In the mid-1800s, it was derided by Europe as an ‘experiment in gross vulgarity’. Today, it bestrides the world culturally, economically, technologically and militarily. Christopher Hitchens charts the unstoppable rise of the United States Who looks at an American book?” asked the Reverend Sydney Smith scornfully in the Edinburgh Review of the mid- Victorian epoch. […]

It was a momentous year. The gold price collapsed; the first black Reserve Bank governor took the helm; the face of black empowerment was changed forever; and privatisation was propelled to the top of the economic agenda, write Donna Block and Mungo Soggot Gold, the metal that defined South Africa in the twentieth century, went […]

More than 99 years of scientific progress has been tracked by the Nobel Prize, writes David Le Page It is unlikely any scientist ever began research with an eye on the Stockholm academies administering the prizes founded by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel. But their stature and heritage has come to make them an incontrovertible map […]

Marthali Brand and Aaron Nicodemus Graham Armitage (63), radio, television and theatre personality best known for his roles in television productions such as The Diggers, Westgate and Shaka Zulu. Luis Argana (66), vice-president of Paraguay, killed by gunmen believed to have been sent by President Raul Cubas. Immediately after the killing, MPs voted to begin […]

The idea of a poetry festival in Timbuktu has been wandering since 1992 in the mind of Breyten Breytenbach, poet, painter and member of the board of trustees of the Gore Institute. This has been shared with other poets and kept alive throughout several years. It finally took place before the start of the new […]

Ellen Bartlett There has been a lot of speculation lately about what the Mail & Guardian plans to do regarding its tradition of designating a Bug of the Year – that is, naming the bug that has had the greatest impact in the last 12 months. The question, in short, has been: will the M&G […]

Christian Figenschou They’re the stuff of dreams, nightmares, aspirations and obsessions, freedom and empowerment; of all the inventions of the past 100 years, the motor car best captures the essence of the 20th century. The first self-propelled wagons were described as long ago as the 17th century, and the 19th century saw steam-powered carriages, but […]

Andrew Muchineripi looks at how 1999 treated local soccer It was a year that began with newly appointed Premier Soccer League (PSL) CEO Joe Ndhlela talking of a domestic set-up that would rival the best in Europe. It was a year that ended with Ndhlela suspended for bringing the game into disrepute after charges of […]

William Safire Bliss on bem cumendum fiusende geara, Eallum! That’s “Happy New Millennium, everybody!” in the language that the residents of England were speaking in AD 1000. For this back-translation, which I have jazzed up only a little, I am indebted to Antonette diPaolo Healey of the Dictionary of Old English Project at the University […]

SOMALI gunmen last week captured 33 foreign fishermen said to have been fishing illegally in Somali waters and vowed to punish them under Somali law, according to local elders on Wednesday. The fishermen, who were captured off the the Somali Ayl coast in the region of Garowe, along with their 1000-ton fishing trawler, include two […]