1. What a wacky night in Rome! About 200 Italian women who responded to an ad to come demurely dressed to the Libyan embassy for a swanky do found themselves being lectured by Moammar Gadaffi himself, “the guide of the first of September great revolution of the socialist people’s Libyan Arab jamahiriya”, dressed in black uniform and a beret about … wait for it … the role of women and why they should convert to Islam. He also told them he had it on good authority (it must be very high up) that Jesus Christ wasn’t crucified on the cross. It was someone who looked a lot like him. What a classic story! Click here to read it at the Mail & Guardian.

2. Then Tim Cohen in Business Day picked up on a delightful and fascinating tale by a British hack who had written about witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall. The journo, Daniel Johnson, wrote about a marvellous accident of history in which two questions at a press conference led to the East German government spokesman erroneously telling the press that travel restrictions at the wall had been lifted immediately. Hey presto, the people took to the streets and the rest is history. Well done to Tim for flagging it (read his column here) and click here to read Daniel Johnson’s (very, very long) original piece. Also coming from the reams written on the anniversary of the Fall of the Wall was this little nugget at Daily Telegraph:  a story about an upsurge in East German retro chic.

What a lot of fun! Check out this Trabant ad from the 1960s I unearthed on YouTube. What on earth are those wimpy guys in white suits jumping into the car so merrily about and could this be the genesis of Top Gear’s Styg?

And then in SA, the Daily Maverick was the only site I could see that did a proper profile of Kumi Naidoo, the South African who was made head of Greenpeace (internationally). Interesting guy and a nice in-depth piece!

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