title: Richard Feynman

text: By 1949, Feynman was becoming restless at Cornell. He never settled into a particular house or apartment, living in guest houses or student residences, or with married friends "until these arrangements became sexually volatile". He liked to date undergraduates, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of friends. He was not fond of Ithaca's cold winter weather, and pined for a warmer climate. Above all, at Cornell, he was always in the shadow of Hans Bethe. Despite all of this, Feynman looked back favorably on the Telluride House, where he resided for a large period of his Cornell career. In an interview, he described the House as "a group of boys that have been specially selected because of their scholarship, because of their cleverness or whatever it is, to be given free board and lodging and so on, because of their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and said that "it's there that I did the fundamental work" for which he won the Nobel Prize.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949. That year, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, generating concerns about espionage. Fuchs was arrested as a Soviet spy in 1950 and the FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist David Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950 and emigrated to Brazil in October 1951. Because of the fears of a nuclear war, a girlfriend told Feynman that he should also consider moving to South America. He had a sabbatical coming for 1951–52, and elected to spend it in Brazil, where he gave courses at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas. In Brazil, Feynman was impressed with "samba" music, and learned to play the "frigideira", a metal percussion instrument based on a frying pan (""). He was an enthusiastic amateur player of bongo and conga drums and often played them in the pit orchestra in musicals. He spent time in Rio with his friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman to investigate Bohm's ideas on physics.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his first year on sabbatical in Brazil. He had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. He proposed to her by mail from Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was frightened by his violent temper. Their politics were different; although he registered and voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S. government's interest in science rose for a time. Feynman was considered for a seat on the President's Science Advisory Committee, but was not appointed. At this time, the FBI interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly his ex-wife Bell, who sent a written statement to J. Edgar Hoover on August 8, 1958:


title: Richard Feynman

text: The U.S. government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference. On the beach at Lake Geneva, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, Yorkshire, and working in Switzerland as an "au pair". Feynman's love life had been turbulent since his divorce; his previous girlfriend had walked off with his Albert Einstein Award medal and, on the advice of an earlier girlfriend, had feigned pregnancy and extorted him into paying for an abortion, then used the money to buy furniture. When Feynman found that Howarth was being paid only $25 a month, he offered her $20 a week to be his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort of behavior was illegal under the Mann Act, so he had a friend, Matthew Sands, act as her sponsor. Howarth pointed out that she already had two boyfriends, but decided to take Feynman up on his offer, and arrived in Altadena, California, in June 1959. She made a point of dating other men, but Feynman proposed in early 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach house in Baja California, purchased with the money from Feynman's Nobel Prize.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman tried marijuana and ketamine at John Lilly's sensory deprivation tanks, as a way of studying consciousness. He gave up alcohol when he began to show vague, early signs of alcoholism, as he did not want to do anything that could damage his brain. Despite his curiosity about hallucinations, he was reluctant to experiment with LSD.


title: Richard Feynman

text: There had been protests over his alleged sexism in 1968, and again in 1972, but there is no evidence he discriminated against women. Feynman recalled protesters entering a hall and picketing a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". Seeing the protesters, as Feynman later recalled the incident, he addressed institutional sexism by saying that "women do indeed suffer prejudice and discrimination in physics".


title: Richard Feynman

text: At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems to display a complete lack of viscosity when flowing. Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Applying the Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of superconductivity, but the solution eluded Feynman. It was solved with the BCS theory of superconductivity, proposed by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer in 1957.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams.


title: Richard Feynman

text: With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of weak decay, which showed that the current coupling in the process is a combination of vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay is the decay of a neutron into an electron, a proton, and an antineutrino). Although E. C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because the weak interaction was neatly described by the vector and axial currents. It thus combined the 1933 beta decay theory of Enrico Fermi with an explanation of parity violation.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman attempted an explanation, called the parton model, of the strong interactions governing nucleon scattering. The parton model emerged as a complement to the quark model developed by Gell-Mann. The relationship between the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping device for symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus particle, if it were interpreted as three identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible if quarks were real.


title: Richard Feynman

text: The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory deep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that scattered electrons. It was natural to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret the experimental data in a way that did not introduce additional hypotheses. For example, the data showed that some 45% of the energy momentum was carried by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are now seen to be the gluons that carry the forces between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves the omega-minus problem. Feynman did not dispute the quark model; for example, when the fifth quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to his students that the discovery implied the existence of a sixth quark, which was discovered in the decade after his death.


title: Richard Feynman

text: After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field and derived the Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovered then for gravity, "ghosts", which are "particles" in the interior of his diagrams that have the "wrong" connection between spin and statistics, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior of the Yang–Mills theories, for example, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory. He did work on all four of the forces of nature: electromagnetic, the weak force, the strong force and gravity. John and Mary Gribbin state in their book on Feynman that "Nobody else has made such influential contributions to the investigation of all four of the interactions".


title: Richard Feynman

text: Partly as a way to bring publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for two of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other by Tom Newman.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman was also interested in the relationship between physics and computation. He was also one of the first scientists to conceive the possibility of quantum computers. In the 1980s he began to spend his summers working at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping to build some of the first parallel supercomputers and considering the construction of quantum computers.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1984–1986, he developed a variational method for the approximate calculation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful method of converting divergent perturbation expansions into convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as a consequence, to the most accurate determination of critical exponents measured in satellite experiments. At Caltech, he once chalked "What I cannot create I do not understand" on his blackboard.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded to a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates at Caltech. After three years devoted to the task, he produced a series of lectures that later became "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Accounts vary about how successful the original lectures were. Feynman's own preface, written just after an exam on which the students did poorly, was somewhat pessimistic. His colleagues David L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer said later that the intended audience of first-year students found the material intimidating while older students and faculty found it inspirational, so the lecture hall remained full even as the first-year students dropped away. In contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled the student attendance as being typical for a large lecture course. Converting the lectures into books occupied Sands and Robert B. Leighton as part-time co-authors for several years. Feynman suggested that the cover have a picture of a drum with mathematical diagrams about vibrations drawn upon it, in order to illustrate the application of mathematics to understanding the world. Instead, the publishers gave the books plain red covers, though they included a picture of him playing drums in the foreword. Even though the books were not adopted by universities as textbooks, they continue to sell well because they provide a deep understanding of physics. Many of his lectures and miscellaneous talks were turned into other books, including "The Character of Physical Law", "", "Statistical Mechanics", "Lectures on Gravitation", and the "Feynman Lectures on Computation".


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman wrote about his experiences teaching physics undergraduates in Brazil. The students' studying habits and the Portuguese language textbooks were so devoid of any context or applications for their information that, in Feynman's opinion, the students were not learning physics at all. At the end of the year, Feynman was invited to give a lecture on his teaching experiences, and he agreed to do so, provided he could speak frankly, which he did.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman opposed rote learning or unthinking memorization and other teaching methods that emphasized form over function. "Clear thinking" and "clear presentation" were fundamental prerequisites for his attention. It could be perilous even to approach him unprepared, and he did not forget fools and pretenders. In 1964, he served on the California State Curriculum Commission, which was responsible for approving textbooks to be used by schools in California. He was not impressed with what he found. Many of the mathematics texts covered subjects of use only to pure mathematicians as part of the "New Math". Elementary students were taught about sets, but:


title: Richard Feynman

text: In April 1966, Feynman delivered an address to the National Science Teachers Association, in which he suggested how students could be made to think like scientists, be open-minded, curious, and especially, to doubt. In the course of the lecture, he gave a definition of science, which he said came about by several stages. The evolution of intelligent life on planet Earth—creatures such as cats that play and learn from experience. The evolution of humans, who came to use language to pass knowledge from one individual to the next, so that the knowledge was not lost when an individual died. Unfortunately, incorrect knowledge could be passed down as well as correct knowledge, so another step was needed. Galileo and others started doubting the truth of what was passed down and to investigate "ab initio", from experience, what the true situation was—this was science.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of "cargo cult science", which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He instructed the graduating class that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that."


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1977, Feynman supported his colleague Jenijoy La Belle, who had been hired as Caltech's first female professor in 1969, and filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was refused tenure in 1974. The EEOC ruled against Caltech in 1977, adding that La Belle had been paid less than male colleagues. La Belle finally received tenure in 1979. Many of Feynman's colleagues were surprised that he took her side, but he had gotten to know La Belle and liked and admired her.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In the 1960s, Feynman began thinking of writing an autobiography, and he began granting interviews to historians. In the 1980s, working with Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), he recorded chapters on audio tape that Ralph transcribed. The book was published in 1985 as "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and became a best-seller.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Gell-Mann was upset by Feynman's account in the book of the weak interaction work, and threatened to sue, resulting in a correction being inserted in later editions. This incident was just the latest provocation in decades of bad feeling between the two scientists. Gell-Mann often expressed frustration at the attention Feynman received; he remarked: was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his effort generating anecdotes about himself."


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman has been criticized for a chapter in the book entitled "You Just "Ask" Them", where he describes how he learned to seduce women at a bar he went to in the summer of 1946. A mentor taught him to ask a woman if she would sleep with him before buying her anything. He describes seeing women at the bar as "bitches" in his thoughts, and tells a story of how he told a woman named Ann that she was "worse than a whore" after Ann persuaded him to buy her sandwiches by telling him he could eat them at her place, but then, after he bought them, saying they actually could not eat together because another man was coming over. Later on that same evening, Ann returned to the bar to take Feynman to her place. Feynman states at the end of the chapter that this behaviour was not typical of him: "So it worked even with an ordinary girl! But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn't enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up."


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman played an important role on the Presidential Rogers Commission, which investigated the 1986 "Challenger" disaster. He had been reluctant to participate, but was persuaded by advice from his wife. Feynman clashed several times with commission chairman William P. Rogers. During a break in one hearing, Rogers told commission member Neil Armstrong, "Feynman is becoming a pain in the ass."


title: Richard Feynman

text: During a televised hearing, Feynman demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle's O-rings became less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water. The commission ultimately determined that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not properly sealing in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman devoted the latter half of his 1988 book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" to his experience on the Rogers Commission, straying from his usual convention of brief, light-hearted anecdotes to deliver an extended and sober narrative. Feynman's account reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA's high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. For instance, NASA managers claimed that there was a 1 in 100,000 probability of a catastrophic failure aboard the Shuttle, but Feynman discovered that NASA's own engineers estimated the probability of a catastrophe at closer to 1 in 200. He concluded that NASA management's estimate of the reliability of the Space Shuttle was unrealistic, and he was particularly angered that NASA used it to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned in his appendix to the commission's report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."


title: Richard Feynman

text: The first public recognition of Feynman's work came in 1954, when Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) notified him that he had won the Albert Einstein Award, which was worth $15,000 and came with a gold medal. Because of Strauss's actions in stripping Oppenheimer of his security clearance, Feynman was reluctant to accept the award, but Isidor Isaac Rabi cautioned him: "You should never turn a man's generosity as a sword against him. Any virtue that a man has, even if he has many vices, should not be used as a tool against him." It was followed by the AEC's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1962. Schwinger, Tomonaga and Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1965, received the Oersted Medal in 1972, and the National Medal of Science in 1979. He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, but ultimately resigned and is no longer listed by them.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1978, Feynman sought medical treatment for abdominal pains and was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Surgeons removed a "very large" tumor that had crushed one kidney and his spleen. Further operations were performed in October 1986 and October 1987. He was again hospitalized at the UCLA Medical Center on February 3, 1988. A ruptured duodenal ulcer caused kidney failure, and he declined to undergo the dialysis that might have prolonged his life for a few months. Watched over by his wife Gweneth, sister Joan, and cousin Frances Lewine, he died on February 15, 1988, at age 69.


title: Richard Feynman

text: When Feynman was nearing death, he asked his friend and colleague Danny Hillis why Hillis appeared so sad. Hillis replied that he thought Feynman was going to die soon. Feynman said that this sometimes bothered him, too, adding, when you get to be as old as he was, and have told so many stories to so many people, even when he was dead he would not be completely gone.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Near the end of his life, Feynman attempted to visit the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the Soviet Union, a dream thwarted by Cold War bureaucratic issues. The letter from the Soviet government authorizing the trip was not received until the day after he died. His daughter Michelle later made the journey.


title: Richard Feynman

text: His burial was at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California. His last words were: "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."


title: Richard Feynman

text: Aspects of Feynman's life have been portrayed in various media. Feynman was portrayed by Matthew Broderick in the 1996 biopic "Infinity". Actor Alan Alda commissioned playwright Peter Parnell to write a two-character play about a fictional day in the life of Feynman set two years before Feynman's death. The play, "QED", premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2001 and was later presented at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway, with both presentations starring Alda as Richard Feynman. Real Time Opera premiered its opera "Feynman" at the Norfolk (CT) Chamber Music Festival in June 2005. In 2011, Feynman was the subject of a biographical graphic novel entitled simply "Feynman", written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. In 2013, Feynman's role on the Rogers Commission was dramatised by the BBC in "The Challenger" (US title: "The Challenger Disaster"), with William Hurt playing Feynman. In 2016, Oscar Isaac performed a public reading of Feynman's 1946 love letter to the late Arline.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman is commemorated in various ways. On May 4, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Richard Feynman, John von Neumann, Barbara McClintock, and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Feynman's stamp, sepia-toned, features a photograph of a 30-something Feynman and eight small Feynman diagrams. The stamps were designed by Victor Stabin under the artistic direction of Carl T. Herrman. The main building for the Computing Division at Fermilab is named the "Feynman Computing Center" in his honor. Two photographs of Feynman were used in Apple Computer's "Think Different" advertising campaign, which launched in 1997. Sheldon Cooper, a fictional theoretical physicist from the television series "The Big Bang Theory", is a Feynman fan who has emulated him on various occasions, once by playing the bongo drums. On January 27, 2016, co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates wrote an article describing Feynman's talents as a teacher ("The Best Teacher I Never Had"), which inspired Gates to create Project Tuva to place the videos of Feynman's Messenger Lectures, "The Character of Physical Law", on a website for public viewing. In 2015 Gates made a video in response to Caltech's request for thoughts on Feynman for the 50th anniversary of Feynman's 1965 Nobel Prize, on why he thought Feynman was special. At CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, home of the Large Hadron Collider), a street on the Meyrin site is named "Route Feynman".


title: Richard Feynman

text: "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiled from lectures to Caltech undergraduates in 1961–1964. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, professional physicists and graduate students began to drop in to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, colleagues of Feynman, edited and illustrated them into book form. The work has endured and is useful to this day. They were edited and supplemented in 2005 with "Feynman's Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics" by Michael Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), with support from Kip Thorne and other physicists.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Robert Barisford Brown (born February 5, 1969) is an American singer, songwriter and dancer. Brown, alongside frequent collaborator Teddy Riley, is noted as one of the pioneers of new jack swing: a fusion of hip hop and R&B. Brown started his career in the R&B and pop group New Edition, from its inception in 1978 until his exit from the group in December 1985.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Once he started a solo career, Brown enjoyed commercial and critical success with his second album "Don't Be Cruel" (1988) which spawned five "Billboard" Hot 100 top 10 singles, including the number one hit "My Prerogative", and the Grammy Award-winning "Every Little Step". In 1989, Brown contributed two songs to the soundtrack of "Ghostbusters II". Brown's next album "Bobby" (1992) spawned several singles including "Humpin' Around", "Get Away", and "Good Enough". However, despite going 3× Platinum, sales of "Bobby" did not reach the level of its predecessor. Brown has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. Also in 1992, Brown married the superstar singer Whitney Houston, with whom he later had a daughter named Bobbi Kristina Brown. The couple's drug issues and domestic disputes made them tabloid fodder.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown also appeared in the films "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate" and "Two Can Play That Game". He returned to New Edition for a reunion album and tour from 1996 to 1997, and returned with all six members for another stint in 2005. Brown and Houston starred in the 2005 reality show "Being Bobby Brown". Houston, who filed for divorce two years later in 2007, died in 2012, followed by their daughter in 2015.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown was born in Boston, Massachusetts, as one of eight children. His mother Carole Elizabeth (born Williams) was a substitute teacher, and his father Herbert James Brown was a construction worker. Brown grew up in Roxbury's Orchard Park Projects. Brown's first taste of being onstage occurred when he was three and one of his childhood idols, James Brown, performed in Boston. This performance sparked a dream of becoming a singer. Brown joined the church choir, where he recognized and developed his singing abilities. Brown's musical influences also include Rick James, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and Prince.


title: Bobby Brown

text: New Edition was founded in 1981 by 12-year-old Brown and childhood friends Michael Bivins and Ricky Bell. Ralph Tresvant joined the group at the suggestion of Bell who sang with Tresvant as a duo. Brown was also familiar with Tresvant since they were children. In 1982, they became a quintet when their manager Brooke Payne insisted on bringing in his nephew Ronnie DeVoe, to complete the group. After performing in several talent shows in the Boston area in 1979, they signed a deal with fellow Bostonian Arthur Baker's Streetwise Records, who released their debut album "Candy Girl". The title track, on which Brown sang co-lead alongside Bell and Tresvant, was a top-20 hit on Billboard's R&B Singles Chart in 1983. Brown's first full lead vocal performance was on the New Edition ballad "Jealous Girl", which was a minor hit when it also charted in 1983. The group became pop sensations with their self-titled second release. The album included the crossover hits "Cool It Now" and "Mr. Telephone Man", which Brown also co-led.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Despite the group's success, however, Brown felt the group was never rightfully paid the money they felt they had earned, later saying, "The most I saw from all the tours and all of the records we sold was $500 and a VCR." Brown also allegedly grew jealous of the attention given to fellow New Edition member Ralph Tresvant, and during some of their tour performances would often step out of his position and perform out of turn, singing and performing seductively, which caused concern within the group's management team. Brown was featured on two more New Edition albums before leaving the group in early 1986. Brown later said he felt that the group's management treated them "like little slaves by people who were only interested in money and power, and not in the welfare of New Edition". Some controversy arose over the way Brown was removed from the group. Some say Brown asked to be let out of New Edition, but a VH-1 "Behind the Music" documentary on the group claimed Brown was voted out by the group via their management team, with the members—most prominently Tresvant—against the decision.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Following his exit from New Edition, Brown signed a contract with his former group's label, MCA (which had earlier promised Brown a solo deal if he had decided to leave New Edition), and also signed with manager Steven Machat, who had also worked with New Edition. The label released his debut album "King of Stage" in 1986. Brown had a number-one R&B hit with the ballad "Girlfriend", but the album otherwise failed to perform well.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown laid low for more than a year while working on his follow-up album. With the help of Machat and MCA representative Louil Silas, Brown began working with some of the top R&B producers and songwriters of the time, including Babyface, Antonio "L.A." Reid and Teddy Riley. The producers helped to compose what became Brown's most successful solo album of his career, "Don't Be Cruel". Released in 1988, the album launched five top-ten hits on the ""Billboard"" Hot 100, including the number-one single, the self-penned "My Prerogative", which became, along with "Every Little Step" and the title track, signature hits for the performer. After topping both the pop and R&B charts, album sales would eventually reach twelve million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling album of 1989. In February 1990 he won the Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for the album's fourth single "Every Little Step". "Don't Be Cruel" also garnered Brown two American Music Awards, a Soul Train Music Award and a People's Choice Award.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 1989, Brown contributed two songs to the soundtrack of "Ghostbusters II", and he also had a cameo role in the film. The first track on that album, "On Our Own" became another top-ten single for the singer, peaking at number two. The same year, a remix compilation, "Dance!...Ya Know It!", was released, and found fans in the United Kingdom. Brown embarked on a 120-day world tour to promote "Don't Be Cruel" in 1988, with Al B. Sure! opening for him, and New Edition also opening for him on some dates. The tour lasted into the spring of 1991, but not without Brown gaining notoriety for simulating sexual acts onstage, which got him into trouble with local law enforcement. In 1990, Brown performed "Tap into My Heart" at the 1990 MTV Awards, and was set to release the album "Mystical Magic", but it was eventually shelved for reasons unknown and wasn't released. In 1990, Brown was featured on the number-one hit "She Ain't Worth It" by Glenn Medeiros, making it his second number 1 hit on the pop chart, and also collaborated with Babyface for the remix of the latter's single "Tender Lover" that same year. In 1991, Brown collaborated with New Edition member Ralph Tresvant on the latter's single "Stone Cold Gentleman", which was a top-five R&B hit.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown's next album "Bobby" was released in 1992. Despite its release during the final days of the New Jack Swing era it was success, selling more than 3 million copies, and spawning several hit singles including "Humpin' Around", "Get Away", and "Good Enough". He received his second Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance nomination for "Humpin' Around". He received his third American Music Award in January 1993. However, sales of "Bobby" did not match its predecessor. Whitney Houston and Brown had recorded a song together, "Something in Common", which was released as a single from the "Bobby" album.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 1994, dance producers K-Klass remixed "Two Can Play That Game" from the Bobby album, it would become Brown's biggest single in the UK peaking at No.3 in 1995.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Four years later, he would release his fourth solo album "Forever", in 1997. The album's only single, "Feeling Inside", was not successful.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Prior to the release of "Forever", Brown had been in negotiations with rapper Tupac Shakur to sign with Shakur's new label Makaveli Records, or with the proposed label Death Row East. However, Shakur died before that could take place. Leaving MCA following "Forever", Brown laid low for several years, appearing as a featured artist in 2001 on two tracks from "The Benzino Project", and in 2002 he was featured in a duet with rapper Ja Rule on the song "Thug Lovin'". Brown was signed to Murder Inc. Records, but that label had already begun to dissolve, so Brown's tenure with them was brief. In 2006, Brown appeared adding vocals to Damian Marley's song "Beautiful" on Marley's album, "Welcome to Jamrock".


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2008, Brown planned to release a book titled "Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But", written by author Derrick Handspike. When controversial comments that Brown made about his ex-wife, Whitney Houston, were leaked to the media, he backed out of the project. Handspike released the book after Houston's death in 2012.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2010, Brown was featured in a duet with singer Macy Gray on the song "Real Love" on Gray's album "The Sellout". About this project, Gray explained to "Essence", "Actually, he came to the studio, since he doesn't live far, and knocked out his recording in two hours. We're friends, and his one-year-old son is my godson. His fiancée is one of my best friends in the whole world. I met Bobby a long time ago, but we really got to know each other through her."


title: Bobby Brown

text: On June 5, 2012, Brown released his fifth album, "The Masterpiece", which debuted at number 41 on the "Billboard" R&B album chart.


title: Bobby Brown

text: On February 14, 2017, Brown performed at the Valentine's Day Music Festival with Keith Sweat, Avant and El DeBarge.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown made his first reunited appearance with New Edition at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards. Their performance later sparked the recording of Bell Biv DeVoe's "Word to the Mutha!" in 1991 (on which Brown, Ralph Tresvant and later NE member Johnny Gill were included). A fully-fledged reunion occurred with the 1996 release of the album, "Home Again". Brown contributed lead vocals on two hit singles, "Hit Me Off" and "You Don't Have to Worry". However, a subsequent 1997 tour to support the album led to problems between Brown and the other New Edition members. Brown later admitted that he was struggling with drug addiction and alcoholism during the tour.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2005, at the BET 25th Anniversary Special, Brown again reunited with New Edition. In 2008, Brown, Ralph Tresvant, and Johnny Gill then formed a splinter group, Heads of State, to compete with Bell Biv DeVoe. At the 2009 BET Awards, following the death of the group's idol Michael Jackson, all six of the New Edition members again reunited to perform a medley of Jackson 5 hits in honor of Jackson. This sparked rumors of another full-fledged New Edition reunion, which was confirmed the following year.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown and New Edition continue to perform together, including The Culture Tour, which began in early 2022.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown made his acting debut with a cameo appearance in the 1989 film, "Ghostbusters II", playing the Mayor's doorman. The following year, he appeared in the HBO kids show, "Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme" playing all three characters of Three Blind Mice. In 1995, he made another guest appearance in the film, "Panther", and had a major role in the Martin Lawrence film, "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate". Brown made other guest appearances in the films "Two Can Play That Game", "Gang of Roses", "Nora's Hair Salon" and "Go for Broke".


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2005, Brown was in negotiations with the Bravo television network for a reality series entitled "Being Bobby Brown". Bravo, however, was not ready to commit to the deal unless Brown's superstar wife Whitney Houston agreed to be part of the cast, which she did. The show then received the greenlight from Bravo and was a massive success in the ratings, with Houston proving so popular on the series that she received as much screen time as the show's name-sake. The series showed Brown and Houston not always in their best moments. "The Hollywood Reporter" said that the show was "undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television". Despite the perceived train-wreck nature of the show, it continued Houston's unbroken string of hit motion pictures and television projects, and it gave Bravo its highest ratings ever of any of its ongoing series. The show lasted one season and ended in 2006 after Houston stated she would not appear in season two and Bravo and Brown could not settle on a new deal.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In June 2007, Brown took part in the ITV television series "24 Hours With...", a chat show format as celebrity and interviewer spend an intense 24 hours locked in a room together. The show's host, Jamie Campbell, asked Brown questions about his career and private life, and infamously joked about making "sexual moves" towards the singer. Brown was furious and threatened to beat Campbell up live on air. Brown's later tenures in reality shows included appearances on "Real Husbands of Hollywood", "Celebrity Fit Club" and "Gone Country".


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2021, Brown competed in season five of "The Masked Singer" as the wild card contestant "Crab". At one point after performing Rick James's song "Give It to Me Baby", Brown had to be briefly taken to his dressing room when he became overheated and short of breath in his costume. He was later eliminated on Week 7 alongside Tamera Mowry as "Seashell".


title: Bobby Brown

text: In May 2022, "Biography: Bobby Brown" and "Bobby Brown: Every Little Step" began airing on A&E. Brown is an executive-producer of both the documentary-style and reality television series about his life.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 1995, Brown was with Steven Sealy when Sealy was targeted in a drive-by shooting. Sealy, Brown's sister's boyfriend, was killed and Brown was unharmed. The shooter, John Tibbs, took a plea agreement in 2001.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown's parents, Carole and Herbert Brown, died within a year of each other. Carole in 2011 and Herbert "Pops" in January 2012, a month before Bobby's former wife Whitney Houston's death.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown claimed to have dated Madonna and Janet Jackson, in addition to sleeping with "thousands of women".


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown first met Whitney Houston at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989. They began a close friendship after Houston invited Brown to her birthday party. Their friendship developed into a romance. In 1991, Brown proposed marriage to Houston and the couple married at Houston's estate on July 18, 1992. Their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown was born in 1993. Houston and Brown later collaborated on the hit single "Something in Common", which included their daughter at the end of the music video.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Throughout their marriage, there were rumors of infidelity on Brown's part, drug use, and one instance where Brown was said to have hit Houston. Their personal issues became fodder for talk shows and sketch comedy shows. Some sketch comedy shows portrayed Brown as a has-been who is jealous of his wife's celebrity status. In 2003, Brown was charged with battery after an altercation with Houston.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2005, the couple participated in the reality show "Being Bobby Brown", which gave a picture of their lives behind the scenes. In September 2006, Houston filed for legal separation and later divorce. Their divorce was finalized on April 24, 2007, with Houston receiving custody of their 14-year-old daughter. In a September 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Houston admitted to sometimes using drugs with Brown, stating that Brown had "laced marijuana with cocaine". Houston also told Winfrey that Brown had been abusive during their marriage and even spat on her on one occasion while drunk..


title: Bobby Brown

text: Following the death of Houston on February 11, 2012, six days after his 43rd birthday, Brown struggled to perform at a New Edition show, shouting "I love you, Whitney" in tears. Brown then excused himself from the stage and New Edition finished the remainder of the show. Brown appeared at Houston's memorial service in New Jersey but was asked to leave by the family's security. In an interview given to "The Today Show" in May 2012, Brown said security was the reason he and his family left the service; Brown stated that he loved Houston's family and told Matt Lauer that he had spent "14 beautiful years" with Houston as his wife. Along with Clive Davis, Ray J, and others, Brown has been accused of contributing to the singer's death, which he denies.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2009, Brown had a son named Cassius with his partner of two years, manager Alicia Etheredge. Brown and Etheredge became engaged in May 2010, when Brown proposed during a performance at the Funk Fest in Jacksonville, Florida. The couple married on June 18, 2012, in Hawaii and have since had two daughters.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown has fathered seven children. His eldest, Landon, was born to Melika Williams on June 22, 1986. He has two children with Kim Ward, whom he met around 1980; daughter La'Princia (born 1989) and son Bobby Brown, Jr. (1991–2020). His and Ward's on-and-off 11-year relationship ended in 1991. At two months pregnant, Ward found out Brown was engaged to Whitney Houston. Houston suffered miscarriages in 1992, 1995, and 1996. His only child with Houston, Bobbi Kristina Brown, was born on March 4, 1993. Brown has three children with Alicia Etheredge: a son born in 2009, and daughters born in 2015 and 2016.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In January 2015, Brown's daughter Bobbi Kristina was found unconscious in her bathtub at her residence in Roswell, Georgia. The 21-year-old was rushed into North Fulton Hospital where she was placed on a ventilator in a medically induced coma to stop the swelling of her brain. It was later reported her brain activity was "low". Brown rushed to his daughter's side and released a statement to the press requesting them to respect the family's privacy. She was later transferred to Emory University Hospital. After doctors concluded that significant brain function was unlikely to occur, Bobbi Kristina was removed from the ventilator and put in the care of Hospice in Duluth, Georgia. She died there on July 26, 2015 at age 22.


title: Bobby Brown

text: As a child, Brown was diagnosed with ADD and later with bipolar disorder at age 32. Brown said that his drug of choice was marijuana and that he had developed alcoholism at an early age. Brown claimed Houston introduced him to cocaine shortly before their wedding in 1992. "I never used cocaine until after I met Whitney. Before then, I had experimented with other drugs, but marijuana was my drug of choice," he said. Throughout the 1990s, his drug addiction worsened and at one point he was cooking cocaine and using heroin.


title: Bobby Brown

text: According to former gang member David Collins, Brown was kidnapped by New York street gang the Preacher Crew over a $25,000 drug debt in 1993. Houston paid a $400,000 ransom to the gang who threatened to kill Brown. The incident was never reported to authorities.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown popularized the Roger Rabbit dance (aka the "backwards" running man), as performed in the music video for his song "Every Little Step" (1989), along with the Gumby-style hi-top fade. Brown has claimed that he taught Michael Jackson how to do the moonwalk.


title: Bobby Brown

text: Brown was spoofed by Aries Spears on "MADtv", with Whitney Houston portrayed by Debra Wilson. He was also spoofed by Tracy Morgan and Finesse Mitchell on "Saturday Night Live". Brown was portrayed by Arlen Escarpeta in the television film "Whitney", by Woody McClain in the 2017 miniseries "The New Edition Story" and in the 2018 miniseries about his life, "The Bobby Brown Story". Brown is also portrayed by Ashton Sanders in the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody", slated for release Christmas 2022.


title: Bobby Brown

text: In 2022, Brown also claimed he started wearing the "diaper pants" that MC Hammer altered and made famous, on his A&E show "Bobby Brown: Every Little Step". However, Brown wore a less sagging variation during some concerts and in music videos, such as "My Prerogative" (1988) and "Every Little Step" (1989).


title: Delta Force

text: The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D), referred to variously as Delta Force, Combat Applications Group (CAG), Army Compartmented Elements (ACE), "The Unit", or within Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Task Force Green, is a special operations force of the United States Army, under operational control of JSOC. The unit's missions primarily involve counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and special reconnaissance, often against high-value targets. Delta Force and its Navy and Air Force counterparts, DEVGRU and the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, are among the U.S. military's "tier one" special mission units tasked with performing the most complex, covert, and dangerous missions directed by the National Command Authority.


title: Delta Force

text: Delta Force operators are selected primarily from the United States Army Special Operations Command's elite 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Forces, though members can be selected from other special operations units and conventional forces across the Army and sometimes other military branches.


title: Delta Force

text: Delta Force was created in 1977 after numerous well-publicized terrorist incidents led the U.S. government to develop a full-time counter-terrorism unit.


title: Delta Force

text: Key military and government figures had already been briefed on this type of unit in the early 1960s. Charlie Beckwith, a Special Forces (Green Berets) officer and Vietnam War veteran, served as an exchange officer with the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment during the Malayan Emergency. On his return, Beckwith presented a detailed report highlighting the U.S. Army's vulnerability in not having a SAS-type unit. U.S. Army Special Forces in that period focused on unconventional warfare, but Beckwith recognized the need for "not only a force of teachers, but a force of doers". He envisioned highly adaptable and completely autonomous small teams with a broad array of special skills for direct action and counter-terrorism missions. He briefed military and government figures, who were resistant to creating a new unit outside of Special Forces or changing existing methods.


title: Delta Force

text: Finally, in the mid-1970s, as the threat of terrorism grew, Pentagon and Army senior leaders appointed Beckwith to form the unit. Beckwith estimated that it would take 24 months to get his new unit mission-ready. Beckwith's estimate came from a conversation he had had earlier with Brigadier John Watts while in England in 1976. Watts had made it clear to Beckwith that it would take eighteen months to build a squadron, but advised him to tell Army leaders that it would take two years, and not to "let anyone talk (him) out of this." To justify why it would take two years to build Delta, Beckwith and his staff drafted what they dubbed the "Robert Redford Paper," which outlined its necessities and historical precedents for a four-phase selection/assessment process.


title: Delta Force

text: Delta Force was established on 19 November 1977, by Beckwith and Colonel Thomas Henry. In the meantime, Colonel Bob "Black Gloves" Mountel of the 5th Special Forces Group created a unit "to breach the short-term gap" that existed until Delta was ready, dubbed Blue Light. The initial members of the unit were screened from volunteers and put through a specialized selection process in early 1978, involving a series of land navigation problems in mountainous terrain while carrying increasing weight. The purpose was to test candidates' endurance, stamina, willingness to endure, and mental resolve. The first training course lasted from April to September 1978. Delta Force was certified as fully mission capable in fall 1979, right before the Iran hostage crisis.


title: Delta Force

text: On 4 November 1979, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken captive and held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. Delta Force was tasked to plan and execute Operation Eagle Claw, the effort to recover the hostages from the embassy by force on the nights of 24 and 25 April in 1980. The operation was aborted due to helicopter failures. The review commission that examined the failure found 23 problems with the operation, among them unexpected weather encountered by the aircraft, command-and-control problems between the multi-service component commanders, a collision between a helicopter and a ground-refueling tanker aircraft, and mechanical problems that reduced the number of available helicopters from eight to five (one fewer than the minimum desired) before the mission contingent could leave the trans-loading/refueling site.


title: Delta Force

text: After the failed operation, the U.S. government realized more changes were needed. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), also known as the "Night Stalkers", was created for special operations requiring air support. The Navy's SEAL Team Six, an earlier incarnation of the current Naval Special Warfare Development Group, was created for maritime counter-terrorism operations. The Joint Special Operations Command was created for command and control of the military's various counter-terrorism units.


title: Delta Force

text: In a 2010 article, Marc Ambinder reported that "Army Compartmented Elements" (ACE) was a new cover name for Delta Force. However, Ambinder subsequently wrote an e-book about JSOC in which he reported that the Army Compartmented Elements is a different unit from Delta.


title: Delta Force

text: The unit is under the organization of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), but is controlled by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Command of 1st SFOD-D is a colonel's billet. Virtually all information about the unit is highly classified and details about specific missions or operations generally are not available publicly. The unit is headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.


title: Delta Force

text: Delta Force's structure is similar to the British 22 SAS Regiment, which inspired Delta's formation. In "Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda", "Army Times" staff writer Sean Naylor describes Delta as having, at the time (in 2001), nearly 1,000 soldiers, of whom about 250 to 300 are trained to conduct direct action and hostage rescue operations. The rest are combat support and service support personnel who are among the very best in their fields.


title: Delta Force

text: Naylor further details Delta Force's structure in his book "Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command". He describes a few formations in Delta, primarily the following operational squadrons:


title: Delta Force

text: A, B, C, and DSquadrons are saber squadrons (assault). CSquadron was activated in 1990 and DSquadron in 2006. Combat Support Squadron was activated in 2005. ESquadron was activated in 1989 and is stationed separately in Fort Eustis, Virginia, where it is known as the Aviation Technology Office. An earlier forerunner of the unit was known as SeaSpray.


title: Delta Force

text: Within each squadron there are three troops: two assault troops for direct action, and a reconnaissance and surveillance troop. Each squadron is commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) and troops are led by Majors (O-4). Each troop has four teams, each one led by a team leader, a Master Sergeant (E-8) or Sergeant First Class (E-7), and an assistant team leader who can also have the same rank. Each team can have as many as twelve, or as few as one or two operators.


title: Delta Force

text: Since the 1990s, the Army has posted recruitment notices for the 1st SFOD-D. The Army, however, has never released an official fact sheet for the elite force. The recruitment notices in Fort Bragg's newspaper, "Paraglide", refer to Delta Force by name, and label it "...the U.S. Army's special operations unit organized for the conduct of missions requiring rapid response with surgical application of a wide variety of unique special operations skills...". The notice states that applicants must be male, in the grade of E-4 through E-8, have at least two and a half years of service remaining in their enlistment, be 21 years or older, and score high enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to attend a briefing to be considered for admission. Candidates must be airborne qualified or volunteer for airborne training. Officer candidates need to be O-3 or O-4. All candidates must be eligible for a security clearance level of "Secret" and have not been convicted by court-martial or have disciplinary action noted in their official military personnel file under the provisions of Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.


title: Delta Force

text: On 29 June 2006 during a session of the Committee on Armed Services, General Wayne Downing testified before the U.S. House of Representatives that "[t]he Delta Force is probably 70 percent Rangers who have come out of either a Ranger [to] Special Forces track or directly from [the] Ranger Regiment to Delta".


title: Delta Force

text: Selection is held twice a year (March to April, and September to October) at Camp Dawson, West Virginia, and lasts 4 weeks. Eric Haney's book "Inside Delta Force" described the selection course and its inception in detail. Haney wrote that the selection course began with standard tests including push-ups, sit-ups, and a run, an inverted crawl and a swim fully dressed. The candidates are then put through a series of land navigation courses to include an all-night land navigation course while carrying a rucksack. The rucksack's weight and the distance of the courses are increased and the time standards to complete the task are shortened with every march. The physical testing ended with a march with a rucksack over rough terrain that had to be completed in an unknown amount of time; this is also colloquially known as "The Long Walk". Haney wrote that only the senior officer and NCO in charge of selection are allowed to see the set time limits, but all assessment and selection tasks and conditions were set by Delta training cadre.


title: Delta Force

text: The mental portion of the testing began with numerous psychological exams. The men then went in front of a board of Delta instructors, unit psychologists, and the Delta commander, who each ask the candidate a barrage of questions and then dissect every response and mannerism of the candidate to exhaust the candidate mentally. The unit commander then approaches the candidate and tells him if he has been selected. If an individual is selected for Delta, he undergoes an intense 6-month Operator Training Course (OTC), to learn counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence techniques, in which the individual maintains little contact with friends and family for the duration. Training includes firearm accuracy and various other weapons training.


title: Delta Force

text: In an interview, former Delta operator Paul Howe mentioned the high attrition rate of the Delta selection course. He said that out of his two classes of 120 applicants each, 12 to 14 completed the selection.


title: Delta Force

text: The Central Intelligence Agency's secretive Special Activities Center (SAC) and more specifically its Special Operations Group (SOG), often works with – and recruits – former operators from Delta Force.


title: Delta Force

text: According to Eric Haney, the unit's Operator Training Course is approximately six months long. While the course is constantly changing, the skills taught broadly to include the following:


title: Delta Force

text: Delta Force trains with other foreign special operations units to improve tactics and increase relationships with them including the Australian Special Air Service Regiment and 2nd Commando Regiment the British Special Air Service and Special Boat Service, Canada's Joint Task Force 2 and Israel's Sayeret Matkal.


title: Delta Force

text: The Department of Defense tightly controls information about Delta Force and usually refuses to comment publicly on the highly secretive unit and its activities, unless the unit is part of a major operation or a unit member has been killed. Delta operators are granted an enormous amount of flexibility and autonomy during military operations overseas. Civilian hair styles and facial hair are allowed to enable the members to blend in and avoid recognition as military personnel.


title: Delta Force

text: The origin of the term "operator" in American special operations comes from the U.S. Army Special Forces (aka the Green Berets). The Army Special Forces was established in 1952, ten years before the Navy SEALs and 25 years before Delta. Every other modern U.S. special operations unit in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines was established after 1977. In "Veritas", the Journal of Army Special Operations History, Charles H. Briscoe stated that the Army "Special Forces did not misappropriate the appellation. Unbeknownst to most members of the Army Special Operations Force (ARSOF) community, that moniker was adopted by the Special Forces in the mid-1950s." He goes on to state that all qualified enlisted and officers in Special Forces had to "voluntarily subscribe to the provisions of the 'Code of the Special Forces Operator' and pledge themselves to its tenets by witnessed signature." This pre-dates every other special operations unit that currently uses the term/title operator.


title: Delta Force

text: Inside the United States Special Operations community, an "operator" is a Delta Force member who has completed selection and has graduated OTC (Operator Training Course). "Operator" was used by Delta Force to distinguish between combat personnel and combat support/service support assigned to the unit. Other special operations forces use specific names for their jobs, such as Army Rangers and Air Force Pararescuemen. The Navy uses the acronym SEAL for both their special warfare teams and their individual members, also known as "special operators". In 2006 the Navy created "Special Warfare Operator" (SO) as a rating specific to Naval Special Warfare enlisted personnel, grades E-4 to E-9. (See Navy special warfare ratings). "Operator" has become a colloquial term for almost all special operations forces in the U.S. military and worldwide.


title: Delta Force

text: Most operations assigned to Delta are classified, but some details have become public knowledge. For service during Operation Urgent Fury, Delta was awarded the Joint Meritorious Unit Award. The unit was awarded the Valorous Unit Award for extraordinary heroism during the Modelo Prison hostage rescue mission and the capture of Manuel Noriega in December 1989 during Operation Just Cause in Panama. 1st SFOD-D operators from C Squadron were also involved in Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia.


title: Delta Force

text: During Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, 1st SFOD-D was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for combat operations in Afghanistan from 4 October 2001 to 15 March 2002 and Iraq from 19 March 2003 to 13 December 2003.


title: Delta Force

text: On 26 October 2019, Delta operators accompanied by members of the 75th Ranger Regiment conducted a raid on the compound of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leading to his death.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: The Haunting of Hill House is an American supernatural horror drama streaming television miniseries created and directed by Mike Flanagan, produced by Amblin Television and Paramount Television, for Netflix, and serves as the first entry in "The Haunting" anthology series. It is loosely based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. The plot alternates between two timelines, following five adult siblings whose paranormal experiences at Hill House continue to haunt them in the present day, and flashbacks depicting events leading up to the eventful night in 1992 when the family fled from the mansion. The ensemble cast features Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Kate Siegel, and Victoria Pedretti as the siblings in adulthood, with Carla Gugino and Henry Thomas as parents Olivia and Hugh Crain, and Timothy Hutton appearing as an older version of Hugh.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: The series premiered on Netflix on October 12, 2018. "The Haunting of Hill House" received critical acclaim, particularly for its acting, directing, and production values. A follow-up series by Flanagan titled "The Haunting of Bly Manor", with most of the same crew and some of the same cast but a different story and characters, was released on October 9, 2020.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: In the summer of 1992, Hugh and Olivia Crain and their five children—Steven, Shirley, Theodora (Theo), Luke, and Eleanor (Nell)—move into Hill House to renovate the mansion in order to sell it and build their own house, designed by Olivia. However, due to unexpected repairs, they have to stay longer, and they begin to experience increasing paranormal phenomena, resulting in a tragic loss and the family fleeing from the house. Twenty-six years later, the Crain siblings and their estranged father reunite after another tragedy strikes them, and they are forced to confront how their time in Hill House has affected each of them.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: On April 10, 2017, Netflix announced that it had ordered a 10-episode adaptation of the classic horror novel "The Haunting of Hill House", with Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy as executive producers, and Amblin Television and Paramount Television as co-production companies. It is the first scripted series to be made for Netflix by Amblin.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: Production on the series began in October 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, with location filming in the city and its environs. Bisham Manor, former name of the property located in LaGrange, served as the exterior of "Hill House." The house's interior settings were filmed at EUE/Screen Gem Studios in Atlanta.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: The soundtrack was composed by The Newton Brothers. On October 31, 2018, Waxwork Records released the soundtrack on a double LP.


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "The Haunting of Hill House" has a 93% "certified fresh" rating based on 103 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""The Haunting of Hill House" is an effective ghost story whose steadily mounting anticipation is just as satisfying as its chilling payoff." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: Corrine Corrodus of "The Telegraph" graded the series with a 5/5 rating, calling it "the most complex and complete horror series of its time." Brian Tallerico of "RogerEbert.com" gave unanimous praise to the Netflix adaptation, describing it as "essential viewing," and stated that "[the show] contains some of the most unforgettable horror imagery in film or television in years." David Griffin of IGN gave the series a rating of 9.5 out of 10, calling it "a superb and terrifying family drama," and Paul Tassi of "Forbes" described it as "absolutely fantastic" and stated that "it may actually be Netflix's best original show ever."


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: Horror author Stephen King, who holds considerable admiration for Jackson's novel, tweeted about the series, "I don't usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure."


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: In January 2020, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said, "My favorite Netflix series, with no competition, is "The Haunting of Hill House"."


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: In August 2019, it was announced that "The Haunting of Hill House" would be released on Blu-ray and DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment on October 15, 2019. The release includes extended director's cuts of three episodes ("Steven Sees a Ghost", "The Bent-Neck Lady" and "Silence Lay Steadily"), all of which also have audio commentaries from Flanagan, and an additional audio commentary for "Two Storms".


title: The Haunting of Hill House (TV series)

text: In October 2018, Flanagan said that a possible second season would not continue the story of the Crain family, specifying, "it's done." On February 21, 2019, Netflix renewed the series for a second season as an anthology series, titled "The Haunting of Bly Manor", and based on "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. It was released on October 9, 2020. The second season features the return of several "Hill House" actors portraying new characters, including Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, Katie Parker and Carla Gugino.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana ( or ; ; ) is an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America in the Guianas. It borders Brazil to the east and south and Suriname to the west.


title: French Guiana

text: With a land area of , French Guiana is the second-largest region of France (more than one-seventh the size of Metropolitan France) and the largest outermost region within the European Union. It has a very low population density, with only . (Its population is less than that of Metropolitan France.) Half of its 294,436 inhabitants in 2022 lived in the metropolitan area of Cayenne, its capital. 98.9% of the land territory of French Guiana is covered by forests, a large part of which is primeval rainforest. The Guiana Amazonian Park, which is the largest national park in the European Union, covers 41% of French Guiana's territory.


title: French Guiana

text: Since December 2015, both the region and department have been ruled by a single assembly within the framework of a new territorial collectivity, the French Guiana Territorial Collectivity (). This assembly, the French Guiana Assembly (), replaced the former regional council and departmental council, which were disbanded. The French Guiana Assembly is in charge of regional and departmental government. Its president is Gabriel Serville.


title: French Guiana

text: Fully integrated in the French Republic since 1946, French Guiana is a part of the European Union, and its official currency is the euro. A large part of French Guiana's economy depends on jobs and businesses associated with the presence of the Guiana Space Centre, now the European Space Agency's primary launch site near the equator. As elsewhere in France, the official language is standard French, but each ethnic community has its own language, of which French Guianese Creole, a French-based creole language, is the most widely spoken. French Guiana is the only territory on the continental mainland of either North or South America that is under the sovereignty of a European state, much less fully integrated in a European state.


title: French Guiana

text: The border between French Guiana and Brazil is the longest land border that France shares with another country, as well as one of only two borders which France shares with non-European states, the other being the border with Suriname in the west.


title: French Guiana

text: The addition of the adjective "French" in most languages other than French is rooted in colonial times, when five such colonies (The Guianas) had been named along the coast, subject to differing powers: namely (from west to east) Spanish Guiana (now Guayana Region in Venezuela), British Guiana (now Guyana), Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), French Guiana, and Portuguese Guiana (now Amapá in Brazil). French Guiana and the two larger countries to the north and west, Guyana and Suriname, are still often collectively referred to as "the Guianas" and constitute one large landmass known as the Guiana Shield.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana was originally inhabited by indigenous people: Kalina, Arawak, Galibi, Palikur, Teko, Wayampi and Wayana. The French attempted to create a colony there in the 16th century in conjunction with its settlement of some Caribbean islands, such as Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue.


title: French Guiana

text: Prior to European colonization, the territory was originally inhabited by Native Americans, most speaking the Arawak language, of the Arawakan language family. The people identified as Lokono. The first French establishment is recorded in 1503, but France did not establish a durable presence until colonists founded Cayenne in 1643. Guiana was developed as a slave society, where planters imported Africans as enslaved labourers on large sugar and other plantations in such number as to increase the population. The system of slavery in French Guiana continued until the French Revolution, when the National Convention voted to abolish the French slave trade and slavery in France's overseas colonies in February 1794, months after enslaved Haitians had started a slave rebellion in the colony of Saint-Domingue. However, the 1794 decree was only implemented in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and French Guiana, while the colonies of Senegal, Mauritius, Réunion and Martinique and French India resisted the imposition of these laws.


title: French Guiana

text: Bill Marshall, Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Stirling wrote of French Guiana's origins:


title: French Guiana

text: "Île du Diable" (Devil's Island) was the site of a small prison facility, part of a larger penal system by the same name, which consisted of prisons on three islands and three larger prisons on the mainland. This was operated from 1852 to 1953.


title: French Guiana

text: In addition, in the late nineteenth century, France began requiring forced residencies by prisoners who survived their hard labour. A Portuguese-British naval squadron took French Guiana for the Portuguese Empire in 1809. It was returned to France with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1814. Though Portugal returned the region to France, it kept a military presence until 1817.


title: French Guiana

text: After French Guiana was established as a penal colony, officials sometimes used convicts to catch butterflies. The sentences of the convicts were often long, and the prospect of employment very weak, so the convicts caught butterflies to sell in the international market, both for scientific purposes as well as general collecting.


title: French Guiana

text: A border dispute with Brazil arose in the late 19th century over a vast area of jungle, resulting in the short-lived, pro-French, independent state of Counani in the disputed territory. There was some fighting among settlers. The dispute was resolved largely in favour of Brazil by the arbitration of the Swiss government.


title: French Guiana

text: The territory of Inini consisted of most of the interior of French Guiana when it was created in 1930. It was abolished in 1946, the year that French Guiana as a whole was formally established as an overseas department of France. In 1936, Félix Éboué from Cayenne became the first black man to serve as governor in a French colony.


title: French Guiana

text: During World War II and the fall of France to Nazi German forces, French Guiana became part of Vichy France. Guiana officially rallied to Free France on 16 March 1943. It abandoned its colony status and once again became a French department on 19 March 1946.


title: French Guiana

text: Following the French withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1950s and subsequent warfare conducted in the region by the United States, France helped resettle several hundred Hmong refugees from Laos to French Guiana during the 1970s and 80s, who were fleeing displacement after the communist takeover of Laos by Pathet Lao in 1975.


title: French Guiana

text: In the late 1980s, more than 10,000 Surinamese refugees, mostly Maroons, arrived in French Guiana, fleeing the Surinamese Civil War.


title: French Guiana

text: More recently, French Guiana has received large numbers of Brazilian and Haitian economic migrants. Illegal and ecologically destructive gold mining by Brazilian is a chronic issue in the remote interior rain forest of French Guiana. The region still faces such problems as illegal immigration, poorer infrastructure than mainland France, higher costs of living, higher levels of crime and more common social unrest.


title: French Guiana

text: In 1964, French president Charles de Gaulle decided to construct a space-travel base in French Guiana. It was intended to replace the Sahara base in Algeria and stimulate economic growth in French Guiana. The department was considered suitable for the purpose because it is near the equator and has extensive access to the ocean as a buffer zone. The Guiana Space Centre, located a short distance along the coast from Kourou, has grown considerably since the initial launches of the Véronique rockets. It is now part of the European space industry and has had commercial success with such launches as the Ariane 4, Ariane 5 and Ariane flight VA256 which launched the James Webb Space Telescope into space.


title: French Guiana

text: The Guianese General Council officially adopted a departmental flag in 2010. In a referendum that same year, French Guiana voted against autonomy.


title: French Guiana

text: On 20 March 2017, French Guianese workers began going on strike and demonstrating for more resources and infrastructure. 28 March 2017 was the day of the largest demonstration ever held in French Guiana.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana has been severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, with more than 1% of French Guianese testing positive by the end of June 2020.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana lies between latitudes 2° and 6° N, and longitudes 51° and 55° W. It consists of two main geographical regions: a coastal strip where the majority of the people live, and dense, near-inaccessible rainforest which gradually rises to the modest peaks of the Tumuc-Humac mountains along the Brazilian frontier. French Guiana's highest peak is Bellevue de l'Inini in Maripasoula (). Other mountains include Mont Itoupé (), Cottica Mountain (), Pic Coudreau (), and Kaw Mountain ().


title: French Guiana

text: Several small islands are found off the coast: the three Salvation's Islands which include Devil's Island, and the isolated Îles du Connétable bird sanctuary further along the coast towards Brazil.


title: French Guiana

text: The Petit-Saut Dam, a hydroelectric dam in the north of French Guiana forms an artificial lake and provides hydroelectricity. There are many rivers in French Guiana, including the Waki River.


title: French Guiana

text: , the Amazonian forest, located in the most remote part of the department, is protected as the Guiana Amazonian Park, one of the ten national parks of France. The territory of the park covers some upon the communes of Camopi, Maripasoula, Papaïchton, Saint-Élie and Saül.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana has an equatorial climate predominant. Located within six degrees of the Equator and rising only to modest elevations, French Guiana is hot and oppressively humid all year round. During most of the year, rainfall across the country is heavy due to the presence of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and its powerful thunderstorm cells. In most parts of French Guiana, rainfall is always heavy especially from December to July – typically over can be expected each month during this period throughout the department. Between August and November, the eastern half experiences a warm dry season with rainfall below and average high temperatures above occurring in September and October, causing eastern French Guiana to be classified as a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen "Am"); Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in the west has a tropical rainforest climate ("Af").


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana is home to many different ecosystems: tropical rainforests, coastal mangroves, savannahs, inselbergs and many types of wetlands. It lies within three ecoregions: Guayanan Highlands moist forests, Guianan moist forests, and Guianan mangroves. French Guiana has a high level of biodiversity of both flora and fauna. This is due to the presence of old-growth forests (i.e., ancient/primary forests), which are biodiversity hotspots. The rainforests of French Guiana provide shelter for many species during dry periods and terrestrial glaciation. These forests are protected by a national park (the Guiana Amazonian Park), seven additional nature reserves, and 17 protected sites. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the European Union (EU) have recommended special efforts to protect these areas.


title: French Guiana

text: Following the Grenelle Environment Round Table of 2007, the Grenelle Law II was proposed in 2009, under law number 2010–788. Article 49 of the law proposed the creation of a single organization responsible for environmental conservation in French Guiana. Article 64 proposes a "departmental plan of mining orientation" for French Guiana, which would promote mining (specifically of gold) that is compatible with requirements for environmental protection. The coastal environment along the RN1 has historically experienced the most changes, but development is occurring locally along the RN2, and also in western French Guiana due to gold mining.


title: French Guiana

text: 5,500 plant species have been recorded, including more than a thousand trees, along with 700 species of birds, 177 species of mammals, over 500 species of fish including 45% of which are endemic and 109 species of amphibians. French Guiana's high biodiversity is similar to that of other regions with tropical rainforests, such as the Brazilian Amazon, Borneo and Sumatra.


title: French Guiana

text: Environmental threats include habitat fragmentation from roads, which remains very limited compared to other forests of South America; immediate and deferred impacts of EDF's Petit-Saut Dam; gold mining; poor control of hunting and poaching, facilitated by the creation of many tracks; and the introduction of all-terrain vehicles. Logging remains moderate due to the lack of roads, difficult climate, and difficult terrain. The Forest Code of French Guiana was modified by ordinance on 28 July 2005. Logging concessions or free transfers are sometimes granted by local authorities to persons traditionally deriving their livelihood from the forest.


title: French Guiana

text: The beaches of the Amana Nature Reserve are an exceptional marine turtle nesting site. This is one of the largest worldwide for the leatherback turtle.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana has some of the poorest soils in the world. The soil is low in nutrients (e.g., nitrogen, potassium) and organic matter. Soil acidity is another cause of the poor soils, and it requires farmers to add lime to their fields. The soil characteristics have led to the use of slash and burn agriculture. The resulting ashes elevate soil pH (i.e., lower soil acidity), and contribute minerals and other nutrients to the soil. Sites of Terra preta (anthropogenic soils) have been discovered in French Guiana, particularly near the border with Brazil. Research is being actively pursued in multiple fields to determine how these enriched soils were historically created, and how this can be done in modern times.


title: French Guiana

text: As a part of France, French Guiana is part of the European Union and the Eurozone; its currency is the euro. The country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for French Guiana is .gf, but .fr is generally used instead.


title: French Guiana

text: In 2019, the GDP of French Guiana at market exchange rates was US$4.93 billion (€4.41 billion), ranking as the 2nd largest economy in the Guianas after Guyana (which discovered large oil fields in 2015 and 2018), and the 12th largest in South America.


title: French Guiana

text: From the 1960s to the 2000s, French Guiana experienced strong economic growth, fueled by the development of France's Guiana Space Centre (established in French Guiana in 1964 as the independence of Algeria in 1962 led to the closure of France's space center in the Algerian Sahara) and by high population growth which stimulated domestic consumption. French Guiana's economy did not suffer from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008: the GDP grew by an average of +3.4% per year in real terms from 2002 to 2012, slightly faster than the rapidly growing population, which allowed French Guiana to catch up somewhat with the rest of France in terms of standards of living. The GDP per capita rose from 48.0% of metropolitan France's level in 2000 to 48.5% of metropolitan France in 2012.


title: French Guiana

text: Since 2013, however, French Guiana's economic growth has been uneven, and more subdued. From 2013 to 2019, the economy grew by an average of only +1.2% in real terms. French Guiana experienced a recession of -0.8% in 2014, and social unrest in 2017 led to almost no economic growth that year. Economic growth recovered at +3.0% in 2018, but was again almost null (+0.2%) in 2019. As a result, the GDP per capita has remained stagnant in nominal terms since 2013, and has declined relative to metropolitan France's. In 2019, the GDP per capita of French Guiana at market exchange rates, not at PPP, was US$17,375 (€15,521), only 42.3% of metropolitan France's average GDP per capita that year, and 50.3% of the metropolitan French regions outside the Paris Region.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, leading to a recession of -2.7% that year according to provisional estimates, moderate compared to the COVID-19 recession in metropolitan France (-7.9% in 2020).


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana is heavily dependent on mainland France for subsidies, trade, and goods. The main traditional industries are fishing (accounting for 5% of exports in 2012), gold mining (accounting for 32% of exports in 2012) and timber (accounting for 1% of exports in 2012). In addition, the Guiana Space Centre has played a significant role in the local economy since it was established in Kourou in 1964: it accounted directly and indirectly for 16% of French Guiana's GDP in 2002 (down from 26% in 1994, as the French Guianese economy is becoming increasingly diversified). The Guiana Space Centre employed 1,659 people in 2012.


title: French Guiana

text: There is very little manufacturing. Agriculture is largely undeveloped and is mainly confined to the area near the coast and along the Maroni River. Sugar and bananas were traditionally two of the main cash crops grown for export but have almost completely disappeared. Today they have been replaced by livestock raising (essentially beef cattle and pigs) in the coastal savannas between Cayenne and the second-largest town, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and market gardening (fruits and vegetables) developed by the Hmong communities settled in French Guiana in the 1970s, both destined to the local market. A thriving rice production, developed on polders near Mana from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, has almost completely disappeared since 2011 due to marine erosion and new EU plant health rules which forbid the use of many pesticides and fertilizers. Tourism, especially eco-tourism, is growing.


title: French Guiana

text: Unemployment has been persistently high in the last few decades, standing between 17% and 24%. In recent years, the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 23.0% in 2016 to 19.3% in 2019.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana experienced a long period of demographic stagnation during the days of the Cayenne and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni penal colonies (19th century and first half of the 20th century), when, with the exception of a brief gold rush in the 1900s and 1910s, it suffered from a bad reputation due to its association with penal colonies and bad sanitary conditions (yellow fever and malaria in particular).


title: French Guiana

text: Population started to grow tremendously from the 1950s onwards with the improvement of sanitary conditions (yellow fever and malaria eradication campaigns started in 1949) and the establishment of the Guiana Space Centre in 1964. Population growth has been fueled both by high birth rates and large arrivals of immigrants (from metropolitan France, to man the public administrations and the space center, as well as from neighboring countries, in particular Suriname and Brazil). Arrivals of Surinamese refugees reached record levels in the 1980s during the Surinamese Interior War, resulting in the highest population growth rate in French Guiana's history, recorded between the 1982 and 1990 censuses (+5.8% per year).


title: French Guiana

text: In the 21st century, the birth rate has remained high, and new arrivals of migrants seeking asylum (in particular from Haiti) have kept population growth above 2% per year in the 2010s. French Guiana's population reached 294,436 in 2022 (Jan. estimate), more than 10 times the population it had in 1954.


title: French Guiana

text: The most populous urban unit (agglomeration) is Cayenne, which covers 3 communes (Cayenne, Matoury and Remire-Montjoly). The three largest urban units are:


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana's population, most of whom live along the coast, is substantially ethnically diverse. At the 2018 census, 56.6% of the inhabitants of French Guiana were born in French Guiana, 8.9% were born in Metropolitan France, 2.8% were born in the French Caribbean departments and collectivities (Guadeloupe and Martinique etc.), and 31.5% were born in foreign countries (primarily Suriname, Brazil, and Haiti).


title: French Guiana

text: Estimates of the percentages of French Guiana ethnic composition are difficult to produce due to the presence of a large proportion of immigrants. People of African descent are the largest ethnic group, though estimates vary as to the exact percentage, depending upon whether the large Haitian community is included as well. Generally, the Creole population is judged to be about 60–70% of the total population if Haitians (comprising roughly one-third of Creoles) are included, and 30–50% otherwise. There are also smaller groups from various Caribbean islands, mainly Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Lucia.


title: French Guiana

text: Approximately 41,000 people or 14% of the population is of European ancestry. The vast majority of these are of French ancestry, though there are also people of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry.


title: French Guiana

text: The main Asian communities are the Chinese (about 3–4%, primarily from Zhejiang and Guangdong in mainland China) and Hmong from Laos (1–2%). Other groups from Asia include East Indians, Lebanese and Vietnamese.


title: French Guiana

text: The main groups living in the interior are the Maroons who are of African descent, and Amerindians. The Maroons, descendants of escaped African slaves, live primarily along the Maroni River. The main Maroon groups are the Saramaca, Aucan (both of whom also live in Suriname), and Boni (Aluku).


title: French Guiana

text: The main Amerindian groups (forming about 3–4% of the population) are the Arawak, Carib, Emerillon (now called the Teko), Galibi (now called the Kaliña), Palikur, Wayampi and Wayana. As of the late 1990s, there was evidence of an uncontacted group of Wayampi.


title: French Guiana

text: In recent years, French Guiana has seen an increase in Syrian refugees trying to escape the Syrian Civil War. For them and other groups of migrants, the majority arriving from Latin American and Middle Eastern countries (especially Cuba, Yemen, and Palestine), its status as French territory makes it a "gateway" to Europe. Many live in crowded refugee camps with poor conditions and little protection from the elements. Neither local authorities nor the French government have made significant efforts to help the situation.


title: French Guiana

text: The dominant religion of French Guiana is Roman Catholicism; the Maroons and some Amerindian peoples maintain their own religions. The Hmong people are also largely Catholic owing to the influence of missionaries who helped bring them to French Guiana. Guianan Catholics are part of the Diocese of Cayenne.


title: French Guiana

text: The total fertility rate in French Guiana has remained high and is today considerably higher than that of metropolitan France, as well as most of the other French overseas departments. It is largely responsible for the rapid population growth of French Guiana.


title: French Guiana

text: The official language of French Guiana is French, and it is the predominant language of the department, spoken by most residents as a first or second language. In addition, a number of other local languages exist. Regional languages include French Guianese Creole (not to be confused with Guyanese Creole), six Amerindian languages (Arawak, Palijur, Kali'na, Wayana, Wayampi, Emerillon), four Maroon creole languages (Saramaka, Paramaccan, Aluku, Ndyuka), as well as Hmong Njua. Other languages spoken include Portuguese, Mandarin, Haitian Creole and Spanish.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana, as part of France, forms part of the European Union – the largest landmass for an area outside of Europe (since Greenland left the European Community in 1985), with one of the longest EU external boundaries. It is one of only three European Union territories outside Europe that is not an island (the others being the Spanish Autonomous Cities in Africa, Ceuta and Melilla). As an integral part of France, its head of state is the president of the French Republic, and its head of government is the prime minister of France. The French government and its agencies have responsibility for a wide range of issues that are reserved to the national executive power, such as defense and external relations.


title: French Guiana

text: The president of France appoints a prefect (resident at the prefecture building in Cayenne) as his representative to head the local government of French Guiana. There is one elected, local executive body, the Assemblée de Guyane.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana sends two deputies to the French National Assembly, one representing the commune (municipality) of Cayenne and the commune of Macouria, and the other representing the rest of French Guiana. This latter constituency is the largest in the French Republic by land area. French Guiana also sends two senators to the French Senate. The first woman to be elected to the Senate was Marie-Laure Phinéra-Horth in 2020.


title: French Guiana

text: A chronic issue affecting French Guiana is the influx of illegal immigrants and clandestine gold prospectors from Brazil and Suriname. The border between the department and Suriname, the Maroni River, flows through rain forest and is difficult for the Gendarmerie and the French Foreign Legion to patrol. There have been several phases launched by the French government to combat illegal gold mining in French Guiana, beginning with Operation Anaconda beginning in 2003, followed by Operation Harpie in 2008 and 2009 and Operation Harpie Reinforce in 2010. Colonel François Müller, the commander of French Guiana's gendarmes, believes these operations have been successful. However, after each operation ends, Brazilian miners, , return. Soon after Operation Harpie Reinforce began, an altercation took place between French authorities and Brazilian miners. On 12 March 2010 a team of French soldiers and border police were attacked while returning from a successful operation, during which "the soldiers had arrested 15 miners, confiscated three boats, and seized 617 grams of gold... currently worth about $22,317". Garimpeiros returned to retrieve their lost loot and colleagues. The soldiers fired warning shots and rubber "flash balls", but the miners managed to retake one of their boats and about 500 grams of gold. "The violent reaction by the garimpeiros can be explained by the exceptional take of 617 grams of gold, about 20 percent of the quantity seized in 2009 during the battle against illegal mining", said Phillipe Duporge, the director of French Guiana's border police, at a press conference the next day.


title: French Guiana

text: The transportation system in French Guiana is deficient compared to Metropolitan France, being concentrated in the coastal zone of the territory, while the inland municipalities are poorly connected and often difficult to access.


title: French Guiana

text: Despite the existence of numerous projects to upgrade and asphalt roads (such as the Bélizon road or the Apatou-Maripasoula-Saül axis), which are often opposed by environmental movements because of environmental fragmentation and problems for Amerindian and Maroon communities, several French Guiana municipalities (Ouanary, Camopi, Saül, Saint-Élie, Grand-Santi, Papaïchton, Maripasoula, Apatou) still do not have road access.


title: French Guiana

text: Following a treaty between France and Brazil signed in July 2005, the Oyapock River Bridge over the Oyapock River was built and completed in 2011, becoming the first land crossing ever between French Guiana and the rest of the world (there exists no other bridge crossing the Oyapock River, and no bridge crossing the Maroni River marking the border with Suriname, although there is a ferry crossing to Albina, Suriname). The bridge was officially opened on 18 March 2017, however the border post construction on the Brazilian side caused additional delays. As of 2020, it possible to drive uninterrupted from Cayenne to Macapá (on the Amazon River), the capital of the state of Amapá in Brazil.


title: French Guiana

text: At present, French Guiana does not have a railway system, with the exception of a small section in the Centre Spatial Guyanais used for the transport of components: when the territory was a penal colony, there were some railroad lines built by the prisoners themselves to connect the various baths with each other, the remains of which (now disused and mostly engulfed by the jungle) are still visible in some areas. These lines include the section from Montsinéry-Tonnegrande to the so-called bagne des Annamites, the section from Saint-Élie to the Saut du Tigre labor camp (now submerged by the artificial lake created by the Petit-Saut dam) and the section from Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni-Mana-Saint-Jean-du-Maroni.


title: French Guiana

text: Transportation by boat is quite widespread in French Guiana: among the most important Ports are the port of Dégrad-Des-Cannes, located at the mouth of the Mahury River, in the commune of Rémire-Montjoly, through which most of the imported or exported goods of the territory pass and where the local detachment of the "Marine nationale" is housed, and the port of Larivot, located in Matoury, where the Guyanese fishing fleet is concentrated.


title: French Guiana

text: The port of Dégrad-Des-Cannes, built in 1969 to cope with the impossibility of the former port of Cayenne to decongest the growing maritime traffic, has a rather limited draft, and larger ships often prefer to dock at Ile du Salut to unload people and goods (which are then transported to the mainland by smaller ships) to avoid running aground. The port of Pariacabo in Kourou is home to the Colibri and Toucan ships, which carry components for Ariane missiles.


title: French Guiana

text: The inland rivers are heavily traversed by canoes and other small boats, linking the villages on the Marowijne, Oyapock and Approuague Rivers, which often cannot be reached in any other way; the lake created by the Petit-Saut dam is also frequently crossed, although it is officially forbidden to cross the body of water.


title: French Guiana

text: French Guiana is served by Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport, located in Matoury. There are also several airstrips in the department, located in Camopi, Maripasoula, Ouanary, Saint-Georges-de-l'Oyapock, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and Saül, for a total of eleven hubs (four paved and seven unpaved).