The Benin Kingdom was a flourishing ancient city situated in modern day Nigeria. During the pre-colonial era, Benin was one of the many highly developed cultures in Africa….this kingdom got its start up around 900 CE when Edo people settled in the tropical rainforest of West Africa….the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom was the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era….and was featured in the Genius Book Of Word Record…..Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting….huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city….especially near the king’s palace….fueled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace….when the Portuguese first visited the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom….made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages….calling it “Great city of Benin”…..the city was destroyed and burnt to the ground in 1897 by Britain.

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE…..Was a Haitian general and leader of the Haitian Revolution….

Toussaint Louverture is thought to have been born enslaved around 1739–1746 on the plantation of Bréda…..at Haut de Cap on the northern coast of Saint-Domingue, present day Haiti…..in 1791, a revolt erupted on the French colony….and Toussaint Louverture, a formerly enslaved man, took control of the rebels…..gifted with natural military genius, Toussaint organized an effective guerrilla war against the island’s colonial population (1743? –1803)…..although he was born a slave….Toussaint Louverture rose to become liberator and leader of Haiti….he accomplished this by taking advantage of wars between the powerful countries that occupied his homeland.

AROUND 5,000 YEARS AGO…..the Sumerians, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq)…..revolutionized how we perceive and measure time…..they developed a sophisticated numerical system based on the number 60….known as the sexagesimal system….this unique system led to the division of an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds….concepts that are still in use today….the Sumerians’ need for precise timekeeping was driven by their agricultural society…..accurate calendars were essential for planting and harvesting crops….they also needed to coordinate their complex religious ceremonies and administrative activities….to aid their timekeeping, the Sumerians made significant advancements in astronomy….they observed the movements of celestial bodies and used this knowledge to create a lunar calendar with 12 months…..which closely aligned with the agricultural seasons….the division of the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds was a monumental achievement…..these divisions were not arbitrary but were designed to be practical and easily divisible….reflecting the Sumerians’ advanced understanding of mathematics….this innovative approach to time had a profound impact on later civilizations….including the Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans….who adopted and further developed the Sumerian system….the legacy of the Sumerians’ timekeeping system is evident in our modern clocks and calendars, demonstrating the enduring influence of their ingenuity on our daily lives.

THE AFRICAN CONTINENT…..has a land area of 30.37 million sq km (11.7 million sq mi)…… enough to fit in the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico, and many European nations, combined.

VERYOVKINA CAVE…..is the closest point to the center of the Earth….one of Jules Verne’s most desired dreams….as published in his novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 1864….was to enter the interior of the earth….although the Veryovkina Cave will not take us to such depths.…it does allow us to get as close as we know to the center of the planet…Veryovkina Cave, about 2212 meters deep….is the deepest cave in the world…..it is located in the pass between the Krepost and Zont mountains in the region of Abkhazia….a self-declared independent state that is officially considered part of Georgia….in 1968 the cave was discovered by speleologists from the city of Krasnoyarsk….who were able to reach a depth of 115 meters…. already in 1986, a new group from Moscow and led by Oleg Parfenov managed to reach the considerable depth of 440 meters…..since 2015, a series of new incursions by the Perovo-Speleo group determined that the cave was deeper….reaching new and better marks repeatedly until reaching the record of 2,212 meters in March 2018…..and recording an underground tunnel system of more than 6,000 meters.

BLACK U.S. OLYMPIANS….won In Nazi Germany…only to be overlooked at home…..

eighty-five years ago the United States competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in Nazi Germany….with 18 African-American athletes part of the U.S. squad….at the 1936 Olympics…18 black athletes went to Berlin as part of the U.S. team……high jumpers Dave Albritton and Cornelius Johnson….hurdler Tidye Pickett; sprinter Ralph Metcalfe….boxer Jim Clark….sprinter Mack Robinson……weightlifter John Terry….long jumper John Brooks.

ON JULY 20, 1969….American astronauts landed on the Moon….or did they?…..despite the historic fanfare that surrounded the moment when Apollo 11 seemed to touch down on the lunar surface….it didn’t take long for people to doubt that the Moon landing had actually happened…..

in 1976, a man named Bill Kaysing published a pamphlet entitled….”We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.”….and Kaysing wasn’t just a poll respondent or a random writer with strong opinions….he’d actually worked for a company called Rocketdyne….the NASA contractor that built the engines for the Apollo Moon missions….Kaysing insisted that the Moon landing must have been faked because NASA simply didn’t have the technological capabilities to pull it off….and he claimed that he could prove it….in his pamphlet, he pointed out anomalies in the Moon landing including….the lack of stars in the sky…..the lack of a crater under the lunar module….and the fact that the light and shadows seen in videos and stills from the Moon landing simply didn’t make any sense….since 1969, a number of other theories about the Moon landing have been put forward….some have argued that the radiation in space would have killed the astronauts….while others have pointed to the American flag….suspiciously flapping without any wind….meanwhile, some have questioned why missions to the Moon suddenly stopped after the 1970s.

IF YOU HAVEN’T HEARD…..about the legendary Woodstock, believe me, you’ve missed a lot….in 1969 a music festival, organized by a bunch of 20-year-olds, took place in Bethel, New York in a cow pasture owned by a farmer Max Yasgur…..the organizers had anticipated for the crowd to be around 200.000 people….the lineup of the most iconic bands of the time such as Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Joe Cocker had more than doubled the number of attendees to around 500.000…..the Woodstock festival ran out of food the first day….the traffic was like hell….drugs were flowing free….and still, there were no violent incidents registered…..all in all….it was the most iconic and the most peaceful music festival ever.

DNA….evidence confirms that Australia’s Indigenous culture is one of the most ancient in the world, tracing their origins back to Africa…..the first genome sequence of an Aboriginal person reveals that they left Africa around 60,000-75,000 years ago…..this genetic study highlights that Aborigines are descendants of the first humans to migrate out of Africa…suggesting they may possess the oldest continuous culture on Earth…..Indigenous Australians were the first modern humans to navigate an unexplored region of Asia and Australia….according to Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen….who led the study…. “Their journey was truly remarkable, requiring exceptional survival skills and courage.”…..he says….. “This discovery was made possible by analyzing a century-old lock of hair given to an anthropologist by an Aboriginal man….leading to insights about the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians.