The Nobel Peace Prize of 1993,

Was awarded to two men who went down in history,

Because together they dismantled the dreaded apartheid,

Even though they appeared to each be on a different side.

They fought to turn South Africa into a democratic state,

And end the bitter reprisals and vicious racial hate.

So Nelson Mandela, F.W de Clerk,

Thank you for this truly altruistic work.

From the June of 1793 to July 1794,

Saw the Reign of Terror in France, a bloody ‘social war”.

They invented the ‘national razor’, the dreaded guillotine,

To dispose of all they hated, not least the king and queen.*

All the executions took place in what is La Place de la Concorde,

And endless mass beheadings was the greedy crowds reward.

Finally, in 1794 they killed the man who perpetrated this fear,

The “Incorruptible” Maximilien de Robespierre.

I hate to tell you but this method of decapitation,

Was used till 1981, when abolished by the French nation

*King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette

Rasputin was Siberian, of local peasant stock,

But he had very itchy feet, so he soon left his flock.

Although many think he was a monk, he was just a religious fanatic,

Faith healer, pilgrim, mystic, and he was charismatic.

Mystery  followed him everywhere, his fame spread near and far,

And soon this man’s reputation caught the attention of the Tsar.

He preached that Russian troops should pull out of World War I,

And if they had, the Allies would have been completely overrun.

He soon became known as “little friend”, convinced the Tsarina he had her back,

Above all, he persuaded the Romanovs he’d cure their son, a haemophiliac.

Rasputin believed in grace through sin, that sin would bring salvation,

And this cynicism and meddling led to his assassination.

Prince Yusupov and friends of his lured him to a cellar,

And fed him loads of cyanide, and pumped bullets in this feller…

It is not sure just how he died, from poison, shots or drowning,

But his body, fished from the frozen river, had taken a heavy pounding.

Do you know about Genghis Khan,

A ruthless but talented military man,

Who built a vast empire from Russia to China – almost across to Japan?

He brutally conquered every other nation,

Bent them quite literally,  to his domination,

But brought them all  peace and saved them from chronic starvation.

As part of his single-minded, unifying programme,

He built up a courier system that was known as Yam,

To protect all his people from deception or scam.

Recent research suggests there’s a syndrome,

That 16 million men who call Asia their home,

All share this ruler’s Y-chromosome.

The US likes to think the burger is their invention,

But I believe that this is a bone of contention,

Because Genghis’s men did so by a kind of extension.

They put beef under their saddles to benefit from constriction,

Which broke down into mince, because of the friction,

And cooked from the heat of the horse to their predilection!

Genghis Khan was born under the name Temujin,

When he died they dug an unnamed  grave to bury him in,

According to the traditions and customs of Mongol kin.

A couple of my friends loved my poem about The Terracotta Army and suggested that writing pithy poems about past events would be a great way for children to learn about history…thinking this a great new challenge, here is my take on the events of 1666.

The Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane,

In Thomas Farriner’s bakery, and it soon took gain,

It torched the city of London, behind the old Roman wall,

And soon there was little of value standing at all.

13,200 houses and also St Paul’s.

And 87 churches were lost to its thralls..

There were 80,000 inhabitants of London in that year,

All but 10,000 lost their houses and all they held dear.

The death toll’s unknown, although only 6 deaths were recorded,

But the poor were not counted ‘cause their conditions were sordid.

The fire started at midnight on September 2nd,

And it proved unstoppable, greedy and fecund,

The fire spread rapidly, north and west,

Till the Tower of London garrison thought it best

To use gunpowder to create effective fire breaks,

Thus negating the Mayor’s earlier hesitancy and mistakes.

Coupled with the fact that the winds died down,

That was what ultimately saved London town.

The Great Fire lasted for all of three days,

And most of the city went down in the blaze,

The Palace of Whitehall, with mortar and bricks

Was saved from that fire of 1666.

Pategonia’s a land to bemuse and beguile,

These rice fields are  on a slope to the mountain top,

And you cannot see where these terraces stop,

At sunrise they look like dragon scales,

Never-ending, living fairy tales…

There they stand, row upon row,

Men paying homage to the generalissimo.

An army all buried under the earth,

To accompany an emperor en route to rebirth.

Silent and still, there they all stand,

Righteous, unselfish, at his right hand…

This is the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang,

11 years in the making to sculpt the gang,

Of warriors, chariots and horses, buried with him,

To cater to every afterlife whim!