Excerpts from the Book
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* The Equal of Any Group in the World
* Political and Civil Rights Activists
* New Millenium
* Golf
* Biological Sciences
* Physical Sciences
* Architecture
* Ecology
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Miss Universe Janelle
"Penny" Commissiong
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''The Equal of any Group in the World''
''I rejoice with superlatives,'' writes the poet Cecil Gray, ''that a small island finds Gullivers born on its shore.'' And indeed, in this renaissance nation of Trinidad & Tobago the superlatives flow as casual as commas punctuating the list: the fastest, the strongest, the brightest and the most beautiful.
Another poet, the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, points to ''the depth and contradictions that enrich a place like Trinidad. It is so varied and concentrated in its variety that it is probably one of the most exciting places in the world to work in.''
The Jamaican writer, Rachel Manley, exults in the fact that her father, Michael, was emphatic that the Caribbean's high achievers ''gave us the sense of the Caribbean as a great centre of potential excellence, a tiny part of the world with a very small population who were running world records, Olympic records, who were taking on the best at the highest level and winning. They were burning into our souls the conviction that we were the equal of any group in the world.''
These accolades could encourage conceit. But in Trinidad & Tobago it seems our international celebrities do not know that they are. Accessible as salt, the Nobel Laureate is on first name terms with the youngest in his cast, the Olympic 100 Metres Champion takes a ribbing from a schoolboy, and the most innocuous male gets to dance with Miss Universe or Miss World.
Outsiders who have observed this are baffled, because to them it seems that to be on first name terms with a Nobel Laureate, to dance with the most beautiful woman in the universe, to trade jokes with the fastest man in the world- all such rare occurrences in the outside world - are commonplace in this area of abundance at the mouth of the Orinoco.
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Political and Civil Rights Activists
Individuals from Trinidad & Tobago have made substantial contributions to the civil rights and nationalist movements in the United States, China and Africa.
Kwame Turé, then known as Stokely Carmichael, coined the phrase Black Power when he was one of the leaders of the United States Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. At about the same time in the United Kingdom, Dame Jocelyn Barrow was one of the founders of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD). From 1964 to 1969 she was General Secretary of CARD, which was largely responsible for the British Government's enactment of the Race Relations Act in 1968. Their predecessor in the civil rights struggle, Jean-Baptiste Phillippe, long before that, won the first civil rights case in the New World in 1829.
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Kwame Turé
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In the field of political activism, Eugene Chen, in the 1910s and 1920s, was at the forefront of the struggle to loosen the British stranglehold on China, the most populous nation in the world;
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Eugene Chen
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George Padmore and CLR James were at the vanguard in the fight for the independence of African colonies, which resulted in the independence of Ghana in 1957 and opened the flood gates that resulted in independence, ten years later, for 40 other African states, whose combined population was over 100 million people; and Henry Sylvester Williams was the first to develop the concept of Pan-Africanism.
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George Padmore
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But the involvement of these individuals did not end with independence: Trinidad & Tobago has sent its sons and daughters to the far corners of the globe to help with governance of countries as far away as China and Africa. Eugene Chen was the Foreign Minister to four successive governments in China and the personal advisor to Sun Yat Sen, the founder of Nationalist China; George Padmore was the personal advisor to Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of an independent Ghana; Learie Constantine, as Baron Constantine, sat in the House of Lords, the upper House of the British Parliament; and closer to home CLR James was invited back to Trinidad & Tobago after independence to edit the newspaper of the ruling party.
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C.L.R.James
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New Millennium
Heather Headley
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Fast forward to the new millennium and the patterns of extraordinary achievements continue to be woven:
Heather Headley receives the 2000 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role in Aida on Broadway;
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Sam Mendes directing the Movie Jarhead
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Sam Mendes receives the 2000 Oscar for Best Director of a Movie American Beauty;
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V.S. Naipaul
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V.S. Naipaul is awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature; Peter Minshall receives the 2002 Emmy Award for "Outstanding Costumes for A Variety or Music Program"/Opening Ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games; Darrel Brown sets a new World Junior Record in the 100 Metres in 2003;
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Ria Ramnarine
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Ria Ramnarine wins the Women's International Boxing Association Minimumweight Title on May 28th 2005; Giselle Salandy wins the WIBC Lightweight Championship on September 23rd 2005 and unifies the junior middleweight titles of the WBA and WBC titles on September 16th 2006; Brian Lara becomes the first man in history to score 400 runs in a Test Match on April 12th 2004; and Brian Lara again sets a major record of the most aggregate runs in Test Cricket on November 26th 2005.
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Golf
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On the golf course, PGA tour member, Stephen Ames, has won twice against the top players in the world, including Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh – a prize of US$1.44 million in the 2006 Players Championship at Ponte Vedra Beach, the richest event on the United States PGA Tour and a prize of US$0.9 million in the 2004 Cialis Western Open.
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Stephen Ames
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Biological Science
In the field of medical science, this country has produced the likes of Dr. Emmanuel Cyprian Amoroso, acknowledged as the father of modern Obstetrics and Gynaecology, whose crucial research on the endocrinology and biochemistry of the placenta clarified the relationship between the placenta and the womb and thus led to the establishment of modern Obstetrics and Gynaecology;
Dr. Courtenay Bartholomew
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Dr. Rodney Maingot
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Dr. Alastair Karmody
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Dr Courtenay Bartholomew, the first to diagnose a case of AIDS in the West Indies, co-discovered a new disease called human T-cell leukemia-lymphoma virus (HTLV) in Trinidad & Tobago; Dr. Rodney Maingot, author of the renowned textbook, Maingot's Abdominal Operations, published in 1931, reproduced in 10 editions and used around the world in the training of surgeons; Dr. Bertrand Achong, co-discoverer in 1964 of the Epstein-Barr Virus, which is associated with AIDS, herpes, hepatitis, leukemia and malaria; Dr. Allastair Karmody, pioneer of ''in-situ saphenous vein bypass'' technique for vascular obstruction; and Dr. Joseph Lennox Pawan, medical researcher whose work led to the discovery and isolation of the rabies virus in 1933.
In the related discipline of veterinary science, Dr. Steve Bennett, between 1949 and 1964, developed a new breed of water buffalo in Trinidad which he named the buffalypso, appropriately combining the words buffalo and calypso. This animal bred in Trinidad is the world's most versatile new meat and milk animal. Its milk is used to produce the world famous Mozzarella cheese, a firm white Italian cheese commonly used in pizza.
Physical Sciences
Although these historical achievements have put Trinidad & Tobago on the scientific map, the present work of two cutting-edge young Trinidadians is likely to shake up the world in electronic technology, and solve one of the most fundamental mysteries in physics.
Dr. Stephon Alexander
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Dr. Stephon Alexander, a string theorist and cosmologist at Pennsylvania State University is working on a solution to what is perhaps the greatest mystery in physics, the Cosmological Constant problem because it impacts on our universe on both the microscopic and cosmological scales. Einstein had abandoned the cosmological constant and called it the "biggest blunder" of his life, but this has since been revisited by modern physicists like Professor Stephon Alexander, who is on the verge of a phenomenal breakthrough, perhaps the biggest ever in all of science, the perennial quest to unlock the mysteries of the universe, the origin of space time. In 2006, Professor Stephon Alexander was named National Geographic Emerging Explorer, a distinction reserved for Scientists ''who are making a significant contribution to world knowledge through exploration while still early in their careers.''
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Dr. Andre Cropper, is an electrical engineer who is making a major contribution to modern technology's most important area, flat screen displays used in everything from ATM machines and flat screen TVs to laptop computers. This inventor's research has resulted in a 2006 US Patent for a Method for Manufacturing a Display Device with Low Temperature Diamond Coatings. Cropper's development of this new Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) resulted in a ''more efficient, higher power, longer lifetime device for flat panel displays, backlights and flat light sources,'' which has the potential to revolutionize the electronics industry in its most important areas of flat panel TVs, laptop computers and other devices using flat panel displays.
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Dr. Andre Cropper
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Architecture
The architecture of Port of Spain is a charming combination of the old and the new. The Magnificent Seven, some of the finest examples of classical architecture seen anywhere in the world, were built around the Queen's Park Savannah, a large park in the centre of the city. The President's residence is located on the northern perimeter of this park. A gracious old world bandstand on the grounds of the residence is the venue for Sunday afternoon concerts.
Stollmeyer's Castle
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Roman Catholic Archbishop's House
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The Band Stand at President's House
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Foreign Ministry at Knowsley
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Downtown Port of the Spain boasts of some modern office buildings such as the spanking new space age Issa Nicholas building and the Financial Complex consisting of identical twin towers. The government has been utilizing the windfall from the country's vast reserves of oil and natural gas to finance buildings such as the new modern library, which is tastefully blended into the old fire station building. A great deal of attention has focused on this blending of the new with the old buildings such as the Red House where the Houses of Parliament are housed. Just outside the Houses of Parliament lies Woodford Square with its ornate fountain, the site for the early nationalist speeches of the first Prime Minister, Dr. Eric Williams. A former university professor he renamed the square, the University of Woodford Square.
Space Age Skyscraper
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National Library with Old Fire Station
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Hall of Justice
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Twin Towers Financial Complex
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Houses of Parliament
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Ecology
Trinidad & Tobago's 433 different species of birds, 620 different species of butterflies, 2,300 different flowering shrubs and plants (700 of them orchids), 100 native mammals including a huge variety of bats, and 70 different species of reptiles, truly make it a veritable area of abundance.
Macaw
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Heliconius Butterfly
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Balisier Flower
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Fish on Reef
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Unlike other Caribbean islands, Trinidad was joined to the South American continent in recent geological time, and ever since its separation, continental flora and fauna have commingled with island varieties in a relatively small geographical area. Lush tropical rain forests nestled in the mountainous terrain, rivers flowing into the sea, mangroves flourishing in estuaries bordering inland swamps, coastal and inland savannahs, all coexist in unique diversity on a continent concentrated into one island.
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