QUES: To protect its seagoing interests and trade routes, Portugal established strategic garrisons in Goa (India), Malacca (East Indies), and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Portuguese explorers then embarked upon Macau (now Macao), the Congo, and various other parts of Africa, including the Sudan. The Portuguese policy was to avoid armed strife and to develop a trade empire, rather than to conquer nations. To this end it succeeded with relatively few blood-soaked episodes in its colonial history. Adventures abroad, however, proved disastrous during the second half of the 16th century. In 1557 the 14-year-old boy-king Sebastiao ascended the throne, the beginning of a calamitous reign that was to end at the battle of Alcacer-Quiber (Morocco) in pursuit of a vain crusade. Sebastiao's untimely demise, alongside some 18,000 ill-prepared, badly led followers, set the stage for a crisis of succession. For many years afterwards, legends and rumors bizarrely insisted that the king was still alive, and imposters turned up from time to time claiming the throne; those who were plausible enough to be deemed a threat were summarily executed. In fact, the only rightful claimant to the crown was the elderly Prince Henry. But after two years of alternating between the throne and his sickbed, he died, heirless. Surveying the situation and smelling an opportunity, Spain occupied the power vacuum, and Portugal's neighbor and long-time antagonist became its master. Spanish rule dictated Portugal's inadvertent involvement in Spain's ongoing wars. In 1587 a squadron of British ships commanded by Francis Drake attacked the Algarve (now a "legitimate target" as Spanish territory) and sacked Sagres, thus depriving the world of the relics of Henry the Navigator. Nine years later Faro was torched. The 1386 Treaty of Windsor, by which Britain and Portugal had pledged eternal friendship, seemed a distant memory. Portugal's empire was gradually eroded, and many of its trading posts (with the notable exception of Brazil) were picked off by the British and Dutch. Finally, after 60 years of Spanish rule, Portuguese noblemen (aided by the French, then at war with Spain) organized a palace coup and restored independence. The Great Disaster Portugal's greatest misfortune struck on All Saint's Day, 1 November 1755.
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MY QUESTION: The Great Disaster occurred how many years after the sacking of Sagres?

QUES: Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine died Sunday, her longtime friend Noel Beutel said Monday. She was 96. Fontaine died "very peacefully" in her sleep of natural causes, Beutel said. She was in her Carmel, California, home. She is survived by her older sister, actress Olivia de Havilland -- with whom she had not spoken for decades. Fontaine was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in 1916 in Tokyo, Japan, where her British father was a patent lawyer and teacher. She and her sister moved to Saratoga, California, with their mother in 1919 when her parents separated. Fontaine was a teenager when she began her acting career as Joan Burfield in the 1935 film "No More Ladies." She later adopted the stage name Fontaine -- the name of her mother's second husband. She wrote in her 1978 autobiography, "No Bed of Roses," that her mother, who was an actress, began encouraging the rivalry with her older sister at an early age. The feud extended to their careers when both sisters were nominated for best actress Oscars in 1942. Fontaine, who was nominated for Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion," beat her sister Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for "Hold Back the Dawn." De Havilland won the first of her two Oscars in 1947 when she was given the best actress award for "To Each His Own." De Havilland and Fontaine remain the only sisters who have best-actress Academy Awards. The long-standing feud with de Havilland was at such a peak during one Oscar winners' reunion in 1979 that they had to be seated on opposite ends of the stage. "I was shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of my sister, Joan Fontaine ... and I appreciate the many kind expressions of sympathy that we have received," a statement released by Olivia de Havilland to CNN said.
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MY QUESTION: How old was Joan Fontaine when she died?

QUES: Enter the Shoguns: Japan's austere, ruthless, but statesmanlike new ruler, Yoritomo Minamoto, set up his government in Kamakura (just south of modern Tokyo), well away from the "softening" influence of court life that had been the undoing of his predecessor, Kiyomori. First of the national rulers to take the title of sei-i tai-shogun ("barbarian-subduing great general"), Minamoto expanded and consolidated his power by confiscating lands from some of the defeated Taira and redistributing them to his samurai vassals. Minamoto died in 1199, and the feudal structure passed intact to the tutelage of his widow's family, the Hojo, who were content to play regent to a figurehead shogun, in much the same way as the Fujiwara had done with the emperor. The fiction of Japanese imperial power had become infinitely extendable. The emperor at Kyotostill seconded by a Fujiwara regent at courtlegitimized a Minamoto who was himself a military dictator controlled by a Hojo regent. In a country where form and substance were inextricably interrelated, two things counted in politics: symbolic authority and real power. Neither could exist without the other. A thwarted Mongol invasion in 1274 weakened the Kamakura regime. The fighting brought none of the usual spoils of war that provincial warlords and samurai had come to expect as payment. And the treasury was empty after earthquake, famine, and plague had crippled the economy. Buddhist monasteries were using their private armies to support imperial ambitions to bring power back to Kyoto. Worst of all, the Kamakura warriors, resenting the way the Kyoto court referred to them as "Eastern barbarians," sought refinement in a ruinous taste for luxury: extravagant feasts, rich costumes, and opulent homes. Kamakura was falling apart.
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MY QUESTION:
How did the economy collapse?