In a 2016 interview with Milwaukee Talks, she said about her decision in appearing in only dramatic television: "When I started out, I wanted to be a serious actor, I never thought I'd get into comedy." When a radio personality told her that her last name would not do, she dropped it, to her father's chagrin.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 1954, Rae made her TV debut on episodes of "Look Up and Live" and "The United States Steel Hour." This led to roles on other similar variety shows such as "Armstrong Circle Theatre", "Kraft Television Theatre", "NBC Television Opera Theatre", "The Philco Television Playhouse", "The Colgate Comedy Hour", "The DuPont Show of the Week", and "The Phil Silvers Show".


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Her first significant success was on the sitcom "Car 54, Where Are You?" (1961–1963), in which she played Sylvia Schnauzer, the wife of Officer Leo Schnauzer (played by Al Lewis). This was followed by roles in "'Way Out"; "The Defenders"; "Temperatures Rising"; "The Love Boat"; "The Partridge Family"; "Love, American Style"; "McMillan & Wife"; "Barney Miller"; "Phyllis"; "227"; "Murder, She Wrote"; "St. Elsewhere"; ""; "All in the Family"; and "Good Times". She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role in the 1975 drama "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom". In January 1975, Rae became a cast member on Norman Lear's ABC television comedy "Hot l Baltimore", wherein she played Mrs. Bellotti, whose dysfunctional adult son Moose, who was never actually seen, lived at the "hot l" (the "E" on the hotel's neon sign was burnt out). Mrs. Bellotti, who was a bit odd herself, would visit Moose and then laugh about all the odd situations that Moose would get into with the others living at the hotel. Rae also appeared in an early season of "Sesame Street" as Molly the Mail Lady.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 1978, NBC was losing to both CBS and ABC in sitcom ratings, and Fred Silverman, future producer and former head of CBS, ABC, and NBC, insisted that Norman Lear produce "Diff'rent Strokes". Knowing that Rae was one of Lear's favorite actresses (in addition to "Hot l Baltimore", she also appeared in a 1974 episode of "All in the Family") he hired her immediately for the role of housekeeper Edna Garrett, and she co-starred with Conrad Bain in all 24 episodes of the first season. In "The Girls' School" episode, Mrs. Garrett is asked to help out at Kimberly Drummond's (actress Dana Plato) private school for girls called East Lake (later changed to Eastland). At the end of the episode, Mrs. Garrett decides to return to her housekeeping job at the Drummond residence.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In July 1979, Rae proposed the idea for a spinoff based on "The Girls' School" episode from "Diff'rent Strokes". NBC approved the show, to be called "The Facts of Life", which would portray a housekeeper turned housemother for boarding students in a prestigious private school. The program would deal with issues facing teenagers such as weight gain and dieting, depression, drugs, alcohol, and dating. Rae had a stipulation written into her contract that said she could return to "Diff'rent Strokes" if the new spinoff was not successful.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: After working as a character actress/comedienne in supporting roles or in guest shots on television series and specials, "The Facts of Life" not only gave Rae her best-known role but also finally made her a television star.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: "The Facts of Life" had marginal ratings at first, but after a major restructuring including some cast alterations, plus a time change for the second season, the show became a ratings winner between 1980 and 1986. Between the first and second seasons, Rae went on a very stringent diet and at the start of the second season had lost an enormous amount of weight. As a result, it was briefly mentioned in the second-season premiere two-part episode "The New Girl" and in the sixth installment "Shoplifting" that Rae's character of Mrs. Garrett had also gone on a diet and lost weight. As the seasons passed, the show's success and Rae's popularity continued to grow. In 1982, Rae received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Edna Garrett in "The Facts of Life". However, midway through both the 1984–85 and 1985–86 seasons, the series was undergoing a gradual transition. It was at this time that Rae's appearances on the show were reduced at her request, and as a result, she was not seen in several episodes. The reason for this was that Rae felt that the girls' characters were maturing and not requiring as much of Mrs. Garrett's rearing and advice.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Towards the end of the seventh season, Rae began to contemplate leaving the series. She wanted to spend more time doing theater as well as do some traveling. The producers of the show tried to persuade Rae to continue with "The Facts of Life" for at least another two years, but she felt her time on the program had run its course and decided to leave at the end of the 1985–86 season. Academy and Emmy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman was signed as her replacement. In order to help with the transition, Rae agreed to make her last appearance on the show in the two-part eighth-season premiere "Out of Peekskill". In that episode, Edna Garrett would marry, leave Peekskill with her new husband (played by Robert Mandan), and they both would move to Africa to work in the Peace Corps. In that same installment, Leachman would be introduced as Mrs. Garrett's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, who would attend the wedding, and then with Mrs. Garrett's departure, she would then take over as a mother figure and friend for the girls. Rae and Leachman were very good friends having known each other since they were students at Northwestern University. Leachman inherited Rae's top billing in the cast and her character remained for the show's last two years. The part of Beverly Ann was quite similar to Leachman's character of Phyllis Lindstrom on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Phyllis" from the 1970s. The cast change from Rae to Leachman did not seriously affect viewership. The series continued to garner healthy ratings until it ended in the spring of 1988. NBC wanted to renew the show for a tenth season, but cast members Nancy McKeon and Mindy Cohn wanted to move on to other things.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: After her departure from "The Facts of Life", Rae still kept busy acting. In 1993, she voiced the villainess, Aunt Pristine Figg, in "". In 2000, she starred as Berthe in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of "Pippin".


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 2001, Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, and Kim Fields were reunited in a TV movie, "The Facts of Life Reunion". In 2007, the entire cast was invited to attend the TV Land Awards where several members of the cast, including Rae, sang the show's theme song.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 2007, she appeared in a cabaret show at the Plush Room in San Francisco for several performances. In the 2008 movie "You Don't Mess with the Zohan", Rae had a role as an older woman who has a fling with Adam Sandler's character. On February 18, 2009, she appeared in a small role as Mrs. Ford in the "Life" episode "I Heart Mom".


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In a 2015 interview with "Entertainment Tonight", Rae said that "The Facts of Life" series had an off-stage scale to weigh the girls, but that the pressure had the opposite effect producers were hoping for; "The more they tried to pressure them and weigh them and threaten them, the more they would eat. It's not the way you handle adolescence. You don't do that."


title: Charlotte Rae

text: On April 19, 2011, the entire cast was reunited again to attend the TV Land Awards, where the show was nominated and won the award for Pop Culture Icon. The same day, Nancy McKeon and Kim Fields (who played Jo and Tootie, respectively) gave a speech in honor of her 85th birthday. The cast did likewise on ABC's "Good Morning America", where at the end of the segment, reporter Cynthia McFadden wished Rae a happy birthday, and the cast sang the show's theme song.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 1955, she released her first (and only) solo album, "Songs I Taught My Mother", which featured "silly, sinful, and satirical" songs by Sheldon Harnick, Vernon Duke, John La Touche, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart and Marc Blitzstein, among others.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: She appeared in Ben Bagley's revue "The Littlest Revue" (and on its cast album) in 1956, appearing alongside Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes, among others, and singing songs by Sheldon Harnick ("The Shape of Things"), Vernon Duke ("Summer is a-Comin' In"), and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams ("Spring Doth Let Her Colours Fly"), a parody of opera singer Helen Traubel's Las Vegas night club act, among others.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Rae later recorded "Rodgers & Hart Revisited" with Dorothy Loudon, Cy Young, and Arthur Siegel, singing "Everybody Loves You (When You Sleep)" and in several other duets and ensembles for Bagley's studio. Rae received two Tony Award nominations during her Broadway career. The first was in 1966 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in "Pickwick"; the second came in 1969 for Best Actress in a Play for "Morning, Noon and Night".


title: Charlotte Rae

text: A stage actress since the 1950s, she appeared on Broadway in "Three Wishes for Jamie" (1952), "The Threepenny Opera" (1954), "Li'l Abner" (1956) and "Pickwick" (1965), among others. In 1973, Rae played the role of Southern Comfort in Terrence McNally's spoof "Whiskey" at Saint Clements' Theatre Off-Broadway. She appeared in "The Vagina Monologues" Off-Broadway in 1999.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Rae married composer John Strauss on November 4, 1951. In the mid-1970s, he came out as bisexual, and the couple divorced in 1976. Strauss died in 2011 at age 90 following a long battle with Parkinson's disease. Rae had two sons with Strauss: Lawrence, a high school teacher, and his older brother Andrew (1955–1999). Andy was autistic and suffered from epilepsy.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: Rae joined Alcoholics Anonymous in the early 1970s. The organization became an important part of her personal life.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 1982, Rae had a pacemaker implanted. With periodic alterations, the same pacemaker worked for over 30 years, but it stopped abruptly several years before her death. Her heart rate was around 35 beats per minute prior to entering emergency surgery to install a new pacemaker. The old pacemaker was left in place on the left side of her chest and the new, smaller pacemaker was placed on the right side. It functioned well until her death. In addition to pacemaker replacement, Rae had open-heart surgery to replace her mitral valve with a mechanical equivalent. Her left carotid artery was cleared of blockage as well.


title: Charlotte Rae

text: In 2009, due to the frequency of pancreatic cancer in her own family, Rae was screened, diagnosed early, and became cancer-free after six months of chemotherapy. Her mother, an uncle, and her elder sister Beverly all reportedly died from pancreatic cancer. In 2017, aged 91, she was, however, diagnosed with bone cancer.


title: Multi-core processor

text: A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such as add, move data, and branch) but the single processor can run instructions on separate cores at the same time, increasing overall speed for programs that support multithreading or other parallel computing techniques. Manufacturers typically integrate the cores onto a single integrated circuit die (known as a chip multiprocessor or CMP) or onto multiple dies in a single chip package. The microprocessors currently used in almost all personal computers are multi-core.


title: Multi-core processor

text: A multi-core processor implements multiprocessing in a single physical package. Designers may couple cores in a multi-core device tightly or loosely. For example, cores may or may not share caches, and they may implement message passing or shared-memory inter-core communication methods. Common network topologies used to interconnect cores include bus, ring, two-dimensional mesh, and crossbar. Homogeneous multi-core systems include only identical cores; heterogeneous multi-core systems have cores that are not identical (e.g. big.LITTLE have heterogeneous cores that share the same instruction set, while AMD Accelerated Processing Units have cores that do not share the same instruction set). Just as with single-processor systems, cores in multi-core systems may implement architectures such as VLIW, superscalar, vector, or multithreading.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Multi-core processors are widely used across many application domains, including general-purpose, embedded, network, digital signal processing (DSP), and graphics (GPU). Core count goes up to even dozens, and for specialized chips over 10,000, and in supercomputers (i.e. clusters of chips) the count can go over 10 million (and in one case up to 20 million processing elements total in addition to host processors).


title: Multi-core processor

text: The improvement in performance gained by the use of a multi-core processor depends very much on the software algorithms used and their implementation. In particular, possible gains are limited by the fraction of the software that can run in parallel simultaneously on multiple cores; this effect is described by Amdahl's law. In the best case, so-called embarrassingly parallel problems may realize speedup factors near the number of cores, or even more if the problem is split up enough to fit within each core's cache(s), avoiding use of much slower main-system memory. Most applications, however, are not accelerated as much unless programmers invest effort in refactoring.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The parallelization of software is a significant ongoing topic of research. Cointegration of multiprocessor applications provides flexibility in network architecture design. Adaptability within parallel models is an additional feature of systems utilizing these protocols.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The terms "multi-core" and "dual-core" most commonly refer to some sort of central processing unit (CPU), but are sometimes also applied to digital signal processors (DSP) and system on a chip (SoC). The terms are generally used only to refer to multi-core microprocessors that are manufactured on the "same" integrated circuit die; separate microprocessor dies in the same package are generally referred to by another name, such as "multi-chip module". This article uses the terms "multi-core" and "dual-core" for CPUs manufactured on the "same" integrated circuit, unless otherwise noted.


title: Multi-core processor

text: In contrast to multi-core systems, the term "multi-CPU" refers to multiple physically separate processing-units (which often contain special circuitry to facilitate communication between each other).


title: Multi-core processor

text: The terms "many-core" and "massively multi-core" are sometimes used to describe multi-core architectures with an especially high number of cores (tens to thousands).


title: Multi-core processor

text: Some systems use many soft microprocessor cores placed on a single FPGA. Each "core" can be considered a "semiconductor intellectual property core" as well as a CPU core.


title: Multi-core processor

text: While manufacturing technology improves, reducing the size of individual gates, physical limits of semiconductor-based microelectronics have become a major design concern. These physical limitations can cause significant heat dissipation and data synchronization problems. Various other methods are used to improve CPU performance. Some "instruction-level parallelism" (ILP) methods such as superscalar pipelining are suitable for many applications, but are inefficient for others that contain difficult-to-predict code. Many applications are better suited to "thread-level parallelism" (TLP) methods, and multiple independent CPUs are commonly used to increase a system's overall TLP. A combination of increased available space (due to refined manufacturing processes) and the demand for increased TLP led to the development of multi-core CPUs.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Several business motives drive the development of multi-core architectures. For decades, it was possible to improve performance of a CPU by shrinking the area of the integrated circuit (IC), which reduced the cost per device on the IC. Alternatively, for the same circuit area, more transistors could be used in the design, which increased functionality, especially for complex instruction set computing (CISC) architectures. Clock rates also increased by orders of magnitude in the decades of the late 20th century, from several megahertz in the 1980s to several gigahertz in the early 2000s.


title: Multi-core processor

text: As the rate of clock speed improvements slowed, increased use of parallel computing in the form of multi-core processors has been pursued to improve overall processing performance. Multiple cores were used on the same CPU chip, which could then lead to better sales of CPU chips with two or more cores. For example, Intel has produced a 48-core processor for research in cloud computing; each core has an x86 architecture.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Since computer manufacturers have long implemented symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) designs using discrete CPUs, the issues regarding implementing multi-core processor architecture and supporting it with software are well known.


title: Multi-core processor

text: In order to continue delivering regular performance improvements for general-purpose processors, manufacturers such as Intel and AMD have turned to multi-core designs, sacrificing lower manufacturing-costs for higher performance in some applications and systems. Multi-core architectures are being developed, but so are the alternatives. An especially strong contender for established markets is the further integration of peripheral functions into the chip.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The proximity of multiple CPU cores on the same die allows the cache coherency circuitry to operate at a much higher clock rate than what is possible if the signals have to travel off-chip. Combining equivalent CPUs on a single die significantly improves the performance of cache snoop (alternative: Bus snooping) operations. Put simply, this means that signals between different CPUs travel shorter distances, and therefore those signals degrade less. These higher-quality signals allow more data to be sent in a given time period, since individual signals can be shorter and do not need to be repeated as often.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Assuming that the die can physically fit into the package, multi-core CPU designs require much less printed circuit board (PCB) space than do multi-chip SMP designs. Also, a dual-core processor uses slightly less power than two coupled single-core processors, principally because of the decreased power required to drive signals external to the chip. Furthermore, the cores share some circuitry, like the L2 cache and the interface to the front-side bus (FSB). In terms of competing technologies for the available silicon die area, multi-core design can make use of proven CPU core library designs and produce a product with lower risk of design error than devising a new wider-core design. Also, adding more cache suffers from diminishing returns.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Multi-core chips also allow higher performance at lower energy. This can be a big factor in mobile devices that operate on batteries. Since each core in a multi-core CPU is generally more energy-efficient, the chip becomes more efficient than having a single large monolithic core. This allows higher performance with less energy. A challenge in this, however, is the additional overhead of writing parallel code.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Maximizing the usage of the computing resources provided by multi-core processors requires adjustments both to the operating system (OS) support and to existing application software. Also, the ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Integration of a multi-core chip can lower the chip production yields. They are also more difficult to manage thermally than lower-density single-core designs. Intel has partially countered this first problem by creating its quad-core designs by combining two dual-core ones on a single die with a unified cache, hence any two working dual-core dies can be used, as opposed to producing four cores on a single die and requiring all four to work to produce a quad-core CPU. From an architectural point of view, ultimately, single CPU designs may make better use of the silicon surface area than multiprocessing cores, so a development commitment to this architecture may carry the risk of obsolescence. Finally, raw processing power is not the only constraint on system performance. Two processing cores sharing the same system bus and memory bandwidth limits the real-world performance advantage. In a 2009 report, Dr Jun Ni showed that if a single core is close to being memory-bandwidth limited, then going to dual-core might give 30% to 70% improvement; if memory bandwidth is not a problem, then a 90% improvement can be expected; however, Amdahl's law makes this claim dubious. It would be possible for an application that used two CPUs to end up running faster on a single-core one if communication between the CPUs was the limiting factor, which would count as more than 100% improvement.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The trend in processor development has been towards an ever-increasing number of cores, as processors with hundreds or even thousands of cores become theoretically possible. In addition, multi-core chips mixed with simultaneous multithreading, memory-on-chip, and special-purpose "heterogeneous" (or asymmetric) cores promise further performance and efficiency gains, especially in processing multimedia, recognition and networking applications. For example, a big.LITTLE core includes a high-performance core (called 'big') and a low-power core (called 'LITTLE'). There is also a trend towards improving energy-efficiency by focusing on performance-per-watt with advanced fine-grain or ultra fine-grain power management and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (i.e. laptop computers and portable media players).


title: Multi-core processor

text: Chips designed from the outset for a large number of cores (rather than having evolved from single core designs) are sometimes referred to as manycore designs, emphasising qualitative differences.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The composition and balance of the cores in multi-core architecture show great variety. Some architectures use one core design repeated consistently ("homogeneous"), while others use a mixture of different cores, each optimized for a different, "heterogeneous" role.


title: Multi-core processor

text: How multiple cores are implemented and integrated significantly affects both the developer's programming skills and the consumer's expectations of apps and interactivity versus the device. A device advertised as being octa-core will only have independent cores if advertised as "True Octa-core", or similar styling, as opposed to being merely two sets of quad-cores each with fixed clock speeds.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The article "CPU designers debate multi-core future" by Rick Merritt, EE Times 2008, includes these comments:


title: Multi-core processor

text: An outdated version of an anti-virus application may create a new thread for a scan process, while its GUI thread waits for commands from the user (e.g. cancel the scan). In such cases, a multi-core architecture is of little benefit for the application itself due to the single thread doing all the heavy lifting and the inability to balance the work evenly across multiple cores. Programming truly multithreaded code often requires complex co-ordination of threads and can easily introduce subtle and difficult-to-find bugs due to the interweaving of processing on data shared between threads (see thread-safety). Consequently, such code is much more difficult to debug than single-threaded code when it breaks. There has been a perceived lack of motivation for writing consumer-level threaded applications because of the relative rarity of consumer-level demand for maximum use of computer hardware. Also, serial tasks like decoding the entropy encoding algorithms used in video codecs are impossible to parallelize because each result generated is used to help create the next result of the entropy decoding algorithm.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Given the increasing emphasis on multi-core chip design, stemming from the grave thermal and power consumption problems posed by any further significant increase in processor clock speeds, the extent to which software can be multithreaded to take advantage of these new chips is likely to be the single greatest constraint on computer performance in the future. If developers are unable to design software to fully exploit the resources provided by multiple cores, then they will ultimately reach an insurmountable performance ceiling.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The telecommunications market had been one of the first that needed a new design of parallel datapath packet processing because there was a very quick adoption of these multiple-core processors for the datapath and the control plane. These MPUs are going to replace the traditional Network Processors that were based on proprietary microcode or picocode.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Parallel programming techniques can benefit from multiple cores directly. Some existing parallel programming models such as Cilk Plus, OpenMP, OpenHMPP, FastFlow, Skandium, MPI, and Erlang can be used on multi-core platforms. Intel introduced a new abstraction for C++ parallelism called TBB. Other research efforts include the Codeplay Sieve System, Cray's Chapel, Sun's Fortress, and IBM's X10.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Multi-core processing has also affected the ability of modern computational software development. Developers programming in newer languages might find that their modern languages do not support multi-core functionality. This then requires the use of numerical libraries to access code written in languages like C and Fortran, which perform math computations faster than newer languages like C#. Intel's MKL and AMD's ACML are written in these native languages and take advantage of multi-core processing. Balancing the application workload across processors can be problematic, especially if they have different performance characteristics. There are different conceptual models to deal with the problem, for example using a coordination language and program building blocks (programming libraries or higher-order functions). Each block can have a different native implementation for each processor type. Users simply program using these abstractions and an intelligent compiler chooses the best implementation based on the context.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Managing concurrency acquires a central role in developing parallel applications. The basic steps in designing parallel applications are:


title: Multi-core processor

text: On the other hand, on the server side, multi-core processors are ideal because they allow many users to connect to a site simultaneously and have independent threads of execution. This allows for Web servers and application servers that have much better throughput.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Vendors may license some software "per processor". This can give rise to ambiguity, because a "processor" may consist either of a single core or of a combination of cores.


title: Multi-core processor

text: Embedded computing operates in an area of processor technology distinct from that of "mainstream" PCs. The same technological drives towards multi-core apply here too. Indeed, in many cases the application is a "natural" fit for multi-core technologies, if the task can easily be partitioned between the different processors.


title: Multi-core processor

text: In addition, embedded software is typically developed for a specific hardware release, making issues of software portability, legacy code or supporting independent developers less critical than is the case for PC or enterprise computing. As a result, it is easier for developers to adopt new technologies and as a result there is a greater variety of multi-core processing architectures and suppliers.


title: Multi-core processor

text: , multi-core network processors have become mainstream, with companies such as Freescale Semiconductor, Cavium Networks, Wintegra and Broadcom all manufacturing products with eight processors. For the system developer, a key challenge is how to exploit all the cores in these devices to achieve maximum networking performance at the system level, despite the performance limitations inherent in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) operating system. Companies such as 6WIND provide portable packet processing software designed so that the networking data plane runs in a fast path environment outside the operating system of the network device.


title: Multi-core processor

text: In digital signal processing the same trend applies: Texas Instruments has the three-core TMS320C6488 and four-core TMS320C5441, Freescale the four-core MSC8144 and six-core MSC8156 (and both have stated they are working on eight-core successors). Newer entries include the Storm-1 family from Stream Processors, Inc with 40 and 80 general purpose ALUs per chip, all programmable in C as a SIMD engine and Picochip with 300 processors on a single die, focused on communication applications.


title: Multi-core processor

text: In heterogeneous computing, where a system uses more than one kind of processor or cores, multi-core solutions are becoming more common: Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 and dual-core ARM Cortex-R5. Software solutions such as OpenAMP are being used to help with inter-processor communication.


title: Multi-core processor

text: The research and development of multicore processors often compares many options, and benchmarks are developed to help such evaluations. Existing benchmarks include SPLASH-2, PARSEC, and COSMIC for heterogeneous systems.


title: Black History Month

text: Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated in February in the United States and Canada, while in Ireland, and the United Kingdom it is observed in October.


title: Black History Month

text: The precursor to Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) announced the second week of February to be "Negro History Week". This week was chosen because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and that of Frederick Douglass on February 14, both of which dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century. For example, in January 1897 school teacher Mary Church Terrell persuaded the Washington, D.C. school board to set aside the afternoon of Douglass's birthday in February to teach about his life and work in the city's segregated public schools, and this became known as Douglass Day. The thought process behind the week was never recorded, but scholars acknowledge two reasons for its birth: recognition and importance. In 1915, Woodson had participated in the Lincoln Jubilee, a celebration of the 50-years since emancipation from slavery held in Bronzeville, Chicago. The summer-long Jubilee drew attendance from across the county with thousands of attendees to see exhibitions of heritage and culture, impressing Woodson with need to draw organized focus to the history of black people, and he led the founding of the ASNLH that fall.


title: Black History Month

text: Early in the event´s history, African-American newspapers lent crucial support. From the event's initial phase, primary emphasis was placed on encouraging the coordinated teaching of the history of Black Americans in the nation's public schools. The first Negro History Week was met with a lukewarm response, gaining the cooperation of the departments of education of the states of North Carolina, Delaware, and West Virginia as well as the city school administrations of Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Despite this far-from-universal observance, the event was regarded by Woodson as "one of the most fortunate steps ever taken by the Association", and plans for a repeat of the event on an annual basis continued apace.


title: Black History Month

text: At the time of Negro History Week's launch, Woodson contended that the teaching of Black History was essential to ensure the physical and intellectual survival of the race within broader society:


title: Black History Month

text: By 1929, "The Journal of Negro History" was able to note that with only two exceptions, officials with the state departments of education of "every state with considerable Negro population" had made the event known to that state's teachers and distributed official literature associated with the event. Churches also played a significant role in the distribution of literature in association with Negro History Week during this initial interval, with the mainstream and Black press aiding in the publicity effort.


title: Black History Month

text: Throughout the 1930s, Negro History Week countered the growing myth of the South's "lost cause", as epitomized in both the novel and the film "Gone with the Wind". That myth argued that slaves had been well-treated, that the Civil War was a war of "northern aggression", and that Black people had been better off under slavery. "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions", Woodson wrote in his book "The Miseducation of the American Negro", "you do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it."


title: Black History Month

text: Negro History Week grew in popularity throughout the following decades, with mayors across the United States endorsing it as a holiday.


title: Black History Month

text: Black History Month was first proposed by Black educators and the Black United Students at Kent State University in February 1969. The first celebration of Black History Month took place at Kent State a year later, from January 2 to February 28, 1970.


title: Black History Month

text: Six years later, Black History Month was being celebrated all across the country in educational institutions, centers of Black culture and community centers, both great and small, when President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month in 1976, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial. He urged Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history".


title: Black History Month

text: In the Black community, Black History Month was met with enthusiastic response; it prompted the creation of Black history clubs, an increase in interest among teachers, and interest from progressive whites.


title: Black History Month

text: On February 21, 2016, 106-year Washington, D.C., resident and school volunteer Virginia McLaurin visited the White House as part of Black History Month. When asked by President Barack Obama why she was there, McLaurin said: "A Black president. A Black wife. And I'm here to celebrate Black history. That's what I'm here for."


title: Black History Month

text: In the United Kingdom, Black History Month was first celebrated in October 1987 (which year was also coincidentally the 150th anniversary of Caribbean emancipation, the centenary of the birth of Marcus Garvey and the 25th anniversary of the Organization of African Unity, an institution dedicated to advancing the progress of African states). Black History Month in the UK was organised through the leadership of Ghanaian analyst Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who had served as a coordinator of special projects for the Greater London Council (GLC) and created a collaboration to get it underway.


title: Black History Month

text: In the UK, Black History Month was first celebrated in London in 1987, as part of African Jubilee Year, when on October 1 Dr Maulana Karenga from the US was invited to an event at County Hall to mark the contributions of Black people throughout history, and Addai-Sebo drew up a plan to recognise the contributions of African, Asian and Caribbean people to the economic, cultural and political life in the UK, with other boroughs beginning formally to institute October as Black History Month in the UK.


title: Black History Month

text: Black History Month UK does not support the use of the term "black" to refer to all people of colour in the UK (see: Political blackness), and has criticised institutions for supporting Black History Month with images of people from British Asian backgrounds.


title: Black History Month

text: In Berlin in 1990, members of the Black German community began observing Black History Month, and these celebrations spread to other German cities. Programs have included discussions of black Europeans, international African perspectives, the history of civil rights in the U.S., and apartheid in South Africa.


title: Black History Month

text: In 1995, after a motion by politician Jean Augustine, representing the riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore in Ontario, Canada's House of Commons officially recognized February as Black History Month and honored Black Canadians. In 2008, Senator Donald Oliver moved to have the Senate officially recognize Black History Month, which was unanimously approved.


title: Black History Month

text: Currently Canada defines the festivity as an opportunity to celebrate “the achievements and contributions of Black Canadians and their communities who … have done so much to take make Canada a culturally diverse, compassionate, and prosperous country”.


title: Black History Month

text: Ireland's Great Hunger Institute, at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, notes: "Black History Month Ireland was initiated in Cork in 2010. This location seems particularly appropriate as, in the 19th century, the city was a leading center of abolition, and the male and female anti-slavery societies welcomed a number of black abolitionists to lecture there, including Charles Lenox Remond and Frederick Douglass."


title: Black History Month

text: When first established, Black History Month resulted in some controversy. Those who believed that Black History Month was limited to educational institutions questioned whether it was appropriate to confine the celebration of Black history to one month, as opposed to the integration of black history into mainstream education for the whole of the year. Another concern was that contrary to the original inspiration for Black History Month, which was a desire to redress the manner in which American schools failed to represent Black historical figures as anything other than slaves or colonial subjects, Black History Month could reduce complex historical figures to overly simplified objects of "hero worship". Other critics refer to the celebration as a form of racism. Actor and director Morgan Freeman and actress Stacey Dash have criticized the concept of declaring only one month as Black History Month. Freeman noted, "I don't want a Black history month. Black history is American history."


title: Black History Month

text: Since its inception, Black History Month has expanded beyond its initial acceptance in educational establishments. Carter Woodson's organization, now known as, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) designates a theme each year: for example, " Black Health and Wellness" in 2022 focused on medical scholars, health care providers, and health outcomes.


title: Black History Month

text: In 2018, Instagram created its first-ever Black History Month program with the help of its then Head of Global Music & Youth Culture Communications, SHAVONE. Instagram's Black History Month program featured a series of first-time initiatives, including a #BlackGirlMagic partnership with Spotify and the launch of the #CelebrateBlackCreatives program, which reached more than 19 million followers. By 2020, Black History Month had become a focus beyond schools. "The Wall Street Journal" describes it as "a time when the culture and contributions of African Americans take center stage" in a variety of cultural institutions including theaters, libraries and museums. It has also garnered attention from the U.S. business community. In February 2020 "Forbes" noted that "much of corporate America is commemorating" Black History Month including The Coca-Cola Company, Google, Target Corporation, Macy's, United Parcel Service and Under Armour.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Armin Jozef Jacobus Daniël van Buuren ( , ; born 25 December 1976) is a Dutch DJ and record producer from Leiden, South Holland. Since 2001, he has hosted "A State of Trance" (ASOT), a weekly radio show, which is broadcast to nearly 40 million listeners in 84 countries on over 100 FM radio stations. According to the website "DJs and Festivals", "the radio show propelled him to stardom and helped cultivate an interest in trance music around the world".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Van Buuren has won a number of accolades. He has been ranked the number one DJ by "DJ Mag" a record of five times, four years in a row. He was ranked fifth on the "DJ Mag" Top 100 DJs list in 2022, as well as fourth in 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020, and third in 2017. In 2014, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for his single "This Is What It Feels Like" featuring Trevor Guthrie, which makes him the fourth trance artist ever to receive a Grammy Award nomination. In the United States, he holds the record for most entries, twenty-one, on the "Billboard" Dance/Electronic Albums chart.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Armin van Buuren was born in Leiden, on 25 December 1976, and grew up in Koudekerk aan den Rijn. He was inspired by French electronic music composer Jean-Michel Jarre and Dutch DJ and Remixer Ben Liebrand. Van Buuren graduated from the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden in 1995, and studied law at Leiden University. He began working as a DJ in Club Nexus in 1996, playing multiple sets a week, most of which lasted six or more hours. In 1999, he met Dave Lewis who introduced him as a DJ in England and the United States. As his musical career began to take off, he put his law degree on hold, but he did return to graduate from law school in 2003.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 18 September 2009, van Buuren married Erika van Thiel. Their daughter Fenna was born in July 2011. Van Buuren announced just hours before he was due to headline the main stage at Tomorrowland (27 July 2013) that his wife had given birth to a son, Remy.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 16 February 2018, van Buuren explored his family history in an episode of the TV series "Verborgen verleden", the Dutch version of the UK series "Who Do You Think You Are?".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In 1996, Van Buuren released "EP" and "Push" on Timeless Records. Van Buuren had his first success with a track called "Blue Fear", which was released under the Cyber Records label in 1997. Another successful track, "Communication", was released under the same label and became popular in Ibiza, Spain in the summer of 1999. After being signed to AM PM Records, this track entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 18 in 2000.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In the beginning of 1999, Van Buuren started his label Armind together with United Recordings. The first release, Gig – "One", was well received. The second release, "Touch Me" under the name Rising Star, was signed to Ministry of Sound in the UK, before the record was released. By the time of his third release, Gimmick – "Free" was signed to R&S Records. During this year, he remixed the first two singles of Gouryella ("Gouryella" and "Walhalla") and, under the guise of Rising Star, produced a remix of "L'Esperanza", a song by Airscape.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In 2000, Van Buuren started his own Armin van Buuren compilation series, a mix of progressive house and vocal trance styles of music. His first compilation album, "A State of Trance" (not to be confused with his weekly "A State of Trance" radio shows), sold 10,000 copies and contains Van Buuren's remix of Moogwai, "Viola". Teaming up with Tiësto, two new projects were born: Major League – "Wonder Where You Are?" was released on Black Hole Recordings and Alibi – "Eternity" was released on Armind. "Eternity" received club and chart success and was signed to Paul van Dyk's imprint Vandit Records. Another major collaboration followed this. Together with Ferry Corsten, Van Buuren recorded a riff titled "Exhale" for the System F album, "Out of the Blue". Released as a single, this track reached Gold status. Under the pseudonym Gaia he released "4 Elements" on Captivating Sounds, a sub-label of Warner Brothers.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: His second album, "Basic Instinct" featured a new track: "Perpetuous Dreamer" – "The Sound of Goodbye". This track entered the Dutch charts in June 2001 at number 26. Later in the year, the track hit No. 1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. The third album, "In Motion" was released 6 August 2001. A fourth album, "Transparence", followed in 2002. In 2003, he worked with such artists such as DJ Seth Alan Fannin throughout a global tour on Dance Revolution in Europe, selling out to crowds of 20,000 people in the Netherlands.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In March 2001, Van Buuren started his own radio show on ID&T Radio (traditionally broadcast in Dutch and later English since ASOT 183). In this weekly two-hour show, entitled "A State of Trance", he plays the latest popular trance music tracks, and publishes the artists and track titles on his website. When ID&T Radio changed genres in 2004, Van Buuren moved "A State of Trance" to Fresh FM and later SLAM!FM, two Dutch radio stations. It is now a weekly feature on Radio 538, the Dutch radio station, DI.FM, an online radio station, and on XM Satellite Radio, channel 52 in the United States and Canada. A complete list of stations that broadcast "A State of Trance" can be found at the ASOT section of Armin's website.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In 2002, he had a residency at Glow in Washington D.C., and played across North America. He regularly appeared at Amnesia on the island of Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain. In October that year, Van Buuren was voted number 5 in the "DJ Mag".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In June 2003, Van Buuren celebrated the 100th episode of "A State of Trance" at Bloomingdale, Bloemendaal aan Zee, Netherlands and released his debut studio album, "76", a 76-minute album divided into 13 tracks. In the same year he was voted No. 3 in the "DJ Mag" and held third place for the next two years (2004, 2005). Also in 2004, Van Buuren remixed the "24" theme song into a trance hit.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 2 June 2005, he celebrated the 200th episode of "A State of Trance" at the Museumplein of Amsterdam. On 8 August 2005, Van Buuren released his second studio album, "Shivers". On the album Van Buuren worked with artists such as Pakistani-American singer Nadia Ali, English singer Justine Suissa and American trance duo Gabriel & Dresden. On 25 May 2006, he celebrated with various artists the 250th episode of "A State of Trance" at Asta, The Hague, Netherlands. He was voted number two in the 2006 "DJ Mag". On 17 May 2007, he celebrated with various artists the 300th episode of "A State of Trance" at Pettelaarse Schans, 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Van Buuren was elected best DJ in the world in the 2007 "DJ Mag" edition. On 12 January 2008, Van Buuren was given the "Buma Cultuur Pop Award," the most prestigious Dutch music award. On 17 April 2008, Van Buuren released his third studio album, "Imagine". It features collaboration with singers such as Jacqueline Govaert of Krezip. The album debuted at number one on the Dutch Albums Chart. The second single released from the album, "In and Out of Love", featuring Sharon den Adel from the band Within Temptation, has spawned a music video that has been viewed over 242 million times on YouTube. Since the release of "Imagine", Van Buuren has been working with Benno de Goeij of Rank 1 on solo productions and remixes. On 1 May 2008, he celebrated with various artists the 350th episode of "A State of Trance" at Noxx, Antwerp, Belgium. He was voted No. 1 in the 2008 "DJ Mag" again.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: He collaborated with his brother, guitarist Eller van Buuren, at Together As One in Los Angeles, U.S., on New Year's Eve 2009, as well as on Armin's 2008 studio album "Imagine". His performance with his brother at Together As One was also the last event of his "Armin Only: Imagine" world tour. To celebrate the 400th episode of "A State of Trance", he performed at three shows with various artists in April, 2009 at Club Butan, Wuppertal, Germany, AIR, Birmingham, United Kingdom and Maassilo, Rotterdam, Netherlands.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Also in 2009, Foreign Media Games announced the production of "", a music video game being produced in collaboration with Cloud 9 Music and Van Buuren's Armada Music label. The title was released on 12 November 2010 exclusively for the Wii console. He was voted number one DJ in the 2009 "DJ Mag" for the third consecutive year.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 3 March 2010, Van Buuren was awarded with the Golden Harp for his musical work and contribution to Dutch music, by Buma/Stemra at the 2010 Buma Harpen Gala in Hilversum, Netherlands. To celebrate the 450th episode of "A State of Trance", he performed with various artists at five shows across two continents. The locations were: The Guvernment, Toronto, Canada on 1 April 2010, Roseland Ballroom, New York City on 2 April and on 3 April again, Expo Arena, Bratislava, Slovakia on 9 April and Centennial Hall, Wroclaw, Poland on 24 April.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 23 June 2010, it was announced that Van Buuren's fourth studio album, "Mirage" was due to be released on 10 September. The first single "Full Focus", was released through iTunes Store on 24 June. The song peaked at number 60 in the Netherlands. One of the confirmed tracks from the album is a collaboration with English singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor called "Not Giving Up on Love", which was released as a single from Bextor's fourth studio album, "Make a Scene". Armin also wrote a song for English singer Seal, but due to the release of his greatest hits album, "Hits", the collaboration never came together. On 12 September 2010, Van Buuren launched "A State of Sundays", a new weekly 24-hour radio show aired on Sirius XM Radio. On 20 October 2010, Van Buuren won the award for Most Popular International DJ presented by The Golden Gnomes. A week later he was announced, for the fourth year running, as the number one DJ in "DJ Mag".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: The 2010 edition of "Armin Only: Mirage" kicked off in November 2010, in Utrecht, Netherlands, and was followed by shows in Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Beirut, Poznań, Moscow and Bratislava.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In March and April, 2011, celebrating the 500th episode of his radio show, Van Buuren performed five live shows along with various artists; the first was in Johannesburg, South Africa at MTN Expo Centre, and the second in Miami's Ultra Music Festival. He then performed in Argentina at GEBA in Buenos Aires, followed by a large event at Brabanthallen in Den Bosch, Netherlands which included more than 30 DJs from countries all over the world and was attended by over 30,000 people. The final show was held in Sydney on 16 April at Acer Arena. In 2011, Van Buuren was appointed Officer of the Order of Oranje-Nassau for services to Dutch dance and music economy. That year he also received the Key to (Freedom) of Leiden from the City Mayor, as well as being voted No. 2 in the 2011 "DJ Mag".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: To celebrate the 550th episode of "A State of Trance", he performed with various artists on two different continents during fourth weeks. The show was called "A State of Trance 550: Invasion". The first event was celebrated at Ministry of Sound in London on 1 March 2012. On 7 March, Moscow held the second event at Expocentre. Kyiv's show was performed at International Exhibition Centre on 10 March. On 17 March, as part of the Beyond Wonderland festival in Los Angeles and on 25 March at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami. On 31 March, the biggest and final edition of ASOT 550 took place in the Brabanthallen of Den Bosch, Netherlands. On 19 October 2012, Van Buuren was announced for a fifth non-consecutive year as the world's number one DJ according to "DJ Mag".


title: Armin van Buuren

text: To celebrate the 600th episode of "A State of Trance", Van Buuren announced that he would perform with various artists all around the world in early 2013. The show was called "A State of Trance 600: The Expedition". It was announced that the show would tour the world, including stops in Madrid, Mexico City, São Paulo, Minsk, Sofia, Beirut, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Miami, Guatemala City, New York City, and Den Bosch.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: The first single of Van Buuren's fifth studio album, "Intense", titled "This Is What It Feels Like", featured Canadian singer and songwriter Trevor Guthrie, and was released on 5 April 2013. The single nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. The tour for the album, "Armin Only: Intense", was announced on 17 October 2013.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: 30 April 2013 saw the abdication of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in favor of her son, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who was crowned that day, which was Queen's Day as well. Van Buuren was the headline act in a performance to a live audience celebrating the King's crowning in Amsterdam. While he was performing live together with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Amsterdam Harbor on Java-eiland, King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima and their three daughters made an unplanned visit on stage.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 19 October 2013, Armin van Buuren was ranked number two DJ in the world by "DJ Mag". On 26 January 2014, Armin van Buuren attended the 56th Grammy Awards, in relation to his Grammy Award nomination for the single featuring Trevor Guthrie, "This Is What It Feels Like" in the category of Best Dance Recording.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 8 May 2015, Armin van Buuren released the first single from his sixth studio album, "Embrace", which was released on 29 October 2015. The single is titled "Another You" featuring Mr Probz. Three weeks after releasing "Another You", Van Buuren also debuted another remix from "Game of Thrones" official theme which is originally made by composer Ramin Djawadi.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 16 October 2015 Armin van Buuren released the next single from "Embrace" called "Strong Ones" featuring Cimo Fränkel. This was followed by the release of his collaboration with Cosmic Gate "Embargo" on 22 October 2015. To accompany the album's release, Van Buuren announced the return of the "Armin Only" series of parties.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: This edition of the tour was titled "Armin Only: Embrace" and took place throughout both 2015 and 2016. As the title of the tour suggests, it was based around the collection of music that he showcased on his new album.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 2 February 2017, Armin van Buuren officially opened a new A State of Trance radio show studio in Amsterdam as part of his celebrations for the 800th episode of the radio show. The studio is located in the Armada headquarters. With the new accommodations made possible by the studio, he introduced a new segment of the radio show called Service for Dreamers where he invites fans to send in their favorite trance tracks that have a special meaning to them. Every week one track gets chosen to be featured live on the show and introduced by the fans of the radio show live, either by a walk-in, phone call, Skype or other means of contact.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In 2017, Armin van Buuren announced he will be releasing an online MasterClass sharing his expertise in electronic music production.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 13 April 2017, Armin van Buuren performed at the Heineken stage in Shanghai, in the first Formula 1 Festival along with Angela Zhang.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: Armin performed a seven-hour-long set at the Romania Untold Festival on 6 August 2018, clocking from 2:00 a.m. to after 9:00 a.m. This outlasted his previous 2017 ASOT performance, which had gone on for five hours.


title: Armin van Buuren

text: On 6 October 2019, he performed at Republic Square, Yerevan, Armenia as an opening act for the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT).


title: Armin van Buuren

text: In January 2021, Armin celebrated the 1000th episode of A State of Trance with a 7-day long livestream, where he, co-host Ruben de Ronde and monthly show resident Ferry Corsten presented a list of the top 1000 songs played during A State of Trance radio shows, as voted on by listeners of the show. The livestream ran from January 14 to January 21, and the top song was Shivers, from Armin's 2005 album. As has been done for previous radio show milestones, a major ASOT1000 festival was planned in Utrecht, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has since been repeatedly delayed. The festival is currently set to happen on March 4-5, 2023, by which point the weekly radio show will have already surpassed 1100 episodes.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: The first generation Honda NSX ("New Sportscar eXperimental"), marketed in North America and Hong Kong as the Acura NSX, is a 2-seater, mid-engine sports car that was manufactured by Honda in Japan from 1990 until 2005.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: Around 1984, Honda engineers began experimenting with different engine and chassis layouts to test viability for future products. One of the test mules was a Honda City that had been cut in half, with the engine installed behind the driver's seat and powering the rear wheels. Although the project was not developed any further, many of the engineers were inspired by the exciting laps around the company parking lot in the mid-engined City. This experience, in part, convinced Honda leadership that the company should consider developing a pure sports car. As a result, in 1984, Honda commissioned the Italian car styling house Pininfarina to design the concept car HP-X (Honda Pininfarina eXperimental), which had a C20A 2.0 L V6 engine in a mid-mounted configuration. After Honda committed to a sports car project, the company management informed the engineers working on the project that the new car would have to be as fast as anything coming from Italy and Germany. The HP-X concept car evolved into a prototype known as NS-X, which stood for "New", "Sportscar" "eXperimental". The prototype and eventual production model—which was marketed as the NSX—were designed by a team led by Honda Chief Designer Masahito Nakano, and Executive Chief Engineer Shigeru Uehara (who were subsequently placed in charge of the S2000 project).


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: The original performance target for Honda's new sports car was the Ferrari 328 (and later, the 348) as the design neared completion. Honda intended its sports car to meet or exceed the performance of the Ferrari, while offering superior reliability and a lower price. For this reason, the 2.0 L V6 engine utilised in the HP-X was shelved and ultimately replaced with a significantly more powerful 3.0 L VTEC V6 engine. Over the course of development of the NSX, many engines were used, ranging from the 2.7-litre single overhead camshaft V6 engine from the Honda Legend/Honda Coupé to the 3.0-litre single overhead camshaft V6 engine, used subsequently in 15 test mules. Honda eventually settled on a non-VTEC, 3.0-liter double overhead camshaft 24-valve V6 engine selected for the production model. This engine generated a maximum power output of about and of torque, with a redline of 7,300 rpm. However, at the same time, Honda was working on its revolutionary VTEC variable valve timing system, with plans to release it on the company's home-market 4-cylinder Integra. Honda's then-president Tadashi Kume, himself a highly skilled and respected engine designer, questioned the NS-X designers' logic in foregoing the VTEC system for Honda's new flagship sports car, while it was being used on the lower-market Integra. As a result, the engine was redesigned very late in the development process "to achieve the desired levels of performance and durability"; Honda designed a new cylinder block with 6-bolt main caps and larger cylinder heads to contain the complex VTEC mechanism. Innovative connecting rods made from a titanium alloy were used to lower reciprocating weight, while increasing overall rod-strength—something which increased the engine's maximum rpm by 700, resulting in a final redline of 8,000 rpm. A consequence of this last-minute engine change was that the new C30A engine was too large to fit in the NS-X's engine bay, which had been carefully sized for the smaller heads of the non-VTEC DOHC 3.0 liter engine. As a result, the engineers were forced to tilt the entire engine backward approximately 5 degrees- a characteristic that continued all the way to the NSX's final production in 2005.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: The exterior design had been specifically researched by Uehara after studying the 360-degree visibility inside an F-16 fighter jet's cockpit. Thematically, the F-16 came into play in the exterior design as well as establishing the conceptual goals of the NSX. In the F-16 and other high performance aircraft such as unlimited hydroplanes along with open-wheel race cars, the cockpit is located far forward and in front of the power plant. This "cab-forward" layout was chosen to optimize visibility while the long tail design enhanced high speed directional stability. The NSX was designed to showcase several automotive technologies, many derived from Honda's F1 motor-sports program.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: The NSX was the first production car to feature an all-aluminium semi-monocoque, incorporating a revolutionary extruded aluminium alloy frame and suspension components. The use of aluminium saved nearly of weight over the use of steel in the body alone, while the aluminium suspension arms saved an additional ; a suspension compliance pivot helped maintain wheel alignment changes at a near zero value throughout the suspension cycle. Other notable features included an independent, 4-channel anti-lock brake system; an electric power steering system; Honda's proprietary VTEC variable valve timing system and in 1995, the first electronic throttle control fitted in Honda production car.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: With a robust motorsports division, Honda had significant development resources at its disposal and made extensive use of them. Respected Japanese Formula One driver Satoru Nakajima, for example, was involved with Honda in the NSX's early on-track development at Suzuka race circuit, where he performed many endurance distance duties related to chassis tuning. Brazilian Formula One World Champion Ayrton Senna, who won many races in Formula One with Honda before his death in 1994, was considered Honda's main innovator in convincing the company to stiffen the NSX's chassis further after initially testing the car at Honda's Suzuka GP circuit in Japan. Senna further helped refine the original NSX's suspension tuning and handling by spending a whole day test driving prototypes and reporting his findings to Honda engineers after each of the day's five testing sessions. Senna also tested the NSX at the Nürburgring and other race tracks. As a result of Senna's input, Honda took the NS-X prototype to the Nürburgring to tune the chassis stiffness. Over the course of several months, the chassis was refined in a painstaking process: Nakajima would drive a lap on the circuit and then discuss with the Honda engineers where he felt flex in the chassis. The engineers would hand-weld aluminum braces in the area they believed would fix the issue and send the driver back out to confirm. This process was repeated over and over, with the data results sent directly to Honda headquarters in Japan, where it was fed into a Cray supercomputer and translated into reinforcements in the production aluminum monocoque. As a result of this process, the NS-X chassis stiffness increased by over 50% with only a small increase in weight. The suspension development program was similarly far-ranging and took place at the Tochigi Proving Grounds, the Suzuka circuit, the 179-turn Nürburgring Course in Germany, HPCC, and Honda's newest test track in Takasu, Hokkaido. Honda automobile dealer Bobby Rahal (two-time CART PPG Cup and 1986 Indianapolis 500 champion) also participated in the car's development.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: The NSX made its first public appearances in 1989, at the Chicago Auto Show in February and at the Tokyo Motor Show in October of that year, receiving positive reviews. Honda revised the car's name from NS-X to NSX before commencement of production and sales. The NSX went on sale in Japan in 1990 at "Honda Verno" dealership sales channels, supplanting the Prelude as the flagship model. The NSX was sold under Honda's Acura luxury brand starting in November 1990 in North America and Hong Kong.


title: Honda NSX (first generation)

text: Upon its official debut, the NSX design concept showcased Honda's technology, measuring only in height. The Japanese car maker's race track innovations and competitive history were further exemplified on the road by the NSX's ultra-rigid and ultra-light all aluminium monocoque chassis along with front and rear double wishbone suspension, with forged control arms connected to forged alloy wheels. The car additionally boasted the world's first production car engine with titanium connecting rods, forged pistons, and ultra high-revving capabilities – the redline was at 8,300 rpm – all traits usually associated with track and race engineered cars. The NSX's exterior had a dedicated 23-step paint process, including an aircraft type chromate coating designed for chemically protecting the aluminium bodywork and a waterborne paint for the base coat to achieve a clearer, more vivid top color and a smoother surface finish.