Although the area may have been populated previously, the seafaring Taino people moved into the Southern Bahamas around the seventh century from Hispaniola and Cuba. These people came to be known as the Lucayans. There were an estimated forty thousand Lucayans at the time of Columbus' arrival.

Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World was on San Salvador Island, also known as Watling's Island, in the southern part of Bahamas. Here, Columbus made contact with the Lucayans and exchanged goods with them.

Bahamian Lucayans were later taken to Hispaniola as slaves; in two decades, many Lucayan societies ceased to exist, as the population endured considerable forced labour, warfare, disease, emigration and outmarriage. After the Lucayan population was eliminated, the Bahamian islands were virtually unoccupied until the English settlers came from Bermuda in 1647. The Eleutherian Adventurers established settlements on the island of Eleuthera.

The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1717. Some 8,000 American Loyalists and their slaves moved to the Bahamas after 1783 from New York, Florida and the Carolinas. The Emancipation of the British West Indies United Kingdom Emancipation Act took force on August 1, 1834, thereby ending slavery in the Bahamas. This led to many fugitive slaves from the US braving the perils of the Atlantic for the promise of a free life in the Bahamas.

The British made the islands internally self-governing in 1964. In 1973, the Bahamas became fully independent, but retained membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1967, Sir Lynden Pindling became the first black Premier of the colony, and in 1973 became Prime Minister. He 'recommended' the appointment of Sir. Milo Butler as Govenor General.

Based on the pillars of tourism and financial services, the Bahamas' economy has prospered since the 1950s. Today, the country enjoys the third highest per capita income in the western hemisphere, and the highest in the Caribbean excluding the dependent territories of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Despite this, the country still faces significant challenges in areas such as education, health care, international narcotics trafficking, correctional facilities and illegal immigration. The urban renewal project has been launched in recent years to help build up dilapidated urban areas and arrest social decline in the main islands.

The origin of the name "Bahamas" is ambiguous. It is thought to derive from the Spanish baja mar, meaning "shallow seas"; others trace the name to the Lucayan word for Grand Bahama Island, ba-ha-ma "large upper middle land".

Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality. Stedman's Medical Dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning."

People experiencing a psychotic episode may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs (e.g., grandiose or paranoid delusions), and may exhibit personality changes and disorganized thinking. This is often accompanied by lack of insight into the unusual or bizarre nature of their behaviour, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out the activities of daily living.

A wide variety of nervous system stressors, both organic and functional, can cause a psychotic reaction. This has led to the belief that psychosis is the 'fever' of mental illness—a serious but nonspecific indicator.

However, most people have unusual and reality-distorting experiences at some point in their lives, without being impaired or even distressed by these experiences. For example, many people have experienced hallucinations, and some have even found inspiration or religious revelation in them. As a result, it has been argued that psychosis is not fundamentally separate from normal consciousness, but rather, is on a continuum with normal consciousness.In this view, people who are clinically found to be psychotic, may simply be having particularly intense or distressing experiences (see schizotyp).

In pop culture, the term "psychotic" is often used incorrectly to refer to psychopathy.

Art Nouveau ([aʁ nu vo], anglicised/ˈɑːt nuːvəu/) (French for 'new art') is an international style of art, architecture and design that peaked in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century(1880-1914) and is characterised by highly-stylised, flowing, curvilinear designs often incorporating floral and other plant-inspired motifs.

The name 'Art Nouveau' derived from the name of a shop in Paris, Maison de l'Art Nouveau, at the time run by Siegfried Bing, that showcased objects that followed this approach to design. The style introduced by Bing was not an immediate success in Paris but rapidly spread to Nancy and to Belgium (especially Brussels) where Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde would make major contributions in the field of architecture and design. In the United Kingdom Art Nouveau developed out of the Arts and Crafts Movement The most important centre in Britain was Glasgow with the creations of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

More localised terms for the phenomenon of self-consciously radical, somewhat mannered reformist chic that formed a prelude to 20th-century modernism include Jugendstil in Germany Austria and many other countries or skønvirke in Denmark, named after the avant-garde periodical Jugend ('Youth'), Młoda Polska('Young Poland' style) in Poland, and Sezessionsstil ('Secessionism') in Vienna, where forward-looking artists and designers seceded from the mainstream salon exhibitions to exhibit on their own work in more congenial surroundings.

In Spain, the movement was centred in Barcelona and was known as modernisme with the architect Antoni Gaudí as the most noteworthy practitioner. Art Nouveau was also a force in Eastern Europe, with the influence of Alfons Mucha in Prague and Moravia (part of the modern Czech Republic) and Latvian Romanticism (Riga, the capital of Latvia, is home to over 800 Art Nouveau buildings).

In Russia, the movement revolved around the art magazine Mir iskusstva ('World of Art'), which spawned the revolutionary Ballets Russes. In Italy, Stile Liberty was named for the London shop, Liberty & Co, which distributed modern design emanating from the Arts and Crafts movement, a sign both of the Art Nouveau's commercial aspect and the 'imported' character that it always retained in Italy.

The entrances to the Paris Métro designed by Hector Guimard in 1899 and 1900 are famous examples of Art Nouveau in Paris.