title: Ekiti State

text: Ekiti State () is a state in southwestern Nigeria, bordered to the north by Kwara State, to the northeast by Kogi State, to the south and southeast by Ondo State, and to the west by Osun State. Named for the Ekiti people—the Yoruba subgroup that make up the majority of the state's population—Ekiti State was formed from a part of Ondo State in 1996 and has its capital as the city of Ado-Ekiti.


title: Ekiti State

text: One of the smallest states of Nigeria, Ekiti is the 31st largest in area and 30th most populous with an estimated population of nearly 3.3 million as of 2016. Geographically, the state is divided between the Nigerian lowland forests in most of the state and the drier Guinean forest–savanna mosaic in the north. Among the state's nature are false acraeas, mona monkey, forest buffalo, and grey parrot populations along with one of the last remaining Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee populations with a troop of about 20 chimpanzees in the heavily threatened Ise Forest Reserve. In March 2022, Ekiti State became the first state in Nigeria to adopt a state tree as one of its official symbols. On World Forest Day 2022, Governor Kayode Fayemi announced that Obeche (Triplochiton scleroxylon) had been chosen as State Tree owing to its local prominence and environmental, economic and cultural significance.


title: Ekiti State

text: Modern-day Ekiti State has been primarily inhabited for centuries by the Ekiti people, a Yoruba subgroup, with minorities of the Akoko Yoruba subgroup. Religiously, the majority of the state's population (~85%) are Christian with smaller Muslim and traditionalist minorities at about 10% and 5%, respectively.


title: Ekiti State

text: In the pre-colonial period, the area that is now Ekiti State was at various points ruled by the Oyo Empire, Benin Empire, and finally, the Ekiti states which formed the Ekiti Confederacy in the later half of the 1800s. From 1877 to 1893, the Confederacy fought the Kiriji War led by Fabunmi Okemesi alongside other Eastern Yoruba groups against the Ibadan Kingdom and other Western Yoruba groups; the war ended in a British-brokered stalemate before the area was colonized and incorporated into the British Southern Nigeria Protectorate which later merged into British Nigeria in 1914. After independence in 1960, the area of now-Ekiti was a part of the post-independence Western Region until 1967 when the region was split and the area became part of the Western State. In 1976, the Western State was split and the state's east became Ondo State. Twenty years later, Ondo State's northwest (then termed the Ekiti Zone) was broken off to form Ekiti State.


title: Ekiti State

text: Economically, Ekiti State is partially based around agriculture, mainly of yams, rice, cocoa, and cassava crops. Key minor industries are logging and tourism. Ekiti has the joint-thirteenth highest Human Development Index in the country and is considered the heart of the homeland of the Ekiti people.


title: Ekiti State

text: Ekiti was an independent state prior to the British conquest. It was one of the many Yoruba states in what is today Nigeria. The Ekiti people as a nation and districts of Yoruba race trace some of her progeny to Oduduwa, the father and progenitor of Yoruba race even though good reason appear to establish the existence of aboriginal people in Ekiti region prior to influx of royalty from present day Ile Ife as that kingdom grew and abound.


title: Ekiti State

text: There are two major schools of thought regarding Ekiti history. First was the story that tied the origin of Ekiti to Ife. The story goes that the Olofin, one of the sons of Oduduwa had 16 children and in the means of searching for the new land to develop, they all journeyed out of Ile-Ife as they walked through the Iwo - Eleru (Cave of Ashes) at Isarun and had stop over at a place called Igbo-Aka (forest of termites) closer to Ile-Oluji.


title: Ekiti State

text: The Olofin, the 16 children and some other beloved people continued with their journey, but when they got to a particular lovely and flat land, the Owa-Obokun (the Monarch of Ijesha land) and Orangun of Ila decided to stay in the present Ijesha and Igbomina land in Osun state. While the remaining 14 children journeyed onwards and later settled in the present day Ekiti land. They discovered that there were many hills in the place and they said in their mother's language that this is "Ile olokiti" the land of hills. Therefore, the Okiti later blended to Ekiti. So Ekiti derived her name through hills.


title: Ekiti State

text: It must however be noted, that this history may describe the history of certain royalty in present-day Ekiti, but not all of Ekiti which is made up of 131 Principal towns, with their own royalty and many land-owning communities with no royalty at all. In fact, the invading royalties from the East went on to colonize and transform the aboriginals, distinguishing the Ekiti dialect upon mix-up with the Ife/Oyo tongue of the Yorubas according to Samuel Johnson, the renowned historian of early Yoruba States and Affairs


title: Ekiti State

text: Second school of thought on Ekiti origin is more likely and grounded in actual history. It was said that Oduduwa, the ancestor of the Yoruba traveled to Ife [Ife Ooyelagbo] where he met people who were already settled there. Among the elders he met in the town were Agbonniregun [Stetillu], Obatala, Orelure, Obameri, Elesije, Obamirin, Obalejugbe just to mention a few. It is known that descendants of Agbonniregun [Baba Ifa] settled in Ekiti, examples being the Alara and Ajero who are sons of Ifa. Orunmila [Agbonniregun] himself spent a greater part of his life at Ado. Due to this, we have the saying ‘Ado ni ile Ifa’ [Ado is the home of Ifa]. The Ekiti have ever since settled in their present location.


title: Ekiti State

text: Nobody can give accurate dates to these events due to the lack of written sources, but people have lived in Ekiti for centuries. It is on record that Ekiti Obas had prosperous reign in the 13th century. An example was the reign of Ewi Ata of Ado-Ekiti in the 1400s.


title: Ekiti State

text: "Historically, the Ekitis are among the aboriginal elements of the Nigeria absorbed by the invaders from the East (Yoruba people from Ile Ife). "The term "Ekiti" denotes a "Mound", and is derived from the rugged mountainous feature of that part of the country. It is an extensive province and well watered, including several tribes and families right on to the border of the Niger, eastward. They hold themselves quite distinct from the Ijesas, especially in political affairs." (Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yoruba, 1921). It is believed that the ancestors of Ekiti people who came to combine with the aboriginal people on the land migrated from Ile Ife, the spiritual home of the Yoruba people. According to oral and contemporary written sources of Yoruba history, Oduduwa, the ancestor of the Yoruba traveled to Ife [Ife Ooyelagbo] where he met people who were already settled there. Among the elders he met in the town were Agbonniregun [Stetillu], Obatala, Orelure, Obameri, Elesije, Obamirin, Obalejugbe just to mention a few. It is known that descendants of Agbonniregun [Baba Ifa] settled in Ekiti, examples being the Alara and Ajero who are sons of Ifa. Orunmila [Agbonniregun] himself spent a greater part of his life at Ado. Due to this, we have the saying ‘Ado ni ile Ifa’ [Ado is the home of Ifa]. The Ekiti have ever since settled in their present location.


title: Ekiti State

text: The early Ekiti country is divided into 16 districts (and it has been maintained to this day), each with its own Owa or King (Owa being a generic term amongst them) of which four are supreme, viz. : —


title: Ekiti State

text: (5) Alara of Aramoko, (6) Alaye of Efon Alaye, (7) Ajanpanda of Akure, (8) Alagotun of Ogotun, (9) Olojudo of Ido, (10) Attah of Aiyede, (11) Oloja Oke of Igbo Odo, (12) Oloye of Oye, (13) Olomuwo of Omuwo, (14) Onire of Ire, (15) Arinjale of Ise and (16) Onitaji of Itaji.


title: Ekiti State

text: The Orangun of Ila is sometimes classed among them, but he is only Ekiti in sympathy, being of a different family."


title: Ekiti State

text: The modern Ekiti state was formed from part of Ondo in 1996. Prior to this, it was part of the Ondo Province in Western Region of Nigeria. While the non-Ekiti part of the region largely dominated geographically, Akure which was then regarded as an Ekiti town was the headquarters of Ondo province.


title: Ekiti State

text: The State is mainly an upland zone, rising over 250 meters above sea level. It lies on an area underlain by metamorphic rock. It is generally an undulating part of the country with a characteristic landscape that consists of old plains broken by step-sided out-crops that may occur singularly or in groups or ridges.


title: Ekiti State

text: Such rocks out-crops exist mainly at Aramoko, Efon-Alaiye, Ikere-Ekiti, Igbara-odo- ekiti and Okemesi-Ekiti. The State is dotted with rugged hills, notable ones being Ikere-Ekiti Hills in the south, Efon-Alaiye Hills on the western boundary and Ado-Ekiti Hills in the centre.


title: Ekiti State

text: The State enjoys tropical climate with two distinct seasons. These are the rainy season (April–October) and the dry season (November–March). Temperature ranges between 21° and 28 °C with high humidity. The south westerly wind and the northeast trade winds blow in the rainy and dry (Harmattan) seasons respectively. Tropical forest exists in the south, while savannah occupies the northern peripheries.


title: Ekiti State

text: The Ekiti State Government in 2014, prior to the exit of the immediate past Governor Fayemi, was to create additional 18 LCDAs based on the recommendations of the White Paper Committee set up by the government. This has, however, been cancelled by Governor Ayo Fayose.


title: Ekiti State

text: Ekitis are culturally homogeneous and they speak a dialect of Yoruba language known as Ekiti. The homogeneous nature of Ekiti confers on the state some uniqueness among the states of the federation. Slight differences are noticeable in the Ekiti dialects of the Yoruba language spoken by the border communities to other states. For example, the people of Ado local government area do not speak exactly the same dialect with the people of Ijero Local government area, while the people of Ikole area speak something different from the people of Ikere area. The communities influenced by their locations include Otun (Moba land) that speaks a dialect close to the one spoken by the Igbominas in Kwara State. The people of Oke-Ako, Irele, Omuo speak a similar dialect to that of Ijesas of Osun State. However, part of the uniqueness of the Ekitis is that wherever is your own part of the state, you will understand well, when the other Ekiti man/woman speaks, in spite of the dialectal variations. In addition, all towns in Ekiti State take a common suffix, “Ekiti,” after their names.


title: Ekiti State

text: The dominant religions in Ekiti State are Islam and Christianity although a certain amount of traditional religion is still practiced.


title: Ekiti State

text: Ekiti State operates the 6-3-3-4 system of education in use in Nigeria. The primary education is under the supervision of Ekiti State Universal Basic Education Board which usually partner with UBEC to ensure the development of human capacity and infrastructure as captured in the Universal Basic Education Policy. The State Ministry of Education coordinates the registration and maintenance in both private and public schools from basic to the secondary level as it is applicable all over Nigeria.


title: Ekiti State

text: Emmanuel School (now Emmanuel Nursery and Primary School)established in 1896 was the first and now the oldest formal school in Ekiti State. Saint Joseph Nursery and Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, St. Louis Primary School, Ikere-Ekiti, Catford Nursery and Primary School, Ado-Ekiti, and EKSU Staff School are among the most popular primary schools in Ekiti State. Notable secondary schools in Ekiti State include but not limited to Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti, Petoa City College, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti Anglican Diocesan High School, Ado-Ekiti and Notre Dame College, Usi-Ekiti.


title: Ekiti State

text: The Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti that was established in 2009 which has its main campus in the capital city of Ekiti State, is one of the leading private universities in Nigeria. Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, and the newly established Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology Ikere-Ekiti are the public universities in Ekiti State. Other tertiary institutions in Ekiti State are the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Crown Polytechnic Ado-Ekiti, College of Health Technology, Ijero-Ekiti.


title: Ekiti State

text: Ekiti land is naturally endowed with numerous natural resources. The state is potentially rich in mineral deposits. These include granite, kaolinite, columbite, charnockite, iron ore, baryte, limestones, aquamarine, gemstone, phosphate, limestone, tourmaline, gold coal in limited quantty among others. They are largely deposited in different towns and villages of Ijero, Ekiti West, Ado - Ekiti, Ikole, Ikere, Ise-Ekiti and other Local Government Areas.


title: Ekiti State

text: The Land is also blessed with water resources, some of its major rivers are Ero, Osun, Ose, and Ogbese. The state of hills is also blessed with variety of tourist attractions abound in the state namely, Ikogosi Warm Springs; Arinta Water Falls; Olosunta and Orole hills of Ikere; Erin-ayonugba River at Erijiyan Ekiti; Fajuyi Memorial Park of Ado - Ekiti and so on. The Ikogosi tourist centre is the most popular and the most developed. The warm spring is a unique natural feature, and supporting facilities are developed in the centre. The spring is at present, being processed and packaged into bottled water for commercial purpose by a private company - UAC Nigeria.


title: Ekiti State

text: Moreover, the land is buoyant in agricultural resources with cocoa as its leading cash crop. It was largely known that Ekiti land constituted well over 40% of the cocoa products of the famous old Western Region. The land is also known for its forest resources, notably timber, and in March 2022, Obeche (Triplochiton scleroxylon) was adopted as State Tree due to its prominence and economic significance. Because of the favourable climatic conditions, the land enjoys luxuriant vegetation, thus, it has abundant resources of different species of timber. Food crops such as yam, cassava, and also grains like rice and maize are grown in large quantities. Other notable crops such as kola nut and varieties of fruits are also cultivated in commercial quantities.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: The debt-to-equity ratio (D/E) is a financial ratio indicating the relative proportion of shareholders' equity and debt used to finance a company's assets. Closely related to leveraging, the ratio is also known as risk, gearing or leverage. The two components are often taken from the firm's balance sheet or statement of financial position (so-called book value), but the ratio may also be calculated using market values for both, if the company's debt and equity are publicly traded, or using a combination of book value for debt and market value for equity financially.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: Preferred stock can be considered part of debt or equity. Attributing preferred shares to one or the other is partially a subjective decision but will also take into account the specific features of the preferred shares.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: When used to calculate a company's financial leverage, the debt usually includes only the Long Term Debt (LTD). Quoted ratios can even exclude the current portion of the LTD. The composition of equity and debt and its influence on the value of the firm is much debated and also described in the Modigliani–Miller theorem.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: Financial economists and academic papers will usually refer to all liabilities as debt, and the statement that equity plus liabilities equals assets is therefore an accounting identity (it is, by definition, true). Other definitions of debt to equity may not respect this accounting identity, and should be carefully compared.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: Generally speaking, a high ratio may indicate that the company is much resourced with (outside) borrowing as compared to funding from shareholders.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: In a general sense, the ratio is simply debt divided by equity. However, what is classified as debt can differ depending on the interpretation used. Thus, the ratio can take on a number of forms including:


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: In a basic sense, Total Debt / Equity is a measure of all of a company's future obligations on the balance sheet relative to equity. However, the ratio can be more discerning as to what is actually a borrowing, as opposed to other types of obligations that might exist on the balance sheet under the liabilities section. For example, often only the liabilities accounts that are actually labelled as "debt" on the balance sheet are used in the numerator, instead of the broader category of "total liabilities". In other words, actual borrowings like bank loans and interest-bearing debt securities are used, as opposed to the broadly inclusive category of total liabilities which, in addition to debt-labelled accounts, can include accrual accounts like unearned revenue.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: Another popular iteration of the ratio is the long-term-debt-to-equity ratio which uses only long-term debt in the numerator instead of total debt or total liabilities. Total debt includes both long-term debt and short-term debt which is made up of actual short-term debt that has actual short-term maturities and also the portion of long-term debt that has become short-term in the current period because it is now nearing maturity. This second classification of short-term debt is carved out of long-term debt and is reclassified as a current liability called "current portion of long-term debt" (or a similar name). The remaining long-term debt is used in the numerator of the long-term-debt-to-equity ratio.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: It is a problematic measure of leverage, because an increase in non-financial liabilities reduces this ratio. Nevertheless, it is in common use.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: In the financial industry (particularly banking), a similar concept is equity to total assets (or equity to risk-weighted assets), otherwise known as capital adequacy.


title: Debt-to-equity ratio

text: On a balance sheet, the formal definition is that debt (liabilities) plus equity equals assets, or any equivalent reformulation. Both the formulas below are therefore identical:


title: Justicia adhatoda

text: Justicia adhatoda commonly known in English as Malabar nut, adulsa, adhatoda, vasa, vasaka, is native to Asia.


title: Justicia adhatoda

text: The plant's native range is Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka), Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. It has been introduced elsewhere.


title: Justicia adhatoda

text: "Justicia adhatoda" is a shrub with 10-20 lance-shaped leaves 8-9 centimeters in length by four wide. They are oppositely arranged, smooth-edged, and borne on short petioles. When dry they are of a dull brownish-green colour. They are bitter-tasting. When a leaf is cleared with chloral hydrate and examined microscopically the oval stomata can be seen. They are surrounded by two crescent-shaped cells at right angles to the ostiole. The epidermis bears simple one- to three-celled warty hairs, and small glandular hairs. Cystoliths occur beneath the epidermis of the underside of the blade.


title: Justicia adhatoda

text: The trunk has many long opposite ascending branches, where the bark is yellowish in color. Flowers are usually white and the inflorescence shows large, dense, axillary spikes. Fruits are pubescent, and are with club-shaped capsules.


title: Justicia adhatoda

text: The leaves of "Justicia adhatoda" contains phytochemicals such as alkaloids, tannins, saponins, phenolics and flavonoids. The most important is vasicine, a quinazoline alkaloid. The vasicine yield of the herbage has been measured as 0.541 to 1.1% by dry weight. Bromhexine, a serine protease inhibitor with mucolytic properties available over-the-counter in Europe, was originally derived from "Justicia adhotada".


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Campbell McLaren (born June 18, 1956) is an American entrepreneur and media executive. He is the co-creator of the UFC. ESPN said he is the 10th most influential person in UFC history and that "his influence on the promotion cannot be overstated." McLaren was responsible for marketing the first UFC shows and subsequently became responsible for the entire operation.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: McLaren was born in Scotland and emigrated to the United States when he was six years old. His father was a former RAF Flight Officer and hospital executive and his mother was a Presbyterian Church administrator.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: McLaren went to primary school in Cowie, Scotland, elementary school and middle school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and high school in Indianapolis, Indiana.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: He received an AB from the University of California, Berkeley. He also studied video production at MIT, with documentarian Richard Leacock.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: McLaren began his career in New York at Caroline's Comedy Club (now Caroline's on Broadway) as talent director. He began producing TV shows for cable, network, and pay-per-view in 1989, winning awards including the Cable Ace and the Imagen Award.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: In 1993, McLaren was the head of programming for SEG, BMG's pay-per-view television company. He received a call from Art Davie representing Rorion Gracie and his “War of the Worlds,” a martial arts tournament idea. McLaren envisioned a reality version of the hit video game Mortal Kombat, and immediately put the concept into development. The result was the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which premiered on pay per view November 12, 1993.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: McLaren developed the controversial marketing slogan “There Are No Rules”. This along with his notorious interview in the New York Times, "Death is Cheap: Maybe It's Just 14.95," launched the franchise and delivered a high pay-per-view buyrate. Public interest and the popularity of the UFC increased leading to its appearance on Friends (The One with the Ultimate Fighting Champion), the cover of Mad Magazine (which featured McLaren as the promoter “Marky D Sodd”), and in the Denzel Washington film, Virtuosity.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: McLaren picked Joe Rogan to do post fight interviews on UFC 12. According to Rogan, "My manager was friends with Campbell McLaren. And Campbell McLaren is amazing. He's a great guy and he's been on the podcast. And Campbell, had he had an opening and he said we need someone to do the post-fight interviews."


title: Campbell McLaren

text: In 2000, McLaren and David Isaacs, with whom he worked on the early UFCs, founded the VC backed College TV Network, Zilo, which was an early version of a user-generated content programming network. Zilo launched Collegehumor.com with the TV series Sex Violence Collegehumor.com.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Campbell McLaren also launched the Iron Ring, an MMA competition reality series, with Floyd Mayweather, Ludacris, Nelly, and T.I.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Campbell McLaren is currently CEO of Combate Global, the first Hispanic MMA sports and media franchise.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Campbell McLaren created Combate Global in 2011. Beginning as a reality show on Mun2, Combate Global fights air in the United States, Latin America, Brazil and Spain.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: “I saw that there was a huge group of sports fans that didn't have anything to root for. Combate fit perfectly into the demographics of the US/Hispanic World,” McLaren said of creating a Hispanic franchise.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Focusing on country against country rivalries, Combate Global brings the excitement of Soccer to MMA. McLaren created COPA COMBATE, an eight-man tournament, pitting country against country. It aired on the 24th anniversary of UFC 1.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: “Combate is MMA with a Spanish flavor ... we’ve always said we’re presenting a thoroughly authentic Hispanic product, and we stuck to that,” explains McLaren.


title: Campbell McLaren

text: Combate Global has grown rapidly, both on Television and streaming live on social media. Their second annual Copa Combate had better ratings than Bellator (the second event to do so). The inaugural event of 2019 outperformed their competitors, on Paramount, ESPN 2 and TNT as well as Telemundo Boxing, getting 610,000 viewers on Univision and UDN, despite its midnight ET timeslot. The event in Hidalgo, Texas on June 26, was the highest rated MMA event of the night and beat both the UFC and Bellator.


title: Nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States

text: The nomination and confirmation of justices to the Supreme Court of the United States involves several steps, the framework for which is set forth in the United States Constitution. Specifically, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, provides that the President of the United States nominates a justice and that the United States Senate provides Advice and consent before the person is formally appointed to the Court. It also empowers a president to temporarily, under certain circumstances, fill a Supreme Court vacancy by means of a recess appointment. The Constitution does not set any qualifications for service as a justice, thus the president may nominate any individual to serve on the Court.


text: In modern practice, Supreme Court nominations are first referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee before being considered by the full Senate. Since the late 1960s, the committee's examination of a Supreme Court nominee almost always has consisted of three parts: a pre-hearing investigation, followed by public hearings in which both the nominee and other witnesses make statements and answer questions, and concluding with a committee decision on what recommendation to make to the full Senate (favorable, unfavorable or no recommendation). Once that recommendation is reported to the Senate, floor debate can begin ahead of a confirmation vote. A simple majority vote is needed for confirmation.


text: The process for replacing a Supreme Court justice attracts considerable public attention and is closely scrutinized. Typically, the whole process takes several months, but it can be, and on occasion has been, completed more quickly. Since the mid 1950s, the average time from nomination to final Senate vote has been about 55 days. Presidents generally select a nominee a few weeks after a vacancy occurs or a retirement is announced. The number of hours each nominee has spent before the Senate Judiciary Committee for public testimony has varied; the six nominees who have appeared before the committee since 2005 spent between 17 and hours testifying.


text: The Appointments Clause in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution empowers the President of the United States to nominate and, with the confirmation (advice and consent) of the United States Senate, to appoint public officials, including justices of the United States Supreme Court. This clause, commonly known as the Appointments Clause, is one example of the system of checks and balances inherent in the Constitution. The president has the plenary power to nominate and to appoint, while the Senate possesses the plenary power to reject or confirm the nominee prior to their appointment.


text: Alexander Hamilton wrote about the way the Constitution allocates the power of appointment in The Federalist No. 76 (1778). The president, he asserted, should have the sole power to nominate because "one man of discernment is better fitted to analyze and estimate the peculiar qualities adapted to particular offices, than a body of men of equal, or perhaps even of superior discernment." And, requiring the cooperation of the Senate would, he contended, "have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to preventing the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration."


text: White House staff members typically handle the vetting and recommending of potential Supreme Court nominees. In practice, the task of conducting background research on and preparing profiles of possible candidates for the Supreme Court is among the first taken on by an incoming president's staff, vacancy or not. As there was a Supreme Court vacancy at the time of the 2016 presidential campaign, advisors to then-candidate Donald Trump developed, and Trump made public, two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees.


text: Once a Supreme Court vacancy opens, the president discusses the candidates with advisors, Senate leaders and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a matter of senatorial courtesy, before selecting a nominee. In doing so, potential problems a nominee may face during confirmation can be addressed in advance. This can also be an opportunity for senators to advise the president, though president is not obliged to take their advice on whom to nominate, neither does the Senate have the authority to set qualifications or otherwise limit who the president may select.


text: As the president considers who to nominate, formal investigations into the backgrounds of prospective nominees are conducted. In recent decades this process has involved both an inquiry into the public record and professional credentials of persons under consideration, and an inquiry into the private background of potential candidates. The former is usually conducted senior White House aides in consultation with the Justice Department. The latter is conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The goal of these inquiries is to ensure that a nominee has nothing in their background that would prove embarrassing or would otherwise put confirmation in jeopardy.


text: As the president prepares to announce their selection, a former senator of the president's party is selected to serve as the nominee's sherpa, their guide through the process. When ready, the president publicly announces the selection, with the nominee present. Shortly thereafter, the nomination then is formally submitted to the Senate. Once that has been done, it is customary for a nominee to meet with senators while also preparing for confirmation hearings.


text: How quickly a president selects a nominee has varied from president to president and from instance to instance. For the 14 vacancies since 1975 that required only one nomination prior to being filled, the average length of time between the date it was publicly known that a justice was leaving the court (or had died) and the date on which the president publicly identified a nominee for the vacancy was about 19 days.


text: The Appointments Clause does not set qualifications for being a Supreme Court justice (e.g. age, citizenship or admission to the bar) nor does it describe the intellectual or temperamental qualities that justices should possess. As a result, each president has had their own criteria for selecting individuals to fill Supreme Court vacancies. While specific motives vary from president to president and situation to situation, the motivations behind the choices made can be grouped into two general categories: professional qualifications criteria and politicalpublic policy criteria.


text: Most presidents have intentionally sought out nominees with solid legal qualifications, persons with a distinguished reputation or expertise in a particular area of the law, or who is highly regarded for their public service. As a result, many nominees have had prior experience as lower court judges, legal scholars, or private practitioners, or have served as Members of Congress, as federal administrators, or as governors. Even though neither the Constitution nor federal law requires that a Supreme Court justice be a lawyer, every person nominated to the Court to date has been.


text: Most presidents have nominated individuals who broadly share their political views or ideological philosophy. During the 20th century for example, Franklin D. Roosevelt chose people whom he believed would affirm his New Deal programs. Similarly, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson chose people whom they anticipated would support their respective New Frontier and Great Society initiatives. Ronald Reagan chose conservative jurists, people he believed would further his goal of undoing the activism of the Warren and Burger Courts.


text: On occasion, a justice's decisions may be contrary to what the nominating president anticipated. One such justice was David Souter, who was nominated by George H. W. Bush. When nominated, he was not well known and had no paper trail whatsoever. Many pundits and politicians at the time expected Souter to be a conservative; however, after becoming a justice, his opinions generally fell on the liberal side of the political spectrum.


text: Throughout much of the nation's history, presidents also nominated individuals based upon geographical considerations. President George Washington established this practice, intentionally combining geography with his other considerations when making judicial and other appointments. Of his first six Supreme court appointments in 1789, two were from the East, two from the Mid-Atlantic and two from the South. From 1789 until 1971, with the exception of the 1865–76 Reconstruction Era, there was always a southerner on the Court; similarly, from 1789 through 1932 there was always a New Englander as well. Since the mid-1970s, however, the role of geography in the selection process has been minimal.


text: Beginning in the mid 20th Century, concerns about diversity on the Court with regard to religion, race, and gender have also been of particular importance to various presidents. In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed William J. Brennan Jr., a Catholic, to the Court. Eisenhower sought a Catholic to appoint—in part because there had been no Catholic justice since 1949, and in part because Eisenhower was directly lobbied by Cardinal Francis Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York to make such an appointment. Lyndon B. Johnson, as part of his strategy to implement the his civil rights agenda, appointed the first African-American justice, Thurgood Marshall, in 1967. Ronald Reagan pledged during his 1980 presidential campaign to nominate the first woman to the Supreme Court. In 1981, he nominated Sandra Day O'Connor.


text: An additional consideration is age; the younger the person, the longer they could conceivably serve on the Court. Presidents have generally selected persons who are in their late 40s or 50s, old enough to have the requisite experience yet young enough to impact the makeup of the court for decades.


text: The Appointments Clause does not tell the Senate how to assess Supreme Court nominees. As a result, the Senate has developed, and modified over time, its own set of practices and criteria for examining nominees and their fitness to serve on the bench. Nominees are, generally speaking, examined on: character and competency; social and judicial philosophy; and partypolitical identification and region (of the country from).


text: The Senate Judiciary Committee plays a key role in the confirmation process, as nearly every Supreme Court nomination since 1868 has come before it for review. Among those not referred were the nominations of: William Howard Taft, for chief Justice in 1921, and James F. Byrnes, for associate justice in 1941. Byrnes is the most recent Supreme Court nominee confirmed by the Senate without being reviewed first by a committee. Under the present procedures, the committee conducts hearings, examining the background of the nominee, and questioning him or her about their work experiences, views on a variety of constitutional issues and their general judicial philosophy. The committee also hears testimony from various outside witnesses, both supporting and opposing the nomination. Among them is the American Bar Association, which since 1952 has provided its analysis and a recommendation on each nominees' professional qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court.


text: The committee's practice of personally interviewing nominees is a relatively recent development. The first recorded instance in which formal hearings are known to have been held on a Supreme Court nominee by a Senate committee were held by the Judiciary Committee in December 1873, on the nomination of George Henry Williams to become chief justice (after the committee had reported the nomination to the Senate with a favorable recommendation). Two days of closed-door hearings were held to review documents and hear testimony from witnesses about a controversy that had arisen about the nominee. Opposition to Williams intensified, and the president withdrew the nomination in January 1874. The committee did not hold hearings on another Supreme Court nominee until February 1916, when intense opposition arose against the nomination of Louis Brandeis to become an associate justice. There were 19 days of public hearings altogether; the Senate ultimately voted to confirm Brandeis in June 1916.


text: The first Supreme Court nominee to appear in person before the Judiciary Committee was Harlan F. Stone, at his own request, in January 1925 (after the committee had reported the nomination to the Senate with a favorable recommendation). Some western senators were concerned with his links to Wall Street and expressed their opposition when Stone was nominated. Stone proposed what was then the novelty of appearing before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions; his testimony helped secure a confirmation vote with very little opposition. The second nominee to appear before the Judiciary Committee, this time at the committee's request, was Felix Frankfurterin 1939, who only addressed what he considered to be slanderous allegations against him. The modern practice of the committee questioning nominees on their judicial views began with John Marshall Harlan II in 1955; the nomination came shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, and several southern senators threatened to block Harlan's confirmation, hence the decision to testify. Nearly all nominees since Harlan have appeared before the Judiciary Committee. Nominees during the 1950s and through the 1970s were often questioned perfunctorily; few hearings involved extended questions and comments from committee members. They were not lengthy either, as nominees typically only spent a few hours in front of the committee.


text: Nominations during the late civil rights and post-Watergate eras were the beginning of the style of nomination hearings where more substantive issues were discussed. This, according to Robert Katzmann, "reflects in part the increasing importance of the Supreme Court to interest groups in the making of public policy." With this transformation have come longer confirmation hearings. In 1967, for example, Thurgood Marshall spent about seven hours in front of the committee. In 1987, Robert Bork was questioned for 30 hours over five days, with the hearings as a whole lasting for 12 days. An estimated 150–300 interest groups were involved in the Bork confirmation process.


text: The table below notes the approximate number of hours that media sources estimate Supreme Court nominees since 2005 (excluding those whose nomination was withdrawn) have spent before the Senate Judiciary Committee for public testimony.


text: At the close of hearings, the committee votes on whether a nomination should go to the full Senate. Historically, it sends nominations with a favorable or unfavorable report or with no recommendation. It has been the committee's typical practice to report even those nominations that were opposed by a committee majority. The most recent nominee to be reported "unfavorably" was Robert Bork in 1987. In 1991, the nomination of Clarence Thomas was forwarded to the full Senate "without recommendation" after an earlier vote to give the nomination a "favorable recommendation" resulted in a tie.


text: Without an affirmative vote, a nomination cannot proceed to the floor of the Senate, that is unless the Senate votes to discharge it from the committee. This rarely needed parliamentary procedure was used to move the nomination in 2022 of Ketanji Brown Jackson forward, when the committee deadlocked along party lines in a vote on whether to give it a favorable recommendation.


text: Once the committee reports out the nomination, it is put before the full Senate for final consideration. A simple majority vote is required to confirm or to reject a nominee. Historically, such rejections are relatively uncommon. Of the 37 unsuccessful Supreme Court nominations since 1789, only 11 nominees have been rejected in a Senate roll-call vote. The most recent rejection of a nominee by vote of the full Senate occurred in 1987, when it defeated Robert Bork's nomination by a 42–58 vote.


text: Senate debate on a nomination continues until ended by cloture, which allows debate to end and forces a final vote. Historically, a three-fifths majority (60%) had to vote in favor of cloture in order to move to a final vote on a Supreme Court nominee. In 1968, there was a bi-partisan effort to filibuster the nomination of incumbent associate justice Abe Fortas as chief justice. After four days of debate, a cloture motion fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority to cut off debate. President Lyndon Johnson withdrew the nomination soon afterward. Fortas remained on the Court as an associate justice. More recently, in 2017, there was an effort to filibuster President Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch. Unlike the Fortas filibuster, however, only Democratic senators voted against cloture. The Republican majority responded by changing the standing rules to allow for filibusters of Supreme Court nominations to be broken with simple majority rather than three-fifths. The vote threshold for cloture on nominations to lower court and executive branch positions had earlier been lowered to simple majority. That change was made in 2013, when the Democrats held the majority.


text: A president has the prerogative to withdraw a nomination at any point during the process, typically doing so if it becomes clear that the Senate will reject the nominee. This occurred most recently with President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers in 2005 to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor, who had announced her intention to retire. The nomination was never fully embraced by the president's own (Republican) party, and Bush withdrew it before Committee hearings had begun. Bush had previously nominated John Roberts to succeed O'Connor, but upon the death of William Rehnquist, that initial nomination was withdrawn and resubmitted as a nomination for Chief Justice, for which he was confirmed. O'Connor was ultimately succeeded by Samuel Alito.


text: The Judiciary Committee has the prerogative to take no action on a nomination. For example, it did not act upon President Dwight Eisenhower's first nomination of John Marshall Harlan II in November 1954, as it was made one month prior to the adjournment of the 83rd Congress. Most recently, the committee, led at the time by Republicans, did not hold hearings on Democratic President Barack Obama's 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland. Citing the upcoming 2016 presidential election and Obama's Lame duck status, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared at the time that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. The vacancy, created by the death of Antonin Scalia, arose 269 days before the election. The nomination expired in January 2017, at the end of the 114th Congress.


text: Similarly, the Senate has the prerogative to take no action on a nomination, or to table it, effectively eliminating any prospect of the person's confirmation. Though frequently attempted over the years, a successful vote to table a nomination has been a rare occurrence. Even so, this procedure was successfully used to block several nominees of presidents John Tyler (1841–1845) and Millard Fillmore (1850–1853). In modern time, the decision in 2016 by Senate leadership to take no action on the Garland nomination was unique, and received significant push back from scholars and in public opinion challenging whether their refusal to meaningfully consider a duly nominated and well qualified individual contravened their Appointments Clause responsibility to "advise and consent".


text: Under Senate rules, nominations still pending when the Senate adjourns at the end of a session or recesses for more than 30 days are returned to the president unless the Senate, by unanimous consent, waives the rule. If the president still desires Senate consideration of a returned nomination, he or she must submit a new nomination when the Senate returns in the new session or following its extended recess. Eisenhower re-nominated John Harlan in January 1955, when the new Congress convened. Obama's successor, Donald Trump, nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy shortly after his inauguration.


text: Once the Senate has taken final action on a nomination, the secretary of the Senate attests to a resolution of confirmation or rejection and sends it to the president. After receiving a resolution of confirmation, the president may then sign and deliver a commission officially appointing the nominee to the Court. The appointee then must take two oaths before executing the duties of the office: the constitutional oath, which is used for every federal and state officeholder below the president, and the judicial oath used for all federal judges. The general practice in recent decades has been to hold the oath ceremony at either the White House or the Supreme Court Building. It is at this point that a person has taken "the necessary steps toward becoming a member of the Court."


text: Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution empowers the president to fill critical federal executive and judicial branch vacancies unilaterally but temporarily when the Senate is in recess, and thus unavailable to provide advice and consent. Such recess appointments, including to the Supreme Court, expire at the end of the next Senate session. To continue to serve thereafter, the appointee must be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Through the late 1800s, the Senate was in recess for long periods of time, and so this clause enabled the president to keep the functions of government running in the meantime, but without completely bypassing the system of checks and balances. As the Senate now remains in session nearly year-round, this recess appointment power has lost its original necessity and usefulness.


text: There have been 12 recess appointments to the Supreme Court altogether. George Washington made two: Thomas Johnson in August 1791, and John Rutledge in July 1795. Rutledge is the only recess-appointed justice not subsequently confirmed by the Senate, rejected December 1795. Later, during the 1800s, seven presidents made one recess appointment each. More recently, Dwight D. Eisenhower made three: Earl Warren in October 1953, William J. Brennan Jr. in October 1956, and Potter Stewart in October 1958. No president since has made a recess appointment to the Supreme Court. In 1960 the Senate passed a non-binding resolution stating that it was the sense of the Senate that recess appointments to the Supreme Court should not be made except under unusual circumstances.


text: Though Supreme Court nominations have historically been intertwined with the political battles of the day, there is a perception that the confirmation process has become more partisan over the past several decades. The 1987 battle over Robert Bork's nomination is viewed as a pivotal event in the present day politicization of the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process. The subsequent contentious confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, in 1991 and 2018 respectively, along with the Senate's refusal to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016, underscored the breadth of the partisan divide. Much of the proceedings around the hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022 focused on those prior battles and which party should be blamed for politicizing the confirmation process.


text: The widening of the partisan divide over judicial nominations corresponds with the prolongation of the confirmation process. From the establishment of the Supreme Court up to the early 1950s, the process of approving justices was usually rapid. The average time between nomination and confirmation was 13.2 days. Eight justices during that era were confirmed on the same day they were formally nominated, including Edward Douglass White as an associate justice in 1894 and again as chief justice in 1910, and on a voice vote both times. From the mid-1950s to 2020, however, the process took much longer. Over the past 65 years, the time from nomination to confirmation has averaged 54.4 days.


text: The partisan divide over judicial nominations can also be seen in both the referral and the confirmation vote margins received by nominees over the past few decades. Since the 1990s, the votes by which the Judiciary Committee refers nominations to the full Senate have frequently fallen along party lines. The most recent nomination forwarded with a unanimous bipartisan recommendation was that of Stephen Breyer in 1994. More recently, the 2020 nomination of Amy Coney Barrett was forwarded with a unanimous recommendation, but only because all the committee's Democrats boycotted the proceedings. Likewise, confirmation votes are increasingly falling nearly along party lines. The last justice to be confirmed by a unanimous vote was Anthony Kennedy, 97–0, in 1988; the last to receive a two-thirds majority was Sonia Sotomayor, 68–31, in 2009. The Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 by a razor-thin 50–48–1 (51.02% favorable) margin that broke along party lines.


text: Article Three, Section 1 of the Constitution provides that justices "shall hold their offices during good behavior", which is understood to mean that they may serve for the remainder of their lives, until death; furthermore, the phrase is generally interpreted to mean that the only way justices can be removed from office is by Congress via the impeachment process. The Framers of the Constitution chose good behavior tenure to limit the power to remove justices and to ensure judicial independence. The only justice ever to be impeached was Samuel Chase in 1804, after he openly criticized President Thomas Jefferson and his policies to a Baltimore grand jury. The House of Representatives adopted eight articles of impeachment against Chase; however, he was acquitted by the Senate, and remained in office until his death in 1811. This failed impeachment was, according to William Rehnquist, "enormously important in securing the kind of judicial independence contemplated by" the Constitution. No subsequent effort to impeach a sitting justices has progressed beyond referral to the Judiciary Committee. William O. Douglas was the subject of hearings twice, in 1953 and again in 1970, and Abe Fortas resigned while hearings were being organized in 1969.


text: The ability of a president to appoint a new justice depends on the occurrence of a vacancy on the Court. Because justices have indefinite tenure, vacancies, and thus appointments, occur unevenly. Sometimes vacancies arise in quick succession. The shortest period of time between vacancies occurred in September 1971, when Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II left within days of each other. On the other hand, sometimes several years pass between vacancies. The longest period of time between vacancies was 12 years, from 1811 to 1823 (from the death of Samuel Chase to the death of Henry Brockholst Livingston). The next longest was an 11-year span, from 1994 to 2005 (from the retirement of Harry Blackmun to the death of William Rehnquist). On average a new justice joins the Court about every two years. Variables such as age, tenure, health, potential longevity and personal finances impact retirement decisions, as do considerations about whether the incumbent president—who would appoint their successor were they to retire—shares their legal-policy preferences.


text: Due to the randomness of vacancies, some presidents had several opportunities to make many Supreme Court appointments, while others had few or even none. George Washington made 14 nominations, 10 of which were confirmed, during his two terms in office, and Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed eight justices within a six year period during his second and third terms, while William Howard Taft made six appointments during his single term. Only William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson and Jimmy Carter did not have a nominee confirmed. Carter is the only one of the four who served a full term in office.


text: It was not unusual, historically, for justices to die while still on the bench. Specifically, 38 of the 57 justices (two-thirds) appointed prior to 1900 died in office. But since that time it has been less frequent for vacancies on the Court to be created by the death of a justice – about one third. The most recent justice to die while in office was Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.


text: Since the mid-1950s, most justices (80%) have left office through (resigning into) retirement. Beginning in 1869, qualifying justices have been able to retire on a pension; currently any justice who is 65 and has served 15 years on the bench can retire with a full salary. In contrast, resignation prior to retirement eligibility is rare. The last non-retirement resignation from the Court was that of Abe Fortas in 1969.


text: When a chief justice vacancy occurs, the president may choose to nominate an incumbent associate justice for the Court's top post. If the chief justice nominee is confirmed, he or she must resign as an associate justice to assume the new position. The president then selects a new nominee to fill the now-vacant associate justice seat. Three persons have served as Associate Justice and then as Chief Justice without break between their periods of service: Edward Douglas White; Harlan F. Stone; and William Rehnquist.


text: Additionally, because the Constitution does not specify the size of the Court, Congress may determine the matter through law. If Congress were to increase the size of the Court, the president would then have an opportunity to nominate a person (or persons) to the new seat(s). Congress has increased the size of the Court on five occasions; on two other occasions it has reduced the Court's size.


text: There has been considerable variation in the duration of Supreme Court vacancies since the first occurred in 1791. Vacancies on the Court generally lasted for longer periods of time prior to the 20th century. In fact, vacancies prior to 1900 lasted an average of 165 days, which is more than twice the average length of vacancies since 1900. The average duration of the 10 Supreme Court vacancies since 1991—from a justice's departure date to the swearing-in of their successor—has been 70 days. Three of these vacancies lasted for less than a day each, as the successor was sworn in the same day the retiring justice officially left office. The longest vacancy during this time frame, and the longest since the Supreme Court was expanded to nine members in 1869, was the 422-day vacancy between the death of Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016 and the swearing-in of Neil Gorsuch on April 10, 2017. Overall, it was the eighth-longest vacancy period in U.S. Supreme Court history. The longest vacancy lasted days, from the death on April 21, 1844 of Henry Baldwin until August 10, 1846, when Robert C. Grier was sworn into office to replace him.


title: Currie Cup

text: The Currie Cup is South Africa's premier domestic rugby union competition, played each winter and spring (June to October), featuring teams representing either entire provinces or substantial regions within provinces. Although it is the premier domestic competition, four South African franchises also compete in the United Rugby Championship competition, including for the 'South African Shield'. for the highest placed South African team.


title: Currie Cup

text: Steeped in history and tradition, the Currie Cup dates back to 1891. The tournament is regarded as the cornerstone of South Africa's rugby heritage, and the coveted gold trophy remains the most prestigious prize in South African domestic rugby.


title: Currie Cup

text: The Currie Cup is one of the oldest rugby competitions, with the first games played in 1889 but it was only in 1892 that it became officially known as the Currie Cup. The competition had its humble beginnings as an inter-province competition in 1884, but when the South African Rugby Board was founded in 1889 it decided to organize a national competition that would involve representative teams from all the major unions. The original participating unions were Western Province, Griqualand West, Transvaal and Eastern Province. The first tournament was held in Kimberley and was won by Western Province. For a prize they received a silver cup donated by the South African Rugby Board, now displayed at the SA Rugby Museum in Cape Town. The story of how the Currie Cup came to be comes from the first overseas rugby team to tour South Africa in 1891, The British Isles, who carried with them a particularly precious bit of cargo. Among the bags, boots and balls was a golden cup given to them by Sir Donald Currie, owner of Union-Castle Lines, the shipping company that transported them to the southern tip of Africa. Sir Donald was clear with his instructions – hand this trophy over to the team in South Africa that gives the best game; and after a spirited display where the unbeaten British Lions narrowly won 3–0, Griqualand West became the first ever holders of the Currie Cup. They then handed the trophy over to the South African rugby board and it became the floating trophy for the Currie Cup competition. The inaugural Currie Cup tournament was thus held in 1892 with Western Province earning the honour of holding it aloft as the first official winners.


title: Currie Cup

text: The competition missed a few years here and there for reasons such as war and the like, but in 1968 it became a fully fledged annual showpiece.


title: Currie Cup

text: Western Province dominated the competition's early years, and by 1920 the team from Cape Town had already secured the trophy 10 times. Only Griqualand West could halt the rampant WP side and win the trophy in 1899 and 1911. In 1922 the Transvaal won the competition for the first time, however Western Province would continue to dominate the Currie Cup throughout the 1920s and 1930s, winning the trophy a further 4 times and sharing it twice with Border. In 1939 the trophy returned to Johannesburg for only the second time after Transvaal defeated Western Province in Cape Town. This was the first time WP had lost a final at their home ground Newlands. The Currie Cup went into hiatus during the Second World War but resumed in 1946 when claimed their first ever trophy by beating Western Province 11–9 in the final at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria.


title: Currie Cup

text: The late 1940s and early 1950s were dominated by Transvaal who would win the trophy in 1950 and 1952, however in 1954 the Currie Cup would finally return south following Western Province's narrow 11–8 victory over in the final at Newlands in Cape Town.


title: Currie Cup

text: At the end of the apartheid 1980s, South African rugby supporters were treated to two of the most memorable Currie Cup finals. In 1989 winger Carel du Plessis scored a last-minute try as WP managed to draw with 16-all, Riaan Gouws missed the conversion which would have given WP its 6th title of the decade a feat which has never been achieved. The following year the Blue Bulls slipped up, though, and Natal sneaked home 18–12, inspired by fly-half Joel Stransky. The 1990s saw further improvement by Natal and the rise of Francois Pienaar's Transvaal. Since the end of apartheid in 1990–4, and the age of professionalism in rugby union in the early 1990s, the Currie Cup has become much more competitive with no team able to carve out an era of dominance like that of WP in the early years or in the 1970s and 1980s. All five of the so-called 'big unions' have won the Currie Cup on at least one occasion in the last 20 years; the Golden Lions (formerly Transvaal) have won the trophy 3 times in 1999, 2011 and 2015; Western Province have won the trophy on six occasions in 1997, 2000, 2001, 2012, 2014, and 2017; the Blue Bulls (formerly Northern Transvaal) have won the trophy 6 times in 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009 and 2020/21; the Free State Cheetahs have won the trophy 3 times in 2005, 2007 and 2016 and the have won the trophy 4 times in 2008, 2010, 2013 and 2018. In 2006 the trophy was shared by the Free State Cheetahs and Blue Bulls following their 28-28 all draw in a tense final in Bloemfontein.


title: Currie Cup

text: Whilst these days the competition lags behind Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship (previously the Tri-Nations) in the order of importance, the Currie Cup still holds a special place amongst South African rugby supporters and players, with the trophy very much still the holy grail of the South African domestic rugby.


title: Currie Cup

text: Between 1892 and 1920, the competition was held as a centralised tournament, with the team with the best record crowned as the winner. Between 1922 and 1936 (as well as in three tournaments between 1957 and 1966), the winner was the team with the best record following a round-robin competition. In all the other seasons, a final was played to determine the champion.


title: Currie Cup

text: In addition to the winners above, also won the South African Rugby Board Trophy in 1889. This tournament was effectively the precursor to the Currie Cup, which started in 1892.


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: The Worst Witch is an ITV television series about a group of young witches at a school for magic. The series stars Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones, and is based on "The Worst Witch" books by Jill Murphy (published from 1974 onwards). It aired for a total of 40 episodes spread over three series between 1998 and 2001, before being followed by "Weirdsister College." Most episodes revolved around the school, following the adventures of Mildred and her friends. The series was later followed by "The New Worst Witch", which ran for two series and chronicled the experiences of Mildred's younger cousin Hettie as she attended the school.


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: The series stars Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones (as Mildred Hubble and Ethel Hallow respectively), and was broadcast from 1998 to 2001 on ITV, and later on HBO. The series also stars veteran British actress Una Stubbs as the eccentric chanting teacher, Miss Bat. Felicity Jones was replaced by Katy Allen after the first series. It was explained away as a magical makeover (a "witch-over"). The series also starred Mildred Hubble's close friends Emma Brown who played her best friend Maud Moonshine, Jessica Fox as Enid Nightshade, Joanna Dyce as Ruby Cherrytree and Harshna Brahmbhatt as Jadu Wali. New characters were also added, such as Frank Blossom (the school's caretaker), and Miss Crotchet, the music teacher in the third series who replaced Miss Bat. New recurring characters included Merlin Langstaff, a wizard apprentice who befriended Mildred, his two mean-spirited acquaintances – Barry "Baz" Dragonsbane and Gary "Gaz" Grailquest, Charlie, Frank Blossom's nephew who really wanted to be a witch at first, but then later decided to train to be a wizard, Mrs. Cosie, the nervous owner of the nearby tearoom and Mistress Hecketty Broomhead, the evil school inspector who later became headmistress for a brief time. A character who also appears more than once is Egbert Hellibore, chief wizard and headmaster of Camelot Castle, where Merlin, Charlie, Baz and Gaz live. The first series dramatised "The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch Strikes Again", and the second series dramatised "A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch All At Sea". Both of these two series also contained original stories. The third and final series continued with purely original material.


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: In the United Kingdom series 1 was released on VHS on six videocassette tapes in 2000. "The Best of" was released on DVD in 2002 and included the episodes: "Battle of the Broomsticks", "A Pig in a Poke", "Old Hats and New Brooms", "It's a Frog's Life", "The Witchy Hour", "Unfairground", and "The Uninvited".


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: In Australia series 1–3 were released onto DVD as was "Weirdsister College", and both series of "The New Worst Witch" were released in 2007. Series one and two were released as one boxset, containing four discs that play on most DVD players (including the United Kingdom), as well as Series three and "Weirdsister College" on another boxset.


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: In Germany series 1–3, plus "Weirdsister College", were released on DVD. As common with many other releases of British television programmes in Europe, the packaging, subtitles and menus are in German; however, it contains the original English soundtrack. "Weirdsister College" is packaged as Series 4 rather than a separately named release.


title: The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)

text: In 2000, Georgina Sherrington won the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Comedy Series – Leading Young Actress.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The 1961 Formula One season was the 15th season of Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1961 World Championship of Drivers and the 1961 International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, which were contested concurrently from 14 May to 8 October over an eight race series. The season also included numerous non-championship races for Formula One cars.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Phil Hill of Ferrari won his only Drivers' Championship after his teammate and rival Wolfgang von Trips was killed at the Italian Grand Prix, the penultimate race of the season. Ferrari won its first F1 manufacturers' title.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The 1961 season was the first to feature only a single tyre supplier as Firestone decided to withdraw from the sport after eleven seasons.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The first year of the 1.5-litre formula was dominated by a well-prepared Ferrari team – the 1961 season was the first time they made a mid-engined car, the legendary 156 "Sharknose" - going against team boss Enzo Ferrari's dislike of mid-engined cars and his old-fashioned belief that mid-engined cars were built by people who did not have enough horsepower. Only Stirling Moss, in an outdated Lotus, was able to beat the Ferraris on two tracks where his skills offset the Ferrari power advantage. Innes Ireland also won a race, the 1961 United States Grand Prix, after Ferrari did not enter the race. Giancarlo Baghetti in a privately-entered Ferrari won the French Grand Prix on his championship debut, the only driver to have done so other than Nino Farina, winner of the first Formula One World Championship race. Baghetti had also won his only two previous Formula One races, the non-championship events at Syracuse and Naples, but the French race was his only win in the World Championship. The contest for the championship between Ferrari's leading drivers, Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips, ended in tragedy when von Trips collided with Jim Clark at Monza, killing von Trips and 14 spectators. Hill went on to win the championship, the first American driver to do so. The Indianapolis 500, a race that was run to completely different regulations to a Grand Prix and had almost nothing to do with European-style road racing, was dropped from the championship.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The number of points awarded to a race winner was increased to nine for the World Championship of Drivers.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Besides von Trips, two other drivers died during this season: Briton Shane Summers during the non-championship Silver City Trophy event at Brands Hatch, and Italian Giulio Cabianca during a test at the Modena Autodrome.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The following teams and drivers competed in the 1961 FIA World Championship. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Dunlop.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The Argentine Grand Prix was dropped from the calendar with the retirements of Juan Manuel Fangio in 1958 and José Froilán González in 1960, combined with unstable governments after the exile of then President of Argentina Juan Peron in 1955.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The British Grand Prix was moved from Silverstone to Aintree, in keeping with the event-sharing arrangement between the two circuits.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The German Grand Prix returned to the calendar for 1961, the 1960 race was initially supposed to be held at the AVUS circuit, but the race was cancelled after drivers complained about the extreme danger of the track. The German Grand Prix was held in 1960 but was run as a Formula 2 race at the Nürburgring but on the Südschleife version instead of the Nordschleife.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: With six weeks to go to the planned raceday it was deciced the United States Grand Prix would move from Riverside International Raceway in California to Watkins Glen International in New York because of the lack of spectators attending and prize money being paid.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The Moroccan Grand Prix was originally scheduled to be held on 29 October as the last race of the year but was cancelled for the third year in a row for monetary reasons.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Before the 1961 Formula One season was to start in Monaco in mid-May, many non-championship races were held throughout Europe. The first was the Lombank Trophy, a joint Formula One and Intercontinental Formula race, at the fast 2.7-mile Snetterton circuit in eastern England. Most of the top drivers of the day, such as Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips were in the United States competing in the prestigious 12 Hours of Sebring sportscar race. Still, two top drivers—John Surtees and defending champion Jack Brabham—were in attendance. Brabham won the race in an Intercontinental Cooper while Surtees finished third, first of the Formula One entrants.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: A week later, the Glover Trophy at the fast Goodwood circuit in southern England was held, with Surtees winning in a privately entered Cooper, ahead of Graham Hill in a works BRM, Surtees's teammate Roy Salvadori in a Cooper and Moss in a Rob Walker-entered Lotus. On the same day, the Pau Grand Prix in southwest France was won by Clark driving a works Lotus. Six days later, the Brussels Grand Prix at Heysel Park was won by Brabham in a works Cooper. Seven days after that, Moss won the Vienna Grand Prix in Austria, held at an aerodrome in Aspern, Vienna. Six days later, on a Friday, the Aintree 200 in Liverpool was won by Brabham in wet conditions, and three days later, the prestigious Syracuse Grand Prix in Sicily was won by Giancarlo Baghetti in a Ferrari – his first ever Formula One race.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The 1961 Formula One season did not officially start until May, eight days after the BRDC race in England. Practice saw Clark crash his Lotus heavily at turn one, and Lotus's woes continued when Innes Ireland crashed in the tunnel during the final session, destroying his car and breaking his leg. Moss took pole in his Rob Walker Lotus with Richie Ginther's Ferrari and Clark's Lotus sharing the front row. Graham and Phil Hill shared the second row. This particular Monaco Grand Prix turned out to be a classic, with one of the greatest driving performances in the history of Formula One by Stirling Moss in a privately entered Lotus against three Ferraris with a lot more power but worse handling than the Lotus.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: At the start, Ginther took the lead from Clark and Moss, but Clark soon had to pit with fuel pump problems, and so Jo Bonnier and Dan Gurney took third and fourth in their Porsches. On Lap 14, both Moss and Bonnier were able to pass Ginther, and 10 laps later Phil Hill passed both Ginther and Bonnier to move into second but there was no way he was going to catch Moss, who was driving one of the greatest races of his illustrious career. Towards mid-distance Ginther fought back, passing Hill for second and chasing after Moss, closing the gap to just three seconds. Moss responded, driving on the limit the entire way and eventually won the race. Hill finished third and Wolfgang von Trips was classified fourth despite crashing on the last lap.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The 19th Naples Grand Prix in southern Italy, held on the same day as the Monaco Grand Prix, at the Posillipo Park circuit and it was won by Baghetti- who had won two Formula One races from two starts.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: There were just eight days between Monaco and the Dutch Grands Prix. The Dutch race was held at the Zandvoort circuit located in small sand dunes right next to a popular beach 20 miles west of Amsterdam. The injured Innes Ireland was replaced at Team Lotus by Trevor Taylor but otherwise the field was much as it had been at Monaco, with local hero Carel Godin de Beaufort getting a drive in one of the Porsches, entered by his Ecurie Maarsbergen. Ferrari monopolised the front row of the grid with Phil Hill on pole from von Trips and Ginther, while Moss's Walker Lotus and Graham Hill's BRM shared the second row.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: At the start, von Trips took the lead with Graham Hill in a works BRM and Phil Hill behind him. Graham Hill soon began to fall back, dropping quickly behind Phil Hill and Clark, who had stormed through the field from the fourth row to run fourth at the end of the first lap. Clark proceeded to battle for second place with the Ferrari and they exchanged places several times before Phil Hill finally asserted himself. Further back Graham Hill battled with Moss and Ginther, but it was von Trips who emerged ahead for most of the race, and won it. On the last lap, however, Ginther went wide when his throttle stuck open and Moss was able to grab fourth.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The 1961 Dutch Grand Prix has a remarkable place in F1 history: every starter finished the race and no-one went into the pits. Such reliability has never been achieved since, made even more remarkable by the fact that Formula One cars were far from reliable machines during a race.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The London Trophy was held at the short, tight and twisty Crystal Palace circuit in London the day after the Dutch Grand Prix, and it was won by Salvadori driving a Yeoman Credit Cooper, whilst another English race, the Silver City Trophy at the undulating and twisty Brands Hatch circuit nearby Crystal Palace was held in wet conditions and was won by Moss in a Walker Lotus, but was marred by the death of 24-year-old Welshman Shane Summers in a Cooper, who was killed almost instantly when he spun at the challenging, anti-cambered Paddock Hill Bend, went off and crashed into a concrete wall near an underground tunnel entrance.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: A year after the traumatic 1960 Belgian Grand Prix, the F1 teams gathered again at the very fast and frighteningly daunting 8.7 mile Spa-Francorchamps public road circuit near Liège with a few changes from the Dutch Grand Prix three weeks previously. Innes Ireland, who had broken his leg at Monaco, was back in action for Team Lotus, which had new Lotus 21s for Ireland and Jim Clark. Ferrari had a fourth car painted up in Belgian racing yellow for Olivier Gendebien, which was being run by Ecurie Nationale Belge, which also had a pair of Emeryson chassis for Lucien Bianchi and Willy Mairesse. These were both damaged in practice and so Bianchi and Mairesse took over the non-qualified Lotus 18's with Tony Marsh and Wolfgang Seidel. British Racing Partnership was also in trouble with only one Lotus 18 to be shared by Cliff Allison and Henry Taylor. The team decided that the fastest driver would race, and as a result Allison went too fast, crashed heavily at Blanchimont, rolled the car and suffered severe leg injuries which would end his F1 career.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Phil Hill took pole with von Trips alongside while Gendebien made the most of his local experience to take third despite using a less powerful engine than the factory Ferraris. Ginther's Ferrari shared the second row with Surtees in Reg Parnell's Cooper-Climax.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Phil Hill took the lead at the start but was then passed by Gendebien while von Trips and Ginther joined in. The four Ferrari cars, well suited to this power circuit thanks to the formidable performance of their 120-degree V6 engines dominated the race and the lead changed several times before Phil Hill took the lead from von Trips and Ginther. Gendebien was fourth giving Ferrari a straight 1-2-3-4 result. Phil Hill fought von Trips all the way and the Phil Hill finished 0.7 seconds ahead of von Trips. Surtees was fifth although he had to battle early in the race with Graham Hill's BRM which eventually went out with electrical trouble. Gurney finished sixth in his Porsche.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: A fortnight after the Belgian GP the F1 teams gathered at the very fast, straight dominated Reims public road circuit for the French Grand Prix in Champagne country. As the French did not bother with the restrictive invitations it was a large field of cars with a variety of unusual privateers. Ferrari had a fourth car, run in the colors of the Federazione Italiana Scuderie Automobilische and driven by Baghetti who arrived at Reims undefeated. There was a new De Tomaso-Osca which was run by Scuderia Serenissima for Giorgio Scarlatti but it was not competitive. It was an all-Ferrari front row with Phil Hill on pole from Wolfgang Von Trips and Ritchie Ginther with the second row being shared by Stirling Moss in his Rob Walker Lotus 18 and Jim Clark in one of the factory Lotus 21s.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The race weekend was held in extremely hot conditions, and the track began to break up at the track's 2 hairpins. The ambient temperature on Sunday/race day was 102°F (39°C), and the race turned out to be yet another classic. Hill led from the start with Ginther and Von Trips giving chase but when Ginther spun Moss was able to take third for a while before the American recovered. Further back, there was an exciting slipstreaming battle between seven cars: the two Porsches of Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier, the factory Lotuses of Clark and Ireland, Graham Hill's BRM (Tony Brooks went out early in the other car with engine trouble), Bruce McLaren's Cooper and the fourth Ferrari of Baghetti. Eventually Ginther passed Moss and he dropped back into this fight because of brake trouble. Then the Ferrari team faltered. Von Trips, who had taken the lead under team orders, stopped with engine trouble on lap 18. Hill took over but spun on lap 38 and stalled his engine, re-joining a lap behind. Ginther lasted only three laps in the lead before he stopped with an engine problem and suddenly the seething battle for fourth place was a fight for the lead. Gradually the challengers dropped away leaving Gurney's Porsche against Baghetti's Ferrari. They changed places lap after lap and on the final lap Baghetti dived out of Gurney's slipstream to pass the American a couple of hundred yards before the finish line. Baghetti thus became the first and, to date, only man to win his first World Championship event.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Thirteen days later the British Grand Prix was held at the Aintree circuit in Liverpool, site of England's Grand National horse race. The field at Aintree was not very different from that which had been seen at Reims, although Rob Walker ran a four-wheel-drive Ferguson for Jack Fairman, although this was also driven by Stirling Moss during practice. There were four Ferraris again, with the unbeaten Giancarlo Baghetti joining the works trio. Qualifying saw Phil Hill, Ritchie Ginther, Jo Bonnier (Porsche) and Wolfgang Von Trips all set identical lap times, while Moss was alongside Von Trips on the second row in his Walker Lotus 18.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The race began in heavy rain with Phil Hill, Von Trips and Ginther getting ahead at the start, chased by Moss and Bonnier. Von Trips took the lead after seven laps, passing Hill. Moss moved to third when Ginther ran wide at one point and then managed to get past Hill for second. He chased Von Trips but was never able to pass him. When the rain stopped Moss began to drop back and would retire with brake problems. This allowed the Ferraris to finish 1-2-3 with Von Trips winning over Hill and Ginther. Jack Brabham, Bonnier and Roy Salvadori (Reg Parnell Cooper) completed the top six. The unbeaten Baghetti crashed out early in the race. Moss took over Fairman's Ferguson after he had retired but was eventually called into the pits and disqualified for having received a push-start.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The Solitude Grand Prix in Germany was held a week after the British Grand Prix on the very demanding and dangerous seven mile Solitude circuit near Porsche and Mercedes-Benz's hometown of Stuttgart. This race was won by Briton Innes Ireland in a works Lotus.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The German Grand Prix, held at the fearsome, twisty, very dangerous and extremely challenging 14.2 mile Nürburgring circuit for the first time since 1958 featured a huge field of cars with Ferrari turning up with four cars, Wolfgang Von Trips, Phil Hill and Ritchie Ginther being joined by Willy Mairesse, although the Belgian had an older engine in his car. Jack Brabham had the new Climax V8 FWMV engine for the first time in his factory Cooper, while Porsche had four cars, Edgar Barth joining Jo Bonnier, Dan Gurney and Hans Herrmann. Qualifying saw Hill record a remarkable lap of 8:55.2 – the first time anyone had lapped the Nordschleife in under nine minutes. This time which was nearly six seconds faster than Brabham's best, with Moss third quickest in his Rob Walker Lotus 18. Bonnier completed the front row in his Porsche. The second row featured Von Trips, Graham Hill in his BRM and Gurney.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The race started in damp conditions and Brabham led the field away only to spin out and crash on that first lap. Phil Hill charged up and took the lead, but Moss passed the American before they reached the finish line to start the second lap. Moss would stay ahead for the rest of the race while Von Trips came up and overtook Hill for second after a long battle. Towards the end of the race it started to rain, but Moss never took off his intermediate tires, and this allowed Moss to extend his lead, and won a superb victory with a Lotus that had superior handling to the Ferrari – essential at the Nürburgring.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: There was a three-week break between the German Grand Prix and the Swedish Kanonloppet, a non-championship race near Stockholm, and a week after that, the Danish Grand Prix at Roskilde near Copenhagen and a week after that the Modena Grand Prix near Ferrari's headquarters was held and all three of these races were won by Moss in the Walker Lotus.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The penultimate race of the 1961 World Championship was to be a showdown between two Ferrari drivers. The team had already won the Constructors' title so it was a straight fight between Wolfgang Von Trips and Phil Hill for the Drivers' title although Moss still had a mathematical chance of victory if he won both races. The advantage lay with Wolfgang Von Trips who had 33 points to Phil Hill's 29. The Ferrari team had a new recruit at the Monza Autodrome near Milan, 19-year old Mexican Ricardo Rodriguez taking over the team's fourth car while Giancarlo Baghetti re-appeared in a private Ferrari. Once again Jack Brabham was the only driver with the new Climax V8 engine. Stirling Moss ran his usual Lotus 18 but was not happy with it and Innes Ireland let him have his factory Lotus 21. The organisers, wanting to give the advantage to the Ferrari team decided to use the combined oval/road course again making this Monza the fastest circuit of the year. This circuit had been boycotted by the British teams last year because of the terrible quality of the extremely rough and bumpy concrete banking, which was of such poor quality and design that it even went as far as to badly affect the structural strength and reliability of the cars, particularly in regards to the cars' chassis and suspension but the British teams relented and they all competed in this year's event. As expected the powerful Ferraris were impressive, Von Trips was on pole with Rodriguez second (becoming the youngest driver ever to start a World Championship Grand Prix) ahead of Ginther and Phil Hill with Graham Hill's BRM sharing the third row with Baghetti.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: This Italian Grand Prix was to be marred by one of the worst tragedies in the history of motor racing, and would cast a shadow over the Italian Grand Prix for years. At the start, Phil Hill and Ginther managed to get into first and second places followed by Rodriguez, the fast-starting Jim Clark and Von Trips. Approaching the Parabolica the two cars collided. Clark crashed without injury but the Ferrari went through a spectator fence, went up an embankment on the left and was tossed into a roll, into where spectators were standing. Von Trips was thrown from the car, landed on the track, broke his neck and was killed along with 14 spectators. The race organisers decided not to stop the race and the Ferrari team put on a display until Rodriguez, Baghetti and Ginther all stopped with mechanical trouble. This left Phil Hill to win. Of the rest, Brabham went out with engine trouble while Surtees retired after running to the back of Bonnier who had slowed his Porsche at the site of Von Trips's accident. Moss went out with a broken wheel which left Dan Gurney second for Porsche and Bruce McLaren third for Cooper. Jack Lewis drove a marvellous race in his private Cooper to finish fourth ahead of Tony Brooks (BRM) and Roy Salvadori (Parnell Cooper). Von Trips's fatal retirement meant that Phil Hill became the first American to win the Formula 1 World Championship.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: The only non-European championship race of 1961 was the United States GP, which was being held at the 2.3 mile Watkins Glen circuit in upstate New York for the first time 4 weeks after the tragic Italian race. Having won both World Championships Ferrari decided not to bother crossing the Atlantic, denying Phil Hill the chance to race at the Glen. Not counting the famous Indianapolis 500, run to totally different regulations and not included again on the Grand Prix calendar from 1961 onwards, this was the 3rd time the US GP had been held since the international championship started in 1950, with one off-spells at Sebring in Florida and Riverside in southern California failing to achieve any success. Watkins Glen would continuously host the US GP up until 1980.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Both Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss had the new Climax V8 engine on this occasion but Moss decided after practice not to race it. The field was joined by a number of local stars, notably Hap Sharp and Roger Penske in Coopers and Jim Hall and Ken Miles in Lotuses. Brabham took pole position with Graham Hill alongside while Moss shared the second row with Bruce McLaren in the second factory Cooper.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: A paid crowd of 28,000 (total around 60,000) on Sunday made the sponsors extremely happy and also boded well for the race's future. At the start, Brabham led the field off the grid and into the first corner, but before the end of the first lap, Moss had moved by into the lead. These two were followed by Ireland (up from eighth), Hill, Dan Gurney, Masten Gregory and McLaren. On lap three, McLaren moved up to third when Ireland spun on oil at the end of the straight. "I nearly went out of the race," he said. "I went into a whirl, a 360-degree spin, cars were whipping past." He recovered and continued in eleventh.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: By lap 10, Ireland had already stormed his way back to fourth, behind McLaren's Cooper, as Moss and Brabham continued to draw away at a second a lap, swapping the lead back and forth. At about one-third distance, on lap 34, Brabham's V8 began to leak water and overheat. With puffs of smoke appearing from the left-side exhaust, the Cooper dropped back from Moss and finally entered the pits on lap 45. After taking on water and returning to the race, Brabham completed only seven more laps before retiring.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Leading now by over 40 seconds, Moss seemed on his way to a comfortable victory. Only he knew, however, that his oil pressure was dropping, and on lap 59, the dark blue Lotus peeled off and retired suddenly, handing the lead to Ireland. Hill was right on the tail of the Scot, hounding him for 15 laps, until he, too, suddenly coasted down the pit lane with a loose magneto wire. The next challenger was Roy Salvadori, who began trimming the lead from 20 seconds down to five with only five laps left. But it was Ireland's day. With just over three laps remaining, Salvadori's privately entered Cooper blew its engine, just as his teammate John Surtees' car had done on the first lap.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Ireland came home under the waving chequered flag of Tex Hopkins, less than five seconds ahead of American Dan Gurney, as Britain's Tony Brooks finished the last GP of his career in third. It was a race of milestones: Innes Ireland's only career win, the first win for Team Lotus, and the first American Grand Prix to turn a profit, ensuring its return in 1962. Unfortunately for Stirling Moss, it would be his last World Championship race, as his career was ended by a heavy accident during the 1962 Glover Trophy race at Goodwood the following April.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Points were awarded on a 9–6–4–3–2–1 basis to the first six finishers at each race. However, only the best five results from the eight races were retained.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: Points were awarded on an 8–6–4–3–2–1 basis to the first six finishers at each race. However, a manufacturer only received points for its highest placed car and only the best five results from the eight races were retained.


title: 1961 Formula One season

text: A pink background indicates an Intercontinental Formula race. A blue background indicates a combined Formula One and Intercontinental Formula race.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: The Needleman–Wunsch algorithm is an algorithm used in bioinformatics to align protein or nucleotide sequences. It was one of the first applications of dynamic programming to compare biological sequences. The algorithm was developed by Saul B. Needleman and Christian D. Wunsch and published in 1970. The algorithm essentially divides a large problem (e.g. the full sequence) into a series of smaller problems, and it uses the solutions to the smaller problems to find an optimal solution to the larger problem. It is also sometimes referred to as the optimal matching algorithm and the global alignment technique. The Needleman–Wunsch algorithm is still widely used for optimal global alignment, particularly when the quality of the global alignment is of the utmost importance. The algorithm assigns a score to every possible alignment, and the purpose of the algorithm is to find all possible alignments having the highest score.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: This algorithm can be used for any two strings. This guide will use two small DNA sequences as examples as shown in Figure 1:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: First construct a grid such as one shown in Figure 1 above. Start the first string in the top of the third column and start the other string at the start of the third row. Fill out the rest of the column and row headers as in Figure 1. There should be no numbers in the grid yet.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Next, decide how to score each individual pair of letters. Using the example above, one possible alignment candidate might be:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Each of these scenarios is assigned a score and the sum of the scores of all the pairings is the score of the whole alignment candidate. Different systems exist for assigning scores; some have been outlined in the Scoring systems section below. For now, the system used by Needleman and Wunsch will be used:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Start with a zero in the second row, second column. Move through the cells row by row, calculating the score for each cell. The score is calculated by comparing the scores of the cells neighboring to the left, top or top-left (diagonal) of the cell and adding the appropriate score for match, mismatch or indel. Calculate the candidate scores for each of the three possibilities:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Given there is no 'top' or 'top-left' cells for the second row only the existing cell to the left can be used to calculate the score of each cell. Hence −1 is added for each shift to the right as this represents an indel from the previous score. This results in the first row being 0, −1, −2, −3, −4, −5, −6, −7. The same applies to the first column as only the existing score above each cell can be used. Thus the resulting table is:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: The first case with existing scores in all 3 directions is the intersection of our first letters (in this case G and G). The surrounding cells are below:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: The cell which gave the highest candidate score must also be recorded. In the completed diagram in figure 1 above, this is represented as an arrow from the cell in row and column 3 to the cell in row and column 2.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: In this case, all directions reaching the highest candidate score must be noted as possible origin cells in the finished diagram in figure 1, e.g. in the cell in row and column 7.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Filling in the table in this manner gives the scores of all possible alignment candidates, the score in the cell on the bottom right represents the alignment score for the best alignment.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Mark a path from the cell on the bottom right back to the cell on the top left by following the direction of the arrows. From this path, the sequence is constructed by these rules:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: The simplest scoring schemes simply give a value for each match, mismatch and indel. The step-by-step guide above uses match = 1, mismatch = −1, indel = −1. Thus the lower the alignment score the larger the edit distance, for this scoring system one wants a high score. Another scoring system might be:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Different scoring systems can be devised for different situations, for example if gaps are considered very bad for your alignment you may use a scoring system that penalises gaps heavily, such as:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: More complicated scoring systems attribute values not only for the type of alteration, but also for the letters that are involved. For example, a match between A and A may be given 1, but a match between T and T may be given 4. Here (assuming the first scoring system) more importance is given to the Ts matching than the As, i.e. the Ts matching is assumed to be more significant to the alignment. This weighting based on letters also applies to mismatches.


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: In order to represent all the possible combinations of letters and their resulting scores a similarity matrix is used. The similarity matrix for the most basic system is represented as:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Each score represents a switch from one of the letters the cell matches to the other. Hence this represents all possible matches and mismatches (for an alphabet of ACGT). Note all the matches go along the diagonal, also not all the table needs to be filled, only this triangle because the scores are reciprocal.= (Score for A → C = Score for C → A). If implementing the T-T = 4 rule from above the following similarity matrix is produced:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Different scoring matrices have been statistically constructed which give weight to different actions appropriate to a particular scenario. Having weighted scoring matrices is particularly important in protein sequence alignment due to the varying frequency of the different amino acids. There are two broad families of scoring matrices, each with further alterations for specific scenarios:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: When aligning sequences there are often gaps (i.e. indels), sometimes large ones. Biologically, a large gap is more likely to occur as one large deletion as opposed to multiple single deletions. Hence two small indels should have a worse score than one large one. The simple and common way to do this is via a large gap-start score for a new indel and a smaller gap-extension score for every letter which extends the indel. For example, new-indel may cost -5 and extend-indel may cost -1. In this way an alignment such as:


title: Needleman–Wunsch algorithm

text: Scores for aligned characters are specified by a similarity matrix. Here, is the similarity of characters "a" and "b". It uses a linear gap penalty, here called .