Occasional Digest

San Martin is regarded as the most important Argentinian founding father, who liberated not only a part of Argentina but also helped liberate Chile and Peru along with O’Higgins and Bolívar.

José Francisco de San Martín y Matorras (February 25th 1778 – August 17th 1850) was an Argentine general and the principal leader of the successful struggle for independence from Spain by the southern nations of South America.

Together with Simón Bolívar in the north, San Martín is regarded as one of the Liberators of Spanish South America.

He is regarded as a national hero in Argentina, Chile and Peru. San Martin’s exploits earned him a series of honorific names. In Argentina he is remembered as the “Padre de la Patria”, (Father of our Country). In Peru, he is known as, “Fundador de la Libertad del Peru”, (founder of the freedom of Peru), “Protector de Peru” (protector of Peru) and “Fundador de la República” y “Generalísimo de las Armas” ( founder of the Republic and supreme commander of weapons). In Chile, he is called simply “Captain General”.

In Argentina, historical figures such as San Martín are remembered on the anniversary of their death, rather than their birth.

The Order of the Liberator General San Martin, named in his honour, is the highest decoration in Argentina.

A MAN’S girlfriend kept helpfully interjecting while he was telling a funny story to ensure it was an accurate account of events.

In the pub with friends, Jack, not his real name, began relating an anecdote about himself and girlfriend Grace Wood-Morris visiting a restaurant during their recent holiday in Greece.

Hannah, not her real name, said: “Jack’s story was about our meal being ruined when a band turned up and serenaded a woman at the next table for her birthday. Luckily I was able to do a live fact-check.

“Jack gave the impression it was a whole mariachi-style band playing deafening instruments. It really wasn’t, it was the restaurant owner with a guitar and a couple of waiters singing. So obviously I had to clear that up.

“Jack was insisting they were absolutely terrible and went on for 20 minutes. It wasn’t anything like that. It was three minutes at most. I remember looking at my watch just then. And they weren’t terrible, they were quite good. I enjoyed the brief diversion.

“Obviously all these corrections broke the flow of the story and Katrina, Pete and Emma all stopped laughing and just looked at Jack suspiciously. But I know Jack wouldn’t want to give a distorted version of the facts.”

Jack said: “She did this with my funny story about my old car. From now on my anecdotes will be ones where this bloody Emily Maitlis cow wasn’t there.”

The first Europeans to visit Gabon were the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century when Diego Cam explored the region. They gave Gabon its name when they named the mouth of the Como River as gabão, Portuguese for “cloak”, after the shape of the estuary.

The French arrived in the region in the early nineteenth attracted by the slave trade. In 1839, local rulers in the coastal region signed away sovereignty to the French. The French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875 increasing French control and founded the town of Franceville in 1880. France officially occupied Gabon in 1885 and in 1910, Gabon became one of the four colonies of French Equatorial Africa. 

During the Fourth French Republic (1946–58), Gabon became an overseas territory with its own assembly and representation in the French Parliament. In 1958 Gabon voted to become an autonomous republic within the French Community. 

On August 17th 1960, Gabon gained its independence and became an independent republic joining the other three territories of the French Equatorial Union who also gained their independence in the same month.

The first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon M’ba.

After the nation gained independence, France established a new dynamic with Gabon partly motivated by the West African nation’s uranium wealth which was key to France’s nuclear programme.