title: Marines

text: Marines, or naval infantry, are typically a military force trained to operate in littoral zones in support of naval operations. Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (reflecting the pressed nature of the ship's company and the risk of mutiny), the boarding of vessels during combat or capture of prize ships, and providing manpower for raiding ashore in support of the naval objectives. In most countries, the marines are an integral part of that state's navy.


title: Marines

text: The exact term "marine" does not exist in many languages other than English. In French-speaking countries, two terms exist which could be translated as "marine", but do not translate exactly: and ; similar pseudo-translations exist elsewhere, e.g. in Portuguese (). The word "marine" means "navy" in many European languages such as Dutch, French, German, Italian and Norwegian.


title: Marines

text: In the earliest day of naval warfare, there was little distinction between sailors and soldiers on a warship. The oarsmen of Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman ships had to be capable of fighting the rowers of opposing ships hand-to-hand; though hoplites began appearing on Greek ships specifically for the boarding of enemy ships.


title: Marines

text: The Roman Republic was the first to understand the importance of professional soldiers dedicated to melee combat onboard of ships. During the First Punic War, Roman crews remained inferior in naval experience to the Carthaginians and could not hope to match them in naval tactics, which required great fleet maneuverability and tactical experience. The Romans therefore employed a novel weapon which changed sea warfare to their advantage — they equipped their ships with the "corvus", a long pivoting plank with a beak-like spike on the underside for hooking onto enemy ships, possibly developed earlier by the Syracusans against the Athenians during the Sicilian Expedition of the Peloponnesian War. Using it as a boarding bridge, Roman infantrymen were able to invade an enemy ship, transforming sea combat into a version of land combat, where the Roman legionaries had the upper hand. During the early Principate, a ship's crew, regardless of its size, was organized as a . Crewmen could sign on as naval infantry (called ), rowers/seamen, craftsmen and various other jobs, though all personnel serving in the imperial fleet were classed as ("soldiers"), regardless of their function; only when differentiation with the army was required, were the adjectives or added. The Roman Navy's two fleet legions, I "Adiutrix" and II "Adiutrix", were among the first distinct naval infantry units.


title: Marines

text: The first organized marine corps was created in Venice by the Doge Enrico Dandolo when he created the first regiment of ten companies spread on several ships. That Corps participated to the conquest of Byzantium (1203-1204), later officially called "Fanti da Mar" (sea infantry) in 1550.


title: Marines

text: Later also the Spanish king, Carlos I, assigned the naval infantry of the (Naples Sea Old Companies) to the Escuadras de Galeras del Mediterráneo (Mediterranean Galley Squadrons) in 1537, progenitors of the current Spanish Navy Marines (Infantería de Marina) corps, making them the oldest marine corps still in active service in the world.


title: Marines

text: The English noun "marine" is from the adjective "marine", meaning "of the sea", via French ("of the sea") from Latin ("of the sea") itself from mare ("sea"), from Proto-Indo-European "*móri" ("body of water, lake") (cognate with Old English "mere" ("sea, lake"), Dutch , German , all from Proto-Germanic "*mari").


title: Marines

text: The word "marine" was originally used for the marine-type forces of England; however, in many European languages the word "marine" or "marina" means "navy" – for example, in Dutch, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, and Norwegian.


title: Marines

text: Because of this use of "marine" to mean "navy", exact one-word translations for the English term "Marines" do not exist in many other languages, which can lead to misunderstandings when translating, with the notable exception of the Dutch word . Typically, marine forces in non-English speaking countries have names that translate in English to "naval infantry" or "coastal infantry". In French-speaking countries, two phrases exist which could be translated as marine, "" and ""; similar phrases exist elsewhere, e.g., in Portuguese .


title: Marines

text: The principal role of marine troops is military operations in the littoral zone; operating from ships they are trained to land on and secure key points to around 85 km (or 50 miles) inland, or as far as ship borne logistics can provide.


title: Marines

text: Marine units primarily deploy from warships using boats, landing craft, hovercraft, amphibious vehicles or helicopters. Specialist units are also trained in combat diving/combat swimming and parachuting.


title: Marines

text: As well as amphibious operations, marine troops are used in a variety of other, naval roles. Stationed at naval bases or forming marine detachments on board naval ships, they also conduct small scale raiding, maritime boarding operations, security of naval vessels and bases, riverine and coastal missions, mess duty, and field day operations.


title: Marines

text: In addition to their primary roles, they perform other tasks, including special operations and land warfare, separate from naval operations; ceremonial duties and miscellaneous other tasks as directed by governments.


title: Marines

text: The Marine Fusilier Regiments are the marine infantry regiments of the Algerian Navy and they are specialised in amphibious warfare.


title: Marines

text: The Argentine Marine Corps ( or IMARA) is a part of the Argentine Navy. Argentine marines have the same rank insignia and titles as the rest of the navy. The Argentine Marine Corps dates from 1827 when a single infantry battalion was raised. This was expanded in 1880 but seven years later the corps was merged with the existing coast artillery, to form a Naval Artillery Regiment. A series of reorganizations followed until responsibility for coastal defense was passed to the Argentine Army in 1898. Between 1935 and 1938 the marines reappeared in the form of five battalions of Marine Infantry, serving both on board ship and in coastal defense fortifications. In 1968 the Infanteria de Marina was reorganized as a separate corps within the Navy.


title: Marines

text: The marine and naval infantry designations are not, officially, applied to Australian Defence Force units, although some Australian Army units specialise in amphibious warfare, including 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment which retrained in an amphibious light infantry role from 2012.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) is the navy of The Bahamas. Since the Bahamas does not have an army or an air force, its navy composes the entirety of its armed forces. The RBDF Commando Squadron is a sizable force of 500 Special Marine Commandos.


title: Marines

text: The Special warfare Driving and Salvage (SWADS) is special operations force of the Bangladesh Navy. SWADS is trained for the role of naval infantry and it consists of elite soldiers specially chosen form the national armed forces branches. They receive special training in United States, South Korea and Turkey.


title: Marines

text: The Bolivian Naval Force includes about 2,000 naval infantry personnel and marines. These are organized into seven small battalions.


title: Marines

text: The Corps of Naval Fusiliers () is subordinate to the Brazilian Navy. The marine corps is composed of an operational brigade and some guard and ceremonial duty battalions. The main unit is the brigade-sized (Amphibious Division). Officers´ ranks and titles are the same as for the rest of the Navy.


title: Marines

text: During the 1970-75 Cambodian Civil War the Cambodian Marine Corps were active, but were effectively disbanded by the end of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. The Royal Cambodian Navy created a force of 2,000 marines in 2007.


title: Marines

text: Canada had a history of participating in amphibious operations such as the Normandy landings and the Allied invasion of Sicily. Even though Canada does not have a marine corps, it has units that can carry out Marines-type operations, such as: an amphibious-operations trained company of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment, JTF2 that specializes in combat diving and amphibious reconnaissance, the Naval Tactical Operations Group that specializes in maritime interdiction, and the Naval Security Team that can provide force protection for amphibious forces.


title: Marines

text: The 4,200 strong Chilean Marine Corps is a branch of the Chilean Navy. Specialized in amphibious assaults, the corps is built around four detachments based along Chile's long coasts at Viña del Mar, Talcahuano, Punta Arenas and Iquique. There are also a number of independent companies and platoons, for security protection at naval bases, other shore installations and the Ministry of Defense. The Viña del Mar and Talcahuano detachments contribute to the Amphibious Expeditionary Brigade (Brigada Anfibia Expedicionaria). There is as a group of Marine Infantry commandos (Grupo de Comandos IM), which together with the group of naval tactical divers (Agrupación de Buzos Tácticos) are part of the Navy's Special Operations Command (Comando de Operaciones Especiales).


title: Marines

text: The People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps (PLANMC) is a service branch of the PRC navy, and is therefore under the command of the PLAN Headquarters. The PLANMC are divided into six brigades. The majority of the PLAMC's personnel is based in the South China Sea.


title: Marines

text: The Colombian Marine Corps is a part of the Colombian Navy. The modern Marine Corps dates from the establishment of two rifle companies in 1936. While remaining a small force the corps saw service during the civil war between Conservatives and Liberals of 1946–58; and provided volunteers for service in the Korean War. By the 1960s it had been expanded to a battalion of marine infantry plus five independent companies.


title: Marines

text: Croatian Navy formed naval infantry companies during the Croatian War of Independence (1991-5), esp. on islands (Hvar: Zvir Company, Korčula: Mixed Detachment etc.) and one in Pula (Vanga Company, saw action in relieving Siege of Dubrovnik and in Operation Maslenica). As they were all dissolved during 2000s, a new naval infantry company, ~160-strong () was formed again in 2018 as a part of the Navy Flotilla and is located in Ploče.


title: Marines

text: The Cuban Revolutionary Navy ( or MGR) maintains a small marine battalion called the Desembarco de Granma.


title: Marines

text: The Guard Hussar Regiment ( or GHR) maintains a marine squadron based in Almegårds Kaserne on the Baltic island Bornholm. The squadron is a part of the 3rd Light Reconnaissance Battalion and trains conscripts.


title: Marines

text: The 5,000-man Ecuadorian Navy maintains a 1,700-man Naval Infantry Corps () headquartered in Guayaquil. Formed on 12 November 1962, it is organised into two security battalions, one in the Amazon River area and the other on the Pacific coast. There is also a commando battalion based on the Galápagos Islands.


title: Marines

text: The 111th Independent Mechanized Brigade (formerly the 130th Marine Amphibious Brigade) of the Egyptian Army can conduct amphibious assault operations. There is also the 153rd Commando Group with three Marine Commandos Battalions (515th, 616th, 818th) controlling 12 Marine Commandos Companies.


title: Marines

text: The El Salvador Navy included two 600-man Marine Infantry Battalions ( or BIM), and a 300-man Naval Commando Force. The BIMs were located at La Unión and Usulután. The Salvadoran Marine Corps uses green pixelated and green woodland uniforms.


title: Marines

text: The Finnish Uusimaa Brigade () in Ekenäs is the home of the Finnish Marines — the (in Swedish) / (in Finnish) / or "Coastal Jaegers" (in English). The Brigade is part of the Finnish Navy, and the only Swedish-speaking unit within the Finnish Defence Forces.


title: Marines

text: The (Naval Fusiliers) and (Naval Commandos) are naval personnel. The protect vessels and installations, provide the navy with military training, augment boarding-landing parties and support operations of the Commandos Marine. The (Naval Commandos) are a seven company Commando formation whose roots can be traced to the Second World War. The Commandos Marine have evolved to be broadly comparable to the British Special Boat Service, with whom they exchange officers.


title: Marines

text: The Sea Battalion () is a land formation of the German Navy. It was formed in Eckernförde on 1 April 2014, succeeding the Naval Protection Force.


title: Marines

text: The Greek 32nd Marine Brigade "Moravas" and the Amphibious Raider Squadrons (known as MAK) of the 13th Special Operations Command are amphibious infantry and maritime operations units maintained by the Hellenic Army and supported by the Hellenic Navy.


title: Marines

text: The Indian Army has amphibious units under the Jodhpur-based corps. The MARCOS are the special forces of Indian Navy similar to the US Navy Seals.


title: Marines

text: In Indonesia, the main amphibious warfare force and naval infantry of the Indonesian National Armed Forces is the Indonesian Marine Corps of the Indonesian Navy. The Marine commandant reports to the Chief of Staff of the Indonesian Navy.


title: Marines

text: Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the number of marines in the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) has expanded to 2,600 personnel, in two marine brigades, each composed of three battalions. Their mission is to provide security throughout the Arabian Sea and free waters, as well as securing routes for Iranian ships in the Gulf of Aden. The Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGCN) maintains several units which may perform marine-type functions. It also has a Takavar naval commando battalion, called Sepah Navy Special Force (SNSF). They are tasked with providing security in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, as well as conducting anti-piracy missions to assist Iranian ships.


title: Marines

text: The Iraqi Navy is a small force with 1,500 sailors and 800 marines designed to protect the shoreline and inland waterways from insurgent infiltration. The navy will have coastal patrol squadrons, assault boat squadrons and a marine battalion. The force will consist of 2,000 to 2,500 sailors by 2010.


title: Marines

text: Upon its revival in the 1980s the Givati Brigade was intended to serve as the amphibious infantry brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, but this was not put into effect. Currently the 35th Paratroopers Brigade is the only brigade that has amphibious abilities as part of its Depth Warfare arsenal together with parachuting and air assault.


title: Marines

text: The San Marco Marine Brigade is the marine infantry unit of the Italian Navy (). It traces its roots back to 1550 with the formation of in the Republic of Venice.


title: Marines

text: The Serenissima Regiment is the amphibious infantry unit of the Italian Army (). Its soldiers are called and they are the Italian Army Marines.


title: Marines

text: Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade – Japanese marines tasked with offensive amphibious assault to retake islands.


title: Marines

text: The Republic of Korea Marine Corps is the marine corps of South Korea. It was founded as a reconnaissance force just prior to the start of the Korean War. The ROKMC has seen action in several major conflicts. Though theoretically it is under the direction of the Chief of Naval Operations for all practical purposes it operates as an independent branch of the military.


title: Marines

text: The Korean People's Army's Light Infantry Training Guidance Bureau has two or more amphibious light infantry/sniper brigades. These brigades are believed deployed to Wonsan on the east coast and Namp'o and Tasa-ri on the west coast. In organization and manpower, they are reduced versions of the regular light infantry brigades with a total strength of approximately 5,000 men organized into ten battalions. Each battalion has about 400 men organized into five companies each. Some amphibious brigade personnel are trained as frogmen.


title: Marines

text: Lebanon maintains an elite but very small in number "Navy Commando" regiment. Trained internationally and armed with mostly American and French made equipment and weaponry.


title: Marines

text: The Maldives National Defence Force maintains a frontline ground combat force known as the MNDF Marine Corps. It is divided into Marine Deployment Units (MDUs) which acts as the force projection element MNDF. The MNDF Marine Corps, as a naval unit, works closely with the Coast Guard of the country.


title: Marines

text: The Mexican Naval Infantry (Spanish: ) of the Mexican Navy is responsible for port security, protection of the ten-kilometer coastal fringe, and patrolling major waterways. The marines have light arms, heavy weapons and armored amphibious vehicles. The Navy ceded most of its riverine responsibilities to the Army, reducing the size of the marine force, and deploying them back aboard ships where they play a vital role in drug interdiction and boarding of suspect vessels in territorial waters.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Moroccan Marines are a naval infantry force subordinated to the Royal Moroccan Navy trained in landing missions and sabotage. The force is between 1,500 and 2,000 troops strong, organized in three battalion-strength units. Among its roles are guarding the southern coast against infiltration by Polisario Front guerrillas.


title: Marines

text: The Myanmar Navy raised a naval infantry battalion of 800 men in 1964, followed by a second battalion in 1967. Two more battalions may have also been raised. They were deployed mainly to the Arakan and Tenasserim areas, and to the Irrawaddy delta, to assist in counter-insurgency operations, but also performed other security duties.


title: Marines

text: Namibian Marine Corps is a battalion-sized infantry unit of the Namibian Navy under the command of a naval captain. Its officers and men are part of the navy and use naval ranks though insignia is adopted from Brazilian Marine Corps, The Corps is primarily formed up of a Rapid Reaction Unit, Operation Dive team, Operational boat team and a Special Operations Commando Unit.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Netherlands Navy naval infantry unit is the Netherlands Marine Corps (), founded in 1665 as an infantry regiment to the Dutch Navy. They saw their first amphibious action in 1667 raiding the English coast during the Raid on the Medway. Their Latin motto is Qua Patet Orbis ("As Far as the World Extends"). Today, it is a brigade approximately 2300 marines strong, consisting of two marine infantry battalions (plus one infantry company which is stationed in Aruba), one amphibious combat support battalion and one logistical battalion. Dutch Marines train in all possible geographical and climate conditions for their role. Enlisted marine recruit training lasts 33 weeks, and marine officers train up to 18 months (including naval academy time). It has its own Special Forces branch known as Netherlands Maritime Special Operations Forces (NLMARSOF).


title: Marines

text: The Coastal Ranger Command ( or KJK) of the Norwegian Navy is an amphibious infantry unit trained to operate in littoral combat theatres, as naval infantry and coastal artillery. There is also an SBS type naval commando unit, the .


title: Marines

text: The Pakistan Marines division of the Pakistan Navy was re-established on April 14, 1990, with about 3,600 men. The marines are based at PNS Qasim naval base.


title: Marines

text: The Paraguayan Marine Corps () is a battalion-sized organization consisting of four company sized brigades. In limited cadre form the Marine Corps dates from the late 19th century, although it only achieved significant existence when the three-battalion sized was created in the final stages of the Chaco War of 1932–1935.


title: Marines

text: The Peruvian Naval Infantry () consists of around 3,000 naval infantrymen and includes an amphibious brigade of three battalions and local security units with two transport ships, four tank landing ships, and about forty Chaimite armored personnel carriers. Since 1982, IMAP detachments have been deployed, under army command, in counter-insurgency operations.


title: Marines

text: The Philippine Marine Corps (PMC) () is the marine corps of the Philippines, it is a naval infantry force under the command of the Philippine Navy. PMC primarily conducts amphibious and expeditionary warfare, as well as special operation missions. It has a strength of about 9,500 men organized into three maneuver brigades, a Combat Service and Support Brigade (CSSB), and independent units such as the Marine Special Operations Group (MARSOG) and the Marine Security and Escort Group (MSEG). Formed on November 7, 1950, the Philippine Marine Corps is considered the first and foremost unit to be involved in any amphibious or seaborne clashes.


title: Marines

text: The Polish Navy maintains several naval infantry units responsible for port and coastal security. The Polish Army maintains the 7th Coastal Defense Brigade, which bears traditions of the disbanded 7th Coastal Defence Division (the Blue Berets), therefore it is sometimes referred to as the Marines of Poland. there are no plans by the Polish Army to create an active marine unit. Therefore, the 7th Brigade carries out only limited-scale exercises of amphibious assaults.


title: Marines

text: The third oldest marine corps in the world was founded as the in 1618. The Portuguese Navy still maintains this Elite Naval Infantry , which is currently known as the . The Corpo de Fuzileiros, meaning literally "Corps of Fusiliers,” are an Elite Infantry and Special Forces unit of the Portuguese Navy.


title: Marines

text: The 307th Marine Battalion () is the light infantry/reconnaissance unit of the Romanian Naval Forces. It is located in Babadag, Tulcea County, and was formed in the mid-1970s for the defence of the Danube Delta and Romanian Black Sea shore.


title: Marines

text: The Russian Naval Infantry () are the amphibious forces of the Russian Armed Forces. The Russian Navy also has the Russian commando frogmen, an elite unit for underwater reconnaissance and special operations.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Saudi Navy maintains two, 1,500-man marine brigades consisting of three battalions each. The brigades are assigned to the Western Fleet headquartered in Jeddah and the Eastern Fleet headquartered in Jubail.


title: Marines

text: South Africa has not had a dedicated marine branch of its military since the apartheid era. A close analogue would be the South African Navy's Maritime Reaction Squadron, a marine-type unit of four companies. Members are marines and use naval ranks. They are trained in infantry combat up to company sized operations. They are also used for crowd control and conduct peacekeeping operations. During peacekeeping operations they are meant to augment an army infantry battalion. Their role is very similar to the now disbanded South Africa Marine Corps from the apartheid era. The 4 Special Forces Regiment of the South African Special Forces provides South Africa its seaward Special Forces capability.


title: Marines

text: The Spanish Navy Marines () are the oldest existing marine force in the world, as they were established on February 27, 1537, by Charles I when he permanently assigned the (Naples Sea Old Companies) to the (Mediterranean Galley Squadrons). Their red trouser stripes mark the as part of the Royal Household Corps, and were given by Charles III to the marines in reward for their fierce defence of the Castillo del Morro of Havana, Cuba in 1762.


title: Marines

text: The Sri Lanka Navy established its Sri Lanka Marine Corps in November 2016 and the first group of members were assisted in training by the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit of the United States Marine Corps. The unit became functional after the first group of members consisting of 6 officers and 158 sailors graduated from training on the 27th of February, 2017.


title: Marines

text: The Swedish Amphibious Corps () is an arm of the Swedish Navy. The Corps consists of two regiments each comprising one amphibious battalion, tasked with reconnaissance, amphibious assaults and combat on, over and under the surface of the sea.


title: Marines

text: The Fouj Al-Mughawayr Al-Bahir ( meaning "Marines Regiment") is a unit based in Latakia Governorate. It has participated in operations in the Syrian Civil War.


title: Marines

text: With the size of about 9,000 personnel, the Taiwanese (Republic of China) Marine Corps is responsible for amphibious combat, counter-landing, and reinforcement of Taiwan and surrounding islands (such as Kinmen, Wuchiu, Matsu Islands, and Pratas Island, etc.), defense of Naval facilities, and also functions as a rapid reaction force (special service company) and a strategic reserve.


title: Marines

text: Royal Thai Marine Corps (RTMC) is the naval infantry sub-branch of the Royal Thai Navy.The Royal Thai Marine Corps was founded in 1932, when the first battalion was formed with the assistance of the United States Marine Corps. It was expanded to a regiment in 1940 and was in action against communist guerrillas throughout the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1960s the United States Marine Corps assisted in its expansion into a brigade. The Royal Thai Marine Corps saw action on the Malaysian border in the 1970s, and has now been increased to four brigades.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Tongan Marines is a sub-unit of the Tongan Maritime Force, which itself is a branch of the Tonga Defence Services. It is a single battalion-sized group composed of a Headquarters Company and three Light Infantry Companies.


title: Marines

text: The Amphibious Marine Infantry Brigade Command is the marine force of the Turkish Naval Forces and consists of 4,500 men based in Foça near İzmir.


title: Marines

text: The Ukrainian Marines was founded in 1993 from a unit of the former Soviet Naval Infantry. It serves as a coastal defense force of the Ukrainian Navy. Also known by its official name, the "Ukrainian Naval Infantry", the sub-branch of the Navy is based in Mykolaiv.


title: Marines

text: The Royal Marines (RM) were formed in 1664 and are part of HM Naval Service. They include an amphibious brigade (which includes commando-trained units and individual personnel from the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force), a naval security unit responsible for guarding the UK's naval nuclear weapons and other security duties, a landing craft and boat-training group which is also a parent unit for three landing craft units deployed on amphibious warfare ships; and a naval musical branch. The RM has close international ties with allied marine forces, particularly the United States Marine Corps and the Netherlands Marine Corps/Korps Mariniers. "Marine" is also used as a rank in the Royal Marines, being equivalent to an army private. The Royal Marines Reserve (RMR) is the volunteer reserve force used to augment the regular Royal Marines in times of war or national crisis.


title: Marines

text: The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is currently the only marine combined-arms force in the world. Created in 1775, it was originally intended only to guard naval vessels during the American Revolutionary War. The USMC is a component part of the US Department of the Navy in the military command structure, with its own representative on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Corps’ major functions include: seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and land operations essential to a naval campaign, providing detachments and organizations for service on armed vessels of the Navy and security detachments for the protection of naval property at naval stations and bases, and such other duties as the President may direct and develop those phases of amphibious operations that pertain to the tactics, technique, and equipment used by landing forces. It also has other missions, including providing personnel as security guards at US diplomatic missions, and providing helicopter transportation for the President of the United States aboard Marine One. The United States Marine Corps Reserve (USMCR) is the reserve force of the United States Marine Corps.


title: Marines

text: The Uruguayan Marine Corps ( or FUSNA) is a battalion-sized organization. However, given its small size, it's not a separate corps within the Navy, but regular naval officers are posted to the Marines as to any other Navy unit.


title: Marines

text: The Venezuelan Marine Corps () is a sub-division of the Venezuelan Navy. Headquartered in Meseta de Mamo, Vargas, the estimated numerical strength of this unit is approximately 8,000 men and women. Its mission is to "enlist and direct its units in order to form the disembarking force and/or support of amphibious or special operations; executing naval safeguarding and environmental policing, as well as actively participating in the national development".


title: Marines

text: The Vietnam People's Navy maintains a naval infantry force. It once stood at eleven brigades each of several battalions. Currently the Vietnam People's Navy maintains two naval infantry brigades.


title: Marines

text: The ancient Greek states did not possess specialized marine infantry; instead, they used hoplites and archers as an onboard contingent ().


title: Marines

text: The Roman Navy used regular infantry as marines. Naval personnel were trained for raiding and also provided the troops for at least two legions (I "Adiutrix" and II "Adiutrix") for service on land. The various provincial fleets were usually provided with marines from the adjacent legions.


title: Marines

text: Several of the Colonial navies of Australia raised volunteer naval infantry and naval militia brigades in the second half of the 19th century. Following the Federation of Australia they were combined into the Commonwealth Naval Militia. With the formation of the Royal Australian Navy in 1911 they were renamed the Royal Australian Naval Brigade. At its peak in 1915 it numbered 2,817 officers and men. The Naval Brigade was disbanded in 1920 and volunteers were absorbed into the Royal Australian Naval Reserve.


title: Marines

text: Though overshadowed by its Prussian counterpart, the Marinier-Korps as well as naval powers like the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians, Austria-Hungary maintained a small regiment of naval infantrymen dating back to Venetian times alongside the then Austrian Imperial Navy's “Corps of Sailors” (). However, in 1868, as part of his naval reforms, then Commander Wilhelm von Tegetthoff abolished the Naval Infantry Regiment and the Naval Artillery Corps in favor of an enlarged and all-encompassing as no marines had served aboard a ship for 10 years, and so from that point on sailors not serving on active warships received infantry drills & took up naval infantry duties.


title: Marines

text: For several centuries, the Byzantine navy used the descendants of the Mardaites, who were settled in southern Anatolia and Greece, as marines and rowers for its ships. Emperor Basil I also established a separate marine regiment, 4,000 strong, for the central Imperial Fleet based at Constantinople. These were professional troops, and were counted among the elite .


title: Marines

text: In the 1260s, when emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos rebuilt the navy, he recruited the (settlers from Laconia) and the (men of mixed Greek-Latin descent) as special marine troops. Despite the progressive decline and virtual disappearance of the navy, they remained active until the late Palaiologan period.


title: Marines

text: The Corps was founded on 10 December 1665 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War by the unofficial leader of the republic Johan de Witt and Admiral Michiel de Ruyter as the Regiment de Marine. Its leader was Willem Joseph Baron van Ghent. The Dutch had successfully used ordinary soldiers in ships at sea in the First Anglo-Dutch War. It was the fifth European marine unit formed, being preceded by the Spanish Marines (1537), the Portuguese Marines (1610), the French Marines (1622) and the English Royal Marines (1664). Like Britain, the Netherlands has had several periods when its Marines were disbanded. The Netherlands itself was under French occupation or control from 1810 until 1813. A new marine unit was raised on 20 March 1801 during the time of the Batavian Republic and on 14 August 1806 the was raised under King Louis Bonaparte. The modern dates from 1814, receiving its current name in 1817.


title: Marines

text: The battle honors on the ' colors are: Raid on the Medway (1667), Kijkduin (1673), Sennefe (1674), Spain, Dogger Bank (1781), West Indies, Algiers (1816), Atjeh, Bali, Rotterdam (1940), Java Sea (1942), Java and Madoera (1947–1948), New Guinea (1962) and Cambodia (1992–1993).


title: Marines

text: The , was a short-lived infantry battalion of the Estonian Navy. The battalion was created in 1919 from the crews of the Estonian surface warships and was based in Tallinn. The unit was mainly used on the Southern Front during the Estonian War of Independence. The unit was operational from March to June in 1919.


title: Marines

text: The Troupes de marine were founded in 1622 (as ) as land forces under the control of the Secretary of State of the Navy, notably for operations in French Canada. The were transformed in line infantry regiments by Napoleon, but became once more marine forces in 1822 (for the artillery) and 1831 (for the infantry). These were in the 19th century the main overseas and colonial forces of the French military. In 1900 they were put under the orders of the War Ministry and took the name of (Colonial Forces). In 1958 the designation of was changed to (Overseas Forces) but in 1961 it reverted to the original . Throughout these changes in title, these troops continued to be part of the French Army.


title: Marines

text: The Federation of Gran Colombia Marines were formed in 1822 and were disbanded in 1829, Personnel were mostly from Venezuela.


title: Marines

text: The Blackshirt militia maintained an independent "Marine Group" with four MVSN battalions (24th, 25th, 50th and 60th).


title: Marines

text: During the feudal period, the Japanese used Ashigaru soldiers or regular Yumi archers as soldiers to protect ships from pirates.


title: Marines

text: In 1873 a short-lived marine corps was added to the newly created Imperial Japanese Navy, using Britain's Royal Marines as a model. Considered unsuitable in its original form, the force was disbanded in 1878.


title: Marines

text: The Cambodian Marine Corps or Corps de Fusiliers-Marins Khmères (CFMK) were the Marine Corps of the Khmer Republic of 1970–1975 under the Khmer National Navy as part of the Khmer National Armed Forces.


title: Marines

text: They took part in the Cambodian Civil War against the Khmer Rouge but was dissolved along with the rest of the Khmer National Armed Forces when the Khmer Republic were defeated and capitulated to the Khmer Rouge.


title: Marines

text: The role of Ottoman naval infantry originated in Orhan's conquest of the Karasi Beylik and the capture of its fleet. From then on, Janissaries and Azaps were sometimes deployed as marines during the 14th Century. The Deniz azaps were used during the 16th Century; while troops called Levend (Bahriyeli) were raised on and off over the centuries – over 50,000 of them by the late 18th century. The last raised units were the (corsair captains militia) recruited from among the North African Arabs and indigenous Berbers. Ottoman marines were part of the Ottoman navy.


title: Marines

text: Portugal raised numerous companies of Special Marines () and African Special Marines (), both at home and in the African colonies of Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Mozambique, for service in Africa during the Portuguese Colonial Wars. The African Special Marines were all-black units.


title: Marines

text: The Imperial Russian Navy used several regiments of marine equipage troops that fought as much on land as they served in ship detachments. One battalion was formed within the Guard, and served on the Imperial family's ships.


title: Marines

text: The oldest naval infantry. Created 27 February 1537 as Tercio de Armada by Carlos I (Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 1519–1556). Miguel de Cervantes, famous writer, was a member of naval infantry at Lepanto Battle.


title: Marines

text: The Soviet Navy had a number of small battalion-sized naval infantry and coastal defence units that mostly served in the ports and bases before the Second World War. During the war, and building on the visuals of the mutinied sailors of Petrograd in 1917, the Stavka ordered formation of naval infantry brigades from surplus ship crew or shore duty sailors.


title: Marines

text: The South Africa Marine Corps was set up as a sub-branch of the South African Navy in 1979, with the primary purpose of protecting harbours. The Marines were disbanded in 1989, following a major restructuring of the Navy at the end of the South African Border War.


title: Marines

text: Vietnamese dynasties had a long tradition of utilizing marines. This tradition went back no later than the Annam Protectorate of Tang dynasty when the governors built boats and trained marines to fight off pirates and invaders. The successive Vietnamese dynasties made full use of their marines' superiority at river and sea to launch successful campaigns against their northward and southward neighbors alike.


title: Marines

text: The forerunner of the Republic of Vietnam Marine Corps (VNMC) was established by Ngo Dinh Diem, then prime minister of what was then the State of Vietnam on October 13, 1954. The VNMC became defunct on 1 May 1975 after the fall of Saigon.


title: Marines

text: The 12th Naval Infantry Brigade () of the Yugoslavian Navy consisted of 900 to 2,000 men in three battalions. A multi-ethnic unit, the brigade was broken up during the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation and saw little action.


title: Darren Star

text: Darren Star (born July 25, 1961) is an American writer, director and producer of film and television. He is best known for creating the television series "Beverly Hills, 90210" (1990–2000), "Melrose Place" (1992–1999), "Sex and the City" (1998–2004), "Younger" (2015–2021), and "Emily in Paris" (2020–present).


title: Darren Star

text: Darren Star was born to a Jewish family in Potomac, Maryland. His mother was a freelance writer and his father was an orthodontist. He attended Winston Churchill High School and UCLA where he studied English and Creative Writing.


title: Darren Star

text: He created the television series "Beverly Hills, 90210" based on his own high school experiences and "Melrose Place", and he was the creator and a writer for the HBO series "Sex and the City".


title: Darren Star

text: He also worked on "Central Park West" (1995), "Grosse Pointe" (2000), "The $treet" (2000), "Miss Match" (2003), "Kitchen Confidential" (2005), "Runaway" (2006) and "Cashmere Mafia" (2008). He was the producer of "Sex and the City: The Movie", which was released in 2008, and its sequel "Sex and the City 2", which was released in 2010.


title: Darren Star

text: In 2002, he was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award. He sits on the board of directors of Project Angel Food. In 2020, he signed a deal with ViacomCBS.


title: Glitch (Australian TV series)

text: Glitch is an Australian television programme which premiered on 9 July 2015 on ABC. The series is set in the fictional country town of Yoorana, Victoria, and follows seven people who return from the dead in perfect health but with no memory. No one in the town knows why the deceased have returned. The series was created by Tony Ayres and Louise Fox. The first series was awarded Best Television Drama Series at the 2016 AACTA Awards. The series also won Most Outstanding Drama Series at the 2016 Logie Awards.


title: Glitch (Australian TV series)

text: On 26 October 2015, ABC TV renewed the show for a second series of six episodes. The second series premiered on 14 September 2017 on ABC. Series two follows James and the Risen as they begin to unravel the mystery of how and why they are back, though their journey of reconciliation, romance, and revenge is soon disrupted by a new and even more lethal threat.


title: Glitch (Australian TV series)

text: The first series was made available to stream on Netflix globally on 15 October 2016. Series 2 premiered on 28 November 2017 internationally on Netflix. The show concluded with the third season, which was announced via Facebook on 20 August 2018 and began filming on 17 September 2018. It premiered on 25 August 2019. Netflix globally released series 3 on 25 September 2019.


title: Glitch (Australian TV series)

text: James Hayes (Patrick Brammall) is a small town policeman in Yoorana, Victoria. He is called to the local cemetery in the middle of the night, only to discover that seven people have risen from the dead in perfect health but with no memory of their identities or past. They are determined to find out who they are and what has happened to them. James struggles to keep the mysterious case hidden from his colleagues, family, and the world, with the help of local doctor Elishia McKellar (Genevieve O'Reilly). The seven people are all linked in some way, and the search begins for someone who knows the truth about how and why they have returned.


title: Glitch (Australian TV series)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, season 1 of "Glitch" has an approval rating of 80% based on 5 reviews. Likewise, season 2 has an approval rating of 80% based on 5 reviews.


title: Machete

text: A machete (; ) is a broad blade used either as an agricultural implement similar to an axe, or in combat like a long-bladed knife. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the Spanish language, the word is possibly a diminutive form of the word "macho", which was used to refer to sledgehammers. Alternatively, its origin may be "machaera", the name given by the Romans to the falcata. It is the origin of the English language equivalent term "matchet", though it is less commonly used. In much of the English-speaking Caribbean, such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago, the term "cutlass" is used for these agricultural tools.


title: Machete

text: In various tropical and subtropical countries, the machete is frequently used to cut through rainforest undergrowth and for agricultural purposes (e.g. cutting sugar cane). Besides this, in Latin America a common use is for such household tasks as cutting large foodstuffs into pieces—much as a cleaver is used—or to perform crude cutting tasks, such as making simple wooden handles for other tools. It is common to see people using machetes for other jobs, such as splitting open coconuts, yard work, removing small branches and plants, chopping animals' food, and clearing bushes.


title: Machete

text: Machetes are often considered tools and used by adults. However, many hunter–gatherer societies and cultures surviving through subsistence agriculture begin teaching babies to use sharp tools, including machetes, before their first birthdays.


title: Machete

text: People in uprisings sometimes use these weapons. For example, the Boricua Popular Army are unofficially called "macheteros" because of the machete-wielding laborers of sugar cane fields of past Puerto Rico.


title: Machete

text: Many of the killings in the 1994 Rwandan genocide were performed with machetes, and they were the primary weapon used by the Interahamwe militias there. Machetes were also a distinctive tool and weapon of the Haitian "Tonton Macoute".


title: Machete

text: In 1762, the British captured Havana in a lengthy siege during the Seven Years' War. Volunteer militiamen led by Pepe Antonio, a Guanabacoa councilman, were issued with machetes during the unsuccessful defense of the city. The machete was also the most iconic weapon during the independence wars in Cuba, although it saw limited battlefield use. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, owner of the sugar refinery "La Demajagua" near Manzanillo, freed his slaves on 10 October 1868. He proceeded to lead them, armed with machetes, in revolt against the Spanish government. The first cavalry charge using machetes as the primary weapon was carried out on 4 November 1868 by Máximo Gómez, a sergeant born in the Dominican Republic, who later became the general in chief of the Cuban Army.


title: Machete

text: The machete is a common side arm and tool for many ethnic groups in West Africa. Machetes in this role are referenced in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart".


title: Machete

text: Some countries have a name for the blow of a machete; the Spanish "machetazo" is sometimes used in English. In the British Virgin Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago, the word "planass" means to hit someone with the flat of the blade of a machete or cutlass. To strike with the sharpened edge is to "chop". Throughout the Caribbean, the term 'cutlass' refers to a laborers' cutting tool.


title: Machete

text: The Brazilian Army's Instruction Center on Jungle Warfare developed a machete with a blade in length and a very pronounced clip point. This machete is issued with a Bowie knife and a sharpening stone in the scabbard; collectively called a "jungle kit" ("Conjunto de Selva" in Portuguese); it is manufactured by Indústria de Material Bélico do Brasil (IMBEL).


title: Machete

text: The machete was used as a weapon during the Mau Mau rebellion, in the Rwandan Genocide, and in South Africa, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s when the former province of Natal was wracked by conflict between the African National Congress and the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party.


title: Machete

text: Good machetes rely on the materials used and the shape. In the past, the most famous manufacturer of machetes in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean was Collins Company of Collinsville, Connecticut. The company was founded as Collins & Company in 1826 by Samuel W. Collins to make axes. Its first machetes were sold in 1845 and became so famous that all good machetes were called "un Collins". In the English-speaking Caribbean, Robert Mole & Sons of Birmingham, England, was long considered the manufacturer of agricultural cutlasses of the best quality. Some Robert Mole blades survive as souvenirs of travelers to Trinidad, Jamaica, and, less commonly, St. Lucia.


title: Machete

text: The southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has a dance called the "dança dos facões" (machetes' dance) in which the dancers, who are usually men, bang their machetes against various surfaces while dancing, simulating a battle. "Maculelê", an Afro-Brazilian dance and martial art, can also be performed with "facões". This practice began in the city of Santo Amaro, Bahia, in the northeastern part of the country.


title: Machete

text: In the Philippines, the "bolo" is used in training in "eskrima", the indigenous martial art of the Philippines.


title: Machete

text: The panga or "tapanga" is a variant used in East and Southern Africa. This name may be of Swahili etymology; not to be confused with the Panga fish. The "panga" blade broadens on the backside and has a length of . The upper inclined portion of the blade may be sharpened.


title: Machete

text: Other similar tools include the "parang" and the "golok" (from Malaysia and Indonesia); however, these tend to have shorter, thicker blades with a primary grind, and are more effective on woody vegetation.


title: William Golding

text: Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel "Lord of the Flies" (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for "Rites of Passage", the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, "To the Ends of the Earth". He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature.


title: William Golding

text: As a result of his contributions to literature, Golding was knighted in 1988. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2008, "The Times" ranked Golding third on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".


title: William Golding

text: William Golding was born in his maternal grandmother's house, 47 Mount Wise, Newquay, Cornwall. The house was known as "Karenza", the Cornish word for "love", and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father, Alec Golding, was a science master at Marlborough Grammar School (1905 to retirement), the school the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended. His mother, Mildred (Curnoe), kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and was a campaigner for female suffrage. Golding's mother, who was Cornish and whom he considered "a superstitious Celt", used to tell him old Cornish ghost stories from her own childhood. In 1930 Golding went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read Natural Sciences for two years before transferring to English for his final two years. His original tutor was the chemist Thomas Taylor. In a private journal and in a memoir for his wife he admitted having tried to rape a teenage girl during a vacation.


title: William Golding

text: Golding took his B.A. degree with Second Class Honours in the summer of 1934, and later that year a book of his "Poems" was published by Macmillan & Co, with the help of his Oxford friend, the anthroposophist Adam Bittleston.


title: William Golding

text: . After a year in Oxford studying for a Diploma of Education, he was a schoolmaster teaching English and music at Maidstone Grammar School 1938 – 1940, before moving to Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury, in April 1940. There he taught English, Philosophy, Greek, and drama until joining the navy on 18 December 1940, reporting for duty at HMS Raleigh. He returned in 1945 and taught the same subjects until 1961.


title: William Golding

text: Golding kept a personal journal for over 22 years from 1971 until the night before his death, and which contained approximately 2.4 million words in total. The journal was initially used by Golding in order to record his dreams, but over time it gradually began to function as a record of his life. The journals contained insights including retrospective thoughts about his novels and memories from his past. At one point Golding described setting his students up into two groups to fight each other – an experience he drew on when writing "Lord of the Flies". John Carey, the emeritus professor of English literature at Oxford university, was eventually given 'unprecedented access to Golding's unpublished papers and journals by the Golding estate'. Though Golding had not written the journals specifically so that a biography could be written about him, Carey published "William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies" in 2009.


title: William Golding

text: Golding was engaged to Molly Evans, a woman from Marlborough, who was well liked by both of his parents. However, he broke off the engagement and married Ann Brookfield, an analytical chemist, on 30 September 1939. They had two children, David (born September 1940) and Judith (born July 1945).


title: William Golding

text: During World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy in 1940. He served on a destroyer which was briefly involved in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship "Bismarck". Golding participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, commanding a landing craft that fired salvoes of rockets onto the beaches. He was also in action at Walcheren in October and November 1944, during which time 10 out of 27 assault craft that went into the attack were sunk.


title: William Golding

text: Golding had a troubled relationship with alcohol; Judy Carver notes that her father was "always very open, if rueful, about problems with drink". Golding suggested that his self-described "crisis", of which alcoholism played a major part, had plagued him his entire life. John Carey mentions several instances of binge drinking in his biography, including Golding's experiences in 1963; whilst on holiday in Greece (when he was meant to have been finishing his novel "The Spire"), after working on his writing in the morning, he would go to his preferred "Kapheneion" to drink at midday. By the evening would move onto ouzo and brandy; he developed a reputation locally for "provoking explosions".


title: William Golding

text: Unfortunately, the eventual publication of "The Spire" the following year did not help Golding's developing struggle with alcohol; it had precisely the opposite effect, with the novel's scathingly negative reviews in a BBC radio broadcast affecting him severely. Following the publication of "The Pyramid" in 1967, Golding experienced a severe writer's block: the result of myriad crises (family anxieties, insomnia, and a general sense of dejection). Golding eventually became unable to deal with what he perceived to be the intense reality of his life without first drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Tim Kendall suggests that these experiences manifest in Golding's writing as the character Wilf in "The Paper Men"; "an ageing novelist whose alcohol-sodden journeys across Europe are bankrolled by the continuing success of his first book".


title: William Golding

text: By the late 1960s, Golding was relying on alcohol – which he referred to as "the old, old anodyne". His first steps towards recovery came from his study of Carl Jung's writings, and in what he called "an admission of discipleship" he travelled to Switzerland in 1971 to see Jung's landscapes for himself. That same year, he started keeping a journal in which he recorded and interpreted his dreams; the last entry is from the day before he died, in 1993, and the volumes-long work came to be thousands of pages long by this time.


title: William Golding

text: The crisis did inevitably affect Golding's output, and his next novel, "Darkness Visible", would be published twelve years after "The Pyramid"; a far cry from the prolific author who had produced six novels in thirteen years since the start of his career. But, despite this, the extent of Golding's recovery is evident from the fact that this was only the first of six further novels that Golding completed before his death.


title: William Golding

text: In 1985, Golding and his wife moved to a house called Tullimaar in Perranarworthal, near Truro, Cornwall. He died of heart failure eight years later on 19 June 1993. His body was buried in the parish churchyard of Bowerchalke near his former home and the Wiltshire county border with Hampshire and Dorset.


title: William Golding

text: On his death he left the draft of a novel, "The Double Tongue", set in ancient Delphi, which was published posthumously in 1995.


title: William Golding

text: Whilst still a teacher at Bishop Wordsworth's School, in 1951 Golding began writing a manuscript of the novel initially titled "Strangers from Within". In September 1953, after rejections from seven other publishers, Golding sent a manuscript to Faber and Faber and was initially rejected by their reader, Jan Perkins, who labelled it as "Rubbish & dull. Pointless". His book, however, was championed by Charles Monteith, a new editor at the firm. Monteith asked for some changes to the text and the novel was published in September 1954 as "Lord of the Flies".


title: William Golding

text: After moving in 1958 from Salisbury to nearby Bowerchalke, he met his fellow villager and walking companion James Lovelock. The two discussed Lovelock's hypothesis, that the living matter of the planet Earth functions like a single organism, and Golding suggested naming this hypothesis after Gaia, the personification of the Earth in Greek mythology, and mother of the Titans. His publishing success made it possible for Golding to resign his teaching post at Bishop Wordsworth's School in 1961, and he spent that academic year in the United States as writer-in-residence at Hollins College (now Hollins University), near Roanoke, Virginia.


title: William Golding

text: Golding won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for "Darkness Visible" in 1979, and the Booker Prize for "Rites of Passage" in 1980. In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and was according to the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" "an unexpected and even contentious choice".


title: William Golding

text: In 1988 Golding was appointed a Knight Bachelor. In September 1993, only a few months after his unexpected death, the First International William Golding Conference was held in France, where Golding's presence had been promised and was eagerly expected.


title: William Golding

text: His first novel, "Lord of the Flies" (1954; film, 1963 and 1990; play, adapted by Nigel Williams, 1995), describes a group of boys stranded on a tropical island descending into a lawless and increasingly wild existence before being rescued. Arguably his most famous work, the book is read in schools around the world today. "The Inheritors" (1955) depicts a tribe of gentle Neanderthals encountering modern humans, who by comparison are deceitful and violent. His 1956 novel "Pincher Martin" records the thoughts of a drowning sailor. "Free Fall" (1959) explores the issue of freedom of choice. The novel's narrator, a World War Two soldier in a German POW Camp, endures interrogation and solitary confinement. After these events and while recollecting the experiences, he looks back over the choices he has made, trying to trace precisely where he lost the freedom to make his own decisions. "The Spire" (1964) follows the construction (and near collapse) of an impossibly large spire on the top of a medieval cathedral (generally assumed to be Salisbury Cathedral). The novel explores ideas of sexual lust, religious fervour and delusion, and the power of the Church in Medieval England, with the titular spire symbolizing both spiritual aspiration and worldly vanity.


title: William Golding

text: Golding's 1967 novel "The Pyramid" consists of three linked stories with a shared setting in a small English town based partly on Marlborough where Golding grew up. "The Scorpion God" (1971) contains three novellas, the first set in an ancient Egyptian court ("The Scorpion God"); the second describing a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer group ("Clonk, Clonk"); and the third in the court of a Roman emperor ("Envoy Extraordinary"). The last of these, originally published in 1956, was reworked by Golding into a play, "The Brass Butterfly", in 1958. From 1971 to 1979 Golding published no novels. After this period he published "Darkness Visible" (1979): a story involving terrorism, paedophilia, and a mysterious figure who survives a fire in the Blitz, and appears to have supernatural powers. In 1980, Golding published "Rites of Passage", the first of his novels about a voyage to Australia in the early nineteenth century. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1980 and Golding followed this success with "Close Quarters" (1987) and "Fire Down Below" (1989) to complete his 'sea trilogy', later published as one volume entitled "To the Ends of the Earth". The three stories were later adapted into a mini-series for the BBC, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. In 1984 he published "The Paper Men": an account of the struggles between a novelist and his would-be biographer.


title: Sanatorium

text: A sanatorium (from Latin "sānāre" 'to heal, make healthy'), also sanitarium or sanitorium, are antiquated names for specialised hospitals, for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often located in a healthy climate, usually in the countryside. The idea of healing was an important reason for the historical wave of establishments of sanatoriums, especially at the end of the 19th- and early 20th centuries. One sought for instance the healing of consumptives, especially tuberculosis (before the discovery of antibiotics) or alcoholism, but also of more obscure addictions and longings, of hysteria, masturbation, fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Facility operators were often charitable associations such as the Order of St. John and the newly founded social welfare insurance companies.


title: Sanatorium

text: Sanatoriums should not be confused with the Russian sanatoriums from the time of the Soviet Union, which were a type of sanatorium resort residence for workers.


title: Sanatorium

text: The first suggestion of sanatoria in the modern sense was likely made by George Bodington, who opened a sanatorium in Sutton Coldfield in 1836 and later published his essay "On the Treatment and Cure of Pulmonary Consumption" in 1840. His novel approach was dismissed as "very crude ideas and unsupported assertions" by reviewers in the "Lancet", and his sanatorium was converted to an asylum soon after. The rationale for sanatoria in the pre-antibiotic era was that a regimen of rest and good nutrition offered the best chance that the patient's immune system would "wall off" pockets of pulmonary TB infection. In 1863, Hermann Brehmer opened the "Brehmersche Heilanstalt für Lungenkranke" in Görbersdorf (Sokołowsko), Silesia (now Poland), for the treatment of tuberculosis. Patients were exposed to plentiful amounts of high altitude, fresh air, and good nutrition. Tuberculosis sanatoria became common throughout Europe from the late-19th century onward.


title: Sanatorium

text: The Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, established in Saranac Lake, New York, in 1885, was the first such establishment in North America. According to the Saskatchewan Lung Association, when the National Anti-Tuberculosis Association (Canada) was founded in 1904, its members, including renowned pioneer in the fight against tuberculosis Dr. R.G. Ferguson, believed that a distinction should be made between the health resorts with which people were familiar and the new tuberculosis treatment hospitals: "So they decided to use a new word which instead of being derived from the Latin noun "sanitas", meaning health, would emphasize the need for scientific healing or treatment. Accordingly, they took the Latin verb root "sano", meaning to heal, and adopted the new word sanatorium."


title: Sanatorium

text: Switzerland used to have many sanatoria, as health professionals believed that clean, cold mountain air was the best treatment for lung diseases. In Finland, a series of tuberculosis sanatoria were built throughout the country in isolated forest areas during the early 1900s. The most famous was the Paimio Sanatorium, completed in 1933, designed by world-renowned architect Alvar Aalto. It had both sun-balconies and a rooftop terrace where the patients would lie all day either in beds or on specially designed chairs, the Paimio Chair. In Portugal, the Heliantia Sanatorium in Valadares was used for the treatment of bone tuberculosis between the 1930s and 1960s.


title: Sanatorium

text: In the early 20th century, tuberculosis sanatoria became common in the United States. The first of several in Asheville, North Carolina was established by Dr Horatio Page Gatchell in 1871, before the cause of tuberculosis (then called "phthisis" or "consumption") was even known. Fifty years earlier, Dr. J.F.E. Hardy had reportedly been cured in the "healing climate". Medical experts reported that at 2,200 feet (670 m) above sea level, air pressure was equal to that in blood vessels, and activities, scenery and lack of stress also helped. In the early 1900s, Arizona's sunshine and dry desert air attracted many people (called "lungers") who had tuberculosis, rheumatism, asthma, and numerous other diseases. Wealthier people chose to recuperate in exclusive TB resorts, while others used their savings to make the journey to Arizona and arrived penniless. TB camps in the desert were formed by pitching tents and building cabins. During the tuberculosis epidemic, cities in Arizona advertised the state as an ideal place for treatment of TB. Many sanatoria in the state of Arizona were modeled after European away-from-city resorts of the time, boasting courtyards and individual rooms. Each sanatorium was equipped to take care of about 120 people.


title: Sanatorium

text: The first sanatorium in the Pacific Northwest opened in Milwaukie Heights, Oregon in 1905, followed closely by the first state-owned TB hospital in Salem, Oregon, in 1910. Oregon was the first state on the West Coast to enact legislation stating that the government was to supply proper housing for people with TB who are unable to receive proper care at home. The West Coast became a popular spot for sanatoriums.


title: Sanatorium

text: The greatest area for sanatoria was in Tucson with over 12 hotel-style facilities in the city. By 1920, Tucson had 7,000 people who had come for treatment of tuberculosis. So many people came to the West that not enough housing was available for them all. In 1910, tent cities began to pop up in different areas; one was described as a place of squalor and shunned by most citizens. Many of the infected slept in the open desert. The area adjacent to what was then central Phoenix, called Sunnyslope, was home to another large TB encampment, with the residents primarily living in tents pitched along the hillsides of the mountains that rise to the north of the city. Several sanatoria also opened in southern California in the early part of the 20th century due to the dry, warm climate.


title: Sanatorium

text: The first tuberculosis sanatorium for blacks in the segregated South was the Piedmont Sanatorium in Burkeville, Virginia. Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a Louisville, Kentucky, tuberculosis sanatorium, was founded in 1911. It has become a mecca for curiosity seekers who believe it is haunted. Because of its dry climate, Colorado Springs was home to several sanatoria. A. G. Holley Hospital in Lantana, Florida, was the last remaining freestanding tuberculosis sanatorium in the United States until it closed on July 2, 2012.


title: Sanatorium

text: In 1907, Stannington Sanatorium was opened in the North East of England to treat tuberculosis in children. The sanatorium was opened using funds raised by a local charity, the Poor Children's Holiday Association, now the region's oldest children's charity, Children North East. The largest U.S. tuberculosis sanatorium was located on the site of Chicago's present-day North Park Village. Chicago's Peterson Park fieldhouse housed the lab and morgue of Chicago's Municipal Tuberculosis Sanatorium.


title: Sanatorium

text: After 1943, when Albert Schatz, then a graduate student at Rutgers University, discovered streptomycin, an antibiotic and the first cure for tuberculosis, sanatoria began to close. As in the case of the Paimio Sanatorium, many were transformed into general hospitals. By the 1950s, tuberculosis was no longer a major public health threat; it was controlled by antibiotics rather than extended rest. Most sanatoria had been demolished years before.


title: Sanatorium

text: Some, however, have been adapted for new medical roles. The Tambaram Sanatorium in south India is now a hospital for AIDS patients. The state hospital in Sanatorium, Mississippi, is now a regional center for programs for treatment and occupational therapy associated with intellectual disability. In Japan in 2001, the ministry of welfare suggested changing the name of a leprosarium to a sanatorium.


title: Chives

text: Chives, scientific name Allium schoenoprasum, is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaryllidaceae that produces edible leaves and flowers. Their close relatives include the common onions, garlic, shallot, leek, scallion, and Chinese onion.


title: Chives

text: Chives are a commonly used herb and can be found in grocery stores or grown in home gardens. In culinary use, the green stalks (scapes) and the unopened, immature flower buds are diced and used as an ingredient for omelettes, fish, potatoes, soups, and many other dishes. The edible flowers can be used in salads. Chives have insect-repelling properties that can be used in gardens to control pests.


title: Chives

text: The plant provides a great deal of nectar for pollinators. It was rated in the top 10 for most nectar production (nectar per unit cover per year) in a UK plants survey conducted by the AgriLand project which is supported by the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative.


title: Chives

text: Chives are a bulb-forming herbaceous perennial plant, growing to tall. The bulbs are slender, conical, long and broad, and grow in dense clusters from the roots. The scapes (or stems) are hollow and tubular, up to long and across, with a soft texture, although, prior to the emergence of a flower, they may appear stiffer than usual. The grass-like leaves, which are shorter than the scapes, are also hollow and tubular, or terete, (round in cross-section) which distinguishes it at a glance from garlic chives ("Allium tuberosum").


title: Chives

text: The flowers are pale purple, and star-shaped with six petals, wide, and produced in a dense inflorescence of 10-30 together; before opening, the inflorescence is surrounded by a papery bract. The seeds are produced in a small, three-valved capsule, maturing in summer. The herb flowers from April to May in the southern parts of its habitat zones and in June in the northern parts.


title: Chives

text: Chives are the only species of "Allium" native to both the New and the Old Worlds. Sometimes, the plants found in North America are classified as "A. schoenoprasum" var. "sibiricum", although this is disputed. Differences between specimens are significant. One example was found in northern Maine growing solitary, instead of in clumps, also exhibiting dingy grey flowers.


title: Chives

text: Although chives are repulsive to insects in general, due to their sulfur compounds, their flowers attract bees, and they are at times kept to increase desired insect life.


title: Chives

text: It was formally described by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in his seminal publication "Species Plantarum" in 1753.


title: Chives

text: The name of the species derives from the Greek σχοίνος, "skhoínos" (sedge or rush) and πράσον, "práson" (leek). Its English name, chives, derives from the French word "cive", from "cepa", the Latin word for onion. In the Middle Ages, it was known as 'rush leek'.


title: Chives

text: Some subspecies have been proposed, but are not accepted by Plants of the World Online, , which sinks them into the species:


title: Chives

text: Varieties have also been proposed, including "A. schoenoprasum" var. "sibiricum". The Flora of North America notes that the species is very variable, and considers recognition of varieties as "unsound".


title: Chives

text: It is found in Asia within the Caucasus (in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), also in China, Iran, Iraq, Japan (within the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russian Federation (within the krais of Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, and Primorye) Siberia and Turkey.


title: Chives

text: In middle Europe, it is found within Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland. In northern Europe, in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In southeastern Europe, within Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania. It is also found in southwestern Europe, in France, Portugal and Spain.


title: Chives

text: In North America, it is found in Canada (within the provinces and territories of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Yukon), and the United States (within the states of Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming).


title: Chives

text: Chives are grown for their scapes and leaves, which are used for culinary purposes as a flavoring herb, and provide a somewhat milder onion-like flavor than those of other "Allium" species.


title: Chives

text: Chives have a wide variety of culinary uses, such as in traditional dishes in France, Sweden, and elsewhere. In his 1806 book "Attempt at a Flora" ("Försök til en flora"), Anders Jahan Retzius describes how chives are used with pancakes, soups, fish, and sandwiches. They are also an ingredient of the "gräddfil" sauce with the traditional herring dish served at Swedish midsummer celebrations. The flowers may also be used to garnish dishes.


title: Chives

text: In Poland and Germany, chives are served with quark. Chives are one of the "fines herbes" of French cuisine, the others being tarragon, chervil and parsley. Chives can be found fresh at most markets year-round, making them readily available; they can also be dry-frozen without much impairment to the taste, giving home growers the opportunity to store large quantities harvested from their own gardens.


title: Chives

text: Retzius also describes how farmers would plant chives between the rocks making up the borders of their flowerbeds, to keep the plants free from pests (such as Japanese beetles). The growing plant repels unwanted insect life, and the juice of the leaves can be used for the same purpose, as well as fighting fungal infections, mildew, and scab.


title: Chives

text: Chives are cultivated both for their culinary uses and for their ornamental value; the violet flowers are often used in ornamental dry bouquets. The flowers are also edible and are used in salads, or used to make blossom vinegars.


title: Chives

text: Chives thrive in well-drained soil, rich in organic matter, with a pH of 6-7 and full sun. They can be grown from seed and mature in summer, or early the following spring. Typically, chives need to be germinated at a temperature of 15 to 20 °C (60-70 °F) and kept moist. They can also be planted under a cloche or germinated indoors in cooler climates, then planted out later. After at least four weeks, the young shoots should be ready to be planted out. They are also easily propagated by division.


title: Chives

text: In cold regions, chives die back to the underground bulbs in winter, with the new leaves appearing in early spring. Chives starting to look old can be cut back to about 2–5 cm. When harvesting, the needed number of stalks should be cut to the base. During the growing season, the plant continually regrows leaves, allowing for a continuous harvest.


title: Chives

text: Chives are susceptible to damage by leek moth larvae, which bore into the leaves or bulbs of the plant.


title: Chives

text: Chives have been cultivated in Europe since the Middle Ages (from the fifth until the 15th centuries), although their usage dates back 5,000 years. They were sometimes referred to as "rush leeks".


title: Chives

text: The Romans believed chives could relieve the pain from sunburn or a sore throat. They believed eating chives could increase blood pressure and act as a diuretic.


title: Chives

text: Romani have used chives in fortune telling. Bunches of dried chives hung around a house were believed to ward off disease and evil.


title: Legend

text: A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time to keep them fresh and vital.


title: Legend

text: Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted. Legends are sometimes distinguished from myths in that they concern human beings as the main characters rather than gods, and sometimes in that they have some sort of historical basis whereas myths generally do not. The Brothers Grimm defined "legend" as "folktale historically grounded". A by-product of the "concern with human beings" is the long list of legendary creatures, leaving no "resolute doubt" that legends are "historically grounded."


title: Legend

text: A modern folklorist's professional definition of "legend" was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990:


title: Legend

text: Legend, typically, is a short (mono-) episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk belief and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs.


title: Legend

text: "Legend" is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage circa 1340. The Old French noun "legende" derives from the Medieval Latin "legenda". In its early English-language usage, the word indicated a narrative of an event. The word "legendary" was originally a noun (introduced in the 1510s) meaning a collection or corpus of legends. This word changed to "legendry", and "legendary" became the adjectival form.


title: Legend

text: By 1613, English-speaking Protestants began to use the word when they wished to imply that an event (especially the story of any saint not acknowledged in John Foxe's "Actes and Monuments") was fictitious. Thus, "legend" gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and "spurious", which distinguish it from the meaning of "chronicle".


title: Legend

text: In 1866, Jacob Grimm described the fairy tale as "poetic, legend historic." Early scholars such as Friedrich Ranke and Will Erich Peuckert followed Grimm's example in focussing solely on the literary narrative, an approach that was enriched particularly after the 1960s, by addressing questions of performance and the anthropological and psychological insights provided in considering legends' social context. Questions of categorising legends, in hopes of compiling a content-based series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index, provoked a search for a broader new synthesis.


title: Legend

text: In an early attempt at defining some basic questions operative in examining folk tales, in 1925 characterised the folk legend as "a popular narrative with an objectively untrue imaginary content", a dismissive position that was subsequently largely abandoned.


title: Legend

text: Compared to the highly structured folktale, legend is comparatively amorphous, Helmut de Boor noted in 1928. The narrative content of legend is in realistic mode, rather than the wry irony of folktale; Wilhelm Heiske remarked on the similarity of motifs in legend and folktale and concluded that, in spite of its realistic mode, legend is not more historical than folktale.


title: Legend

text: In "Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft" (1928), Ernst Bernheim asserted that a legend is simply a longstanding rumour. Gordon Allport credited the staying-power of some rumours to the persistent cultural state-of-mind that they embody and capsulise; thus "Urban legends" are a feature of rumour. When Willian Hugh Jansen suggested that legends that disappear quickly were "short-term legends" and the persistent ones be termed "long-term legends", the distinction between legend and rumour was effectively obliterated, Tangherlini concluded.


title: Legend

text: In a narrow Christian sense, "legenda" ("things to be read [on a certain day, in church]") were hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Because saints' lives are often included in many miracle stories, "legend", in a wider sense, came to refer to any story that is set in a historical context, but that contains supernatural, divine or fantastic elements.


title: Legend

text: Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth: "The "legend", on the other hand, has, of necessity, some historical or topographical connection. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot."


title: Legend

text: From the moment a legend is retold as fiction, its authentic legendary qualities begin to fade and recede: in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", Washington Irving transformed a local Hudson River Valley legend into a literary anecdote with "Gothic" overtones, which actually tended to diminish its character as genuine legend.


title: Legend

text: Stories that exceed the boundaries of "realism" are called "fables". For example, the talking animal formula of Aesop identifies his brief stories as fables, not legends. The parable of the Prodigal Son would be a legend if it were told as having actually happened to a specific son of a historical father. If it included a donkey that gave sage advice to the Prodigal Son it would be a fable.


title: Legend

text: Legend may be transmitted orally, passed on person-to-person, or, in the original sense, through written text. Jacobus de Voragine's "Legenda Aurea" or "The Golden Legend" comprises a series of "vitae" or instructive biographical narratives, tied to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. They are presented as lives of the saints, but the profusion of miraculous happenings and above all their uncritical context are characteristics of hagiography. The "Legenda" was intended to inspire extemporized homilies and sermons appropriate to the saint of the day.


title: Legend

text: Urban legends are a modern genre of folklore that is rooted in local popular culture, usually comprising fictional stories that are often presented as true, with macabre or humorous elements. These legends can be used for entertainment purposes, as well as semi-serious explanations for seemingly-mysterious events, such as disappearances and strange objects.


title: Legend

text: The term "urban legend," as used by folklorists, has appeared in print since at least 1968. Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981. Brunvand used his collection of legends, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings" (1981) to make two points: first, that legends and folklore do not occur exclusively in so-called primitive or traditional societies, and second, that one could learn much about urban and modern culture by studying such tales.


title: Regions of Europe

text: Europe, the westernmost portion of Eurasia—is often divided into regions and subregions based on geographical, cultural or historical factors. Since there is no universal agreement on Europe's regional composition, the placement of individual countries may vary based on criteria being used. For instance, the Balkans is a distinct geographic region within Europe but individual countries may alternatively be grouped into Southern Europe (as is often the case of Greece), in Southeastern Europe (as in the case of Bulgaria), or less commonly altogether lumped with East Central Europe.


title: Regions of Europe

text: Regional affiliation of countries may also evolve over time. Malta was considered an island of North Africa for centuries but is now generally considered part of Southern Europe. The exact placement of the Caucasus has also varied since classical antiquity and is now regarded as a distinct region within or partly in Europe. Greenland is technically part of North America but has been politically and culturally associated with Northern Europe for more than a millennium. As such, several countries are often included as belonging to a "Greater Europe", including Armenia, Cyprus, Greenland, as well as the overseas territories and regions of the European Union.


title: Regions of Europe

text: Groupings by compass directions are the hardest to define in Europe, since there are a few calculations of the midpoint of Europe (among other issues), and the pure geographical criteria of "east" and "west" are often confused with the political meaning these words acquired during the Cold War era.


title: Regions of Europe

text: Note: There is no universally agreed definition for continental subregions. Depending on the source, some of the subregions, such as Central Europe or South-eastern Europe, can be listed as first-tier subregions. Some transregional countries, such as Romania or the United Kingdom, can be included in multiple subregions.


title: Regions of Europe

text: Europe can be divided along many differing historical lines, normally corresponding to those parts that were inside or outside a particular cultural phenomenon, empire or political division. The areas varied at different times, and so it is arguable as to which were part of some common historical entity (e.g., were Germany or Britain part of Roman Europe as they were only partly and relatively briefly part of the Empire—or were the countries of the former communist Yugoslavia part of the Eastern Bloc, since it was not in the Warsaw Pact).


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as "lowland equatorial evergreen rainforest". True rainforests are typically found between 10 degrees north and south of the equator (see map); they are a sub-set of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28-degree latitudes (in the equatorial zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn). Within the World Wildlife Fund's biome classification, tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest (or tropical wet forest) that also includes the more extensive seasonal tropical forests.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests are characterized by two words: hot and wet. Mean monthly temperatures exceed during all months of the year. Average annual rainfall is no less than and can exceed although it typically lies between and . This high level of precipitation often results in poor soils due to leaching of soluble nutrients in the ground.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests exhibit high levels of biodiversity. Around 40% to 75% of all biotic species are indigenous to the rainforests. Rainforests are home to half of all the living animal and plant species on the planet. Two-thirds of all flowering plants can be found in rainforests. A single hectare of rainforest may contain 42,000 different species of insect, up to 807 trees of 313 species and 1,500 species of higher plants. Tropical rainforests have been called the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered within them. It is likely that there may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests are among the most threatened ecosystems globally due to large-scale fragmentation as a result of human activity. Habitat fragmentation caused by geological processes such as volcanism and climate change occurred in the past, and have been identified as important drivers of speciation. However, fast human driven habitat destruction is suspected to be one of the major causes of species extinction. Tropical rain forests have been subjected to heavy logging and agricultural clearance throughout the 20th century, and the area covered by rainforests around the world is rapidly shrinking.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests have existed on earth for hundreds of millions of years. Most tropical rainforests today are on fragments of the Mesozoic era supercontinent of Gondwana. The separation of the landmass resulted in a great loss of amphibian diversity while at the same time the drier climate spurred the diversification of reptiles. The division left tropical rainforests located in five major regions of the world: tropical America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and New Guinea, with smaller outliers in Australia. However, the specifics of the origin of rainforests remain uncertain due to an incomplete fossil record.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Moist seasonal tropical forests receive high overall rainfall with a warm summer wet season and a cooler winter dry season. Some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the winter dry season, thus they are sometimes called "tropical mixed forest". They are found in parts of South America, in Central America and around the Caribbean, in coastal West Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent, and across much of Indochina.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: These are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas, becoming known as cloud forests at higher elevations. Depending on latitude, the lower limit of montane rainforests on large mountains is generally between 1500 and 2500 m while the upper limit is usually from 2400 to 3300 m.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical freshwater swamp forests, or "flooded forests", are found in Amazon basin (the Várzea) and elsewhere.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Rainforests are divided into different strata, or layers, with vegetation organized into a vertical pattern from the top of the soil to the canopy. Each layer is a unique biotic community containing different plants and animals adapted for life in that particular strata. Only the emergent layer is unique to tropical rainforests, while the others are also found in temperate rainforests.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: The forest floor, the bottom-most layer, receives only 2% of the sunlight. Only plants adapted to low light can grow in this region. Away from riverbanks, swamps and clearings, where dense undergrowth is found, the forest floor is relatively clear of vegetation because of the low sunlight penetration. This more open quality permits the easy movement of larger animals such as: ungulates like the okapi ("Okapia johnstoni"), tapir ("Tapirus" sp.), Sumatran rhinoceros ("Dicerorhinus sumatrensis"), and apes like the western lowland gorilla ("Gorilla gorilla"), as well as many species of reptiles, amphibians, and insects. The forest floor also contains decaying plant and animal matter, which disappears quickly, because the warm, humid conditions promote rapid decay. Many forms of fungi growing here help decay the animal and plant waste.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: The understory layer lies between the canopy and the forest floor. The understory is home to a number of birds, small mammals, insects, reptiles, and predators. Examples include leopard ("Panthera pardus"), poison dart frogs ("Dendrobates" sp.), ring-tailed coati ("Nasua nasua"), boa constrictor ("Boa constrictor"), and many species of Coleoptera. The vegetation at this layer generally consists of shade-tolerant shrubs, herbs, small trees, and large woody vines which climb into the trees to capture sunlight. Only about 5% of sunlight breaches the canopy to arrive at the understory causing true understory plants to seldom grow to 3 m (10 feet). As an adaptation to these low light levels, understory plants have often evolved much larger leaves. Many seedlings that will grow to the canopy level are in the understory.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: The canopy is the primary layer of the forest, forming a roof over the two remaining layers. It contains the majority of the largest trees, typically 30–45 m in height. Tall, broad-leaved evergreen trees are the dominant plants. The densest areas of biodiversity are found in the forest canopy, as it often supports a rich flora of epiphytes, including orchids, bromeliads, mosses and lichens. These epiphytic plants attach to trunks and branches and obtain water and minerals from rain and debris that collects on the supporting plants. The fauna is similar to that found in the emergent layer, but more diverse. It is suggested that the total arthropod species richness of the tropical canopy might be as high as 20 million. Other species inhabiting this layer include many avian species such as the yellow-casqued wattled hornbill ("Ceratogymna elata"), collared sunbird ("Anthreptes collaris"), grey parrot ("Psitacus erithacus"), keel-billed toucan ("Ramphastos sulfuratus"), scarlet macaw ("Ara macao") as well as other animals like the spider monkey ("Ateles" sp.), African giant swallowtail ("Papilio antimachus"), three-toed sloth ("Bradypus tridactylus"), kinkajou ("Potos flavus"), and tamandua ("Tamandua tetradactyla").


title: Tropical rainforest

text: The emergent layer contains a small number of very large trees, called "emergents", which grow above the general canopy, reaching heights of 45–55 m, although on occasion a few species will grow to 70–80 m tall. Some examples of emergents include: "Balizia elegans", "Dipteryx panamensis", "Hieronyma alchorneoides", "Hymenolobium mesoamericanum", "Lecythis ampla" and "Terminalia oblonga". These trees need to be able to withstand the hot temperatures and strong winds that occur above the canopy in some areas. Several unique faunal species inhabit this layer such as the crowned eagle ("Stephanoaetus coronatus"), the king colobus ("Colobus polykomos"), and the large flying fox ("Pteropus vampyrus").


title: Tropical rainforest

text: However, stratification is not always clear. Rainforests are dynamic and many changes affect the structure of the forest. Emergent or canopy trees collapse, for example, causing gaps to form. Openings in the forest canopy are widely recognized as important for the establishment and growth of rainforest trees. It is estimated that perhaps 75% of the tree species at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica are dependent on canopy opening for seed germination or for growth beyond sapling size, for example.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Tropical rainforests are located around and near the equator, therefore having what is called an equatorial climate characterized by three major climatic parameters: temperature, rainfall, and dry season intensity. Other parameters that affect tropical rainforests are carbon dioxide concentrations, solar radiation, and nitrogen availability. In general, climatic patterns consist of warm temperatures and high annual rainfall. However, the abundance of rainfall changes throughout the year creating distinct moist and dry seasons. Tropical forests are classified by the amount of rainfall received each year, which has allowed ecologists to define differences in these forests that look so similar in structure. According to Holdridge's classification of tropical ecosystems, true tropical rainforests have an annual rainfall greater than 2 m and annual temperature greater than 24 degrees Celsius, with a potential evapotranspiration ratio (PET) value of <0.25. However, most lowland tropical forests can be classified as tropical moist or wet forests, which differ in regards to rainfall. Tropical forest ecology- dynamics, composition, and function- are sensitive to changes in climate especially changes in rainfall.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Soil types are highly variable in the tropics and are the result of a combination of several variables such as climate, vegetation, topographic position, parent material, and soil age. Most tropical soils are characterized by significant leaching and poor nutrients, however there are some areas that contain fertile soils. Soils throughout the tropical rainforests fall into two classifications which include the ultisols and oxisols. Ultisols are known as well weathered, acidic red clay soils, deficient in major nutrients such as calcium and potassium. Similarly, oxisols are acidic, old, typically reddish, highly weathered and leached, however are well drained compared to ultisols. The clay content of ultisols is high, making it difficult for water to penetrate and flow through. The reddish color of both soils is the result of heavy heat and moisture forming oxides of iron and aluminium, which are insoluble in water and not taken up readily by plants.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Soil chemical and physical characteristics are strongly related to above ground productivity and forest structure and dynamics. The physical properties of soil control the tree turnover rates whereas chemical properties such as available nitrogen and phosphorus control forest growth rates. The soils of the eastern and central Amazon as well as the Southeast Asian Rainforest are old and mineral poor whereas the soils of the western Amazon (Ecuador and Peru) and volcanic areas of Costa Rica are young and mineral rich. Primary productivity or wood production is highest in western Amazon and lowest in eastern Amazon which contains heavily weathered soils classified as oxisols. Additionally, Amazonian soils are greatly weathered, making them devoid of minerals like phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, which come from rock sources. However, not all tropical rainforests occur on nutrient poor soils, but on nutrient rich floodplains and volcanic soils located in the Andean foothills, and volcanic areas of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America.


title: Tropical rainforest

text: Oxisols, infertile, deeply weathered and severely leached, have developed on the ancient Gondwanan shields. Rapid bacterial decay prevents the accumulation of humus. The concentration of iron and aluminium oxides by the laterization process gives the oxisols a bright red color and sometimes produces minable deposits (e.g., bauxite). On younger substrates, especially of volcanic origin, tropical soils may be quite fertile.