History Tag Archive

7 Badass Heroes from Around the World

Badass has no passport. It has no rules. When badass finds you and hands you a titanium pair of the sac, you cant say no. Badass does not take no for an answer. You don’t choose badass, badass finds you. It asks nothing of you but to go completely berserk and show Death the middle …

When the Mau Mau Used a Biological Weapon

Sometime in late 1952, a series of mysterious deaths occurred at a mission station in Kikuyu, Kenya. First, the victims, a herd of cows, developed large swellings near the forelegs. The swelling then spread over the course of several days, across the chest and abdomen. Then one after the other, the steeds fell and died.

When a Mozambican Woman Gave Birth in a Tree

At the start of the new millennium, Mozambique found itself pounded by weeks of excess rainfall and a series of disasters.

7 Most Brutal African Serial Killers

Human society has always had psychopaths, and Africa has been no exception to the seeming rise of serial murders. Some remain unsolved, their perpetrators walking among an unsuspecting population. The most terrifying thing is that two of the members of this list used the guise of job interviews to trick their would-be victims, with one …

In McMillan’s Underbelly: The Quest for Kenya’s History

This piece was originally published on the Medium Blog here.  I hadn’t planned to spend my entire afternoon like this. At least not at first. I was in town, with a few hours to kill and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. I always know, but I never get round to …

Why Newspapers Have to Register at the GPO

The registration is a remnant of a time when there were preferential postal rates on newspapers as long as they were in a newspaper wrapper and registered with the GPO as a newspaper. It actually precedes the Kenyan state and survives today as a relic of her colonial history

7 Greatest Art Heists in Kenya’s History

From a sadistic point of view, a culture’s art comes of age when it is worth stealing. Some pilfer, some plunder, others loot, and yet others pluck artifacts from graves. 

The Three Curious Bombings that Rocked Nairobi in 1975

In the span of five weeks in early 1975, three explosions hit Kenya’s capital. 

Is Lake Turkana in Game of Thrones?

Some Europeans called it the Jade Sea, a name that appears in the Game of Thrones books and subsequent HBO series. Lake Turkana was named the Jade Sea due to the turquoise color you see when you are approaching the massive water body from a distance.