Despite the fact that he was regarded as an outstanding engineer, he seemed to be a very poor administrator, although no one quite knew what was wrong with him.

Despite extensive oil and gas resources, diamonds, hydroelectric potential, and rich agricultural land, Angola remains poor, and a third of the population relies on subsistence agriculture.

Despite a strong lineup anchored by the potent Lajoie and Shoeless Joe Jackson, poor pitching kept the team below third place for most of the next decade.

Despite the club's poor record, several Rockies hitters gained notoriety for their exploits at the plate, assisted by the thin and dry air of Denver, which purportedly allows balls to carry farther than they would at sea-level ballparks.

Despite the movie's poor box office and critical reception at the time of its original release, it is gradually becoming a favorite among fans due to its dark nature, brief but entertaining kaiju battles, and the return of series veterans Ishiro Honda and Akira Ifukube.

Despite these changes the highlands remained very poor and traditional, with few connections to the uplift of the Scottish Enlightenment and little role in the Industrial Revolution.

Despite poor performances from the usually steady Chris Capuano and more nagging injuries to Ben Sheets, the Brewers found themselves in a heated pennant race with Chicago's North Siders.

Despite the poor launch publicity, Spore was still a commercial success.

Despite his family's poor background, he performed well after entering the Church and rose quickly through the ranks.

Despite many development plans and efforts, the state of telecommunication sector in the country remained extremely poor up to 1994.

Despite poor writing and plotting, spy fiction endured.

Despite the large number of mainlanders who consume Spam, and the various recipes that have been made from it, Spam, along with most canned food, is often stigmatized on the mainland as " poor people food ".

Despite an initially poor reception, it became a great success, playing 400 times in the next two years.

Despite poor record sales ( due to the elongated period of inactivity by the band ) the album is favored by critics and fans alike.

Despite his poor health, he still welcomed a steady stream of visitors from family members, business partners, political associates and his constituents.

Despite the excommunication, John will continue to make amends to the Church, including giving alms to the poor whenever he defiles a holy day by hunting during it.

Despite praise from critics and fans for her vocals on the three-month Street Angel tour, Nicks was crushed by the focus on her weight and the poor reception of the album itself.

Despite the arrival of additional settlers, including whites, slaves and free blacks, from Bermuda and the receipt of relief supplies from Virginia and New England, the Eleuthera colony struggled for many years because of poor soil, fighting between settlers, and conflict with the Spanish.

Despite the army's access to the armaments factories of Lille, the Army of the North suffered from severe supply difficulties which kept the soldiers ' already poor morale at a permanently low level.

Despite his bloodline in that age when people died young and younger, the orphaned Conrad grew up poor by the standards of the nobility and was raised by Burchard, Bishop of Worms.

Despite the destruction wrought on the countryside, the city castle held out in spite of repeated attempts over twelve days to take it, and the Turks left the island unsuccessfully because of poor logistics and an epidemic that decimated their ranks.

Despite his importance for the period, Dexippus has been declared a " poor " source by the modern historian David S. Potter.

Despite the therapeutic effectiveness and proven success of CBT, treatment availability is significantly limited by a lack of trained clinicians, poor geographical distribution of knowledgeable professionals, and expense.

Despite all these notable successes in diagnostics and detection techniques ectopic pregnancy remains a source of serious maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially in countries with poor prenatal care.

Despite Edward Heath claiming it was a ' hard, cold budget, without any glimmer of warmth ' Jenkins ' first budget broadly received a warm reception, with Harold Wilson remarking that ' it was widely acclaimed as a speech of surpassing quality and elegance ' and Barbara Castle that it ' took everyone's breath away '.

Despite such criticisms, there is some educational quality to the group's activities and they have helped to foster a good deal of valuable research, especially in the area of medieval crafts.

Despite its age, it is still considered an excellent commentary on simple but high quality code.

Despite the disdain of sousaphones held by most serious tuba players, a quality modern sousaphone is often a better choice for the high school or semi-pro player due to more stable intonation and less breath effort needed to generate tone.

Despite the frequency of these military conflicts, the region developed a reputation for quality wine production in the early Middle Ages and was able to continue that reputation as the region's producers began making sparkling wine with the advent of the great Champagne houses in the 17th & 18th centuries.

Despite this, the water quality has still improved, with several historians having called it at various times in the past as an " open sewer ".

Despite the stereophonic quality of their voices, Ithorians are able to speak Basic, and be understood by others, with ease.

Despite the very low quantity, the quality of cassava root protein is fairly good in terms of essential amino acids.

Despite its advantages, VBR has three main drawbacks: first, by only specifying quality, there is no guarantee about the final average bit-rate.

Despite the generous supply and quality of food, some prisoners died of starvation after gambling away their rations.

Despite the low quality of the animation, the TV cartoon studios Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Jay Ward and Filmation thrived during this period.

Despite the move to " quality " based judging, volume was still a significant portion of most early 1990s competitions.

Despite being related to kings of Italy and Burgundy, Agnes was not known as a quality leader.

Despite his small level of success, Johnson acknowledged that racism and other prejudices kept a black jazz musician such as himself from securing the amount and quality of work he was qualified to perform.

Despite its small population, the town prides itself on its ability to bring in high quality cultural offerings, including the Grant County Community Concert Association, which presents numerous events each year.

Despite the draconian measures instituted by Mao's regime to instill literary uniformity, novels of great quality were produced.

" Despite over 200 pages of their fashion editorial in Glamour, and over 80 pages in Vogue, the Arbuses ' fashion photography has been described as of " middling quality.

Despite the quality of individual songs, " lush orchestration and a Ray Conniff type choir, presumably aimed at Dr. King ’ s predominantly middle class following, finally destroyed a lot of the record ’ s potential.

Despite initial praise as providing " CD sound quality ", both Beta Hi-Fi and VHS HiFi suffered from " carrier buzz ", where high frequency information bled into the audio carriers, creating momentary " buzzing " and other audio flaws.

Despite the high quality and lower difficulty of the questions, only sixteen teams attended ACF Nationals in 2001, and the future of the format seemed tenuous.

Despite having lower budgets than features intended for theater release, Japanese direct-to-video productions are rarely marred by the poor storyline and lower quality production often associated with the DTV market in the US.

Despite the streamlining and the successful battle with trade unions, LWT knew that if it were to keep on making quality programmes, it could not over-bid.

Despite Toronto's win, the CFL felt that the overall quality of play in the East Division had deteriorated compared to that of the West.

Despite its biosphere reserve status, the lake contains an unknown number of unexploded bombs from tests in the 1950s through 2000s, and sewer waste from Montreal decreases the water quality.