Today, the San Fernando City Corporation recognized Pan extraordinaire, Lennox Bobby Mohamed, by renaming Harris Promenade East after him.
This gesture was done in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the steel-band art form.
Bobby was a game changer and trailblazer, producing a style of music in the 1960s that was unheard of, but no doubt infectious. He brought victory to the southland in 1965 and 1967 as he became the youngest arranger in the history of the competition to win a Panorama title, which he did with his arrangement for the San Fernando-based band Guinness Cavaliers

​This area was called Coolie Town when former Indian indentured labourers settled there after the expiration of their their five-year contracts.

By the 1890s the area expanded to eventually become what is now known as St James.

The new name was apparently taken from the main street through the area - St James Street (which became Tragarete Road).

St James Street got its name from the nearby St James Barracks.

Other street names recognised the nationality of the inhabitants. Therefore, Delhi Street, Agra Street etc.

Coolie Town had emerged on an area that Sir Ralph Abercromby had landed his troops to seize Trinidad from the Spanish in 1797.

The estate became the property of the Devinish family who, by the 1850s, sold tracts of land to merchant families like the Stones and Salazars.

It was during that period that Indian labourers began to arrive to work on plantations.

From about 1870, the area started to be called Coolie Town as the Indian labourers whose contracts had ended began renting estate lands for farming. Among them were craftsmen, including jewelers whose work made the area commercially popular.

St James was incorporated in the City of Port-of-Spain in 1917.
Source:  Dominic Kalipersad, March 2019

Deep in the Trin­i­ty forests about 13 miles from the coast lies one of T&T's best-kept se­crets—a warm salt wa­ter vol­cano or salt spring, pos­si­bly the on­ly one of its kind in the world.
Salt Spring—the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter Vol­cano—was record­ed in a pub­li­ca­tion in 1959 by Swiss ge­ol­o­gist Dr Hans Ku­gler, but it was on­ly two years ago a team of 37 ge­ol­o­gists went back to the site, defin­ing it and mak­ing it known pub­licly.
De­spite this, the vol­cano re­mains un­der-ex­plored to many cit­i­zens. The rocks around the vol­cano are spongy be­neath your feet. A coral-like for­ma­tion known as "tu­fa" ex­ists on the flanks of the vol­cano, which plunges around 250 feet down­hill to meet the salt wa­ter riv­er in the area, which is de­void of veg­e­ta­tion.
Re­searchers have been try­ing to as­cer­tain why the wa­ter which flows from the vol­cano is salty, see­ing that the near­est coast is 25 kilo­me­tres away.
Around 100 feet from the salt wa­ter vol­cano is a ma­jor oil seep, which al­so flows down to­ward the salt wa­ter riv­er.
Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Xavier Moo­nan, who has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mys­te­ri­ous nat­ur­al won­der, be­lieves the out­flow is ac­tu­al­ly trapped sea wa­ter com­ing from a Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir dat­ing 65 mil­lion years ago.
In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Moo­nan said the warm salt wa­ter emerges from the ground as a nat­ur­al seep sim­i­lar to mud vol­ca­noes in oth­er parts of the coun­try.
"Ac­com­pa­nied by some oil, the salty wa­ter con­stant­ly flows and cas­cades ra­di­al­ly down the hill­side where the small streams merge to form Salt Riv­er. Salt Riv­er flows gen­er­al­ly north­ward where it even­tu­al­ly merges with the larg­er Or­toire Riv­er that emp­ties in­to the At­lantic on the east coast near Ma­yaro," Moo­nan said.
It was hunters who first came up­on the vol­cano, which when viewed from drones ap­pears as a whitish ex­pan­sive pud­dle com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by dense trop­i­cal for­est.
Moo­nan said the small hill­side of very ac­tive oil and salt wa­ter seeps drew ge­ol­o­gists by the droves.
"The Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Pe­tro­le­um Ge­ol­o­gists Young Pro­fes­sion­als Trinidad and To­ba­go Chap­ter (AAP­GYPTT) vis­it­ed the site on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, sam­pling the rocks, wa­ter, and oil em­a­nat­ing from the ground," Moo­nan said.
Not­ing that this site is quite unique, and quite pos­si­bly the on­ly of its kind in the world, Moo­nan said it was much more than just an­oth­er oil and salt wa­ter seep.
"Our very own La Brea Pitch Lake, for in­stance, is one of the largest nat­ur­al oil seeps in the world. This Salt Wa­ter vol­cano is unique. We be­lieve the salt wa­ter flow comes from trapped sea­wa­ter flow­ing from an an­cient Cre­ta­ceous reser­voir," Moo­nan said.
He said proof of this comes from the re­sults of an ex­plo­ration well drilled by Exxon in the 1990s which showed a num­ber of lime­stone-rich zones in the area which dates to the Cre­ta­ceous age. The rocks were found at depths of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,500 feet, Moo­nan ex­plained. Clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the "crunchy" rocks iden­ti­fied then as a car­bon­ate de­posit called tu­fa.
"It is gen­er­al­ly grey to white and ap­pears spongy in parts. They are very sim­i­lar to the lime­stone de­posits at Tu­rure Wa­ter­steps in the North­ern Range, which make up the walls of each ter­race. At Tu­rure the car­bon­ate is be­ing ac­tive­ly re­pre­cip­i­tat­ed out of the riv­er wa­ter. It is en­riched in car­bon­ate due to lime­stone rocks along the riv­er trib­u­taries fur­ther up the moun­tain," Moo­nan said.
"Based on the ge­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the Guayagua­yare area, we strong­ly be­lieve that the source of the car­bon­ate for tu­fa pre­cip­i­ta­tion comes from Cre­ta­ceous rocks, and fur­ther­more, the saline wa­ters which feed the Salt Riv­er are very like­ly be­ing ex­pelled from Cre­ta­ceous reser­voirs as well," Moo­nan ex­plained.
Like the Pitch Lake of La Brea and our many oth­er mud vol­ca­noes, Moo­nan be­lieves the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could gen­er­ate mass for­eign ex­change to the coun­try at a time when the econ­o­my is in sham­bles.
"In oth­er parts of the world, a fea­ture such as this would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­vel­oped and mar­ket­ed as a nat­ur­al spa," he said.
"Com­pa­nies such as Range Re­sources and Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, who are ac­tive­ly ex­plor­ing these ar­eas for hy­dro­car­bons have to date sig­nif­i­cant­ly sup­port­ed the ex­pe­di­tions, test­ing and ge­o­log­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the fea­ture," he said.
Get­ting to the vol­cano is not easy and on­ly an ex­pe­ri­enced tour guide can get you there.
It takes two hours south­ward from the Trinidad Con­trolled Oil­field (TCO) Duck­ham Road, through very thick for­est, to come up­on the vol­canic site.
Down­stream from the salt wa­ter vol­cano, the Salt Riv­er cross­es the Duck­ham Road, head­ing north­east to join the Poole Riv­er.
"Though its salin­i­ty has dropped from 23,000 ppm at the source to a brack­ish 6,000 ppm some 2.5 kilo­me­tres down­stream, peo­ple can rev­el in this nat­ur­al ge­o­log­ic phe­nom­e­non," Moo­nan said.
"With the right vi­sion a good syn­er­gy of the sci­ence from the com­pa­nies and mar­ket­ing from the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Salt Wa­ter vol­cano can be­come a new ge­o­t­ouris­tic site that can re­dound in jobs and de­vel­op­ment for the peo­ple of Rio Claro, Guayagua­yare," he added.
Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat who ac­com­pa­nied the team of ge­ol­o­gists on the his­toric 2017 ex­pe­di­tion to the vol­cano agreed that the vol­cano had the po­ten­tial for tourism.
Chair­man of the Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Glen Ram said that in 1959, Dr Hans Ku­gler record­ed this fea­ture as a salt spring in his work Sur­face Ge­ol­o­gy Map of Trinidad. Ram said with prop­er as­sis­tance, the Rio Claro Salt Wa­ter vol­cano could be de­vel­oped in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al tourist site. He said the Cor­po­ra­tion was will­ing to print brochures on the vol­cano to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion about its won­ders once it re­ceives fund­ing from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.
Source:  The Guardian, March 2019

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, according to the 2019 Forbes billionaires' list released this week. With an estimated fortune of $131bn (£99bn) he is the wealthiest man in modern history.
But he is by no means the richest man of all time.
That title belongs to Mansa Musa, the 14th Century West African ruler who was so rich his generous handouts wrecked an entire country's economy.
"Contemporary accounts of Musa's wealth are so breathless that it's almost impossible to get a sense of just how wealthy and powerful he truly was," Rudolph Butch Ware, associate professor of history at the University of California, told the BBC.
Mansa Musa was "richer than anyone could describe", Jacob Davidson wrote about the African king for Money.com in 2015.
In 2012, US website Celebrity Net Worth estimated his wealth at $400bn, but economic historians agree that his wealth is impossible to pin down to a number.
The 10 richest men of all time

• Mansa Musa (1280-1337, king of the Mali empire) wealth incomprehensible
• Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman emperor) $4.6tn (£3.5tn)
• Zhao Xu (1048-1085, emperor Shenzong of Song in China) wealth incalculable
• Akbar I (1542-1605, emperor of India's Mughal dynasty) wealth incalculable
• Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) $372bn
• John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) American business magnate) $341bn
• Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) $300bn
• Mir Osman Ali Khan ( 1886-1967, Indian royal) $230bn
• William The Conqueror (1028-1087) $229.5bn
• Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) $200bn

Source: Money.com, Celebrity Net Worth
The golden kingMansa Musa was born in 1280 into a family of rulers. His brother, Mansa Abu-Bakr, ruled the empire until 1312, when he abdicated to go on an expedition. 
According to 14th Century Syrian historian Shibab al-Umari, Abu-Bakr was obsessed with the Atlantic Ocean and what lay beyond it. He reportedly embarked on an expedition with a fleet of 2,000 ships and thousands of men, women and slaves. They sailed off, never to return.
Some, like the late American historian Ivan Van Sertima, entertain the idea that they reached South America. But there is no evidence of this.
In any case, Mansa Musa inherited the kingdom he left behind.
Under his rule, the kingdom of Mali grew significantly. He annexed 24 cities, including Timbuktu.
The kingdom stretched for about 2,000 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to modern-day Niger, taking in parts of what are now Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ivory Coast.

With such a large land mass came great resources such as gold and salt.
During the reign of Mansa Musa, the empire of Mali accounted for almost half of the Old World's gold, according to the British Museum.
And all of it belonged to the king.
"As the ruler, Mansa Musa had almost unlimited access to the most highly valued source of wealth in the medieval world," Kathleen Bickford Berzock, who specializes in African art at the Block Museum of Art at the Northwestern University, told the BBC.
"Major trading centres that traded in gold and other goods were also in his territory, and he garnered wealth from this trade," she added.
The journey to MeccaThough the empire of Mali was home to so much gold, the kingdom itself was not well known.
This changed when Mansa Musa, a devout Muslim, decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, passing through the Sahara Desert and Egypt.
The king reportedly left Mali with a caravan of 60,000 men.
He took his entire royal court and officials, soldiers, griots (entertainers), merchants, camel drivers and 12,000 slaves, as well as a long train of goats and sheep for food.
It was a city moving through the desert.
A city whose inhabitants, all the way down to the slaves, were clad in gold brocade and finest Persian silk. A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold.
It was a sight to behold.
And the sight got even more opulent once the caravan reached Cairo, where they could really show off their wealth.
The Cairo gold crashMansa Musa left such a memorable impression on Cairo that al-Umari, who visited the city 12 years after the Malian king, recounted how highly the people of Cairo were speaking of him.
So lavishly did he hand out gold in Cairo that his three-month stay caused the price of gold to plummet in the region for 10 years, wrecking the economy.
US-based technology company SmartAsset.com estimates that due to the depreciation of gold, Mansa Musa's pilgrimage led to about $1.5bn (£1.1bn) of economic losses across the Middle East.
On his way back home, Mansa Musa passed through Egypt again, and according to some, tried to help the country's economy by removing some of the gold from circulation by borrowing it back at extortionate interest rates from Egyptian lenders. Others say he spent so much that he ran out of gold.
Lucy Duran of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London notes that Malian griots, who are singing historian storytellers, in particular, were upset with him.
"He gave out so much Malian gold along the way that jelis [griots] don't like to praise him in their songs because they think he wasted local resources outside the empire," she said.
Education at heartThere is no doubt that Mansa Musa spent, or wasted, a lot of gold during his pilgrimage. But it was this excessive generosity that also caught the eyes of the world.
Mansa Musa had put Mali and himself on the map, quite literally. In a Catalan Atlas map from 1375, a drawing of an African king sits on a golden throne atop Timbuktu, holding a piece of gold in his hand.
Timbuktu became an African El Dorado and people came from near and far to have a glimpse.
In the 19th Century, it still had a mythical status as a lost city of gold at the edge of the world, a beacon for both European fortune hunters and explorers, and this was largely down to the exploits of Mansa Musa 500 years earlier.
Mansa Musa returned from Mecca with several Islamic scholars, including direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad and an Andalusian poet and architect by the name of Abu Es Haq es Saheli, who is widely credited with designing the famous Djinguereber mosque.
The king reportedly paid the poet 200 kg (440lb) in gold, which in today's money would be $8.2m (£6.3m).
In addition to encouraging the arts and architecture, he also funded literature and built schools, libraries and mosques. Timbuktu soon became a centre of education and people travelled from around the world to study at what would become the Sankore University.
The rich king is often credited with starting the tradition of education in West Africa, although the story of his empire largely remains little known outside West Africa.
"History is written by victors," according to Britain's World War II Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
After Mansa Musa died in 1337, aged 57, the empire was inherited by his sons who could not hold the empire together. The smaller states broke off and the empire crumbled.

The later arrival of Europeans in the region was the final nail in the empire's coffin.
"The history of the medieval period is still largely seen only as a Western history," says Lisa Corrin Graziose, director of the Block Museum of Art, explaining why the story of Mansa Musa is not widely known.
"Had Europeans arrived in significant numbers in Musa's time, with Mali at the height of its military and economic power instead of a couple hundred years later, things almost certainly would have been different," says Mr Ware.
Source:  BBC News, March 2019