The parishes of Jamaica are the main units of local government in Jamaica. They were created following the English Invasion of Jamaica in 1655. This administrative structure for the Colony of Jamaica developed slowly. However, since 1 May 1867 Jamaica has been divided into the current fourteen parishes. These were retained after independence in 1962. They are grouped into three historic counties, which no longer have any administrative relevance. Every parish has a coast; none are landlocked.
Portmore United Football Club is a Jamaican football team that currently plays in the National Premier League.
The Priory School in Kingston, Jamaica teaches kindergarten, primary and secondary students, the latter under the name Priory High.
Linval Dixon is a retired Jamaican football defender and currently head coach at Portmore United.
Duckenfield, Jamaica is a village in St Thomas, in south-east Jamaica. It is named after the sugar plantation on which it is located. It is a very poor community, but it has grown substantially in recent years. There were plans to build an international airport in the vicinity in order to open the eastern end of the island to tourism, but these have since been shelved.
Leval Alphonso Thompson, known as Linval Thompson, is a Jamaican reggae and dub musician and record producer.
Kimberly-Ann Robinson-Walcott is a Jamaican poet and editor. She has been the editor-in-chief of the Jamaica Journal since 2004 and editor-in-chief of the Caribbean Quarterly since 2010. Robinson-Walcott is the author of a study of the white Jamaican novelist Anthony Winkler, called Out of Order! (2006).
The Gleaner Company Ltd. is a newspaper publishing enterprise in Jamaica. Established in 1834 by Joshua and Jacob De Cordova, the company's primary product is The Gleaner, a morning broadsheet published six days each week. It also publishes a Sunday paper, the Sunday Gleaner, and an evening tabloid, The Star. Overseas weekly editions are published in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. The paper was known as The Daily Gleaner until 1992.
Denham Town is a predominantly residential neighbourhood in western Kingston, Jamaica. It has a reputation as one of Kingston's more violent areas.
Harbour View is a community in Kingston, Jamaica. It is administered by the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation and is served by the Kingston 17 Post Office. Harbour View was built in 1963, one year after the country's Independence in 1962. The community was the first in Jamaica to have a community paper and its residents claim that the community was the first to host street dances. Harbour View is located in East Kingston and can be described as one of the best communities to live and raise families.
Southfield is a farming town on the southern ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains in St Elizabeth, Jamaica.
Tivoli Gardens is a neighbourhood in Kingston, Jamaica. Developed as a renewal project between 1963 and 1965, the neighborhood continued to suffer from poverty. By the late twentieth century, it had become a center of drug trafficking activity and social unrest. Repeated confrontations took place between law enforcement and gunmen in the neighborhood in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2008, and 2010.
The 2015–16 Red Stripe Premier League is the highest competitive football league in Jamaica. It is the 42nd edition of the competition. It started on September 6, 2015 and ended on May 17, 2016.
Mary Morris Knibb, MBE was a Jamaican teacher, social reformer and philanthropist. She founded the Morris Knibb Preparatory School and donated a building which is used as the headquarters of the Moravian Church in Jamaica as well as land for construction of a community center. Morris Knibb was a women's rights activist and the first elected councilwomen in Jamaica. She was the first woman to vie for a seat in the House when Universal Suffrage was granted to all Jamaicans.
Heather Little-White was a Jamaican nutritionist, journalist and disabilities activist. After earning degrees in nutrition and communication, she worked with Grace Kitchens and founded the television program Creative Cooking to share sound nutritional advice throughout the country. As a journalist, besides writing articles on nutrition, she wrote a weekly column on sexuality for the Outlook Magazine segment of The Gleaner newspaper. After working with the Reggae Boyz, Jamaica's national football team, as a nutrition consultant, Little-White became paralyzed from the waist down after being shot during a robbery attempt. Becoming an advocate for people with disabilities, she focused on bringing awareness, accessibility, and assistance to Jamaicans living with disabilities. She was honored as an officer in the Order of Distinction in 2001.
Jamaica is scheduled to compete in the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru from July 26 to August 11, 2019.
Hazel Monteith, O.D., J.P. was an Afro-Jamaican consumer rights advocate, radio personality and social worker. Graduating from the first course in social work offered by the University of the West Indies, Monteith worked for twelve years as a traveling field agent coordinating social welfare projects for the Jamaica Federation of Women. In 1972 she became a regional officer at the Council of Voluntary Social Services and was tasked with creating the Citizen's Advice Bureau. Through innovative programs, she developed training and advice centers and radio broadcasts to help citizens with a wide variety of issues from how to register vital records, to employment training, to where to obtain assistance for household goods. She was honored as an officer in the Order of Distinction in 1982 and subsequently appointed a Senator from 1986 to 1989.
Edris Elaine Allan was a Jamaican community worker, political figure and women's rights advocate. From childhood, she performed community service and worked as a clerk in several retail establishments prior to her marriage. She was the first telephone operator for the Jamaica All Island Telephone Service. As the wife of Sir Harold Allan, honored with the first knighthood bestowed on a Jamaican of African descent by the British crown, she became an instant celebrity, traveling often with her husband and serving as his secretary. A founding member of the Jamaica Federation of Women (JFW), she held many offices in the organization including serving as chair from 1959 to 1962 and again from 1971 to 1976, and then president from 1976 until her death in 1995.
Sir Harold Egbert Allan was a Jamaican politician, legislator and statesman.
The 1944 Jamaica hurricane was a deadly major hurricane that swept across the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in August 1944. Conservative estimates placed the storm's death toll at 116. The storm was already well-developed when it was first noted passing westward over the Windward Islands into the Caribbean Sea on August 16. A ship near Grenada with 74 occupants was lost, constituting a plurality of the deaths associated with the storm. The following day, the storm intensified into a hurricane, reaching its peak strength on August 20 with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 km/h). At this intensity, the major hurricane made landfall on Jamaica later that day, traversing the length of the island. The damage wrought was extensive, with the strong winds destroying 90 percent of banana trees and 41 percent of coconut trees in Jamaica; the overall damage toll was estimated at "several millions of dollars". The northern coast of Jamaica saw the most severe damage, with widespread structural damage and numerous homes destroyed across several parishes. In Port Maria, the storm was considered the worst since 1903.
