A platoon is a military unit composed of two or more squads/sections/patrols. Platoon organization varies depending on the country and the branch, but are around 50 strong, although specific platoons may range from 9 to 100 men. A platoon is the smallest military unit led by a commissioned officer; the platoon leader is a junior officer—a second or first lieutenant or an equivalent rank. The officer is assisted by a platoon sergeant. Rifle platoons consist of a small platoon headquarters and three or four sections or squads. In some armies, platoon is used throughout the branches of the army. In a few armies, such as the French Army, a platoon is a cavalry unit, the infantry use "section" as the equivalent unit. A unit consisting of several platoons is called a company/battery. According to Merriam-Webster, "The term was first used in the 17th century to refer to a small body of musketeers who fired together in a volley alternately with another platoon." The word is from pelote meaning a small ball.

The suffix "-on" can be an augmentative in French, but on the other hand is a diminutive in relation to animals, so the original intention in forming peloton from pelote is not obvious. Nonetheless it is documented that the meaning was a group of soldiers firing a volley together, while a different platoon reloaded; this suggests an augmentative intention. Since soldiers were organized in two or three lines, each firing its volley together, this would have meant platoons organised so that intention half or a third of the company is firing at once; the modern French word peloton, when not meaning platoon, can refer to the main body of riders in a bicycle race. Pelote itself comes from the low Latin "pilotta" from Latin "pila", meaning "ball", the French suffix "-on" derives from the Latin suffix "-onus"; the platoon was a firing unit rather than an organization. The system was said to have been invented by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1618. In the French Army in the 1670s, a battalion was divided into 18 platoons who were grouped into three "firings".

The system was used in the British, Austrian and Dutch armies. In modern Mexican Spanish peloton retains its meaning of a group firing together, in the specialized sense of an execution firing squad; this is found in the ballad El Preso Numero Nueve, popularized by Joan Baez. On 1 October 1913, under a scheme by General Sir Ivor Maxse, the regular battalions of the British Army were reorganised from the previous eight companies to a four company structure, with each company having four platoons as separate units each commanded by a lieutenant with a platoon sergeant as his deputy; each platoon was divided into four sections, each commanded by a corporal. Due to a shortage of officers, a non commissioned officer rank of Platoon Sergeant Major was introduced from 1938 to 1940 for experienced non-commissioned officers who were given command of platoons. In the Australian Army, an infantry platoon has thirty-six soldiers organized into three eight-man sections and a twelve-man maneuver support section, with a lieutenant as platoon commander and a sergeant as platoon sergeant, accompanied by a platoon signaller and sometimes a platoon medic.

A section comprises eight soldiers led by a corporal with a lance corporal as second in command. Each section has two fireteams of four men, one led by the corporal and the other by the lance corporal; each fireteam has one soldier with an F89 Minimi LSW and the other three armed with F88 Steyr assault rifles. One rifle per fireteam has an attached 40mm grenade launcher. Fireteam bravo has a HK417 7.62mm for the designated marksman role. More the designated marksman of each Australian fireteam has been issued the HK417 in Afghanistan and afterwards; the platoon may have three MAG 58 general-purpose machine guns, one M2 Browning heavy machine gun or a Mk 19 grenade launcher at its disposal. In the British Army, a rifle platoon from an infantry company consists of three sections of eight men, plus a signaller, a platoon sergeant, the platoon commander and a mortar man operating a light mortar; this may not be the case for all British Infantry units, since the 51mm mortars are not part of the TOE post-Afghanistan.

Under Army 2020, a platoon in the Heavy Protected Mobility Regiments will consist of around 30 soldiers in four Mastiff/FRES UV vehicles. As of March 2016, the British Army is reviewing whether to retain the FN Herstal Para Minimi 5.56×45mm light machine gun and the M6-640 Commando 60 mm mortar at platoon level in dismounted units. Each section is commanded by a corporal, with a lance corporal as second-in-command and six riflemen divided into two four-man fireteams. Support weapons platoons are larger and are commanded by a captain with a colour Sergeant or WO2 as 2ic; some sections are seven-man teams – in the case of the Warrior within armored regiments, as it only seats seven soldiers. An armoured "platoon" is known as a "troop". In the Bangladesh Army, infantry regiments have platoons commanded a captain, assisted by one or two lieutenants and at least two sergeants; the platoon strength is 30 to 50 soldiers. These platoons are equipped with at least one

Tomaz Aquino Messias de Bragança was a Goan physicist, journalist and Mozambican social scientist at the Eduardo Mondlane University. He played a leading intellectual and political role in the campaign for the decolonialisation of Mozambique from its colonial power Portugal. Aquino's parents were João Paulo Proença Ana Carlota Praxetes Antónia do Rosário Sousa. Both lived in the former Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent, he spent his childhood in Goa. The high school he studied at was the Liceu Nacional de Afonso de Albuquerque in the town called Pangim. In 1945 he took part in a training course for Chemical Engineering in Dharwad, in what was British India; as a young adult, Aquino de Bragança was in Portuguese East Africa in 1947, there to look for work. During this time he was confronted with the effects of the Portuguese colonial policy, which exercised a decisive influence on him for the rest of his life. Aquino de Bragança moved to Portugal by 1948, where he met the writer Orlando da Costa, from Goa, who studied philosophy at the University of Lisbon.

Here Aquino de Bragança came across the physician Arménio Ferreira and the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, a centre for students from the African and other colonies of Portugal. In 1951, Aquino de Bragança headed for France. In Grenoble and Paris, he studied physics. In both places, he met students who were aware of the role of Portugal as a colonial power, had negative and critical positions on the same, including Mário Pinto de Andrade, Frantz Fanon, Marcelino dos Santos. Aquino de Bragança developed at that time a strong political consciousness of the Marxist variety and lived with the hope that the colony of Goa could be independent from Portugal. On the basis of his shared ideas with other activists from various Portuguese colonies, he created personal bonds. Within such political activists, he developed a Paris-Casablanca Algiers group designated as an informal alliance, as a result of the Confederação das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colonias Portuguesas. In 1957 Aquino de Bragança emigrated to Morocco in Algeria to take to teaching science.

Here he married his first wife Mariana. Both the couple's children were born in Morocco. During this time he worked as a journalist and wrote for the Simon Malley-founded Afrique-Asie magazine in Paris. With the consent of King Mohamed V, he acted as the secretary of the editorial group of the Moroccan newspaper Al Istiklal and the private secretary of Ben Barka, a Moroccan opposition leader, whom he had met in Paris; when the PAIGC and the MPLA in 1961 set up an office of CONCP in Rabat to coordinate the political work of the independence movement of Portuguese colonies, together with the trade unionist and campaigner George Vaz, he represented the Goan People's Party within the new organization. His participation in this umbrella organization led to a growing influence in CONCP Secretariat and expanding contacts with leading figures in the liberation movements on the African continent; the Bragança family lived until 1962 in Morocco. In the same year they moved to Algiers in Algeria. During this time he worked under simple conditions and his journalistic activities offered only a modest living.

He is co-founder of the weekly newspaper Révolution Africaine, wrote for the daily newspaper El Moudjahid. By this time, the government of the dictator Salazar had become aware of his political activities and therefore sought an arrest warrant for the Portuguese secret police dated March 14, 1962. All his activities were recorded in regular reports. In 1965, he is found as a participant of 3 to 8 October at the second CONCP conference in Dar es Salaam, which had Agostinho Neto as Secretary and was organised by Mário Pinto de Andrade and Amalia de Fonseca and Aquino himself, he participated as an author and co-author along with Pascoal Mocumbi and Edmundo Rocha of the conference documents. On the recommendation of Simon Malley, he took on the task of commentator on issues in the Portuguese colonies since 1969 for Africasia, which became Afrique-Asie. Together with Immanuel Wallerstein and Melo Antunes, the three-volume work Quem é o inimigo came about, it dealt with key issues of colonialism, first appeared in 1978 in Lisbon.

His work in Algeria reflects a stage of comprehensive journalistic activities with the objectives of promoting the African liberation movements and participation in logistical support, building their international profile and promoting the training of journalists. In this way, Aquino de Bragança was founder of the Algerian School of Journalism, where he taught courses in the sociology of journalism. During his varied activities he met leading figures of the liberation movements, was their counselor and was friends with a number of these people. From this group of people are Mário Pinto de Andrade, Ben Bella, Amílcar Cabral, Samora Machel, Agostinho Neto and Eduardo Mondlane. After the Carnation Revolution of 1974 in Portugal, Aquino de Bragança decided to step up further engagement in Mozambique; this event had changed the balance of power in southern Africa completely. At the beginning of this new chapter of life, he was commissioned by Samora Machel in May 1974 with a political mission in Lisbon, in order to figure out the new negotiating partner for the FRELIMO in a situation where the power in a state of flux in

The 1969 Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team represented Rutgers University in the 1969 college football season. In their tenth season under head coach John F. Bateman, the Scarlet Knights compiled a 6–3 record and outscored their opponents 212 to 150; the team's statistical leaders included Rich Policastro with 1,690 passing yards, Steve Ferrughelli with 564 rushing yards, Jim Benedict with 650 receiving yards. The team was scheduled to play at the College of the Holy Cross on November 15, but the game was cancelled due to an outbreak of hepatitis there; this year was celebrated as the centennial of college football, one hundred years since the 1869 game between Rutgers and Princeton. The game against Princeton, which Rutgers won 29-0, was broadcast in the Eastern Region by ABC Television. Two weeks Rutgers was upset by Lehigh in a 7-17 loss