title: Phoenix (band)

text: Phoenix and Tatenokawa, Inc. created Phoenix Sake Collection, which features Tatenokawa Phoenix (also referred to as Rainbow Label) and Sparkling sake. The Sparking sake was created to commemorate the band's 20th anniversary. The collection also featured limited-edition brews: Tatenokawa Junmai Daiginjo, Kaze no Mori Junmai Daiginjo (from Nara Prefecture), and Sohomare Junmai Ginjo (from Tochigi Prefecture). The bottles were wrapped in a hand-dyed washcloth featuring illustrations of the band and sake logo. A portion of the sales were donated to the Japanese Red Cross.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: In 2020 Phoenix released the book "Liberte, Egalite, Phoenix!" to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first album. The book was a biography written by Laura Snapes about the band and their music.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: In July 2020 during a "Pitchfork" live stream on YouTube which re-played their 2017 Accorhotels Arena concert in Paris, the band members gave commentary to the performance and answered fans' questions. In August 2020, the single "Identical" was released for Coppola's film "On the Rocks". It topped the "Billboard" Adult Alternative Airplay chart in November 2020. It was also announced that "Identical" would be on the next studio album.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: Phoenix began recording their seventh album "Alpha Zulu" during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 at the Musée des Arts décoratifs, a studio located within the Louvre Palace in Paris. Brancowitz said the band "felt it would be a fantastic adventure to create something out of nothing", with Mazzalai revealing that they wrote "almost all" of "Alpha Zulu" within the first 10 days. The album was inspired by Philippe Zdar of the band Cassius, who produced three of Phoenix's albums and died in 2019.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: On 27 May 2022, the band announced the lead single "Alpha Zulu", which was released on 1 June. "Alpha Zulu" topped the US Adult Alternative Airplay chart on 6 August 2022 for two weeks.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: On 6 September, Phoenix started their "Alpha Zulu" Tour in St. Paul, Minnesota. On 7 September, Phoenix released "Tonight" featuring Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig. Phoenix also performed on multiple television shows around this time and on 23 September, the band appeared on the cover of "NME", with a story on the making of the album appearing in the issue.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: The fourth single from the album, "Winter Solstice", was released on 20 October 2022. "Winter Solstice" is the only song the band did not craft together in the studio, instead writing it remotely, building from a long loop that Brancowitz, Mazzalai, and D'Arcy sent to frontman Mars, who then recorded stream-of-consciousness lyrics for it. The band released the album "Alpha Zulu" on 4 November.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: The band had a online release party on their YouTube channel where they took calls from fans, gave out prizes, and commented on music from the album. On November 15, they embarked on their European tour.


title: Phoenix (band)

text: On 10 December 2022, “Tonight” topped the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart. So far, it’s lasted two weeks at #1. This made it the third single from the album to top such chart (Following “Identical” and the title track.) and the fourth Phoenix song ever to top any Billboard chart.


title: Paramecium

text: Paramecium ( , ; also spelled Paramoecium) is a genus of eukaryotic, unicellular ciliates, commonly studied as a representative of the ciliate group. "Paramecia" are widespread in freshwater, brackish, and marine environments and are often very abundant in stagnant basins and ponds. Because some species are readily cultivated and easily induced to conjugate and divide, it has been widely used in classrooms and laboratories to study biological processes. Its usefulness as a model organism has caused one ciliate researcher to characterize it as the "white rat" of the phylum Ciliophora.


title: Paramecium

text: "Paramecia" were among the first ciliates to be seen by microscopists, in the late 17th century. They were probably known to the Dutch pioneer of protozoology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and were clearly described by his contemporary Christiaan Huygens in a letter of 1678. The earliest known illustration of a Paramecium was published anonymously in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1703.


title: Paramecium

text: In 1718, the French mathematics teacher and microscopist Louis Joblot published a description and illustration of a microscopic (fish), which he discovered in an infusion of oak bark in water. Joblot gave this creature the name , or "slipper", and the phrase "slipper animalcule" remained in use as a colloquial epithet for "Paramecium", throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Paramecium

text: The name "Paramecium" – constructed from the Greek ("paramēkēs", "oblong") – was coined in 1752 by the English microscopist John Hill, who applied the name generally to "Animalcules which have no visible limbs or tails, and are of an irregularly oblong figure". In 1773, O. F. Müller, the first researcher to place the genus within the Linnaean system of taxonomy, adopted the name "Paramecium", but changed the spelling to "Paramœcium". C. G. Ehrenberg, in a major study of the infusoria published in 1838, restored Hill's original spelling for the genus name, and most researchers have followed his lead.


title: Paramecium

text: Species of "Paramecium" range in size from in length. Cells are typically ovoid, elongate, foot- or cigar-shaped.


title: Paramecium

text: The body of the cell is enclosed by a stiff but elastic structure called the pellicle. This consists of the outer cell membrane (plasma membrane), a layer of flattened membrane-bound sacs called "alveoli", and an inner membrane called the "epiplasm". The pellicle is not smooth, but textured with hexagonal or rectangular depressions. Each of these polygons is perforated by a central aperture through which a single cilium projects. Between the alveolar sacs of the pellicle, most species of "Paramecium" have closely spaced spindle-shaped trichocysts, explosive organelles that discharge thin, non-toxic filaments, often used for defensive purposes.


title: Paramecium

text: Typically, an anal pore (cytoproct) is located on the ventral surface, in the posterior half of the cell. In all species, there is a deep oral groove running from the anterior of the cell to its midpoint. This is lined with inconspicuous cilia which beat continuously, drawing food inside the cell. "Paramecia" live mainly by heterotrophy, feeding on bacteria and other small organisms. A few species are mixotrophs, deriving some nutrients from endosymbiotic algae (chlorella) carried in the cytoplasm of the cell.


title: Paramecium

text: Osmoregulation is carried out by contractile vacuoles, which actively expel water from the cell to compensate for fluid absorbed by osmosis from its surroundings. The number of contractile vacuoles varies from one, to many, depending on species.


title: Paramecium

text: A "Paramecium" propels itself by whiplash movements of the cilia, which are arranged in tightly spaced rows around the outside of the body. The beat of each cilium has two phases: a fast "effective stroke", during which the cilium is relatively stiff, followed by a slow "recovery stroke", during which the cilium curls loosely to one side and sweeps forward in a counter-clockwise fashion. The densely arrayed cilia move in a coordinated fashion, with waves of activity moving across the "ciliary carpet", creating an effect sometimes likened to that of the wind blowing across a field of grain.


title: Paramecium

text: The "Paramecium" spirals through the water as it progresses. When it happens to encounter an obstacle, the "effective stroke" of its cilia is reversed and the organism swims backward for a brief time, before resuming its forward progress. This is called the avoidance reaction. If it runs into the solid object again, it repeats this process, until it can get past the object.


title: Paramecium

text: It has been calculated that a "Paramecium" expends more than half of its energy in propelling itself through the water. This ciliary method of locomotion has been found to be less than 1% efficient. This low percentage is nevertheless close to the maximum theoretical efficiency that can be achieved by an organism equipped with cilia as short as those of the members of "Paramecium."


title: Paramecium

text: "Paramecia" feed on microorganisms like bacteria, algae, and yeasts. To gather food, the "Paramecium" makes movements with cilia to sweep prey organisms, along with some water, through the oral groove (vestibulum, or vestibule), and into the cell. The food passes from the cilia-lined oral groove into a narrower structure known as the buccal cavity (gullet). From there, food particles pass through a small opening called the cytostome, or cell mouth, and move into the interior of the cell. As food enters the cell, it is gathered into food vacuoles, which are periodically closed off and released into the cytoplasm, where they begin circulating through the cell body by the streaming movement of the cell contents, a process called cyclosis or cytoplasmic streaming. As a food vacuole moves along, enzymes from the cytoplasm enter it, to digest the contents. As enzymatic digestion proceeds, the vacuole contents become more acidic. Within five minutes of a vacuole's formation, pH of its contents drops from 7 to 3. As digested nutrients pass into the cytoplasm, the vacuole shrinks. When the vacuole, with its fully digested contents, reaches the anal pore, it ruptures, expelling its waste contents to the environment, outside the cell.


title: Paramecium

text: Some species of "Paramecium" form mutualistic relationships with other organisms. "Paramecium bursaria" and "Paramecium chlorelligerum" harbour endosymbiotic green algae, from which they derive nutrients and a degree of protection from predators such as "Didinium nasutum". Numerous bacterial endosymbionts have been identified in species of "Paramecium." Some intracellular bacteria, known as Kappa particles, give "Paramecia" that have them the ability to kill other strains of "Paramecium" that lack Kappa.


title: Paramecium

text: The genome of the species "Paramecium tetraurelia" has been sequenced, providing evidence for three whole-genome duplications.


title: Paramecium

text: In some ciliates, like "Stylonychia" and "Paramecium", only UGA is decoded as a stop codon, while UAG and UAA are reassigned as sense codons (that is, codons that code for standard amino acids), coding for the amino acid glutamic acid.


title: Paramecium

text: The question of whether "Paramecia" exhibit learning has been the object of a great deal of experimentation, yielding equivocal results. However, a study published in 2006 seems to show that "Paramecium caudatum" may be trained, through the application of a 6.5 volt electric current, to discriminate between brightness levels. This experiment has been cited as a possible instance of cell memory, or epigenetic learning in organisms with no nervous system.


title: Paramecium

text: Like all ciliates, "Paramecium" has a dual nuclear apparatus, consisting of a polyploid macronucleus, and one or more diploid micronuclei. The macronucleus controls non-reproductive cell functions, expressing the genes needed for daily functioning. The micronucleus is the generative, or germline nucleus, containing the genetic material that is passed along from one generation to the next.


title: Paramecium

text: "Paramecium" reproduction is asexual, by binary fission, which has been characterized as "the sole mode of reproduction in ciliates" (conjugation being a sexual phenomenon, not directly resulting in increase of numbers). During fission, the macronucleus splits by a type of amitosis, and the micronuclei undergo mitosis. The cell then divides transversally, and each new cell obtains a copy of the micronucleus and the macronucleus.


title: Paramecium

text: Fission may occur spontaneously, in the course of the vegetative cell cycle. Under certain conditions, it may be preceded by self-fertilization (autogamy), or it may immediately follow conjugation, in which "Paramecia" of compatible mating types fuse temporarily and exchange genetic material.


title: Paramecium

text: In ciliates such as "Paramecium", conjugation is a sexual phenomenon that results in genetic recombination and nuclear reorganization within the cell. During conjugation, two "Paramecia" of a compatible mating type come together and a bridge forms between their cytoplasms. Their respective micronuclei undergo meiosis, and haploid micronuclei are exchanged over the bridge. Following conjugation, the cells separate. The old macronuclei are destroyed, and both post-conjugants form new macronuclei, by amplification of DNA in their micronuclei. Conjugation is followed by one or more "exconjugant divisions".


title: Paramecium

text: In the asexual fission phase of growth, during which cell divisions occur by mitosis rather than meiosis, clonal aging occurs leading to a gradual loss of vitality. In some species, such as the well studied "Paramecium tetraurelia", the asexual line of clonally aging "Paramecia" loses vitality and expires after about 200 fissions if the cells fail to undergo autogamy or conjugation. The basis for clonal aging was clarified by transplantation experiments of Aufderheide in 1986. When macronuclei of clonally young "Paramecia" were injected into "Paramecia" of standard clonal age, the lifespan (clonal fissions) of the recipient was prolonged. In contrast, transfer of cytoplasm from clonally young "Paramecia" did not prolong the lifespan of the recipient. These experiments indicated that the macronucleus, rather than the cytoplasm, is responsible for clonal aging. Other experiments by Smith-Sonneborn, Holmes and Holmes, and Gilley and Blackburn demonstrated that, during clonal aging, DNA damage increases dramatically. Thus, DNA damage in the macronucleus appears to be the cause of aging in "P. tetraurelia". In this single-celled protist, aging appears to proceed as it does in multicellular eukaryotes, as described in DNA damage theory of aging.


title: Paramecium

text: When clonally aged "P. tetraurelia" are stimulated to undergo meiosis in association with either conjugation or automixis, the genetic descendants are rejuvenated, and are able to have many more mitotic binary fission divisions. During either of these processes, the micronuclei of the cell(s) undergo meiosis, the old macronucleus disintegrates and a new macronucleus is formed by replication of the micronuclear DNA that had recently undergone meiosis. There is apparently little, if any, DNA damage in the new macronucleus. These findings further solidify that clonal aging is due, in large part, to a progressive accumulation of DNA damage; and that rejuvenation is due to the repair of this damage in the micronucleus during meiosis. Meiosis appears to be an adaptation for DNA repair and rejuvenation in "P. tetraurelia". In "P. tetraurelia", CtlP protein is a key factor needed for the completion of meiosis during sexual reproduction and recovery of viable sexual progeny. The CtlP and Mre11 nuclease complex are essential for accurate processing and repair of double-strand breaks during homologous recombination.


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: A domestic short-haired cat is a cat possessing a coat of short fur, not belonging to any particular recognised cat breed. In Britain they are sometimes colloquially called moggies. Domestic short-haired cats are distinct from the British Shorthair, American Shorthair, and other standardized breeds with "Short-hair" names recognized by various registries. Domestic short-haired cats are the most common kind of cat in the United States, accounting for around 95% of their number. Other generic terms include house cat and alley cat (the latter may be used more specifically to refer to feral cats).


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: In the cat fancy, and among veterinarians and animal control agencies, domestic short-haired cats may be classified with organisation-specific terminology (often capitalized), such as:


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: Such a pseudo-breed is used for registry as well as shelter/rescue classification purposes. While not bred as show cats, some domestic short-haired cats are actually pedigreed and entered into cat shows that have non-purebred "Household Pet" divisions. Show rules vary; Fédération Internationale Féline (FIFe) permits "any eye colour, all coat colours and patterns, any coat length or texture, and any length of tail" (basically, any cat). Others may be more restrictive; an example from the World Cat Federation: "All classic colours are permitted. Any amount of white is permitted. The colours chocolate and cinnamon, as well as their dilution (lilac and fawn) are not recognized in any combinations (bicolour, tricolour, tabby). The pointed pattern is also not recognized. The description of colours is listed in the general list of colours."


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: Domestic short-haired cats are characterised by a wide range of colouring, and typically "revert to type" after a few generations, which means they express their coats as a tabby cat. This can be any colour or combination of colours. They also exhibit a wide range of physical characteristics, and as a result, domestic short-haired cats in different countries tend to look different in body shape and size, as they are working from differing gene pools. DSH cats in Asia tend to have a build similar to a "classic" Siamese or Tonkinese, while European and American varieties have a thicker, heavier build. Cats that did not go through selective breeding are much less vulnerable to the genetic problems for which purebred cats must be carefully screened, due to their diverse gene pool.


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: Since freely breeding domestic short-haired cats form distinctive landraces in wide geographic areas, they have been the basis of several recent formal breeds such as the European Shorthair (Celtic Shorthair), and American Shorthair.


title: Domestic short-haired cat

text: Obesity is a common disease in pet cats. However, adult obesity is not significantly affected by birth weight and litter size.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Ashley Louise Urbanski (born March 14, 1992) is an American professional wrestler and singer. She is currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the SmackDown brand under the ring name Shotzi (shortened from her previous ring name Shotzi Blackheart). She is also known for her time in NXT, where she is a former NXT Women's Tag Team Champion.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Prior to joining WWE, she competed in various promotions on the independent circuit, including major promotions such as Shimmer Women Athletes, Evolve, and Shine Wrestling, where she won the Shine Nova Championship.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Ashley Louise Urbanski was born in San Jose, California, on March 14, 1992. She is of Filipino and Polish descent.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Urbanski began her career at Hoodslam in Oakland, California in 2014 as Missy Highasshit, a cheerleader valet for the stable Stoner U. She also frequently appeared on the California independent circuit, wrestling for All Pro Wrestling, Bar Wrestling, and Big Time Wrestling, as well as Nashville, Tennessee promotion Impact Wrestling.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Urbanski made her debut for Shimmer Women Athletes on November 11, 2016 in a loss to Melanie Cruise. She made her Evolve debut at Evolve 115 on November 9, 2018, challenging Allysin Kay for the Shine Championship in a losing effort. Blackheart also competed for Shine Wrestling, and at Shine 58 on May 10, 2019, Blackheart defeated Aja Perera to win the Shine Nova Championship. At Shine 59 on June 29, she retained the title in a triple threat match involving Perera and Santana Garrett. Blackheart successfully defended the title against Natalia Markova on August 24 at Shine 60.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: At Evolve 137 on October 11, 2019, after defeating Perera, William Regal offered Urbanski a WWE contract during an unannounced appearance, and due to this, she had to vacate the Shine Nova Championship.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: In 2015, Blackheart, under her real name, took part in the trials for the sixth season of WWE's competition "Tough Enough". She was initially selected as one of 6 women who would take part in that season's competition, but had to withdraw from it before it began, due to a previously undiagnosed irregular heartbeat causing a failed medical.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: On October 15, 2019, it was reported that Blackheart had signed with WWE and would report to the WWE Performance Center. Blackheart made her debut on a live NXT house show on December 5, 2019, losing to Chelsea Green. She made her televised debut on the December 25 episode of "NXT" in a loss to Bianca Belair. On the January 15, 2020 episode of "NXT", Blackheart entered a battle royal for an NXT Women's Championship opportunity at , eliminating Shayna Baszler until she was eliminated by Belair, the eventual winner. On the following episode of "NXT", Blackheart lost to Baszler. At the Royal Rumble on January 26, 2020, Blackheart entered her first Royal Rumble match at #26 before being eliminated by Baszler. On the June 17 episode of "NXT", Blackheart and Tegan Nox challenged Bayley and Sasha Banks for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship, which they were unsuccessful in winning.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: On the September 16 episode of "NXT", Blackheart lost to NXT Women's Champion Io Shirai in a non-title match. At on October 28, she served as the host during that episode, preventing Shirai during her match against Candice LeRae from being attacked by a mysterious person wearing a Ghostface mask (later revealed as Indi Hartwell). She formed an alliance with Rhea Ripley, Shirai and Ember Moon to compete at the pay-per-view on December 6, where they faced off against LeRae, Toni Storm, Raquel González and Dakota Kai in a WarGames match, which her team lost.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: At Royal Rumble on January 31, 2021, she entered at #5, but was eliminated by Baszler. Blackheart and Moon participated in the Women's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, defeating Marina Shafir and Zoey Stark in the first round, The Way (Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell) in the semi-finals, but lost to Kai and González in the finals on February 14 at Vengeance Day. On the March 10 episode of "NXT", Blackheart and Moon defeated Kai and González to win the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship, her first title in NXT. On the second night of on April 8, they retained the titles against The Way. On the May 4 episode of "NXT", Blackheart and Moon lost the titles to The Way in a Street Fight, ending their reign at 55 days. Blackheart competed in her final match in "NXT" on June 29, where she and Moon lost a triple threat tag team match to determine the #1 contenders to the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: On the July 9 episode of "SmackDown", Blackheart, now under the shortened ring name Shotzi, debuted alongside Tegan Nox as Shotzi & Nox, but the team was disbanded when, as part of the 2021 Draft, Nox was drafted to the Raw brand while Shotzi remained on the SmackDown brand. On the October 29 episode of "SmackDown", after losing to SmackDown Women's Champion Charlotte Flair in a championship contenders match, Shotzi attacked Sasha Banks who was at ringside, turning heel in the process.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: Shotzi participated in the 5 on 5 Survivor Series elimination match at Survivor Series on November 21, but was eliminated by Bianca Belair. She participated in the Royal Rumble match at the namesake event on January 29, 2022, entering at #29 but was eliminated by the returning Ronda Rousey. On the June 3 episode of "SmackDown", Shotzi competed in a six-pack challenge to determine the #1 contender to the SmackDown Women's Championship, which was won by Natalya. On the June 24 episode of "SmackDown", she defeated Tamina to qualify for the Money in the Bank ladder match on July 2, which she failed to win. On the August 5 episode of "SmackDown", Shotzi competed in a gauntlet match to determine the #1 contender to Liv Morgan's SmackDown Women's Championship, which was won by Shayna Baszler. The following week, she and Xia Li participated in the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship Tournament for the vacant tag titles, but were eliminated by Raquel Rodriguez and Aliyah in the first round. On the August 26 episode of "SmackDown", they competed in a "Last Chance" fatal four-way to be in the semifinals of the tournament later that night, which was won by Natalya and Sonya Deville.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: On the September 16 episode of "SmackDown", Shotzi saved Rodriguez from an attack by Damage CTRL (Dakota Kai and Iyo Sky), turning face in the process. On the October 21 episode of "SmackDown", Shotzi and Rodriguez challenged Kai and Sky for the Women's Tag Team Championship, but were unsuccessful after Bayley distracted Shotzi. The next day, she served as the host for NXT Halloween Havoc alongside Quincy Elliot, attacking Lash Legend after she interrupted them. On the November 11 episode of "SmackDown," Shotzi won a six-pack challenge, earning a SmackDown Women’s Championship match against Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series WarGames. At the event, Shotzi failed to win the title after interference from Shayna Baszler.


title: Shotzi Blackheart

text: In April 2021, Blackheart alongside Scarlett Bordeaux were featured on fellow wrestler and singer Harley Cameron's music video "Indestructible". On October 14, 2022, the trio performed "I Put a Spell on You" (as a tribute of the film "Hocus Pocus") in a music video which was released by WWE.


title: Chamorro people

text: The Chamorro people (; also CHamoru) are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territory of Guam and the encompassing Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Micronesia. Today, significant Chamorro populations also exist in several U.S. states, including Hawaii, California, Washington, Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, and Nevada, all of which together are designated as Pacific Islander Americans according to the U.S. Census. According to the 2000 Census, about 64,590 people of Chamorro ancestry live in Guam and another 19,000 live in the Northern Marianas. Another 93,000 live outside the Marianas in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States.


title: Chamorro people

text: The Chamorros are primarily Austronesian, and many have Filipino ancestry (another Austronesian group). There are also descendants of Japanese people. Many may also have a small amount of Spanish and Mexican ancestry.


title: Chamorro people

text: Precolonial society in the Marianas was based on a caste system, "Chamori" being the name of the ruling, highest caste.


title: Chamorro people

text: After Spain annexed and colonized the Marianas, the caste system eventually became extinct under Spanish rule, and all of the indigenous residents of the archipelago eventually came to be referred to by the Spanish exonym "Chamorro". The name "CHamoru" is an endonym derived from the indigenous orthography of the Spanish exonym. The digraph "ch" is treated as a single letter, hence both characters are capitalized at the beginning of a sentence or proper noun, much like "ij" in Dutch.


title: Chamorro people

text: Some people theorize that Spanish definitions of the word "Chamorro" played a role in its being used to refer to the island's indigenous inhabitants. Not only is "Chamorro" a Spanish surname; in Spanish it also means "leg of pork", "beardless [wheat]", "bald", "close-cropped", or "shorn/shaven/[hair or wool] cut close to the surface". Around 1670, a Catholic missionary reported that men were sporting a style in which their heads were shaven, save for a "finger-length" amount of hair at the crown. This hairstyle has often been portrayed in modern-day depictions of early Chamorros, but the first European descriptions of the physical appearance of the Chamorro people in the 1520s and '30s report that both sexes had long black hair, which they wore down to their waists or even further. Another description, given about 50 years later, reported that the natives at that time were tying up their hair into one or two topknots.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro institutions on Guam advocate for the spelling "CHamoru", as reflected in the 2017 Guam public law 33-236. In 2018, the Commission on the CHamoru Language and the Teaching of the History and Culture of the Indigenous People of Guam announced "CHamoru" as the preferred standardized spelling of the language and people, as opposed to the conventional spelling "Chamorro".


title: Chamorro people

text: The Chamorro language is included in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian family. Because Guam was colonized by Spain for over 300 years, Chamorro has acquired many loanwords from Spanish. An example is how the traditional Chamorro number system was replaced by Spanish numbers.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro is often spoken in many homes, but this is becoming less common. However, a resurgence of interest in reviving the language has occurred, and all public schools on both Guam and the Northern Marianas are now required by law to teach the Chamorro language as part of the elementary-, middle-, and high-school curriculum.


title: Chamorro people

text: The Chamorros are commonly believed to have arrived in the Marianas Islands from Southeast Asia "circa" 2,000 BC. They are most closely related to other Austronesian-speaking natives from the Philippines, eastern Indonesia (specifically in Maluku and Sulawesi), Taiwanese aborigines, and peoples of the Caroline Islands to the south (in particular the outer islands of the Federated States of Micronesia state of Yap). Recent advanced DNA testing conducted on the remains of ancient Chamorros showed that the lineage of both the Unai and the Latte periods originated during the Holocene Epoch in eastern Indonesia, most likely Sulawesi, with no direct prehistoric connection to the Philippines. They were expert seafarers and skilled craftspeople familiar with intricate weaving and detailed pottery-making. The latte stone, a megalithic rock pillar topped with a hemispherical capstone, was used by early Chamorros as foundation for buildings, and has since been appropriated as a national symbol.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro society was based on what sociologist Dr. Lawrence J. Cunningham termed the "matrilineal avuncuclan", one characteristic of which is that the of the female parent plays a more primary paternal role than biological male parent of a child.


title: Chamorro people

text: Spanish colonial records show that Chamorro farmers planted seeds according to the phases of the moon. For example, farmers on Guam often plant tuber crops such as sweet potato and yams at full moon during low tide.


title: Chamorro people

text: According to early Chamorro legend, the world was created by a twin brother and sister, Puntan and Fu'uña. As he lay dying, Puntan instructed his sister Fu'uña to make his body into the ingredients of the universe. She used his eyes to create the Sun and Moon, his eyebrows to make rainbows, and most of the rest of his parts into various features of the Earth. Once her work was complete, she descended on an island called "Guåhan", and transformed herself into a giant rock. This rock split, and from it emerged all human beings. Some believe that this rock was once located at the site of a church in Agat, while others believe it is the phallic-shaped "Laso de Fua" located in Fouha Bay in Umatac.


title: Chamorro people

text: Ancient Chamorros engaged in ancestor veneration, but did not practice a formal "religion" in the sense of worshiping deities. At least one account by Christoph Carl Fernberger in 1623 holds that human sacrifice was practiced to placate a "great fish". This claim may be related to a Chamorro legend about why the island of Guam is narrow in the middle. According to the legend, a gigantic fish was gradually eating away at the island from both sides. Although the ancient Chamorros supposedly had magical abilities, the huge creature eluded them. When the men were unsuccessful in hunting it down, the women used their hair to weave a net, which grew larger as they sang. The singing enchanted the fish, and lured it into the giant net.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro society was divided into two main castes, and continued to be so for well over a century after the Spanish first arrived. According to historical records provided by Europeans such as Father Charles Le Gobien, apparent racial differences existed between the subservient "Manachang" caste, and the higher "", the Manachang being described as shorter, darker-skinned, and physically less hardy than the Chamori. The Chamori caste was further subdivided into the upper-middle class "Achoti"/"Acha'ot" and the highest, the ruling "Matua"/"Matao" class. Achoti could gain status as Matua, and Matua could be reduced to Achoti, but Manachang were born and died as such and had no recourse to improve their station. Members of the Manachang and the Chamori were not permitted to intermingle. All three classes performed physical labor, but had specifically different duties. Le Gobien theorized that Chamorro society comprised the geographical convergence of peoples of different ethnic origins. This idea may be supportable by the evidence of linguistic characteristics of the Chamorro language and social customs.


title: Chamorro people

text: Prior to Spanish contact, Chamorro boys and men wore no clothing and went about fully nude at all times. Chamorro girls went nude until around the age of eight to ten, at which point they began to wear a small genital covering made either of bark, one or more leaves, a piece of a turtle shell or in some cases matting. Both sexes at times wore hats of woven leaves to protect themselves from the sun.


title: Chamorro people

text: Father Pierre Coomans wrote of the practice among Chamorro women of teeth blackening/dental lacquering (also a widespread custom in ancient maritime Southeast Asia, Japan, southeastern China, and parts of Indochina), which they considered beautiful as a distinction apart from animals. Fernberger wrote in his account of the Chamorros that “penis pins” were employed as a chastity measure for young males, a type of genital piercing similar to those employed by inhabitants of precolonial maritime Southeast Asia.


title: Chamorro people

text: The Chamorro creation story revolves around two celestial siblings named Puntan and Fu'una. In time, this creation story underwent a series of modifications due to the complications in passing the story along from generation to generation. In this Chamorro creation story, Puntan and Fu'una create the world with their body parts and souls. Puntan's various body parts were turned into the land, his chest into the sky, his eyebrows into rainbows, and his eyes into the sun and moon. Fu’una having the ability to give life, brought the sun, soil, and waters to life, and with a final transformation, she turned into stone and gave birth to the Chamorro people. Evidence supporting this creation story can be seen through the names of the villages on Guam as they are named after body parts. Barrigada translates to flank, Tiyan translates to stomach, Hagatna translates to blood and Mongmong translates to a heartbeat.


title: Chamorro people

text: Traditional beliefs among the Chamorros include tales of "taotaomo'na" and "birak", as well as the Spanish-introduced concepts of "duendes" and hauntings in places such as in Yona, other old buildings, schools, hotel elevators, and the Ma’ina bridge. Taotaomo'na are spirits of ancient Chamorros. Birak is a broader term that may refer not only to the undead, but also to demons or general elemental types. Taotaomona essentially translates to “people of early times,” referring to the ancestors of the Chamorro peoples. The Taotaomona is a supernatural ancestral spirit that Chamorros and some neighboring islanders from Rota and Saipan believe in. The Taotaomona possess a strength that far exceeds man and has the ability to cause sickness and death to those who offend them. The appearance of a Taotaomona can vary as they can be a female or male and can take an attractive form or a monstrous form.


title: Chamorro people

text: On March 6, 1521, Ferdinand Magellan and his men, after having crossed the Pacific Ocean, had encountered the first "indios" since leaving South America. Later Spanish visitors named the inhabitants "Chamurres", derived from a local term for the upper caste; this was then converted to "Chamorros", an old Spanish term for "bald", perhaps in reference to the local habit to shave.


title: Chamorro people

text: Over the centuries, the Mariana Islands have been occupied by several foreign countries (Spain, Germany, Japan, United States), and present-day Chamorro society is almost entirely multiethnic, with the inhabitants of Luta/Rota being the least so. The Chamorros are primarily of Austronesian ancestry, but began to significantly interact with Spanish and Filipinos during the Spanish colonial era (1521–1898 AD). Primarily since the late 19th century onward, many Chamorros have intermarried with other Pacific Islanders, mainland Americans, Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese.


title: Chamorro people

text: During the Spanish colonial era, the Chamorro population was greatly reduced by the introduction of European diseases and changes in society during the Spanish-Chamorro Wars. The Spanish killed many Chamorro men and relocated most others to Guam, where they lived in several parishes to prevent rebellion. An estimated 100,000 Chamorros may have populated the Marianas when Europeans first settled in 1667. By 1800, they numbered under 1,000. Within the parishes, the Spanish eventually focused their efforts on converting the natives to Catholicism. Father Frances X. Hezel stated that Chamorros caught or reported engaging in pagan "sorcery" were publicly punished. Through this, they were given Spanish surnames through "Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos" or Alphabetic Catalog of Surnames. Thus, a multiracially mixed Chamorro with European descent and a Spanish surname may not necessarily have Spanish blood, any more than Filipinos with Spanish surnames do.


title: Chamorro people

text: During the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam on June 21, 1898. Under the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, Spain ceded Guam to the United States effective April 11, 1899. Guam is among the 17 nonself-governing territories listed by the United Nations.


title: Chamorro people

text: Before World War II, five American jurisdictions were in the Pacific Ocean: Guam and Wake Island in Micronesia, American Samoa and Hawaii in Polynesia, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia. On December 8, 1941, hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces from the Marianas launched an invasion of Guam. Chamorros from the Northern Marianas, who had been under Japanese rule for more than 20 years, were brought to Guam to assist the Japanese administration. This, combined with the harsh treatment of Chamorros during the two-and-a-half-year occupation, created a rift that would become the main reason Chamorros rejected the referendum on reunification approved by the Northern Marianas in the 1960s. During the occupation, Chamorros were subjected to forced labor, incarceration, torture, and execution. American forces recaptured the island on July 21, 1944; Liberation Day commemorates the victory.


title: Chamorro people

text: After World War II, the Guam Organic Act of 1950 established Guam as an unincorporated organized territory of the United States, provided for the structure of the island's civilian government, and granted the people U.S. citizenship. The governor of Guam was federally appointed until 1968, when the Guam Elective Governor Act provided for the office's popular election. Since Guam is not a U.S. state, U.S. citizens residing on Guam are not allowed to vote for president and their congressional representative is a nonvoting member. They do, however, get to vote for party delegates in presidential primaries.


title: Chamorro people

text: The increasing numbers of Chamorros, especially Chamorro youth, relocating to the U.S. mainland, has complicated both definition and preservation of Chamorro identity. On Guam, a Chamorro-rights movement has developed since the United States gained control of the island. Leaders of the movement seek to return ancestral lands to the Chamorro people, and attain self-determination.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro culture has over the years acquired noticeable influences from Spanish, Mexican, American, Japanese, and Filipino cultures, as well as the presence of fellow Oceanic (mostly Micronesian) groups. Influence from the German era in the Northern Marianas is most visible in the form of certain given names and family surnames.


title: Chamorro people

text: The prehistoric concept of "inafa'maolek" ("doing good for each other", often translated as interdependence) is a core value of traditional Chamorro culture. Respect for one's family, community, and the elderly ("man åmko"') are major components, although this varies from person to person and family to family. The culture is now strongly influenced by American customs and values, largely because the Marianas archipelago (partitioned into Guam and the CNMI) is currently possessed by the United States of America, as organized but unincorporated territories; in addition, most people of Chamorro descent now live outside of the Marianas in the United States. The American military has a major cultural influence among the Chamorro; enlistment rates are higher in the Marianas than in any other place in the USA. On Guam, the enlistment rate is around 14 people per 10,000; by contrast, the US state of Montana, which has the highest per capita enlistment, has a rate near half that, with about eight people per 10,000. (See the Guam page for more details about this topic.)


title: Chamorro people

text: Cockfighting and cockfight-related gambling were introduced by the Spanish and have long been a significant pastime in Chamoru culture, especially among men. It is still popular among the members of older generations and with Filipino immigrants, who raise roosters for cockfighting purposes; however, mixed martial arts fighting competitions have grown in popularity as spectator sports, particularly among the members of more recent generations. Large-scale events are held throughout the year on Guam and Saipan, which feature local competitors and guest participants from abroad.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro life has long centered on one's matriarchal clan. The concept of a "clan" stemming from a common female ancestor is still observed. Large extended families remain central to life in the Marianas.


title: Chamorro people

text: Diabetes and heart disease have become increasingly common among the indigenous population, as well as among nonindigenous Oceanic people living in the Marianas, particularly the Carolinian Refaluwasch.


title: Chamorro people

text: Traditional healers called "suruhånu" (or "suruhåna" for women) are still greatly respected for their knowledge of herbal treatments and spirits.


title: Chamorro people

text: Most Chamorros are Roman Catholic and few in the Marianas still maintain some customs and beliefs from the time before the first European conquests; some residents of the Marianas will still ask permission from ancestral spirits before entering parts of jungles.


title: Chamorro people

text: Among the 56 states and territories of the United States, the Mariana Islands have the highest rate of religious self-identification, with a combined percentage of only 1.75% of the population (Guam at 2.5% and the CNMI at just 1%) not claiming membership in or affiliation with a particular religion.


title: Chamorro people

text: Chamorro cuisine is influenced by various cultures. Examples of popular foods of foreign origin include various types of sweet or savory "empanada", originally introduced by Spain, and "pancit", a noodle dish from the Philippines.


title: Chamorro people

text: Archeological evidence from islands in the Marianas reveals that rice was cultivated there since prehistory. Red rice made with "achoti" is a distinct staple food that strongly identifies Chamorro cuisine among the many dishes of fellow Pacific Island cultures. It is commonly served for special events, such as parties ("gupot" or "fiestas"), "nobenas", and occasions such as a high-school or college graduations. The condiment "fina'denne'" accompanies most meals. Fruits such as "lemmai, mangga, niyok", and" bilimbines "are consumed in various local recipes. In the Marianas, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and American cuisine are also commonly available. Local cookies are known as "guyuria".


title: Chamorro people

text: Locally distinct foods include "kelaguen", a dish in which meat is denatured in whole or in part by citric acid rather than heat; "tinaktak", a meat dish made with coconut milk; and "kå'du fanihi" (flying fox/fruit bat soup). Fruit bats and local birds have become scarce in modern times primarily due to the World War II-era introduction of the brown tree snake, which decimated the populations of local birds and threatens the" fanihi" (fruit bat) population, as well. Illegal hunting of fruit bats also threatens existing populations.


title: Chamorro people

text: Spam and other canned meats were introduced to the islands after World War II, leading to a dietary shift.


title: Chamorro people

text: According to the 2010 census, 148,220 Chamorros are living in the United States, mostly from Guam, but also from the Northern Marianas and Saipan.


title: Chamorro people

text: The early Chamorros who migrated to the USA were Guamanians who moved in the first decade of the 20th century. In the following decades, small groups of Guamanians emigrated to Hawaii and the Western United States, where they worked as farmers. The population of Guam got the American citizenship in 1929. So, after the end of World War II, many more Guamanians emigrated to the US. Most of them were in the military or married with military people.


title: Chamorro people

text: In 1950, the population of Guam gained the full American citizenship, which favoured Guamanian migration to the US. So, the first major Guamanian migration emerged and more of 160 Guamanians emigrated to the US in the '50s. Many of them moved to California. In 1952, Guamanian immigrants founded their first organization in US, the Guam Territorial Society (later renamed as the Guam Society of America), in Washington, D.C., where many worked for the Department of Defense and developing military operations.


title: Chamorro people

text: In the 1960s, hundreds of Guamanians emigrated to the United States, when the largest numbers emigrated to this country. Most of them were fleeing the Korean War and Typhoon Karen.


title: Chamorro people

text: In the '70s, another wave of Guamanians arrived in the US. In 1986, the US acquired the Northern Marianas Islands, which favoured migration from islands to the US.


title: Chamorro people

text: As of 2020, Pierce County, Washington, has the largest Chamorro population with 4,931 persons or 0.62% of the total population.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Bristol Rovers Football Club are a professional football club in Bristol, England. They compete in League One, the third tier of the English football league system.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: They play home matches at the Memorial Stadium in Horfield, they have been competing there since 1996. They spent 89 years in the heart of North Bristol between 1897 to 1986 at the Eastville Stadium. Following a sale of the land they spent ten years at Twerton Park in Bath. The club's official nickname is "The Pirates", reflecting the maritime history of Bristol. The local nickname of the club is "The Gas", derived from the gasworks next to their former home, Eastville Stadium. This nickname originally began as a derogatory term used by fans of their main rivals, Bristol City, but was affectionately adopted by the club and its supporters. Cardiff City and Swindon Town are considered their second and third biggest rivals. Other rivalries include; Cheltenham Town, Exeter City, Forest Green Rovers, Plymouth Argyle, Torquay United and Yeovil Town. These rivalries are considered West Country Derbies and are often heated encounters. The women's team play in the Gloucestershire County Women's League.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The club was founded in 1883 as Black Arabs F.C. and entered the Bristol & District League as Eastville Rovers in 1892. The club moved to the Birmingham & District League in 1897, then changed divisions to the Southern League as Bristol Rovers in 1899. They won the Southern League in 1904–05 and were admitted to the Football League in 1920. They were placed in the Third Division South the following year and remained there until winning promotion as champions in 1952–53. They recorded their highest finishing positions in 1956 and 1959, a sixth-place finish in the Second Division, before suffering relegation in 1962. Promoted in second-place in 1973–74, they spent another seven seasons in the second tier until relegation in 1981. They won the Third Division title in 1989–90, though this time lasted just three seasons in the second tier and were relegated back into the fourth tier by 2001.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Rovers won the League Two play-off final in 2007, but relegations in 2011 and 2014 saw the club drop into the Conference Premier. They finished second in the Conference under the stewardship of Darrell Clarke and immediately regained their Football League status with victory in the 2015 play-off Final. They followed up this success by securing promotion out of League Two at the end of the 2015–16 season. They were relegated from the third tier in 2020–21 but returned at the first attempt. Rovers have won the Gloucestershire Cup 32 times, the Third Division South Cup in 1932, the Watney Cup in 1972, and have been Football League Trophy finalists two times.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The club was formed following a meeting at the Eastville Restaurant in Bristol in September 1883. It was initially called Black Arabs F.C., after the Arabs rugby team and the predominantly black kits in which they played. This name only lasted for the 1883–84 season, and in a bid to draw more fans from the local area the club was renamed Eastville Rovers in 1884.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The club played only friendly games until the 1887–88 season, when it took part in the Gloucestershire Cup for the first time. In 1892 the club became a founder member of the Bristol and District League, which three years later was renamed the Western League. In 1897 Eastville Rovers joined the Birmingham and District League, and for two seasons played in both this league and the Western League. At the beginning of the 1897–98 season, the club turned professional and changed its name to Bristol Eastville Rovers, and on 17 February 1899 the name was officially changed to Bristol Rovers. In 1899 Bristol Rovers joined the newly formed Southern League, where they remained until 1920, winning the league title along the way in 1905.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: For the 1920–21 season, the Southern League teams were moved into the new Division Three of the Football League, which became Division Three (South) the following season. They remained in this division for over 30 years, before winning the league, and promotion in the 1952–53 season.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The team has won promotion on six other occasions: in 1973–74 from the Third Division to the Second Division, again in 1989–90 as Division Three champions, in 2006–07 to the Football League One, in 2014–15 to League Two from the Conference Premier, in 2015–16 to League One and then in 2021-22 to League One from League Two. The club has been relegated six times—in 1961–62, 1980–81, 1992–93, 2000–01, 2010–11 and most recently at the end of the 2013–14 season.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The highest position in the football ladder achieved by Rovers at the end of season is sixth place in the second tier, which they did twice; once in 1955–56, and again in 1958–59. The closest they came to the top flight was in 1955–56, when they ended the season just four points below the promotion positions. The lowest league position achieved by the club is twenty-third out of twenty-four teams in the fourth tier, which has occurred twice. In the 2001–02 season, relegation from the Football League was narrowly avoided on two counts; firstly they ended just one league position above the relegation zone, and secondly the rules were changed the following season to increase the number of relegation places to two, meaning that if Rovers had finished in that position one year later they would have been relegated. This position was matched at the end of the 2013–14 season, which this time saw Rovers relegated to the Conference for the first time. They returned to the league at the end of their first Conference season, with a penalty shootout victory over Grimsby Town in the play-off final. In February 2016 it was announced that a 92% stake in the club had been bought by the Jordanian al-Qadi family and that Wael al-Qadi, a member of the Jordan Football Association, would become the president. The club is now owned by Dwane Sports Ltd with 92.6% of the shares with Bristol Rovers Supporters Club owning the remaining 7.4%. In May 2016 the club recorded a second consecutive promotion in dramatic fashion finishing third in League Two after a 92nd-minute goal secured victory over Dagenham and Redbridge and Accrington Stanley failed to beat Stevenage on the last day of the season. It marked the first time Rovers had reached the third tier of English Football since relegation in 2011. In June 2020 it was announced that president Wael al-Qadi had obtained a 90% stake in Dwane Sports Ltd after buying the shares of other members of his family it was also announced that the club's debt would be capitalised and a new training facility would begin construction at Hortham Lane, Almondsbury which is close to the M5 motorway. Rovers have owned the site known as 'The Colony' since 2017 and in June 2020 the club announced that it would be ready for the start of the 2020–21 season.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The only major cup competition won by Bristol Rovers is the 1972 Watney Cup, when they beat Sheffield United in the final. The club also won the Division Three (South) Cup in 1934–35, as well as winning or sharing the Gloucestershire Cup on 32 occasions. The team has never played in European competition; the closest Rovers came was when they missed out on reaching the international stage of the Anglo-Italian Cup in the 1992–93 season on a coin toss held over the phone with West Ham United.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In the FA Cup, Rovers have reached the quarter-final stage on three occasions. The first time was in 1950–51 when they faced Newcastle United at St James' Park in front of a crowd of 62,787, the record for the highest attendance at any Bristol Rovers match. The second time they reached the quarter final was in 1957–58, when they lost to Fulham, and the most recent appearance at this stage of the competition was during the 2007–08 season, when they faced West Bromwich Albion. They were the first Division Three team to win an FA Cup tie away to a Premier League side, when in 2002 they beat Derby County 3–1 at Pride Park Stadium.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: They have twice reached the final of the Football League Trophy, in 1989–90 and 2006–07, but finished runners-up on both occasions. On the second occasion they did not allow a single goal against them in the competition "en route" to the final, but conceded the lead less than a minute after the final kicked off.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Bristol Rovers main rivals are city neighbours Bristol City, with whom they contest the Bristol derby. This rivalry was deemed 8th fiercest rivalry in English football in an in-depth report by the Football Pools in 2008. The most recent encounter between the clubs took place on 4 September 2013, which saw Rovers beaten by City in a Football League Trophy tie at Ashton Gate Stadium by a 2–1 scoreline. Other rivals are Newport County and mainly teams from the West Country, such as Swindon Town, Cheltenham Town, Yeovil Town and Forest Green Rovers.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In the past, rivalries also emerged with Severnside rivals Cardiff City known as the Severnside derby. Rovers most recent meeting against Cardiff was a League Cup match on 11 August 2016, which Rovers won 1–0 with Chris Lines scoring the winner. The last time Cardiff and Bristol Rovers were in the same league was in the 1999–2000 season.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The first time Rovers encountered Yeovil was a Football League Trophy match which was played on 31 October 2001, which Rovers won via a penalty shoot-out. The most recent encounter between the teams was in a Football League Two match on 16 April 2016, which Rovers won 2–1. Because of the close proximity many players have also represented both the clubs, for example Adam Virgo, Gavin Williams, Dominic Blizzard and Tom Parkes.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Rovers last played Swindon Town in the 2021–22 League Two season (a 1–1 draw) Cheltenham Town in the first round of the EFL cup in 2019 (Rovers won 3–0) and Forest Green Rovers in the 2022–23 League One season (a 2–1 home defeat).


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Other clubs in the West country such as Plymouth Argyle and Exeter City have also been considered rivals despite being further away from Bristol (162 km for Plymouth and 104 km for Exeter). Bristol Rovers last played Plymouth in the 2022–23 League One season where Rovers drew 2–2 at home and they last played Exeter away in the 2022–23 season when they also drew 2–2.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Bristol Rovers are known for their distinctive blue and white quartered shirts, which they have worn for most of their history. The current home kit consists of a light blue and white quartered shirt and white shorts, while the away kit is black and gold with the same colours as the trim. During the 2008–09 season a special third strip, which is black with a gold sash, and is a reproduction of the original "Black Arab" shirt, was used for a single match to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the club.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The team began playing in black shirts with a yellow sash from their foundation in 1883 as Black Arabs F.C. until 1885, by which time they were called Eastville Rovers. For the next fourteen years, until 1899, the team wore blue and white hooped shirts. These were replaced by black and white striped shirts until 1919.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: When Rovers were admitted to The Football League in 1920 they wore white shirts with blue shorts. These remained the team colours until 1930, when the colours were reversed to blue shirts and white shorts for one season. The blue and white quarters were first worn in 1931, when they were introduced to try to make the players look larger and more intimidating. Rovers continued to wear the quarters for 31 years until they were replaced by blue pinstripes on a white background.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Over the next ten years, Rovers went on to wear blue and white stripes, all blue, and blue shirts with white shorts before returning to the blue and white quarters in 1973, which have remained the colours ever since. During the 1996–97 season, Rovers wore an unpopular striped quartered design, prompting fans to refer to it as the Tesco bag shirts because of their similarity to the design used for the company's carrier bags. The change in design prompted the Trump"ton Times" fanzine to change its name to "Wot, No Quarters?"


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The black and gold shirts were also used as the away kit for the 2002–03 season, the club's 120th anniversary.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In 2005, Rovers ran an April Fools' joke on their official website, stating that the team's new away strip would be all pink. Although this was intended to be a joke, a number of fans petitioned the club to get the kit made for real, and also suggested that funds raised through the sale of the pink shirts should be donated to a breast cancer charity. Although the pink shirts were never used in a competitive fixture, they were worn for a pre-season friendly against Plymouth Argyle in 2006.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: A pirate features on both the club badge and the badge of the supporters club, reflecting the club nickname of The Pirates. Previous club badges have featured a blue and white quartered design, based on the quartered design of the team's jerseys.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Rovers first used Bukta as an official kit supplier in 1977, and Great Mills as the first kit sponsor followed 1981. Rovers' longest running kit supplier is Errea who supplied the club kits for eleven years (2005–16). The club's longest running kit sponsorship was from local company Cowlin Construction who sponsored the club for 11 years before ending the deal in 2009. Following the end of the Cowlin deal, sponsors were chosen by raffle, via the 1883 Club. This process lasted nine seasons before the club announced Football INDEX as new sponsors for both home and away kits. In 2019 Utilita become the main shirt sponsors of both the home and away kits for the 2019-2020 season, the deal was then extended in July 2020 to cover the 2020-2021 season marking the first time a shirt sponsor had lasted for more than one season since the end of the Cowlin sponsorship in 2009.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Rovers play their home games at the Memorial Stadium in Horfield, a ground they formerly shared with Bristol Rugby. The team moved to The Mem, as it is known informally, at the beginning of the 1996–97 season, initially as tenants but purchased it two years later.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: When Bristol Rovers were known as Black Arabs F.C. in 1883, they played their home games at Purdown, Stapleton. The following year they moved to Three Acres, the precise location of which is not known, but is believed to have been in the Ashley Down area of Bristol, where they remained for seven years. This was followed by brief stays at the Schoolmasters Cricket Ground, Durdham Down and Ridgeway.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: For the majority of their history, Bristol Rovers have played their home games at the Eastville Stadium, where they remained for a period of 89 years from 1897 to 1986. Financial problems led to the team being forced to leave Eastville, and they found a temporary home at Twerton Park, the home of Bath City. They stayed in Bath for 10 seasons, leading to the chant that there really is only 1 team in Bristol, before returning to Bristol in 1996.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Rovers also played five home games at Ashton Gate Stadium, home of rivals Bristol City, following a fire which destroyed the South Stand of the Eastville Stadium on the night of the 16–17 August 1980. Rovers returned to Eastville in October 1980. During World War II, some friendly matches were played in Kingswood, and in their early history some games were played at Parson Street, Bedminster


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In January 2007 planning permission was granted for a new 18,500 capacity all-seater stadium to be built on the site of the Memorial Stadium. The project was abandoned after a series of delays. In June 2011, the club announced its intention to relocate the club to a new 21,700 all-seater stadium on the University of the West of England's Frenchay campus. The planned UWE Stadium was shelved in August 2017 due to disputes between the club and the university, and attention returned to redeveloping the Memorial Stadium.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In June 2020 the club began construction of a new training facility at a site on Hortham Lane, Almondsbury near the M5 motorway. The site is set to include two full size pitches, a goalkeeping area, a gym and a clubhouse building. Having owned the land since 2017, no work had previously been carried out before the club moved into the training ground for the start in October 2020.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The team traditionally draws the majority of its support from north and east Bristol and South Gloucestershire. Many towns and villages in the surrounding area are also home to significant pockets of Rovers supporters.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The nickname given to Bristol Rovers supporters is "Gasheads". "The Gas" was originally coined as a derogatory term by the supporters of Bristol Rovers' rivals Bristol City, and was in reference to the large gas works adjacent to the old Bristol Rovers stadium, in Eastville, Bristol which wafted the sometimes overpowering odour of town gas across the crowd. "Gasheads" was adopted as a name by a splinter group of Rovers supporters in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The chant "Proud to be a Gashead" spread to regular fans, and a fanzine was produced called "The Gashead".


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The term "Gasheads" is now universally accepted within the English media and football fraternity as referring to Bristol Rovers supporters. After the club's relegation to Football League Two in 2001, the club designated the squad number 12 to the Gasheads to signify them as the club's 12th Man in recognition of their loyal support.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The retired Conservative MP for Hayes and Harlington Terry Dicks was a Bristol Rovers fan. He mentioned the club in parliament on 5 May 1994 when debating with Labour MP and Chelsea fan Tony Banks. Other notable fans are local musicians Roni Size and Geoff Barrow of Portishead and writer David Goldblatt. and Declan Hynds. Former Bristol Rovers player and manager, Ian Holloway, who also managed QPR and Blackpool as well as featuring as a pundit, is still a big fan of the club.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Based on September 2014 statistics released by the Home Office, the Rovers fan base were named the Most Dangerous English Football fan base for the 2013-2014 season, with 57 arrests on the season, of which 35% were for "violent disorder." Particularly dangerous was the scene on 3 May 2014 when the Rovers were assured relegation from the Football League for the first time.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The Rovers fans have good relations with Spanish club CE Sabadell FC, which initially began due to several Rovers fans noticing that the club had the same colours. In July 2016 the clubs played each other in a pre-season match in Spain.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: One Bristol Rovers print fanzine is currently active and is entitled "Last Saturday Night". There is also a fan-run podcast and blog called "GasCast".


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Opinions differ as to how this came about but it is thought to have become popular in the 1950s when a version of the song was in the British charts—the line "sometimes I have a great notion to jump in the river and drown"—seemed to be particularly apt when Rovers lost as the Bristol Frome flows alongside the old Eastville ground. It is believed that John Clapham is responsible for the song as he used to work at Eastville stadium for the greyhound racing and the last record he would play at the end of the night was "Goodnight Irene" also having a daughter called Irene, the record would then be left in the player and was played at the football. Another theory is that it was sung at a fireworks display at the Stadium the night before a home game against Plymouth Argyle in the 1950s. During the game the following day, Rovers were winning quite comfortably and the few Argyle supporters present began to leave early prompting a chorus of "Goodnight Argyle" from the Rovers supporters—the tune stuck and "Irene" became the club song.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: Another popular Bristol Rovers song is "Tote End Boys", which was written and sung by Ben Gunstone. The name derives from the section of Gasheads who stood in the Tote End terrace at Rovers' old home, Eastville Stadium.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The football club launched its official Hall of Fame in 2021 in partnership with Retro Rovers podcast with the purpose of recognising the players and managers who had had the greatest impact. It was announced that ten people would be inducted in the Hall at a rate of one per week in the first half of 2021, with three added per year thereafter. The first inductee was the club's all-time record goalscorer Geoff Bradford.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: This is a list of the other most noted former players at Bristol Rovers Football Club (excluding those listed in the Hall of Fame above) stating the period that each player spent at the club, their nationality and their reason for being listed. To be included in this list a player must have made over 400 league appearances for the club, scored over 100 league goals or hold a club record.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: 36 men have been appointed as a manager of Bristol Rovers Football Club, excluding caretaker managers. Bobby Gould, Gerry Francis and John Ward are the only men to have been given the job on a permanent basis twice, although Garry Thompson had a spell as caretaker manager before later being appointed permanently, and Phil Bater was caretaker manager on two occasions.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The Bristol Rovers Academy currently operates at The City Academy Bristol and Sir Bernard Lovell School. Current first-team squad members Alfie Kilgour, Luca Hoole and Jed Ward all graduated from the Academy to earn professional contracts. In May 2021, U16s player Kyrie Pierre joined Aston Villa for an undisclosed six-figure fee, a record fee received by the Academy for a player. Perhaps the most successful former member of the academy is Scott Sinclair, who was signed by Chelsea in 2005 for £200,000, with further payments to the club possible, depending on performance. In October 2022, he returned to Bristol Rovers following his release from Championship club Preston North End. Other former Academy players currently contracted to teams in the Premier League or English Football League include Ryan Broom (Cheltenham Town), Ellis Harrison (Port Vale), Tom Lockyer (Luton Town), Matt Macey (Luton Town) and Ollie Clarke (Mansfield Town).


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: The club had a successful women's team, formed in 1998 as Bristol Rovers W.F.C. following a merger with Cable-Tel L.F.C.. This merger came about as Bristol Rovers only had girls teams up to the under 16 age group level, so when girls reached the age of 16 they were forced to leave the club. The merger with Cable-Tel meant that Bristol Rovers had a senior squad. The club's name was changed to Bristol Academy W.F.C. in 2005 to reflect the increased investment from the Bristol Academy of Sport. In 2016, Bristol Academy were re-branded as Bristol City following a sponsorship arrangement with Rovers' local rivals.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

text: In 2019 it was announced that Rovers were to reform their women's team. They have fielded two teams in the Gloucestershire County Women's Football League since the 2019–20 season. The relaunched Bristol Rovers Women's FC was founded by Matthew Davies and Nathan Hallett-Young. The first team currently play in Division One with a development team playing in Division Two.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Joseph Saddler (born January 1, 1958), popularly known by his stage name Grandmaster Flash, is an American DJ and rapper. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Hip Hop DJing, cutting, scratching and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first Hip Hop act to be honored. In 2019 he won the Polar Music Prize. On May 21, 2022, he acquired an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Buffalo State College.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Saddler's family immigrated to the United States from Barbados. He was raised in the Bronx, New York City, where he attended Samuel Gompers High School, a public vocational school. There, he learned how to repair electronic equipment. Saddler's parents played an important role in his interest in music. His father was a fan of Caribbean and African American recordings.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: During his childhood, Joseph Saddler was fascinated by his father's record collection. In an interview, he reflected: "My father was a very heavy record collector... I used to open his closets and just watch all the records he had. I used to get into trouble for touching his records, but I'd go right back and bother them." Saddler's early interest in DJing came from this fascination with his father's record collection as well as his mother's desire for him to educate himself in electronics. After high school, he became involved in the earliest New York DJ scene, attending parties set up by early luminaries, like DJ Kool Herc and Disco King Mario.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Grandmaster Flash carefully studied the styles and techniques of earlier DJs, particularly Pete Jones, Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flowers. As a teenager, he began experimenting with DJ gear in his bedroom, eventually developing and mastering three innovations that are still considered standard DJing techniques today.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Grandmaster Flash played parties and collaborated with rappers such as Kurtis Blow and Lovebug Starski. In the late 1970s, he formed his own group. The original lineup consisted of Cowboy (Keef Cowboy), Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) and The Kidd Creole (AKA Kidd Creole/Nathaniel Glover), and the ensemble went by the name "Grandmaster Flash & the 3 MCs". Cowboy created the term "hip hop". He created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Mel was the first rapper to call himself "MC" (Master of Ceremony). Two other rappers briefly joined, but they were replaced more permanently by Rahiem (Guy Todd Williams, previously in the Funky Four) and Scorpio (Eddie Morris, a.k.a. Mr. Ness) to make Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Quickly gaining recognition for their skillful raps, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five pioneered MCing and freestyle battles. Some of the staple phrases in MCing have their origins in the early shows and recordings of the group. In 1978, the new group began performing regularly at Disco Fever in the Bronx, one of the first times a hip-hop group was given a weekly gig at a well-known venue.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were signed to Bobby Robinson's Enjoy Records and in 1979 released their first single, "Superrappin'".


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: In 1980 they signed to Sugar Hill Records and began touring and releasing numerous singles. The seminal "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel", released in 1981, is a 7-minute solo showcase of Grandmaster Flash's virtuosic turntable skills, combining elements of Blondie's "Rapture," Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," Chic's "Good Times," and the group's own "Freedom." It is also the first documented appearance of record scratching on a record. That year, the group opened for The Clash and were poorly received by an audience unaccustomed to the new style.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: The group's most significant hit was the electro rap song "The Message" (1982), which was produced by in-house Sugar Hill producer Clifton "Jiggs" Chase and featured session musician Duke Bootee. Unlike earlier rap tunes, "The Message" featured a grim narrative about inner city violence, drugs, and poverty. In 2002, its first year of archival, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, the first hip hop recording ever to receive this honor. Critics praised the song's social awareness, calling the chorus "a slow chant seething with desperation and fury."


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Other than Melle Mel, no members of the group actually appear in the song. Rahiem lip-synced Duke Bootee's vocal in the music video. The same year, Grandmaster Flash appeared in the movie "Wild Style" and sued Sugar Hill over the non-payment of royalties. Tensions mounted as "The Message" gained in popularity, eventually leading to a rupture between Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. Soon the group disintegrated entirely. Grandmaster Flash, The Kidd Creole, and Rahiem left Sugar Hill, signed with Elektra Records, and continued on as simply "Grandmaster Flash", while Melle Mel and the others continued on as "Grandmaster Melle Mel & the Furious Five".


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Although frequently credited on the records, Grandmaster Flash does not actually appear on "The Message," "Freedom," or many of the other Furious Five songs. Although Grandmaster Flash provided the central element of the group's sound when performing live (in addition to giving the group its name), there was little room for his turntablism in early singles driven by the grooves of live session musicians. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five reformed in 1987 for a charity concert, and in 1988 they released a new album. The group reunited again in 1994, although Cowboy died in 1989.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: In 1999, Grandmaster Flash recorded with DJ Tomekk and Flavor Flav the single "1, 2, 3, ... Rhymes Galore". The single stayed for 17 weeks in the TOP ten of the German charts.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: In 2008 he released a memoir, "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats", in which he talks about the origins of his fascination with scratching records and creating new beats. From a young age, Flash talks about how he would sneak into his father's record room to watch the record player spin, and then get punished for touching the records. He found inspiration even from things not associated with music. The spokes of his bicycle caused an interest in how record players create music just by rotating a grooved disc. Flash continued to experiment by taking apart any machine he could get his hands on to figure out how it worked. His early work shows the innovative ways in which his artistic abilities led to what is considered the first evolution of hip hop culture.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: He hosted a weekly show on Sirius Satellite Radio (Friday Night Fire with Grandmaster Flash) and was presented with the BET "I Am Hip Hop Icon" award in 2006.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip-hop/rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 12, 2007 by Jay-Z. In 2008, he remixed the single "Into the Galaxy" by the Australian group, Midnight Juggernauts.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: It has been said that "his pioneering mixing skills transformed the turntable into a true 'instrument', and his ability to get a crowd moving has made his DJ sets legendary."


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Grandmaster Flash appears in the video game "DJ Hero" as a playable character along with original mixes created for the game.


title: Grandmaster Flash

text: Aired in 2016, the Netflix original series "The Get Down" features a version of Grandmaster Flash that is played by Mamoudou Athie. The series takes place in 1977 New York City and follows the genesis of the DJing, B-boying, and hip-hop cultures of the city. After the premiere of "The Get Down", Netflix premiered "Hip-Hop Evolution", a music documentary discussing the history of hip hop in which Grandmaster Flash talks about the evolution of his art.


title: 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election

text: The 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Arkansas. Incumbent Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson is term-limited and cannot seek re-election to a third term. Arkansas is one of the eight states and one territory of the United States that limit governors to two terms for life in their constitutions, along with California, Delaware, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Oklahoma. The winner of the 2022 gubernatorial election is scheduled to be sworn in on January 10, 2023.


title: 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election

text: Primary elections in Arkansas were held on May 24. Runoff elections for instances where no candidate receives over 50% of the vote were scheduled for June 21. Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the Republican nomination, while Chris Jones won the Democratic nomination.


title: 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election

text: Leading up to the Republican Primary, Sanders received many endorsements from key Republican figures, including Donald Trump, Mike Pence, incumbent Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas' entire U.S. Congressional delegation, and dozens of GOP representatives from the State House and State Senate. She cruised to a landslide victory in the primary, and as Arkansas is a GOP stronghold, her victory virtually guaranteed she would win the general election, in which she defeated Jones by 28 points. Jones became the first Democrat to win Washington County since 2010, and Sanders became the first Republican to win majority-Black Crittenden County since her father in 1998. Sanders will become the first female Governor of Arkansas, as well as the first daughter of a former governor to take office in United States history.


title: 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election

text: In addition, with the election of Leslie Rutledge as lieutenant governor, Arkansas, along with Massachusetts, will become the first two U.S. states to have both a female governor and female lieutenant Governor serving at the same time.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The Spratly Islands (; ; Malay, ; ) are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. Composed of islands, islets, cays, and more than 100 reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls, the archipelago lies off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, and southern Vietnam. Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly who sighted Spratly Island in 1843, the islands contain less than of naturally occurring land area, which is spread over an area of more than .


title: Spratly Islands

text: The Spratly Islands are one of the major archipelagos in the South China Sea which complicate governance and economics in this part of Southeast Asia due to their location in strategic shipping lanes. The islands are largely uninhabited, but offer rich fishing grounds and may contain significant oil and natural gas reserves, and as such are important to the claimants in their attempts to establish international boundaries. Some of the islands have civilian settlements, but of the approximately 45 islands, cays, reefs and shoals that are occupied, all contain structures that are occupied by military forces from Malaysia, Taiwan (ROC), China (PRC), the Philippines or Vietnam. Additionally, Brunei has claimed an exclusive economic zone in the southeastern part of the Spratly Islands, which includes the uninhabited Louisa Reef.


title: Spratly Islands

text: In 1939, the Spratly Islands were coral islets mostly inhabited by seabirds. Despite the Spratly Islands naturally consisting of 19 islands "(see below)", according to a Chinese 1986 source, the Spratly Islands consist of 14 islands or islets, 6 banks, 113 submerged reefs, 35 underwater banks and 21 underwater shoals.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The northeast part of the Spratly Islands is known as Dangerous Ground and is characterised by many low islands, sunken reefs, and degraded, sunken atolls with coral often rising abruptly from ocean depths greater than – all of which makes the area dangerous for navigation.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The islands are all of similar nature; they are cays (or keys): sand islands formed on old degraded and submerged coral reefs.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The Spratly Islands contain almost no arable land, are largely uninhabited, and very few of the islands have a permanent drinkable water supply.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Natural resources include fish, guano, oil and natural gas. Economic activity has included commercial fishing, shipping, guano mining, oil and gas exploitation, and more recently, tourism. The Spratly Islands are located near several primary shipping lanes.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The Spratly Islands consist of islands, reefs, banks and shoals made up of biogenic carbonate. These accumulations of biogenic carbonate lie upon the higher crests of major submarine ridges that are uplifted fault blocks known by geologists as horsts. These horsts are part of a series of parallel and en echelon, half-grabens and rotated fault-blocks. The long axes of the horsts, rotated fault blocks and half-grabens form well-defined linear trends that lie parallel to magnetic anomalies exhibited by the oceanic crust of the adjacent South China Sea. The horsts, rotated fault blocks, and the rock forming the bottoms of associated grabens consist of stretched and subsided continental crust that is composed of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous strata that include calc-alkalic extrusive igneous rocks, intermediate to acid intrusive igneous rocks, sandstones, siltstones, dark-green claystones, and metamorphic rocks that include biotite–muscovite–feldspar–quartz migmatites and garnet–mica schists.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The dismemberment and subsidence of continental crust into horsts, rotated fault blocks and half-grabens that underlie the Spratly Islands and surrounding sea bottom occurred in two distinct periods. They occurred as the result of the tectonic stretching of continental crust along underlying deeply rooted detachment faults. During the Late Cretaceous and Early Oligocene, the earliest period of tectonic stretching of continental crust and formation of horsts, half-grabens, and rotated fault-blocks occurred in association with the rifting and later sea-floor spreading that created the South China Sea. During the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene additional stretching and block faulting of continental crust occurred within the Spratly Islands and adjacent Dangerous Ground. During and after this period of tectonic activity, corals and other marine life colonised the crests of the horsts and other ridges that lay in shallow water. The remains of these organisms accumulated over time as biogenic carbonates that comprise the current day reefs, shoals and cays of the Spratly Islands. Starting with their formation in Late Cretaceous, fine-grained organic-rich marine sediments accumulated within the numerous submarine half-grabens that underlie sea bottom within the Dangerous Ground region.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The geological surveys show localised areas within the Spratly Islands region are favourable for the accumulation of economic oil and gas reserves. They include thick sequences of Cenozoic sediments east of the Spratly Islands. Southeast and west of them, there also exist thick accumulations of sediments that possibly might contain economic oil and gas reserves lie closer to the Spratly Islands.


title: Spratly Islands

text: In some cays in the Spratly Islands, the sand and pebble sediments form the beaches and spits around the island. Under the influence of the dominant wind direction, which changes seasonally, these sediments move around the island to change the shape and size of the island. For example, Spratly Island is larger during the northeast monsoon (about 700 × 300 meters), and smaller during the southwest monsoon (approximately 650 × 320 meters).


title: Spratly Islands

text: Some islands may contain fresh groundwater fed by rain. Groundwater levels fluctuate during the day with the rhythm of the tides.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Phosphates from bird faeces (guano) are mainly concentrated in the beach rocks by the way of exchange-endosmosis. The principal minerals bearing phosphate are podolite, lewistonite and dehonite.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Coral reefs are the predominant structures of these islands; the Spratly group contains over 600 coral reefs in total. In April 2015 the "New York Times" reported that China were using "scores of dredgers" to convert Fiery Cross Reef and several other reefs into military facilities.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Little vegetation grows on these islands, which are subject to intense monsoons. Larger islands are capable of supporting tropical forest, scrub forest, coastal scrub and grasses. It is difficult to determine which species have been introduced or cultivated by humans. Taiping Island (Itu Aba) was reportedly covered with shrubs, coconut, and mangroves in 1938; pineapple was also cultivated there when it was profitable. Other accounts mention papaya, banana, palm, and even white peach trees growing on one island. A few islands that have been developed as small tourist resorts had soil and trees brought in and planted where there was none.


title: Spratly Islands

text: A total of 2,927 marine species have been recorded in the Spratly Sea, including 776 benthic species, 382 species of hard coral, 524 species of marine fish, 262 species of algae and sea grass, 35 species of seabirds, and 20 species of marine mammals and sea turtles. Terrestrial vegetation in the islands includes 103 species of vascular plants of magnolia branches (Magnoliophyta) of 39 families and 79 genera. The islands that do have vegetation provide important habitats for many seabirds and sea turtles. Both the green turtle ("Chelonia mydas", endangered) and the hawksbill turtle ("Eretmochelys imbricata", critically endangered) formerly occurred in numbers sufficient to support commercial exploitation. These species reportedly continue to nest even on islands inhabited by military personnel (such as Pratas) to some extent, though it is believed that their numbers have declined.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Seabirds use the islands as resting, breeding, and wintering sites. Species found here include streaked shearwater ("Calonectris leucomelas"), brown booby ("Sula leucogaster"), red-footed booby ("S. sula"), great crested tern ("Sterna bergii"), and white tern ("Gygis alba"). Little information is available regarding the current status of the islands' seabird populations, though it is likely that birds may divert nesting sites to smaller, less disturbed islands. Bird eggs cover the majority of Southwest Cay, a small island in the eastern Danger Zone. A variety of cetaceans such as dolphins, orcas, pilot whales, and sperm whales are also present around the islands.


title: Spratly Islands

text: This ecoregion is still largely a mystery. Scientists have focused their research on the marine environment, while the ecology of the terrestrial environment remains relatively unknown.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Political instability, tourism and the increasing industrialisation of neighbouring countries has led to serious disruption of native flora and fauna, over-exploitation of natural resources, and environmental pollution. Disruption of nesting areas by human activity and/or by introduced animals, such as dogs, has reduced the number of turtles nesting on the islands. Sea turtles are also slaughtered for food on a significant scale. The sea turtle is a symbol of longevity in Chinese culture and at times the military personnel are given orders to protect the turtles.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Heavy commercial fishing in the region incurs other problems. Although it has been outlawed, fishing methods continue to include the use of bottom trawlers fitted with chain rollers. In 1994 a routine patrol by Taiwan's marine navy confiscated more than 200 kg of potassium cyanide solution from fishermen who had been using it for cyanide fishing. These activities have a devastating impact on local marine organisms and coral reefs.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Some interest has been taken in regard to conservation of these island ecosystems. J.W. McManus, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, has explored the possibilities of designating portions of the Spratly Islands as a marine park. One region of the Spratly Archipelago, named Truong Sa, was proposed by Vietnam's Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment (MOSTE) as a future protected area. The site, with an area of , is currently managed by the Khánh Hòa Provincial People's Committee of Vietnam.


title: Spratly Islands

text: Military groups in the Spratly Islands have engaged in environmentally damaging activities such as shooting turtles and seabirds, raiding nests and fishing with explosives. The collection of rare medicinal plants, collecting of wood, and hunting for the wildlife trade are common threats to the biodiversity of the entire region, including these islands. Coral habitats are threatened by pollution, over-exploitation of fish and invertebrates, and the use of explosives and poisons as fishing techniques.


title: Spratly Islands

text: The average price of sand imported by Singapore was US$3 per tonne from 1995 to 2001, but the price increased to US$190 per tonne from 2003 to 2005. Although the Philippines and China had both ratified the UNCLOS III, in the case of and Johnson South Reef, Hughes Reef, Mischief Reef, the PRC dredged sand for free in the EEZ the Philippines had claimed from 1978 arguing this is the "waters of China's Nansha Islands".


title: Spratly Islands

text: Although the consequences of substrate mining are hidden, they are tremendous. Aggregate particles that are too fine to be used are rejected by dredging boats, releasing vast dust plumes and changing water turbidity.


title: Spratly Islands

text: John McManus, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said: "The worst thing anyone can do to a coral reef is to bury it under tons of sand and gravel ... There are global security concerns associated with the damage. It is likely broad enough to reduce fish stocks in the world's most fish-dependent region." He explained that the reason "the world has heard little about the damage inflicted by the Peoples Republic of China to the reefs is that the experts can't get to them" and noted "I have colleagues from the Philippines, Taiwan, PRC, Vietnam and Malaysia who have worked in the Spratly area. Most would not be able to get near the artificial islands except possibly some from PRC, and those would not be able to release their findings."


title: Spratly Islands

text: Records show the islands as inhabited at various times in history by Chinese and Vietnamese fishermen. In 1888 the Central Borneo Company were granted a lease to work guano 'on Sprattly island and Amboyna Cay' During the Second World War troops from French Indochina and Japan were in occupation. However, there is no record of large settlements on the islands until 1956, when Filipino adventurer Tomás Cloma, Sr., decided to "claim" a part of Spratly islands as his own, naming it the "Free Territory of Freedomland".


title: Spratly Islands

text: Evidence of human presence in the region extends back nearly 50,000 years at Tabon Caves on Palawan. Therefore, it is difficult to say when humans first came upon this island group. Within historical times, several groups may have passed through or occupied the islands. Between 600 BC to 3 BC there was an east to west migration by members of the seafaring Sa Huỳnh culture. This may have led them through the Spratly Islands on their way to Vietnam. These migrants were the forebears of the Cham people, an Austronesian-speaking people that founded the Old Champa empire that ruled what was known for centuries as the Champa Sea.


title: Spratly Islands

text: In the Song Dynasty work "Zhu fan zhi" by Zhao Rugua, the name "Thousand Li Stretch of Sands" ("Qianli Changsha", ) and the "Ten-Thousand Li of Stone Pools/Beds" ("Wanli Shitang" , or "Wanli Shichuang" ) were given, interpreted by some to refer to Paracel and Spratly respectively. "Wanli Shitang" is also recorded in the "History of Yuan" to have been explored by the Chinese during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty and may have been considered by them to have been within their national boundaries. However, the Yuan also ruled over Korea, Outer Mongolia, and parts of modern Russia. They are also referenced, sometimes with different names, in the Ming dynasty. For example, in the Mao Kun map dating from Zheng He's voyage of the early 15th century, "Shixing Shitang" () is taken by some to mean Spratly, however different authors interpret the identities of these islands differently. Another Ming text, "Haiyu" (海語, On the Sea), uses "Wanli Changsha" () for Spratly and noted that it is located southeast of "Wanli Shitang" (Paracels). When the Ming Dynasty collapsed, the Qing dynasty continued to include the territory in maps compiled in 1724, 1755, 1767, 1810, and 1817, but did not officially claim jurisdiction over these islands.


title: Spratly Islands

text: A Vietnamese map from 1834 also combines the Spratly and Paracel Islands into one region known as "Vạn Lý Trường Sa", a feature commonly incorporated into maps of the era () ‒ that is, the same as the aforementioned Chinese island name "Wanli Changsha". According to Hanoi, Vietnamese maps record Bãi Cát Vàng ("Golden Sandbanks", referring to both the Spratly and Paracel Islands), which lay near the coast of the central Vietnam, as early as 1838. In "Phủ Biên Tạp Lục" ("The Frontier Chronicles") by scholar Lê Quý Đôn, both Hoàng Sa and Trường Sa were defined as belonging to the Quảng Ngãi District. He described it as where sea products and shipwrecked cargoes were available to be collected. Vietnamese text written in the 17th century referenced government-sponsored economic activities during the Lê dynasty, 200 years earlier. The Vietnamese government conducted several geographical surveys of the islands in the 18th century.