There were three ships which were nearby when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.
One of them was known as the Sampson.
It was seven miles away from the Titanic and they saw the white flares signalling danger, but because the crew had been hunting seals illegally and didn’t want to be caught, they turned and went the opposite direction away from the Titanic.
The next ship was the Californian.
This ship was only 14 miles away from the Titanic. They were surrounded by ice fields and the captain looked out and saw the white flares, but because the conditions weren’t favourable and it was dark, he decided to go back to bed and wait...
...until morning. The crew tried to convince themselves that nothing was happening.
The last ship was the Carpathia.
This ship was actually headed in a southern direction 58 miles away from the Titanic when they heard the distress cries over the radio.
The captain of this ship knelt down, prayed to God for direction and then turned the ship around and went full steam ahead through the ice fields. This was the ship that saved the 705 survivors of the Titanic.
When the captain looked back at the ice fields they had come through, he said, "Someone else hands must have been at the helm of this ship!"
LESSONS
The first ship represents us and people like us if we are so busy looking inward at our own sins and lives that we can’t recognise when someone else...is in need.
The second ship represents those of us who say "I can’t do anything now. The conditions aren’t right for it," and so we wait until conditions are perfect before going out.
The last ship! That's what we should all aim to be. To be there for each other and thrust everything into God's hands.
Life whispers to your soul and speaks to your heart. We need to take time to listen to these whispers and take heed.
Socrates said, ''Know Thyself.'' So ask yourself this moment, ''Who am I?'' Then, whatever good in your heart you want to do, do it!
HRM Oba Olateru Olagbegi II, the Olowo of Owo, reportedly had over 140 children. Of these, about 121 were University graduates. In fact, his father had 300 wives, five of whom remained virgins at his death.
The Olateru-Olagbegi family is one of the largest and most educated families in Yoruba land.
Knighted in 1960, Oba (Sir) Titus Olateru Olagbegi II (1910–1998) was appointed Olowo in 1941 and ruled for 25 years before he was suspended by the military government of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi in June 1966 for supporting Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola.
During the Civil War, when the Ministry of Defence shared the same building with the External Affairs, Michael Ojukwu, an officer with External Affairs, had to show his service identification card before being allowed in.
A military guard who first caught sight of his name hollered for the others to come and see his catch.
"You are Ojukwu?"
"Yes, I am."
"You're under arrest!"
"I am a foreign service officer."
Before the poor man could complete the sentence, he was beaten so badly that he had to be hospitalised.
Some of his colleagues who tried to intervene told the soldiers that Michael was not a Biafran nor had any relation to the secessionist leader, Emeka Ojukwu (pictured)...
A successful arms dealer, Francis Arthur Nzeribe sold weapons to both Nigeria and Biafra during the 30-month Nigerian Civil War. As a matter of fact, Nzeribe traded arms in every single place there had been a conflict in Africa.
In the 1960s, Nzeribe worked for Kwame Nkrumah as a speechwriter but after the coup that sent Nkrumah and his aides to Conakry, Nzeribe sneaked back to Ghana to work for the new government that had overthrown his principal.
In April 1969, Nzeribe was involved in a bribery scandal with Ghana's Head-of-State, Joseph Arthur Ankrah which forced the latter to resign. In 1979, J.J Rawlings deported the Nigerian businessman from Ghana where he found his way to the UK to continue his arms-dealing business.
John "Mad Jack" Churchill was the last British soldier to go to war with a bow and arrows, and a sword. And he did it during the Second World War!
His motto was: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."
Over the course of the war, Mad Jack killed German soldiers with his arrows and captured 42 of them as prisoners at sword-point during the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943.
However, in May 1944, the Germans captured him and flew him to Berlin thinking he was related to the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. After much interrogation which yielded no result, Hitler sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (ruled 1888–1897) was the last Oba of the Old Benin kingdom before the British punitive expedition of 1897 led to his capture, exile, incarceration and eventual death in Calabar on January 1, 1914.
The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a punitive one by a British force of 1,200 under Rear-Admiral Sir Harry Rawson in response to the defeat of a previous British-led pseudo-invasion force under Acting Consul-General James Philips (which had left all but two men dead).
On January 12, 1897, Rear-Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, commanding the squadron at the Cape of Good Hope, was appointed by the British Admiralty to lead an expedition to capture the Benin king and destroy Benin City.
The largest church building in Africa, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, is located in Yamoussoukro the capital of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast).
The basilica was constructed between 1985 and 1989 for an estimated $600 million.
The cornerstone was laid on August 10, 1985, and it was consecrated on September 10, 1990, by Pope John Paul II, who had just formally accepted the basilica as a gift from President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire on behalf of the Catholic Church.
Houphouët-Boigny chose his birthplace of Yamoussoukro to be the future site of the new capital city of his country in 1983.
As part of the plan for the city, the president wanted to memorialise himself with the construction of what he called the greatest church in the world.