African Independence

The continent Africa changed from the 20 year period of time from 1955 to 1975. After World War 2, the leaders of Africa gave up colonial rulings and began to form independent countries. Doing this took time and effort because Europe had imperialized Africa and had demolished most of their resources.

In the 1940s a man named Kwame Nkrumah who was a former teacher who had spent many years studying in the Us, began to make protests for the rights of the peoples independence. Kwame returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 to help out with boycotts against the government. In the end, his efforts for independence was successful. In 1957, the Gold Coast received its independence and called their country Ghana to symbolize a famous West African kingdom of the past.Ghana became the first country by black Americans to work with the British Commonwealth.

Nine years later, in 1966, Nkrumah the army and the police took power over Ghana. They are stuck in between a civilization and military ruling and stubble with the economy. In 1979 and 1981, an Air Force pilot named Jerry Rawlings took control of Ghana and in the year 2000 the first elections began.

In 1955, almost all of Africa was owned by British colonies except, Libya, Egypt, Liberia, and the Union of South Africa. Ethiopia was the only place in Africa that always had their independence.

By the year of 1975, drastic changes had occurred. The British colonies now only owned South-West Africa, Spanish Sahara, Affars and Issas Terr. and Rhodesia. which named after a racist British man named Ceciles Rhodes.

Rhodesia finally got it's independence in 1980 and renamed their country Zimbabwe.

Colonel Joseph Mobutu came into the rule of Zaire for 32 years after overthrowing the nation's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. He renamed Kantaga to Zaire. His way of ruling was unprofitable towards the people and pushed the people into poorness.

Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu and had himself sworn in as president of Congo(Zaire) in 1997.He banned all political parties.

Another leader of South African independence is Nelson Mandela who had to go through many obstacles in order to achieve the rights for his people and was then elected for president and won with the majority of the votes.

9th Grade Review - Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution followed a time when people were what was called nomads. Nomads were people who lived in groups and moved from place to place and never really stayed in one place too long.They hunted food with spears and other such sharp objects. They were like cavemen.

It appears that the action of being sexist was historical because while the men went hunting for animals to bring home for women to cook, the women stayed home and gathered fruits.

This was the period of time that brought about spears and axes that were made and formed form bone, wood, and stone. This way of life came to a halt in about 10,000 BCE because of the discovery of the cultivation of crops and domesticate animals.

This change is called the Neolithic Revolution. This new system of things brought about agriculture which led to the extinction of nomads and the creation of permanent housing. With the creation of homes came villages which divided the people into different social classes. This put the more endowed above the less endowed. This action was determined by what you did for a living. You were judged if you were a farmer, craftsman, priest, or warrior.

With these different social classes came the Council of Elders who were in charge of each village. From the transformation of hunters into gentlemen, those men became great warriors because of their methods of weaponry and skill.

Even though the inventive tools produced by the nomads were good, they were still not great. Neolithic farmers invented a calendar to keep track of the progress of their crops during planting and harvesting time. They also created metal tools to help out on the fields, like plows.

Some of the earlier nomads that decided to settle,stayed in the fertile valleys of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates,Yellow, and Indus Rivers because the water form these valleys made the soil rich and easier to plant crops in.

The Neolithic Revolution is an important time in history because of its impact on our world today. Some of these great civilizations turned into what is now Europe, Mesopotamia, China , and India.

The European Union

The European Union(EU) was a combination of 25 nations to make one alliance in Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was only the US to stand alone, so Europe came in to take the empty space for power. Like the USSR, the European Union didn't work with the US, they competed with them.

The 25 allied nations shared the same income, as stated in their contract of alliance. This was called the Euro. This took over for the US dollars that were usually exchanged.After this new economic system of money exchange was finalized, it became obvious that the US dollars were about one-third more than Euro dollars. This new system made the people of Europe richer.

The EU gave workers a broader area to skim through jobs. The people in these 25 nations had a choice of all 25 of these nations.

One of the restrictions of the EU was that capital punishment was not allowed, so that eliminated Turkey not to be included in this alliance. The EU has about 500 million people in its population which is about 200 million more of the population of the US. Maybe this huge difference of people is because of those who are free to roam the US even with all the laws, killing people. Since the US has capital punishment, the population will decrease by those who die at the hands of the law more often than that in the EU.

I think that the EU has a higher population because of not having capital punishment. I think that because of the fact that the EU is refusing to kill their own people, the people in these 25 nations choose to be at peace with each and not kill each other on a daily basis because of this action of law. I'm not saying that their perfect,but that they have a lower rate of deaths per year which speaks greatly when compared to the US.

Film Lesson - "The Right Stuff"

In the film "The Right Stuff", the Russians and the US are competing to have the first man in space. They have spies on both sides and are racing to be the best. In the end, the US had the first monkey in space but Russia had the first man in space.

From the film generally I would say that I would remain how desperate the US seemed to beat Russia at everything and how the Russians just sat there and laughed.

Maybe, if the US was a bit calmer with their race for providence then there might have been a chance for them to win more competitions

I think the US has finally learned to play their cards right with exception of a few bad leaders.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missle Crisis began on October 15, 1962 when reconnaissnace photographs revealed Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba. When President John F. Kennedy was informed of this the next day, he organized the EX-COMM which was a group of his twelve most important advisors to handle the crisis.

Kennedy then proclaimed that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba.

As tension began to build Kennedy ordered low-level reconnaissance missions once every two hours.

Kennedy did many things to prevent this crisi on sides.

On October 28, the air was finally clear when Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba.

Other agreements were made to bring justice to this final conclusion.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO is an organization in Europe and North America. It satnds for This was created to a build a mutual defense alliance so that if one of them were attacked all of the other countries in NATO would come to help them.

The agreement also helped them with economic aide under the Marshall Plan. This would help them rebuild more quickly and get them on good terms.

The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defense alliance and was created in response to the Treaty of North Atlantic. This allance treaty was owned by the Soviet Union. They kept in contact with military pesonnels to insure their alliances. It was anattempt to strenghthen their satellites.