History they say bring back the memories of the past, many of today's countries have made series of error that almost threatened their existence, let us take a look at the world most famous mistakes and what we learnt from them. You can add yours and let the fun begins

*Note: If you are not a fan of reading you might get bored.
(Culled from Nigel Blundell famous books)

THE PROPHETESS WHO LED HER TRIBE TO DEATH (Am sure South-Africans will never forget such history)

Nongqawuse had a fatal charisma. She was so smooth-tongued that she led an entire South African tribe to obliteration. And she was just 14 years old.

One hot, still day in 1856 she sat on a rock overlooking a pool in the Gxara River and, as she stared at the placid water, she imagined she saw faces reflected there.

She ran back to her village and told the elders of her tribe, the Gcaleka Xhosas, that she had seen the faces of her ancestore and that they had spoken to her. They had told her that they were ready to be resurrected to lead a holy war against the Europeans who were taking over their country.

But, said, Nongqawuse , the ancestors would only return on earth at a price. The tribe would first have to prove their faith by destroying all their worldly wealth. They would have to burn their crops and slaughter all their cattle - otherwise they would be turned into reptiles and insects and destroyed in a tempest.

February 18, 1857, was the appointed day on which the ancestral dead would be reborn to fight again. The Gceleka Xhosas met the deadline. They spent almost a year taking part in a prolonged orgy of ceremonial massacre and destruction.
Eventually the great day arrived. The hungry tribesfolk rose early for fear of missing the promised miracle. Nongqawuse told them to watch the sun rise and the chart its progress across the sky. It would, she predicted, halt in the heavens - then retrace its course to set for the first time in the east.

Throughout the day, the sun continued on its inevitable course. Tribes people, half blinded through staring at it, wailed in despair. And, as the sun died in west, their despair turned to anger. Even hungrier than they had been at dawn, they peered around for the young prophetess - but she had fled.

Nongqawuse sought sanctuary with the British in King William's Town. They place her, for her own protection, on Robben Island. Later she moved secretly Eastern Province, where she lived on farm until her death in 1898.
The tribe she had led to ruin were not so lucky. They had no food, nor the means of providing themselves with any. Though many were helped by neighbouring tribes and European charity, 25,000 died of starvation.

More to come...

40 YEARS IN BED - WITH 'FLU

A doctor taking over a local practice visited a 74-year old woman who had been bedridden for 40 years. He could find nothing wrong with her. He discovered that one of his predecessors had ordered the woman to bed because she had influenza and had told her not to get up again until he returned. He forgot to return.

Within a few days, the 34-year-old single woman had recovered. But she remained in her sickroom awaiting the doctor's visit. Several weeks elapsed and he still did not call. By then the patient had discovered that she enjoyed being waited on hand and foot - she refused to budge.

At first, she was nursed by her mother. But when the old woman died, a brother-in-law took over. Finally, a new doctor to the area paid a routine call to the patient's home in Taunton, Devon, and examined the woman, now aged 74 and still keeping resolutely to her bed. He referred her case to a geriatric specialist.

The specialist, Dr. Peter Rowe, said: 'By the time I saw her, she couldn't have got up if she had wanted to. She was decidedly plump and far from keen to leave her bed.

Dr. Rowe reported the case to British medical journals in 1978, but, because of medical ethics, the woman's name was never revealed. The doctor told how it took seven months of sympathetic encouragement before the old lady was persuaded to leave her bed; and how, happily, she took to her feet again for three 'fairly active' years before her death at 77.

Next » The baker who burned down London

Interesting read, please continue with the rest.

THE BAKER WHO BURNED DOWN LONDON - He left an oven alight - and sparked off the Great fire of 1666

For a humble tradesman, John Farynor had attained a special honour and reputation. He was baker to King Charles II, recently restored to the English throne after his exile in France.

Farynor had been the royal baker for five years when, one evening in 1666, after another long and weary day, he climbed the stairs to bed above his bakery in Pudding Lane. He snuffled out his candled and settled down for a peaceful night's sleep. But as he slept, a flame still flickered in the bakery beneath. He failed to damp down his bread ovens.

The flame grew. And at two o'clock that morning, on september 2, 1666, the fire in the bakery sparked off one of the worst conflagrations in history, the Great Fire of London.

Sparks rising from Farynor's establishment set fire to a pile of hay stacked in the courtyard of the nearby Star Inn and lit up the sky. Pudding Lane at the centre of an overcrowded area of old London, and thousands of the local inhabitant were soon out in the streets watching the blaze. They were not unduly alarmed. Fires were common in this city of pitch-soaked timbers and lathe-and-plaster constructions. Only the year before, King Charles had written to the Lorf Mayor urging him to enforce more stringent fire regulations. But previous fire had fizzled out, and there was no reason to think that this one would be any different.

Pudding Lane was a dumping groud for offal from nearby Eastcheap Market, and no one of any note lived there. But it was close to main road running down to London Bridge, so in the early hours of the morning the mayor was informed. When he arrived at the scene he was singularly unimpressed, 'Pish!' He said. 'A woman might piss it out.'

Diarist Samuel Pepys was no more impressed. He was awoken by the maid at 3 a.m. At his house about three-quarters of a mile to the east near Tower Hill. He wrote of the fire in his dairy: 'I rose and slipped on my nightgown and went to her window and thought it to be at the backside of Mark Lane at the farthest, and so to bed again and sleep.'

Pepys carried the news of the fire to the court, and thereby the king, when he arrived at his office in Whitehall before midday.

Continuation from the previous....

No one had bothered to tell the king then. It was sunday, after all.
But any idea that the fire would fizzle out was soon dispelled. On sunday afternoon the blaze reached the River Thames, and warehouses loaded with timber, oil, brandy and coal exploded like bombs, one after another.
A steady dry wind blew continously from the east, so that, although the fire barely reached Pepy's house a short distance away, it spread uncontrollably to the west. There was one stage on the Sunday when the blaze might have been halted. But the firefighters smashed up the water pipes to fill their buckets more quickly and cut off the area's water supply.
The inferno swept on unabated from sunday to Wednesday, by then 13,000 houses had been destroyed, 87 parish churches burned down and 300 acres blackened. The shops built on London Bridge caught fire. Sparked carried across to the opposite bank of the Thames and started small fires in Southwark. The Guildhall and the Royal Exchange - the city's financial centre - were reduced to ashes.
The great conflagration was at St. Paul's Cathedral, where the heat caused the stonework to explode and ancient tombs to burst open, revealing mummified remains. The cathedral's roof melted, and molten lead flooded down neighbouring streets.
Remarkably, only eight people died in the Great Fire of London. Most citizens had plenty of time to flee. The roads were crammed with handcarts piled with belongings, and the surrounding countryside was one vast refugee camp.
Pepys was among those who left the city. He wrote, 'With one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire drops (from this) most horrid, malicious, bloody flame.....(Above it all was) a smoke so great as darkened the sun at midday. If at any time the sun peeped forth it look red like blood.'

By wednesday night fire had been virtually contained, largely due to the personal intervention of the king, who organized the fire-fighters in knocking down buildings to clear a fire-break. But London smouldered for week afterwards. Cellars were still burning six months later.

Baker Farynor's blunder did result in some good, however. The shameful slums of central London were wiped out in a single week. And the fire purged the last vestiges of London's previous disaster, the Great Plague of 1665, which had claimed 100,000 victims

kinibigdeal:
Continuation from the previous....

No one had bothered to tell the king then. It was sunday, after all.
But any idea that the fire would fizzle out was soon dispelled. On sunday afternoon the blaze reached the River Thames, and warehouses loaded with timber, oil, brandy and coal exploded like bombs, one after another.
A steady dry wind blew continously from the east, so that, although the fire barely reached Pepy's house a short distance away, it spread uncontrollably to the west. There was one stage on the Sunday when the blaze might have been halted. But the firefighters smashed up the water pipes to fill their buckets more quickly and cut off the area's water supply.
The inferno swept on unabated from sunday to Wednesday, by then 13,000 houses had been destroyed, 87 parish churches burned down and 300 acres blackened. The shops built on London Bridge caught fire. Sparked carried across to the opposite bank of the Thames and started small fires in Southwark. The Guildhall and the Royal Exchange - the city's financial centre - were reduced to ashes.
The great conflagration was at St. Paul's Cathedral, where the heat caused the stonework to explode and ancient tombs to burst open, revealing mummified remains. The cathedral's roof melted, and molten lead flooded down neighbouring streets.
Remarkably, only eight people died in the Great Fire of London. Most citizens had plenty of time to flee. The roads were crammed with handcarts piled with belongings, and the surrounding countryside was one vast refugee camp.
Pepys was among those who left the city. He wrote, 'With one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of fire drops (from this) most horrid, malicious, bloody flame.....(Above it all was) a smoke so great as darkened the sun at midday. If at any time the sun peeped forth it look red like blood.'

By wednesday night fire had been virtually contained, largely due to the personal intervention of the king, who organized the fire-fighters in knocking down buildings to clear a fire-break. But London smouldered for week afterwards. Cellars were still burning six months later.

Baker Farynor's blunder did result in some good, however. The shameful slums of central London were wiped out in a single week. And the fire purged the last vestiges of London's previous disaster, the Great Plague of 1665, which had claimed 100,000 victims

this must have really encouraged the organised state of the country UK now. pls keep it coming

wow

what of the remaining story nko