title: Lebanese pound

text: Since September 2019, the exchange rate has forked into multiple distinct rates due to Lebanon's banking sector collapse. Within six months, five distinct Lebanese pound rates were defined against the US dollar, officially and unofficially. They were valued at:


title: Lebanese pound

text: The "lollar" is a deposit denominated in US dollars in the Lebanese banking system. It is a nominal balance stuck or frozen in the Lebanese banks, with currency value simply as a computer entry. The lollar is not a tangible currency, but is a concept of an outstanding deposit in US dollars in Lebanese banks that can only be withdrawn in Lebanese pounds at a very reduced set rate and considerably lower than the highly speculative black market rate which is multiple times higher. There are also limits put on the total amount that can be withdrawn on the lollars. The term was coined by Harvard University economic fellow Dan Azzi after the Lebanese banks suffered serious difficulties and restricted the amount of US dollars and other foreign currencies they could pay to their depositors.


title: Lebanese pound

text: The official exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Lebanon: Lebanese pound to U.S. dollar is approximately 1,507.5ل.ل per 1 US dollar. This rate is more two times different from the real exchange rate on the black market.


title: Lebanese pound

text: The real exchange rate of the Lebanese pound to U.S. dollar is approximately ل.ل39,750 per 1 US dollar on black market.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: The Aston Martin Lagonda is a full-size luxury four-door saloon manufactured by British manufacturer Aston Martin between 1974 and 1990. A total of 645 were produced. The name was derived from the Lagonda marque that Aston Martin had purchased in 1947. There are two distinct generations, the original, the short lived 1974 design based on a lengthened Aston Martin V8, and the entirely redesigned, wedge-shaped Series 2 model introduced in 1976.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: In 2014, Aston Martin confirmed it would launch a new Lagonda model called the Taraf for the Middle-East market, sold on an invitation-only basis as a successor to this saloon.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: Aston Martin was facing financial pressure in the mid-1970s and needed something to bring in some much-needed funds. Traditionally Aston Martin had worked on 2+2 sports cars but the Lagonda was a four-door saloon. As soon as it was introduced, it attracted hundreds of deposits and boosted Aston Martin's cash reserves.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: After the production of seven Series 1 cars, the Lagonda was designed from the ground up in 1976 by William Towns as an extreme interpretation of the classic 1970s "folded paper" style. It was an unconventional design practice for the company. With famous contemporaries like the Lamborghini Countach, Lotus Esprit, and DMC DeLorean, the Lagonda is frequently named among the most striking wedge-shaped designs. The Lagonda combined striking styling with a premium leather interior and (for the day), advanced instrumentation. Coupled to a Chrysler three-speed "TorqueFlite" automatic transmission, its four-cam carbureted V8 provided poor fuel economy, impacted little by the change to fuel injection in the Series 3.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: Throughout the history of the marque, the hand-built Lagonda was amongst the most expensive luxury saloons in the world. The only other production cars to approach its price were the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit/Silver Spur and the Bentley Mulsanne.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: The Lagonda was the first production car to use a digital instrument panel. The development cost for the electronics alone on the Lagonda came to four times as much as the budget for the whole car. The Series 3 used cathode ray tubes for the instrumentation, which proved even less reliable than the original model's light-emitting diode (LED) display.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: It was named by "Bloomberg Businessweek" as one of the 50 ugliest cars of the last 50 years and "Time" magazine included it in its "50 Worst Cars of All Time", describing it as a mechanical "catastrophe" with electronics that would be impressive if they ever worked.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: A number of iterations of the Lagonda were produced: the original Series 1 and the wedge-shaped Series 2, 3, and 4. A total of 645 cars were produced in its 12-year production run.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: This long-wheelbase, four-door version of the Aston Martin V8 was announced at the 1974 London Motor Show. Designed by William Towns and based on the DBS, it was the first car to wear the Lagonda name since the 1961 Rapide. The 5.3 L V8 engine was supplied with either a 5-speed manual or automatic transmission. Only seven were sold.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: At least two of the cars (having chassis numbers 12003 and 12005) have been upgraded by R.S. Williams Ltd of Cobham to a 7.0-litre version of the original engine, able to generate a power output ranging from on unleaded fuel.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: The wedge-shaped Lagonda V8 saloon was launched in 1976 at the London Motor Show and was a total contrast to the 1974 model, sharing little but the engine. Deliveries of the Lagonda did not commence until 1979. Series 2 cars were originally fitted with digital LCD dashboards and touch button controls but these features were abandoned in 1980. The Lagonda retailed at GB£49,933 in 1980, significantly more than a Ferrari 400 or Maserati Kyalami but less than a Rolls-Royce Corniche. The car commenced sales in the US from 1982 with minor regulatory amendments to the front bumper and airdam.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: The Series 3 was produced for only one year with 75 units manufactured. All had fuel injected engines. Cathode ray tube instrumentation was later changed to a vacuum fluorescent display system and shared exterior styling with the Series 2.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: The Series 4 was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1987, having been extensively restyled by the car's original designer William Towns. Sharp edges were rounded off and the pop-up headlights were replaced with three headlights on each side of the grille. The side swage line (or character line) was removed and 16-inch wheels were introduced. With production of around one car per week, 105 cars were manufactured through January 1990.


title: Aston Martin Lagonda

text: As of 2011, 81 remain registered in the United Kingdom--but 32 are SORN (unregistered for routine road use).


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge with his wife, fellow palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey. Having established a programme of palaeoanthropological inquiry in eastern Africa, he also motivated many future generations to continue this scholarly work. Several members of the Leakey family became prominent scholars themselves.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Another of Leakey's legacies stems from his role in fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats, which he saw as key to understanding human evolution. He personally focused on three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas, calling them The Trimates. Each went on to become an important scholar in the field of primatology. Leakey also encouraged and supported many other PhD candidates, most notably from the University of Cambridge. Leakey also played a role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis's parents, Harry (1868–1940) and Mary (May) Bazett Leakey (died 1948), were Church of England missionaries in British East Africa (now Kenya). Harry was the son of James Shirley Leakey (1824–1871), one of the eleven children of the portrait painter James Leakey. Harry Leakey was assigned to an established post of the Church Mission Society among the Kikuyu at Kabete, in the highlands north of Nairobi. The station was at that time a hut and two tents. Louis's earliest home had an earthen floor, a leaky thatched roof, rodents and insects, and no heating system except for charcoal braziers. The facilities slowly improved over time. The mission, a center of activity, set up a clinic in one of the tents, and later a girls' school. Harry was working on a translation of the Bible into the Gikuyu language. He had a distinguished career in the CMS, becoming canon of the station.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis had a younger brother, Douglas, and two older sisters, Gladys and Julia. Both sisters married missionaries: Gladys married Leonard Beecher, Anglican Bishop of Mombasa and then Archbishop of East Africa from 1960 to 1970; Julia married Lawrence Barham, the second Bishop of Rwanda and Burundi from 1964 to 1966; their son Ken Barham was later the Bishop of Cyangugu in Rwanda.


title: Louis Leakey

text: The Leakey household came to contain Miss Oakes (a governess), Miss Higgenbotham (another missionary), and Mariamu (a Kikuyu nurse). Louis grew up, played, and learned to hunt with the native Kikuyus. He also learned to walk with the distinctive gait of the Kikuyu and speak their language fluently, as did his siblings. He was initiated into the Kikuyu ethnic group, an event of which he never spoke, as he was sworn to secrecy.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis requested and was given permission to build and move into a hut, Kikuyu style, at the end of the garden. It was home to his personal collection of natural objects, such as birds' eggs and skulls. All the children developed a keen interest in and appreciation of the pristine natural surroundings in which they found themselves. They raised baby animals, later turning them over to zoos. Louis read a gift book, "Days Before History", by H. R. Hall (1907), a juvenile fictional work illustrating the prehistory of Britain. He began to collect tools and was further encouraged in this activity by a role model, Arthur Loveridge, the first curator (1914) of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi, the predecessor of the Coryndon Museum. This interest may have predisposed him toward a career in archaeology. His father was also a role model: Canon Leakey co-founded East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Neither Harry nor May were of strong constitution. From 1904 to 1906 the entire family lived at May's mother's house in Reading, Berkshire, in England, while Harry recovered from neurasthenia, and again in 1911–1913, while May recovered from general frailty and exhaustion. During the latter stay, Harry bought a house in Boscombe, Hampshire.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In Britain, the Leakey children attended primary school; in Africa, they had a tutor. The family sat out World War I in Africa. When the sea lanes opened again in 1919, they returned to Boscombe, where Louis was sent to Weymouth College, a private boys' school, when he was 16 years old. In three years there, he did not do well and complained of hazing and rules that he considered an infringement on his freedom. Advised by one teacher to seek employment in a bank, he secured help from an English teacher in applying to St John's College, Cambridge. He received a scholarship for his high scores on the entrance exams.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis matriculated at the University of Cambridge, his father's alma mater, in 1922, intending to become a missionary to British East Africa.


title: Louis Leakey

text: He frequently told a story about his final exams. When he had arrived in Britain, he had notified the register that he was fluent in Swahili. When he came to his finals, he asked to be examined in this language, and the authorities agreed. Then one day, he received two letters. One instructed him to report at a certain time and place for a "viva voce" examination in Swahili. The other asked if, at the same time and place, he would examine a candidate in Swahili.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1922, the British had been awarded German East Africa as part of the settlement of World War I. Within the Tanganyika Territory the Germans had discovered a site rich in dinosaur fossils, Tendaguru. Louis was told by C. W. Hobley, a friend of the family, that the British Museum of Natural History was going to send a fossil-hunting expedition led by William E. Cutler to the site. Louis applied and was hired to locate the site and manage the administrative details. In 1924 they departed for Africa. They never found a complete dinosaur skeleton, and Louis was recalled from the site by Cambridge in 1925.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis switched his focus to anthropology, and found a new mentor in Alfred Cort Haddon, head of the Cambridge department. In 1926, Louis graduated with a "double first", or high honours, in anthropology and archaeology. He had used some of his preexisting qualifications; for example, Kikuyu was offered and accepted as the second modern language in which he was required to be proficient, even though no one there could test him on it. The university accepted an affidavit from a Kikuyu chief signed with a thumbprint.


title: Louis Leakey

text: From 1925 on Louis lectured and wrote on African archaeological and palaeontological topics. On graduation he was such a respected figure that Cambridge sent him to East Africa to study prehistoric African humans. He excavated dozens of sites, undertaking for the first time a systematic study of the artifacts. Some of his names for archaeological cultures are still in use; for example, the Elmenteitan.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1927, Louis received a visit at a site called Gamble's Cave, near Lake Elmenteita, by two women on a holiday, one of whom was Frida Avern (1902–1993). Avern had done some course work in archaeology. Louis and Frida began a relationship, which continued upon his return to Cambridge. In 1928, they married and continued work near Lake Elmenteita. Finds from Gamble's Cave were donated by Leakey to the British Museum in 1931. At that time he discovered the Acheulean site of Kariandusi, which he excavated in 1928.


title: Louis Leakey

text: On the strength of his work there, he obtained a post-graduate research fellowship at St. John's College and returned to Cambridge in 1929 to classify and prepare the finds from Elmenteita. His patron and mentor at Cambridge were now Arthur Keith. While cleaning two skeletons he had found, he noticed a similarity to one found in Olduvai Gorge by Professor Hans Reck, a German national, whom Louis had met in 1925 in Germany while on business for Keith.


title: Louis Leakey

text: The geology of Olduvai was known. In 1913, Reck had extricated a skeleton from Bed II in the gorge wall. He argued that it must have the date of the bed, which was believed to be 600,000 years, in the mid-Pleistocene. Early dates for human evolution were not widely accepted by the general public at the time. Reck became involved in a media uproar. He was barred from going back to settle the question by the war and then the terms of the transfer of Tanganyika from Germany to Britain. In 1929, Louis visited Berlin to talk to the now skeptical Reck. Noting an Acheulean tool in Reck's collection of artifacts from Olduvai, he bet Reck he could find ancient stone tools at Olduvai within 24 hours.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis received his PhD in 1930 at the age of 27. His first child, a daughter named Priscilla Muthoni Leakey, was born in 1931. His headaches and epilepsy returned, and he was prescribed Luminal, which he took for the rest of his life.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In November 1931, Louis led an expedition to Olduvai whose members included Reck, whom Louis allowed to enter the gorge first. Leakey had bet Reck that Leakey would find Acheulean tools within the first 24 hours, which he did. These verified the provenance of the 1913 find, now called Olduvai Man. Non-humanoid fossils and tools were extracted from the ground in large numbers. Frida delayed joining her husband and was less enthusiastic about him on behalf of Priscilla. She did arrive eventually, however, and Louis put her to work. Frida's site became FLK, for Frida Leakey's Karongo ("gully").


title: Louis Leakey

text: Back in Cambridge, the sceptics were not impressed. To find supporting evidence of the antiquity of Reck's Olduvai Man, Louis returned to Africa, excavating at Kanam and Kanjera. He easily found more fossils, which he named Homo kanamensis. While he was gone, the opposition worked up some "evidence" of the intrusion of Olduvai Man into an earlier layer, evidence that seemed convincing at the time, but is missing and unverifiable now. On his return, Louis' finds were carefully examined by a committee of 26 scientists and were tentatively accepted as valid.


title: Louis Leakey

text: With Frida's dowry money, the Leakeys bought a large brick house in Girton near Cambridge, which they named "The Close".


title: Louis Leakey

text: At the time, Frida was pregnant, suffered from morning sickness most of the time and was unable to work on the illustrations for Louis's second book, "Adam's Ancestors." At a dinner party given in his honor, after a lecture of his at the Royal Anthropological Institute, Gertrude Caton-Thompson introduced her own illustrator, the twenty-year-old Mary Nicol. Louis convinced Mary to take on the illustration of his book, and a few months later companionship turned to an affair. Frida gave birth to Colin in December 1933, and the next month Louis left her and his new born son. She would not sue for divorce until 1936.


title: Louis Leakey

text: A panel at Cambridge investigated his morals. Grants dried up, but his mother raised enough money for another expedition to Olduvai, Kanam and Kanjera, the latter two on the Winam Gulf. His previous work there was questioned by P. G. H. Boswell, whom he invited to verify the sites for himself. Arriving at Kanam and Kanjera in 1935, they found that the iron markers Louis had used to mark the sites had been removed by the Luo tribe for use as harpoons and the sites could not now be located. To make matters worse, all the photos Louis took were ruined by a light leak in the camera. After an irritating and fruitless two-month search, Boswell left for England, promising, as Louis understood it, not to publish a word until Louis returned.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Boswell immediately set out to publish as many words as he was able, beginning with a letter in "Nature" dated 9 March 1935, destroying Reck's and Louis's dates of the fossils and questioning Louis's competence. Despite the searches for the iron markers, Boswell averred that "the earlier expedition (of 1931–32) neither marked the localities on the ground nor recorded the sites on a map." In a field report of March 1935, Louis accused Boswell of reneging on his word, but Boswell asserted he had made no such promise, and now having public opinion on his side, warned Louis to withdraw the claim. Louis was not only forced to retract the accusation in his final field report in June 1935, but also to recant his support of Reck. Louis was through at Cambridge. Even his mentors turned on him.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Meeting Mary in Africa, he proceeded to Olduvai with a small party. Louis' parents continued to urge him to return to Frida, and would pay for everyone in the party but Mary. Mary joined him under a stigma but her skill and competence eventually won over the other participants. Louis and his associates did the groundwork for future excavation at Olduvai, uncovering dozens of sites for a broad sampling, as was his method. They were named after the excavator: SHK (Sam Howard's karongo), BK (Peter Bell's), SWK (Sam White's), MNK (Mary Nicol's). Louis and Mary conducted a temporary clinic for the Maasai, made preliminary investigations of Laetoli, and ended by studying the rock paintings at the Kisese/Cheke region.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis and Mary returned to England in 1935 without positions or any place to stay except Mary's mother's apartment. They soon leased Steen Cottage in Great Munden. This settlement was in Hertfordshire and had an unusual name which Louis, with his sense of humor noted in his "Memoirs", Chapter 5, as "the village of Nasty." They lived without heat, electricity, or plumbing, fetching water from a well and writing by oil lantern. They lived in poverty for 18 months at this low point of their fortunes, visited at first only by Mary's relatives. Louis gardened for subsistence and exercise and improved the house and grounds. He appealed at last to the Royal Society, who relented with a small grant to continue work on his collection.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis had already involved himself in Kikuyu tribal affairs in 1928, taking a stand against female genital cutting. He got into a shouting match in Kikuyu one evening with Jomo Kenyatta, later the president of Kenya, who was lecturing on the topic. R. Copeland at Oxford recommended he apply to the Rhodes Trust for a grant to write a study of the Kikuyu and it was given late in 1936 along with a salary for two years. In January 1937 the Leakeys travelled to Kenya. Colin would not see his father for 20 years.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis returned to Kiambaa near Nairobi and persuaded Senior Chief Koinange, who designated a committee of chiefs, to help him describe the Kikuyu the way they had been. Mary excavated at Waterfall Cave. She fell ill with double pneumonia and was near death for two weeks in the hospital in Nairobi, during which time her mother was sent for. Contrary to expectation, she recovered and began another excavation at Hyrax Hill and then Njoro River Cave. Louis got an extension of his grant, which he used partially for fossil-hunting. Leakey discoveries began to appear in the newspapers again.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Tensions between the Kikuyu and the settlers increased alarmingly. Louis jumped into the fray as an exponent of the middle ground. In "Kenya: Contrasts and Problems", he angered the settlers by proclaiming Kenya could never be a "white man's country."


title: Louis Leakey

text: The government offered Louis work as a policeman in intelligence, which he accepted. He traveled the country as a pedlar, reporting on the talk. In September 1939, when Britain went to war, the Kenyan government drafted Louis into its African intelligence service. Apart from some bumbling around, during which he and some settlers stalked each other as possible saboteurs of the Sagana Railway Bridge, his first task was to supply and arm Ethiopian guerrillas against the Italian invaders of their country. He created a clandestine network using his childhood friends among the Kikuyu. They also hunted fossils on the sly.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis conducted interrogations, analyzed handwriting, wrote radio broadcasts and took on regular police investigations. He loved a good mystery of any sort. The white leadership of the King's African Rifles used him extensively to clear up many cultural mysteries; for example, he helped an officer remove a curse he had inadvertently put on his men.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Mary continued to find and excavate sites. In 1940, their son Jonathan Leakey was born. She worked in the Coryndon Memorial Museum (later called the National Museums of Kenya) where Louis joined her as an unpaid honorary curator in 1941. Their life was a melange of police work and archaeology. They investigated Rusinga Island and Olorgesailie. At the latter site they were assisted by a team of Italian experts recruited from the prisoners of war and paroled for the purpose.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1942, the Italian menace ended, but the Japanese began to reconnoiter with a view toward landing in force. Louis found himself in counter-intelligence work, which he performed with zest and imagination. In the same year, their daughter Deborah was born, but died at the age of three months. They lived in a rundown and bug-infested Nairobi home, provided by the museum. Jonathan was attacked by army ants in his crib.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1944 Richard Leakey was born. In 1945 the family's income from police work all but vanished. By now Louis was getting plenty of job offers but he chose to stay on in Kenya as Curator of the Coryndon Museum, with an annual salary and a house, but more importantly, to continue palaeoanthropological research.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In January 1947 Louis conducted the first Pan-African Congress of Prehistory at Nairobi. Sixty scientists from 26 countries attended, delivering papers and visiting the Leakey sites. The conference restored Louis to the scientific fold and made him a major figure in it. With the money that now poured in Louis undertook the famous expeditions of 1948 and beyond at Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, where Mary discovered the most complete Proconsul fossil up to that time.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Charles Watson Boise donated money for a boat to be used for transport on Lake Victoria, "The Miocene Lady". Its skipper, Hassan Salimu, was later to deliver Jane Goodall to Gombe. Philip Leakey was born in 1949. In 1950, Louis was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University.


title: Louis Leakey

text: While the Leakeys were at Lake Victoria, the Kikuyu struck at the European settlers of the Kenyan highlands, who seemed to have the upper hand and were insisting on a "white" government of a "white" Africa. In 1949 the Kikuyu formed a secret society, the Mau Mau, which attacked settlers and especially loyalist Kikuyu.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis had attempted to warn Sir Philip Mitchell, governor of the colony, that nocturnal meetings and forced oaths were not Kikuyu customs and foreboded violence, but was ignored. Now he found himself pulled away from anthropology to investigate the Mau Mau. During this period his life was threatened and a reward placed on his head. The Leakeys began to pack pistols, termed "European National Dress." The government placed him under 24-hour guard.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1952, after a Mau Mau massacre of pro-British chiefs, the government arrested Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union. Louis was summoned to be a court interpreter, but withdrew after an accusation of mistranslation because of prejudice against the defendant. He returned on request to translate documents only. Because of lack of evidence linking Kenyatta to the Mau Mau, although convicted, he did not receive the death penalty, but was sentenced to several years of hard labor and banned from Kenya.


title: Louis Leakey

text: The government brought in British troops and formed a home guard of 20,000 Kikuyu. During this time, Louis played a difficult and contradictory role. He sided with the settlers, serving as their spokesman and intelligence officer, helping to ferret out bands of guerrillas. On the other hand, he continued to advocate for the Kikuyu in his 1954 book "Defeating Mau Mau" and numerous talks and articles. He recommended a multi-racial government, land reform in the highlands, a wage hike for the Kikuyu, and many other reforms, most of which were eventually adopted.


title: Louis Leakey

text: The government then realized the rebellion was being directed from urban centers, instituted martial law and detained the committees. Following Louis' suggestion, thousands of Kikuyu were placed in re-education camps and resettled in new villages. The rebellion continued from bases under Mount Kenya until 1956, when, deprived of its leadership and supplies, it had to disperse. The state of emergency lasted until 1960. In 1963 Kenya became independent, with Jomo Kenyatta as prime minister.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Beginning in 1951, Louis and Mary began intensive research at Olduvai Gorge. A trial trench in Bed II at BK in 1951 was followed by a more extensive excavation in 1952. They found what Louis termed an Oldowan "slaughter-house", an ancient bog where animals had been trapped and butchered. Excavations stopped in 1953 but were briefly resumed in 1955 with Jean Brown.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1959, excavations at Bed I were opened. While Louis was sick in camp, Mary discovered the fossilized skull OH 5 at FLK, "Paranthropus boisei", famously identified as ""Zinjanthropus"" or "Zinj." The question was whether the fossil belonged to a previous genus discovered by Robert Broom, "Paranthropus", or a member of a different genus ancestral to humans. Louis opted for "Zinjanthropus", a decision opposed by Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, but one which attracted the attention of Melville Bell Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society. That contact resulted in an article in "National Geographic" and a large grant to continue work at Olduvai.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1960, geophysicists Jack Evernden and Garniss Curtis dated Bed I from 1.89 to 1.75 million years ago, confirming the great antiquity of fossil hominids in Africa.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1960, Louis appointed Mary director of excavation at Olduvai. She brought in a staff of Kamba assistants, including Kamoya Kimeu, who later discovered many of eastern Africa's most famous fossils. At Olduvai, Mary set up Camp 5 and began work with her own staff and associates.


title: Louis Leakey

text: At "Jonny's site", FLK-NN, Jonathan Leakey discovered two skull fragments without the Australopithecine sagittal crest, which Mary connected with Broom's and Robinson's "Telanthropus". The problem with it was its contemporaneity with "Zinjanthropus". When mailed photographs, Le Gros Clark retorted casually "Shades of Piltdown." Louis cabled him immediately and had some strong words at this suggestion of his incompetence. Clark apologized.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Not long afterwards, in 1960, Louis, his son Philip and Ray Pickering discovered a fossil he termed "Chellean Man", (Olduvai Hominid 9), in context with Oldowan tools. After reconstruction Louis and Mary called it "Pinhead." It was subsequently identified as "Homo erectus", contemporaneous with "Paranthropus" at 1.4 million years old.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1961 Louis got a salary as well as a grant from the National Geographic Society and turned over the acting directorship of Coryndon to a subordinate. He created the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology on the same grounds, moved his collections to it, and appointed himself director. This was his new operations center. He opened another excavation at Fort Ternan on Lake Victoria. Shortly after, Heselon discovered "Kenyapithecus wickeri", named after the owner of the property. Louis promptly celebrated with George Gaylord Simpson, who happened to be present, aboard the "Miocene Lady" with "Leakey Safari Specials", a drink made of condensed milk and cognac.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1962 Louis was visiting Olduvai when Ndibo Mbuika discovered the first tooth of "Homo habilis" at MNK. Louis and Mary thought it was female and named her Cinderella, or Cindy. Phillip Tobias identified Jonny's Child with it and Raymond Dart came up with the name "Homo habilis" at Louis' request, which Tobias translated as "handyman." It was seen as intermediary between gracile "Australopithecus" and "Homo".


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1959 Leakey, while at the British Museum of Natural History in London, received a visit from Ruth DeEtte Simpson, an archaeologist from California. Simpson had acquired what looked like ancient scrapers from a site in the Calico Hills and showed it to Leakey.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1963, Leakey obtained funds from the National Geographic Society and commenced archaeological excavations with Simpson. Excavations at the site carried out by Leakey and Simpson revealed that they had located stone artifacts which were dated 100,000 years or older, suggesting a human presence in North America much earlier than others had estimated.


title: Louis Leakey

text: The geologist Vance Haynes had made three visits to the site in 1973 and had claimed that the artifacts found by Leakey were naturally formed geofacts. According to Haynes, the geofacts were formed by stones becoming fractured in an ancient river on the site.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In her autobiography, Mary Leakey wrote that because of Louis's involvement with the Calico Hills site she had lost academic respect for him and that the Calico excavation project was "catastrophic to his professional career and was largely responsible for the parting of our ways".


title: Louis Leakey

text: One of Louis's legacies stems from his role in fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats, which he understood as key to unraveling the mysteries of human evolution. He personally chose three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas, calling them The Trimates. Each went on to become an important scholar in the field of primatology, immersing themselves in the study of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, respectively. Leakey also encouraged and supported many other PhD candidates, most notably from Cambridge University. Louis believed that women were better at studying primates than man, as shown in the book "Primates."


title: Louis Leakey

text: During his final years Louis became famous as a lecturer in the United Kingdom and United States. He did not excavate any longer, as he was crippled with arthritis, for which he had a hip replacement in 1968. He raised funds and directed his family and associates. In Kenya he was a facilitator for hundreds of scientists exploring the East African Rift system for fossils.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In 1968, Louis refused an honorary doctorate from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, primarily because of apartheid in South Africa. Mary accepted one, and they thereafter led separate professional lives.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In the last few years Louis' health began to fail more seriously. He had his first heart attacks and spent six months in the hospital. An empathy over health brought him and Dian Fossey together for a brief romance, which she broke off. Richard began to assume more and more of his father's responsibilities, which Louis resisted, but in the end was forced to accept.


title: Louis Leakey

text: On 1 October 1972, Louis had a heart attack in Jane Goodall's apartment in London. Jane sat up all night with him in St. Stephen's Hospital and left at 9:00 a.m. He died 30 minutes later at the age of 69.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Mary wanted to cremate Louis and fly the ashes back to Nairobi. Richard intervened. Louis' body was flown home and interred at Limuru, near the graves of his parents.


title: Louis Leakey

text: In denial, the family did not face the question of a memorial marker for a year. When Richard went to place a stone on the grave he found one already there, courtesy of Louis' former secretary Rosalie Osborn. The inscription was signed with the letters, "ILYUA", "I'll love you always", which Rosalie used to place on her letters to him. Richard left it in place.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Louis Leakey was married to Mary Leakey, who made the noteworthy discovery of fossil footprints at Laetoli. Found preserved in volcanic ash in Tanzania, they are the earliest record of bipedal gait.


title: Louis Leakey

text: He is also the father of paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey and the botanist Colin Leakey. Louis's cousin, Nigel Gray Leakey, was a recipient of the Victoria Cross during World War II.


title: Louis Leakey

text: Leakey's books are listed below. The gaps between books are filled by too many articles to list. It was Louis who began the Leakey tradition of publishing in "Nature".


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The history of the Caribbean reveals the significant role the region played in the colonial struggles of the European powers since the 15th century. In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and claimed the region for Spain. The following year, the first Spanish settlements were established in the Caribbean. Although the Spanish conquests of the Aztec empire and the Inca empire in the early sixteenth century made Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement, the Caribbean remained strategically important.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: From the 1620s and 1630s onwards, non-Hispanic privateers, traders, and settlers established permanent colonies and trading posts on the Caribbean islands neglected by Spain. Such colonies spread throughout the Caribbean, from the Bahamas in the North West to Tobago in the South East. Furthermore, during this period, French and English buccaneers settled on the island of Tortuga, the northern and western coasts of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), and later in Jamaica.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: After the Spanish American war in 1898, the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico were no longer part of the Spanish Empire in the New World. In the 20th century the Caribbean was again important during World War II, in the decolonisation wave after the war, and in the tension between Communist Cuba and the United States. Genocide, slavery, immigration, and rivalry between world powers have given Caribbean history an impact disproportionate to its size.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: At the beginning of the Holocene the northern part of South America was occupied by groups of small-game hunters, fishers and foragers. These groups occasionally resided in semi-permanent camp sites, while mostly being mobile in order to make use of a wide range of plant and animal resources in a variety of habitats.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Archaeological evidence suggests that Trinidad was the first Caribbean island to have been settled as early as 9000/8000 BCE. However, the first settlers most likely arrived in Trinidad when it was still attached to South America by land bridges. It was not until about 7000/6000 BCE, during the early Holocene that Trinidad became an island due to a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m. Climate change may have been a cause for this sea level rise. Hence Trinidad was the only Caribbean Island that could have been colonised by indigenous people from the South American mainland by not traversing hundreds or thousands kilometres of open sea. The earliest major habitation sites discovered in Trinidad are the shell midden deposits of Banwari Trace and St. John, which have been dated between 6000 and 5100 BCE. Both shell middens represent extended deposits of discarded shells that originally yielded a food source and stone and bone tools. They are considered to belong to the Ortoiroid archaeological tradition, named after the similar but much more recent Ortoire site in Mayaro, Trinidad.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Classifying Caribbean prehistory into different "ages" has proven a difficult and controversial task. In the 1970s archaeologist Irving Rouse defined three "ages" to classify Caribbean prehistory: the Lithic, Archaic and Ceramic Age, based on archaeological evidence. Current literature on Caribbean prehistory still uses the three aforementioned terms, however, there is much dispute regarding their usefulness and definition. In general, the Lithic Age is considered the first era of human development in the Americas and the period where stone chipping is first practised. The ensuing Archaic age is often defined by specialised subsistence adaptions, combining hunting, fishing, collecting and the managing of wild food plants. Ceramic Age communities manufactured ceramic and made use of small-scale agriculture.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: With the exception of Trinidad the first Caribbean islands were settled between 3500 and 3000 BCE, during the Archaic Age. Archaeological sites of this period have been located in Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao and St. Martin, followed closely by Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. This settlement phase is often attributed to the Ortoiroid culture.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Between 800 and 200 BCE a new migratory group expanded through the Caribbean island: the Saladoid. This group is named after the Saladero site in Venezuela, where their distinctive pottery (typically distinguished by white-on-red painted designs) was first identified. The introduction of pottery and plant domestication to the Caribbean is often attributed to Saladoid groups and represents the beginning of the Ceramic Age. However, recent studies have revealed that crops and pottery were already present in some Archaic Caribbean populations before the arrival of the Saladoid. Although a large amount of Caribbean Islands were settled during the Archaic and Ceramic Age, some islands were presumably visited much later. For example, Jamaica has no known settlements until around 600 AD while the Cayman Islands show no settlement evidence before European arrival.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Following the colonisation of Trinidad it was originally proposed that Saladoid groups island-hopped their way to Puerto Rico. However, current research tends to move away from this stepping-stone model in favour of the southward route hypothesis. The southward route hypothesis proposes that the northern Antilles were settled directly from South America followed by progressively southward movements into the Lesser Antilles. This hypothesis has been supported by both radiocarbon dates and seafaring simulations. One initial impetus of movement from the mainland to the northern Antilles may have been the search for high quality materials such as flint. Flinty Bay on Antigua, is one of the best known sources of high quality flint in the Lesser Antilles. The presence of flint from Antigua on many other Caribbean Islands highlights the importance of this material during the Pre-Columbian period.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The period from 650 to 800 AD saw major cultural, socio-political and ritual reformulations, which took place both on the mainland and in many Caribbean islands. The Saladoid interaction sphere disintegrated rapidly. Furthermore, this period is characterised with a change in climate. Centuries of abundant rainfall were replaced by prolonged droughts and increased hurricane frequency. In general the Caribbean population increased and communities changed from residence in a single village to the creation of settlement cluster. Additionally the amount of agriculture on the Caribbean islands increased. Lithic analysis have also show the development of tighter networks between islands during the post-Saladoid period.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The period after 800 AD can be seen as a period of transition in which status differentiation and hierarchically ranked society evolved, which can be identified by a shift from achieved to ascribed leadership. After about 1200 AD this process was interrupted by the absorption of many Caribbean Islands into the socio-political structure of the Greater Antillean society. This process disrupted more-or-less independent lines of development of local communities and marked the beginnings of sociopolitical changes on a much larger scale.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: At the time of the European arrival, three major Amerindian indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno (sometimes also referred to as Arawak) in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and the Leeward Islands; the Kalinago and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. The Taínos are subdivided into Classic Taínos, who occupied Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Western Taínos, who occupied Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamian archipelago, and the Eastern Taínos, who occupied the Leeward Islands. Trinidad was inhabited by both Carib speaking and Arawak-speaking groups.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: DNA studies changed some of the traditional beliefs about pre-Columbian indigenous history. In 2003 Juan Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez designed an island-wide DNA survey of Puerto Rico's people. According to conventional historical belief, Puerto Ricans have mainly Spanish ethnic origins, with some African ancestry, and distant and less significant indigenous ancestry. Cruzado's research revealed that 61% of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27% have African and 12% Caucasian. According to National Geographic, "Among the surprising findings is that most of the Caribbean’s original inhabitants may have been wiped out by South American newcomers a thousand years before the Spanish invasion that began in 1492. Moreover, indigenous populations of islands like Puerto Rico and Hispaniola were likely far smaller at the time of the Spanish arrival than previously thought."


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Soon after the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, both Portuguese and Spanish ships began claiming territories in Central and South America. These colonies brought in gold, and other European powers, most specifically England, the Netherlands, and France, hoped to establish profitable colonies of their own. Imperial rivalries made the Caribbean a contested area during European wars for centuries. In the Spanish American wars of independence in the early nineteenth century, most of Spanish America broke away from the Spanish Empire, but Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under the Spanish crown until the Spanish–American War of 1898.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: During the first voyage of the explorer Christopher Columbus contact was made with the Lucayans in the Bahamas and the Taíno in Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola, and a few of the native people were taken back to Spain. Significant amounts of gold were found in their personal ornaments and other objects such as masks and belts enticing the Spanish search for wealth. To supplement the Amerindian labour, the Spanish imported African slaves. Although Spain claimed the entire Caribbean, they settled only the larger islands of Hispaniola (1493), Puerto Rico (1508), Jamaica (1509), Cuba (1511), and Trinidad (1530) and the small 'pearl islands' of Cubagua and Margarita off the Venezuelan coast because of their valuable pearl beds, which were worked extensively between 1508 and 1530.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The other European powers established a presence in the Caribbean after the Spanish Empire declined, partly due to the reduced native population of the area from European diseases. The Dutch, the French, and the British followed one another to the region and established a long-term presence. They brought with them millions of slaves kidnapped from Africa to support the tropical plantation system that spread through the Caribbean islands.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: During the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century, matters of balance of power and dynastic succession weighed heavily on the course of European diplomacy and war. Europe's largest and most powerful kingdoms, France and Spain, were the continent's staunchest rivals. Tensions increased after 1516, when the kingdoms of Castile, León, and Aragon were formally unified under Charles I of Spain, who three years later expanded his domains after his election as Holy Roman Emperor and began to surround France. In 1521, France went to war with the Holy Roman Empire. Spanish troops routed French armies in France, the Italian Peninsula, and elsewhere, forcing the French Crown to surrender in 1526 and again in 1529. The Italian Wars, as the French-Spanish wars came to be known, reignited in 1536 and again in 1542. Intermittent warring between the Valois monarchy and the Habsburg Empire continued until 1559.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: French corsair attacks began in the early 1520s, as soon as France declared war on Spain in 1521. At the time, prodigious treasures from Mexico began to cross the Atlantic en route to Spain. French monarch Francis I challenged Spain's exclusivist claims to the New World and its wealth, demanding to see "the clause in Adam’s will which excluded me from my share when the world was being divided." Giovanni da Verrazzano (aka Jean Florin) led the first recorded French corsair attack against Spanish vessels carrying treasures from the New World. In 1523, off the Cape of St. Vincent, Portugal, his vessels captured two Spanish ships laden with a fabulous treasure consisting of 70,000 ducats worth of gold, large quantities of silver and pearls, and 25,000 pounds of sugar, a much-treasured commodity at the time.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The first recorded incursion in the Caribbean happened in 1528, when a lone French corsair vessel appeared off the coast of Santo Domingo and its crew sacked the village of San Germán on the western coast of Puerto Rico. In the mid-1530s, corsairs, some Catholic but most of them Protestant (Huguenot), began routinely attacking Spanish vessels and raiding Caribbean ports and coastal towns; the most coveted were Santo Domingo, Havana, Santiago, and San Germán. Corsair port raids in Cuba and elsewhere in the region usually followed the rescate (ransom) model, whereby the aggressors seized villages and cities, kidnapped local residents, and demanded payment for their release. If there were no hostages, corsairs demanded ransoms in exchange for sparing towns from destruction. Whether ransoms were paid or not, corsairs looted, committed unspeakable violence against their victims, desecrated churches and holy images, and left smoldering reminders of their incursions.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: In 1536, France and Spain went to war again and French corsairs launched a series of attacks on Spanish Caribbean settlements and ships. The next year, a corsair vessel appeared in Havana and demanded a 700-ducat rescate. Spanish men-of-war arrived soon and scared off the intruding vessel, which returned soon thereafter to demand yet another rescate. Santiago was also victim of an attack that year, and both cities endured raids yet again in 1538. The waters off Cuba's northwest became particularly attractive to pirates as commercial vessels returning to Spain had to squeeze through the 90-mile-long strait between Key West and Havana. In 1537–1538, corsairs captured and sacked nine Spanish vessels. While France and Spain were at peace until 1542, beyond-the-line corsair activity continued. When war erupted again, it echoed once more in the Caribbean. A particularly vicious French corsair attack took place in Havana in 1543. It left a gory toll of 200 killed Spanish settlers. In all, between 1535 and 1563, French corsairs carried out around sixty attacks against Spanish settlements and captured over seventeen Spanish vessels in the region (1536–1547).


title: History of the Caribbean

text: While the French and Spanish fought one another in Europe and the Caribbean, England sided with Spain, largely because of dynastic alliances. Spain's relations with England soured upon the crowning of Elizabeth I in 1558. She openly supported the Dutch insurrection and aided Huguenot forces in France. After decades of increasing tensions and confrontations in the northern Atlantic and the Caribbean, Anglo-Spanish hostilities broke out in 1585, when the English Crown dispatched over 7,000 troops to the Netherlands and Queen Elizabeth liberally granted licenses for privateers to carry out piracy against Spain's Caribbean possessions and vessels. Tensions further intensified in 1587, when Elizabeth I ordered the execution of Catholic Mary Queen of Scots after twenty years of captivity and gave the order for a preemptive attack against the Spanish Armada stationed in Cadiz. In retaliation, Spain organised the famous naval attack that ended tragically for Spain with the destruction of the "invincible" Armada in 1588. Spain rebuilt its naval forces, largely with galleons built in Havana, and continued to fight England until Elizabeth's death in 1603. Spain, however, had received a near-fatal blow that ended its standing as Europe's most powerful nation and virtually undisputed master of the Indies.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Following the Franco-Spanish peace treaty of 1559, crown-sanctioned French corsair activities subsided, but piratical Huguenot incursions persisted and in at least one instance led to the formation of a temporary Huguenot settlement in the Isle of Pines, off Cuba. English piracy increased during the reign of Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1625–1649) and became more aggressive as Anglo-Spanish relations tensed up further during the Thirty Years' War. Although Spain and the Netherlands had been at war since the 1560s, the Dutch were latecomers, appearing in the region only after the mid-1590s, when the Dutch Republic was no longer on the defensive in its long conflict against Spain. Dutch privateering became more widespread and violent beginning in the 1620s.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: English incursions in the Spanish-claimed Caribbean boomed during Queen Elizabeth's rule. These actions originally took the guise of well-organised, large-scale smuggling expeditions headed by piratical smugglers the likes of John Hawkins, John Oxenham, and Francis Drake; their primary objectives were smuggling African slaves into Spain's Caribbean possessions in exchange for tropical products. The first instances of English mercantile piracy took place in 1562–63, when Hawkins’ men raided a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Sierra Leone, captured the 300 slaves on board, and smuggled them into Santo Domingo in exchange for sugar, hides, and precious woods. Hawkins and his contemporaries mastered the devilish art of maximising the number of slaves that could fit into a ship. He and other slave traders methodically packed slaves by having them lay on their sides, spooned against one another. Such was the case of the slave-trading vessel bearing the sub-lime name Jesus of Lübeck, into whose pestilent bowels, in partnership with Elizabeth I, Hawkins jammed 400 African slaves. In 1567 and 1568, Hawkins commanded two piratical smuggling expeditions, the last of which ended disastrously; he lost almost all of his ships and three-fourths of his men were killed by Spanish soldiers at San Juan de Ulúa, off the coast of Veracruz, the point of departure of the fleet of New Spain. Hawkins and Drake barely escaped but Oxenham was captured, convicted of heresy by the Inquisition and burned alive.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Many of the battles of the Anglo-Spanish war were fought in the Caribbean, not by regular English troops but rather by privateers whom Queen Elizabeth had licensed to carry out attacks on Spanish vessels and ports. These were former pirates who now held a more venerable status as privateers. During those years, over seventy-five documented English privateering expeditions targeted Spanish possessions and vessels. Drake terrorised Spanish vessels and ports. Early in 1586, his forces seized Santo Domingo, retaining control over it for around a month. Before departing they plundered and destroyed the city, taking a huge bounty. Drake's men destroyed church images and ornaments and even erected a defensive palisade with wooden images of saints in the hope that the Spanish soldiers’ Catholic fervor would keep them from firing saints as human shields of sorts.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The development of agriculture in the Caribbean required a large workforce of manual labourers, which the Europeans found by taking advantage of the slave trade in Africa. The Atlantic slave trade brought African slaves to British, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Americas, including the Caribbean. Slaves were brought to the Caribbean from the early 16th century until the end of the 19th century. The majority of slaves were brought to the Caribbean colonies between 1701 and 1810. Also in 1816 there was a slave revolution in the colony of Barbados.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Abolitionists in the Americas and in Europe became vocal opponents of the slave trade throughout the 19th century. The importation of slaves to the colonies was often outlawed years before the end of the institution of slavery itself. It was well into the 19th century before many slaves in the Caribbean were legally free. The trade in slaves was abolished in the British Empire through the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. Men, women and children who were already enslaved in the British Empire remained slaves, however, until Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. When the Slavery Abolition Act came into force in 1834, roughly 700,000 slaves in the British West Indies immediately became free; other enslaved workers were freed several years later after a period of forced apprenticeship. Slavery was abolished in the Dutch Empire in 1814. Spain abolished slavery in its empire in 1811, with the exceptions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo; Spain ended the slave trade to these colonies in 1817, after being paid £400,000 by Britain. Slavery itself was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: "The official plantocratic view of slave marriage sought to deny the slaves any loving bonds or long-standing relationships, thus conveniently rationalising the indiscriminate separation of close kin through sales." "From the earliest days of slavery, indiscriminate sales and separation severely disrupted the domestic life of individual slaves." Slaves could be sold so that spouses could be sold separately. "Slave couples were sometimes separated by sale ... They lived as single slaves or as part of maternal or extended families but considered themselves 'married. Sale of estates with "stock" to pay debts, more common in the late period of slavery, was criticised as separating slave spouses. William Beckford argued for "families to be sold together or kept as near as possible in the same neighbourhood" and "laws were passed in the late period of slavery to prevent the breakup of slave families by sale, ... [but] these laws were frequently ignored". "Slaves frequently reacted strongly to enforced severance of their emotional bonds", feeling "sorrow and despair", sometimes, according to Thomas Cooper in 1820, resulting in death from distress. John Stewart argued against separation as leading slave buyers to regret it because of utter or period to their lives. Separated slaves often used free time to travel long distances to reunite for a night and sometimes runaway slaves were married couples. However, "sale of slaves and the resulting breakup of families decreased as slave plantations lost prosperity."


title: History of the Caribbean

text: European plantations required laws to regulate the plantation system and the many slaves imported to work on the plantations. This legal control was the most oppressive for slaves inhabiting colonies where they outnumbered their European masters and where rebellion was persistent such as Jamaica. During the early colonial period, rebellious slaves were harshly punished, with sentences including death by torture; less serious crimes such as assault, theft, or persistent escape attempts were commonly punished with mutilations, such as the cutting off of a hand or a foot.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Under British rule, slaves could only be freed with the consent of their master, and therefore freedom for slaves was rare. British colonies were able to establish laws through their own legislatures, and the assent of the local island governor and the Crown. British law considered slaves to be property, and thus did not recognise marriage for slaves, family rights, education for slaves, or the right to religious practices such as holidays. British law denied all rights to freed slaves, with the exception of the right to a jury trial. Otherwise, freed slaves had no right to own property, vote or hold office, or even enter some trades.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The French Empire regulated slaves under the "Code Noir" (Black Code) which was in force throughout the empire, but which was based upon French practices in the Caribbean colonies. French law recognized slave marriages, but only with the consent of the master. French law, like Spanish law, gave legal recognition to marriages between European men and black or Creole women. French and Spanish laws were also significantly more lenient than British law in recognising manumission, or the ability of a slave to purchase their freedom and become a "freeman". Under French law, free slaves gained full rights to citizenship. The French also extended limited legal rights to slaves, for example the right to own property, and the right to enter contracts.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The exploitation of the Caribbean landscape dates back to the Spanish conquistadors starting in the 1490s, who forced indigenous peoples held by Spanish settlers in encomienda to mine for gold. The more significant development came when Christopher Columbus wrote back to Spain that the islands were made for sugar development. The history of Caribbean agricultural dependency is closely linked with European colonialism which altered the financial potential of the region by introducing a plantation system. Much like the Spanish exploited indigenous labour to mine gold, the 17th century brought a new series of oppressors in the form of the Dutch, the English, and the French. By the middle of the 18th century sugar was Britain's largest import which made the Caribbean that much more important as a colony.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Sugar was a luxury in Europe prior to the 18th century. It became widely popular in the 18th century, then graduated to becoming a necessity in the 19th century. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient unleashed major economic and social changes. Caribbean islands with plentiful sunshine, abundant rainfalls and no extended frosts were well suited for sugarcane agriculture and sugar factories.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Following the emancipation of slaves in 1833 in the United Kingdom, many liberated Africans left their former masters. This created an economic chaos for British owners of Caribbean sugar cane plantations. The hard work in hot, humid farms required a regular, docile and low-waged labour force. The British looked for cheap labour. This they found initially in China and then mostly in India. The British crafted a new legal system of forced labour, which in many ways resembled enslavement. Instead of calling them slaves, they were called indentured labour. Indians and southeast Asians began to replace Africans previously brought as slaves, under this indentured labour scheme to serve on sugarcane plantations across the British empire. The first ships carrying indentured labourers for sugarcane plantations left India in 1836. Over the next 70 years, numerous more ships brought indentured labourers to the Caribbean, as cheap and docile labour for harsh inhumane work. The slave labour and indentured labour - both in millions of people - were brought into Caribbean, as in other European colonies throughout the world.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The New World plantations were established in order to fulfill the growing needs of the Old World. The sugar plantations were built with the intention of exporting the sugar back to Britain which is why the British did not need to stimulate local demand for the sugar with wages. A system of slavery was adapted since it allowed the coloniser to have an abundant work force with little worry about declining demands for sugar. In the 19th century wages were finally introduced with the abolition of slavery. The new system in place however was similar to the previous as it was based on white capital and coloured labour. Large numbers of unskilled workers were hired to perform repeated tasks, which made if very difficult for these workers to ever leave and pursue any non farming employment. Unlike other countries, where there was an urban option for finding work, the Caribbean countries had money invested in agriculture and lacked any core industrial base. The cities that did exist offered limited opportunities to citizens and almost none for the unskilled masses who had worked in agriculture their entire lives. The products produced brought in no profits for the countries since they were sold to the colonial occupant buyer who controlled the price the products were sold at. This resulted in extremely low wages with no potential for growth since the occupant nations had no intention of selling the products at a higher price to themselves.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The result of this economic exploitation was a plantation dependence which saw the Caribbean nations possessing a large quantity of unskilled workers capable of performing agricultural tasks and not much else. After many years of colonial rule the nations also saw no profits brought into their country since the sugar production was controlled by the colonial rulers. This left the Caribbean nations with little capital to invest towards enhancing any future industries unlike European nations which were developing rapidly and separating themselves technologically and economically from most impoverished nations of the world.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The Caribbean region was war-torn throughout much of colonial history, but the wars were often based in Europe, with only minor battles fought in the Caribbean. Some wars, however, were borne of political turmoil in the Caribbean itself.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Piracy in the Caribbean was often a tool used by the European empires to wage war unofficially against one another. Gold plundered from Spanish ships and brought to Britain had a pivotal effect on European interest in colonising the region.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The plantation system and the slave trade that enabled its growth led to regular slave resistance in many Caribbean islands throughout the colonial era. Resistance was made by escaping from the plantations altogether, and seeking refuge in the areas free of European settlement. Communities of escaped slaves, who were known as Maroons, banded together in heavily forested and mountainous areas of the Greater Antilles and some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles. The spread of the plantations and European settlement often meant the end of many Maroon communities, although they survived on Saint Vincent and Dominica, and in the more remote mountainous areas of Jamaica, Hispaniola, Guadeloupe and Cuba.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Violent resistance broke out periodically on the larger Caribbean islands. Many more conspiracies intended to create rebellions were discovered and ended by Europeans before they could materialise. Actual violent uprisings, involving anywhere from dozens to thousands of slaves, were regular events, however. Jamaica and Cuba in particular had many slave uprisings. Such uprisings were brutally crushed by European forces.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Haiti, the former French colony of Saint-Domingue on Hispaniola, was the first Caribbean nation to gain independence from European powers in 1804. This followed 13 years of war that started as a slave uprising in 1791 and quickly turned into the Haitian Revolution under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, where Haitian revolutionaries overthrew the French colonial government, before becoming the world's first and oldest black republic, and also the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. This is additionally notable as being the only successful slave uprising in history. The remaining two-thirds of Hispaniola were conquered by Haitian forces in 1821. In 1844, the newly formed Dominican Republic declared its independence from Haiti.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The nations bordering the Caribbean in Central America gained independence with the 1821 establishment of the First Mexican Empire—which at that time included the modern states of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. The nations bordering the Caribbean in South America also gained independence from Spain in 1821 with the establishment of Gran Colombia—which comprised the modern states of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Cuba and Puerto Rico remained as Spanish colonies until the Spanish–American War in 1898, after which Cuba attained its independence in 1902, and Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the United States, being the last of the Greater Antilles under colonial control.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Between 1958 and 1962 most of the British-controlled Caribbean was integrated as the new West Indies Federation in an attempt to create a single unified future independent state—but it failed. The following former British Caribbean island colonies achieved independence in their own right; Jamaica (1962), Trinidad and Tobago (1962), Barbados (1966), Bahamas (1973), Grenada (1974), Dominica (1978), St. Lucia (1979), St. Vincent (1979), Antigua and Barbuda (1981), St. Kitts and Nevis (1983).


title: History of the Caribbean

text: In addition British Honduras in Central America became independent as Belize (1981), British Guiana in South America became independent as Guyana (1966), and Dutch Guiana also in South America became independent as Suriname (1975).


title: History of the Caribbean

text: As of the early 21st century, not all Caribbean islands have become independent. Several islands continue to have government ties with European countries, or with the United States.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: French overseas departments and territories include several Caribbean islands. Guadeloupe and Martinique are French overseas regions, a legal status that they have had since 1946. Their citizens are considered full French citizens with the same legal rights. In 2003, the populations of St. Martin and St. Barthélemy voted in favour of secession from Guadeloupe in order to form separate overseas collectivities of France. After a bill was passed in the French Parliament, the new status took effect on 22 February 2007.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are officially territories of the United States, but are sometimes referred to as "protectorates" of the United States. They are self governing territories subject to Congress plenary powers over the territories.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are all presently separate constituent countries, formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles. Along with Netherlands, they form the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Citizens of these islands have full Dutch citizenship.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: President James Monroe's State of the Union address in 1823 included a significant change to United States foreign policy which later became known as the Monroe Doctrine. In a key addition to this policy called the Roosevelt Corollary, the United States reserved the right to intervene in any nation of the Western Hemisphere it determined to be engaged in "chronic wrongdoing". This new expansionism coupled with the loss of relative power by the colonial nations enabled the United States to become a major influence in the region. In the early part of the twentieth century this influence was extended by participation in The Banana Wars. Areas outside British or French control became known in Europe as "America's tropical empire".


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Victory in the Spanish–American War and the signing of the Platt amendment in 1901 ensured that the United States would have the right to interfere in Cuban political and economic affairs, militarily if necessary. After the Cuban revolution of 1959 relations deteriorated rapidly leading to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and successive US attempts to destabilise the island. The US invaded and occupied Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic and Haiti) for 19 years (1915–34), subsequently dominating the Haitian economy through aid and loan repayments. The U.S. invaded Haiti again in 1994 to overthrow a military regime, and restored elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the 2004, Aristide was overthrown in coup d'état, and flown out of the country by the U.S.. Aristide later accused the U.S of kidnapping him.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: In 1965, 23,000 US troops were sent to the Dominican Republic to intervene into the Dominican Civil War to end the war and prevent supporters of deposed left-wing president Juan Bosch taking over, in what was the first U.S. military intervention in Latin America in more than 30 years. President Lyndon Johnson had ordered the invasion to stem what he claimed to be a "Communist threat", but the mission appeared ambiguous and was condemned throughout the hemisphere as a return to gunboat diplomacy. On October 25 1983 the United States invaded Grenada to remove left-wing leader Hudson Austin, who had deposed Maurice Bishop nine days earlier on October 16. Bishop was executed three days later on the 19th. The United States maintains a naval military base in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay. The base is one of five unified commands whose "area of responsibility" is Latin America and the Caribbean. The command is headquartered in Miami, Florida.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: As an arm of the economic and political network of the Americas, the influence of the United States stretches beyond a military context. In economic terms, the United States represents a primary market for the export of Caribbean goods. Notably, this is a recent historical trend. The post-war era reflects a time of transition for the Caribbean basin when, as colonial powers sought to disentangle from the region (as part of a larger trend of decolonisation), the US began to expand its hegemony throughout the region. This pattern is confirmed by economic initiatives such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), which sought to congeal alliances with the region in light of a perceived Soviet threat. The CBI marks the emergence of the Caribbean basin as a geopolitical area of strategic interest to the US.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: This relationship has carried through to the 21st century, as reflected by the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. The Caribbean Basin is also of strategic interest in regards to trade routes; it has been estimated that nearly half of US foreign cargo and crude oil imports are brought via Caribbean seaways. During wartime, these figures only stand to increase. It is important to note that the United States is also of strategic interest to the Caribbean. Caribbean foreign policy seeks to strengthen its participation in a global free market economy. As an extension of this, Caribbean states do not wish to be excluded from their primary market in the United States, or be bypassed in the creation of "wider hemispheric trading blocs" that stand to drastically alter trade and production in the Caribbean Basin. As such, the US has played an influential role in shaping the Caribbean's role in this hemispheric market. Likewise, building trade relationships with the US has always figured in strongly with the political goal of economic security in post-independence Caribbean states.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The mainstay of the Caribbean economy, sugar, has declined gradually since the beginning of the 20th century, although it is still a major crop in the region. Caribbean sugar production became relatively expensive in comparison to other parts of the world that developed their own sugar cultivation industries, making it difficult for Caribbean sugar products to compete. Caribbean economic diversification into new activities became essential to the islands.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: By the beginning of the 20th century, the Caribbean islands enjoyed greater political stability. Large-scale violence was no longer a threat after the end of slavery in the islands. The British-controlled islands in particular benefited from investments in the infrastructure of colonies. By the beginning of World War I, all British-controlled islands had their own police force, fire department, doctors and at least one hospital. Sewage systems and public water supplies were built, and death rates in the islands dropped sharply. Literacy also increased significantly during this period, as schools were set up for students descended from African slaves. Public libraries were established in large towns and capital cities.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: These improvements in the quality of life for the inhabitants also made the islands a much more attractive destination for visitors. Tourists began to visit the Caribbean in larger numbers by the beginning of the 20th century, although there was a tourist presence in the region as early as the 1880s. The U.S.-owned United Fruit Company operated a fleet of "banana boats" in the region that doubled as tourist transportation. The United Fruit Company also developed hotels for tourist accommodations. It soon became apparent, however, that this industry was much like a new form of colonialism; the hotels operated by the company were fully staffed by Americans, from chefs to waitresses, in addition to being owned by Americans, so that the local populations saw little economic benefit. The company also enforced racial discrimination in many policies for its fleet. Black passengers were assigned to inferior cabins, were sometimes denied bookings, and were expected to eat meals early before white passengers. The most popular early destinations were Jamaica and the Bahamas; the Bahamas remains today the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Post-independence economic needs, particularly in the aftermath of the end of preferential agricultural trade ties with Europe, led to a boom in the development of the tourism industry in the 1980s and thereafter. Large luxury hotels and resorts have been built by foreign investors in many of the islands. Cruise ships are also regular visitors to the Caribbean.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Some islands have gone against this trend, such as Cuba and Haiti, whose governments chose not to pursue foreign tourism, although Cuba has developed this part of the economy very recently. Other islands lacking sandy beaches, such as Dominica, missed out on the 20th-century tourism boom, although they have recently begun to develop eco-tourism, diversifying the tourism industry in the Caribbean.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The development of offshore banking services began during the 1920s. The close proximity of the Caribbean islands to the United States has made them an attractive location for branches of foreign banks. Clients from the United States take advantage of offshore banking services to avoid U.S. taxation. The Bahamas entered the financial services industry first, and continues to be at the forefront of financial services in the region. The Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the Netherlands Antilles have also developed competitive financial services industries. In recent years reduced interest rates and higher costs related largely to anti-money laundering compliance have led to the closure of many correspondent banking arrangements by extra-regional banks.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Ports both large and small were built throughout the Caribbean during the colonial era. The export of sugar on a large scale made the Caribbean one of the world's shipping cornerstones, as it remains today. Many key shipping routes still pass through the region.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: The development of large-scale shipping to compete with other ports in Central and South America ran into several obstacles during the 20th century. Economies of scale, high port handling charges, and a reluctance by Caribbean governments to privatise ports put Caribbean shipping at a disadvantage. Many locations in the Caribbean are suitable for the construction of deepwater ports for commercial ship container traffic, or to accommodate large cruise ships. The deepwater port at Bridgetown, Barbados, was completed by British investors in 1961. A more recent deepwater port project was completed by Hong Kong investors in Grand Bahama in the Bahamas.


title: History of the Caribbean

text: Some Caribbean islands take advantage of flag of convenience policies followed by foreign merchant fleets, registering the ships in Caribbean ports. The registry of ships at "flag of convenience" ports is protected by the Law of the Sea and other international treaties. These treaties leave the enforcement of labour, tax, health and safety, and environmental laws under the control of the registry, or "flag" country, which in practical terms means that such regulations seldom result in penalties against the merchant ship. The Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Antigua, Bermuda, and St. Vincent are among the top 11 flags of convenience in the world. However, the flag of convenience practice has been a disadvantage to Caribbean islands as well, since it also applies to cruise ships, which register outside the Caribbean and thus can evade Caribbean enforcement of the same territorial laws and regulations.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: Uthamaputhiran () is a 2010 Indian Tamil-language romantic action comedy film directed by Mithran Jawahar. A remake of the 2008 Telugu film "Ready", it stars Dhanush and Genelia, reprising her role from the original version; the supporting cast includes Vivek, K. Bhagyaraj, Ashish Vidyarthi and Jaya Prakash Reddy (who was also part of the original film) among others with Shriya Saran in a cameo. The film received positive reviews from critics, ended up as a commercial success among 2010 Deepavali releases along with "Mynaa". The film was dubbed into Hindi as "Rakhwala No. 1" in 2012.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: Siva (Dhanush) is a happy-go-lucky young boy in a large family. The head of this family are three brothers: Raghupathi (K. Bhagyaraj), Raghavan (Vijay Babu), and Rajaram (Vivekvasu Nagalla). One of the brothers is Siva's father. Siva studies from a hostel away from home. He is always helpful and always comes in when others need him. In one of his obliging acts, he helps his cousin Kalpana (Shriya Saran) elope with her lover against the family's choice. This aggravates the family, and they are asked to forget all about him.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: On another occasion, he is asked to help a friend in a love marriage. Siva kidnaps Pooja (Genelia) on a mistaken identity from the marriage hall. When Pooja is kidnapped, her uncles Periyamuthu Gounder (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Chinnamuthu Gounder (Jaya Prakash Reddy) and their henchmen follow them. Pooja, while on the run, tells Siva that she was not interested in the wedding and that her uncles are forcing her marriage with one of their sons, only to seize her properties. When Siva went to kidnap her, she was thinking of how to run away from this marriage. While escaping from Pooja's uncles, Siva brings Pooja to his house under a false identity. Soon, Siva falls in love with Pooja and determines to marry her only with the consent of all the members of both families. When Siva's family along with Pooja visit a temple, her uncle kidnaps her and locks her away in his house.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: To save Pooja, Siva joins Emotional Ekambaram (Vivek) – the auditor of Pooja's uncles – as an assistant. He makes Ekambaram believe that he is capable of creating new worlds with characters of their own. Ekambaram then "creates" two American billionaires and with the help of Siva, convinces the two uncles to marry their sons to the daughters of these billionaires. To prove that they are real and not merely the figment of Ekambaram's imagination, Siva asks his parents and his uncles and aunts to play the role. They manage to win the Gounders' hearts and bring about a change in their behavior.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: The soundtrack, composed by Vijay Antony, was released on 5 October 2010 in Chennai. The album consists of 6 tracks overall.


title: Uthamaputhiran (2010 film)

text: The film was released on Diwali alongside Arjun's "Vallakottai", "Mynaa", and "Va Quarter Cutting". The film netted approximately 58 lakh in three days from Chennai city and 67 lakh from Salem area on its opening weekend. It was hat-trick victory for Dhanush-Mithran combination. The film was however banned in western districts of Tamil Nadu. Upon release, Vivek's dialogues relating to the business community Kounder and scenes pertaining to the community were removed. People of the Kongu caste disrupted the screening of the film as the film made negative remarks against their caste.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) is an Australian educational institution for the performing arts is based in Sydney, New South Wales. Founded in 1958, many of Australia's leading actors and directors trained at NIDA, including Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Judy Davis and Baz Luhrmann.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA's main campus is based in the Sydney suburb of Kensington, located adjacent to the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and is made up of a range of rehearsal and performance venues. Its performance venues include the Parade Theatre (also the name of an earlier venue in NIDA's history); the Space; the Studio Theatre; and the Playhouse, while the Rodney Seaborn Library forms part of its library and the Reg Grundy Studio is a training and production facility for film and television.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA offers bachelor's, master's and vocational degrees in subjects including acting, writing, directing, scenic construction, technical theatre, voice, costume, props, production design and cultural leadership.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA was founded in 1958 as the first professional theatre training school in Australia. The idea of a national theatre training school was initiated by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT) in 1954. With the support of the Vice-Chancellor (later Sir) Philip Baxter, NIDA was established in the grounds of the University of New South Wales. Robert Quentin, later Professor of Drama at UNSW, was appointed the inaugural Director.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: Teaching began in 1959 and in 1960, the first 23 students graduated with a Diploma in Acting. After 1961 it offered both acting and production streams, and in the early 1970s design, technical production and directing streams were introduced.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA ran the Old Tote Theatre Company until 1969, whose productions were initially funded by the AETT and subsequently by the Australia Council for the Arts and the New South Wales Government. In 1967 the Old Tote moved its administration to separate premises, to a building which still exists on the UNSW campus, then known as the Parade Theatre, and on 7 May 1969 gave its first performance at that venue, a production of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: In 1991 NIDA expanded into the study of theatrical crafts – costume, properties, scenery and staging – and over the 2000s developed post-graduate courses in voice, movement studies, production management and playwriting.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: Additional buildings opened in 2001, which were awarded the 2002 Sir John Sulman Medal for public architecture.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA receives funding from the Australian Government through the Department of Communications and the Arts, and is a member of the "Australian Roundtable for Arts Training Excellence" (ARTS8), an initiative between the national performing arts training organisations and the federal government that provides training for emerging artists.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: Entry to NIDA's Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts and Vocational courses is highly competitive with an admission rate of around 12% and even lower for some courses; with more than 1,500 applicants from around the country competing for an annual offering of approximately 185 places across the six undergraduate, five post-graduate and four vocational diploma disciplines.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA's Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting is particularly competitive, with approximately 1,000 applicants per year attempting to secure one of 24 spots in the program.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA is located on Anzac Parade in the Sydney suburb of Kensington, across the road from the University of New South Wales.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA campus has six professional performance venues, in addition to studios and rehearsal rooms. The largest of these, the Parade Theatre, has three-tiered seating which accommodates up to 707 people. Other venues include the Playhouse, the Space, and the Studio Theatre.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: The Rodney Seaborn Library, named in honour of arts philanthropist Rodney Seaborn , is a specialist library for NIDA students, graduates and staff and is also open to the general public by appointment. It was created in 1980.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: The NIDA campus includes rehearsal rooms, multi-media and computer-aided design (CAD) studios, a sound stage, a lighting studio, production workshops, audio-visual facilities, and the Reg Grundy Studio film and television training and production facility.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: In 2018, NIDA was ranked as the 10th best drama school in the world by "The Hollywood Reporter" It is consistently ranked as the top school in Australia, or in the top five, by many sources. In 2021, it was reported as the 16th best drama school in the world by the same source, making it the only Australian drama school to make the list.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) is Australia's leading centre for education and training in the performing arts. A complete list of NIDA alumni can be found on the NIDA website.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: Many of NIDA's prominent alumni were featured in a photo essay in "The Sydney Morning Herald" in celebration of the school's 60th anniversary in 2019.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA alumni have won close to 1,000 awards including 8 Academy Awards, 8 Golden Globes, 9 Emmys, 48 Logies, 18 BAFTAs, 5 Oliviers, 3 Tonys and more.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: Industry engagement and collaborative student learning are core part of NIDA courses. NIDA utilises a conservatoire model, where students learn by practical application through in-house productions and working with professional companies on short-term placements. In addition to classwork, students will work on multiple practical projects during their time at NIDA, ranging from full theatrical productions to short films. Depending on the program, students may also undertake interstate and international trips as part of the learning process.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA delivers hundreds of short courses every year across Australia and internationally through NIDA Open and NIDA Corporate.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA Open is Australia's largest non-profit, performing arts short course program. In 2018, more than 15,000 students attended NIDA Open courses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Darwin and other locations. NIDA Open offers courses for children and young people from preschool through Grade 12, as well as adult courses, in acting, comedy, costumes, props, make-up, design, directing, filmmaking, musical theatre, physical theatre and movement, presenting, technical theatre, stage management, voice and writing.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: NIDA Corporate offers training in professional communication, presentation and leadership for individuals and businesses in the public and private sectors. Tutors include voice specialists, movement and body language practitioners, film and theatre directors, actors and television presenters. In 2018, more than 9,000 participants attended NIDA Corporate training.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: In 2012, former NIDA board member and Liberal senator Chris Puplick, who had served on the board for three years, wrote an essay titled "Changing Times at NIDA" which was published in the October issue of the publication "Platform Papers". In the essay, Puplick criticized the teaching standards of the school and its director and chief executive, Lynne Williams, stating that she has had no significant experience in theatre to head the school and that her style was "Thatcherite". Soon after Puplick's statements were reported, chairman of NIDA's board, Malcolm Long, and Lynne Williams replied back to the comments, with Long stating that Williams had the complete support of the board and described Puplick as "an apparently disaffected former board member." Williams had defended herself stating her management style was not "Thatcherite". Long also mentioned that amongst Williams' supporters were Cate Blanchett and Ralph Myers. Supporting Puplick were actor, director and a graduate of the school Jeremy Sims, who had launched the essay, and Kevin Jackson, who had taught acting at the school for 27 years.


title: National Institute of Dramatic Art

text: In June 2020, a letter from over 100 alumni, students and former staff was signed and sent to NIDA's chief executive Liz Hughes accusing the school for failing to support Indigenous, Black and other students of colors. The letter which was sent to Hughes via email accused the school of "systemic and institutionalised racism" and where students had felt that they were there simply to fulfill diversity quotas.


title: Mano (gesture)

text: Mano or pagmamano is an "honoring-gesture" used in Filipino culture performed as a sign of respect to elders and as a way of requesting a blessing from the elder. Similar to hand-kissing, the person giving the greeting bows towards the hand of the elder and presses their forehead on the elder's hand. Usually performed with the right hand, the person showing respect may ask ""Mano po"" or "["Pa-"]bless "po"" to the elder in order to ask permission to initiate the gesture. Typically someone may "mano" to their older relatives upon entry into their home or upon seeing them.


title: Mano (gesture)

text: The word "mano" is Spanish for "hand" while the word "po" is often used in Filipino culture and language at the end of each sentence as a sign of respect when addressing someone older, akin to English (sir/ma'am). Put together, "mano po" literally translates to "[your] hand please" as the greeting initiates the gesture of touching the back of the hand of an elder lightly on one’s forehead. In Visayas the gesture is called "amin" and it is called "siklod" in Kapampangan. An identical tradition is followed in neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia called "salim" and "salam" respectively, suggesting that the "mano po" tradition dates to precolonial times.


title: Mano (gesture)

text: "Of the civilities, terms of courtesy, and good breeding among the Filipinos. Chapter XVI...As among them it is not courtesy to remain standing before a person whom they respect, they seat themselves upon the ground, or rather on their heel-bones. Seated in this way, with head uncovered and the potong thrown like a towel over the left shoulder, they talk with their superiors. The mode of salutation upon entering or meeting anyone is as follows: They draw the body together and make a low reverence, raising one or both hands to the face, and placing them upon the cheeks; they next sit down waiting for the question that may be put to them, for it is considered bad manners to speak before one is spoken to."


title: Mano (gesture)

text: "422. The natives of these islands employ innumerable other elegancies and courtesies, now in actions, now in words, now in names and titles, which they apply to themselves; these are various according to the difference of the provinces, and are too numerous to mention, for they are ceremonial, and they value their ceremonies highly. No one will pass in front of another, without asking permission, and in order to pass, he doubles the whole body with the most profound bow, at the same time lifting one foot in the air, and doubling the knee and lifting both hands to the face. If one has to talk to any person of higher rank, he shows all reverence and squats down [pone en cuclillas], with raised face, and waits thus, until he is asked his reason for coming; for to speak without being questioned would be a point of bad breeding."


title: Mano (gesture)

text: The custom of "mano" is dated to precolonial times, and is still followed by the related countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, which the Philippines shares a common ethnolinguistical origin with. In these countries however, the custom is called "salim" originating from Arabic. "Salim" is also done in the family to respect elder family members and relatives. "Salim" is also a normal gesture done in a traditional Islamic society to respect the "ulama" (religious elite/scholars).


title: Mano (gesture)

text: In today's Philippine setting, the "mano" is still used by Filipinos as a sign of respect to their elders. It is usually done when the elder is seen for the first time in the day or upon entering a house or gathering. There is no age limit for the usage of the mano, but it is usually practiced on those older by two generations or more.


title: Mano (gesture)

text: By offering your hand to "mano", you are allowing yourself to be subservient to the elder to accept their blessing and wisdom. It is considered impolite if one does not exercise the custom of "pagmamano" when entering the home of an elder or after seeing them at a gathering.