The town of Johannesburg was founded on this date in 1886. 10 facts about it:
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The exact origin of the name isn’t known. There were several people with the name "Johannes" involved in the early history of the city, but records about the naming of the settlement are lost, so nobody knows which of them it was named for.
The origin of the city’s nickname, eGoli or the City of Gold, is more obvious. EGoli is a Zulu name which means place of gold. The city sprang up when gold prospectors arrived in the late 1880s. Johannesburg is home to the world’s deepest mine, the Mponeng gold mine, with a mining shaft depth of 2,800m-3,400m below the surface. 40% of the World’s Gold is found in the greater Johannesburg region.
It’s the largest city in South Africa with a population, in 2011, of 4,434,827.
Hardly surprising, then, that it is home to several of Africa’s “largests”. Between 1973 and 2021, it was home to the tallest building in Africa: the Carlton Centre in the CBD until 2019 and then The Leonardo in Sandton. In 2021, the Iconic Tower in Cairo, Egypt took the honour. The Johannesburg stock exchange is the largest on the continent. The OR Tambo International Airport (named after Oliver Reginald Tambo, an anti-apartheid activist) is the busiest in Africa, while the Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital is the largest hospital in Africa and the third-largest in the world. it has 3,200 beds and more than 6,700 staff members. Then there is the world’s largest dry port, City Deep, developed in 1977 by South African Railways, and the largest sports stadium, the FNB Stadium.
Staying with sport for a moment, Johannesburg is one of only two cities in the world to have hosted finals for the FIFA World Cup, Cricket World Cup and IRB Rugby World Cup. The other is London.
There are arguably more trees than people in Johannesburg. As the area was originally grassland, the trees were planted by mankind. There are over 10 million trees, with more being planted every year, to combat the greenhouse effect of mining.
Vilakazi Street in Soweto (an acronym for South Western Townships) has the distinction of being the only street in the world to have been home to two Nobel Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
There’s a zoo, founded in 1904, which was once the home of the only two Polar Bears in Africa.
The area around Johannesburg is known for its fossil finds and is said to be the birthplace of humanity. The Cradle of Humankind is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and 40% of all fossil finds have taken place here.
Johannesburg’s twin cities include: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Birmingham, United Kingdom; Beijing and Shanghai, China; Ramallah, Palestine; Montreal, Canada Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Windhoek, Namibia and New York City, United States.
The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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