Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.2 million km² (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers six percent of Earth's total surface area and 20.4 percent of its total land area. With 1.1 billion people as of 2013, it accounts for about 15% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries), nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition.

Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4.Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria by population. Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to around seven million years ago, including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.

Black people

Black people is a term used in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity, to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned compared to other given populations. As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends significantly on context. For many other individuals, communities and countries, "black" is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result is neither used nor defined.

Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. For example, in North America the term black people is not necessarily an indicator of skin color or majority ethnic ancestry, but it is instead a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history associated with institutionalized slavery. In South Africa and Latin America, for instance, mixed-race people are generally not classified as "black." In South Pacific regions such as Australia and Melanesia, European colonists applied the term "black" or it was used by populations with different histories and ethnic origin.

Crash Course

Crash Course (also known as Driving Academy) is a 1988 made for television teen film directed by Oz Scott.

Plot

Crash Course centers on a group of high schoolers in a driver’s education class; many for the second or third time. The recently divorced teacher, super-passive Larry Pearl, is on thin ice with the football fanatic principal, Principal Paulson, who is being pressured by the district superintendent to raise driver’s education completion rates or lose his coveted football program. With this in mind, Principal Paulson and his assistant, with a secret desire for his job, Abner Frasier, hire an outside driver’s education instructor with a very tough reputation, Edna Savage, aka E.W. Savage, who quickly takes control of the class.

The plot focuses mostly on the students and their interactions with their teachers and each other. In the beginning, Rico is the loner with just a few friends, Chadley is the bookish nerd with few friends who longs to be cool and also longs to be a part of Vanessa’s life who is the young, friendly and attractive girl who had to fake her mother’s signature on her driver’s education permission slip. Kichi is the hip-hop Asian kid who often raps what he has to say and constantly flirts with Maria, the rich foreign girl who thinks that the right-of-way on the roadways always goes to (insert awesomely fake foreign Latino accent) “my father’s limo”. Finally you have stereotypical football meathead J.J., who needs to pass his English exam to keep his eligibility and constantly asks out and gets rejected by Alice, the tomboy whose father owns “Santini & Son” Concrete Company. Alice is portrayed as being the “son” her father wanted.

Colonisation of Africa

The history of external colonisation of Africa can be divided into two stages: Classical antiquity and European colonialism. In popular parlance, discussions of colonialism in Africa usually focus on the European conquests that resulted in the scramble for Africa after the Berlin Conference in the 19th century.

In nearly all African countries today, the language used in government and media is a relic inherited from one of these waves of colonisation. The existence of a vast African diaspora is largely the legacy of the practice of transporting millions of African slaves out of the continent by these external colonisers. Some modern scholars also blame the current under-development of Africa on the colonial era.

Chronological overview

World history

World history, global history or transnational history (not to be confused with diplomatic or international history) is a field of historical study that emerged as a distinct academic field in the 1980s. It examines history from a global perspective. It is not to be confused with comparative history, which, like world history, deals with the history of multiple cultures on a global scale. World historians use a thematic approach, with two major focal points: integration (how processes of world history have drawn people of the world together) and difference (how patterns of world history reveal the diversity of the human experiences).

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History

Pre-modern

The study of world history, as distinct from national history, has existed in many world cultures. However, early forms of world history were not truly global, and were limited to only the regions known by the historian.

In Ancient China, Chinese world history, that of China and the surrounding people of East Asia, was based on the dynastic cycle articulated by Sima Qian in circa 100 BC. Sima Qian's model is based on the Mandate of Heaven. Rulers rise when they united China, then are overthrown when a ruling dynasty became corrupt. Each new dynasty begins virtuous and strong, but then decays, provoking the transfer of Heaven's mandate to a new ruler. The test of virtue in a new dynasty is success in being obeyed by China and neighboring barbarians. After 2000 years Sima Qian's model still dominates scholarship, although the dynastic cycle is no longer used for modern Chinese history.