Harlow is a new town and local government district in Essex, England. It is located in the west of the county and on the border with Hertfordshire, on the Stort Valley, The town is near the M11 motorway and forms part of the London commuter belt.The district has a current population of 78,889 (2010 estimate).

There is some dispute as to where the placename Harlow derives from. One theory is that it derives from the Anglo-Saxon words 'here' and 'hlaw', meaning "army hill", probably to be identified with Mulberry Hill, which was used as the moot or meeting place for the district.

The other theory is that it derives from the words 'here' and 'hearg', meaning "temple hill/mound", probably to be identified with an Iron Age burial mound, later a Roman temple site on River Way.

The original village, mentioned in the Norman Domesday Book, developed as a typical rural community around what is now known as Old Harlow, with many of its buildings still standing.

The earliest deposits are of a Mesolithic (circa 10,000 BC) hunting camp excavated by Davey in Northbrooks in the 1970s(Unpublished) closely followed by the large and unexcavated deposits of Neolithic flint located at Gilden Way. These deposits are mostly known of due to the large numbers of surface bound worked flint ; indeed there is substanital amounts to speculate on organised working of flint in the area. Large amounts of debetage litter the area and tools found include Axeheads, hammers, blades, dowles and other boring tools and multipuprpose flints such as scrapers. An organised Field Walk in the late 1990s by Bartlett(Unpublished)indicates that most of the area, some 80 hectares, produces worked flint from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age with a smattering of Mesolithic ; so basically it indicates organised industry from 5000 BC to 2000 BC. Indeed the deposits are so large and dispersed that any major archaeological work in the area will have to take this into consideration before any ground work is started.

Harlow Herbert Curtice (August 15, 1893 - November 3, 1962) was an American auto industry executive who led General Motors (GM) from 1953 to 1958. As GM's chief, Curtice was selected as Man of the Year for 1955 by TIME magazine.

Curtice was born in Petrieville, Michigan. He joined General Motors at age 20, and rose through its AC Spark Plug division to head it by age 36, and made the division profitable during the Depression. Selected to head the Buick division of GM, he expanded its line and made it profitable in the 1930s.

In 1948, Curtice became executive vice president of GM, and succeeded to the presidency in 1953 when GM president Charles Wilson became Secretary of Defense. With Curtice as president, GM became immensely profitable, and became the first corporation to have $1 billion in profits in one year.

In 1958, Curtice retired just after his 65th birthday. The following year, he accidentally shot and killed a friend while duck hunting. He died in 1962 at age 69.

Curtice was born in Petrieville, Michigan, on August 15, 1893, the son of Marion Curtice and the former Mary Ellen Eckhart, and was raised in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, attending Eaton Rapids High School. During school vacations, he kept the books for his father, a commission merchant, and also worked in a woolen mill. He graduated from the Ferris Business College in 1914. After moving to Flint, Michigan later in 1914, Curtice began his meteoric rise at GM. He started as a bookkeeper for GM's AC Spark Plug Division. The 20-year-old, in his job interview by the company comptroller, told him that his ambition was to become comptroller himself within a year. He did so, becoming AC Spark Plug's comptroller at just 21. Curtice went beyond the ledger, exploring the plant to find out what the figures meant in terms of men and equipment.

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”

The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles.

Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"