text: By summer 2003, Howard Dean had become the apparent front-runner for the Democratic nomination, performing strongly in most polls and leading the pack with the largest campaign war chest. His strength as a fund raiser was attributed mainly to his embrace of the Internet for campaigning. The majority of his donations came from individual supporters, who became known as "Deanites", or, more commonly, "Deaniacs". Generally regarded as a pragmatic centrist during his governorship, Dean emerged during his presidential campaign as a left-wing populist, denouncing the Bush policies like invasion of Iraq as well as fellow Democrats, who, in his view, failed to strongly oppose them. Senator Joe Lieberman, a liberal on domestic issues but a hawk on the War on Terror, began his candidacy in early 2003 but failed to gain traction with liberal Democratic primary voters.


title: 2004 United States presidential election

text: In September 2003, retired four-star general Wesley Clark announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination. His campaign focused on themes of leadership and patriotism; early campaign advertisements relied heavily on biography. His late start left him with relatively few detailed policy proposals. His first few debates showed this weakness, although he soon presented a range of position papers, including a major tax-relief plan. Nevertheless, Democrats did not flock to support his campaign.


text: In sheer numbers, John Kerry had fewer endorsements than Dean, who was far ahead in the superdelegate race going into the Iowa caucuses in January 2004. However, Kerry led the endorsement races in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Nevada. His main perceived weakness was in his neighboring state of New Hampshire and nearly all national polls. Most other states did not have updated polling numbers to give an accurate placing for Kerry's campaign before Iowa. Heading into the primaries, Kerry's campaign was largely seen as being in trouble, particularly after he fired campaign manager Jim Jordan. The key factors enabling it to survive were when fellow Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy assigned Mary Beth Cahill to be the new campaign manager, as well as Kerry's mortgaging his home to lend the money to his campaign (while his wife was a billionaire, campaign finance rules prohibited using one's personal fortune). He also brought on the "magical" Michael Whouley who would be credited with helping bring home the Iowa victory the same as he did in New Hampshire for Al Gore in 2000 against Bill Bradley.


text: By the January 2004 Iowa caucuses, the field had dwindled down to nine candidates, as Bob Graham had dropped out of the race. Howard Dean was a strong front-runner. However, the Iowa caucuses yielded unexpectedly strong results for Democratic candidates Kerry, who earned 38% of the state's delegates, and John Edwards, who took 32%. Dean slipped to 18% and into third place, while Richard Gephardt finished fourth (11%). In the days leading up to the Iowa vote, there was much negative campaigning between the Dean and Gephardt candidacies.


text: The dismal results caused Gephardt to drop out and later endorse Kerry. Carol Moseley Braun also dropped out, endorsing Howard Dean. Besides the impact of coming in third, Dean was further hurt by a speech that he gave while at a post-caucus rally. He was shouting over the cheers of his enthusiastic audience, but the crowd noise was being filtered out by his unidirectional microphone, leaving only his full-throated exhortations audible to the television viewers. To those at home, he seemed to raise his voice out of sheer emotion.


text: The incessant replaying of the "Dean Scream" by the press became a debate on whether Dean was victimized by media bias. The scream scene was shown approximately 633 times by cable and broadcast news networks in just four days after the incident, an amount not including talk shows and local news broadcasts. However, those in the actual audience that day have insisted that they didn't know about the infamous "scream" until they returned to their hotel rooms and saw it on television.


text: On January 27, Kerry triumphed again, winning the New Hampshire primary. Dean finished second, Clark came in third, and Edwards placed fourth. The largest of the debates was held at Saint Anselm College, where both Kerry and Dean had strong performances.


text: Edwards won the South Carolina primary the following week and brought home a strong second-place finish in Oklahoma to Clark. Lieberman dropped out of the campaign the following day. Kerry dominated throughout February and his support quickly snowballed as he won caucuses and primaries, taking in wins in Michigan, Washington, Maine, Tennessee; Washington, D.C.; Nevada, Wisconsin, Utah, Hawaii, and Idaho. Clark and Dean dropped out during this time, leaving Edwards as the only real threat to Kerry. Kucinich and Sharpton continued to run despite poor results at the polls.


text: In March's Super Tuesday, Kerry won decisive victories in the California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island primaries as well as in the Minnesota caucuses. Despite having withdrawn from the race two weeks earlier, Dean won his home state of Vermont. Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry in Georgia, but after failing to win a single state other than South Carolina, he chose to withdraw from the presidential race. Sharpton followed suit a couple weeks later. Kucinich did not leave the race officially until July.


text: On July 6, Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate, shortly before the 2004 Democratic National Convention was held later that month in Boston. Days before Kerry announced Edwards as his running mate, Kerry gave a short list of three candidates: Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dick Gephardt, and Gov. Tom Vilsack. Heading into the convention, the Kerry/Edwards ticket unveiled its new slogan: a promise to make America "stronger at home and more respected in the world." Kerry made his Vietnam War experience the convention's prominent theme. In accepting the nomination, he began his speech with, "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." He later delivered what may have been the speech's most memorable line when he said, "the future doesn't belong to fear, it belongs to freedom," a quote that later appeared in a Kerry/Edwards television advertisement.


text: The keynote address at the convention was delivered by Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senate candidate (as well as future president) Barack Obama; the speech was well received, and it elevated Obama's status within the Democratic Party.


text: There were four other presidential tickets on the ballot in a number of states totaling enough electoral votes to have a theoretical possibility of winning a majority in the Electoral College. They were:


text: Bush focused his campaign on national security, presenting himself as a decisive leader and contrasted Kerry as a "flip-flopper." This strategy was designed to convey to American voters the idea that Bush could be trusted to be tough on terrorism while Kerry would be "uncertain in the face of danger." Bush also sought to portray Kerry as a "Massachusetts liberal" who was out of touch with mainstream Americans (just as his father did with Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election). One of Kerry's slogans was "Stronger at home, respected in the world." This advanced the suggestion that Kerry would pay more attention to domestic concerns; it also encapsulated Kerry's contention that Bush had alienated American allies by his foreign policy.


text: According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and traditional values as the most important factors in their decision. Kerry supporters cited the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and health care.


text: Over the course of Bush's first term in office, his extremely high approval ratings immediately following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks steadily dwindled, rising only during combat operations in Iraq in spring 2003, and again following the capture of Saddam Hussein in December that same year.


text: Between August and September 2004, there was an intense focus on events that occurred in the late-1960s and early-1970s. Bush was accused of failing to fulfill his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. However, the focus quickly shifted to the conduct of CBS News after they aired a segment on "60 Minutes Wednesday", introducing what became known as the Killian documents. Serious doubts about the documents' authenticity quickly emerged, leading CBS to appoint a review panel that eventually resulted in the firing of the news producer and other significant staffing changes.


text: Meanwhile, Kerry was accused by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, who asserted that "phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward." The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navy, and the disposition of his discharge.


text: In the beginning of September, the successful Republican National Convention along with the allegations by Kerry's former mates gave Bush his first comfortable margin since Kerry had won the nomination. A post-convention Gallup poll showed the President leading the Senator by 14 points.


text: Three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate were organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and held in the autumn of 2004. As expected, these debates set the agenda for the final leg of the political contest. Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb were arrested while trying to access the debates. Badnarik was attempting to serve papers to the Commission on Presidential Debates.


text: On October 29, four days before the election, excerpts of a video of Osama bin Laden addressing the American people were broadcast on al Jazeera. In his remarks, bin Laden mentions the September 11, 2001 attacks and taunted Bush over his response to them. In the days following the video's release, Bush's lead over Kerry increased by several points.


text: The following table records the official vote tallies for each state as reported by the official Federal Election Commission report. The column labeled "Margin" shows Bush's margin of victory over Kerry (the margin is negative for states and districts won by Kerry).


text: Although Guam has no votes in the Electoral College, they have held a straw poll for their presidential preferences since 1980. In 2004, the results were Bush 21,490 (64.1%), Kerry 11,781 (35.1%), Nader 196 (0.58%) and Badnarik 67 (0.2%).


text: Maine and Nebraska each allowed for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. In both states, two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote was awarded to the winner of each congressional district.


text: Red font color denotes those won by Republican President George W. Bush; blue denotes states won by Democrat John Kerry.


text: In New York, Bush obtained 2,806,993 votes on the Republican ticket and 155,574 on the Conservative Party ticket. Kerry obtained 4,180,755 votes on the Democratic ticket and 133,525 votes on the Working Families ticket. Nader obtained 84,247 votes on the Independence ticket, and 15,626 votes on the Peace and Justice ticket.


text: Note also: Official Federal Election Commission Report, with the latest, most final, and complete vote totals available.


text: One elector in Minnesota cast a ballot for president with the name of "John Ewards" written on it. The Electoral College officials certified this ballot as a vote for John Edwards for president. The remaining nine electors cast ballots for John Kerry. All ten electors in the state cast ballots for John Edwards for vice president (John Edwards's name was spelled correctly on all ballots for vice president). This was the first time in U.S. history that an elector had cast a vote for the same person to be both president and vice president.


text: Electoral balloting in Minnesota was performed by secret ballot, and none of the electors admitted to casting the Edwards vote for president, so it may never be known who the faithless elector was. It is not even known whether the vote for Edwards was deliberate or unintentional; the Republican Secretary of State and several of the Democratic electors have expressed the opinion that this was an accident.


text: New York's initial electoral vote certificate indicated that all of its 31 electoral votes for president were cast for "John L. Kerry of Massachusetts" instead of John F. Kerry, who won the popular vote in the state. This was apparently the result of a typographical error, and an amended electoral vote certificate with the correct middle initial was transmitted to the President of the Senate prior to the official electoral vote count.


text: During the campaign and as the results came in on the night of the election there was much focus on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. These three swing states were seen as evenly divided, and with each casting 20 electoral votes or more, they had the power to decide the election. As the final results came in, Kerry took Pennsylvania and then Bush took Florida, focusing all attention on Ohio.


text: The morning after the election, the major candidates were neck and neck. It was clear that the result in Ohio, along with two other states who had still not declared (New Mexico and Iowa), would decide the winner. Bush had established a lead of around 130,000 votes but the Democrats pointed to provisional ballots that had yet to be counted, initially reported to number as high as 200,000. Bush had preliminary leads of less than 5% of the vote in only four states, but if Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico had all eventually gone to Kerry, a win for Bush in Ohio would have created a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. The result of an electoral tie would cause the election to be decided in the House of Representatives with each state casting one vote, regardless of population. Such a scenario would almost certainly have resulted in a victory for Bush, as Republicans controlled more House delegations. Therefore, the outcome of the election hinged solely on the result in Ohio, regardless of the final totals elsewhere. In the afternoon of the day after the election, Ohio's Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, announced that it was statistically impossible for the Democrats to make up enough valid votes in the provisional ballots to win. At the time provisional ballots were reported as numbering 140,000 (and later estimated to be only 135,000). Faced with this announcement, Kerry conceded defeat.


text: The upper Midwest bloc of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin is also notable, casting a sum of 27 electoral votes. The following is list of the states considered swing states in the 2004 election by most news organizations and which candidate they eventually went for. The two major parties chose to focus their advertising on these states:


text: After the election, some sources reported indications of possible data irregularities and systematic flaws during the voting process.


text: Although the overall result of the election was not challenged by the Kerry campaign, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik obtained a recount in Ohio. This recount was completed December 28, 2004, although on January 24, 2007, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of selecting precincts to recount where they already knew the hand total would match the machine total, thereby avoiding having to perform a full recount.


text: At the official counting of the electoral votes on January 6, an objection was made under the Electoral Count Act (now ) to Ohio's electoral votes. Because the motion was supported by at least one member of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the law required that the two houses separate to debate and vote on the objection. In the House of Representatives, the objection was supported by 31 Democrats. It was opposed by 178 Republicans, 88 Democrats and one independent. Not voting were 52 Republicans and 80 Democrats. Four people elected to the House had not yet taken office, and one seat was vacant. In the Senate, it was supported only by its maker, Barbara Boxer, with 74 Senators opposed and 25 not voting. During the debate, no Senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or revote. Boxer claimed that she had made the motion not to challenge the outcome, but "to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now.".


text: Kerry would later state that "the widespread irregularities make it impossible to know for certain that the [Ohio] outcome reflected the will of the voters." In the same article, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said "I'm not confident that the election in Ohio was fairly decided... We know that there was substantial voter suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. That's what we suspect has happened."


text: At the invitation of the United States government, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent a team of observers to monitor the presidential elections in 2004. It was the first time the OSCE had sent observers to a U.S. presidential election, although they had been invited in the past. In September 2004 the OSCE issued a report on U.S. electoral processes and the election final report. The report reads: "The November 2, 2004 elections in the United States mostly met the OSCE commitments included in the 1990 Copenhagen Document. They were conducted in an environment that reflects a long-standing democratic tradition, including institutions governed by the rule of law, free and generally professional media, and a civil society intensively engaged in the election process. There was exceptional public interest in the two leading presidential candidates and the issues raised by their respective campaigns, as well as in the election process itself."


text: Earlier, some 13 U.S. Representatives from the Democratic Party had sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking for the UN to monitor the elections. The UN responded that such a request could only come from the official national executive. The move was met with opposition from some Republican lawmakers. The OSCE is not affiliated with the United Nations.


text: For 2004, some states expedited the implementation of electronic voting systems for the election, raising several issues:


text: The 2004 election was the first to be affected by the campaign finance reforms mandated by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain–Feingold Bill for its sponsors in the United States Senate). Because of the Act's restrictions on candidates' and parties' fundraising, a large number of so-called 527 groups emerged. Named for a section of the Internal Revenue Code, these groups were able to raise large amounts of money for various political causes as long as they do not coordinate their activities with political campaigns. Examples of 527s include Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, MoveOn.org, the Media Fund, and America Coming Together. Many such groups were active throughout the campaign season (there was some similar activity, although on a much lesser scale, during the 2000 campaign).


text: To distinguish official campaigning from independent campaigning, political advertisements on television were required to include a verbal disclaimer identifying the organization responsible for the advertisement. Advertisements produced by political campaigns usually included the statement, "I'm "[candidate's name]", and I approve this message." Advertisements produced by independent organizations usually included the statement, "[Organization name] is responsible for the content of this advertisement", and from September 3 (60 days before the general election), such organizations' ads were prohibited from mentioning any candidate by name. Previously, television advertisements only required a written "paid for by" disclaimer on the screen.


text: This law was not well known or widely publicized at the beginning of the Democratic primary season, which led to some early misperception of Howard Dean, who was the first candidate to buy television advertising in this election cycle. Not realizing that the law required the phrasing, some people viewing the ads reportedly questioned why Dean might say such a thing—such questions were easier to ask because of the maverick nature of Dean's campaign in general.


text: A ballot initiative in Colorado, known as Amendment 36, would have changed the way in which the state apportions its electoral votes. Rather than assigning all 9 of the state's electors to the candidate with a plurality of popular votes, under the amendment Colorado would have assigned presidential electors proportionally to the statewide vote count, which would be a unique system (Nebraska and Maine assign electoral votes based on vote totals within each congressional district). Opponents claimed that this splitting would diminish Colorado's influence in the Electoral College, and the amendment ultimately failed, receiving only 34% of the vote.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology company Oracle Corporation. As of November 2022, he was listed by "Bloomberg Billionaires Index" as the seventh-wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated fortune of $91 billion. Ellison is also known for his 98% ownership stake in Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother. His biological father was an Italian-American United States Army Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison moved to Chicago's South Shore, then a middle-class neighborhood. He remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, who had chosen the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the United States, Ellis Island. Louis Ellison was a government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Although Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, who attended synagogue regularly, he remained a religious skeptic. At age thirteen, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration. Ellison states: "While I think I am religious in one sense, the particular dogmas of Judaism are not dogmas I subscribe to. I don't believe that they are real. They're interesting stories. They're interesting mythology, and I certainly respect people who believe these are literally true, but I don't. I see no evidence for this stuff." Ellison says that his fondness for Israel is not connected to religious sentiments, but rather due to the innovative spirit of Israelis in the technology sector.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago and later was admitted to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and was enrolled as a premed student. At the university, he was named science student of the year. He withdrew without taking final exams after his sophomore year, because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending the summer of 1966 in California, he then attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he studied physics and mathematics, and also first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to Berkeley, California.


title: Larry Ellison

text: While working at Ampex in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd's research on relational database design for IBM. That led in 1977 to the formation of the company which later became Oracle. Oracle became a successful database vendor to mid- and low-range systems, later competing with Sybase (created 1984) and Microsoft SQL Server (a port of Sybase created in 1989) which led to Ellison being listed by "Forbes" as one of the richest people in the world.


title: Larry Ellison

text: During the 1970s, after a brief stint at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation. His projects included a database for the CIA, which he named "Oracle". Ellison was inspired by a paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000; $1,200 of the money was his.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 1979, the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc. Ellison had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to achieve compatibility with it, but IBM made this impossible by refusing to share System R's code. The initial release of the Oracle Database in 1979 was called Oracle version 2; there was no Oracle version 1. In 1983, the company officially became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship product. In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% of its workforce (about 400 people) because it was losing money. This crisis, which almost resulted in the company's bankruptcy, came about because of Oracle's "up-front" marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and had to settle class-action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake".


title: Larry Ellison

text: Although IBM dominated the mainframe relational database market with its DB2 and SQL/DS database products, it delayed entering the market for a relational database on Unix and Windows operating systems. This left the door open for Sybase, Oracle, Informix, and eventually Microsoft to dominate mid-range systems and microcomputers. Around this time, Oracle fell behind Sybase. From 1990 to 1993, Sybase was the fastest-growing database company and the database industry's darling vendor, but soon it fell victim to merger mania. Sybase's 1996 merger with Powersoft resulted in a loss of focus on its core database technology. In 1993, Sybase sold the rights to its database software running under the Windows operating system to Microsoft Corporation, which now markets it under the name "SQL Server".


title: Larry Ellison

text: In his early years at Oracle, Ellison was named an Award Recipient in the High Technology Category for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Program.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 1994, Informix overtook Sybase and became Oracle's most important rival. The intense war between Informix CEO Phil White and Ellison was front-page Silicon Valley news for three years. In April 1997, Informix announced a major revenue shortfall and earnings restatements. Phil White eventually landed in jail, and IBM absorbed Informix in 2001. Also in 1997, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer after Steve Jobs returned to the company. Ellison resigned in 2002. With the defeat of Informix and of Sybase, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance until the rise of Microsoft SQL Server in the late 1990s and IBM's acquisition of Informix Software in 2001 to complement their DB2 database. Oracle's main competition for new database licenses on UNIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems comes from IBM's DB2 and from Microsoft SQL Server. IBM's DB2 still dominates the mainframe database market.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2005, Oracle Corporation paid Ellison a $975,000 salary, a $6,500,000 bonus, and other compensation of $955,100. In 2007, Ellison earned a total compensation of $61,180,524, which included a base salary of $1,000,000, a cash bonus of $8,369,000, and options granted of $50,087,100. In 2008, he earned a total compensation of $84,598,700, which included a base salary of $1,000,000, a cash bonus of $10,779,000, no stock grants, and options granted of $71,372,700. In the year ending May 31, 2009, he made $56.8 million. In 2006, "Forbes" ranked him as the richest Californian. In April 2009, after a tug-of-war with IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Oracle announced its intent to buy Sun Microsystems. On July 2, 2009, for the fourth year in a row, Oracle's board awarded Ellison another 7 million stock options. On August 22, 2009, it was reported that Ellison would be paid only $1 for his base salary for the fiscal year of 2010, down from the $1,000,000 he was paid in fiscal 2009.


title: Larry Ellison

text: The European Union approved Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems on January 21, 2010, and agreed that Oracle's acquisition of Sun "has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products". The Sun acquisition also gave Oracle control of the popular MySQL open source database, which Sun had acquired in 2008. On August 9, 2010, Ellison denounced Hewlett-Packard's board for firing CEO Mark Hurd, writing that: "The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." (Ellison and Hurd were close personal friends.) Then on September 6, Oracle hired Mark Hurd as co-president alongside Safra Catz. Ellison remained in his current role at Oracle.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In March 2010, the "Forbes" list of billionaires ranked Ellison as the sixth-richest person in the world and as the third-richest American, with an estimated net worth of US$28 billion. On July 27, 2010, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Ellison was the best-paid executive in the last decade, collecting a total compensation of US$1.84 billion. In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the "Forbes" list of billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world and was still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion. In September 2012, Ellison was again listed on the "Forbes" list of billionaires as the third richest American citizen, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, with a net worth of $44 billion. In October 2012, he was listed just behind David Hamilton Koch as the eighth richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In June 2012, Ellison agreed to buy 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lana'i from David Murdock's company, Castle & Cooke. The price was reported to be between $500 million and $600 million. In 2005, Ellison agreed to settle a four-year-old insider-trading lawsuit by offering to pay $100 million to charity in Oracle's name.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2013, according to "The Wall Street Journal", Ellison earned $94.6 million. On September 18, 2014, Ellison appointed Mark Hurd to CEO of Oracle from his former position as president; Safra Catz was also made CEO, moving from her former role as CFO. Ellison assumed the positions of chief technology officer and executive chairman.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In November 2016, Oracle bought NetSuite for $9.3 billion. Ellison owned 35% of NetSuite at the time of the purchase making him $3.5 billion personally.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In December 2018, Ellison became a director on the board of Tesla, Inc., after purchasing 3 million shares earlier that year. Ellison left the Tesla Board in August 2022.


title: Larry Ellison

text: As of June 2020, Ellison is said to be the seventh wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $66.8 billion.


title: Larry Ellison

text: As of 2022, Ellison owns 42.9 percent of the shares of Oracle Corporation, and 1.5 percent of the shares of Tesla.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison made a brief cameo appearance in the 2010 movie "Iron Man 2". In 2010, Ellison purchased a 50% share of the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament. Ellison owns many exotic cars, including an Audi R8 and a McLaren F1. His favorite is the Acura NSX, which he was known to give as gifts each year during its production. Ellison is also reportedly the owner of a Lexus LFA.


title: Larry Ellison

text: With the economic downturn of 2010, Ellison sold his share of "Rising Sun", the 12th largest yacht in the world, making David Geffen the sole owner. The vessel is long, and reportedly cost over $200million to build. He downsized to "Musashi", a yacht built by Feadship.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison competes in yachting through Oracle Team USA. Following success racing Maxi yachts, Ellison founded BMW Oracle Racing to compete for the 2003 Louis Vuitton Cup.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2002, Ellison's Oracle's team introduced kite yachting into the America's Cup environment. Kite sail flying lasting about 30 minutes was achieved during testing in New Zealand.


title: Larry Ellison

text: BMW Oracle Racing was the "Challenger of Record" on behalf of the Golden Gate Yacht Club of San Francisco for the 2007 America's Cup in Valencia, Spain, until eliminated from the 2007 Louis Vuitton Cup challenger-selection series in the semi-finals. On February 14, 2010, Ellison's yacht "USA 17" won the second race (in the best of three "deed of gift" series) of the 33rd America's Cup, after winning the first race two days earlier. Securing a historic victory, Ellison and his BMW Oracle team became the first challengers to win a "deed of gift" match. The Cup returned to American shores for the first time since 1995. Ellison served as a crew member in the second race. Previously, Ellison had filed several legal challenges, through the Golden Gate Yacht Club, against the way that Ernesto Bertarelli (also one of the world's richest men) proposed to organize the 33rd America's Cup following the 2007 victory of Bertarelli's team Alinghi. The races were finally held in February 2010 in Valencia.


title: Larry Ellison

text: On September 25, 2013, Ellison's Oracle Team USA defeated Emirates Team New Zealand to win the 34th America's Cup in San Francisco Bay, California. Oracle Team USA had been penalized two points in the final for cheating by some team members during the America's Cup World Series warm-up events. The Oracle team came from a 1–8 deficit to win 9–8, in what has been called "one of the greatest comebacks in sports history".


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2019, Ellison, in conjunction with Russell Coutts, started the SailGP international racing series. The series used F50 foiling catamarans, the fastest class of boat in history with regattas held across the globe. Ellison committed to five years of funding to support the series until it could become self sustaining. The first season was successful with global audiences of over 1.8 billion.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison is a licensed pilot who has owned several aircraft. He was cited by the city of San Jose, California, for violating its limits on late-night takeoffs and landings from San Jose Mineta International Airport by planes weighing more than 75,000 pounds (34,019 kg). In January 2000, Ellison sued over the interpretation of the airport rule, contending that his Gulfstream V aircraft "is certified by the manufacturer to fly at two weights: 75,000 pounds, and at 90,000 pounds for heavier loads or long flights requiring more fuel. But the pilot only lands the plane in San Jose when it weighs 75,000 pounds or less, and has the logs to prove it." US District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in Ellison's favor in June 2001, calling for a waiver for Ellison's jet, but did not invalidate the curfew.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison also owns at least two military jets: the Italian training aircraft SIAI-Marchetti S.211, and a decommissioned Soviet fighter MiG-29, which the US government has refused him permission to import.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2009, Ellison purchased the Indian Wells Tennis Garden tennis facility in California's Coachella Valley and the Indian Wells Masters tournament for $100 million, and has subsequently invested another $100 million into the club.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison styled his estimated $110 million Woodside, California, estate after feudal Japanese architecture, complete with a man-made lake and an extensive seismic retrofit. In 2004 and 2005 he purchased more than 12 properties in Malibu, California, worth more than $180 million. The $65 million Ellison spent on five contiguous lots at Malibu's Carbon Beach made this the most costly residential transaction in United States history until banker Ronald Perelman sold his Palm Beach, Florida, compound for $70 million later that same year. His entertainment system at his Pacific Heights home cost $1 million, and includes a rock concert-sized video projector at one end of a drained swimming pool, using the gaping hole as a giant subwoofer.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In early 2010, Ellison purchased the Astors' Beechwood Mansion – formerly the summer home of the Astor family – in Newport, Rhode Island, for $10.5 million.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2011 he purchased the 249-acre Porcupine Creek Estate and private golf course in Rancho Mirage, California, for $42.9 million. The property was formerly the home of Yellowstone Club founders Edra and Tim Blixseth, and was sold to Ellison by creditors following their divorce and bankruptcy.


title: Larry Ellison

text: On June 21, 2012, the governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, declared that Ellison had signed an agreement to buy most of the island of Lanai from the Castle & Cooke company, owned by David H. Murdock. Following the purchase Ellison owns 98% of Lanai, Hawaii's sixth-largest island.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2022, Ellison bought a 22-acre property in Manalapan, Florida for $173 million. He purchased it from Jim Clark, who in turn had acquired it from the Ziff family. It is the most expensive residential property purchase in Florida history.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 1992 Ellison shattered his elbow in a high-speed bicycle crash. After receiving treatment at University of California, Davis, Ellison donated $5 million to seed the Lawrence J. Ellison Musculo-Skeletal Research Center. In 1998, the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center opened on the Sacramento campus of the UC Davis Medical Center.


title: Larry Ellison

text: To settle an insider trading lawsuit arising from his selling nearly $1 billion of Oracle stock, a court allowed Ellison to donate $100 million to his own charitable foundation without admitting wrongdoing. A California judge refused to allow Oracle to pay Ellison's legal fees of $24 million. Ellison's lawyer had argued that if Ellison were to pay the fees, that could be construed as an admission of guilt. His charitable donations to Stanford University raised questions about the independence of two Stanford professors who evaluated the case's merits for Oracle. In response to the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Ellison made a controversial offer to donate software to the federal government that would have enabled it to build and run a national identification database and to issue ID cards.


title: Larry Ellison

text: "Forbes" 2004 list of charitable donations made by the wealthiest 400 Americans stated that Ellison had donated $151,092,103, about 1% of his estimated personal wealth. In June 2006, Ellison announced he would not honor his earlier pledge of $115 million to Harvard University, claiming it was due to the departure of former president Lawrence Summers. Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne announced, "It was really Larry Summers' brainchild and once it looked like Larry Summers was leaving, Larry Ellison reconsidered ... [I]t was Larry Ellison and Larry Summers that had initially come up with this notion." In 2007 Ellison pledged $500,000 to fortify a community centre in Sderot, Israel, after discovering that the building was not fortified against rocket attacks. Other charitable donations by Ellison include a $10 million donation to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2014. In 2017 Ellison again donated to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, this time for $16.6 million. His donation was intended to support the construction of well-being facilities on a new campus for co-ed conscripts.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In August 2010 a report listed Ellison as one of the 40 billionaires who had signed "The Giving Pledge".


title: Larry Ellison

text: In May 2016 Ellison donated $200 million to the University of Southern California for establishing a cancer research center: the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison was critical of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, saying that "Snowden had yet to identify a single person who had been 'wrongly injured' by the NSA's data collection". He has donated to both Democratic and Republican politicians, and in late 2014 hosted Republican senator Rand Paul at a fundraiser at his home.


title: Larry Ellison

text: Ellison was one of the top donors to Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC supporting Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid. As of February 2016, Ellison had given $4 million overall to the PAC. In 2020, Ellison allowed former president Donald Trump to have a fundraiser at his Rancho Mirage estate, but Ellison was not present. In January 2022, Ellison donated $15 million to the Opportunity Matters Fund super PAC associated with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), which is one of the most significant financial contributions of the 2022 election cycle.


title: Larry Ellison

text: "The Washington Post" reported in May 2022 that Ellison participated in a conference call days after the 2020 presidential election that focused on strategies for challenging the legitimacy of the vote. Other participants on the call included Fox News host Sean Hannity, senator Lindsey Graham, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow and James Bopp, an attorney for True the Vote. The "Post" cited court documents and a participant on the call.


title: Larry Ellison

text: In 2019, the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC honored Ellison with the first Rebels With A Cause Award in recognition of his generous support through the years.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Patton Peter Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is known as Spence Olchin in the sitcom "The King of Queens" (1998–2007) and for narrating the sitcom "The Goldbergs" (2013–present) as adult Adam F. Goldberg. After making his acting debut in the "Seinfeld" episode "The Couch", he has since appeared in a variety of television series, such as "Parks and Recreation", "Community", "Two and a Half Men", "Drunk History", "Reno 911!", "Mystery Science Theater 3000", "Archer", "Veep", "Justified", "Kim Possible", and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", portraying Principal Ralph Durbin in "A.P. Bio" (2018–2021) and Matthew the Raven in the TV series "The Sandman" (2022–present).


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt is also known for voicing Remy in the Pixar film "Ratatouille" (2007), Max in the Illumination film "The Secret Life of Pets 2" (2019) (replacing Louis C.K. from the first film), and M.O.D.O.K in the 2021 Hulu series of the same name. Other notable film credits include "Man on the Moon" (1999), "Zoolander" (2001), "" (2004), "All Roads Lead Home" (2008), "Big Fan" (2009), "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas" (2011), "22 Jump Street" (2014), and "The Circle" (2017). In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) multimedia franchise, Oswalt guest starred as the Koenigs on "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." (2014–2020) and voiced Pip the Troll in "Eternals" (2021). He also made a notable appearance on the web series, "Best of the Worst" in 2019.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: In his work as a stand-up comedian, Oswalt has appeared in six stand-up specials and also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his Netflix special "Patton Oswalt: Talking for Clapping" (2016).


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt was born on January 27, 1969 in Portsmouth, Virginia, the son of Carla and Larry J. Oswalt, a career United States Marine Corps officer. He was named after General George S. Patton. Oswalt is of Italian, Irish, German, English, and Scottish descent. He has one younger brother, Matt Oswalt, a comedy writer best known for writing and starring in the YouTube web series "Puddin"'. While he was a military brat, his family lived in Ohio and in Tustin, California, before settling in Sterling, Virginia. He is a 1987 graduate of Broad Run High School in Ashburn, Virginia. He later graduated from The College of William & Mary where he majored in English and was initiated into the Alpha Theta chapter of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt began performing stand-up comedy on July 18, 1988. After writing for "MADtv" and starring in his own 1996 comedy special for HBO, he went on to garner notable roles in films and television shows with his film debut coming in the 1996 military comedy film "Down Periscope" alongside Kelsey Grammer. His television debut was on the "Seinfeld" episode "The Couch". His most prominent and longest running role was as Spence Olchin on "The King of Queens". His first starring film role was as the voice of Remy, the lead character in the 2007 Academy Award-winning Pixar film "Ratatouille". He has also appeared in smaller roles in such films as "Magnolia" and "22 Jump Street".


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt wrote the comic book story "JLA: Welcome to the Working Week", a backup story in "Batman" #600; a story for "Dwight T. Albatross's The Goon Noir #01" and a story for "Masks: Too Hot for TV". Expanding his voice artist repertoire, he began voicing the villainous character Tobey on PBS Kids GO! series "WordGirl" in 2007. He also appeared on the "Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner". He appeared on the "Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav" in August 2007. That same year, he appeared on an episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants", "The Original Fry Cook", as Jim. Oswalt moderated a reunion panel of the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" cast at the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2008.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt played Paul Aufiero, the leading role in Robert D. Siegel's 2009 directorial debut, "Big Fan". He was set to star in a 2010 Broadway revival of "Lips Together, Teeth Apart". The show was postponed, then eventually canceled, when Megan Mullally left the production after the director denied her request to replace Oswalt due to his lack of stage experience.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: He starred in the Showtime drama "The United States of Tara" as Neil, an employee of Four Winds Landscaping. He also provided the voice of Thrasher, a robot protagonist from the Cartoon Network show "Robotomy".


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt emceed the 2010 BookExpo America, promoting his then-upcoming book "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" and introducing the evening's panelists: Christopher Hitchens, William Gibson, and Sara Gruen. Oswalt released "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" in 2011.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt played the role of Hurlan Heartshe in the 2011 surrealist comedy miniseries "The Heart, She Holler" on Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, Adult Swim. Oswalt appeared in the 2011 film "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas". Oswalt played Matt Freehauf in Jason Reitman's 2011 black comedy "Young Adult". He played Billy Stanhope, ex-best friend of Ashton Kutcher's Walden Schmidt on "Two and a Half Men" in 2012.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: As of September 2013, Oswalt narrates the TV series "The Goldbergs". He also had a recurring role as Constable Bob Sweeney in the fourth season of the FX series "Justified".


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Patton played the role of Agent Koenig on the TV series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." He later appeared in separate episodes as brothers Eric and Billy Koenig. He continued to appear in the second season as Billy and a third brother named Sam. In season four, he also played a fourth brother, Thurston.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's memoir "Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film" was published by Simon & Schuster in 2015. He also voiced the male version of Jesse in "", which was released in October 2015.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt played Max in the reboot of "Mystery Science Theater 3000", as the son of Frank Conniff's character TV's Frank. The program premiered on Netflix in 2017.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Also in 2017, lifelong film fan Oswalt provided the voice of horror icon Boris Karloff in several episodes of film critic Karina Longworth’s podcast "You Must Remember This," for the season entitled “Bela and Boris.”


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt had a voice-over role in science fiction comedy film "Sorry to Bother You", which was released in theaters on July 6, 2018.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt replaced Louis C.K. in the 2019 film "The Secret Life of Pets 2", as the voice of main character Max. In addition, he reprised his role as Professor Dementor in the Disney Channel Original Movie "Kim Possible", a live action adaptation of the 2002-2007 animated series.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: On April 15, 2019, Oswalt joined a host of other writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA's stand against the ATA and the practice of packaging.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's stand-up comedy covers topics ranging from pop culture frivolity, such as comic book supervillains and 1980s glam metal, to deeper social issues like American excess, materialism, foreign policy, and religion. He also discusses his atheism in his stand-up. He recorded his third comedy album at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on February 28, 2009. It premiered on Comedy Central as "Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong" on August 23, 2009, and was released on DVD August 25, 2009.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: An animated video of Patton's take on New Song's Christmas Shoes was posted on YouTube in November 2009. The track does not appear on any albums. The audio is claimed to be recorded at Lisner Auditorium in Washington DC.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's album "Patton Oswalt: Finest Hour" was released on September 19, 2011. The extended and uncensored DVD of this special was released in April 2012, a few days after its television premiere on Comedy Central.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's comedy special "" was to be released on January 16, 2014, via online movie streaming website Epix, but was pushed back by the company for unknown reasons. However, it did premiere on Comedy Central on April 6, 2014, and became available for purchase on April 8, 2014, in both DVD and CD format.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's comedy special "Talking for Clapping" was released on Netflix on April 22, 2016. For the album, he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: In an episode of "Hiking with Kevin Nealon" on YouTube, posted November 14, 2019, Oswalt confirmed a new special, "I Love Everything", recorded three weeks prior to the recording of the hike. It is currently airing on Netflix and was nominated for another Primetime Emmy Award.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt married true crime writer and journalist Michelle McNamara on September 24, 2005. They had one daughter together, Alice, born in April 2009.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: McNamara died in her sleep in the family's Los Angeles, California home on April 21, 2016. Her death was attributed to a combination of a previously undiagnosed heart condition and complications from ingested medications (Adderall, Xanax, and Fentanyl). The season-three finale of "The Goldbergs" was dedicated to her memory.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: On August 1, 2016, Oswalt announced that he had been working to complete McNamara's unfinished nonfiction book about the Golden State Killer. In September 2017, Oswalt announced that the book, titled "I'll Be Gone in the Dark", was scheduled for release on February 27, 2018, and was subsequently available for preorders. Less than two months after the book's release, on April 25, 2018, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department announced they had made an arrest in the Golden State Killer case. Oswalt posted a brief video to Instagram, saying: "I think you got him, Michelle." He also posted on Twitter that same day, saying that he hoped to visit the suspect if he was indeed the Golden State Killer, "not to gloat or gawk - to ask him the questions that [McNamara] wanted answered in her 'Letter to an Old Man'" at the end of her book.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt is a longtime comic book fan, which he has discussed in his stand up as well as writing a few issues for comics.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: In July 2017 he and actress Meredith Salenger were confirmed to be engaged. They were married in November 2017.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: In 2013, he teamed up with PETA, spoke out against chaining pet dogs, and sent a letter to the mayor and members of the city council of Newport News, Virginia urging them to ban the practice.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt is an outspoken atheist and has referred to his atheism in his comedy specials: "No Reason to Complain", "Feelin' Kinda Patton", "My Weakness Is Strong", and "Finest Hour".


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt's influences include Jonathan Winters, Richard Pryor, Emo Philips, Blaine Capatch, Jim Goad, Bill Hicks, Bobcat Goldthwait, Sam Kinison, Steve Martin, and Louis C.K.


title: Patton Oswalt

text: Oswalt endorsed Barack Obama for re-election as president in 2012. Oswalt was an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump. In January 2019, following an intense Twitter feud with a Trump supporter, he donated $2,000 to the man's GoFundMe fund created to help cover his medical expenses.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar's main industries are spices, raffia and tourism. In particular, the islands produce cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper. For this reason, the Zanzibar Archipelago, together with Tanzania's Mafia Island, are sometimes referred to locally as the "Spice Islands". Tourism in Zanzibar is a more recent activity, driven by government promotion that caused an increase from 19,000 tourists in 1985, to 376,000 in 2016. The islands are accessible via 5 ports and the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, which can serve up to 1.5 million passengers per year.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar's marine ecosystem is an important part of the economy for fishing and algaculture and contains important marine ecosystems that act as fish nurseries for Indian Ocean fish populations. Moreover, the land ecosystem is the home of the endemic Zanzibar red colobus, the Zanzibar servaline genet, and the extinct or rare Zanzibar leopard. Pressure from the tourist industry and fishing as well as larger threats such as sea level rise caused by climate change are creating increasing environmental concerns throughout the region.


title: Zanzibar

text: The word "Zanzibar" came from Arabic "zanjibār" ( ), which is in turn from Persian "zangbâr" ( ), a compound of "Zang" ( , "black") + "bâr" ( , "coast"), cf. the Sea of Zanj. The name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies, ultimately meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants.


title: Zanzibar

text: The presence of microliths suggests that Zanzibar has been home to humans for at least 20,000 years, which was the beginning of the Later Stone Age.


title: Zanzibar

text: A Greco-Roman text between the 1st and 3rd centuries, the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", mentioned the island of "Menuthias" (), which is probably Unguja. Zanzibar, like the nearby coast, was settled by Bantu speakers at the outset of the first millennium. Archaeological finds at Fukuchani, on the northwest coast of Zanzibar, indicate a settled agricultural and fishing community from the 6th century at the latest. The considerable amount of daub found indicates timber buildings, and shell beads, bead grinders, and iron slag have been found at the site. There is evidence of limited engagement in long-distance trade: a small amount of imported pottery has been found, less than 1% of total pottery finds, mostly from the Gulf and dated to the 5th to 8th century. The similarity to contemporary sites such as Mkokotoni and Dar es Salaam indicates a unified group of communities that developed into the first center of coastal maritime culture. The coastal towns appear to have been engaged in Indian Ocean and inland African trade at this early period. Trade rapidly increased in importance and quantity beginning in the mid-8th century and by the close of the 10th century Zanzibar was one of the central Swahili trading towns.


title: Zanzibar

text: Excavations at nearby Pemba Island, but especially at Shanga in the Lamu Archipelago, provide the clearest picture of architectural development. Houses were originally built with timber (circa 1050) and later in mud with coral walls (circa 1150). The houses were continually rebuilt with more permanent materials. By the 13th century, houses were built with stone, and bonded with mud, and the 14th century saw the use of lime to bond stone. Only the wealthier patricians would have had stone and lime built houses, the strength of the materials allowing for flat roofs, while the majority of the population lived in single-story thatched houses similar to those from the 11th and 12th centuries. According to John Middleton and Mark Horton, the architectural style of these stone houses have no Arab or Persian elements, and should be viewed as an entirely indigenous development of local vernacular architecture. While much of Zanzibar Town's architecture was rebuilt during Omani rule, nearby sites elucidate the general development of Swahili, and Zanzibari, architecture before the 15th century.


title: Zanzibar

text: From the 9th century, Swahili merchants on Zanzibar operated as brokers for long-distance traders from both the hinterland and Indian Ocean world. Persian, Indian, and Arab traders frequented Zanzibar to acquire East African goods like gold, ivory, and ambergris and then shipped them overseas to Asia. Similarly, caravan traders from the African Great Lakes and Zambezian Region came to the coast to trade for imported goods, especially Indian cloth. Before the Portuguese arrival, the southern towns of Unguja Ukuu and Kizimkazi and the northern town of Tumbatu were the dominant centers of exchange. Zanzibar was just one of the many autonomous city-states that dotted the East African littoral. These towns grew in wealth as the Swahili people served as intermediaries and facilitators to merchants and traders. This interaction between Central African and Indian Ocean cultures contributed in part to the evolution of the Swahili culture, which developed an Arabic-script literary tradition. Although a Bantu language, the Swahili language as a consequence today includes some borrowed elements, particularly loanwords from Arabic, though this was mostly a 19th-century phenomenon with the growth of Omani hegemony. Many foreign traders from Africa and Asia married into wealthy patrician families on Zanzibar. Particularly Asian men, who "wintered" on the coast for up to six months because of the prevailing monsoon wind patterns, married East African women. Since most Asian traders were Muslim, their children inherited their paternal ethnic identity, though East African matrilineal traditions remained key.


title: Zanzibar

text: Vasco da Gama's visit in 1498 marked the beginning of European influence. In 1503 or 1504, Zanzibar became part of the Portuguese Empire when Captain Ruy Lourenço Ravasco Marques landed and demanded and received tribute from the sultan, in exchange for peace. Zanzibar remained a possession of Portugal for almost two centuries. It initially became part of the Portuguese province of Arabia and Ethiopia and was administered by a governor general. Around 1571, Zanzibar became part of the western division of the Portuguese empire and was administered from Mozambique. It appears, however, that the Portuguese did not closely administer Zanzibar. The first English ship to visit Unguja, the "Edward Bonaventure" in 1591, found that there was no Portuguese fort or garrison. The extent of their occupation was a trade depot where produce was purchased and collected for shipment to Mozambique. "In other respects, the affairs of the island were managed by the local 'king', the predecessor of the Mwinyi Mkuu of Dunga." This hands-off approach ended when Portugal established a fort on Pemba Island around 1635 in response to the Sultan of Mombasa's slaughter of Portuguese residents several years earlier. Portugal had long considered Pemba to be a troublesome launching point for rebellions in Mombasa against Portuguese rule.


title: Zanzibar

text: The precise origins of the sultans of Unguja are uncertain. However, their capital at Unguja Ukuu is believed to have been an extensive town. Possibly constructed by locals, it was composed mainly of perishable materials.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Portuguese arrived in East Africa in 1498, where they found several independent towns on the coast, with Muslim Arabic-speaking elites. While the Portuguese travelers describe them as 'black' they made a clear distinction between the Muslim and non-Muslim populations. Their relations with these leaders were mostly hostile, but during the sixteenth century they firmly established their power, and ruled with the aid of tributary sultans. The Portuguese presence was relatively limited, leaving administration in the hands of preexisting local leaders and power structures. This system lasted until 1631, when the Sultan of Mombasa massacred the Portuguese inhabitants. For the remainder of their rule, the Portuguese appointed European governors. The strangling of trade and diminished local power led the Swahili elites in Mombasa and Zanzibar to invite Omani aristocrats to assist them in driving the Europeans out.


title: Zanzibar

text: In 1698, Zanzibar came under the influence of the Sultanate of Oman. There was a brief revolt against Omani rule in 1784. Local elites invited Omani merchant princes to settle on Zanzibar in the first half of the nineteenth century, preferring them to the Portuguese. Many locals today continue to emphasize that indigenous Zanzibaris had invited Seyyid Said, the first Busaidi sultan, to their island, claiming a patron-client relationship with powerful families was a strategy used by many Swahili coast towns since at least the fifteenth century.


title: Zanzibar

text: In 1832, or 1840 (the date varies among sources), Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman moved his capital from Muscat, Oman to Stone Town. After Said's death in June 1856, two of his sons, Thuwaini bin Said and Majid bin Said, struggled over the succession. Said's will divided his dominions into two separate principalities, with Thuwaini to become the Sultan of Oman and Majid to become the first Sultan of Zanzibar; the brothers quarreled about the will, which was eventually upheld by Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning, Great Britain's Viceroy and Governor-General of India.


title: Zanzibar

text: Until around 1890, the sultans of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the Swahili coast known as Zanj, which included Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. Beginning in 1886, Great Britain and Germany plotted to obtain parts of the Zanzibar sultanate for their own empires.


title: Zanzibar

text: In October 1886, a British-German border commission established the Zanj as a strip along most of the African Great Lakes region's coast, an area stretching from Cape Delgado (now in Mozambique) to Kipini (now in Kenya), including Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. Over the next few years, however, almost all of these mainland possessions were lost to European imperial powers.


title: Zanzibar

text: The sultans developed an economy of trade and cash crops in the Zanzibar Archipelago with a ruling Arab elite. Ivory was a major trade good. The archipelago, sometimes referred to by locals as the Spice Islands, was famous worldwide for its cloves and other spices, and plantations were developed to grow them. The archipelago's commerce gradually fell into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, whom Said bin Sultan encouraged to settle on the islands.


title: Zanzibar

text: During his 14-year reign as sultan, Majid bin Said consolidated his power around the east African slave trade. Malindi in Zanzibar City was the Swahili Coast's main port for the slave trade with the Middle East. In the mid-19th century, as many as 50,000 slaves passed annually through the port.


title: Zanzibar

text: One of Majid's brothers, Barghash bin Said, succeeded him and was forced to abolish the slave trade in the Zanzibar Archipelago by the British. He largely developed Unguja's infrastructure. Another brother of Majid, Khalifa bin Said, was the third sultan of Zanzibar and furthered the relationship with the British which led to the archipelago's progress toward abolishing slavery.


title: Zanzibar

text: Control of Zanzibar eventually came into the hands of the British Empire; part of the political impetus for this was the 19th century movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Zanzibar was the center of the east African slave trade. In 1822, Captain Moresby, the British consul in Muscat pressed Sultan Said to end the slave trade by signing Moresby treaty.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Moresby Treaty, the first of a series of anti-slavery treaties with Britain. It prohibited slave transport south and east of the Moresby Line, from Cape Delgado in Africa to Diu Head on the coast of India. Said lost the revenue he would have received as duty on all slaves sold, so to make up for this shortfall he encouraged the development of the slave trade in Zanzibar itself. Said came under increasing pressure from the British to abolish slavery entirely. In 1842, Britain told Said it wished to abolish the slave trade to Arabia, Oman, Persia, and the Red Sea.


title: Zanzibar

text: Ships from the Royal Navy were employed to enforce the anti-slavery treaties by capturing any dhows carrying slaves, but with only four ships patrolling a huge area of sea, the British navy found it hard to enforce the treaties as ships from France, Spain, Portugal, and America continued to carry slaves. In 1856, Sultan Majid consolidated his power around the African Great Lakes slave trade. But in 1873, Sir John Kirk informed his successor, Sultan Barghash, that a total blockade of Zanzibar was imminent, and Barghash reluctantly signed the Anglo-Zanzibari treaty which abolished the slave trade in the sultan's territories, closed all slave markets and protected liberated slaves.


title: Zanzibar

text: The relationship between Britain and the German Empire, at that time the nearest relevant colonial power, was formalized by the 1890 Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty, in which Germany agreed to "recognize the British protectorate over ... the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba".


title: Zanzibar

text: In 1890 Zanzibar became a protectorate (not a colony) of Britain. This status meant it remained under the sovereignty of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Prime Minister Salisbury explained the British position:


title: Zanzibar

text: From 1890 to 1913, traditional viziers were in charge; they were supervised by advisors appointed by the Colonial Office. However, in 1913 a switch was made to a system of direct rule through residents (effectively governors) from 1913. The death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25 August 1896 and the succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash, whom the British did not approve of, led to the Anglo-Zanzibar War. On the morning of 27 August 1896, ships of the Royal Navy destroyed the Beit al Hukum Palace. A cease-fire was declared 38 minutes later, and to this day the bombardment stands as the shortest war in history.


title: Zanzibar

text: On 10 December 1963, the Protectorate that had existed over Zanzibar since 1890 was terminated by the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom did not grant Zanzibar independence as such, because the UK had never had sovereignty over Zanzibar. Rather, by the Zanzibar Act 1963 of the United Kingdom, the UK ended the Protectorate and made provision for full self-government in Zanzibar as an independent country within the Commonwealth. Upon the Protectorate being abolished, Zanzibar became a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth under the Sultan.


title: Zanzibar

text: However, just a month later, on 12 January 1964 Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah was deposed during the Zanzibar Revolution. The Sultan fled into exile, and the Sultanate was replaced by the People's Republic of Zanzibar, a socialist government led by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). Over 20,000 people were killed - mostly Arabs and Indians - and many of them escaped the country as a consequence of the revolution.


title: Zanzibar

text: In April 1964, the republic merged with mainland Tanganyika. This United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar was soon renamed, blending the two names, as the United Republic of Tanzania, within which Zanzibar remains an autonomous region.


title: Zanzibar

text: The 2002 census is the most recent census for which results have been reported. The total population of Zanzibar was 984,625 – with an annual growth rate of 3.1 percent. The population of Zanzibar City, which was the largest city, was 205,870.


title: Zanzibar

text: Around two-thirds of the people, 622,459, lived on Unguja (Zanzibar Island), with most settled in the densely populated west. Besides Zanzibar City, other towns on Unguja include Chaani, Mbweni, Mangapwani, Chwaka, and Nungwi. Outside of these towns, most people live in small villages and are engaged in farming or fishing.


title: Zanzibar

text: The population of Pemba Island was 362,166. The largest town on the island was Chake-Chake, with a population of 19,283. The smaller towns are Wete and Mkoani.


title: Zanzibar

text: Mafia Island, the other major island of the Zanzibar Archipelago but administered by mainland Tanzania (Tanganyika), had a total population of 40,801.


title: Zanzibar

text: The people of Zanzibar are of diverse ethnic origins. The first permanent residents of Zanzibar seem to have been the ancestors of the Bantu Hadimu and Tumbatu, who began arriving from the African Great Lakes mainland around AD 1000. They belonged to various mainland ethnic groups and on Zanzibar, generally lived in small villages. They did not coalesce to form larger political units.


title: Zanzibar

text: During Zanzibar's brief period of independence in the early 1960s, the major political cleavage was between the Shirazi (Zanzibar Africans), who made up approximately 56% of the population, and the Zanzibar Arabs the bulk of whom arrived from Oman in the 1800s, made up approximately 17%. Today, Zanzibar is inhabited mostly by ethnic Swahili. There are also a number of Arabs, as well as some ethnic Persian, Somalis, and Indian people.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibaris speak Swahili (Kiswahili), a Bantu language that is extensively spoken in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili is the de facto national and official language of Tanzania. Many local residents also speak Arabic, English, Italian and French.


title: Zanzibar

text: The dialect of Swahili spoken in Zanzibar is called kiunguja. Kiunguja, which has a high percentage of Arabic loanwords, enjoys the status of Standard Swahili not in Tanzania only but also in other countries, where Swahili is spoken.


title: Zanzibar

text: Three distinct varieties of Arabic are in use in Zanzibar: Standard Arabic, Omani Arabic and Hadrami Arabic. Both vernacular varieties are falling out of use, although the Omani one is spoken by a larger group of people (probably, several hundreds). In parallel to this, Standard Arabic, traditionally associated with the Quran and Islamic faith, is very popular not only among ethnic Arabs but also among Muslims of various descent who inhabit Zanzibar. Nevertheless, Standard Arabic is mastered by very few people. This can be attributed to the aggressive policy of Swahilisation. Despite the prestige and importance the Arabic language once enjoyed, today it is no longer the dominant spoken language.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar's population is almost entirely Muslim, with a small Christian minority containing around 22 000 Christians. Other religious groups that are represented include Hindus, Jains and Sikhs.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Anglican Diocese of Zanzibar was founded in 1892. The first Bishop of Zanzibar was Charles Smythies, who was translated from his former post as Bishop of Nyasaland. Christ Church Cathedral, located in Stone Town, Zanzibar City, is a prominent landmark, and a national heritage asset.


title: Zanzibar

text: Christ Church Cathedral had fallen into poor condition by the late 20th century, but it was fully restored in 2016, at a cost of one million Euros, with a world heritage visitor centre. The restoration was supported by the Tanzanian and Zanzibari governments, and overseen by the diocese in partnership with the World Monuments Fund. The restoration of the spire, clock, and historic Willis organ are still outstanding. Historically the diocese included mainland locations in Tanganyika. In 1963 it was renamed as the Diocese of Zanzibar & Dar es Salaam. Two years later, in 1965, Dar es Salaam became a separate diocese. The original jurisdiction was renamed as the Diocese of Zanzibar & Tanga. In 2001 the mainland links were finally ended, and it is now known as the Diocese of Zanzibar. The diocese includes parishioners on the neighbouring island of Pemba. Ten bishops have served in the diocese from 1892 to the present day. The bishop is Michael Hafidh. It is part of the Province of Tanzania, under the Archbishop of All Tanzania, based at Dodoma.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Zanzibar, headquartered at the St. Joseph's Cathedral in Stone Town, was established in 1980. An apostolic vicariate of Zanzibar had been established in 1906, from a much larger East African jurisdiction. This was suppressed in 1953, when the territory was put under control of the Kenyan church, but it was restored in 1964 after independence. The church created a diocese here shortly before Easter 1980. The bishop is Augustine Ndeliakyama Shao. Zanzibar is part of the Roman Catholic Province of Dar es Salaam, under the Archbishop of Dar es Salaam.


title: Zanzibar

text: Other Christian denominations include the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania which arrived in Zanzibar town in the 1960s, and a wide range of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian churches such as the Tanzania Assemblies of God, the Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania, the Evangelical Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal Church of Tanzania, the Victory Church and the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa. Pentecostal-Charismatic churches have been present and growing in Zanzibar since the 1980s in relation to economic liberalization and increased labor migration from mainland Tanzania in connection to Zanzibar's expanding tourist sector. There are also Seventh Day Adventist and Baptist churches.


title: Zanzibar

text: Since 2005 there is also an inter-religious body called the Joint Committee of Religious Leaders for Peace (in Swahili "Juhudi za Viongozi wa Dini kuimarisha Amani") with representatives from Muslim institutions such as the Islamic law ("Kadhi" courts), religious property (the "Wakf" and Trust commission), education (the Muslim academy) and the "Mufti"'s office as well as representatives from the Roman Catholic, the Anglican and the Lutheran church.


title: Zanzibar

text: The places of worship in the city are predominantly Muslim mosques. There are also Christian churches and temples: Roman Catholic Diocese of Zanzibar (Catholic Church), Anglican Church of Tanzania (Anglican Communion), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Lutheran World Federation), Baptist Convention of Tanzania (Baptist World Alliance), Assemblies of God.


title: Zanzibar

text: As an autonomous part of Tanzania, Zanzibar has its own government, known as the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. It is made up of the Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives.


title: Zanzibar

text: The House of Representatives has a similar composition to the National Assembly of Tanzania. Fifty members are elected directly from constituencies to serve five-year terms; 10 members are appointed by the President of Zanzibar; 15 special seats are for women members of political parties that have representation in the House of Representatives; six members serve "ex officio", including all regional commissioners and the attorney general. Five of these 81 members are then elected to represent Zanzibar in the National Assembly.


title: Zanzibar

text: Unguja has three administrative regions: Zanzibar Central/South, Zanzibar North and Zanzibar Urban/West. Pemba has two: Pemba North and Pemba South.


title: Zanzibar

text: Concerning the independence and sovereignty of Zanzibar, Tanzania Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said on 3 July 2008 that there was "nothing like the sovereignty of Zanzibar in the Union Government unless the Constitution is changed in future". Zanzibar House of Representatives members from both the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, and the opposition party, Civic United Front, disagreed and stood firmly in recognizing Zanzibar as a fully autonomous state.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar has a government of national unity, with the president of Zanzibar being Hussein Ali Mwinyi, since 1 November 2020. There are many political parties in Zanzibar, but the most popular parties are the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF). Since the early 1990s, the politics of the archipelago have been marked by repeated clashes between these two parties.


title: Zanzibar

text: Contested elections in October 2000 led to a massacre on 27 January 2001 when, according to Human Rights Watch, the army and police shot into crowds of protestors, killing at least 35 and wounding more than 600. Those forces, accompanied by ruling party officials and militias, also went on a house-to-house rampage, indiscriminately arresting, beating, and sexually abusing residents. Approximately 2,000 temporarily fled to Kenya.


title: Zanzibar

text: Violence erupted again after another contested election on 31 October 2005, with the CUF claiming that its rightful victory had been stolen from it. Nine people were killed.


title: Zanzibar

text: Following 2005, negotiations between the two parties aiming at the long-term resolution of the tensions and a power-sharing accord took place, but they suffered repeated setbacks. The most notable of these took place in April 2008, when the CUF walked away from the negotiating table following a CCM call for a referendum to approve of what had been presented as a done deal on the power-sharing agreement.


title: Zanzibar

text: In November 2009, the then-president of Zanzibar, Amani Abeid Karume, met with CUF secretary-general Seif Sharif Hamad at the State House to discuss how to save Zanzibar from future political turmoil and to end the animosity between them. This move was welcomed by many, including the United States. It was the first time since the multi-party system was introduced in Zanzibar that the CUF agreed to recognize Karume as the legitimate president of Zanzibar.


title: Zanzibar

text: A proposal to amend Zanzibar's constitution to allow rival parties to form governments of national unity was adopted by 66.2 percent of voters on 31 July 2010.


title: Zanzibar

text: The autonomous status of Zanzibar is viewed as comparable to Hong Kong as suggested by some scholars, and with some recognizing the island as an "African Hong Kong".


title: Zanzibar

text: Nowadays, The Alliance for Change and Transparency-Wazalendois (ACT-Wazalendo) is considered the main opposition political party of semi-autonomous Zanzibar. The constitution of Zanzibar requires the party that comes in second in the polls to join a coalition with the winning party. ACT-Wazalendo joined a coalition government with the islands’ ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi in December 2020 after Zanzibar disputed elections.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar is one of the Indian Ocean islands. It is situated on the Swahili Coast, adjacent to Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania).


title: Zanzibar

text: The northern tip of Unguja island is located at 5.72 degrees south, 39.30 degrees east, with the southernmost point at 6.48 degrees south, 39.51 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel, which at its narrowest point is across. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Unguja is mainly low lying, with its highest point being . Unguja is characterised by beautiful sandy beaches with fringing coral reefs. The reefs are rich in marine biodiversity.


title: Zanzibar

text: The northern tip of Pemba island is located at 4.87 degrees south, 39.68 degrees east, and the southernmost point is located at 5.47 degrees south, 39.72 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel some wide. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Pemba is also mainly low lying, with its highest point being .


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar has a tropical monsoon climate (Am). The heat of summer (corresponding to the Northern Hemisphere winter) is often cooled by strong sea breezes associated with the northeast monsoon (known as "Kaskazi" in Kiswahili), particularly on the north and east coasts. Being near to the equator, the islands are warm year round. The rainfall regime is split into two main seasons, a primary maximum in March, April, and May in association with the southwest monsoon (known locally as "Kusi" in Kiswahili), and a secondary maximum in November and December. The months in between receive less rain, with a minimum in July.


title: Zanzibar

text: The main island of Zanzibar, Unguja, has a fauna reflecting its connection to the African mainland during the last Ice Age.


title: Zanzibar

text: Endemic mammals with continental relatives include the Zanzibar red colobus ("Procolobus kirkii"), one of Africa's rarest primates, with perhaps only 1,500 existing. Isolated on this island for at least 1,000 years, this colobus is recognized as a distinct species, with different coat patterns, calls, and food habits from related colobus species on the mainland. The Zanzibar red colobus lives in a wide variety of drier areas of coastal thickets and coral rag scrub, as well as mangrove swamps and agricultural areas. About one third of them live in and around Jozani Forest. The easiest place to see the colobus is farmland adjacent to the reserve. They are accustomed to people and the low vegetation means they come close to the ground.


title: Zanzibar

text: Rare native animals include the Zanzibar leopard, which is critically endangered, and the recently described Zanzibar servaline genet. There are no large wild animals in Unguja. Forested areas such as Jozani are inhabited by monkeys, bushpigs, small antelopes, African palm civets, and, as shown by a camera trap in June 2018, the elusive leopard. Various species of mongoose can also be found on the island. There is a wide variety of birdlife and a large number of butterflies in rural areas.


title: Zanzibar

text: Pemba Island is separated from Unguja island and the African continent by deep channels and has a correspondingly restricted fauna, reflecting its comparative isolation from the mainland. The island is home to the Pemba flying fox.


title: Zanzibar

text: Considerable disparities exist in the standard of living for inhabitants of Pemba and Unguja, as well as the disparity between urban and rural populations. The average annual income is US $2500. About half the population lives below the poverty line.


title: Zanzibar

text: Despite a relatively high standard of primary health care and education, infant mortality in Zanzibar is 54 out of 1,000 live births, which is 10.0 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The child mortality rate in Zanzibar is 73 out of 1,000 live births, which is 21.5 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The birth rate in Tanzania in 2021 is high, 35.64 births per 1000 population, but the rate is falling.


title: Zanzibar

text: Life expectancy at birth is 57 years, which is significantly lower than the 2010 world average of 67.2.


title: Zanzibar

text: The general prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the population of Zanzibar aged 15–64 is 0.5 percent, with the rate much higher in females (0.9 percent) than males (less than 0.1 percent).


title: Zanzibar

text: The northern part of the island presents elevated volumes of trash in the streets, beaches and the ocean—mostly plastic bottles, other plastics and cigarette butts. There is indiscriminate dumping in residential areas. Medical equipment waste is a particular problem on the island.


title: Zanzibar

text: Studies conducted show temperatures and wind speeds have increased strongly over the last 40 years. These climatic stressors, in addition to the changes in rainfall patterns have had significant effects on the seaweed farming, causing seaweed to rot or be destroyed in the process of yielding.


title: Zanzibar

text: Ancient pottery implies trade routes with Zanzibar as far back as the time of the ancient Assyrians. Traders from the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf region of modern-day Iran (especially Shiraz), and west India probably visited Zanzibar as early as the 1st century. They used the monsoon winds to sail across the Indian Ocean to land at the sheltered harbor located on the site of present-day Zanzibar City.


title: Zanzibar

text: The clove, originating from the Moluccan Islands (today in Indonesia), was introduced in Zanzibar by the Omani sultans in the first half of the 19th century. Zanzibar, mainly Pemba Island, was once the world's leading clove producer, but annual clove sales have plummeted by 80 percent since the 1970s. Zanzibar's clove industry has been crippled by a fast-moving global market, international competition, and a hangover from Tanzania's failed experiment with socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, when the government controlled clove prices and exports. Zanzibar now ranks a distant third with Indonesia supplying 75 percent of the world's cloves compared to Zanzibar's 7 percent.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar exports spices, seaweed and fine raffia. Beside the Zanzibar State Trading Cooperation, Zanj Spice Limited, also known as 1001 Organic, is the biggest organic spice exporter in Zanzibar. Zanzibar also has a large fishing and dugout canoe production. Tourism is a major foreign currency earner.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Government of Zanzibar legalized foreign exchange bureaux on the islands before mainland Tanzania moved to do so. The effect was to increase the availability of consumer commodities. The government has also established a free port area, which provides the following benefits: contribution to economic diversification by providing a window for free trade as well as stimulating the establishment of support services; administration of a regime that imports, exports, and warehouses general merchandise; adequate storage facilities and other infrastructure to cater for effective operation of trade; and creation of an efficient management system for effective re-exportation of goods.


title: Zanzibar

text: The island's manufacturing sector is limited mainly to import substitution industries, such as cigarettes, shoes, and processed agricultural products. In 1992, the government designated two export-producing zones and encouraged the development of offshore financial services. Zanzibar still imports much of its staple requirements, petroleum products, and manufactured articles.


title: Zanzibar

text: There is also a possibility of oil availability in Zanzibar on the island of Pemba, and efforts have been made by the Tanzanian government and Zanzibar revolutionary government to exploit what could be one of the most significant discoveries in recent memory. Oil would help boost the economy of Zanzibar, but there have been disagreements about dividends between the Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar, the latter claiming the oil should be excluded in Union matters.


title: Zanzibar

text: In 2007, a Norwegian consultancy firm went to Zanzibar to determine how the region could develop its oil potential. The firm recommended that Zanzibar follow economist Hernando de Soto Polar's ideas about the formalization of property rights for persons living on ancestral land for which they probably do not have a legal deed.


title: Zanzibar

text: The energy sector in Zanzibar consists of unreliable electric power, petroleum and petroleum products; it is also supplemented by firewood and its related products. Coal and gas are rarely used for either domestic or industrial purposes.


title: Zanzibar

text: Unguja (Zanzibar Island) gets most of its electric power from mainland Tanzania through a 39-kilometer, 100-megawatt submarine cable from Ras Kiromoni (near Dar es Salaam) to Ras Fumba on Unguja. The laying of the cable was begun on 10 October 2012 by the Viscas Corporation of Japan and was funded by a US$28.1 million grant from the United States through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The cable became operational on 13 April 2013. The previous 45-megawatt cable, which was seldom-maintained, was completed by Norway in 1980.


title: Zanzibar

text: Since May 2010, Pemba Island has had a , 25-megawatt, subsea electrical link directly to mainland Tanzania. The cable project was financed through a 45 million euro grant from Norway and contributions of 8 million euros from the Zanzibar government and 4 million euros from the Tanzanian national government. The project ended years of dependence on unreliable and erratic diesel generation subject to frequent power cuts. Only about 20 percent of the cable's capacity was being used in January 2011, so it is anticipated that the cable will meet the island's needs for 20 to 25 years.


title: Zanzibar

text: Between 70 and 75 percent of the electricity generated is used domestically while less than 20 percent is used industrially. Fuel wood, charcoal and kerosene are widely used as sources of energy for cooking and lighting for most rural and urban areas. The consumption capacity of petroleum, gas, oil, kerosene and industrial diesel oil is increasing annually, going from a total of 5,650 tons consumed in 1997 to more than 7,500 tons in 1999.


title: Zanzibar

text: From 21 May to 19 June 2008, Unguja suffered a major failure of its electricity system, which left the island without electrical service and mostly dependent on diesel generators. The failure originated in mainland Tanzania. Another blackout happened from 10 December 2009 to 23 March 2010, caused by a problem with the submarine cable that formerly supplied electricity from mainland Tanzania. This led to a serious shock to Unguja's fragile economy, which is heavily dependent on foreign tourism.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar has 1,600 kilometres of roads, of which 85 percent are tarmacked or semi-tarmacked. The remainder are earth roads, which are rehabilitated annually to make them passable throughout the year.. Zanzibar, to ensure the roads are passable at all times and are maintained had established a Road Fund Board, situated at maisala which collects funds and disburses to Ministry of Communication, whom is the Road Agency at this time through the Department of Road Maintenance, known as UUB.


title: Zanzibar

text: The Road Fund Board, oversees a Performance Agreement entered between the Ministry of Communication and Infrastructure, while all the procurements and maintenances are assumed by the later.


title: Zanzibar

text: There is no government-owned public transportation in Zanzibar. The privately owned Daladala, as it is officially known in Zanzibar, is the only kind of public transportation. The term Daladala originated from the Kiswahili word DALA(Dollar) or five shillings during the 1970s and 1980s when public transport cost five shillings to travel to the nearest town. Therefore, travelling to town will cost a Dollar("Dala") and returning will again cost a Dollar, hence the term Daladala originated.


title: Zanzibar

text: Stone Town is the main hub for Daladalas on Zanzibar and nearly all journeys will either start or end here. There are two main Dala Dala stations in Stone Town: Darajani market and Mwanakwerekwe market. The Darajani market terminus serves the North and North East of the island and the Mwanakwerekwe market terminus serves the South and South East. As with most of East African transport, the buses do not run on set schedules - instead departing when full. As there is no fixed schedule, it is not possible to book tickets in advance (with the exception of The Zanzibus). There are plans of implementing a government-operated bus service on the island, which will bring the ground transportations more in line with the relatively developed water and air transport infrastructure, but there is currently no timeline available for this project. With Zanzibar visitor numbers set to top 1,000,000 annually, there will be increasing pressure on the current transportation network - the bus network will reduce the number of vehicles on the road and help reduce environmental impact of tourism on Zanzibar.


title: Zanzibar

text: There are five ports in the islands of Unguja and Pemba, all operated and developed by the Zanzibar Ports Corporation.


title: Zanzibar

text: The main port at Malindi, which handles 90 percent of Zanzibar's trade, was built in 1925. The port was rehabilitated between 1989 and 1992 with financial assistance from the European Union. The Italian contractor, Salini Impregilo S.p.A., was supposed to build wharves that lasted 60 years; however, the wharves lasted only 11 years before crumbling and degenerating because the company deviated from the specifications. After a long legal battle, the company was required in 2005 by the International Court of Arbitration to pay Zanzibar US$11.6 million in damages. The port was again rehabilitated between 2004 and 2009 with a 31 million euro grant from the European Union. The contract was awarded to M/S E. Phil and Sons of Denmark. The then-director of the contractor suggested that the rehabilitation would last a minimum of 50 years. But the port is again facing problems, including sinking.


title: Zanzibar

text: The MV "Faith", which began its final journey at the port of Dar es Salaam, sank in May 2009 shortly before docking at the port of Malindi. Six of the 25 people aboard lost their lives.


title: Zanzibar

text: The sinking of the MV Spice Islander I on 10 September 2011, after departing from Unguja island for Pemba Island, was the worst disaster in Tanzanian history. In a report to the Zanzibar House of Representatives on 14 October 2011, Zanzibar's Second Vice President, Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi, said that 2,764 people were missing, 203 bodies had been recovered, and 619 passengers were rescued. It was the worst maritime disaster in Tanzanian history. A presidential commission, however, reported three months later that 1,370 people were missing, 203 bodies had been recovered, and 941 passengers survived. Severe overloading caused the ferry to sink.


title: Zanzibar

text: The MV "Skagit", which also began its final journey at the port of Dar es Salaam, capsized in rough seas near Chumbe island on 18 July 2012. The ferry had 447 passengers, with 81 dead, 212 missing and presumed drowned, and 154 rescued. The ferry left port despite warnings from the Tanzania Meteorological Agency for ships not to attempt the crossing from Dar es Salaam to Unguja island because of the rough seas. A presidential commission reported in October 2012 that overloading was the cause of the disaster.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar's main airport, Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, has been able to handle large passenger planes since 2011, which has resulted in an increase in passenger and cargo inflows and outflows. Since another increase in capacity by the end of 2013, it can serve up to 1.5 million passengers per year. The island can be reached by flights operated by Auric Air, Coastal Aviation, Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways, FlyDubai, Mango (airline), Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and others.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar's most famous event is the Zanzibar International Film Festival, also known as the Festival of the Dhow Countries. Every July, this event showcases the best of the Swahili Coast arts scene, including Zanzibar's favorite music, taarab.


title: Zanzibar

text: Important architectural features in Stone Town are the Livingstone house, The Old dispensary of Zanzibar, the Guliani Bridge, Ngome kongwe (The Old fort of Zanzibar) and the House of Wonders. The town of Kidichi features the Hamamni Persian Baths, built by immigrants from Shiraz, Iran during the reign of Barghash bin Said.


title: Zanzibar

text: Zanzibar also is the only place in Eastern African countries to have the longest settlement houses formally known as Michenzani flats which were built by the aid from East Germany during the 1970s to solve housing problems in Zanzibar.