In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color were people of mixed African and sometimes Native American descent who were not enslaved. The term arose in the French colonies, including La Louisiane and settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue, St. Lucia, Dominica and Martinique, where a distinct group of free people of color developed. Freed African slaves were included in the term affranchis, but they were considered as distinct from the free people of color. In these territories and major cities New Orleans, those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of mixed-race, free people developed; these colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America; the term gens de couleur was used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery, where it was a short form of gens de couleur libres.

It referred to free people of mixed race African and European. In the Thirteen Colonies settled by the British to become the United States, the term free negro was used to cover the same class of people – those who were free and visibly of ethnic African descent. Many were people of mixed race, freed because of relation to their master or other whites. By the late 18th century, the Upper South included many slaves of mixed race. Among the most well known is Sally Hemings, a slave held by Thomas Jefferson and considered his concubine, she was three-quarters white, a half-sister to his late wife. Their four surviving Hemings children were born into slavery because of her status, were seven-eighths white; as adults, three passed into white society and married white in generations. By the late 18th century prior to the Haitian Revolution, Saint-Domingue was divided into three distinct groups: free whites. More than half of the affranchis were gens de couleur libres. In addition, maroons were sometimes able to establish independent small communities and a kind of freedom in the mountains, along with remnants of Haiti's original Taino people.

When slavery was ended in the colony in 1793, by action of the French government following the French Revolution, there were 28,000 anciens libres in Saint-Domingue. The term was used to distinguish those who were free, compared to those liberated by the general emancipation of 1793. About 16,000 of these anciens libres were gens de couleur libres. Another 12,000 were affranchis, black slaves who had either purchased their freedom or had been given it by their masters for various reasons. Regardless of their ethnicity, in Saint-Domingue freedmen had been able to own land; some owned large numbers of slaves themselves. The slaves were not friendly with the freedmen, who sometimes portrayed themselves to whites as bulwarks against a slave uprising; as property owners, freedmen tended to support distinct lines set between their own class and that of slaves. Working as artisans, shopkeepers or landowners, the gens de couleur became quite prosperous, many prided themselves on their European culture and descent.

They were well-educated in the French language, they tended to scorn the Haitian Creole language used by slaves. Most gens de couleur were reared as Roman Catholic part of French culture, many denounced the Vodoun religion brought with slaves from Africa. Under the ancien régime, despite the provisions of equality nominally established in the Code Noir, the gens de couleur were limited in their freedoms, they did not possess the same rights as white Frenchmen the right to vote. Most supported slavery on the island, at least up to the time of the French Revolution, but they sought equal rights for free people of color, which became an early central issue of the unfolding Haitian Revolution. The primary adversary of the gens de couleur before and into the Haitian Revolution were the poor white farmers and tradesmen of the colony, known as the petits blancs; because of the freedmen's relative economic success in the region, sometimes related to blood ties to influential whites, the petits blancs farmers resented their social standing and worked to keep them shut out of government.

Beyond financial incentives, the free coloreds caused the poor whites further problems in finding women to start a family. The successful mulattoes won the hands of the small number of eligible women on the island. With growing resentment, the working class whites monopolized assembly participation and caused the free people of color to look to France for legislative assistance; the free people of color won a major political battle on May 15, 1791 when the National Assembly in France voted to give full French citizenship to free men of color. The decree restricted citizenship to those persons; the free people of color were encouraged, many petits blancs were enraged. Fighting broke out in Saint-Domingue over exercising the National Assembly's decree; this turmoil played into the slaves' revolts on the island. In their competition for power, both the poor whites and free coloreds enlisted the help of slaves. By doing this, the feud helped to disintegrate class discipline and propel the slave population in t

Armigatus is an extinct genus of clupeomorph fishes belonging to the order Ellimmichthyiformes. These fishes lived in the Upper Cretaceous; the Latin genus name armigatus, means bearer of armor. Brevissimus signifies "shortest, smallest". Armigatus has an osteoglossid-like tooth patch, a large foramen in the anterior ceratohyal and a series of subtriangular dorsal scutes, giving rise to their scientific name. Forey, P. L. L. Yi, C. Patterson, C. E. Davies. 2003. Fossil fishes from the Cenomanian of Lebanon. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 1:227–330. Vernygora, O. and Murray, M. 2016. A New Species of Armigatus from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco, Its Phylogenetic Relationships. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 36: e1031342

RFA Green Rover was a Rover-class fleet support tanker of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, built by Swan Hunter Shipbuilders on the River Tyne, UK and completed in 1969. After decommissioning in 1992 she was sold to the Indonesian Navy and renamed KRI Arun The Rover class were single hulled tankers, designed to carry a mixture of fuel oil, aviation fuel, lubricating oil and fresh water supply for services around the globe, they were built with a flight deck large enough to accommodate two helicopters, although no hangar was fitted. Although not big enough to support a large task group, these ships are ideal for supporting individual warships or small groups on deployment; the keel of Green Rover was laid at Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd's Hebburn yard on the River Tyne, UK on 28 February 1968, she was launched on 19 December the same year, completed on 15 August 1969. She was in service with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary from 1969 until 1992. One of Green Rover's first duties was to attend Navy Days at Chatham.

In September 1969 she towed the disabled RFA Appleleaf from the North Atlantic to Devonport. On September 1971 she carried out deck landing trials with the new Harrier Jump Jet while was moored at Greenwich Pier on the Thames. Green Rover was decommissioned in 1992 from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. In April 1992 the ship was purchased by her builders who resold her to the Indonesian Navy for £6 million, she was towed from Portsmouth to the Tyne renamed C to be taken in hand for a 4-month refurbishment before re-entering service for her new owners. Commissioned as KRI Arun, in addition to providing tanker duties, she became the flagship of the Training Command in the Indonesian fleet, she is still in service as of 2018. On 19 March 2018 Arun took on a severe list during a replenishment operation off Surabaya; the exercise was cancelled and she was towed to naval facilities at Surabaya for tehnical examination