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When the German adventurer Gerhard Rohlfs visited the city of Ibadan in 1867, he described it as “one of the greatest cities of the interior of Africa” with “endlessly long and wide streets made up of trading stalls.” However, unlike many of the West African cities he had encountered which were centuries old, Ibadan was only about as old as the 36-year-old explorer, yet it quickly surpassed its peers to be counted among the largest cities on the continent by the end of the century.
The East African coast is home to the longest contiguous chain of urban settlements on the continent.
The Wangara chronicle, one of West Africa's oldest surviving historical texts composed around 1650, contains an interesting account explaining the migration of a group of scholars from medieval Malī against the wishes of its ruler:
The southern half of the African continent is populated by speakers of about 550 closely related languages that are referred to as the Bantu languages.
Among the corpus of terracotta figurines discovered in the Greco-Egyptian city of Alexandria dating back to the 2nd century BC is a fine clay vessel in the form of a Nubian priestess of Isis of Philae, who is depicted in a kneeling position while performing a Greek-type mortuary wine libation.
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Project Mercury was America’s entry into the Space Race and was intended to put a human into space before the Soviet Union did. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957 caused a near-panic in the United States and led to desperate calls to “catch up”. President Eisenhower responded by establishing the National … Continue reading Project Mercury →
I remember the first time I sat down and watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s lyrical, meandering sci-fi epic Stalker. It was a long time ago, before the advent of smartphones and tablets. I watched a beat-up VHS copy on a non-“smart” TV, and had no ability to pause every few minutes and swing by Facebook, Twitter, or […]
Pompey’s Greatest Show on Earth JamesHoare Tue, 03/04/2025 - 09:08
Before his fateful entry into politics, Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Even to the most neutral imaginable observer, the known examples of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 paintings and other works of art he produced in his early adulthood would hardly evidence astonishing genius. They do show a certain technical competence, especially where […]
In 1944, Harold Fisk was a geologist and cartographer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers when he made these 15 maps to illustrate the government’s “Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River”. Fisk’s ingenious maps shows a different portion of the Mississippi and its various courses over time between … Continue reading "Harold Fisk Maps the History of the Mississippi River, 1944" The post Harold Fisk Maps the History of the Mississippi River, 1944 appeared first on Flashbak.
