X-Nico

40 unusual facts about Pretoria


2011 Hectorville siege

The victims were South African immigrants who arrived in Australia three years before the shooting from Pretoria in the hope of a better life for their son as they felt that South Africa was a violent place to bring a child up.

Andre Keyser

Andre Werner Keyser (8 March 1938 Pretoria - 15 August 2010 Pretoria), was a South African palaeontologist and geologist noted for his discovery of the Drimolen hominid site and of numerous hominid remains.

Aud Marit Wiig

She served in the Norwegian embassy in Pretoria from 1996 to 2001, and as head of department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2001 to 2004.

Battle of Nooitgedacht

Lord Roberts captured Pretoria on 5 June and the armies soon passed to the east.

Benjamin Roxburgh-Smith

To garner the job, he qualified as the first South African commercial pilot at Roberts Heights, Pretoria.

Bruno Geddo

From 1997 to 2001 Bruno was Assistant Regional Representative (Protection) in Pretoria, South Africa with responsibility for refugee issues across southern Africa.

Burgers Park

Burgers Park is a park located in the center of Pretoria, South Africa.

Cape Eagle-Owl

They have been rarely found roosting in cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Chrysler VH Valiant

VH Valiants were assembled at Silverton, near Pretoria in South Africa using Australian bodies, electrics and trim and locally sourced mechanical components including a 225 cid engine.

David B. A. Epstein

David Epstein was born in 1937 in Pretoria, South Africa to Ben Epstein and Pauline (or Polly) Alper, both Jewish of Lithuanian descent, though Polly was born in South Africa.

David Stanley Evans

Evans left England in 1946 to work at the Radcliffe Observatory, Pretoria, South Africa when positional determinations and photometry were the main interests of the astronomical world, but when he left some twenty years later, the South African observatories had become active in astrophysics.

Élisabeth Daynès

Her work is present at museums all over the world, like Musée des Merveilles in Tende, Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Transvaal Museum in Pretoria and Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm.

HM Passport Office

In 2007, the 90 British diplomatic missions that issued passports were consolidated into seven Regional Passport Processing Centres (RPPCs) based in Düsseldorf, Hong Kong, Madrid, Paris, Pretoria, Washington, D.C. and Wellington with an additional centre in Dublin.

James Houlik

His concerto performances have included those with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Grant Park Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony, the San Remo Orchestra (Italy), the Istanbul Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Milan, the New Art Philharmonic of Pretoria, South Africa, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the United States Navy Band, and dozens more.

John Frederick Fogerty

John Frederick Fogerty, ARIBA, was an Irish architect and engineer active in mid-to-late-nineteenth-century Limerick, London, Shropshire, Bournemouth, Pretoria, and Zambia.

Marabastad, Pretoria

Marabastad was a culturally diverse community, with the Hindu Mariamman Temple arguably being its most prominent landmark.

Mark Douglas-Home

(An unrepentant Douglas-Home was deported from South Africa in 1970 by the government of the day, following a series of anti-government cartoons that were deemed offensive by Pretoria.) He was a reporter for the North London Weekly Herald, the Sunday Express, and the Edinburgh Evening News.

Maude Bonney

Born as Maude Rose Rubens, in Pretoria, South Africa, she adopted the name "Lores" later in preference to her given names.

Michael Jon Hand

Efforts to arrange deals included incorporating a company in Pretoria, South Africa, and sending Bernie Houghton with two Nugan Hand employees to the United States to meet Edwin P. Wilson.

Mokhonoana

The surname is most concentrated in Mokopane in however it has also spread to other parts of the country like the Townships of Pretoria and Johannesburg.

Nugan Hand Bank

In April 1983 a Perth businessman, Murray Quartermaine, testified to the Stewart Royal Commission on drugs that Hand was living in Pretoria, South Africa under the name of "Hahn".

Pax Praetoriana

The term Praetoriana also derives from Pretoria, the administrative capital city of South Africa.

Phyllobrostis argillosa

It was described from a single male from Kranspoort near Pretoria.

Radcliffe Observatory

Radcliffe Observatory was the astronomical observatory of the University of Oxford from 1773 until 1934, when the Radcliffe Trustees sold it and erected a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa.

Eventually that site, in Pretoria, also became untenable and the facility was combined with others into the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in the 1970s.

Reino Tolvanen

Reino Tolvanen (31 July 1920, Viipuri – 21 November 1974, Pretoria, South Africa) was a Finnish actor who played Antti Rokka in Edvin Laine's movie The Unknown Soldier, based on a book by Väinö Linna.

Rex Distin Martienssen

Rex Distin Martienssen, ARIBA, CIAM, 26 February 1905 Queenstown - 23 August 1942 Pretoria, was a South African architect who was greatly influenced by Le Corbusier and spearheaded a modernist architectural movement in South Africa.

Ronald Halpin

He served as a foreign affairs officer in Canadian embassies in Pretoria, Moscow and Warsaw.

Siege of Lydenburg

On 20 December 1880, six officers and 246 men of the 94th Regiment, along with 12 men of the Army Service Corps and 4 men of the Army Hospital Corps, were attacked by 250 Boers at Bronkhorstspruit whilst marching from Lydenburg to Pretoria.

Slick Aircraft Slick 360

The Slick Aircraft Slick 360 is a South African aerobatics aircraft produced by the Slick Aircraft Company of Pretoria, South Africa.

South African Police Memorial

The South African Police Memorial is located in the grounds of the Union Buildings in Pretoria and commemorates officers of the South African Police Service who died in the line of duty.

Stodacom

Stodacom is headquartered in Kampala, and with offices in Lagos, Kinshasa, Kigali, Lusaka, Cairo, Algiers, Pretoria, and Accra.

Stodacom's South Africa's operations are carried out by offices in Kampala, Pretoria, and Lagos.

Sytze Wierda

One of his most celebrated works is the Palace of Justice on Church Square in Pretoria.

The Little Marionette Company

Performances have been staged at a variety of venues in South Africa, including the State Theatre (Pretoria), as well as abroad in France, Austria, the United States of America and most recently in Denmark, in 1999

Thomas Horrocks Openshaw

He was subsequently appointed Principal Medical Officer at the Number Three Medical School Hospital in Pretoria.

Tudor Vaughan

At Pretoria he was assistant private secretary to Sir Alfred Milner, then political secretary to Lord Roberts, then assistant secretary to the Administration of the Transvaal Republic.

WellPoint Systems

Founded in 1997, Calgary-based WellPoint Systems also has operations in Denver, CO; Houston, TX; Livingston, New Jersey, NJ; Tampa, FL; Tunis, Tunisia and Pretoria, South Africa.

Wickes

Wickes embarked on a joint venture in South Africa in 1994 with Federated Blaikie, which saw six Wickes branded stores open in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Xolilizwe Mzikayise Sigcawu

Xolilizwe died on the 31 December 2005 at No 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria and was buried on the 14 January 2006 at the Nqadu Great Palace near Willowvale in the Eastern Cape Province


155 mm Creusot Long Tom

Replicas of the original cannons can be seen at various places in South Africa, including Fort Klapperkop near Pretoria, in the Long Tom Pass in Mpumalanga, The Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein (formerly the War Museum of the Boer Republics) and next to the town hall in Ladysmith.

AH574


This was not on the official programme at all, but I hoped that I could persuade Captain Caspar John of the Pretoria Castle to turn a blind eye to what I had in mind.

Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary

He was born in Pretoria in 1883, but grew up in Potchefstroom as a minister's son, where the local amateur ornithologist, Thomas Ayres, was his mentor.

Ben Martins

He is still a practicing artist, with his artwork forming part of the permanent Art collection of the Killie Campbell Collection of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Pretoria and Johannesburg Art Galleries, as well as that of numerous private collections.

Bettie Cilliers-Barnard

Most recently in 1992 she painted "Vision" for the Pretoria Eye Institute and some of her other commissions including the painting "Flight" for South African Airways, 1983, the tapestry "Guardian Angel of the Arts" for t he State Theatre of Pretoria, 1981, and her mural in oils "Mensa sana corpore sano" for the Department of Health in Pretoria, 1980.

Charl Van Den Berg

At a gala event held at the Pretoria State Theatre Opera House in November 2009, Charl won the Mr. Gay South Africa title, which enabled him to represent South Africa at the International Mr Gay World pageant in Oslo, Norway.

Don Laka

Donald Mahwetša Laka (born 15 December 1958 in Mamelodi, Pretoria), professionally known as Don Laka, is a South African jazz musician, pianist, songwriter, music producer and entrepreneur.

English cricket team in South Africa in 1905–06

The South African Army faced the MCC for a three-day match on an army camp in Pretoria between the first and second Test matches on 12 January.

Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 3rd Marquess of Dufferin and Ava

He served with the 9th Lancers during the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1901 and was present at the engagements at Belmont, Enslin, Modder River, Magersfonstein, the relief of Kimberley, the advance to Bloemfontein and Pretoria and the subsequent fighting in the Transvaal, Orange River Colony and Cape Colony, where he was badly wounded on Christmas Eve 1900.

Friedrich Wilms

From here he travelled north to Pretoria, east to Bronkhorstspruit and further east to Lydenburg which was to be his headquarters for the next 13 years.

GIBS

The Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, a business school in Johannesburg, South Africa

Gustavo Gonzalez

As peace-building adviser, Gonzalez took part in relevant peace negotiations in Africa, including the Lusaka Protocol for the Angolan peace process (1994); the Bangui Peace Accord for Central African Republic (1997), the Dar es Salaam Accord for the Demilitarization of the Ituri in DRC (2004) and the Pretoria Talks for the Burundi peace-building process (April 2009).

John Ruston

Ruston was ordained to the episcopacy as Bishop Suffragan of Pretoria, being sent to oversee the Archdeaconry of the North centred on Pietersburg (now Polokwane).

Kevin Winterbottom

Kevin Roy Winterbottom (1955 to 9 June 1976) was a South African Air Force (SAAF) pilot who chose to avoid crashing his stricken Impala jet aircraft in the Monument Park suburb of Pretoria by remaining with his aircraft to the end.

Ladislav Mucina

He completed post-doctoral studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and later served as visiting fellow and professor in Trieste, Camerino, Perugia, and Rome, all in Italy, Uppsala in Sweden, Brno in the Czech Republic, Perth in Australia and Pretoria and Stellenbosch, both in South Africa.

Marco Tezza

Besides, he won the first prize in several international piano competitions: Città di Treviso, La Spezia, RAI, and received awards in other prizes: Moncalieri (European Prize for Chamber Music), Busoni, Pretoria and Viotti.

Pardon for Morant, Handcock and Witton

Following four separate courts martial in early 1902, during the Second Boer War, Lieutenants Peter Joseph Handcock (1868-1902) and Harry Harbord Morant (1864-1902), also known as "Breaker" Morant, of the Bushveldt Carbineers, were executed by a firing squad of Cameron Highlanders, in Pretoria, South Africa, on 27 February 1902, 18 hours after they had been sentenced.

Paul Bové

Bové also holds affiliations with the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Valencia in Spain and the Centre for International Political Studies in Pretoria, South Africa.

Piazza Pretoria

Piazza Pretoria also known as square of Shame is at the limits of the district of Kalsa, near the corner of Cassaro with Via Maqueda, just a few meters from the Quattro Canti, the exact center of the historic city of Palermo .

Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment

The Jack Abramoff produced feature was dropped by Warner Bros. when protest groups claimed that the involvement of the South African government in the film's creation violated the United Nations cultural boycott against the Pretoria government.

South African Class 36-200

The exception was the third type SW1002 locomotive to be built for Iscor in Pretoria, which was delivered from GM-Astarsa in Argentina.

The Legacy of Pretoria

The Legacy of Pretoria (German:Das Erbe von Pretoria) is a 1936 German drama film directed by Johannes Meyer and starring Paul Hartmann, Charlotte Susa and Paul Henckels.

Trans-African Highway network

Trans-African Highway (TAH 4), Cairo–Gaborone–(Pretoria/Cape Town) Highway, 10,228 km: the completion of the stretch of highway from Dongola to Wadi Halfa in Northern Sudan and the road from the Galabat border crossing in North-Western Ethiopia leaves only 2 stretches unpaved: between Isiolo and Moyale in northern Kenya (dubbed 'the road to hell' by overland travellers) and the gravel section through Dodoma in central Tanzania.

Trans-Kalahari Corridor

The Trans-Kalahari Corridor is a paved highway corridor that provides a direct route from Walvis Bay and Windhoek in central Namibia, through Botswana, to Johannesburg and Pretoria in Gauteng province in South Africa.