May

28th 2008

Mapping Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

Filed Under Africa | Leave a Comment

With violence against foreigners in South Africa increasing, United for Africa has been mapping out incidents.  The site maps out using Google maps the locations of all incidents as well as a rolling table describing each event.  Visitors to the site can submit incidents either online or via SMS (all submitted claims are verified before being posted).

Jul

02nd 2007

16th- Early 20th Century Maps of Africa

Filed Under Africa, Map Collections | Leave a Comment

Housed at Northwestern University, this web site has an extensive collection of maps collected for the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies.  There are over 113 maps dating from the 16th Century that you can search for by keyword, cartographer, date or place of publication.  To see all the maps in the collection, simply hit the “search” button without typing in a search term.  This returns a listing of all the maps with detailed information about each map.  You can sort the list by a variety of parameters including the date and the geographic place.  Maps load into a new window with tools to zoom in, zoom out, pan and print are available.

Mar

04th 2007

Name Games

Filed Under Africa, Games, World | 1 Comment

How well do your geography smarts hold up under the gun, especially when timed?  Try these pages which test how well you can regurgitate names of countries.  The first one, developed by UC Berkeley students, asks you to name the 53 African countries in under ten minutes:

Name the 53 African Countries in 10 minutes

The second test page goes global; how many of the 245 recognized countries in the entire world can you name in 10 minutes?

Name the 245 countries of the world in 10 minutes

Try filling out the fifty boxes on this page to test your smarts on naming all the states in the United States (at least they don’t have to be in alphabetical order):

Name the 50 states in 10 minutes

Jan

02nd 2007

Stuck Woman Traps South African Cave Group

Filed Under Africa, Offbeat, Travel | Leave a Comment

An overweight woman who was warned she was too large by the cave managers for the Cango Caves in Western Cape got stuck and trapped fellow spelunkers for more than 10 hours until rescue workers could free the woman.  Included in the unfortunate group was a diabetic who needed insulin and two asthmatic children.  Fortunately, a rescue worker was able to climb over the woman to deliver the insulin to the diabetic.  Eventually the workers were able to use paraffin to grease the woman to pull her out.  Hein Gerstner summed up the days event with “We believe what goes in, must come out again. People get stuck all the time - that’s one of the unfortunate things that happen, it’s part of the adventure.”
As reported on the BBC web site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6225301.stm