The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.
In 1956 a secret committee met to review the possible military applications for atomic energy. Work began on delivery systems for nuclear weapons, but another year passed before President René Coty authorised the creation of the Centre Saharien d'Expérimentations Militaires (C.S.E.M.) - a military research facility in what was then the French Sahara. In 1958 the newly installed President Charles de Gaulle gave the final authorisation for France to develop a nuclear bomb, only the fourth country to do so after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
At 7.04am on 12th February 1960 the scientists at C.S.E.M. conducted their first nuclear explosive test, codenamed Gerboise Bleue ("blue jerboa" - a jerboa is desert rodent). The scientists had mounted the pure fission plutonium implosion device on a 105 meter high tower near Reganne in the desert of Tanezrouf (now in Algeria). The resultant explosion was the most powerful first nuclear test by any nation with a yield of seventy kilotons. They conducted two other tests of much smaller devices in April and December of that year codenamed Gerboise Blanche and Gerboise Rouge - making up the three colours of the tricolore. In April 1961 the scientists detonated the final bomb in the programme, Gerboise Verte.
The first European to set foot on the Galápagos Islands was the fourth Bishop of Panama, the Dominican Fray Tomás de Berlanga. In order to settle a territorial dispute between the conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, Berlanga sailed to Peru but strong winds blew his ship off course. He arrived at the islands on 10th March 10 1535 before continuing his journey.
For over two centuries from Richard Hawkin's visit to the islands in 1593, the English pirates and privateers that preyed on Spanish bullion ships and settlements often used the archipelago to evade attack. One such privateer, Woodes Rogers, stopped at the islands to make repairs after having rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Daniel Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe. The islands attracted a wide range of naturalists including the Italian nobleman Alessandro Malaspina, James Colnett and famously Charles Darwin.
On 12th February 1832, the newly independent Ecuador annexed the islands calling them the Archipelago of Ecuador. The islands initially served as a penal colony governed by General José de Villamil, who sent an exploratory commission there in the previous October. He then set up the Colonising society of the Archipelago of the Galápagos to exploit the lichens that grew there, which served as a dye. Artisans and farmers soon joined the convicts to colonise the islands.
Nelson Mandela was born on 18th July 1918 in a small village called Mvezo, near Umtata the capital of the Transkei. His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a member of the Thembu royal family and chief of Mvezo until the colonial authorities removed him following an argument with a European. The family moved to Qunu where Mphakanyiswa died when Nelson was only nine years old.
The regent of the Thembu, Jongintaba, became Mandela's guardian, sending him to a Wesleyan mission school where he was a gifted pupil. Mandela attended a Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort before enrolling at Fort Hare University, where he became involved in student politics. His involvement in agitation against university policy resulted in him being expelled.
To escape from an arranged marriage, Mandela moved to Johannesburg with Jongintaba, the regent's son. He eventually found employment with a legal firm and completed a BA by correspondence with the University of South Africa. He then began to law at the University of Witwatersand where he first met many people who would later be part of the anti-apartheid movement.
Following the 1948 election victory of the National Party cemented the apartheid policy, Mandela became a political activist. In December 1956 the South African authorities arrested Mandela along with 150 others on charges of treason. A five year trial followed, during which all defendants received acquittals.
To begin with Mandela was committed to the principles of non-violent resistance made famous by Mahatma Gandhi, but in response to an increase in state repression, he co-founded and became leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"). The group engaged in bombing campaigns against government and military buildings, while not harming any people. Mandela coordinated these campaigns and travelled abroad to raise funds for the group.
On 5th August 1962, the security police followed a CIA tip-off and arrested Mandela. He faced charges of inciting workers to strike and travelling abroad illegally for which he was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Following the arrest of many leaders of the ANC in 1963, Mandela faced trial again on charges of sabotage and other treasonous activities. Found guilty he escaped the death penalty, but received a sentence of life imprisonment.
Robben Island became Mandela's home for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. While there he engaged in hard labour in a lime quarry and also received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London after studying by correspondence. Meanwhile he became a cause célèbre as international opinion turned against the South African government and their segregationist policies.
In 1982, the authorities relocated Mandela and the other ANC leaders to Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. Three years later Mandela met with a representative of the National Party government at the Volks Hospital in Cape Town where he was undergoing treatment on his prostate. Nevertheless, no progress was made until Frederik Willem de Klerk became president in August 1989.
The following February de Clerk lifted the ban on the ANC and the other anti-apartheid organisations and announced the imminent release of Nelson Mandela. On 11th February 1990, millions of television viewers watched Nelson Mandela leave Victor Verster Prison in Paarl as a free man. He resumed his role as a leader of the ANC taking part in the four years of negotiations with the government.
In recognition of the attempts at peace and reconciliation the Nobel prize committee awarded Mandela and de Clerk with the Peace Prize in 1993. A year later the first South African multi-racial elections took place. The ANC received 62% of the vote and Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. He remained in office for five years becoming a world statesman, a position he still holds.
The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.
