title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Oklahoma State University – Stillwater is listed by the Princeton Review as one of 120 “Best Western Colleges” for 2014, and as one of 75 "Best Value Colleges – Public" for 2013. The university has one of the highest rated veterinarian programs in the United States. It is ranked by U.S. News & World Report No. 73 among "Top Public Schools: National Universities" and No. 142 among all National Universities for 2014.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: In 2003, Northern Oklahoma College added a campus in Stillwater. Applicants who do not meet Oklahoma State University admission requirements may attend the NOC-OSU Gateway Program held on the campus.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is home to the Meridian Technology Center and also the state agency that oversees career technology schools in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater Public Schools is the city's only public school district. There are more than 5,400 students enrolled in the district. The district includes Highland Park, Richmond, Sangre Ridge, Skyline, Westwood and Will Rogers elementary schools; Stillwater High School; Lincoln Academy (Alternative Education); Stillwater Middle School; and Stillwater Junior High.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater has been served by the Stillwater Public Library since 1922. In 1990, Stillwater voters passed a $4.98 million bond issue for the construction of a new public library at 1107 S. Duck. The Stillwater Public Library provides a core collections of more than 100,000 volumes and includes books, audio books, music CDs, DVDs, videos magazines and newspapers as well as technological services. The library is active in the community, holding events and programs, including free computer classes, children's storytimes, and scholarly databases with information on a variety of topics.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University houses approximately 3 million volumes, 190,000 government documents, 70,000 electronic and print serials. Stillwater campus branch libraries include the Architecture Library, Curriculum Materials Library, Veterinary Medicine Library, Electronic Publishing Center and the Library Annex. It is a federal depository library.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is known as the home of red dirt music, a mixture of folk, country, blues and rock. Notable red dirt artists from Stillwater include Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, the Red Dirt Rangers, The Great Divide, No Justice, Jenny Labow, the Jason Savory Band, and the father of red dirt music, Bob Childers.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Garth Brooks, Other Lives, and The All-American Rejects launched their careers playing the local bars like Willie's Saloon, Tumbleweed Dance Hall, and Eskimo Joe's.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Eskimo Joe's was voted the “Best College Post-Game Hangout” by Sporting News, ranked third in the "Perfect 10 College Sports Bars" list by "Sports Illustrated", and named in Playboy's “Top 10 College Sports Bars.” Eskimo Joe's collectable T-shirts have been spotted all around the globe.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Tumbleweed Dance Hall, home of the world-famous annual Calf Fry, was nominated for “Dancehall of the Year” award by the Academy of Country Music.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Located on The Strip on Washington Street, Willie's Saloon is a Stillwater landmark. It is known for launching the career of Garth Brooks after he was discovered there by Dallas entertainment attorney, Rod Phelps.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater hosts several performing arts series, including performances at the City of Stillwater Community Center, the Town and Gown Community Theater. OSU's Allied Arts holds performances in the Seretean Center and the Jerry L. Davis Studio Theatre on the OSU-Stillwater campus. The McKnight Center, a new state-of-the-art performing arts center on campus, is currently under construction.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is served by several voluntary organizations dedicated to providing entertainment and cultural experiences: the Stillwater Community Singers, the Stillwater Community Band and Stillwater Jazz.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is home to a number of annual festivals and community events held throughout the year. Residents also benefit from the many events and activities hosted by Oklahoma State University.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Since 1920, Oklahoma State University has welcomed alumni to “America’s Greatest Homecoming Celebration." Each year, more than 70,000 alumni and friends return to campus for "Walkaround" and the Homecoming Parade.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Spring kicks off with the Stillwater Public Education Foundation's "A Taste of Stillwater", a fundraiser held every March. Other events include the Tumbleweed Calf Fry, the Stillwater Home Builders Association's Home and Garden Show, the Remember the 10 Run, and the OSU Jazz Festival.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Since 2012, Stillwater has hosted the annual Land Run 100, a 100-mile (161 km) bicycling endurance race around north-central Oklahoma.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The annual Red Dirt Film Festival is held every March. The independent film festival features screenings, panels, and workshops on the OSU campus.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Stillwater Arts Festival is now in its third decade. The festival is a two-day, juried art show held in April that features live entertainment, artist demonstrations, and children's activities.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Oklahoma Special Olympics’ Annual Summer Games take place every May. It is the largest amateur sporting event in Oklahoma and the largest Special Olympics event in the United States.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Since 2011, Stillwater has hosted the annual Bob Childers' Gypsy Cafe, a red dirt music festival. Benefits from the event go to the Red Dirt Relief Fund which supports Oklahoma musicians in crisis.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: In the summer, there is the Krazy Daze Shopping Extravaganza and the Payne County Fair. On Independence Day, Stillwater hosts the annual Boomer Blast, a fireworks show at Boomer Lake Park.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The fall season begins Collegefest, OSU Student Government Association's Lights on Stillwater (a trade-show style event where students learn about local organizations, shops, restaurants, and services), and the Downtown Stillwater Car Show. The annual Downtown Stillwater Halloween Festival is held the Tuesday before Halloween and includes a costume contest.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: For more than twenty years, the Eskimo Joe's Juke Joint Jog 5K and Fun Run (one mile race) have been held in the fall to benefit the Stillwater Area United Way.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Winter is celebrated with the Downtown Parade of Lights and the Madrigal Dinner Concert on the OSU campus.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Sheerar Museum of Stillwater History is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of Stillwater. The museum features exhibits on Stillwater and Payne County, including the first land run that opened Oklahoma Territory for settlement in 1889. The museum also offers a variety of temporary exhibits and programs.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum is also located in Stillwater. It is dedicated to preserving the heritage of the sport, celebrating achievements, and encouraging young athletes.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Washington Irving Trail and Museum, located in a rural setting, celebrates the heritage of Payne County. It is named for American writer Washington Irving who used to camp in the area. The museum features items from the famous Oklahoma boomer, David L. Payne.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: In October 2013, Oklahoma State University opened the OSU Museum of Art in the renovated Postal Plaza, a former WPA-built Federal Post Office in Downtown Stillwater. The university began collecting art in the 1930s, an endeavor initiated by the former head of the OSU Art Department, Doel Reed. The university also operates the Gardiner Art Gallery on campus in the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts, home of the OSU Art Department. Exhibits in the gallery, which are open to the public, vary from student and faculty exhibits to national shows.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Botanic Garden at Oklahoma State University covers more than with thousands of species of flowers, shrubs, grasses and trees. It features specialized gardens like butterfly and organic gardens, turf and nursery research centers, and a Centennial Grove. It also has a studio garden where OETA's show "Oklahoma Gardening" is filmed. The facility also has an authentic Japanese Tea Ceremony Garden.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The David L. Payne Memorial Monument, located in Boomer Lake Park, honors Oklahoma boomer, David L. Payne. In 1995, his body was exhumed and moved from Wellington, Kansas to this site. Payne County, Oklahoma, is named for him.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The International Friendship Garden is located at the City of Stillwater Community Center and was built in 1997 by the Kameoka Landscape Gardeners Association to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the sister city relationship between Stillwater and Kameoka, Japan. The gardeners shipped 22 tons of materials, tools, and supplies to Stillwater from Japan. Over a two-week period, they constructed a traditional Japanese garden. They also built a small tea garden at OSU's Oklahoma Botanical Garden and Arboretum. The International Friendship Garden was dedicated Sunday, July 26, 1998, with a delegation from Kameoka in attendance.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Stillwater Public Library dedicated a bronze statue of Oklahoma historian and author Angie Debo on November 18, 2010. Created by local artist Phyllis Mantik, the statue depicts a young Debo sitting on a rock with several books by her side. Mantik chose to depict the historian as a young woman to illustrate that, at an early age, she chose the life of a scholar. To highlight Debo's importance to Oklahoma's Native American community, the base of the statue is surrounded by the seals of Oklahoma's 38 federally recognized Native American tribes.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: "Payne County's Grandest Elm Tree" is located in Stillwater. It has gained large attention from bystanders and neighbors of the attraction.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The city's first craft brewery, Iron Monk Brewing Company, opened in 2014. The brewery opened its taproom in 2015.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater's newspaper of record is the "NewsPress", owned by the Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. The community is also served by the weekly "Stillwater Journal", owned and published by David and Lisa Sasser. "The Daily O'Collegian" has been published since 1895 as a daily paper by Oklahoma State University and is an affiliate of the College Media Network.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is also home to several radio stations, including Stillwater Radio that broadcasts on four stations: KSPI 780 AM, 80's, 90's and 2000's Rock; KSPI 94.3 FM, 80's, 90's and 2000's Rock; KVRO 101.1 FM, classic hits and home of Stillwater High School sports; KGFY 105.5 FM, country music and the home of Perkins-Tryon High School sports (in nearby Perkins, OK), and OSU women's basketball, soccer, and softball; and KSPI 93.7 FM, adult contemporary, and the home of OSU football, baseball, men's basketball, and wrestling. KOSU 91.7 FM is owned by Oklahoma State University and is a National Public Radio station.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: White Peacock Publishing publishes "Stillwater Living Magazine", a full-color monthly magazine. "Stillwater Scene", published by Red Productions, is a monthly print and online magazine that focuses on local entertainment.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater TV is a government-access television station airing on Suddenlink Communications’s channel 14. It broadcasts programming provided by the City of Stillwater, including live and rebroadcasts of Stillwater City Council and Planning Commission meetings.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater citizens were featured in the news for threatening fellow citizens attempting to enforce public safety regulations related to COVID-19 "just three hours [after] the rule going into effect".


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: As a college town, Stillwater is home to the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Cowgirls. Oklahoma State University teams have won 52 NCAA National Championships. Men's programs include baseball, basketball, football, cross country, golf, wrestling, tennis, and track and field. Women's programs include basketball, cross country, equestrian, soccer, softball, tennis, and track and field.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team is an NCAA Division I wrestling program and is one of five Big 12 Conference schools which participate in wrestling. The team has won 34 team national championships (plus an additional three which are unofficial) and 134 individual NCAA championships.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater High School is a 6A-2 school. The Pioneers compete in football, volleyball, softball, cross country, cheerleading, pom, wrestling, basketball, swimming, baseball, golf, tennis, and soccer.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The City of Stillwater Parks and Recreation Department manages more than of parkland, including five ball complexes, ten tennis courts, two disc golf courses, four lakes, one swimming pool, 14 playgrounds, one skate and bmx bike ramp, special services centers, including the Multi Arts Center, Senior Activity Center, Community Center, Armory Gymnasium and Lakeside Golf Course.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Lake McMurtry, owned by the City of Stillwater, offers hiking and mountain-bike trails, back-to-nature camping and well-stocked reserves for fishing. Its convenience store and bait shop are open seasonal hours.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Carl Blackwell Lake is owned by Oklahoma State University. It offers camping, boat rentals, covered pavilions, and a gift shop.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater is served by a number of paved and unpaved bicycle and walking trails for non-motorized forms of transit. The Kameoka Trail Corridor includes a three-mile (5 km) loop around Boomer Lake and additional disconnected segments throughout the city. The corridor begins north at Park View Estates and runs along West Boomer Creek toward Airport Road and Boomer Lake Park, circles the lake and cuts south to Stillwater High School, crosses McElroy and continues to Hall of Fame between Main and Perkins and crosses through Hoyt Grove Park.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Other multi-use trails include an asphalt trail through Couch Park, a dirt nature trail around Sanborn Lake, bike and pedestrian trails at Lake McMurtry, and a one-mile (1.6 km) gravel screenings loop at the Oklahoma Technology & Research Park.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater has two highways running through it: Oklahoma State Highway 51, or 6th Avenue, runs east and west; and US-177, or Perkins Road, runs north and south. The city is also served by a spur that connects US-177 to the Cimarron Turnpike.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater Regional Airport (SWO) has served the city since 1917. American Airlines began service in August 2016 with two daily round trip flights to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The flights are operated on behalf of American Airlines by their regional partner Envoy Air using the 50 seat Embraer-145 jet. Private jets also fly in and out of this airport.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Public transportation is provided by the OSU/Stillwater Community Transit System. Ten bus routes are operated within Stillwater's city limits and on the OSU campus.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater has been a community-owned electric utility since 1907. The electric utility, now part of the Stillwater Utilities Authority, provides electric, water, wastewater and solid waste management services. A portion of the Utility Authority's revenues help to support the City of Stillwater's fire and police departments, the parks and recreation system, and other city services. Water in Stillwater is drawn from Kaw Lake and pumped approximately to the treatment facility.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater Medical Center is a 119-bed non-profit public trust facility. Services offered by the hospital include emergency, wound care, labor and delivery, surgery, radiology, rehabilitation, cancer care, and wellness.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The community is also served by the Stillwater Surgery Center, an outpatient surgery center, and the Stillwater Cancer Center, a physician-owned cancer treatment center. Residents who seek the full services of a teaching hospital must travel to the OSU Medical Center, about 60–70 minutes east in Tulsa.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: The Payne County Health Department is also located in Stillwater and offers services such as WIC, consumer protection, health promotion, and chronic and acute disease services.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater has been sister city to Kameoka since 1985. The State of Oklahoma and Kyoto Prefecture signed a sister state agreement in 1985 through the auspices of the governor's office. Kameoka requested a sister city in Oklahoma that was about one hour from the capital, agriculturally based, and home to a university. Stillwater was a perfect match. In 1985, the first delegation from Kameoka visited Stillwater, and in November of that same year a Stillwater delegation went to Kameoka. There, Mayors Calvin J. Anthony and Yoshihisa Taniguchi signed the Sister City Affiliation Agreement that officially established the sister cities relationship between the two cities.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Since 1989, the Stillwater Middle School and Taisei Junior High School in Kameoka have participated in a sister school relationship, which features an active teacher-student exchange program. In 2016, the Stillwater High School based string quintet, Penta-Strings, played for the during the 30-year visit of the Kameoka delegation.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: Stillwater was featured in the CW television show "Supernatural" in Season 13, Episode 12 "Various & Sundry Villains." Protagonists Sam and Dean Winchester track a pair of witches to the city to try and recover a valuable spell book.


title: Stillwater, Oklahoma

text: In the 2021 film "Stillwater" Matt Damon plays an oil rig worker from Oklahoma who goes to visit his daughter in prison in Marseilles, France in the hope to bring her back home to Stillwater.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are Indian people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji Indian indentured laborers brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority are descendants of Indians or other South Asians who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, engineers, doctors, etc. beginning in the mid-20th century.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Most Indo-Caribbean people live in the English-speaking Caribbean nations, the Dutch-speaking Suriname and the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, with smaller numbers in other Caribbean countries and, following further migration, in North America and Europe.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Indo-Caribbeans may also be referred to as Caribbean Indians, East Indian West Indians, or Caribbean Desis, while first-generation Indo-Caribbeans were called Girmitya, Desi, Kantraki, Mulki (m.) / Mulkin (f.), or Jahaji (m.) / Jahajin (f.). "Coolie", meaning hired laborer, was used in the plantation society of the late 19th to early 20th century, however in the present-day it is considered a derogatory way to refer to Indo-Caribbeans and is considered a pejorative.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: From 1838 to 1917, over half a million Indians from the former British Raj or British India and Colonial India, were taken to thirteen mainland and island nations in the Caribbean as indentured workers to address the demand for sugar cane plantation labour following the abolition of slavery.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Much like cotton, sugarcane plantations motivated large-scale near-enslavement and forced migrations in the 19th and early 20th century.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Following the passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, many formerly enslaved people left their enslavers. This created an economic chaos for European planters in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. The hard work in hot, humid farms required a regular, docile and low-waged labour force, which led to the creation of the Indian indenture system. Poor economic conditions in India led to many Indians to look for sources of work. In this system, Indians were taken to British, French and Dutch colonies around the world, including in the Caribbean, to work on cash crop plantations.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: The first ships carrying indentured labourers for sugarcane plantations left India in 1838 for the Caribbean region. In fact, the first two shiploads of Indians arrived in British Guiana (modern-day Guyana) on May 5, 1838, on board the Whitby and Hesperus.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: These ships had sailed from Calcutta. In the early decades of the sugarcane-driven migrations, the working conditions for the indentured Indian workers were abysmal, due in large part to the lack of care among the planters.. They were confined to their estates and paid a pitiful salary. Any breach of contract brought automatic criminal penalties and imprisonment. Many of these were brought away from their homelands deceptively. Many from inland regions over a thousand kilometers from seaports were promised jobs, were not told the work they were being hired for, or that they would leave their homeland and communities. They were hustled aboard the waiting ships, unprepared for the long and arduous four-month sea journey. Charles Anderson, a special magistrate investigating these sugarcane plantations, wrote to the Colonial Secretary declaring that with few exceptions, the indentured labourers are treated with great and unjust severity; European planters enforced work in sugarcane farms so harshly, that the decaying remains of immigrants were frequently discovered in sugarcane fields. If indentured labourers protested and refused to work, they were not paid or fed by the planters.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: The sugarcane plantation-driven migrations led to ethnically significant presence of Indians in Caribbean. In some islands and countries, these Indo-Caribbean migrants now constitute a significant proportion of the population. Sugarcane plantations and citizens of Indian origin continue to thrive in countries such as Guyana, formerly, British Guiana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, St. Croix, Suriname and Nevis. By some estimates, over 2.5 million people in the Caribbean are of Indian origin. Many have ethnically blended with migrants from other parts of the world, creating a unique syncretic culture.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Though production was centered in the Caribbean, sugarcane production played a significant role in pre-World War II global politics and population movements. France, for example, negotiated with Britain leading to Act XLVI of 1860, whereby large numbers of Indian indentured labourers were brought for sugarcane plantation work in French colonies in the Caribbean region. The Caribbean colonies of the Netherlands too benefitted from the indentured laborers from India.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: The ratio of female to male Indians coming to the Caribbean was for many years extremely low, 3:100 in 1938. The Indian government and the Colonial Office set up a quota system that dictated how many Indian women came to the Caribbean. In 1870, the quota called for 40 Indian women for every 100 Indian men, a quota that often was not met. In total, only 25% of all Indians who emigrated to the Caribbean were women. There were several reasons for fewer Indian women than men emigrating.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: It was more expensive for agents to recruit Indian women than men, because not many Indian women wanted to leave India. It was more socially acceptable in India for men to emigrate and seek work. Women were not encouraged to do the same. Another factor dissuading Indian women from going to the Caribbean was the invasive medical examination administered upon arrival, which involved inspection of genitals. Many women did not want to have to undergo this examination and many men would not have wanted this to happen to their wives.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Additionally, the colonial powers present in the Caribbean were not initially interested in convincing Indian women to immigrate. Colonialists saw indentureship as a temporary replacement for the labor that had previously been done by enslaved African people. Their goal was to use Indian men for labor. They did not want Indian people to start families in the Caribbean, which would establish Indian culture and people as a lasting presence in the Caribbean, undermining the power of the indenture system to control all aspects of the laborer's lives and force them into subjugation.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: In the late 1800s, there was a change in policy. The late 1880s saw competition in the sugar industry from European beet sugar, and the colonial government knew that having a settled, immobile group of Indian people to exploit for labor would be highly profitable and advantageous in the competition to dominate the sugar industry. Encouraging Indian people to stay in the Caribbean also cut the costs required to bring Indian people back to India. As indentureships ended, the Indian men who had come to work as indentured laborers were given small parcels of land to encourage settlement. Another method of encouraging settlement was to encourage more Indian women to immigrate, since permanent settlement was no longer being discouraged by the colonial powers.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Indian women who were recruited and immigrated to the Caribbean were for the most part married women joining their husbands, single women, women who had been widowed, women trying to escape poverty, and women prostitutes from the cities of Calcutta and Chennai, then called Madras. Under the indenture system, married Indian women were excused from work on the plantations and planters were required to give them medical care and rations. However, the colonial government did not recognize Hindu or Muslim marriages until the 1940s, so many married women were categorized as single and did not receive the few privileges given to married women. Married women who did not have to work in the fields took care of children and expenses. Women who worked were paid less than men.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: The majority of the Indians living in the English-speaking Caribbean came from eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar which are mostly Hindi-speakers, while those brought to Guadeloupe and Martinique were largely from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. About twenty percent (20%) of the indentured were Tamils and Telugus particularly in Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: They are the second largest group in Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Martinique and Guadeloupe.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: There are also small communities in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, French Guiana, Panama, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Netherlands Antilles. Small groups also exist in Haiti, where they are sometimes mistakenly referred to as "mulattos".


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Modern-day immigrants from India (mostly Sindhi merchants) are to be found on Saint-Martin / Sint Maarten, St. Thomas, Curaçao and other islands with duty-free commercial capabilities, where they are active in business. Other Indo-Caribbean people descend from later migrants, including Indian doctors, Gujarati businessmen and migrants from Kenya and Uganda.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Indo-Caribbeans have migrated to the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and to other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: The indentured Indians and their descendants have actively contributed to the evolution of their adopted lands in spite of many difficulties.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: In recent years, attempts to commemorate the Indian presence and contributions have come to fruition:


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: Indian Arrival Day is a holiday celebrated on May 30 in Trinidad and Tobago each year since the 1990s. It was first celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago and then other countries with significant Indian people whose ancestors came as indentured laborers. It commemorates the first arrivals from India to Trinidad and Tobago, on May 30, 1845, on the ship "Fatel Razack"


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: In 1995, Jamaica started to celebrate the arrival of Indians in Old Harbour Bay, St. Catherine Parish on May 13.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: In 2003, Martinique celebrated the 150th anniversary of Indian arrival. Guadeloupe did the same in 2004. These celebrations were not the fact of just the Indian minority, but the official recognition by the French and local authorities of their integration and their wide-scale contributions in various fields including agriculture, education, and politics, and to the diversification of the culture of the Creole peoples. Thus, the noted participation of the whole multi-ethnic population of the two islands were in these events.


title: Indo-Caribbeans

text: St. Lucia and many Caribbean countries have dedicated commemorative days to acknowledge the arrival and important contributions of their Indo-Caribbean populations. St. Lucia celebrates its Indo-Caribbean heritage on May 6. Other dates when India Arrival Day is celebrated in the Caribbean include May 5 (Guyana), May 10 (Jamaica), May 30 (Trinidad and Tobago), June 1 (St. Vincent), and June 5 (Suriname).


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The Samsung Galaxy S III (or Galaxy S3) is an Android smartphone designed, developed, and marketed by Samsung Electronics. Launched in 2012, it had sold more than 80 million units overall, making it the most sold phone in the S series. It is the third smartphone in the Samsung Galaxy S series.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: It has additional software features, expanded hardware, and a redesigned physique from its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S II, released the previous year. The "S III" employs an intelligent personal assistant (S Voice), eye-tracking ability, and increased storage. Although a wireless charging option was announced, it never came to fruition. However, there are third party kits which add support for Qi wireless charging. Depending on country, the smartphone comes with different processors and RAM capacity, and 4G LTE support. The device was launched with Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich", was updated to Android 4.3 "Jelly Bean", and can be updated to Android 4.4.2 "KitKat" on variants with 2 GB of RAM. The phone's successor, the Samsung Galaxy S4, was announced on 14 March 2013 and was released the following month.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Following an 18-month development phase, Samsung unveiled the S III on 3 May 2012. The device was released in 28 European and Middle Eastern countries on 29 May 2012, before being progressively released in other major markets in June 2012. Prior to release, 9 million pre-orders were placed by more than 100 carriers globally. The S III was released by approximately 300 carriers in nearly 150 countries at the end of July 2012. More than 20 million units of the S III were sold within the first 100 days of release and more than 50 million until April 2013.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III was well-received commercially and critically, with some technology commentators touting it as the "iPhone killer". In September 2012, TechRadar ranked it as the No. 1 handset in its constantly updated list of the 20 best mobile phones, while Stuff magazine likewise ranked it at No. 1 in its list of 10 best smartphones in May 2012. The handset also won the "European Mobile Phone of 2012–13" award from the European Imaging and Sound Association, as well as "T3" magazine's "Phone of the Year" award for 2012.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: It played a major role in boosting Samsung's record operating profit during the second quarter of 2012. , the S III is part of a high-profile lawsuit between Samsung and Apple. In November 2012, research firm Strategy Analytics announced that the S III had overtaken Apple's iPhone 4S to become the world's best-selling smartphone model in Q3 2012. Because of overwhelming demand and a manufacturing problem with the blue variant of the phone, there was an extensive shortage of the S III, especially in the United States.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The Samsung Galaxy S III was succeeded as the series flagship by the Samsung Galaxy S4 in April 2013. In April 2014, following the release of its new flagship, the Galaxy S5, Samsung released a refreshed version called the "Galaxy S3 Neo", which has a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor clocked either at 1.2 or 1.4 GHz. It has 1.5 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage and ships with Android 4.4.4 "KitKat".


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Design work on the S III started in late 2010 under the supervision of Chang Dong-hoon, Samsung's Vice President and Head of the Design Group of Samsung Electronics. From the start, the design group concentrated on a trend which Samsung dubs "organic", which suggests that a prospective design should reflect natural elements such as the flow of water and wind. Some of the results of this design were the curved outline of the phone and its home screen's "Water Lux" effect, where taps and slides produce water ripples.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Throughout the eighteen-month design process, Samsung implemented stringent security measures and procedures to maintain secrecy of the eventual design until its launch. Designers worked on three prototypes concurrently while regarding each of them as the final product. Doing so required a constant duplication of effort, as they had to repeat the same process for all three prototypes. The prototypes, of which taking photos was forbidden, were locked in a separate laboratory, accessible only by core designers. They were transported by trusted company employees, instead of third-party couriers. "Because we were only permitted to see the products and others weren't," explained Principal Engineer Lee Byung-Joon, "we couldn't send pictures or drawings. We had to explain the Galaxy S III with all sorts of words." Despite such security measures, specifications of one of the three units were leaked by Vietnamese Web site Tinhte, although it was not the selected design.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Speculation in the general public and media outlets regarding the handset's specifications began gathering momentum several months before its formal unveiling in May 2012. In February 2012, prior to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, there were rumors that the handset would incorporate a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, a display of 1080p (1080×1920 pixels) resolution, a 12-megapixel rear camera and a HD Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen. More accurate rumored specifications included 2 GB of RAM, 64 GB of internal storage, 4G LTE, a screen, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a thick chassis. Samsung confirmed the existence of the Galaxy S II's successor on 5 March 2012, but it was not until late April 2012 that Samsung's Senior Vice-President Robert Yi confirmed the phone to be called "Samsung Galaxy S III".


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: After inviting reporters in mid-April, Samsung launched the Galaxy S III during the Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2012 event at Earls Court Exhibition Centre, London, United Kingdom, on 3 May 2012, instead of unveiling their products earlier in the year during either the World Mobile Congress or Consumer Electronics Show (CES). One explanation for this decision is that Samsung wanted to minimize the time between its launch and availability. The keynote address of the hour-long event was delivered by Loesje De Vriese, Marketing Director of Samsung Belgium.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Following the launch of the Galaxy S4 in June 2013, Samsung was reportedly retiring the phone earlier than planned because of low sales numbers and to streamline manufacturing operations.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III has a plastic chassis measuring long, wide, and thick, with the device weighing . Samsung abandoned the rectangular design of the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and instead incorporated round corners and curved edges, reminiscent of the Galaxy Nexus. The device has been available in several color options: white (marketed as "marble white"), black, grey, brushed dark blue (marketed as "pebble blue"), red (marketed as "garnet red"), and brown. A "Garnet Red" model was made available exclusively to US carrier AT&T on 15 July 2012.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In addition to the touchscreen, the S III has several physical user inputs, including a home button located below the screen, an "option" key to the left side of the home button, a "back" key on the right side of the home button, a volume key on the left edge and a power/lock key on the right. At the top there is a headphone jack and one of the two microphones on the S III; the other is located below the home button.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III comes in two distinct variations that differ primarily in the internal hardware. The international S III version has Samsung's Exynos 4 Quad system on a chip (SoC) containing a 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 central processing unit (CPU) and an ARM Mali-400 MP graphics processing unit (GPU). According to Samsung, the Exynos 4 Quad doubles the performance of the Exynos 4 Dual used on the S II, while using 20 percent less power. Samsung had also released several 4G LTE versions—4G facilitates higher-speed mobile connection compared to 3G—in selected countries to exploit the corresponding communications infrastructures that exist in those markets. Most of these versions use Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 SoC featuring a dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU and an Adreno 225 GPU. The South Korean and Australian versions are a hybrid of the international and 4G-capable versions.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Like the predecessor, the S3 is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, front-facing proximity sensor and a digital compass sensor.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III has a maximum of 2 GB of RAM, depending on the model. The phone comes with either 16, 32, or 64 GB storage; additionally, microSDXC storage offers a further 64 GB for a potential total of 128 GB. Moreover, 50 GB of space is offered for two years on Dropbox—a cloud storage service—for purchasers of the device, doubling rival HTC's 25 GB storage for the same duration.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III's HD Super AMOLED display measures on the diagonal. With a 720×1280-pixel (720p) resolution, its 306 pixels per inch (PPI, a measure of pixel density) is a relatively high, which is accommodated by the removal of one of the three subpixels—red, green and blue—in each pixel to create a PenTile matrix-display; consequently, it does not share the "Plus" suffix found on the S II's Super AMOLED Plus display. The glass used for the display is the damage-resistant corning Gorilla Glass 2, except for S3 Neo variant. The device's software includes a feature known as "Smart Stay", which uses the device's front camera to detect whether the user's eyes are looking at the screen, and prevents the screen from automatically turning off while the user is still looking at it.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Like its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3 supports Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) for connection to HDMI displays. The S3 is newly equipped with Miracast support (also known as Screen Mirroring; also branded ""AllShare Cast"" by Samsung) that allows wirelessly transmitting the device's display view to a supported television or Blu-ray player with integrated miracast support.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III has an 8-megapixel (3264×2448) camera similar to that of the Galaxy S II. It can take 3264×2448-pixel resolution photos and record videos in 1920×1080-pixel (1080p) resolution.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The camera software allows digital zooming up to four times, and displays the video's current file size (in kilobytes) as well as remaining storage capacity (in megabytes) in real-time during video recording.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Samsung improved the camera's software over that of its predecessor to include zero shutter lag, and a Burst shot mode that allows capturing up to 20 full-resolution photos per row in quick succession. Another feature, "Best Shot", allows selecting the best photo out of eight frames captured in quick succession. The phone can also take pictures while recording videos. Photos can additionally be captured using voice commands such as ""cheese"", ""shoot"", ""photo"", and ""picture"". The shortcuts on the left pane are customizable.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The rear-facing camera is complemented by a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera that can record 720p videos. The phone has LED flash and autofocus.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The Galaxy S3 records videos with stereo audio and is able to capture 6 MP (3264×1836) photos during video recording, which is the full 16:9 aspect ratio section of the 4:3 image sensor.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III's user-replaceable Li-ion 2,100 mAh battery is said to have a 790-hour standby time or 11 hours of talk time on 3G, compared to 900 hours in standby and 21 hours of talk time on 2G.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Built into the battery is near field communication (NFC) connectivity, which allows users to share files, map directions and YouTube videos quickly using Wi-Fi Direct (through Android Beam), and perform non-touch payments at shops that employ specially equipped NFC cash registers. The battery can be wirelessly charged using a special charging pad (sold separately) that utilizes magnetic resonance to produce a magnetic field through which electricity could be transferred.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III is advertised as having an MHL port that can be used both as a micro-USB On-The-Go port and for connecting the phone to HDMI devices. However, a retailer later discovered that Samsung had made a modification to the electronics of the port such that only the adapter made specifically for this model by Samsung could be used.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: CNET TV torture-tested an S III by cooling it to , placing it in a heat-proof box and heating it to , and submerging it in water—the S III survived all three tests. The phone also did not exhibit any scratches when a key was repeatedly scraped against the display. However, Android Authority later carried out a drop test with the purpose of comparing the S III and the iPhone 5. The screen on the S III shattered on the second drop test, while the iPhone received only minor scuffs and scratches on the metal composite frame after three drop tests.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Accessories for the Galaxy S3 include a wireless charging kit, the "Pebble" MP3 player, a docking station, a "C-Pen", a slimline case, and a car mount.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III is powered by Android, a Linux-based, open source mobile operating system developed by Google and introduced commercially in 2008. Among other features, the software allows users to maintain customized home screens which can contain shortcuts to applications and widgets for displaying information. Four shortcuts to frequently used applications can be stored on a dock at the bottom of the screen; the button in the center of the dock opens the application drawer, which displays a menu containing all of the apps installed on the device. A tray accessed by dragging from the top of the screen allows users to view notifications received from other apps, and contains toggle switches for commonly used functions. Pre-loaded apps also provide access to Google's various services. The keyboard software is equipped with a clipboard manager.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III uses Samsung's proprietary TouchWiz graphical user interface (GUI). The "Nature" version used by the S III has a more "organic" feel than previous versions, and contains more interactive elements such as a water ripple effect on the precluded lock screen, to resemble its appearance in nature. To complement the TouchWiz interface, and as a response to Apple's Siri, the phone introduces S Voice, Samsung's intelligent personal assistant. S Voice can recognize eight languages including English, Korean, Italian and French. Based on Vlingo, S Voice enables the user to verbally control 20 functions such as playing a song, setting the alarm, or activating driving mode; it relies on Wolfram Alpha for online searches. With the "Wake-up commands" feature, voice commands can be set to launch apps and tasks out of stand-by mode, such as S Voice, camera, music player, voice recorder, missed calls, messages, and schedule. The "Auto Haptic" feature can complement audio with synchronous haptic feedback.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The precluded telephone application is equipped with additional options for noise cancellation, call holding, volume boosting and the ability to personalize the call sound.""


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The new gallery software of the Galaxy S3 allows sorting photos and videos chronologically, by location, by group. Photos with tagged faces can also be sorted by person.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The "Spiral View" feature was added with the Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 update, which displays the thumbnails in a 3D spiral.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The precluded video player software is newly equipped with the ability to play videos in a floating pop-up that can be moved freely around the screen. In addition, the video player application is able to show "motion thumbnails", which means that the preview thumbnails show a moving portion of the video.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III initially shipped with Android version 4.0.4, named "Ice Cream Sandwich", which became commercially available in March 2012 with the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus. Ice Cream Sandwich has a refined user interface, and expanded camera capabilities, security features and connectivity. In mid-June 2012, Google unveiled Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean", which employs Google Now, a voice-assistant similar to S Voice, and incorporates other software changes. Samsung accommodated Jelly Bean in the S III by making last-minute hardware changes to the phone in some markets. Jelly Bean updates began rolling out to S IIIs in selected European countries, and to the T-Mobile in the United States in November 2012. Samsung started pushing Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean to the international version of the S III in December 2012.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: This update shipped the so-called "Premium Suite Upgrade" which brought additional features to the Galaxy S3, such as split-screen app view as known from the Galaxy Note 2.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In December 2013, Samsung began rolling out Android 4.3 for the S III, adding user interface features back ported from the Galaxy S4, and support for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch. In March 2014, Samsung started the rollout of 4.4.2 KitKat for the 2 GB variant of the S III.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III comes with a multitude of pre-installed applications, including Google Apps like Google Play, YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Google Maps, Voice Search and Calendar, in addition to Samsung-specific apps such as ChatON, Game Hub, Music Hub, Video Hub, Social Hub and Navigation. To address the fact that iPhone users are reluctant to switch to Android because the OS is not compatible with iTunes, from June 2012 Samsung offered customers of its Galaxy series the Easy Phone Sync app to enable the transfer of music, photos, videos, podcasts, and text messages from an iPhone to a Galaxy device. The user is able to access Google Play, a digital-distribution multimedia-content service exclusive to Android, to download applications, games, music, movies, books, magazines, and TV programs.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Apart from S Voice, Samsung has directed the bulk of the S III's marketing campaign towards the device's "smart" features, which facilitate improved human-device interactivity. These features include: "Direct Call", the handset's ability to recognize when a user wants to talk to somebody instead of messaging them, if they bring the phone to their head; "Social Tag", a function that identifies and tags people in a photo and shares photos with them, "Smart Alert", a haptic feedback (short vibration) when the device detects being picked up after new notifications have arrived; and "Pop Up Play", which allows a video and other applications to occupy the screen at the same time. In addition, the S III can beam its screen to a monitor or be used as a remote controller (AllShare Cast and Play) and share photos with people who are tagged in them (Buddy Photo Share).


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III can access and play traditional media formats such as music, movies, TV programs, audiobooks, and podcasts, and can sort its media library alphabetically by song title, artist, album, playlist, folder, and genre. One notable feature of the S III's music player is Music Square, which analyses a song's intensity and ranks the song by mood so that the user can play songs according to their current emotional state. The device also introduced Music Hub, an online music store powered by 7digital with a catalogue of over 19 million songs.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Its "Auto Haptic" feature vibrates synchronously to the audio output for intensification, similarly to the "audio-coupled haptic effect", a feature added to stock Android in 2021.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III was the first smartphone to support Voice Over LTE with the introduction of HD Voice service in South Korea. The phone enables video calling with its 1.9 MP front-facing camera, and with support for the aptX codec, improves Bluetooth-headset connectivity. Texting on the S III does not embody any new significant features from the S II. Speech-to-text is aided by the Vlingo and Google's voice-recognition assistant. Not unlike other Android devices, there is a multitude of third-party typing applications available that could complement the S III's stock keyboard.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: On 18 June 2012, Samsung announced that the S III would have a version with enterprise software under the company's Samsung Approved For Enterprise (SAFE) program, an initiative facilitating the use of its devices for "bring your own device" scenarios in workplace environments. The enterprise S III version would support AES-256 bit encryption, VPN and Mobile Device Management functionality, and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. It was scheduled to be released in the United States in July 2012. The enterprise version was expected to penetrate the business market dominated by Research in Motion's BlackBerry, following the release of similar enterprise versions of the Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Tab line of tablet computers.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: A separate "Developer Edition" of the S III was made available from Samsung's Developer Portal. It came with an unlockable bootloader to allow the user to modify the phone's software.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: On 19 September 2012, security researchers demonstrated during Pwn2Own, a computer hacking contest held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, that the S III can be hacked via NFC, allowing attackers to download all data from the phone.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In December 2012, two hardware issues were reported by users of the S III: A vulnerability of the Exynos SoC allowed malicious apps to gain root privileges even on unrooted devices, and a spontaneous bricking of the unit, called the "sudden death vulnerability", that occurs about six months after activation. Samsung has been replacing the mainboards of affected units under warranty. In January 2013, Samsung released a firmware update that corrected both issues.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Affecting both Galaxy S II and III, some units can have high memory use without apparent cause, in itself causing units to be unable to store any more data and making the units memory to be 'full' when apparently not using all of the units internal memory available. In October 2012 Samsung noted that this was caused by a mass caching archive running in the background of units operational tasks. This copied and saved media, tasks and app information to a background archive which was not accessible to the user without change and re-writing of the phones operational script. When this has been altered access can be gained and the cache can be deleted and no further caching will occur unless requested. This issue was resolved for the Galaxy S III (and Later) model.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: while the more recent incident occurred when a Swiss teenager was left with second and third degree burns in her thigh caused by her phone's explosion.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In October 2013, Samsung acknowledged swelling and overheating issues with the Li-ion batteries in many S III phones, and offered replacement batteries for affected devices.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: According to an anonymous Samsung official speaking to the "Korea Economic Daily", the S III received more than 9 million pre-orders from 100 carriers during the two weeks following its London unveiling, making it the fastest-selling gadget in history. Within a month of the London unveiling, auction and shopping website eBay noted a 119-percent increase in second-hand Android phone sales. According to an eBay spokesperson, this was "the first time anything other than an Apple product has sparked such a selling frenzy."


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III was released in 28 countries in Europe and the Middle East on 29 May 2012. To showcase its flagship device, Samsung afterwards embarked on a global month-long tour of the S III to nine cities, including Sydney, New Delhi, and cities in China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III has helped Samsung consolidate its market share in several countries including India, where Samsung expected to capture 60 percent of the country's smartphone market, improving on its previous 46 percent. Within a month of release, Samsung had a 60-percent market share in France, while the company controlled over 50 percent of the German and Italian smartphone markets. Over a similar period the S III helped increase Samsung's market share in the United Kingdom to over 40 percent, while eroding the iPhone 4S's 25 percent to 20 percent in the country. The S III was scheduled to be released in North America on 20 June 2012, but because of high demand, some US and Canadian carriers delayed the release by several days, while some other carriers limited the market at launch.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III's US launch event took place in New York City, hosted by "Twilight" actress Ashley Greene and attended by dubstep artist Skrillex, who performed at Skylight Studios.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Samsung estimated that by the end of July 2012, the S III would have been released by 296 carriers in 145 countries, and that more than 10 million handsets would have been sold. Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile communications sector, announced on 22 July that sales had exceeded 10 million. According to an assessment by Swiss financial services company UBS, Samsung had shipped 5–6 million units of the phone in the second quarter of 2012 and would ship 10–12 million handsets per quarter throughout the rest of the year. An even more aggressive prediction by Paris-based banking group BNP Paribas said 15 million units will be shipped in the third quarter of 2012, while Japanese financial consultant company Nomura placed the figure for this quarter as high as 18 million. Sales of the S III were estimated to top 40 million by the end of the year. To meet demand, Samsung had hired 75,000 workers, and its South Korean factory was running at its peak capacity of 5 million smartphone units per month.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: A manufacturing flaw resulted in a large portion of the new smartphones having irregularities with the "hyper-glazing" process. The mistake caused an undesirable finish on the blue back covers and resulted in the disposal of up to 600,000 plastic casings and a shortage of the blue model. The issue was later resolved; however, Reuters estimated that the shortage had cost Samsung two million S III sales during its first month of release.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: On 6 September 2012, Samsung revealed that sales of the S III had reached 20 million in 100 days, making it three and six times faster-selling than the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S, respectively. Europe accounted for more than 25 percent of this figure with 6 million units, followed by Asia (4.5 million) and the US (4 million); sales in South Korea, the S III's home market, numbered 2.5 million. Around the same time of Samsung's announcement, sales of the S III surpassed that of the iPhone 4S in the US.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In the third quarter of 2012, more than 18 million S III units were shipped, making it the most popular smartphone at the time, ahead of the iPhone 4S's 16.2 million units. Analysts deduced that the slump in iPhone sales was due to customers' anticipation of the iPhone 5.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: By May 2014, the S III had sold approximately 60 million units since its 2012 release. In April 2015, the total sales number was reported as 70 million.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: On 11 October 2012 Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S III Mini, a smartphone with lower specifications compared to the S III.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The reception of the S III has been particularly positive. Critics noted the phone's blend of features, such as its S Voice application, display, processing speed, and dimensions as having an edge over its competition, the Apple iPhone 4S and HTC One X. Vlad Savov of "The Verge" declared it a "technological triumph", while Natasha Lomas of CNET UK lauded the phone's "impossibly slim and light casing and a quad-core engine", calling it the "Ferrari of Android phones", a sentiment affirmed ("a prince among Android phones") by Dave Oliver of "Wired UK" and ("king of Android") Esat Dedezade of "Stuff" magazine. Gareth Beavis of TechRadar described the S III as "all about faster, smarter and being more minimal than ever before while keeping the spec list at the bleeding edge of technology." Matt Warman of "The Daily Telegraph" said, "On spending just a short time with the S3, I'm confident in saying that it's a worthy successor to the globally popular S2".


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Upon release, a number of critics and publications have made references to the S III, Samsung's 2012 flagship phone, as an "iPhone killer", responding perhaps to Apple's favourable customer perception. The label owes itself to the S III's use of the Android OS—the chief rival of Apple's iOS—as well as its design and features that rival the iPhone 4S such as Smart Stay, a large display, a quad-core processor, Android customizability, and a multitude of connectivity options.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: The S III was the first Android phone to have a higher launch price than the iPhone 4S when the Apple product was released in 2011. With the S III, Tim Weber, business editor of the BBC, observed, "With the new Galaxy S3 they [Samsung] have clearly managed to move to the front of the smartphone field, ahead of mighty Apple itself."


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: Conversely, reviewers have opined on the design and feel of phone, calling its polycarbonate shell "cheap" and having a "slippery feel". The S Voice was described as "not optimised" and "more rigid than Siri" with its poor voice-recognition accuracy, with instances when it would not respond at all. Another usage problem was a microphone malfunction that resulted in difficulty communicating during a call. Reviewers have noted the somewhat abrupt auto-adjustment of display brightness, which tends to under-illuminate the screen; however, it has twice the battery life compared to the HTC handset, achieved partly through the dim display. Others say the numerous pre-installed apps make the S III feel "bloated".


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In late-September 2012 TechRadar ranked it as the No. 1 handset in its constantly updated list of the 20 best mobile phones; "Stuff" magazine also ranked it at No. 1 in its list of 10 best smartphones in May 2012. The S III won an award from the European Imaging and Sound Association under the category of "European Mobile Phone" of 2012–2013. In 2012, the S III won "T3"'s "Phone of the Year" award, beating the iPhone 4S, the Nokia Lumia 900, the Sony Xperia S and others and was voted Phone of the Year by readers of tech website S21. In February 2013, the S III won the "Best Smartphone" award from the GSMA at Mobile World Congress.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: On 5 June 2012, Apple filed for preliminary injunctions in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Samsung Electronics, claiming the S III had violated at least two of the company's patents. Apple requested that the court include the phone in its existing legal battle against Samsung, and ban sales of the S III prior to its scheduled 21 June 2012 US launch. Apple claimed the alleged infringements would "cause immediate and irreparable harm" to its commercial interest. Samsung responded by declaring it would "vigorously oppose the request and demonstrate to the court that the Galaxy S3 is innovative and distinctive", and reassured the public that 21 June release would proceed as planned. On 11 June, Judge Lucy Koh said that Apple's claim would overload her work schedule, as she would also be overseeing the trial of Samsung's other devices; consequently, Apple dropped its request to block 21 June release of the S III.


title: Samsung Galaxy S III

text: In mid-July 2012, Samsung removed the universal search feature on Sprint and AT&T S III phones with over-the-air (OTA) software updates to disable the local search function as a "precautionary measure" prior to its patent court trial with Apple, which began on 30 July 2012. Although Apple won the trial, the S III experienced a sales spike because of the public's belief that the phone would be banned. On 31 August 2012, Apple asked the same federal court to add the S III into its existing complaint, believing the device has violated its patents. Samsung countered with the statement: "Apple continues to resort to litigation over market competition in an effort to limit consumer choice."


title: Zabur

text: The Zabūr (also "Zabur", ) is, according to Islam, the holy book of David, one of the holy books revealed by God before the Quran, alongside others such as the "Tawrāh (Torah)" and the Injīl (Gospel). Muslim tradition maintains that the Zabur mentioned in the Quran is the Psalms of David.


title: Zabur

text: The Christian monks and ascetics of pre-Islamic Arabia may be associated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry with texts called "zabūr", which in other contexts may refer to palm leaf documents. This has been interpreted by some as referring to psalters.


title: Zabur

text: Among many Christians in the Middle East and in South Asia, the word "Zabur" (Hindustani , ) is used for the Psalms of David in the Hebrew Bible.


title: Zabur

text: The Arabic word "zabūr" means "book" "inscription," or "writing." In early sources it may refer to South Arabian writing on palm leaves.


title: Zabur

text: Much of Western scholarship sees the word "zabūr" in the sense "psalter" as being a conflation of Arabic "zabūr", "writing", with the Hebrew word for "psalm", "mizmōr" () or its Aramaic equivalent "mazmūrā" ().


title: Zabur

text: An alternate, less accepted origin for the title "zabūr" in this sense is that it is a corruption of the Hebrew "zimrah" () meaning "song, music" or "sippūr" (), meaning "story."


title: Zabur

text: In the Qur'an, the Zabur is mentioned by name three times. The Qur'an itself says nothing about the Zabur specifically, except that it was revealed to Dawud and that in the Zabur is written "My servants the righteous, shall inherit the earth".


title: Zabur

text: In the Quran, the Zabur refers to the Psalms of David. The Quran 21:105 says that in the Zabur there is a quote "the land is inherited by my righteous servants". This resembles the 29th verse of Psalm 37 which says, "The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever," (as translated in the King James Version of the Bible).


title: Zabur

text: Ahrens supports the view that Al-Anbiya 105 is quoting from the Psalms (1930). He says that the verse in the Qur'an reads, "We have written in the Zabur after the reminder that My righteous servants shall inherit the earth." His conclusion is that this verse represents a close and rare linguistic parallel with the Hebrew Bible and, more pointedly, with Psalm 37 ascribed specifically to David (see wording in verses ).


title: Zabur

text: Christian apologist Karl Gottlieb Pfander suggested that the Qur'an's reference to Zabur actually refers to the third division of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the Writings or Ketuvim, a broader grouping of Jewish holy books encompassing the Psalms and other collections of Hebrew literature and poetry.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: The Devil's Rain is a 1975 horror film directed by Robert Fuest. It was one of several B-films in which William Shatner starred between the original "" television series and "" (1979). Other cast members included Tom Skerritt, Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, Keenan Wynn and John Travolta in his film debut in a minor role. Satanist Anton LaVey is credited as the film's technical advisor and appeared in the film playing a minor role. Although apparently taking place in an unspecified part of the American Southwest, the movie was shot in Durango, Mexico.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: A curse affects the Preston family, caused by an ancestor's betrayal of the Satanic priest Jonathan Corbis in colonial New England. Corbis has harassed the Preston family for generations to obtain a book containing the signatures of the members of his cult which bind their souls to Satan. In what appears to be 1970s Arizona, Corbis captures patriarch Steve Preston, who is allowed to escape to warn his wife Emma and son Mark. He tells them to give the book to Corbis, before melting into a waxy substance. Mark advises Emma to keep the book hidden and entrusts her to family friend John. However, moments after he leaves to meet Corbis, he hears Emma scream and returns to find the Satanists have abducted Emma, leaving John bound, hanging by his feet and terrified.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: In a ghost town in the desert, Mark challenges Corbis to a battle of faith. Corbis leads Mark to his cult's church where he reveals that Emma has joined them, as reflected by her now eyeless face. When Mark refuses to do the same (even resisting the temptations of Lilith), he is surrounded and overwhelmed by Corbis's followers, despite deploying the power of a Christian amulet.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: Sheriff Owens scoffs at John's story of eyeless cultists living in a long-deserted town and refuses to conduct a search for the three missing Prestons, so Mark's older brother, Tom, and his wife Julie search for them on their own. In the ghost town they are attacked by Satanists. After escaping, Tom sends Julie to summon the authorities while he returns to rescue Mark. En route, Julie is captured by a Satanist who was waiting hidden in her car.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: Wearing the robe of a defeated Satanist, Tom infiltrates Corbis's church, where Corbis performs a ceremony to convert Mark into one of his eyeless minions. Tom is discovered by Danny, one of the Satanists, but eludes capture. He and Dr. Sam Richards, a psychic researcher, review the book, which explains that the source of Corbis's power is an ornate glass bottle known as "The Devil's Rain", which contains the souls of Corbis's disciples. They also find Mark's signature in the book, which Richards is sure was not there the last time Mark had the book.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: Tom and Richards head to Corbis's church and remove The Devil's Rain from its hiding place. The Satanists converge on the church, so Tom and Richards retreat, taking The Devil's Rain but leaving behind the book, which is taken by Corbis. As Corbis (sporting a horned goat head) begins the ceremony to convert Julie to an eyeless one (hinting also of possible rape), Tom jumps in to intervene, and is captured as well. (Inexplicably, the sheriff shows up with an ax, but fights against the Prestons and Richards.) Richards threatens to destroy The Devil's Rain, but is overpowered by the Satanists, and Mark takes the Devil's Rain from him. Richards tells Mark that he can still save his soul by destroying the bottle, while Corbis maintains that if the bottle is destroyed Mark will wander through nothingness for eternity, unable to enter either Heaven or Hell. Mark smashes the bottle. The Devil's Rain is released from the bottle, melting the Satanists (including Mark and Corbis) and burning down the church. Tom and Julie make a hasty exit. As Tom embraces Julie, it is revealed that he is actually embracing Corbis, and that his wife's soul has become trapped within a new Devil's Rain.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: "The Devil's Rain" was released in 1975, with screenings in New York on August 7 and Los Angeles on August 13, 1975.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: In 2017, Severin Films released "The Devil's Rain" on Blu-ray, featuring a 2K restoration from the film's original interpositive as well as various special features.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: "The Devil's Rain" received a uniformly negative critical response, with the chief complaint being the incoherent storyline. The film's lack of adequate scares was also widely criticized. Vincent Canby in "The New York Times" opined that ""The Devil's Rain" is ostensibly a horror film, but it barely manages to be a horror ... It is as horrible as watching an egg fry." Roger Ebert in the "Chicago Sun-Times" said "All of this would be good silly fun if the movie weren't so painfully dull. The problem is that the material's stretched too thin. There's not enough here to fill a feature-length film." He particularly derided the exhaustive melting of the Satanists at the finale. He gave the film 1½ stars out of four, and eventually added it to his "Most Hated" movies list.


title: The Devil's Rain (film)

text: In his 2010 book "Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies", Australian film reviewer Michael Adams called "The Devil's Rain" "the ultimate cult movie ... It's about a cult, has a cult following, was devised with input from a cult leader, and saw a future superstar indoctrinated into a cult he'd help popularize." The latter reference is to John Travolta and Scientology.


title: Operation Menu

text: Operation Menu was a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) tactical bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 to 26 May 1970 as part of both the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. The targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and base areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN — commonly referred to during the Vietnam War as the North Vietnamese Army [NVA]) and forces of the Viet Cong (VC), which used them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The impact of the bombing campaign on the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the PAVN, and Cambodian civilians in the bombed areas is disputed by historians.


title: Operation Menu

text: An official United States Air Force record of US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the air force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration; this was four years earlier than previously believed. The Menu bombings were an escalation of what had previously been tactical air attacks. Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon authorized for the first time use of long-range Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers to carpet bomb Cambodia.


title: Operation Menu

text: Operation Freedom Deal immediately followed Operation Menu. Under Freedom Deal, B-52 bombing was expanded to a much larger area of Cambodia and continued until August 1973.


title: Operation Menu

text: From the onset of hostilities in South Vietnam and the Kingdom of Laos in the early 1960s, Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk had maintained a delicate domestic and foreign policy balancing act. Convinced of the inevitable victory of the communists in Southeast Asia and concerned for the future existence of his government, Sihanouk swung toward the left in the mid-1960s.


title: Operation Menu

text: In 1966, Sihanouk made an agreement with Zhou Enlai of the People's Republic of China that would allow PAVN and VC forces to establish base areas in Cambodia and to use the port of Sihanoukville for the delivery of military material. The US, heavily involved in South Vietnam, was not eager to openly violate the asserted neutrality of Cambodia, which had been guaranteed by the Geneva Accord of 1954.


title: Operation Menu

text: Beginning in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized covert reconnaissance operations by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). The mission of the highly classified unit was to obtain intelligence on the PAVN/VC base areas (Project Vesuvius) that would be presented to Sihanouk in hopes of changing his position.


title: Operation Menu

text: By late 1968, Sihanouk, under pressure from the political right at home and from the US, agreed to more normalized relations with the Americans. In July 1968, he had agreed to reopen diplomatic relations and, in August, formed a Government of National Salvation under the pro-US General Lon Nol. Newly inaugurated President Richard M. Nixon, seeking any means by which to withdraw from Southeast Asia and obtain "peace with honor", saw an opening with which to give time for the US withdrawal, and time to implement the new policy of Vietnamization.


title: Operation Menu

text: Nixon had promised during the election of 1968 if elected, to continue the peace talks which started in Paris in May 1968, thereby ruling out seeking a military solution to the war and to continue Johnson's approach of seeking a diplomatic solution. Nixon's main opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was also committed to a diplomatic solution, and Nixon had presented himself during the election as the man best capable of reaching a favorable peace deal in Paris. Only George Wallace of the American Independent Party had committed himself during the election to fight on in Vietnam until a military victory, winning 13% of the vote.


title: Operation Menu

text: The diplomatic settlement Nixon wanted was to be on American terms by preserving South Vietnam. A key aspect of Nixon's approach was what he himself called the "madman theory" under which he was to act like he was a dangerous leader capable of any act up to and including nuclear war to intimidate North Vietnam into a diplomatic settlement on American terms. Nixon believed that the Chinese had signed the armistice of Panmunjom in July 1953 because of the threats made by Eisenhower in the spring of 1953 to use nuclear weapons in Korea, and that strategic bombing or the mere threat of strategic bombing would force the North Vietnamese to sign an armistice similar to the agreement at Panmunjom. Nixon conceded that his election promises ruled out a "military victory", but as he often said in private he did not want to be "the first president of the United States to lose a war".


title: Operation Menu

text: Before the diplomatic amenities with Sihanouk were even concluded, Nixon had decided to deal with the situation of PAVN/VC troops and supply bases in Cambodia. He had already considered a naval blockade of the Cambodian coast, but was talked out of it by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who believed that Sihanouk could still be convinced to agree to ground attacks against the base areas.


title: Operation Menu

text: On 30 January 1969, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Earle Wheeler suggested to the president that he authorize the bombing of the Cambodian sanctuaries. He was seconded on 9 February by the U.S. commander in Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams, who also submitted his proposal to bomb the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN), the elusive headquarters of PAVN/VC southern operations, located somewhere in the Fishhook region of eastern Cambodia. Abrams claimed to Nixon that the regions of eastern Cambodia to be bombed were underpopulated and no civilian deaths would be caused, but documents showed that he and other generals were aware that eastern Cambodia was indeed populated and "some Cambodian casualties would be sustained in the operation".


title: Operation Menu

text: The plans for the bombing was opposed by the Defense Secretary Melvin Laird who doubted the bombings could be kept secret and feared the reaction of Congress and public opinion, Secretary of State William P. Rogers who feared the bombings would derail the peace talks in Paris, and the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who feared that Nixon was acting rashly. None of them raised moral objections to the bombings.


title: Operation Menu

text: On 22 February, during the period just following the Tết holidays, PAVN/VC forces launched an offensive. Nixon became even more angered when the communists launched rocket and artillery attacks against Saigon, which he considered a violation of the "agreement" he believed had been made when the US halted the bombing of North Vietnam in November 1968.


title: Operation Menu

text: Nixon, who was en route to Brussels for a meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders, ordered Kissinger to prepare for airstrikes against PAVN/VC base areas in Cambodia as a reprisal. The bombings were to serve three purposes: they would show Nixon's tenacity; they would disable the PAVN's offensive capability to disrupt the US withdrawal and Vietnamization; and they would demonstrate US determination, "that might pay dividends at the negotiating table in Paris." Nixon then cabled Colonel Alexander Haig, a National Security Council staff aide, to meet him in Brussels along with Colonel Raymond Sitton, a former Strategic Air Command (SAC) officer on the JCS staff, to formulate a plan of action.


title: Operation Menu

text: Nixon would have liked to resume bombing North Vietnam, but he was informed by the State Department that would cause the collapse of the peace talks in Paris. Public opinion polls in 1968–1969 showed the majority of the American people supported the strategy of seeking a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War via the Paris peace talks. The bombing of Cambodia was part of Nixon's "madman theory" that was meant to intimidate North Vietnam by showing that he was a dangerous leader capable of anything.


title: Operation Menu

text: By seeking advice from high administration officials, Nixon had delayed any quick response that could be explicitly linked to the provocation. He decided to respond to the next provocation and didn't have long to wait. On 14 March, communist forces once again attacked South Vietnam's urban areas and Nixon was ready. On 16 March, Nixon summoned Kissinger, Laird, Rogers, and Wheeler to a meeting at the White House to announce that he decided that bombing Cambodia was the "only way" to make North Vietnam compromise because he felt he had "to do something on the military front...something they will understand".


title: Operation Menu

text: Nixon decided to keep the bombing a secret from the American people as to admit to bombing an officially neutral nation would damage his credibility and because bombing Cambodia seem like he was escalating the war. Under the US constitution, the power to declare war rests with Congress, and that several constitutional experts testified before Congress in 1973 that Nixon by launching an bombing offensive in 1969 without obtaining the approval of Congress or indeed even informing Congress had committed an illegal act. In 1969, the mood of Congress was such that it was extremely unlikely that Congress would have granted approval had Nixon asked for it, hence his decision to circumvent Congress by launching the bombing offensive while keeping it secret.


title: Operation Menu

text: In his diary in March 1969, Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, noted that the final decision to carpet bomb Cambodia "was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday afternoon, after the church service." In his diary on 17 March 1969, Haldeman wrote: "Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" finally came off at 2:00 pm our time. K really excited, as is P[resident]." And the next day: "K's 'Operation Breakfast' a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if ever."


title: Operation Menu

text: The bombing began on the night of 18 March with a raid by 60 B-52 Stratofortress bombers, based at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The target was Base Area 353, the supposed location of COSVN in the Fishhook. Although the aircrews were briefed that their mission was to take place in South Vietnam, 48 of the bombers were diverted across the Cambodian border and dropped 2,400 tons of bombs. The mission was designated "Breakfast", after the morning Pentagon planning session at which it was devised. On 18 March a 13-man "Daniel Boone" team from MACV-SOG was landed by helicopter at the Base Area 353 impact site to capture survivors, but they were met by intense enemy fire and only two of the team were rescued.


title: Operation Menu

text: "Breakfast" was so successful (in US terms) that General Abrams provided a list of 15 more known base areas for targeting. The five remaining missions and targets were: "Lunch" (Base Area 609); "Snack" (Base Area 351); "Dinner" (Base Area 352); "Supper" (Base Area 740); and "Dessert" (Base Area 350). SAC flew 3,800 B-52 sorties against these targets, and dropped 108,823 tons of ordnance during the missions. Due to the continued reference to meals in the codenames, the entire series of missions was referred to as Operation Menu. MACV-SOG provided 70% of the Menu bomb damage intelligence


title: Operation Menu

text: Nixon and Kissinger went to great lengths to keep the missions secret. In order to prevent criticism of the bombing, an elaborate dual reporting system of the missions had been formulated during the Brussels meeting between Nixon, Haig, and Colonel Sitton.


title: Operation Menu

text: The number of individuals who had complete knowledge of the operation was kept to a minimum. Neither the Secretary of the Air Force nor Air Force's chief of staff were aware of the bombing of Cambodia. All communications concerning the missions was split along two paths – one route was overt, ordering typical B-52 missions that were to take place in South Vietnam near the Cambodian border – the second route was covert, using back-channel messages between commanders ordering the classified missions. For example: General Abrams would request a Menu strike. His request went to Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), in Honolulu.


title: Operation Menu

text: McCain forwarded it to the JCS in Washington DC, who, after reviewing it, passed it on to Defense Secretary Laird (who might consult with the president). The JCS then passed the command for the strike to General Bruce K. Holloway, Commander of SAC, who then notified Lieutenant General Alvin C. Gillem, Commander of the 3rd Air Division on Guam.


title: Operation Menu

text: During this time Air Force Major Hal Knight was supervising an MSQ-77 Combat Skyspot radar site at Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam. "Skyspot" was a ground directed bombing system which directed B-52 strikes to targets in Vietnam.


title: Operation Menu

text: Each day a courier plane would arrive from SAC's Advanced Echelon Office at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon. Knight was given a revised list of target coordinates for the next day's missions. That evening, the coordinates were fed into Olivetti Programma 101 computers. and then relayed to the aircraft as they came on station. Only the pilots and navigators of the aircraft (who had been briefed by General Gillem and sworn to secrecy) knew of the true location of the targets.


title: Operation Menu

text: The bombers then flew on to their targets and delivered their payloads. After the air strikes, Knight gathered the mission paperwork and computer tapes and destroyed them in an incinerator. He then called a phone number in Saigon and reported that "The ball game is over." The aircrews filled out routine reports of hours flown, fuel burned, and ordnance dropped. This dual system maintained secrecy and provided Air Force logistics and personnel administrators with information that they needed to replace air crews or aircraft and replenish stocks of fuel and munitions.


title: Operation Menu

text: Although Sihanouk was not informed by the US about the operation, he may have had a desire to see PAVN/VC forces out of Cambodia, since he himself was precluded from pressing them too hard. After the event, it was claimed by Nixon and Kissinger that Sihanouk had given his tacit approval for the raids, but this is dubious. Sihanouk told US diplomat Chester Bowles on 10 January 1968, that he would not oppose American "hot pursuit" of retreating North Vietnamese troops "in remote areas [of Cambodia]", provided that Cambodians were unharmed.


title: Operation Menu

text: Kenton Clymer notes that this statement "cannot reasonably be construed to mean that Sihanouk approved of the intensive, ongoing B-52 bombing raids ... In any event, no one asked him. ... Sihanouk was never asked to approve the B-52 bombings, and he never gave his approval." During the course of the Menu bombings, Sihanouk's government formally protested "American violation[s] of Cambodian territory and airspace" at the United Nations on over 100 occasions, although it "specifically protested the use of B-52s" only once, following an attack on Bu Chric in November 1969.


title: Operation Menu

text: On 9 May 1969, an article by military reporter William M. Beecher exposing the bombing was run in the "New York Times". Beecher claimed that an unnamed source in the administration had provided the information. Nixon was furious when he heard the news and ordered Kissinger to obtain the assistance of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to discover the source of the leak. Hoover claimed that Kissinger had told him that "we will destroy whoever did this". Hoover suspected Kissinger's own NSC aide, Morton Halperin, of the deed and so informed Kissinger. Halperin's phone was then illegally tapped for 21 months.


title: Operation Menu

text: This was the first in a series of illegal surveillance activities authorized by Nixon in the name of national security. The phones of 13 officials together with four journalists were illegally tapped by the FBI in search of finding the leak. The administration was relieved when no other significant press reports concerning the operation appeared, and the revelation of the secret bombing of Cambodia did not cause any public outrage. Journalist Stanley Karnow asserted that the illegal bugging in May 1969 marked "the first abuses of authority" under Nixon that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal.


title: Operation Menu

text: Likewise, Congressman John Conyers wrote that the Operation Menu bombings led Nixon and his staff to become "enmeshed in the snare of lies and half-truths they themselves had created". Conyers wrote that Nixon's belief that any action done by the president was justified in name of national security, first asserted with Operation Menu, created the mindset that led him directly to the Watergate scandal.


title: Operation Menu

text: By the summer, five members of the United States Congress had been informed of the operation. They were Senators John C. Stennis (MS) and Richard B. Russell, Jr. (GA), and Representatives Lucius Mendel Rivers (SC), Gerald R. Ford (MI), and Leslie C. Arends (IL). Arends and Ford were leaders of the Republican minority and the other three were Democrats on either the Armed Services or Appropriations committees.


title: Operation Menu

text: For those in Washington who knew of the Menu raids, the silence of one party came as a surprise. The Hanoi government made no protest concerning the bombings. It neither denounced the raids for propaganda purposes, nor, according to Kissinger, did its negotiators "raise the matter during formal or secret negotiations." North Vietnam had no wish to advertise the presence of their forces in Cambodia, allowed by Sihanouk in return for the Vietnamese agreeing not to foment rebellion in Cambodia.


title: Operation Menu

text: For four years Menu remained unknown to the US Congress as a whole. That changed in December 1972, when Major Knight wrote a letter to Senator William Proxmire (D, WI), asking for "clarification" of U.S. policy on the bombing of Cambodia. Knight, who had become concerned over the legality of his actions, had complained to his superior officer, Colonel David Patterson. He later received several bad efficiency reports, which ruined his career, and he was discharged from the air force.


title: Operation Menu

text: Proxmire's questioning led to hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which eventually demanded that the Department of Defense turn over all records of US air operations in Cambodia. When they arrived, the records did not even mention the Menu strikes. The committee was not convinced and the investigation continued. Less than two weeks later, it opened hearings on the nomination of General George S. Brown for the position of chief of staff of the Air Force. As commander of the Seventh Air Force in South Vietnam, Brown had been privy to Menu and disclosed as much to the committee.


title: Operation Menu

text: For the next eight days the committee listened to the testimony of administration officials and the JCS, who tried to justify their actions. The committee uncovered excuses and deceptions that were perhaps more alarming than those occurring simultaneously in the Watergate hearings. The Menu revelations raised "fundamental questions as to military discipline and honesty, of civilian control over the military and of Congressional effectiveness." It was basically agreed, both by Congress and concerned military officers, that the deception employed during Menu went beyond covertness.


title: Operation Menu

text: According to Air Force historian Captain Earl H. Tilford: "Deception to fool the enemy was one thing, but lying to Congress and key members of the government, including the chief of staff of the Air Force and the secretary of the Air Force, was something else." Congressman Conyers wrote that the bombing of Cambodia without congressional authorization was an illegal act which Nixon should have been impeached for. Conyers introduced a motion of impeachment against Nixon regarding the bombing of Cambodia on the floor of the House on 30 July 1974, which was not taken up as the House was fully engaged in the Watergate scandal at the time.


title: Operation Menu

text: There are no confirmed estimates of Cambodians killed, wounded, or rendered homeless by Operation Menu. The Department of Defense estimated that the six areas bombed in Operation Menu (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack, Dessert, and Supper) had a non-combatant population of 4,247. DOD planners stated that the effect of attacks could tend to increase casualties, as could the probable lack of protective shelters around Cambodian homes".


title: Operation Menu

text: Each of the target areas was small. Area 353 (Breakfast), was only in size and had an estimated population of 1,640 people. B-52s flew 228 sorties into this single area to bomb. Each B-52 carried up to 108 bombs weighing and spread them equally over a "box" about 1.5 kilometers long by one-half kilometer wide (1 mile by .3 miles); thus, nearly 25,000 bombs may have been dropped in Area 353 alone. The other target areas had similar saturation rates of bombs.


title: Operation Menu

text: Following Operation Menu, Operation Freedom Deal continued the bombing of Cambodia for an additional three years and extended the bombing to at least one-half of the country.


title: Operation Menu

text: The constitutional issues raised at the hearings became less important when the House Judiciary Committee voted (21–12) against including the administration's falsification of records concerning Menu in the articles of impeachment leveled against President Nixon. One of the key issues that prevented congressional inclusion was the embarrassing fact that five key members of both political parties had been privy to the information and none had said or done anything about it.


title: Operation Menu

text: The consequences of U.S. bombing of Cambodia, positive and negative, are still widely debated by participants and scholars. As for preventing further PAVN/VC offensives, they failed. In May 1969, PAVN/VC launched an offensive similar in size to that of the May Offensive of the previous year. It certainly cost North Vietnam the effort and manpower to disperse and camouflage their Cambodian sanctuaries to prevent losses to further air attack. President Nixon claimed the raids were a success, since air power alone had to provide a shield for withdrawal and Vietnamization. They certainly emboldened Nixon to launch the Cambodian Campaign of 1970.


title: Operation Menu

text: While out of the country on 18 March 1970, the prince was deposed by the national assembly and replaced by Lon Nol. The Nixon administration, although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit US military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, announced support for the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. In response, the prince quickly aligned himself with the Khmer Rouge. This was a boon to the communist insurgents, whose movement "started growing as on yeast."


title: Operation Menu

text: On 29 March 1970, the PAVN launched an offensive against the Khmer National Armed Forces, with documents uncovered after 1991 from the Soviet archives revealing that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. Historian Jussi Hanhimäki writes that "the MENU operations pushed the North Vietnamese forces...in east Cambodia westward. American bombers followed suit."


title: Operation Menu

text: Author William Shawcross and other observers asserted that the "Khmer Rouge were born out of the inferno that American policy did much to create" and that Sihanouk's "collaboration with both powers [the United States and North Vietnam] ... was intended to save his people by confining the conflict to the border regions. It was American policy that engulfed the nation in war."


title: Operation Menu

text: When Congress, in the summer of 1973, legislated an end to U.S. military action in, over, or off the shores of Indochina, the only U.S. military activity then going on was air support of a friendly Cambodian government and army desperately defending their country against a North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge onslaught ... What destabilized Cambodia was North Vietnam's occupation of chunks of Cambodian territory from 1965 onwards for use as military bases from which to launch attacks on U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam.


title: Operation Menu

text: People usually refer to the bombing of Cambodia as if it had been unprovoked, secretive U.S. action. The fact is that we were bombing North Vietnamese troops that had invaded Cambodia, that were killing many Americans from these sanctuaries, and we were doing it with the acquiescence of the Cambodian government, which never once protested against it, and which, indeed, encouraged us to do it. I may have a lack of imagination, but I fail to see the moral issue...


title: Operation Menu

text: The simultaneous rise of the Khmer Rouge and the increase in area and intensity of U.S. bombing between 1969 and 1973 has incited speculation as to the relationship between the two events. Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, said the following: