title: Samir Nasri

text: Nasri returned to the national team under the reign of new coach Laurent Blanc for the team's friendly against Norway on 11 August 2010. He missed the September call-ups due to injury before returning to the team in October for Euro 2012 qualifying matches against Romania and Luxembourg. On 25 March 2011, Nasri captained the national team for the first time in its 2–0 Euro qualification win over Luxembourg. He provided the assist on the opening goal scored by Philippe Mexès. In the team's final Euro qualifier against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nasri scored the equalizing goal, converting a penalty in a 1–1 draw. The point gained from the stalemate secured a Euro 2012 qualifying spot for France. After appearing regularly in qualifying for Euro 2012, on 29 May 2012, Nasri was named to the squad to participate in the competition. In the team's opening group stage match against England, he scored the equalizing goal in a 1–1 draw.


title: Samir Nasri

text: After France lost to Spain in the quarter-finals, Nasri subjected a reporter to what was described as a "foul-mouthed tirade" when asked for his views on the match. For that and other misdemeanours, the French Football Federation (FFF) imposed a three-match international ban.


title: Samir Nasri

text: On 13 May 2014, France manager Didier Deschamps revealed his 23-man squad for the 2014 World Cup, omitting Nasri.


title: Samir Nasri

text: In his early years at Marseille, Nasri was deployed in several positions, most notably as a deep-lying midfielder and a wide midfielder primarily on the right side as he was deemed too small to play in the middle of the park. After two years of developing his physical traits, in the 2006–07 season, manager Albert Emon inserted Nasri into the playmaker role, where his vision, passing, technical skill and ability to read and understand the game suited him. Since that season, Nasri was primarily deployed in the position or as a central attacking midfielder at both club and international level. The player personally said that playing centrally was his preference. As a result of his versatility, Nasri could also function on the wing and spent the majority of his career at Arsenal occupying the role in the team's 4–3–3 formation. His close control with the ball, speed, dribbling, crossing, and ability to use both feet suited the position well, which resulted in former manager Arsène Wenger deploying Nasri in the role during the player's four-year stay at the club. Nasri often featured centrally for Arsenal in the absence of former club captain Cesc Fàbregas.


title: Samir Nasri

text: In 2009, in order to accommodate the arrival of Russian attacker Andrey Arshavin, it was recommended by both Wenger and then-France national team coach Raymond Domenech that Nasri revert to his role as a deep-lying midfielder so the player could showcase his underrated defensive abilities. Nasri was also an underrated direct free kick and penalty kick taker. The player had previously developed a superstition with regards to taking spot kicks, but conquered the issue after successfully converting two penalties in the team's League Cup victory over Tottenham Hotspur in 2010. Wenger described Nasri as a "young, quick and technically outstanding player". He was described in a similar fashion by club scout Gilles Grimandi, who stated that Nasri was "a fantastic athlete, he's quick, flexible and good with his feet". Nasri's playing style, ability and cultural background drew comparisons to Zinedine Zidane. After joining Arsenal and excelling on the wing, the English media began comparing him to former club player and compatriot Robert Pires.


title: Williams College

text: Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755. It is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts after Harvard College.


title: Williams College

text: Although the bequest from the estate of Ephraim Williams intended to establish a "free school", the exact meaning of which is ambiguous, the college quickly outgrew its initial ambitions. It positioned itself as a "Western counterpart" to Yale and Harvard. It became officially coeducational in the 1960s.


title: Williams College

text: Williams's main campus is located in Williamstown, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts, and contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. There are 360 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 7:1. , the school has an enrollment of 2,021 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students.


title: Williams College

text: Following a liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences. Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history. The college maintains affiliations with the nearby Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and has a close relationship with Exeter College, Oxford University. The college competes in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference as the Ephs. The athletic program has been highly successful, as Williams College has won 22 of the last 24 College Directors' Cups for NCAA Division III.


title: Williams College

text: Williams is a highly selective school with an acceptance rate of 8% for the Class of 2025. It has ranked first in "U.S. News & World Report"'s rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges every year since 2004, and the college has held high-ranking positions in other institutional rankings. In April 2022, Williams became the first institution of higher education in the United States to eliminate loans and work-study requirements from its financial aid program, transitioning to an all grants system for financial aid.


title: Williams College

text: The college has many prominent alumni, including 9 Pulitzer Prize winners, a Nobel Prize Laureate, a Fields medalist, 3 chairmen of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, 14 billionaire alumni, 71 members of the United States Congress, 22 U.S. Governors, 4 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a President of the United States, 3 prime ministers, CEOs and founders of Fortune 500 companies, high-ranking U.S. diplomats, foreign central bankers, scholars in academia, literary and media figures, numerous Emmy, Oscar, and Grammy award winners, and professional athletes. Other notable alumni include 40 Rhodes Scholars and 17 Marshall Scholarship winners.


title: Williams College

text: Colonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided the town change its name to Williamstown.


title: Williams College

text: Members of the Williams family first attempted to found Queens College in Hatfield, Massachusetts in 1762, but the charter was revoked within a year when Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard succumbed to pressure from Harvard College, which opposed the creation of a second institution of higher learning in the Massachusetts colony. In 1765, the west township was incorporated as Williamstown. Five years later, the town's proprietors brought the executors of Williams' estate before the General Court to dispute the delay in establishment of the free school, and in 1795, the Massachusetts legislature finally granted the school its charter.


title: Williams College

text: After Shays' Rebellion, the Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. The first president was Ebenezer Fitch. Not long after its founding, the school's trustees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to a tuition-based college. The legislature agreed and on June 22, 1793, Williams College was chartered. It was the second college to be founded in Massachusetts.At its founding, the college maintained a policy of racial segregation, refusing admission to black applicants. This policy was challenged by Lucy Terry Prince, who is credited as the first black American poet, when her son Festus was refused admission on account of his race. Prince, who had established a reputation as a raconteur and rhetorician, delivered a three-hour speech before the college's board of trustees, quoting abundantly from scripture, but was unable to secure her son's admission.


title: Williams College

text: More recent scholarship, however, has highlighted there are no records within the college to confirm this event occurred, and Festus Prince may have been refused entry for an insufficient mastery of Latin, Greek, and French, all of which were necessary for successful completion of the entrance exam at the time, and which would most likely not have been available in the local schools of Guilford, Vermont, where Festus was raised.


title: Williams College

text: In 1806, a student prayer meeting gave rise to the American Foreign Mission Movement. In August of that year, five students met in the maple grove of Sloan's Meadow to pray. A thunderstorm drove them to the shelter of a haystack, and the fervor of the ensuing meeting inspired them to take the Gospel abroad. The students went on to build the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first American organization to send missionaries overseas. The Haystack Monument near Mission Park on the Williams Campus commemorates the historic "Haystack Prayer Meeting".


title: Williams College

text: By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and 58 students and was in financial trouble, so the board voted to move the college to Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1821, the president of the college, Zephaniah Swift Moore, who had accepted his position believing the college would move east, decided to proceed with the move. He took 15 students with him, and re-founded the college under the name of Amherst College. Some students and professors decided to stay at Williams and were allowed to keep the land, which was at the time relatively worthless. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.


title: Williams College

text: Edward Dorr Griffin was appointed President of Williams and is widely credited with saving Williams during his 15-year tenure. A Williams student, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, of Albany, New York, whose family owned that city's Cotrell & Leonard department store, designed the gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887. Seven years later he advised the Inter-Collegiate Commission on Academic Costume, which met at Columbia University, and established the current system of U.S. academic dress. One reason gowns were adopted in the late 19th century was to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students. Gardner Cotrell Leonard went on to edit the book "The Songs of Williams", a collection of songs sung at the college. During World War II, Williams College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.


title: Williams College

text: Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962.


title: Williams College

text: Though Williams College officially began the process of coeducation in the late 1960s, women integrated the college as early as the 1930s. Beatrice Irene Wasserscheid (née Acly) was the first woman to be awarded a Williams degree after successfully petitioning the trustees to pursue a master of arts degree in American literature. She received her master's degree in June 1931. That same decade, in 1935, Emily Cleland became the first woman to teach at Williams when she finished teaching her late husband's geology course after he died in an accident. The first tenured woman faculty member at the college, Doris DeKeyselingk, oversaw the Russian department beginning in 1958.


title: Williams College

text: During his time as president of Williams College, John E. Sawyer officially initiated the process of coeducation. After overseeing the abolishment of fraternities, Sawyer created a faculty-trustee committee, the Committee on Coordinate Education and Related Questions, in 1967 to explore options for coeducation and co-ordinate education. In response to the Committee on Coordinate Education's final report, the trustees voted in June 1969 to regularly admit women undergraduate students in fall 1971. The college welcomed 137 women as first-year students in fall 1971. They were joined by 90 transfer and exchange students from women's colleges who, during their junior and senior year, participated in the Ten College Exchange Program which Sawyer helped to establish in the mid-to-late 1960s. The graduating class of 1975 was the first fully co-educational class to graduate from Williams.


title: Williams College

text: The college's admission of women undergraduate students coincided with the diversification of faculty and staff. An affirmative action program, launched in 1972 by President John Chandler, reinforced equal opportunity employment. In addition to facilitating the hiring and retention of African-American staff and faculty, the program prioritized hiring women. As a result of the efforts of the dean of faculty and the provost in collaboration with "Committee W", a women-led group dedicated to fulfilling the program's mission, the number of women faculty steadily rose. From the inception of Williams's affirmative action program in 1972 to its revision in 1975, the proportion of women full-time faculty increased from 4.5% to 11.7%. By 1975, 34% of the first-term assistant professors were women.


title: Williams College

text: Throughout the 1970s, Williams College experienced an increase of women in high administrative and advisory positions as well. In February 1970, the college hired its first female dean, Nancy McIntire. In October 1971, at age 29, Gail Walker Haslett was elected as a three-year term trustee on the Williams College Board of Trustees. She was the first woman to ever serve on the board. In 1976, Pamela G. Carlton '76 became the first woman alumni trustee and Janet Brown ‘73, the first woman graduate of Williams to serve on the executive committee of the Society of Alumni.


title: Williams College

text: , 45.6% of full-time faculty and 51.6% of the undergraduate class are women-identifying at Williams. In July 2018, Maud Mandel began her tenure as the 18th and current President of Williams College. She is the first woman to assume this role.


title: Williams College

text: In the last decade, construction has changed the look of the college. The addition of the $38 million Unified Science Center to the campus in 2001 set a tone of style and comprehensiveness for renovations and additions to campus buildings in the 21st century. This building unifies the formerly separate lab spaces of the physics, chemistry, and biology departments. In addition, it houses Schow Science Library, notable for its unified science materials holdings and architecture. It features vaulted ceilings and an atrium with windows into laboratories on the second through fourth floors of the science center.


title: Williams College

text: In 2003, Williams began the first of three massive construction projects. The $60 million '62 Center for Theatre and Dance was the first project to be successfully completed in the spring of 2005. The $44 million student center, called Paresky Center, opened in February 2007.


title: Williams College

text: Construction had already begun on the third project, called the Stetson-Sawyer project, when economic uncertainty stemming from the 2007 financial crisis led to its delay. College trustees initially balked at the Stetson-Sawyer project's cost, and revisited the idea of renovating Sawyer in its current location, an idea which proved not to be cost effective. The entire project includes construction of two new academic buildings, the removal of Sawyer Library from its current location, and the construction of a new library at the rear of a renovated Stetson Hall (which served as the college library prior to Sawyer's construction). The academic buildings, temporarily named North Academic Building and South Academic Building, were completed in fall 2008. In the spring of 2009, South Academic Building was renamed Schapiro Hall in honor of former president Morton O. Schapiro. In spring 2010 the North Academic Building was renamed Hollander Hall. Construction of the new Sawyer Library was completed in 2014, after which the old Sawyer Library was razed.


title: Williams College

text: After several years of planning, the college decided to group undergraduates starting with the Class of 2010 into four geographically coherent clusters, or "Neighborhoods". Since the fall of 2006, first-years have been housed in Sage Hall, Williams Hall and Mission Park, while the former first-year dormitories East College, Lehman Hall, Fayerweather, and Morgan, joined the remaining residential buildings as upperclass housing. During the spring 2009 semester, a committee formed to evaluate the neighborhood system, and released a report the following fall. From 2003 through 2008, Williams conducted a capital campaign with the goal of raising $400 million by September 2008. The college reached $400 million at the end of June 2007. By the close of the campaign, Williams had raised $500.2 million.


title: Williams College

text: As of the 2008-09 school year, the college eliminated student loans from all financial aid packages in favor of grants. The college was the fourth institution in the United States to do so, following Princeton University, Amherst College, and Davidson College. However, in February 2010, the college announced it would re-introduce loans to its financial aid packages beginning with the Class of 2015 due to the college's changed financial situation. In January 2007 the board voted unanimously to reduce college CO emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, or roughly 50% below 2006 levels. To meet those goals, the college set up the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and has undertaken an energy audit and efficiency timeline. Williams received an 'A−' on the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, following 'B+' grades on both the 2008 and 2009 report cards. In December 2008, President Morton O. Schapiro announced his departure from the college to become president of Northwestern University.


title: Williams College

text: On September 28, 2009, the presidential search committee announced the appointment of Adam Falk as the 17th president of Williams College. Falk, dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, began his term on April 1, 2010. Dean of the Faculty William G. Wagner took the position of interim president beginning in June 2009, and continued in that capacity until President-elect Falk took office. In 2014, Williams College brought their endowment above the 2 billion dollar mark. On March 11, 2018, former Dean of the College at Brown University Maud Mandel was selected to be the 18th president of Williams College. Mandel assumed the role on July 1, 2018.


title: Williams College

text: Williams is a small, four-year liberal arts college accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. There are three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences, and social sciences), 25 departments, 36 majors, and two small master's degree programs in art history and development economics. Students may also concentrate in 12 additional academic areas that are not offered as majors (e.g., environmental studies). The academic year follows a 4–1–4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. During the winter study term, students study one of various courses outside of typical curriculum for 3 weeks. Students typically take this course on a pass/fail basis. Past course offerings have included: Ski patrol, Learn to Play Chess, Accounting, Inside Jury Deliberations, and Creating a Life: Shaping Your Life After Williams, among many others. Williams students often take the winter study term to study abroad or work on intensive research projects.


title: Williams College

text: The college's 2021-22 Comprehensive Fee was $76,980, including tuition ($61,450) and board, room, and fees ($15,530). 48% of students were given need-based financial aid, which averaged $63,516.


title: Williams College

text: Williams sponsors the Williams–Mystic program at Mystic Seaport; the Williams–Exeter Programme at Exeter College of Oxford University; and Williams in Africa. Williams has a close relationship with Exeter College, one of the oldest constituent colleges of Oxford University. In the early 1980s, Williams purchased a group of houses, today known as the Ephraim Williams House, on Banbury Road and Lathbury Road, in North Oxford.


title: Williams College

text: The Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford (WEPO) was founded in 1985. Every year (except 2010–2011 and 2022–2023), 26 undergraduate students from Williams spend their junior year at Exeter as full members of the college.


title: Williams College

text: Williams is classified as "most selective" by "U.S. News & World Report" and "more selective" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.


title: Williams College

text: For freshmen students admitted in fall 2021 (Class of 2025), the average redesigned SAT was 1470-1550. The average super-scored ACT Composite score was 33-35.


title: Williams College

text: In the 2010, 2011, and 2014 "Forbes" college rankings, Williams was ranked the No. 1 undergraduate institution in the United States. Williams was the first school to achieve three first place "Forbes" rankings. In 2012, 2015, and 2016, Williams placed second. In 2017 and 2018, Williams fell out of the top ten (to 13th and 12th, respectively), before dropping further to 19th in 2019. Williams ranked 18th after "Forbes" changed their ranking methodology to emphasize alumni salaries and graduation debt in 2021. In the Forbes 2022 College Rankings, Williams College rose to 7th.


title: Williams College

text: Williams has been ranked first in "U.S. News & World Report"'s rankings of Best National Liberal Arts Colleges every year since 2004, and has been in the top three every year since the rankings were created in 1984. (This list does not include universities: unlike "Forbes", "U.S. News & World Report" ranks universities and liberal arts colleges on separate lists.)


title: Williams College

text: Williams follows a 4-1-4 schedule, with the month of January dedicated to "Winter Study", a time when students take one course (or more) on campus or engage in an international program, an internship, or independent research project. A significant number of Winter Study courses are taught by Williams College alumni, and feature topics otherwise not covered in a traditional liberal arts curriculum—such as financial accounting, entrepreneurship, journalism, and yoga. Winter Study courses change yearly—the catalog features international programs in public health (where students travel to Nicaragua or Liberia), cultural immersion (for example, programs in Morocco and France), and political work (for example, a three-week internship program in the government of the Republic of Georgia).


title: Williams College

text: Certain portions of the Williams education are modeled after the tutorial systems at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Although tutorials at Williams were originally aimed at upperclassmen, the faculty voted in 2001 to expand the tutorial program. There is now a diverse offering of tutorial courses that span many disciplines, including math and sciences, and cater to students of all class years. In 2009–2010 alone, 62 tutorials were offered in 21 departments. Enrollment for tutorials is capped at 10 students, who are then divided into five pairs that each meet separately with the professor once a week. Each week, one student in each tutorial pair writes and presents a 5–7-page paper while the other student writes a critique response. The same pair reverses roles for the next week. The professor takes a more limited role than in a traditional lecture class and usually allows the students to steer and guide the direction of the conversation. Professor (and former Dean and English Department Chair) Stephen E. Fix was one of the early advocates for expanding the tutorial system at Williams and worked to increase support for the concept and the number of tutorial classes offered to students.


title: Williams College

text: Student course evaluations for tutorials are typically very high. In a survey of alumni who had taken tutorials, more than 80% rated their tutorials as "the most valuable of my courses" at Williams.


title: Williams College

text: The Board of Trustees of Williams College has 25 members and is the governing authority of the college. The President of the college serves on the Board "ex officio." There are five Alumni Trustees, each of whom serves for a five-year term. There are five Term Trustees, each elected by the Board for five-year terms. The remaining 14 members are Regular Trustees, also elected by the Board but serving up 15 years, although not beyond their seventieth birthday. The current chair of the board of trustees is Liz Robinson.


title: Williams College

text: The Board appoints as senior executive officer of the college a President who is also a member of and the presiding officer of the faculty. Nine senior administrators report to the President including the Dean of the Faculty, Provost, and Dean of the college. Adam F. Falk is the 17th president of Williams, and took office on April 1, 2010.


title: Williams College

text: College Council (CC) is the student government of Williams College. Its members are elected to represent each class year, the first-year dorms, and the student body at large. CC allocates funds from the Student Activities Fee, appoints students to the faculty-student-administration committees that oversee most aspects of college life, and debates issues of concern to the entire campus community. College Council is the forum through which students address concerns and make changes around campus. CC is led by two co-presidents.


title: Williams College

text: To manage its endowment, the college started the Williams College Investment Office in 2006. The Investment Office is located in Boston, Massachusetts. Collette Chilton is the Chief Investment Officer. In 2020, the endowment-per-student ratio reached $1.40 million unadjusted for inflation, while in 1990 it was $151,000. Adjusting for inflation, the endowment-per-student ratio had still increased to almost $600,000. In 2021, Williams' endowment-per-student ratio was one of nine colleges or universities to exceed $2 million along with Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Harvard,


title: Williams College

text: The Office of the President is located in Hopkins Hall, named after Mark Hopkins, Williams's fourth president, and the president of the college lives in the Samuel Sloan House, erected in 1801. Before moving into the Samuel Sloan House, the president originally lived in a nearby house where Hopkins Hall now stands. The house has been renovated multiple times since originally being built, including over $500,000 in renovations in 2000 and 2001.


title: Williams College

text: Since its creation in 1793, Williams College has had 17 full-time presidents and two interim presidents. The 18th President and current president is Maud Mandel, who began her tenure on July 1, 2018.


title: Williams College

text: Williams is on a campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts. The campus contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings.


title: Williams College

text: The early planners of Williams College eschewed the traditional collegiate quadrangle organization, choosing to freely site buildings among the hills. Later construction, including East and West Colleges and Griffin Hall, tended to cluster around Main Street in Williamstown. The first campus quadrangle was formed with East College, South College, and the Hopkins Observatory.


title: Williams College

text: The Olmsted Brothers design firm played a large part in shaping the campus design and architecture. In 1902, the firm was commissioned to renovate a large part of campus, including the President's House, the cemetery, and South College; as well as incorporating the George A. Cluett estate into the campus acreage. Although these campus renovations were completed in 1912, the Olmsted Brothers would advise the gradual transformation of campus design for six decades. The present-day grounds layout reflects much of the design intent of the Olmsted Brothers.


title: Williams College

text: Williams College is the site of the Hopkins Observatory, the oldest extant astronomical observatory in the United States. Erected in 1836–1838, it now contains the Mehlin Museum of Astronomy, including Alvan Clark's first telescope (from 1852), as well as the Milham Planetarium, which uses a Zeiss Skymaster ZKP3/B optomechanical projector and an Ansible digital projector, both installed in 2005. The Hopkins Observatory's 0.6-m DFM reflecting telescope (1991) is installed elsewhere on the campus. Williams joins with Wellesley, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Colgate, Vassar, Swarthmore, and Haverford/Bryn Mawr to form the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, sponsored for over a decade by the Keck Foundation and now with its student research programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Hopkins Hall serves as the administration building on campus, housing the offices of the president, Dean of the Faculty, registrar, and provost, among others. There is a Newman Center on campus.


title: Williams College

text: The Chapin Library supports the liberal arts curriculum of the college by allowing students close access to a number of rare books and documents of interest. The library opened on June 18, 1923, with an initial collection of 9,000 volumes contributed by alumnus Alfred Clark Chapin, Class of 1869. Over the years, Chapin Library has grown to include over 50,000 volumes (including 3,000 more given by Chapin) as well as 100,000 other artifacts such as prints, photographs, maps, and bookplates. The library is currently located on the fourth floor of the recently reopened Sawyer Library.


title: Williams College

text: The Chapin Library's Americana collection includes original printings of all four founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Additionally it houses George Washington's copy of "The Federalist" and the British reply to the Declaration of Independence.


title: Williams College

text: The Chapin Library's science collection includes a first edition of Nicolaus Copernicus's "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium", as well as first editions of books by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and other major figures.


title: Williams College

text: The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), with over 12,000 works (only a fraction of which are displayed at any one time) in its permanent collection, serves as an educational resource for both undergraduates and students in the graduate art history program.


title: Williams College

text: Notable works include "Morning in a City" by Edward Hopper, a commissioned wall painting by Sol LeWitt, and a commissioned outdoor sculpture and landscape work by Louise Bourgeois entitled "Eyes".


title: Williams College

text: Although often overshadowed by the neighboring and much larger Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), WCMA remains one of the premier attractions of the Berkshires. Because the museum is intended primarily for educational purposes, admission is free for all students.


title: Williams College

text: Located in front of the West College dormitory, the Hopkins gate serves as a memorial to brothers Mark and Albert Hopkins. Both made lasting contributions to the Williams College community. Mark was appointed as president of the college in 1836, while Albert was elected a professor in 1829.


title: Williams College

text: The Hopkins gate is inscribed with an inspirational motto that is familiar to all in the Williams College community.


title: Williams College

text: The longest-running student newspaper at Williams is the "Williams Record", a weekly broadsheet paper published on Wednesdays. The newspaper was founded in 1887, and now has a weekly circulation of 3,000 copies distributed in Williamstown, in addition to more than 600 subscribers across the country. The newspaper formerly received no financial support from the college or from the student government and relied on revenue generated by local and national ad sales, subscriptions, and voluntary contributions for use of its website, but the paper went into debt in 2004 and is now subsidized by the Student Activities Tax. Both Sawyer Library and the College Archives maintain more than a century's worth of publicly accessible, bound volumes of the "Record". The newspaper provides access free of charge to a searchable database of articles stretching back to 1998 on its website.


title: Williams College

text: The student yearbook is called "The Gulielmensian", which means "Williamsian" in Latin. It was published irregularly in the 1990s, but has been annual for the past several years and dates back to the mid-19th century.


title: Williams College

text: Numerous smaller campus publications are also produced each year, including "The Telos", a journal of Christian thought; "The Haystack", a humor magazine; the "Williams College Law Journal", a collection of undergraduate articles; the "Literary Review", a literary magazine; and "Monkeys With Typewriters", a magazine of non-fiction essays.


title: Williams College

text: WCFM is a college-owned, student-run, non-commercial radio station broadcasting from the basement of Prospect House at 91.9 MHz. Featuring 85 hours per week of original programming, the station features a wide variety of musical genres, in addition to sports and talk radio. The station may also be heard on the Internet via SHOUTcast.com. Members of the surrounding communities above the age of 18 are allowed to DJ on the station, which, as part of its mission, seeks to serve the surrounding community with news and announcements of public interest. The board of the radio station holds a concert every semester.


title: Williams College

text: At the end of every semester but one since 1966, WCFM has hosted an all-night, eight-hour trivia contest. Teams of students, alumni, professors, friends, and others compete to answer questions on a variety of subjects, while simultaneously identifying songs and performing designated tasks. The winning team's only prize is the obligation to create and host the following semester's contest.


title: Williams College

text: The precise date of the debut contest is uncertain. Most spring contests occur in early May, but during its first decade, Williams Trivia was sometimes held in March or February. Assuming a May date, Lawrence University's 50-hour-long Great Midwest Trivia Contest, first held on April 29, 1966, would be the oldest continuous competition of its sort in the United States, but if the first Williams contest was held earlier, it would be the oldest. The distinction is, appropriately, trivial.


title: Williams College

text: While other college-based trivia contests in the United States emphasize marathon endurance and revel in the obscurity of their arcana, the aim of the Williams contest is to cram as much evocative and entertaining material into as concentrated a space as possible. Lasting just eight hours, a typical Williams Trivia contest will demand between 900 and 1,200 separate "bits" of trivial information, delivering twice as much content as its "competitors" in a fraction of the time. No discernible rivalry exists between any of the various contests. The contest has occasionally received outside media coverage, including in the New York Times.


title: Williams College

text: Williams's school colors are purple and gold, with purple as the primary school color. A story explaining the origin of purple as a school color says that at the Williams-Harvard baseball game in 1869, spectators watching from carriages had trouble telling the teams apart because there were no uniforms. One of the onlookers bought ribbons from a nearby millinery store to pin on Williams's players, and the only color available was purple. The buyer was Jennie Jerome (later Winston Churchill's mother) whose family summered in Williamstown.


title: Williams College

text: The Williams college mascot is a purple cow. The mascot's name, Ephelia, was submitted in a radio contest in October 1952 by Theodore W. Friend, a senior at Williams. The origins of the cow mascot are unknown, but one possibility is that it was inspired by the "Purple Cow" humor magazine, a student publication begun in 1907, which used the college color along with a cow. The title of the humor magazine was in reference to Gelett Burgess's nonsense poem known as the "Purple Cow":


title: Williams College

text: I never saw a purple cow I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I'd rather see than be one!


title: Williams College

text: The Williams College athletic teams are referred to as the Ephs (rhymes with chiefs) in honor of Colonel Ephraim Williams.


title: Williams College

text: Williams claims the first "alma mater" song written by an undergraduate, "The Mountains", was by Washington Gladden of the class of 1859.


title: Williams College

text: In 2016, a college-wide contest was held for a new official Williams song. The winner was "Echo of Williams", music by Kevin Weist, class of 1981, and lyrics by Bruce Leddy, class of 1983.


title: Williams College

text: On one of the first three Fridays in October, the president of the college cancels classes and declares it Mountain Day. The bells ring, announcing the event, members of the Outing Club unfurl a banner from the roof of Chapin Hall and students hike up Stony Ledge. At Stony Ledge, they celebrate with donuts, cider and "a cappella" performances.


title: Williams College

text: The first known mention of Mountain Day was made in 1827 by Williams president Edward Dorr Griffin in his notebook on college business. He wrote, under 'Holidays': "About the 24th of June a day to go to the mountain. If not then about the 14th of July. Prayers at night."


title: Williams College

text: In 2009, with the threat of bad weather for each of the first three Fridays of the month, Interim-president Wagner declared "Siberian Mountain Day". Festivities were relocated from Stony Ledge to the much more accessible Stone Hill.


title: Williams College

text: The school's athletic teams (except for the men's rugby team, the White Dawgs) are called the Ephs (rhymes with "chiefs"), a shortening of the first name of founder Ephraim Williams. The mascot is a Purple Cow. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Williams also competes in skiing and squash at the Division I level. Williams is ranked first among Division III schools for athletic spending per student.


title: Williams College

text: Williams has a traditional rivalry with Amherst College and Wesleyan University. The "Little Three", a subset of NESCAC, comprises the three schools Although Williams College typically sports purple and gold as their school colors, purple is in fact the only school color. The gold was added in order to differentiate its colors from that of rival school Amherst's purple and white uniforms. On May 3, 2009, Williams and Amherst alumni played a game of vintage baseball at Wahconah Park according to 1859-rules to commemorate the 150th-anniversary of the first college baseball game, which was played on July 2, 1859, between the two schools.


title: Williams College

text: Until 1994, Williams was not permitted, by NESCAC rules, to compete in team NCAA competition. The Williams women's swimming and diving team won the school's first national title in 1981, and claimed the title in 1982 as well. Williams played in the 2003, 2004, 2010, and 2014 men's basketball Division III national championship games, winning the title in March 2003. Men's basketball also played in the 1997, 1998, 2011, and 2017 Final Fours. Williams was the first New England basketball team to win a Division III championship, and since they have been eligible to compete in the NCAA tournament, no team in the country has played in more Final Fours.


title: Williams College

text: Williams teams to win national titles since Williams began participating in NCAA tournaments in 1994 include women's crew (nine titles, including eight straight from 2006 to 2013), men's tennis (four), women's tennis (nine, including six straight from 2008 to 2013), women's soccer (three, 2015, 2017–18), men's cross country (two), women's cross country (three), men's basketball, women's indoor track and field (two), women's golf (2015), and men's soccer (1995).


title: Williams College

text: Williams has won the NACDA Director's Cup 22 of the 24 years since its inception, including 13 years in a row from 1999 through 2011.


title: Williams College

text: Williams also has an active club and intramural sports program, offering 14 club sports including ultimate, rugby, horseback riding, cycling, fencing, volleyball, gymnastics, sailing, and water polo. Approximately 50% of Williams's students compete on at least one varsity, junior varsity, or formal club team.


title: Williams College

text: Williams College has had major updates or renovations of its athletic facilities during the past several decades.


title: Williams College

text: The Lansing Chapman hockey rink, built in 1953 and originally uncovered, was canopied in 1963, enclosed in 1969 and has been periodically upgraded to the present (2014) with rink, roof, locker room and lighting improvements.


title: Williams College

text: The Towne Field House, constructed in 1970, is a multipurpose facility, which includes an indoor track, tennis courts and a climbing wall. The last was initially constructed in 1974 and updated to a state of the art climbing wall in 1995. Towne Field House's track was resurfaced in 2019. The field house also accommodates pre-season baseball, softball and lacrosse.


title: Williams College

text: The Lasell Gym built in 1886 was renovated and expanded with the addition of the Chandler Athletic Center in 1987. It provides a state of the art 50-meter swimming pool, a gymnasium primarily for basketball, squash facilities, wrestling rooms, various fitness centers and administrative offices.


title: Williams College

text: In 1987, the Weston Field cinder running track and baseball field were replaced: the Anthony Plansky 400-meter track was built around the refurbished football field and the Bobby Coombs baseball field was re-located at Cole Field. The Renzi Lamb Field for lacrosse and field hockey, built with artificial turf, was added to Weston Field in 2004.


title: Williams College

text: In November 2013 Williams College began its $22 million renovation of the Weston Field complex. This upgrade includes an artificial turf football field, relocation of the Plansky Track and Lamb Field, new bleachers, improved lighting and the addition of support buildings for the athletes. The completed facility, which reopened in September 2014, allows year round athletic events and practice.


title: Williams College

text: Williams enrolled 2,121 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students in 2021. Women constituted 51.6% of undergraduate students and 56.0% percent of graduate students. 48% of students received need-based financial aid averaging $63,516 in 2021, and 20% qualified to receive Pell Grants. The median family income of Williams students is $185,800, the third-highest in Massachusetts, with 55% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 20% from the bottom 60%. Williams has a 97% freshman retention rate and an 86% four-year graduation rate. 90% of first-years enrolled in the Class of 2021 graduated in the top tenth of their high school graduating class, and their inter-quartile range on the new SAT was 720–770 on Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, and 740–790 on Math. The inter-quartile range on the ACT was 33–35.


title: Williams College

text: The Society of Alumni of Williams College is the oldest existing alumni society of any academic institution in the United States. The Society of Alumni was founded during the "Amherst crisis" in 1821, when Williams College President Zephaniah Swift Moore left Williams. Graduates of Williams formed the Society to ensure that Williams would not have to close, and raised enough money to ensure the future survival of the school. This fund formed by alumni served as the first college endowment in the United States, and as a result, Williams has maintained a legacy of high alumni involvement.


title: Williams College

text: There are 30,699 living alumni of record, and 69 regional alumni associations nationwide and overseas. Alumni participation in the 2018-19 Alumni Fund was 54.1%. More than 61% of the alumni from the classes of 1980 to 2000 have earned at least one graduate or professional degree. The most popular graduate disciplines for alumni are management, education, law, and health care.


title: Spree (film)

text: Spree is a 2020 American satirical horror thriller film directed by Eugene Kotlyarenko. The gonzo-style satire follows a social media obsessed rideshare driver played by Joe Keery who, in an attempt to become viral, livestreams himself murdering passengers. The film also stars Sasheer Zamata, David Arquette, Kyle Mooney and Mischa Barton. It was executive-produced by Drake.


title: Spree (film)

text: "Spree" premiered on January 24, 2020, at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT category, and was released theatrically and via video on demand in the United States on August 14, 2020, by RLJE Films. The film received mixed reviews, though critics praised Keery's performance and the film's premise.


title: Spree (film)

text: A young man named Kurt Kunkle is obsessed with being a social media star and becoming viral. A child he used to babysit, Bobby, is now an internet celebrity who frequently makes live streams and has high viewer numbers, making Kurt jealous. Kurt finds work as a driver for a rideshare app called Spree, then fits out his car with cameras and begins a new Livestream titled "The Lesson", where he instructs viewers on how to become famous on social media.


title: Spree (film)

text: Kurt starts picking up passengers and killing them with poisoned bottles of water that he hands out in his car to gain attention. Despite this, he doesn't gain any viewers besides Bobby, who believes the killings are fake. One of the passengers Kurt accepts is Jessie Adams, a comedian with a large social media following. Kurt is awestruck by Jessie, but she is unimpressed by Kurt and his obsession with gaining followers and leaves the ride. Kurt later learns that Jessie will be performing in a comedy show that will be live-streamed to millions. Kurt goes to Bobby's house, demanding that Bobby share Kurt's stream, but Bobby refuses and starts live streaming their argument, attracting a large audience. Kurt kills Bobby and takes his gun before live streaming for Bobby's fans, who assume the murder is fake.


title: Spree (film)

text: Kurt's father Kris asks him for a ride to a club where he is performing, claiming that a famous DJ called uNo will be there and promising that the DJ will tag Kurt in a photo. When Kurt picks up Kris and takes him to the club, he approaches uNo; she initially refuses to tag him, but then asks him to take her to a taco truck with the promise of tagging him. While waiting for Kurt to get her some food from the truck, uNo discovers Bobby's gun and poses with it on a Livestream before drinking some of the poisoned water and passing out. After realizing this, Kurt attempts to drive away but is stopped by two police officers, who grow suspicious of him. It is revealed that Kurt's murders have already become known to the public, with Kurt being called "The Rideshare Killer" after police are unable to identify him.


title: Spree (film)

text: uNo, having survived drinking the poisoned water, wakes up and panics, shooting dead one of the officers before fleeing, pursued by the second officer. Kurt tries to flee, but he too is pursued by more police, forcing him to escape while crashing his car through a homeless camp. With Kurt's murders becoming more well-known, Spree is temporarily shut down to allow an investigation to take place. Jessie begins her show, by performing a bit about her encounter with Kurt and how disgusted she is by people's desperation for social media fame before concluding her set by destroying her phone on stage, followed by a mic drop. Her actions cause her speech to go viral. After getting drunk, she is picked up by Kurt via another rideshare app called GoGo, with Kurt having killed the previous driver. Kurt gloats that as Jessie destroyed her phone on stage, she has no way of calling for help; she tries to escape after learning he is taking her to his house.


title: Spree (film)

text: Unable to get out of the car, Jessie garrotes Kurt with a charger cable, causing them to crash, but Kurt recovers and beats Jessie unconscious. He arrives at his house and places Jessie's unconscious body outside before being requested by his now-eager viewers to kill Jessie. Distracted by a faulty camera, Kurt doesn't notice Jessie regaining consciousness. She manages to take control of the car and crashes into Kurt's house while trying to run him over. Kurt flees into the house while Jessie is confronted by an intoxicated Kris. The pair discover Kurt's dead mother, who had been killed by Kurt at the start of his Livestream. Kurt shoots his father dead and tries to kill Jessie, but she pins him to the wall with the car and beats him to death with his own phone. She takes a selfie with his dead body and posts it on her Instagram account.


title: Spree (film)

text: Jessie becomes a nationwide star after taking credit for disrupting Kurt's rampage, while Kurt and his killings become revered in small corners of the internet.


title: Spree (film)

text: Filming occurred in February 2019 around Los Angeles, California. Keery worked closely with Kotlyarenko to understand his character, and the pair filmed in-character social media posts such as unboxing videos, shopping trips and vape reviews. As research the cast also spent hours watching content from influencers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.


title: Spree (film)

text: "Spree" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020. Shortly after, distributor RLJE Films paid $2 million to acquire the rights to the film. It was released in the United States in theaters and via VOD on August 14, 2020. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 20, 2020. In late 2020 Spree was put onto Hulu. In May 2022, the film was made available on various platforms like Apple TV.


title: Spree (film)

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of , based on reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Joe Keery's magnetic screen presence can't disguise "Spree"s shallow critique of social media culture -- although that lack of depth may be precisely the point." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 41 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Spree (film)

text: John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised Keery's performance, saying: ""Stranger Things" sneakily charming Joe Keery gets the spotlight here, balancing the character's contradictory aspects (dork, fumbling people pleaser, psychopath) with ease" and "[to] the extent that it works, much credit goes to Keery, for finding the real human need inside this twentysomething cipher." Dan Jackson of "Thrillist" also praised Keery's performance, writing: "One of the best parts of Keery's performance is the way he plays the strange combination of naive earnestness and calculated cynicism that drives a person like Kurt to act in such a desperate manner, begging for followers and turning every awkward interaction into an opportunity to hawk his cringe-inducing brand."


title: Spree (film)

text: Jessica Kiang of "Variety" gave the film a negative review, saying: "If you are in need of more reminders of the most extreme of the potential evils of internet interaction than you get every time you fire up an app, by all means, smash the like button on "Spree." For the rest of us, the best advice might be to mute, block, vote down, unfollow or simply log off and go look at a tree."


title: Cachaça

text: Cachaça () is a distilled spirit made from fermented sugarcane juice. Also known as "pinga", "caninha", and other names, it is the most popular spirit among distilled alcoholic beverages in Brazil. Outside Brazil, cachaça is used almost exclusively as an ingredient in tropical drinks, with the "caipirinha" being the most famous cocktail. In Brazil, caipirinha is often paired with the dish "feijoada".


title: Cachaça

text: Sugar production was mostly switched from the Madeira islands to Brazil by the Portuguese in the 16th century. In Madeira, "aguardente de cana" is made by distilling sugar cane juice into liquor, and the pot stills from Madeira were brought to Brazil to make what today is also called "cachaça". The process dates from 1532, when one of the Portuguese colonists brought the first cuttings of sugar cane to Brazil from Madeira.


title: Cachaça

text: "Cachaça" can only be produced in Brazil, where, according to 2007 figures, are consumed annually, compared with outside the country. It is typically between 38% and 48% alcohol by volume. When homemade, it can be as strong as the distiller wants. Up to six grams per litre of sugar may be added.


title: Cachaça

text: Figures from 2003 indicate 1.3 billion litres of cachaça are produced each year; only 1% of this is exported (mainly to Germany).


title: Cachaça

text: Cachaça, like rum, has two varieties: unaged (, "white" or "prata", "silver") and aged ("amarela", "yellow" or "ouro", "gold"). White cachaça is usually bottled immediately after distillation and tends to be cheaper. Some producers age it for up to 12 months in wooden barrels to achieve a smoother blend. It is often used as an ingredient in caipirinha and other mixed beverages. Dark cachaça, usually seen as the "premium" variety, is aged in wood barrels and is meant to be drunk neat. It is usually aged for up to 3 years, though some "ultra premium" cachaças have been aged for up to 15 years. Its flavour is influenced by the type of wood the barrel is made from.


title: Cachaça

text: There are very important regions in Brazil where fine pot still cachaça is produced such as Salinas in Minas Gerais state, Chã Grande in Pernambuco state, Paraty in Rio de Janeiro state, Monte Alegre do Sul in São Paulo state and Abaíra in Bahia state. Nowadays, producers of cachaça can be found in most Brazilian regions and in 2011 there were over 40,000 of them.


title: Cachaça

text: Cachaça is produced in copper stills. Levels of copper in homemade cachaças can exceed the legal limits established by Brazilian law. Some copper is considered desirable in the distillation process as a catalyst for oxidation of sulfur compounds produced by fermentation, but the levels must be controlled by adequate maintenance and cleaning of the distiller to remove accumulated verdigris. Adsorbents are used, but the most commonly used adsorbents, activated carbon and ion-exchange resin, have been shown to alter the chemical composition of cachaça. Sugarcane bagasse has been proposed as a selective adsorbent.


title: Cachaça

text: For more than four centuries of history, cachaça has accumulated synonyms and creative nicknames coined by the Brazilian people. Some of these words were created for the purpose of deceiving the supervision of the metropolis in the days when cachaça was banned in Brazil; the beverage was competing with the European distillate "grappa". There are more than two thousand words to refer to the Brazilian national distillate. Some of these nicknames are: "abre-coração" (heart-opener), "água-benta" (holy water), "bafo-de-tigre" (tiger breath), and "limpa-olho" (eye-wash).


title: Cachaça

text: In the beginning of the 17th century, the producers of sugar from various European colonies in the Americas used the by-products of sugar, molasses, and scummings as the raw material for the production of alcoholic spirits. The resulting beverage was known by several names: in British colonies, it was named "rum"; in France, "tafia"; in Spain, "aguardiente de caña"; and in Portugal (Brazil), "aguardente da terra", "aguardente de cana" and later "cachaça" (locals also call it "Pinga" which translates to drip).


title: Cachaça

text: The major difference between cachaça and rum is that rum is usually made from molasses, a by-product after a refinery boils the cane juice to extract as much sugar crystal as possible, while cachaça is made from fresh sugarcane juice, fermented and distilled. Some rums, in particular the "rhum agricole" of the French Caribbean, are also made by the latter process. Cachaça is also known as Brazilian rum.


title: Cachaça

text: In the United States, cachaça is recognized as a type of rum and distinctive Brazilian product after an agreement was signed in 2013 with Brazil in which it will drop the usage of the term Brazilian rum.


title: Cointreau

text: Cointreau (, , ) is an orange-flavoured triple sec liqueur produced in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou, France. It is consumed as an apéritif and digestif, and is a component of several well-known cocktails. It was originally called Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec. Despite the orange bottle, Cointreau is colourless.


title: Cointreau

text: Cointreau Distillery was set up in 1849 by Adolphe Cointreau, a confectioner, and his brother Edouard-Jean Cointreau. Their first success was with the cherry liqueur Guignolet, but they also found success when they blended sweet and bitter orange peels and pure alcohol from sugar beets. The first bottles of Cointreau were sold in 1875. An estimated 13 million bottles are sold each year, in more than 150 countries. Ninety percent of production is exported. Cointreau & Cie SA was family-owned until 1990, when it merged with Rémy Martin to form Rémy Cointreau, now a publicly traded company.


title: Cointreau

text: The production methods and recipe are a family secret, but tours of the facility are open to the public. Photography is restricted in many areas to protect the production process from being copied.


title: Cointreau

text: The official IBA recipes for the margarita, Corpse Reviver #2, and the cosmopolitan include Cointreau. When mixed with water, Cointreau exhibits the Ouzo effect.


title: Cointreau

text: In the 1980s, Avirex, now Cockpit USA, issued an A-2 limited-edition leather flight jacket featuring Cointreau Original Margarita nose art on the back of the jacket. In early 2008, burlesque entertainer Dita Von Teese became the new face of Cointreau's "Be Cointreauversial" advertising and marketing campaign, a campaign created in 2003 by the New York advertising agency KraftWorks.


title: Bizaardvark

text: Bizaardvark is an American comedy television series created by Kyle Stegina and Josh Lehrman that premiered on Disney Channel on June 24, 2016. The series ran for three seasons consisting of 63 episodes, airing its final episode on April 13, 2019. The series stars Madison Hu, Olivia Rodrigo, Jake Paul, DeVore Ledridge, Ethan Wacker, Maxwell Simkins, and Elie Samouhi. In addition to the series' regular episodes, the series has also aired shorts under the title of "Bizaardvark Shorts".


title: Bizaardvark

text: Frankie Wong and Paige Olvera are two teenage best friends who post funny songs and comedic videos on the Internet. After hitting 10,000 subscribers on their Vuuugle channel "Bizaardvark", a portmanteau of the words "bizarre" and "aardvark", they are accepted into the Vuuugle studios, where they make their videos while also having to share them with other "Vuuuglers". In the third season, Frankie and Paige are among the Vuuuglers who attend the Vuuugle house in Malibu, where they, along with Amelia and Bernie, meet Zane and Rodney, two new Vuuuglers.


title: Bizaardvark

text: Ross Kobelak has also appeared as Horse Face Guy, a fellow Vuuugle star who always wears a black horse head mask and never talks, since the beginning of the series.


title: Bizaardvark

text: The series was created by Kyle Stegina and Josh Lehrman, who were discovered by the Disney Channel Storytellers program. They serve as the series' co-executive producers. Eric Friedman and Ron Rappaport serve as executive producers, with Eric Friedman as showrunner. Marc Warren, who previously supervised Disney Channel Storytellers, was the executive producer on the pilot. The series started shooting in early 2016. On December 15, 2016, Disney Channel renewed the series for a second season. On July 22, 2017, it was announced that Jake Paul would be leaving both "Bizaardvark" and Disney Channel. On April 19, 2018, Disney Channel publicized that a previously unannounced third season would premiere in summer 2018. On May 30, 2018, it was announced that Maxwell Simkins and Elie Samouhi had joined the series' cast, portraying tween bloggers Zane and Rodney, respectively.


title: Bizaardvark

text: The series premiered in both the United States and Canada following the premiere of "Adventures in Babysitting" on Disney Channel and Disney Channel Canada, respectively, on June 24, 2016. The first season concluded on January 27, 2017. The second season premiered on June 23, 2017, and concluded on April 13, 2018. The third season premiered on July 24, 2018, and concluded on April 13, 2019.


title: Bizaardvark

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" stated that the series manages to be innovative for being a quirky and surreal satirical sitcom, while claiming that Madison Hu and Olivia Rodrigo skillfully manage to capture precociousness through their characters with irony. Emily Ashby of "Common Sense Media" rated the series 3 out of 5 stars, complimented the depiction of positive messages, such as friendship and acceptance, and praised the presence of role models, stating that Hu and Rodrigo's characters portray perseverance and teamwork.


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano ( ), natively called by its generic term Bisaya or Binisaya (both translated into English as "Visayan", though this should not be confused with other Bisayan languages) and sometimes referred to in English sources as Cebuan ( ), is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines. It is spoken by the Visayan ethnolinguistic groups native to the islands of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, the eastern half of Negros, the western half of Leyte, and the northern coastal areas of Northern Mindanao and the Zamboanga Peninsula. In modern times, it has also spread to the Davao Region, Cotabato, Camiguin, parts of the Dinagat Islands, and the lowland regions of Caraga, often displacing native languages in those areas (most of which are closely related to the language).


title: Cebuano language

text: While Tagalog has the largest number of native speakers among the languages of the Philippines today, Cebuano had the largest native-language-speaking population in the Philippines from the 1950s until about the 1980s. It is by far the most widely spoken of the Bisayan languages.


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano is the "lingua franca" of the Central Visayas, western parts of Eastern Visayas, some western parts of Palawan and most parts of Mindanao. The name Cebuano is derived from the island of Cebu, which is the source of Standard Cebuano. Cebuano is also the primary language in Western Leyte — noticeably in Ormoc. Cebuano is assigned the ISO 639-2 three-letter code ceb, but not a ISO 639-1 two-letter code.


title: Cebuano language

text: The Commission on the Filipino Language, the Philippine government body charged with developing and promoting the national and regional languages of the country, spells the name of the language in Filipino as .


title: Cebuano language

text: The term "Cebuano" derives from "Cebu"+""ano"", a Latinate calque, reflective of the Philippines's Spanish colonial heritage. In common or everyday parlance, especially by those speakers from outside of the island of Cebu and in fact in Cebu the language is more often referred to as "Bisaya". "Bisaya", however, may become a source of confusion to non-native speakers as many other Bisayan languages may also be referred to as "Bisaya" even though they are not mutually intelligible with speakers of what is referred to by linguists as Cebuano. Cebuano in this sense applies to all speakers of vernaculars mutually intelligible with the vernaculars of Cebu island, regardless of origin or location, as well as to the language they speak.


title: Cebuano language

text: The term "Cebuano" has garnered some objections. For example, generations of Cebuano speakers in Leyte, Bohol, and Northern Mindanao (Dipolog, Dapitan, Misamis Occidental and Misamis Oriental together with coastal areas of Butuan) say that their ancestry traces back to Cebuano speakers native to their place and not from immigrants or settlers from the Visayas. Furthermore, they ethnically refer to themselves as "Bisaya" and not Cebuano, and their language as "Binisaya".


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano is an Austronesian language; it is generally classified as one of the five primary branches of the Bisayan languages, part of the wider genus of Philippine languages.


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano is spoken in the provinces of Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, Negros Oriental, northeastern Negros Occidental, (as well as the municipality of Hinoba-an and the cities of Kabankalan and Sipalay to a great extent, alongside Ilonggo), southern Masbate, western portions of Leyte and Biliran (to a great extent, alongside Waray), and a large portion of Mindanao, notably the urban areas of Zamboanga Peninsula, Cagayan de Oro, Davao Region, Surigao and Cotabato. Some dialects of Cebuano have different names for the language. Cebuano speakers from Cebu are mainly called "Cebuano" while those from Bohol are "Boholano" or "Bol-anon". Cebuano speakers in Leyte identify their dialect as "Kanâ" meaning "that" (Leyte Cebuano or Leyteño). Speakers in Mindanao and Luzon refer to the language simply as "Binisaya" or "Bisaya".


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano was first documented in a list of vocabulary compiled by Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian explorer who was part of Ferdinand Magellan's 1521 expedition. Spanish missionaries started to write in the language during the early 18th century. As a result of the eventual 333-year Spanish colonial period, Cebuano contains many words of Spanish origin.


title: Cebuano language

text: While there is evidence of a pre-Spanish writing system for the language, its use appears to have been sporadic. Spaniards recorded the Visayan script which was called "Kudlit-kabadlit" by the natives.


title: Cebuano language

text: The language was heavily influenced by the Spanish language during the period of Spanish rule from 1565 to 1898. With the arrival of Spanish colonists, for example, a Latin-based writing system was introduced alongside a number of Spanish loanwords.


title: Cebuano language

text: Below is the vowel system of Cebuano with their corresponding letter representation in angular brackets:


title: Cebuano language

text: Sometimes, may also be pronounced as the open-mid back unrounded vowel (as in English "gut"); or as the near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as in English "bit"); and or as the open-mid back rounded vowel (as in English "thought") or the near-close near-back rounded vowel (as in English "hook").


title: Cebuano language

text: During the precolonial and Spanish period, Cebuano had only three vowel phonemes: , and . This was later expanded to five vowels with the introduction of Spanish. As a consequence, the vowels or , as well as or , are still mostly allophones. They can be freely switched with each other without losing their meaning (free variation); though it may sound strange to a native listener, depending on their dialect. The vowel has no variations, though it can be pronounced subtly differently, as either or (and very rarely as immediately after the consonant ). Loanwords, however, are usually more conservative in their orthography and pronunciation (e.g. "dyip", "jeepney" from English "jeep", will never be written or spoken as "dyep").


title: Cebuano language

text: For Cebuano consonants, all the stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions, including at the beginning of a word (e.g. "ngano", "why"). The glottal stop is most commonly encountered in between two vowels, but can also appear in all positions.


title: Cebuano language

text: Like in Tagalog, glottal stops are usually not indicated in writing. When indicated, it is commonly written as a hyphen or an apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. "tu-o" or "tu'o", "right"). More formally, when it occurs at the end of the word, it is indicated by a circumflex accent if both a stress and a glottal stop occurs at the final vowel (e.g. "basâ", "wet"); or a grave accent if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. "batà", "child").


title: Cebuano language

text: Below is a chart of Cebuano consonants with their corresponding letter representation in parentheses:


title: Cebuano language

text: In certain dialects, may be interchanged with in between vowels and vice versa depending on the following conditions:


title: Cebuano language

text: A final can also be replaced with in certain areas in Bohol (e.g. "tambal", "medicine", becomes "tambaw"). In very rare cases in Cebu, may also be replaced with in between the vowels and / (e.g. "tingali", "maybe", becomes "tingayi").


title: Cebuano language

text: In some parts of Bohol and Southern Leyte, is also often replaced with when it is in the beginning of a syllable (e.g. "kalayo", "fire", becomes "kalajo"). It can also happen even if the is at the final position of the syllable and the word, but only if it is moved to the initial position by the addition of the affix "-a". For example, "baboy" ("pig") can not become "baboj", but "baboya" can become "baboja."


title: Cebuano language

text: In rarer instances, the consonant might also be replaced with when it is in between two vowels (e.g. Boholano "ido" for standard Cebuano "iro", "dog"), but and are not considered allophones, though they may have been in the past.


title: Cebuano language

text: Stress accent is phonemic, which means that words with different accent placements, such as "dapít" (near) and "dápit" (place), are considered separate. The stress is predictably on the penult when the second-to-last syllable is closed (CVC or VC). On the other hand, when the syllable is open (CV or V), the stress can be on either the penultimate or the final syllable (although there are certain grammatical conditions or categories under which the stress is predictable, such as with numbers and pronouns).


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano is a member of the Philippine languages. Early trade contact resulted in a large number of older loan words from other languages being embedded in Cebuano, like Sanskrit (e.g. , "fight" and , "wealth", from Sanskrit and respectively), and Arabic (e.g. , "thanks"; or , "judge").


title: Cebuano language

text: It has also been influenced by thousands of words from Spanish, such as (, "cross"), (, "luck"), (, "beautiful"), (, "market") and (, "brilliant"). It has several hundred loan words from English as well, which are prescriptively altered to conform to the phonemic inventory of Cebuano: (bracelet), (high school), (shopping), (evacuate), and (driver). However, today, it is more common for Cebuanos to spell out those words in their original English form rather than with spelling that might conform to Cebuano standards.


title: Cebuano language

text: The de facto Standard Cebuano dialect (sometimes referred to as General Cebuano) is derived from the conservative Sialo vernacular spoken in southeastern Cebu (also known as the Sialo dialect or the Carcar-Dalaguete dialect). It first gained prominence due to its adoption by the Catholic Church as the standard for written Cebuano. It retains the intervocalic . In contrast, the Urban Cebuano dialect spoken by people in Metro Cebu and surrounding areas is characterized by elision and heavily contracted words and phrases. For example, "balay" ("house"), "dalan" ("road"), "kalahâ" ("pan"), and "kalayo" ("fire") in Standard Cebuano can become "bay", "dan", "kahâ", and "kayo" in Urban Cebuano respectively, while the phrase "waláy problema" ("no problem") in Standard Cebuano can become "way 'blema" in Urban Cebuano.


title: Cebuano language

text: Colloquialisms can also be used to determine the regional origin of the speaker. Cebuano-speaking people from Cagayan de Oro and Dumaguete, for example, say "chada" or "tsada"/"patsada" (roughly translated to the English colloquialism "awesome") and people from Davao City say "atchup" which also translated to the same English context; meanwhile Cebuanos from Cebu on the other hand say "nindot" or, sometimes, "aníndot". However, this word is also commonly used in the same context in other Cebuano-speaking regions, in effect making this word not only limited in use to Cebu.


title: Cebuano language

text: There is no standardized orthography for Cebuano, but spelling in print usually follow the pronunciation of Standard Cebuano, regardless of how it is actually spoken by the speaker. For example, "baláy" ("house") is pronounced in Standard Cebuano and is thus spelled "baláy", even in Urban Cebuano where it is actually pronounced .


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano is spoken natively over a large area of the Philippines and thus has numerous regional dialects. It can vary significantly in terms of lexicon and phonology depending on where it is spoken. Increasing usage of spoken English (being the primary language of commerce and education in the Philippines) has also led to the introduction of new pronunciations and spellings of old Cebuano words. Code-switching forms of English and Bisaya (Bislish) are also common among the educated younger generations.


title: Cebuano language

text: There are four main dialectal groups within Cebuano aside from the Standard Cebuano and Urban Cebuano. They are as follows:


title: Cebuano language

text: The Boholano dialect of Bohol shares many similarities with the southern form of the standard Cebuano dialect. It is also spoken in some parts of Siquijor. Boholano, especially as spoken in central Bohol, can be distinguished from other Cebuano variants by a few phonetic changes:


title: Cebuano language

text: Southern Kanâ is a dialect of both southern Leyte and Southern Leyte provinces; it is closest to the Mindanao Cebuano dialect at the southern area and northern Cebu dialect at the northern boundaries. Both North and South Kana are subgroups of Leyteño dialect. Both of these dialects are spoken in western and central Leyte and in the southern province, but the Boholano is more concentrated in Maasin City.


title: Cebuano language

text: North Kanâ (found in the northern part of Leyte), is closest to the variety of the language spoken in northern part of Leyte, and shows significant influence from Waray-Waray, quite notably in its pace which speakers from Cebu find very fast, and its more mellow tone (compared to the urban Cebu City dialect, which Kana speakers find "rough"). A distinguishing feature of this dialect is the reduction of prominent, but an often unnoticed feature of this dialect is the labialisation of and into , when these phonemes come before , and , velarisation of and into before , and , and the dentalisation of and into before , and and sometimes, before vowels and other consonants as well.


title: Cebuano language

text: This is the variety of Cebuano spoken throughout most of Mindanao and it is the standard dialect of Cebuano in Northern Mindanao.


title: Cebuano language

text: Local historical sources found in Cagayan de Oro indicates the early presence of Cebuano Visayans in the Misamis-Agusan coastal areas and their contacts with the Lumads and peoples of the Rajahnate of Butuan. Lumads refer to these Visayan groups as "Dumagat" ("people of the sea") as they came in the area seaborne. It became the lingua franca of precolonial Visayan settlers and native Lumads of the area, and particularly of the ancient Rajahnate of Butuan where Butuanon, a Southern Visayan language, was also spoken. Cebuano influence in Lumad languages around the highlands of Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon was furthered with the influx of Cebuano Visayan laborers and conscripts of the Spaniards from Cebuano areas of Visayas (particularly from Bohol) during the colonial period around the present-day region of Northern Mindanao. It has spread west towards the Zamboanga Peninsula, east towards Caraga, and south towards Bukidnon, Cotabato and the Davao Region in the final years of Spanish colonial rule and even during the American colonial rule which continued until the Philippine independence. Cebuano becomes a lingua franca in Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao along with Tagalog, especially among Tausug people who speaks a language which is 1 of the Visayan languages.


title: Cebuano language

text: Similar to the Sialo dialect of southeastern Cebu, it is distinctive in retaining /l/ sounds, long since considered archaic in Urban Cebuano. For example: "bulan" instead of "buwan" ("moon" or "month"), "dalunggan" instead of "dunggan" (ear), and "halang" instead of "hang" ("spicy").


title: Cebuano language

text: Due to the influx of migrants (mostly from Western Visayas and Leyte) during the promotion of settlement in the highlands of Central Mindanao in the 1930s, vocabulary from other Visayan languages (predominantly Hiligaynon and Waray-Waray) have also been incorporated into Mindanao Cebuano. For example, the Hiligaynon "sábat" ("reply") is commonly used alongside Cebuano "tubag", "bulig" alongside "tábang" ("help"), and Waray "lutô" alongside "kan-on" ("cooked rice"). Though, these influences are only limited to the speakers along the port area and Hiligaynon-speaking communities.


title: Cebuano language

text: A branch of Mindanaoan Cebuano in Davao is also known as Davaoeño (not to be confused with the Davao variant of Chavacano which is called "Castellano Abakay"). Like the Cebuano of Luzon, it contains some Tagalog vocabulary, which speakers may use even more frequently than in Luzon Cebuano. Its grammar is similar to that of other varieties; however, current speakers exhibit uniquely strong Tagalog influence in their speech by substituting most Cebuano words with Tagalog ones. This is because the older generations speak Tagalog to their children in home settings, and Cebuano is spoken in other everyday settings, making Tagalog the secondary lingua franca. One characteristic of this dialect is the practice of saying "atà", derived from Tagalog "yatà", to denote uncertainty in a speaker's aforementioned statements. For instance, a Davaoeño might say ""Tuá man atà sa baláy si Manuel"" instead of ""Tuá man tingáli sa baláy si Manuel"". The word "atà" does exist in Cebuano, though it means 'squid ink' in contrast to Tagalog (atà sa nukos).


title: Cebuano language

text: Other examples include: "Nibabâ ko sa jeep sa kanto, tapos niulî ko sa among baláy" ("I got off the jeepney at the street corner, and then I went home") instead of "Ninaog ko sa jeep sa kanto, dayon niulî ko sa among baláy". The words "babâ" and "naog" mean "to disembark" or "to go down", while "tapos" and "dayon" mean 'then'; in both cases, the former word is Tagalog, and the latter is Cebuano. Davaoeño speakers may also sometimes add Bagobo or Mansakan vocabulary to their speech, as in ""Madayawng adlaw, amigo, kumusta ka?"" ("Good day, friend, how are you?", literally "Good morning/afternoon") rather than ""Maayong adlaw, amigo, kumusta ka?"" The words "madayaw" and "maayo" both mean 'good', though the former is Bagobo and the latter Cebuano.


title: Cebuano language

text: The Cebuano dialect in Negros is somewhat similar to the Standard Cebuano (spoken by the majority of the provincial areas of Cebu), with distinct Hiligaynon influences. It is distinctive in retaining sounds and longer word forms as well. It is the primary dialectal language of the entire province of Negros Oriental and northeastern parts of Negros Occidental (while the majority of the latter province and its bordered areas speaks Hiligaynon/Ilonggo), as well as some parts of Siquijor. Examples of Negrense Cebuano's distinction from other Cebuano dialects is the usage of the word "maot" instead of "batî" ("ugly"), "alálay", "kalálag" instead of "kalag-kalag" (Halloween), "kabaló/kahíbaló" and "kaágo/kaántigo" instead of "kabawó/kahíbawó" ("know").


title: Cebuano language

text: There is no specific Luzon dialect, as speakers of Cebuano in Luzon come from many different regions in Central Visayas and Mindanao. Cebuano-speaking people from Luzon in Visayas can be easily recognized primarily by their vocabulary, which incorporates Tagalog words. Their accents and some aspects of their grammar can also sometimes exhibit Tagalog influence. Such Tagalog-influenced Cebuano dialects are sometimes colloquially known as "Bisalog" (a portmanteau of Tagalog and Bisaya).


title: Cebuano language

text: The term saksak sinagol in context means "a collection of miscellaneous things" or literally "inserted mixture", thus the few other Cebuano-influenced regions that have a variety of regional languages use this term to refer to their dialects with considerable incorporated Cebuano words. Examples of these regions can be found in places like Masbate.


title: Cebuano language

text: Cebuano uses two numeral systems. Currently, the native system is mostly used in counting the number of things, animate and inanimate, e.g. the number of horses or houses. The Spanish-derived system, on the other hand, is exclusively applied in monetary and chronological terminology and is also commonly used in counting from 11 and above.


title: Robert Clive

text: Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company rule in Bengal. He began as a writer (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the East India Company (EIC) in 1744 and established Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was granted a jagir of £30,000 () per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India he had a fortune of £180,000 () which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.


title: Robert Clive

text: Blocking impending French mastery of India, Clive improvised a 1751 military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the EIC to return (1755) a second time to India, Clive conspired to secure the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England from 1760 to 1765, he used the wealth accumulated from India to secure (1762) an Irish barony from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).


title: Robert Clive

text: Clive's actions on behalf of the EIC have made him one of Britain's most controversial colonial figures. His achievements included checking French imperialist ambitions on the Coromandel Coast and establishing EIC control over Bengal, thereby furthering the establishment of the British Raj, though he worked only as an agent of the East India Company, not of the British government. Vilified by his political rivals in Britain, he went on trial (1772 and 1773) before Parliament, where he was absolved from every charge. Historians have criticised Clive's management of Bengal during his tenure with the EIC and his responsibility in contributing to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, which historians now estimate resulted in the deaths of between seven and ten million people.


title: Robert Clive

text: Robert Clive was born at Styche, the Clive family estate, near Market Drayton in Shropshire, on 29 September 1725 to Richard Clive and Rebecca (née Gaskell) Clive. The family had held the small estate since the time of Henry VII and had a lengthy history of public service: members of the family included a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland under Henry VIII, and a member of the Long Parliament. Robert's father, who supplemented the estate's modest income by practising as a lawyer, also served in Parliament for many years, representing Montgomeryshire. Robert was their eldest son of thirteen children; he had seven sisters and five brothers, six of whom died in infancy.


title: Robert Clive

text: Clive's father was known to have a temper, which the boy apparently inherited. For reasons that are unknown, Clive was sent to live with his mother's sister in Manchester while still a toddler. The site is now Hope Hospital. Biographer Robert Harvey suggests that this move was made because Clive's father was busy in London trying to provide for the family. Daniel Bayley, the sister's husband, reported that the boy was "out of measure addicted to fighting". He was a regular troublemaker in the schools to which he was sent. When he was older he and a gang of teenagers established a protection racket that vandalised the shops of uncooperative merchants in Market Drayton. Clive also exhibited fearlessness at an early age. He is reputed to have climbed the tower of St Mary's Parish Church in Market Drayton and perched on a gargoyle, frightening those down below.


title: Robert Clive

text: When Clive was nine his aunt died, and, after a brief stint in his father's cramped London quarters, he returned to Shropshire. There he attended the Market Drayton Grammar School, where his unruly behaviour (and an improvement in the family's fortunes) prompted his father to send him to Merchant Taylors' School in London. His bad behaviour continued, and he was then sent to a trade school in Hertfordshire to complete a basic education. Despite his early lack of scholarship, in his later years he devoted himself to improving his education. He eventually developed a distinctive writing style, and a speech in the House of Commons was described by William Pitt as the most eloquent he had ever heard.


title: Robert Clive

text: In 1744 Clive's father acquired for him a position as a "factor" or company agent in the service of the East India Company, and Clive set sail for India. After running aground on the coast of Brazil, his ship was detained for nine months while repairs were completed. This enabled him to learn some Portuguese, one of the several languages then in use in south India because of the Portuguese centre at Goa. At this time the East India Company had a small settlement at Fort St. George near the village of Madraspatnam, later Madras, now the major Indian metropolis of Chennai, in addition to others at Calcutta, Bombay, and Cuddalore. Clive arrived at Fort St. George in June 1744, and spent the next two years working as little more than a glorified assistant shopkeeper, tallying books and arguing with suppliers of the East India Company over the quality and quantity of their wares. He was given access to the governor's library, where he became a prolific reader.


title: Robert Clive

text: The India Clive arrived in was divided into a number of successor states to the Mughal Empire. Over the forty years since the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the power of the emperor had gradually fallen into the hands of his provincial viceroys or "Subahdars". The dominant rulers on the Coromandel Coast were the Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah I, and the Nawab of the Carnatic, Anwaruddin Muhammed Khan. The Nawab nominally owed fealty to the nizam, but in many respects acted independently. Fort St. George and the French trading post at Pondicherry were both located in the Nawab's territory.


title: Robert Clive

text: The relationship between the Europeans in India was influenced by a series of wars and treaties in Europe, and by competing commercial rivalry for trade on the subcontinent. Through the 17th and early 18th centuries, the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and British had vied for control of various trading posts, and for trading rights and favour with local Indian rulers. The European merchant companies raised bodies of troops to protect their commercial interests and latterly to influence local politics to their advantage. Military power was rapidly becoming as important as commercial acumen in securing India's valuable trade, and increasingly it was used to appropriate territory and to collect land revenue.


title: Robert Clive

text: In 1720 France effectively nationalised the French East India Company, and began using it to expand its imperial interests. This became a source of conflict with the British in India with the entry of Britain into the War of the Austrian Succession in 1744. The Indian theatre of the conflict is also known as the First Carnatic War, referring to the Carnatic region on the southeast coast of India. Hostilities in India began with a British naval attack on a French fleet in 1745, which led the French Governor-General Dupleix to request additional forces. On 4 September 1746, Madras was attacked by French forces led by La Bourdonnais. After several days of bombardment the British surrendered and the French entered the city. The British leadership was taken prisoner and sent to Pondicherry. It was originally agreed that the town would be restored to the British after negotiation but this was opposed by Dupleix, who sought to annex Madras to French holdings. The remaining British residents were asked to take an oath promising not to take up arms against the French; Clive and a handful of others refused, and were kept under weak guard as the French prepared to destroy the fort. Disguising themselves as natives, Clive and three others eluded their inattentive sentry, slipped out of the fort, and made their way to Fort St. David (the British post at Cuddalore), some to the south. Upon his arrival, Clive decided to enlist in the Company army rather than remain idle; in the hierarchy of the company, this was seen as a step down. Clive was, however, recognised for his contribution in the defence of Fort St. David, where the French assault on 11 March 1747 was repulsed with the assistance of the Nawab of the Carnatic, and was given a commission as ensign.


title: Robert Clive

text: In the conflict, Clive's bravery came to the attention of Major Stringer Lawrence, who arrived in 1748 to take command of the British troops at Fort St. David. During the 1748 Siege of Pondicherry Clive distinguished himself in successfully defending a trench against a French sortie: one witness of the action wrote Clive's "platoon, animated by his exhortation, fired again with new courage and great vivacity upon the enemy." The siege was lifted in October 1748 with the arrival of the monsoons, but the war came to a conclusion with the arrival in December of news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Madras was returned to the British as part of the peace agreement in early 1749.


title: Robert Clive

text: The end of the war between France and Britain did not, however, end hostilities in India. Even before news of the peace arrived in India, the British had sent an expedition to Tanjore on behalf of a claimant to its throne. This expedition, on which Clive, now promoted to lieutenant, served as a volunteer, was a disastrous failure. Monsoons ravaged the land forces, and the local support claimed by their client was not in evidence. The ignominious retreat of the British force (which lost its baggage train to the pursuing Tanjorean army while crossing a swollen river) was a blow to the British reputation. Major Lawrence, seeking to recover British prestige, led the entire Madras garrison to Tanjore in response. At the fort of Devikottai on the Coleroon River the British force was confronted by the much larger Tanjorean army. Lawrence gave Clive command of 30 British soldiers and 700 sepoys, with orders to lead the assault on the fort. Clive led this force rapidly across the river and toward the fort, where the small British unit became separated from the sepoys and were enveloped by the Tanjorean cavalry. Clive was nearly cut down and the beachhead almost lost before reinforcements sent by Lawrence arrived to save the day. The daring move by Clive had an important consequence: the Tanjoreans abandoned the fort, which the British triumphantly occupied. The success prompted the Tanjorean rajah to open peace talks, which resulted in the British being awarded Devikottai and the costs of their expedition, and the British client was awarded a pension in exchange for renouncing his claim. Lawrence wrote of Clive's action that "he behaved in courage and in judgment much beyond what could be expected from his years."


title: Robert Clive

text: On the expedition's return the process of restoring Madras was completed. Company officials, concerned about the cost of the military, slashed its size, denying Clive a promotion to captain in the process. Lawrence procured for Clive a position as the commissary at Fort St. George, a potentially lucrative posting (its pay included commissions on all supply contracts).


title: Robert Clive

text: The death of Asaf Jah I, the Nizam of Hyderabad, in 1748 sparked a struggle to succeed him that is known as the Second Carnatic War, which was also furthered by the expansionist interests of French Governor-General Dupleix. Dupleix had grasped from the first war that small numbers of disciplined European forces (and well-trained sepoys) could be used to tip balances of power between competing interests, and used this idea to greatly expand French influence in southern India. For many years he had been working to negotiate the release of Chanda Sahib, a longtime French ally who had at one time occupied the throne of Tanjore, and sought for himself the throne of the Carnatic. Chanda Sahib had been imprisoned by the Marathas in 1740; by 1748 he had been released from custody and was building an army at Satara.


title: Robert Clive

text: Upon the death of Asaf Jah I, his son, Nasir Jung, seized the throne of Hyderabad, although Asaf Jah had designated as his successor his grandson, Muzaffar Jung. The grandson, who was ruler of Bijapur, fled west to join Chanda Sahib, whose army was also reinforced by French troops sent by Dupleix. These forces met those of Anwaruddin Mohammed Khan in the Battle of Ambur in August 1749; Anwaruddin was slain, and Chanda Sahib victorious entered the Carnatic capital, Arcot. Anwaruddin's son, Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah, fled to Trichinopoly where he sought the protection and assistance of the British. In thanks for French assistance, the victors awarded them a number of villages, including territory nominally under British sway near Cuddalore and Madras. The British began sending additional arms to Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah and sought to bring Nasir Jung into the fray to oppose Chanda Sahib. Nasir Jung came south to Gingee in 1750, where he requested and received a detachment of British troops. Chanda Sahib's forces advanced to meet them, but retreated after a brief long-range cannonade. Nasir Jung pursued, and was able to capture Arcot and his nephew, Muzaffar Jung. Following a series of fruitless negotiations and intrigues, Nasir Jung was assassinated by a rebellious soldier. This made Muzaffar Jung nizam and confirmed Chanda Sahib as Nawab of the Carnatic, both with French support. Dupleix was rewarded for French assistance with titled nobility and rule of the nizam's territories south of the Kistna River. His territories were "said to yield an annual revenue of over 350,000 rupees".


title: Robert Clive

text: Robert Clive was not in southern India for many of these events. In 1750 Clive was afflicted with some sort of nervous disorder, and was sent north to Bengal to recuperate. It was there that he met and befriended Robert Orme, who became his principal chronicler and biographer. Clive returned to Madras in 1751.


title: Robert Clive

text: In the summer of 1751, Chanda Sahib left Arcot to besiege Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah at Trichinopoly. This placed the British at Madras in a precarious position, since the latter was the last of their major allies in the area. The British company's military was also in some disarray, as Stringer Lawrence had returned to England in 1750 over a pay dispute, and much of the company was apathetic about the dangers the expanding French influence and declining British influence posed. The weakness of the British military command was exposed when a force was sent from Madras to support Muhammad Ali at Trichinopoly, but its commander, a Swiss mercenary, refused to attack an outpost at Valikondapuram. Clive, who accompanied the force as commissary, was outraged at the decision to abandon the siege. He rode to Cuddalore, and offered his services to lead an attack on Arcot if he was given a captain's commission, arguing this would force Chanda Sahib to either abandon the siege of Trichinopoly or significantly reduce the force there.