VIDEOS OF SECOND WORLD WAR World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world’s countries including all the great powers eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked…
Author: Msomi Bora
Abushiri bin Salim (C) VIDEOS OF ABUSHIRI REVOLT It was led by the planter Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi, who gained the support by both the Arabs of the area and local Swahili tribes. Abushiri’s father was an ethnic Arab and his mother an Oromo. The rebellion soon spread all along the coast from the town of Tanga in the north to Lindi and Mikindani in the south. The representatives of the German East Africa Company were expelled or killed except for the establishments in Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam. In February 1889, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck intervened and appointed Lieutenant Hermann Wissmann a Reichskommissar of German East Africa. Wissmann concentrated a Schutztruppe of German officers and native Askari soldiers, who, with…
VIDEOS OF TANZANIA INDEPENDENCE Following Germany’s defeat in World War One (1914-1918), Britain administered the region which it renamed as the ‘Tanganyika’ region. Following the Second World War, the Tanganyika region was placed under United Nations (UN) trusteeship, which mandated Britain with the development of the region. Various independent movements emerged around this time, including the Tanganyika Africa National Union (TANU), headed by Julius Nyerere, now the former president of Tanzania. Support for TANU grew, and by 1960, the first elections were planned for Tanganyika. On 9 December 1961, Tanganyika became an independent republic and became known from then on as…
VIDEOS OF CHIEF MIRAMBO OF NYAMWEZI Mtyela Kasanda (1840-1884), better known as Mirambo (which means “corpses”), was a Nyamwezi warlord, from 1860 to 1884. He created the largest state by area in 19th-century east Africa. Mirambo started out as a trader and the son of a minor chief. He owned trade caravans traveling from the Great Lakes region in western Tanzania to the coast, mostly dealing in ivory and slaves. Through trade with Europeans he acquired firearms and money, and organised armies consisting mostly of teenage orphans. With his newly gained power, he toppled the traditional monarchy of the kingdom of Urambo, and installed himself as ntemi (king). The Nyamwezi aristocracy was appalled…
VIDEOS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr. January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he then led…
VIDEOS OF MALCOLM X El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his staunch and controversial black racial advocacy, and for his time spent as the vocal spokesperson of the Nation of Islam. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm X spent his teenage years living in a series of foster homes after his father’s death and his mother’s hospitalization. He engaged in several illicit activities there, eventually…
VIDEOS OF BENITO MUSSOLINI Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who was the leader of the National Fascist Party. He ruled as the Prime Minister of Italy from the fascist coup d’état in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, and Duce (“Leader”) of Italian Fascism from the establishment of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919 to his execution in 1945 during the Italian civil war. As dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired far-right totalitarian rulers such as Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, António de Oliveira Salazar,…
VIDEOS OF MAHATMA GANDHI Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British Rule, and in turn inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: “great-souled”, “venerable”), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world. Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, western India, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and called to the bar at age…
VIDEOS OF FIDEL CASTRO Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban communist revolutionary politician, a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist. Castro governed the Republic of Cuba as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011, Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers from 1976 to 2008. Castro also served as the Commander-in-chief of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state, while industry and business were nationalized and state socialist policies were…
VIDEOS OF COLD WAR The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies, the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, after World War II. The period is generally considered to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. The term “cold” is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by the two powers, following…
