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Showing posts from October, 2019

The 2 hour marathon

The marathon officially is about 42.195 kilometres (approximately 26 miles 385 yards) and it was said to have been started according to legend, by a   Greek soldier named  Pheidippides , who was a courier runner messenger from the  Battle of Marathon  to Athens (490 BC), who reported the victory. He was said to have died immediately after delivering the message of victory over the Persians. Unfortunately,  Pheidippides  time was not recorded, t he winner of the  first modern Olympic marathon , on 10 April 1896 (a male-only race), was Spyridon Louis, from Greece, in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds (2:58:50:0). In 2018 at Berlin, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge took the official record at last year's race, was 2:01:39:0. Hence, those in the know knew that it was only a matter of time when someone ran below 2 hours time mark. The battle to beat the 2-hour marathon is like another similar battle of speed, determination and forbearance, some years ago, the race...

The drug that almost destroyed Africa.

Up till the 18th century, most of sub-Saharan Africa was unexplored apart from the coastal regions. The rest of the world was had been colonized and conquered, the Americas, Asia, Oceania, etc. British, France, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgium ships had been crating away their riches. Africans had the Atlantic slave trade which crated away from millions of them and wreaked havoc on their civilizations and wiped out entire kingdoms. But this was not done directly by the invaders, Europeans, colonists but by their intermediaries or collaborators who were disenfranchised or enraged minorities to the status quo then, who acted as their active agents and were handsomely paid in arms, alcohol, cotton, and trinkets or by the demise of their perceived enemies. But generally, the African Kingdoms were left on their own and direct contact with Europeans was limited and restricted. The thing that was "protecting" Africans from the direct involvement of Europeans was Malaria, wh...