Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid is a form of Racial segregation in South Africa. Kind of like in america with the segregation of blacks and whites. Even thought the conquering of this helped for africa to gain more technology skills and make new products for their better life. This form negated the africans the right to act as citizens of their own land. They would be separated the non whites and whites into two parts for bathrooms, restaurants etc and anyone that opposed this way of life was killed.

One man who never stopped for the independence of his people and country was Nelson Mandela. Mandela started his strive to regain his territory as a African National Congress but was soon cut when he was caught by the whites and was sentenced to life sentence in prison. Many of his followers where inspired by what he tried to do to save his country that they kept fighting.

Finally after a rebellion started and africa was finally independent from rule, the africans rescued the influential leader of this rebellion after 27 years in prison. He was awarded the nobel peace prize in honor of how he never gave up to abolish Apartheid. Soon after he was named the first black president of africa and is still alive to host the fifa world cup 2010!

African Independence

Between 1955 and 1975 Africa started gaining their independence from European Nations. The only countries liberated at this time were Libya, South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt. This time period was also called the Scramble for Africa. African countries had no say in what the Europeans were doing because they were more dominant in weapons. Their purpose for being in this continent was for natural resources even though africans some africans had no problem in foreign countries taking over their homeland. By 1975 Africa broke through and gained their independence. A very important figure in Africa during this time period that impacted this independence was named Jomo Kenyatta. Jomo gained a good education while growing up and soon studied politics while he worked as a carpenter. He was put in prison for trying to prevent the British from turning the Government system in Africa into communism and after Africa had gained their independence and Jomo became the president of Kenya. Some other important leaders during this time period was Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes was a racist British leader who tried instill British control over Africa. The famous picture of him standing over Africa with puppet strings really shows his character during this harsh time. Two other important figures during this time were Nelson Mandela who soon became president of South Africa and Kwame Nkrumah who was the leader of Ghana.

Film lesson:"The right stuff"

This movie was very entertaining due to the back and forth competition between the U.S. and Russia. The competition after WWII the americans and russians terminated their alliance and started competing against each other called the cold war. The movie starts off kind of confusing thinking it might be about airplanes but as it gets in the middle its starts to be about russia and USA and the space race. This was a race between the power house of communism and democracy to see who could get to space quicker.

Very soon once the Americans felt confident about their progress the Russians launch the first satellite and were intimidated at that time by the Russians. To be superior once again the start building spaceships. This is where the movie gets funny because the americans started testing the space ships and the would fly like 3 feet and den crash. Or make a u turn and then crash that was hilarious to me, but anyways finally the americans succeeded and send to space a monkey and we were the center of it all until russia made us look like and sent the first man to space called Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin.

After this event is when america invested tons of dollars on the space program to launch finally the first man to land on the moon. His name was Neil Alden Armstrong. This was the last of this space race but to me it seems like russia won but on history and books USA is the hero and the victorious.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact

NATO stood for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The countries within this organization were mainly the United States, Canada, and several Western European Countries. This organization was made after World War II and it was to provide aid for countries in need and defense.

Due to the NATO alliance the communist nations in Eastern Europe formed the Warsaw Pact, having the Soviet Union like the powerhouse of Communism. As the dominant force in that allied side the Soviet's kept supplied the communist countries with weapons to protect themselves from the democratic countries. Due to this also USA and the Soviet union started the cold war. It is called the cold war because these two countries never used violence to settle this war. Although the Pact was formed 6 years after NATO it started to lose its power as countries went away like Eastern Germany formed back with Western Germany.