Thomas Sankara’s Burkina Faso

Early life and military academy

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born on 21 December 1949 in Yako, a town in the colony of French Upper Volta. His father was a gendarme, meaning that, as the son of one of the few African functionaries employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position and lived in a brick house in a posher area of town. Sankara applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and achieved good results, later advancing into secondary education. His parents wanted him to become a priest, but Sankara chose to enter the popular military, which was seen as an institution which could help discipline the bureaucracy and modernise the country.

History of the region of Palestine-Israel

History of the region

Before Common Era

The region of modern-day Israel and Palestine was known as Canaan and populated by the Semitic-speaking Canaanites during the 2^nd millennium BCE. It was an independent territory during the first half of the millennium but was later conquered by the New Kingdom of Egypt from around 1550 BCE, lasting for a few centuries. The first record of the name ‘Israel’ appeared during this period, in the 1209 BCE Merneptah Stele. Biblical Hebrew and the first versions of Judaism also emerged around this time.

Causes of the Soviet famine of 1932-33

The Soviet famine of 1932 and 1933 was a major famine which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Volga Region, Kazhakstan, the South Urals and West Siberia. The number of deaths can only be estimated, but different researchers and sources like R. W. Davies, S.G. Wheatcroft, Robert Conquest, Micheal Ellman, Norman Naimark, the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Russian Duma believe the number to be anywhere between 3 million and 8.5 million deaths. While other factors may have played a part in causing the famine – like the rapid and forced economic changes of industrialisation and collectivisation, a lack of foresight and a slow and insufficient governmental response – other reasons which are less talked about also played a major role. Moreover, it would be unfair to say that the famine was intentional.

The Seven Wonders of the World

The Seven Wonders of the World are a series of constructions of classical antiquity (between the 8th century BCE and the 5th century CE). The list varied through the years and did not stabilise until the Renaissance, and now includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Six of them – except for the Pyramid of Giza, which still stands relatively intact – have been destroyed, while the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may not have existed at all.

Background

The Greek conquest of much of the known western world in the 4th century BC allowed for Hellenistic travellers to discover the civilizations of the Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman Empire’s government’s systematic extermination, deportation, mass murder and starvation of some 1.5 million Armenians, starting in 1915. The male population was killed through massacre and forced labour, while women, children, the elderly and the invalid were deported into the Syrian Desert, deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape and massacre. Assyrians and Greeks were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman authority and is generally considered part of the same genocidal policy.

The Origins of the Genocide

The western portion of historical Armenia, known as Western Armenia, had come under the control of the Ottoman Empire in 1555, after which it was known as ‘Turkish’ or ‘Ottoman’ Armenia.