Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavour from juniper berries (Juniperus communis). From its earliest beginnings in the Middle Ages, gin has evolved over the course of a millennium from an herbal medicine to an object of commerce in the spirits industry. Today, the gin category is one of the most popular and widely distributed range of spirits, and is represented by products of various origins, styles, and flavor profiles that all revolve around juniper as a common ingredient.

The name gin is derived from either the French genièvre or the Dutch jenever, which both mean "juniper".

Although several different styles of gin have evolved, it is legally differentiated into four categories in the European Union, with two of those four (Distilled Gin and Compound Gin) being officially recognised in the United States.

The official European Union classifications are as follows:

Juniper-Flavoured Spirit Drinks - This represents the earliest class of gin, which is produced by pot distilling alcoholic grain wash and redistilling it with botanicals to extract the aromatic compounds. Due to the use of pot stills, the alcohol content of the distillate is relatively low (e.g. 68% ABV). This type of gin is sometimes aged in wooden barrels, retains varying degrees of flavour from the grain as a result of its distillation method and may be bottled with a strength as low as 30% ABV. Geneva Gin or Holland Gin is the most prominent gin of this class.

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network, a position he assumed in 2004. Williams was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007, and in 2010, a prominent media observer dubbed him "the Walter Cronkite of the 21st century."

Williams was reared in a middle-class Irish Catholic home. His father, Gordon L. Williams, was an executive vice president of the National Retail Merchants Association, in New York. During childhood, his family moved from his birthplace, Ridgewood, New Jersey, to Elmira, New York. He lived in Elmira for ten years before moving to Middletown, New Jersey, when he was in junior high school.

He graduated from Mater Dei High School, a Roman Catholic high school in the New Monmouth section of Middletown. While in high school, he was a volunteer firefighter for three years at the Middletown Township Fire Department. His first job was as a busboy at Perkins Pancake House.

James Trevor "Jamie" Oliver, MBE (born 27 May 1975) is an English chef, restaurateur and media personality, known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and more recently his campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools. He strives to improve unhealthy diets and poor cooking habits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Jamie Oliver's speciality is Italian cuisine, although he has a broad international repertoire.

Jamie Oliver was brought up in Clavering, Essex, England. His parents ran a pub, "The Cricketers", where he used to practise in the kitchen. He was educated at Newport Free Grammar School. He left school at age sixteen without qualifications and went on to attend Westminster Kingsway College, formerly Westminster College. He then earned a City & Guilds NVQ in home economics.

His first job was as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio's Neal's Yard restaurant, where he first gained experience with preparing Italian cuisine, and developed a relationship with his 'mentor' Gennaro Contaldo. Oliver then moved to The River Café, Fulham, as a sous chef.

Virginia "Gin" Wigmore (born 6 June 1986) is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. In 2009, she featured on the single "Brother" by Smashproof, which reached #1 on the RIANZ singles charts for 11 weeks. In 2009 she released her debut album Holy Smoke. On 7 November 2011, she released her second studio album Gravel and Wine.

Virginia Claire Wigmore, more commonly known as Gin Wigmore, was born in Auckland, New Zealand to Peter and Adrienne Wigmore. Wigmore has two siblings: an older brother Olly and Lucy Wigmore, a professional actress well known for starring as Justine Jones in the long running New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street and a role in "Underbelly: Razor".

While Wigmore was in Argentina at age 16, her father died of cancer. Upon her return to New Zealand, she articulated in song the pain of losing her father. One of those early songs, "Hallelujah", won the US-based International Songwriting Competition in 2004, when she beat 11,000 songwriting aspirants from 77 countries to become the youngest and only unsigned Grand Prize winner in the history of the ISC. "Hallelujah" was also featured in the season 6 finale of One Tree Hill.

In the English language, black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within a family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness. It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of other black individuals in flocks of white sheep.

In psychology, the black sheep effect refers to the tendency of group members to judge likeable ingroup members more positively and deviant ingroup member more negatively than comparable outgroup members.

The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a flock of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was considered commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed. In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil. In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its negative connotations, though the term is usually given to the member of a group who has certain characteristics or lack thereof deemed undesirable by that group.