HISTORY OF COTTON

History of Cotton No one knows exactly how old cotton is. Scientists searching caves in Mexico found bits of cotton bolls and pieces of cotton cloth that proved to be at least 7,000 years old. They also found that the cotton itself was much like that grown in America today. In the Indus River Valley in Pakistan, cotton was being grown, spun and woven into cloth 3,000 years BC. At about the same time, natives of Egypt’s Nile valley were making and wearing cotton clothing. Arab merchants brought cotton cloth to Europe about 800 A.D. When Columbus discovered America in 1492, he found cotton growing in the Bahama Islands. By 1500, cotton was known generally throughout the world. Cotton seed are believed to have been planted in Florida in 1556 and in Virginia in 1607. By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia. Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in 1730. The industrial revolution in England and the invention of the cotton gin in the U.S. paved the way for the important place cotton holds in the world today. Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts, secured a patent on the cotton gin in 1793, though patent office records indicate that the first cotton gin may have been built by a machinist named Noah Homes two years before Whitney’s patent was filed. The gin, short for engine, could do the work 10 times faster than by hand. The gin made it possible to supply large quantities of cotton fiber to the fast-growing textile industry. Within 10 years, the value of the U.S. cotton crop rose from $150,000 to more than $8 million.

HISTORY OF BADMINTON

The history of the development of modern badminton is a very long and complex one. Below is a brief account of the history of the game.

Origins of the Game

The sport of badminton has its origins in ancient civilisations in Europe and Asia.  The ancient game known as battledore (bat or paddle) and shuttlecock probably originated more than 2000 years ago.

In the 1600s Battledore and Shuttlecock was an upper class pastime in England and many European countries. Battledore and Shuttlecock was simply two people hitting a shuttlecock backwards and forwards with a simple bat as many times as they could without allowing it to hit the ground.

Contemporary Badminton

A contemporary form of badminton  - a game called ‘Poon’, was played in India in the 1800s where a net was introduced and players hit the shuttlecock across the net. British officers in the mid 1800’s took this game back to England and it was introduced as a game for the guests of the Duke of Beaufort at his stately home ‘Badminton’ in Gloucestershire, England where it became popular.

In March 1898, the first Open Tournament was held at Guildford the first 'All England' Championships were held the following year. Denmark, the USA and Canada became ardent followers of the game during the 1930s.

IBF Established in 1934

Then in 1934, the International Badminton Federation was formed, with the initial members including England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Holland, Canada, New Zealand and France, with India joining as an affiliate in 1936.

The first major IBF tournament was the Thomas Cup (world men's team championships) in 1948. Since then, the number of world events has increased with the addition of the Uber Cup (women’s team), World Championships (individual events), Sudirman Cup (mixed team), World Junior Championships and the World Grand Prix Finals.

Commonwealth Games Sport - 1966

Badminton was introduced as a Commonwealth Games program sport in Kingston Jamaica in 1966 and has been part of every Commonwealth Games program since then. Initially all five disciplines were included – singles (men, women), doubles (men, women) and mixed doubles with the Teams Event included in the program in later Commonwealth Games. 

Olympic Games Sport - 1992

Badminton is a relatively new Olympic Games sport. After being a demonstration sport in Munich in 1972, badminton became an Olympic sport in Barcelona in 1992 with the singles and doubles disciplines introduced for the first time in the Olympic Games. In Atlanta in 1996, a mixed doubles event was included and this is the only mixed doubles event in all of the Olympic sports.

The following countries have won medals in badminton at an Olympic Games since its introduction in 1992 -  China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Russia.

Susi Susanti from Indonesia won the women’s singles in Barcelona, becoming Indonesia’s first medallist in the 40 years Indonesia had competed at the Games. In the same Olympic Games, Alan Budi Kusama won Indonesia’s second gold medal in the men’s badminton singles.

FERDINAND MARCOS BIOGRAPHY

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Born: September 11, 1917
Sarrat, Philippines
Died: September 28, 1989
Honolulu, Hawaii
Filipino president and politician
Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos began his career in politics with the murder of Julio Nalundasan in 1935, and ended it after the murder of Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. Some believe his entire life was based on fraud, deceit, and theft, and his time as president has come to represent one of the prime examples of a corrupt government.

Youth and family

Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was born on September 11, 1917, in Sarrat, a village in the Ilocos North region of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. His parents, Josefa Edralin and Mariano Marcos, were both teachers from important families. In 1925 Mariano Marcos became a congressman, surrounding the young Ferdinand in a political atmosphere at an early age. Mariano also had a strong influence on what was to become Ferdinand's competitive, win-at-all-costs nature. Mariano and Josefa pushed Ferdinand to excel at everything, not only his studies at school, but also at activities such as wrestling, boxing, hunting, survival skills, and marks-manship (skill with a gun or rifle). In college, Marcos's main interest was the .22-caliber college pistol team.
Marcos's real father was not Mariano but a wealthy Chinese man named Ferdinand Chua. (Marcos would claim that Chua was his "godfather.") Chua was a well-connected judge who was responsible for much of Marcos's unusual good luck as a young man. Among other things, Chua paid for young Marcos's schooling and later managed to influence the Philippine Supreme Court to overturn the young Marcos's conviction for murder.
On September 20, 1935, Julio Nalundasan was at home celebrating his congressional election victory over Mariano Marcos when he was shot and killed with a .22-caliber bullet fired by the eighteen-year-old Ferdinand Marcos. Three years later, Ferdinand was arrested for Nalundasan's murder. A year later, after having graduated from law school, he was found guilty of the crime. While in jail Marcos spent six months writing his own appeal for a new trial. When the Supreme Court finally took up Marcos's appeal in 1940, the judge in charge (apparently influenced by Judge Chua) threw out the case. Marcos was a free man. The next day, he returned to the Supreme Court and took the oath to become a lawyer.

Wartime activities

Throughout Marcos's childhood, the Philippines had been a colony (a foreign region under the control of another country) of the United States. However, the Philippines had been largely self-governing and gained independence in 1946. This occurred only after fierce fighting in the country during World War II (1939–45), the international conflict for control of large areas of the world between the Axis (Germany, Japan, and Italy) and the Allies (United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and others). During

Ferdinand Marcos.
Reproduced by permission of

AP/Wide World Photos

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World War II, the Philippines were invaded and occupied by the Japanese, while U.S. forces and Filipino resistance fighters fought to regain control of the country. Marcos emerged from World War II with a reputation as the greatest Filipino resistance leader of the war and the most decorated soldier in the U.S. armed forces. However, he appeared to have spent the war on both sides, lending support to both the Japanese and the United States. In early 1943 in Manila (the capital of the Philippines), Marcos created a "secret" resistance organization called Ang Mga Maharlika that he claimed consisted of agents working against the Japanese. In fact, the group consisted of many criminals—forgers, pickpockets, gunmen, and gangsters—hoping to make money in the wartime climate.
At the war's end, Marcos took up the practice of law again. He often filed false claims in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Filipino veterans seeking back pay (wages owed) and benefits. Encouraged by his success with these claims, he filed a $595 thousand claim on his own behalf, stating that the U.S. Army had taken over two thousand head of cattle from Mariano Marcos's ranch. In fact, this ranch never existed, which made Washington conclude that the cattle never existed.

Political career

In December 1948 a magazine editor published four articles on Marcos's war experiences, causing Marcos's reputation to grow. In 1949, campaigning on promises to get veterans' benefits for two million Filipinos, Marcos ran as a Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives. He won with 70 percent of the vote. In less than a year he was worth a million dollars, mostly because of his American tobacco subsidies (financial assistance to grow tobacco), a huge cigarette smuggling operation, and his practice of pressuring Chinese businesses to cooperate with him. In 1954 he formally met Imelda Romualdez (1929–) and married her.
Marcos was reelected twice, and in 1959 he was elected to the Philippine Senate. He was also the Liberal Party's vice-president from 1954 to 1961, when he successfully managed Diosdado Macapagal's (1911–1997) run for the Philippine presidency. As part of his arrangement with Marcos, Macapagal was supposed to step aside after one term to allow Marcos to run for the presidency. When Macapagal did not do this, Marcos joined the opposition Nationalist Party and became their candidate in the 1965 election against Macapagal and easily won. Marcos was now president of the Philippines.
In 1969 Marcos became the first Philippine president to win a second term. However, not all Filipinos were happy with his presidency, and the month following his reelection included the most violent public demonstrations in the history of the country. Three years later, facing growing student protest and a crumbling economy, Marcos declared martial law, a state of emergency in which military authorities are given extraordinary powers to maintain order. Marcos's excuse for declaring martial law was the growing revolutionary movement of the Communist New People's Army, which opposed his government.
During the next nine years of martial law, Marcos tripled the armed forces to some two hundred thousand troops, guaranteeing his grip on government. When martial law was lifted in 1981, he kept all the power he had been granted under martial law to himself. Meanwhile the economy continued to crumble while Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos became one of the richest couples in the world. As Marcos's health began to fail and U.S. support for him lessened, opposition to Marcos grew in the Philippine middle class.

Final years

The Marcos regime began to collapse after the August 1983 assassination (political killing) of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. (1933–1983), who had been Marcos's main political rival. Aquino was shot and killed when he arrived at the Manila airport after three years in the United States. The killing enraged Filipinos, as did authorities' claim that the murder was the work of a single gunman. A year later, a civilian investigation brought charges against a number of soldiers and government officials, but in 1985 none of them were found guilty. Nevertheless, most Filipinos believe that Marcos was involved in Aquino's killing.
Marcos next called for a "snap [sudden] election" to be held early in 1986. In that election, which was marked by violence and charges of fraud, Marcos's opponent was Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. When the Philippine National Assembly announced that Marcos was the winner, a rebellion in the Philippine military, supported by hundreds of thousands of Filipinos marching in the streets, forced Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to flee the country.
Marcos asked for U.S. aid but was given nothing more than an air force jet, which flew him and Imelda to Hawaii. He remained there until his death on September 28, 1989. The Marcoses had taken with them more than twenty-eight million cash in Philippine currency. President Aquino's administration said this was only a small part of the Marcoses' illegally gained wealth.

For More Information

Bonner, Raymond. Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
Celoza, Albert F. Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines: The Political Economy of Authoritarianism. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
Romulo, Beth Day. Inside the Palace: The Rise and Fall of Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos. New York: Putnam, 1987.
Seagrave, Sterling. The Marcos Dynasty. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Spence, Hartzell. For Every Tear a Victory: The Story of Ferdinand E. Marcos New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.


ORAGINAL WRITE

The Philippines During Martial Law

Proclamation of Martial Law: On September 21, 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos placed the Philippines under Martial Law. The declaration issued under Proclamation 1081 suspended the civil rights and imposed military authority in the country. Marcos defended the declaration stressing the need for extra powers to quell the rising wave of violence allegedly caused by communists. The emergency rule was also intended to eradicate the roots of rebellion and promote a rapid trend for national development. The autocrat assured the country of the legality of Martial Law emphasizing the need for control over civil disobedience that displays lawlessness. Marcos explained citing the provisions from the Philippine Constitution that Martial Law is a strategic approach to legally defend the Constitution and protect the welfare of the Filipino people from the dangerous threats posed by Muslim rebel groups and Christian vigilantes that places national security at risk during the time. Marcos explained that martial law was not a military takeover but was then the only option to resolve the country’s dilemma on rebellion that stages national chaos threatening the peace and order of the country. The emergency rule, according to Marcos’s plan, was to lead the country into what he calls a “New Society”.

Marcos used several events to justify martial law. Threat to the country’s security was intensifying following the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968. Supporters of CPP’s military arm, the New People’s Army, also grew in numbers in Tarlac and other parts of the country. The alleged attempt to the life of then Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile gave Marcos a window to declare Martial Law. Marcos announced the emergency rule the day after the shooting incident. Marcos also declared insurgency in the south caused by the clash between Muslims and Christians, which Marcos considered as a threat to national security. The Muslims were defending their ancestral land against the control of Christians who migrated in the area. The minority group organized the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in Malaysia and pushed for the autonomy of Mindanao from the national government.

The move was initially supported by most Filipinos and was viewed by some critics as a change that solved the massive corruption in the country. Martial law ceased the clash between the executive and legislative branches of the government and a bureaucracy characterized by special interest. Marcos started to implement reforms on social and political values that hindered effective modernization. To match the accomplishments of its Asian neighbors, Marcos imposed the need for self-sacrifice for the attainment of national welfare. His reforms targeted his rivals within the elite depriving them of their power and patronage but did not affect their supporters (US Library of Congress, Martial Law and the Aftermath).

Thirty-thousand opposition figures including Senator Benigno Aquino, journalists, student and labor activists were detained at military compounds under the President’s command (Proclamation 1081 and Martial Law). The army and the Philippine Constabulary seized weapons and disbanded private armies controlled by prominent politicians and other influential figures (Proclamation 1081 and Martial Law). Marcos took control of the legislature and closed the Philippine Congress (Proclamation 1081 and Martial Law). Numerous media outfits were either closed down or operated under tight control (Proclamation 1081 and Martial Law). Marcos also allegedly funnelled millions of the country’s money by placing some of his trusted supporters in strategic economic positions to channel resources to him. Experts call this the “crony capitalism.”

The deterioration of the political and economic condition in the Philippines triggered the decline of support on Marcos’ plans. More and more Filipinos took arms to dislodge the regime. Urban poor communities in the country’s capital were organized by the Philippine Ecumenical Council for Community and were soon conducting protest masses and prayer rallies. These efforts including the exposure of numerous human rights violations pushed Marcos to hold an election in 1978 and 1981 in an aim to stabilize the country’s chaotic condition. Marcos, in both events, won the election; however, his extended term as President of the Republic of the Philippines elicited an extensive opposition against his regime. Social unrest reached its height after former Senator Benigno Aquino was murdered. The incident sent thousands of Filipinos to the streets calling for Marcos’ removal from post. Turning again to his electoral strategy, Marcos held a snap election in 1986 but what he hoped will satisfy the masses only increased their determination to end his rule that seated Corazon Aquino, widow of Benigno Aquino, as President of the Philippines ousting Marcos from Malacañang Palace and ending the twenty-one years of tyrant rule.

ORIGAN WRITE

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