The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. An epeiric (or "shelf") sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north. It is more than 970 kilometres (600 mi) long and 580 kilometres (360 mi) wide, with an area of around 750,000 square kilometres (290,000 sq mi).

The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery. The sea is a popular destination for recreation and tourism in bordering countries and more recently has developed into a rich source of energy resources including fossil fuels, wind, and early efforts in wave power.

Historically, the North Sea has featured prominently in geopolitical and military affairs, particularly in Northern Europe but also globally through the power northern European actors projected worldwide during much of the Middle Ages and modern era. The North Sea was the centre of the Vikings' rise and subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and through it to control access to the markets and resources of the world. As Germany's only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars.

North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. It is one of the most important directions.

North is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west.

By convention, the top side of a map is north.

To go north using a compass for navigation, set a bearing or azimuth of 0° or 360°.

North is specifically the direction that, in Western culture, is treated as the fundamental direction:

The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "down" (or "under"). (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".)

Latin borealis is from Greek boreas "north wind, north", in mythology (according to Ovid) personified as the son of the river-god Strymon, and father of Calais and Zetes; septentrionalis is from septentriones, "the seven plow oxen", a name of Ursa Maior. Greek arktikos "northern" is named for the same constellation (cf. Arctic).

A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, it means a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean. It is also used sometimes to describe a large saline lake that lacks a natural outlet, such as the Caspian Sea.

Arctic (belonging to the Arctic Ocean) and Antarctic (Southern Ocean) seas, as well as some other seas freeze in winter. This occurs below the freezing point of pure water, at about -1.8 °C (28.8 °F). Frozen salt water becomes sea ice.

Humans navigated seas from antiquity. Ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians navigated the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Hannu was the first see explorer of whom there is any information. He sailed along the Red Sea and further to the Arabian Peninsula and the African Coast around 2750 BC. In the 1st millennium BC, Phoenicians and Greeks established colonies all over the Mediterranean, including its outlets like the Black Sea. The seas along the eastern and the southern Asian coast were used by Arabs and Chinese for navigation, and the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were known to Europeans in Roman times. Other seas were not used for navigation in the antiquity and were actually discovered.

Larry Graham, Jr. (born August 14, 1946, Beaumont, Texas) is an American bass guitar player, both with the popular and influential psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone, and as the founder and frontman of Graham Central Station. He is credited with the invention of the slapping technique, which radically expanded the tonal palette of the bass, although he himself refers to the technique as "Thumpin' and Pluckin'."

Graham played bass in the highly successful and influential funk band Sly and the Family Stone from 1966 to 1972. It is said that he pioneered the art of slap-pop playing on the electric bass, in part to provide percussive and rhythmic elements in addition to the notes of the bass line when his mother's band lacked a drummer; the slap of the thumb being used to emulate a bass drum and the pop of the index or middle finger as a snare drum. This style has become archetypal of modern funk. Slap-pop playing couples a percussive thumb-slapping technique of the lower strings with an aggressive finger-snap of the higher strings, often in rhythmic alternation. The slap and pop technique incorporates a large ratio of muted or "dead" notes to normal notes, which adds to the rhythmic effect.

Nile Gregory Rodgers (born September 19, 1952, New York City) is an American musician, producer, composer, arranger, and guitarist.

Rodgers began his career as a session guitarist in New York, touring with the Sesame Street band in his teens, and then working in the house band at Harlem's world famous Apollo Theater, playing behind Screaming Jay Hawkins, Maxine Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ben E. King, Betty Wright, Earl Lewis and the Channels, Parliament Funkadelic, and many other legendary R&B artists.

Nile met bassist Bernard Edwards in 1970. Together they formed The Big Apple Band that backed R&B act New York City ("I’m Doing Fine Now"). The band’s one hit allowed them to tour extensively, even opening for The Jackson 5 on the American leg of their first world tour in 1973. The band dissolved after their second album failed to yield a hit, but Nile and Bernard joined forces with drummer Tony Thompson, and worked and recorded as a Funk Rock band called The Boys, which played numerous gigs up and down the East Coast. Despite major label interest in their demos, they could not get a record deal when the record companies discovered they were black, as they thought that black rock artists would be too hard to promote. The band continued playing mostly local bars.