Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

The apartheid was a racial segragation policy in South Africa. Much similar to the one in the United States. But they were segragated from 1948-1990. This policy stated that white people were above everyone else and can vote, while the "Bantu" which is everyone else that is black mixed or Indian is nit able to. Nelson Mandela was put into jail because of this.

Nelson mandela fought for the independence of South Africa. He was in the ANC's fight to promote non-violence methods to get freedom and justice and to stop the Apartheid. He was a hero because he did this. He was in jail for 26 years and he got out, wrote a book, and still continued to fight for his country and the people admired that and when elections came in 1991, he was elected over the other person with 61% of the votes.

African Independence

Africa is a continent in the world. Africa is filled with over 20 countries. Africa didn't have its independence. The Europeans basically imperialized the continent and took it for themselves. Until recently 1955-1970, Afrida had been gaining their independence. The French, Spanish, English etc. took over them for a long time. They used them for their natural resources and cheap labor.

Ghana was the first country to gain their independence. Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of this. He was a teacher who spent time studying in the united states and came back to get more rights for his country, but ended up becoming the president of Ghana and the English left.

Another nation was Kenya. This country was special because their leader/president was in prison then he was elected as the leader. This is one of the two countries that did this. The leaders name was Jomo Kenyatta. He led the Mau Mau's so he can scare the white men away without any war.

So during this time of fighting for independence, Africa changed alot, they gained all of their independence from the European countries except for a select few and most of them got to eliminate their country's names and change them to something more african and create a flag. For example Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, then they changed it and created their own national flag to show their independence.

Film Lesson: "The Right Stuff"

" The Right Stuff " was a movie made in the 80's about how the USSR and United States were competing against each other non-violently. In the movie, they were competing on who could get to mach 1 speed ( speed of sound ) and mach 2 ( which is 2x the speed of sound).

Then they showed how the USSR launched their first satellite into space. Then the US heard about this and then they choose 7 experience pilots with college degrees to be the first astronauts . They did not choose the main character of the movie that went mach 1 because he didnt go to college. The USSR was winning because they launched the first satellite into space but then the US was trying to put men on the moon. They were not successful at first because all the testing had failed, but in the end they got them up there.

The scenes that will help me remember the cold war and what they did during the competition were breaking the sound barrier and how it was a great achievement and when they did the rocket testing and how they all failed and exploded and crashed. Also when they were training the people because it shows the determination they had to get there and how they were gonna beat the USSR.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

The NATO pact was and intergovernment joining of military forces incase of foreign attacks. So lets say someone attacked US, Canada would be there to back us up because we are both apart of NATO and we were created to protect each other. Also they had to watch each others backs because of the cold war and all the tension between those countries and USSR and US nuclear weapons.
The warsaw pact is a similar treaty where the 8 communist countries in Europe signed a treaty where they will be there for each other incase of an attack from a foreign nation. They made this after the non-communist countries created NATO.
The ones who created warsaw pact were USSR and 8 other communist countries. The ones who created NATO were France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland