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The Mongols Dined Atop their Live Enemies and Other Fascinating Historic Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 2, 2020 36 min

Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol Empire — Mongols feasting atop captives. Pintrest

19. World War I’s First Naval Engagement Occurred in an African Lake

Lake Malawi in the early twentieth century was bordered by German Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania) and British Malawi, and each colonial power maintained a small naval presence there. The British assigned the task to Commander Edmund Rhoades, in charge of the gunboat HMS Gwendolen.

SMS Hermann von Wissmann in 1910. Wikimedia

Rhoades shared the lake with a German Captain Berndt, in command of the SS Hermann von Wissmann. In the decade preceding the war, Rhoades and Berndt became good friends and drinking companions. When Britain declared war against Germany in 1914, Rhoades was the first to receive the news. He decided to end the war in Lake Malawi before it had even begun, without hurting his friend.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.