On 10 September 1960, Abebe Bikila found that the new running shoes he had purchased in Rome were uncomfortable. Undeterred, he decided to run the marathon barefoot. He took the 1960 Rome Olympics gold medal. On 23 November 1915 the retreat from the World War I Serbian front began. Every male over the age of …
In a small church that has been remodeled into an overnight accommodation just outside Mooi River in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa is a cemetery. In this cemetery is a bench with a dedication to a young man killed on 23 September 1918 and buried in Windmill Cemetery, Monchy-Le-Preux, France. Killed-in-action just six weeks before the …
Successfully passing down cultural folktales is vital for a society that wishes to continue through the ages. Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers were wildly successful at making sure native tales would not be forgotten. Geoffrey of Monmouth firmly established the British King Arthur in the popular imagination. Croatia had its own passer-of-tales in …
On 12 September 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the communist Derg. Emperor Selassie was the last of the Solomonic Dynasty to rule Ethiopia, a reported 225 generations from his biblical ancestors the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Selassie would last just less than two years before being murdered, and when …
In the 15th Century the Ottomans were racing through Europe, conquering everything in their path. By 1493 they had reached Croatia and the last bastion of strong defense before Vienna. On 9 September 1493, the Battle of Krbava Field in Croatia began one hundred years of war between the Ottomans and what would become the …
On 10 July 1914, the Russian Minister to Belgrade dropped dead in the house of the Austrian Minister to Belgrade while the two met to discuss the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo just two weeks before. It is safe to say that Baron Nikolai Hartwig’s ill-timed but stress-induced heart attack led the …
August 7, 626 was a defeat for the Slavs, who had been attacking the walls of Constantinople under the command of the Avar army. But it was a victory, too. When the Slavs abandoned the siege, they melted back into the Balkans, where they had begun to settle. From this point in history, they would …
The first of Portugal’s African colonies was also the first to gain independence. It was not, unfortunately, a smooth road to freedom. Most of the trade in Portuguese Guinea was controlled by a single group – Companhia Uniao Fabril – and their subsidiary companies. One of those subsidiaries, Casa Gouveia, controlled the docks. And Casa …
On 27 July 1948, Dorothea Bleek died. Dorothea had followed in her father’s footsteps, documenting the culture, language, and thousands-of-years-old rock art of Southern Africa. And although Dorothea continued to demur to her father’s expertise throughout her life, it was her books that brought the San to the attention of more academics. Her book, A …
The Gambia is an interesting place. It was a part of both the Mali and Songhai Empires. Ibn Battuta visited in the 1300s and had lovely things to say about the justice-minded people who lived there. It’s nearly completely surrounded by Senegal. And it is littered with stone circles resembling versions of Stonehenge. Not much …
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