Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Saturday, 7 January 2017
127th anniversary of the patenting of William B Purvis’s fountain pen
William Purvis (Philadelphia, US) patents his fountain pen invention, 7 January 1890, and reflects, quite perceptibly: “[T]he object of my invention is to provide a simple, durable and inexpensive construction of the fountain pen adapted to general use and which may be carried in the pocket”
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “RPDD” {or “Relation of the poet to day dreaming”} [personnel:Coleman, alto saxophone;Don Cherry, pocket trumpet;Scott LaFaro, bass;Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Records, New York, US, 31 January 1961])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
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