International

For anyone who has read the epic fantasy novels in the “A Song of Fire and Ice” series  by George R.R. Martin or watched the TV series “Game of Thrones” (based on his books), they will surely know that nothing cuts like Valyrian Steel. Swords made from Valarian Steel never dulled and their edges remained as sharp as the day they were forged, unfortunately the knowledge to make the steel was lost and the swords that were made from the metal became the prized possessions of the noble families of Westeros and were passed down from father to son.

Of course the above is pure fiction but it has its basis in fact. Swords of high quality steel were much prized by the Knights of Old during the Crusades to the Holy Land (11th to 15th centuries CE). The Crusaders were introduced to this steel in battle when their own swords were sliced in half by those wielded by the Muslims. The superiority of their weaponry was only one aspect of Islam’s Golden Age, during which advances were made in astronomy, medicine and mathematics. To say that the Christians were playing catch up on the battle field is correct but catch up they did as they discovered where to lay there hands on this sword breaking steel and that was in the city of Damascus, a thriving trading centre of the day where armourers were supplying swords, daggers and body armour, at a price. Thus this strong (hard but flexible) steel...

A Namibian story has it that one morning during the early 1950s two men glided their light aircraft onto a diamond-strewn beach in the Namibian Sperrgebiet (German for no-go or forbidden zone) with the intention of collecting a large amount of diamonds hidden by one of them in rocky outcrops near the beach. On take-off from the beach the aircraft however nose-dived after one of the aircraft’s wheels struck a rock. They were subsequently spotted by the restricted diamond areas’ security personnel and arrested.

Fact or fiction?

Charity store offers up visual evidence

The author is constantly in search of historical South African images. On a recent visit to a Pretoria based charity organisation, the standard question was posed: “Would you have any old South African photographs?”

In majority of instances the response to this would be: “No, we throw them away”, but in this particular instance the charity store volunteer stated that she had some images stashed away somewhere. A few minutes later she appeared with 16 black & white images dating from the early 1950s by the photographer JJ Katzke, all 16,5 x 22cm in size.

The initial attraction was the four photographs of an aircraft stranded on a beach. The rest seemed of little interest, even unrelated to each other. However, when the helpful charity store volunteer stated that she would sell the batch of 16 images for R32 (around $2 or £1.6), the deal was concluded.

Back home, after much googling, the story around these images started to unfold. Soon...

Should you search on the internet for Shildon, a small town in County Durham in the North East corner of England, you will find out that it has house prices one-tenth of those in London, but that is not the town’s major claim to fame. Shildon is world famous for being the cradle of the Railways (a.k.a. Rail Roads), which were launched in the first quarter of the 19th century. Its location on the eastern edge of the Auckland (south-west Durham) coalfield, made its proximity to the coal mines an ideal spot for a rail head for a proposed railway line from Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington; the celebrated Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR).

Front cover of the 1975 Souvenir Guide

Map of the route over time - click here to view a larger version (The Railway Magazine)

The S&DR opened on the 27th September 1825 after what was a long period of gestation, as the need for better transportation of coal from pit to port was first realised in the mid 18th century. There was a talk of a canal and then a tramway but...

July is mid-summer and warm in New York. But in this world city, July 1965, Nat felt cold, miserable, depressed and missing his country, his people.

Nataniël Nakzana Nakasa, popularly known as Nat, could not ever return to his country of birth. The premier placing this restriction on his passport which prevented him from returning to South Africa, was none other than the architect of apartheid, Dr Verwoerd. Verwoerd, as Nat once commented, was himself not even born in South Africa (Dutch), while Nat was.

Verwoerd (via Wikipedia)

Nakasa left his country from Johannesburg in 1964 to follow his dream. It was an ideal of many journalists, to study at Harvard. He persevered and became a Nieman Fellow in 1965 – maybe the first South African who accomplished this fellowship. Eventually he moved to New York to practice his skill with vigour.

In New York that summer, Nat was depressed. He had experienced an America riddled with racism, albeit more subtle and not as legislated like in his home country. Maybe this also contributed to his lesser success in selling articles. Yet, he appeared on television, a programme on apartheid: The fruit of fear.

Nat also surely missed his people in Durban in Natal, now KZN. That is where he grew up and where his father, a letter setter, his teacher mother and his 4 siblings, lived. And there he started writing articles...

Ninety-nine years ago, on 22 May 1921, a young corporal in the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment died. What distinguished him was that he was a Chacma baboon. The story of Jackie the baboon has often been told and forgive me if you have heard it before. The reason for making it a Magalies Memoir is that Jackie was born in the Magaliesberg. Some details have become confused during a century of re-telling, but essentially the story is as follows:

Private Albert Marr and Private Jackie at the end of the war

Jackie was found as an infant by Albert Marr (some accounts refer to him as Andrew) on the family smallholding in Villieria, now a suburb of Pretoria on the southern side of the Magaliesberg. He had probably been orphaned by bounty hunters who were paid by the Transvaal government to shoot baboons raiding crops in the Moot Valley. Albert took the young baboon home and he was raised as a member of the family much like a human child. Jackie and Albert became inseparable.
 
In 1914 South Africa joined the Allies in the First World War and the two-year-old Union Defence Force called for volunteers to...

Antique and vintage photographs are still found on the rare occasion from which a variety of narratives can then be constructed. The purpose of this article is to present a visual narrative using recently discovered discarded photographs.

These 45 inconsequential small format vintage photographs, stored in a little envelope, were found at a Johannesburg based car-boot sale. The amateur photographer that created the images included in this article had a clear intent, namely to present the visual narrative of a bridge under construction. Sadly, nothing is known about the photographer who created the images.

Before presenting the actual visual narrative, it is necessary to briefly reflect on the concepts of “found photographs” and “narrative photography”.

Found Photographs

Found photographs can simply be defined as lost, unclaimed, or discarded photographs that have been found/recovered by collectors and researchers. Discarded or unwanted photographs can literally be acquired from anywhere, be that at flea markets, charity or second hand stores, car-boot sales, rubbish dumps or be rediscovered in those forgotten boxes in the cupboard.

By default, found photographs are mainly photographs that have been captured by amateur photographers about whom very little, if anything, is known. Much of the appeal around found photography therefore remains the mystery around the reason for the existence of the photograph in the first place (the intent) and the photographer itself.

People are more likely to engage in found photography as either hobbyists, researchers or as viewers looking at the collection of found photographs.

Found photograph hobbyists may...

The SA dagger was the service dagger of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) formed under Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm’s authority in 1921. Otherwise known as the Brown Shirts, the SA was a paramilitary group named after elite German forces from the Western Front in the First World War (1914-1918). Their primary role was to provide muscle at Nazi rallies and to counter the actions of opposition paramilitary groups. The SA soldiers were also used to violently intimidate civilians.

Ernst Röhm (Wikipedia)

The SA were modelled on Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts but wore brown uniforms due to their affordability. Near the end of the First World War, large numbers of brown uniforms had been ordered for Germany’s colonial forces in Africa and so were cheaply available in post-war Germany.

In 1933, Hitler commissioned Professor Woenne of the Solingen School of Commerce to design a dagger for the SA. For the design, Professor Woenne largely copied a dagger on display in the Munich City Museum. It was a German hunting dagger based on a 15th Century Swiss dagger pattern. The Munich City Museum’s German example included an image on the scabbard of the woodblock print called Dance of Death, created by German 16th Century artist Hans Holbein the Younger. The dagger on display was therefore known as The Holbein Dagger. 

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My eye has been on international news about the Corona Virus since the story of this mysterious illness that was changing life in Wuhan China first hit the news. It all seemed a little distant in  January. We were concerned and curious but it was not a personal threat - China seemed (mistakenly) a long way away. I now look back on our celebrating Christmas 2019 as a time of innocence and a time free of worry. It was a BC time -  Before Covid 19. Our biggest problem then was a Christmas day power outage. 48 hours of no power and  I had a turkey to cook and a lunch party to cater for.  That moment and making a plan for hosting a Christmas lunch for 12 seems like a lifetime ago. As January and February and then March rolled on the word Corona and Covid-19 came ever closer  and by March upending our lives. Instant news and social media brought the imminent dangers closer and signalled a highly dangerous developing situation.

During the month of March when the first case was picked up in South Africa, I suddenly became an addict of disease statistics and the world wide trajectory of disease movement. It all became  rather more real and closer to home as by the time I woke up to the thought of well maybe I should buy some toilet paper, some hand sanitiser and a mask, these items had mostly disappeared from the shop shelves. The phenomenon of panic buying took hold, along with a steadily upward line on the case...

A 1:48 scale model of the Type VIIC German U-boat “U-96” was donated to the Museum in September 2019. The model is a true representation of the original submarine used in the Second World War (1939 – 1945) and was constructed by the donor, Mr Brian Echstein (see image above).

The Importance of the Donation

The original U-96 played a major role in the Battle of the Atlantic, a vital campaign of the Second World War. This campaign arose as a result of the requirement for Britain to sustain herself through strategic supplies sent by ship from her dominions and colonies around the world and, more importantly, from North America. The termination of this supply line would have eventually starved Britain and forced her to make terms with Germany. Adm Karl Donitz, commander of the German U-boat force, recognised the strategic importance of the U-boat and was of the firm opinion that this aim could be achieved with 300 U-boats on station in the Atlantic.

Supply routes to Britain 1941 (Wiki Commons)

The development of the U-boat was based on the following considerations: Firstly, Allied merchant shipping was the principle target and should be attacked with no restrictions; secondly, operations should be carried according to the strategy of tonnage sunk exceeding that of tonnage constructed. This would eventually strangle Allied...

During the reign of Queen Victoria the then British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli once told the House of Commons, ‘More men have been knocked off balance by gold than by love” but to be fair to the man he also said on another occasion “We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end”.

Gold has always had a fascination for humankind and golden artefacts have been discovered across the globe, on every continent, from the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Central America (the Mayan people). There was no interaction between these civilisations (except perhaps the first two mentioned) but they all had one thing in common in that their craftsmen worked to make ornate jewellery with a yellow metal that we know as Gold (Au).

The question to be asked then is, why was gold held in such high regard by them and considered nobler than any other metal element found in the earth’s crust? Well the hit song by Spandau Ballet “Gold” (sung by Tony Hadley, in 1983) said it all in one line “You’re indestructible!” Gold does not tarnish or rust (like iron) and does not react with acids, except for Aqua Regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids in the ratio 1:3).

Gold was to be found as alluvial deposits in the streams of the foothills of mountains and because it was yellow, bright and shiny it was easily detected. When gold was found to be easy to...