YESTERDAY WAS Heroes’ Day, a day set aside to honour and remember our men and women who carry the status of ‘National Hero/Heroine’. And for years, Derrick ‘Black X’ Robinson has been advocating for Tacky (originally Takyi) to officially join our...
THE MAROON community in Jamaica, and more so the Charles Town Maroon village in Portland, was hurled into deep mourning on the morning of Wednesday, October 16 when Colonel Marcia Douglas died suddenly. She was 48 years old. Colonel Douglas, who...
THE HUNT for the four fugitives wanted for the murder of two infantrymen of the Royal Hampshire Regiment took a gruesome turn on Saturday, June 25, 1960, when the body of three Rastafarians were found buried in one grave, near where the Rastafarian...
WHEN JAMAICAN police personnel and members of the Royal Hampshire Regiment (RHR) went to raid a Rasta Camp at Red Hills in St Andrew on Tuesday, June 21, 1960, they did not go on a whim. The operation took place after a weekend of planning because...
AN ALL-NIGHT vigil and search for the five men suspected of shooting four privates of the Royal Hampshire Regiment who went with local police personnel to raid a Rasta camp in Red Hills, St Andrew on Tuesday, June 22, 1960 was futile. The...
FROM THE very beginning, there was opposition to the rise of the Jamaican folk religion now known as Rastafarianism and its founder, Leonard Howard, who established a camp near Sligoville in St Catherine. The camp was called The Pinnacle because it...
The Jamaican Association for Debating and Empowerment (JADE) Limited, elevating debate culture across Jamaica, will be hosting its second annual National Debaters’ Week (NDW) from Sunday, October 13 to Saturday, October 19, under the theme, ‘Hear...
ON WEDNESDAY, October 2, we tell the story of Obeahman Plato and the tsunami, hurricane and earthquake that destroyed Westmoreland in 1780, a year when hurricanes raged. These natural phenomena are not rare, for the island is prone to them, as a...
IN THE late 1970s, Jamaica was gripped by the evil hands of political violence, leading up to the general election of October 30, 1980. Michael Manley of the People’s National Party (PNP) was prime minister, and Edward Seaga was the leader of the...
LAST YEAR, UK-born Jamaican writer, Kwame M.A. McPherson, won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the first Jamaican to have won this the biggest global fiction-writing competition. But, flashback to 2006. Then, he was starring in his own real-life...
THEY CALLED the hilltop Rastafarian settlement in St Catherine The Pinnacle, because of the lofty heights in which it was situated. And, the Rastas basked in the manifestation of existing in a space, far from the madding crowd, one in which the...
ON NOVEMBER 2, 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, in Africa. His supporters believe that he was the earthly manifestation of God or Jah. His birth, it is said, was foretold in the Bible and his lineage goes...
THE STORIES of bank employees pocketing the money of their employers and clients have been around since the start of the formal banking system. Some people just cannot help themselves from helping themselves with the money that is put into their...
JAMAICA HAS had many serial killers, some committing heinous acts, for which they were never found to be charged. There were those who paid for their dastardly acts, sometimes by way of the hangman’s noose. Lewis Hutchinson was one of them, but he...
OBEAH, A type of witchcraft which originated in Africa, was practised widely during the days of slavery in Jamaica. It was used for benevolent and malevolent purposes. Practitioners were revered and feared at the same time because the people firmly...
JAMAICAN PEOPLE, for the most part, believe in God, whosoever they perceive him to be. But 80 years ago, an incident exploded in the western parish of St James that obliterated such a belief in one person, inspiring him to curse God himself. And...
ON OCTOBER 16, 150 people will be bestowed with Jamaica’s national awards and honours, of course, of different classes and categories. They were established by the National Honours and Awards Act by the Parliament of Jamaica in July 1969 (Act No....
CALL HIM ‘Mr Tourism’, call him ‘Mr Popularity’, call him ‘Mr Innovator’. But he was born Edmund Bartlett, who evolved into “a transformative leader who is recognised globally for his wide-ranging expertise and accomplishments in both tourism and...
JAMAICA’S HISTORY and heritage are replete with stories – folktales, Anansi stories, duppy/paranormal stories, sorcery, tragedies, legal and family dramas, political scandals, stories of persecution and bigotry, ‘bangarangs’ and brouhahas....
LAWSON JOHN CRAWFORD, born October 6, 1973 to Vivian Crawford, former executive director of the Institute of Jamaica, and his wife, Carva, made his transition on July 6, 2024 in London, England. He also predeceased his sister, Sheena. The attorney-...
RECENTLY WE published an article on how, despite our efforts to break away from the political ties that Jamaica has with Britain, there will always be a strong connection between both jurisdictions because the names of hundreds of places in Jamaica...
THE GREAT majority of the Jamaican people are descendants of Africans who were forcibly removed from their homeland and transported across the Atlantic in overcrowded vessels to work on plantations owned by Europeans in a brutal system of chattel...
ON JULY 17, The Gleaner published a story headlined, ‘Jamaica-born artist Garfield Morgan making lasting impressions in Canada’. In it we look at how Morgan has been making a name for himself through his art in that North American country,...
For centuries, Jamaicans have been using herbs (bushes, vines, tree leaves, roots and barks) for a variety of physical, mental, psychological and medical ailments. Hot beverages (bush teas), tonics, balms, oils and powders are some of the things...
In terms of medal count and the quality of the six medals that Jamaica earned at the just-concluded 2024 Olympics in Paris, France, was the most disappointing since 2008 when Jamaica, a fully fledged bird, flew around the ‘Bird Nest’ stadium in...
