Freedom Street

There is a street in Tripoli just south of the Mediterranean Sea called 21st November Street.

Map of Colonized Africa, from New World Encyclopedia

See, early in the 1800s, several dudes in Euorpe realized that Africa was just sitting there unconquered by anyone they knew, so they fell all over each other trying to take as much of it as they possibly could for themselves. As a result, most European countries had colonies there, and in the 1950s, they all were realizing that they’d been total jerks and were giving the land back to whom it had originally belonged. Since they’d stuck their big fat noses in, they hadn’t quite taken in the fact that this was a much more complicated situation than it seemed, and most European countries got a nice lesson on how not to be a huge jerk (except for Belgium, a topic which is capable of driving one of my college history professors into a frothing rage).

On this day in history, the United Nations voted that Libya be returned to the Libyans. Today the country may be in a state of political turmoil, but fact that they are not ruled by a European state is commemorated by a stretch of road between Beach Street and the Piazza del Aurora.

The Maidan al Jazair Mosque in Algeria Square, picture by Abdul-Jawad Elhusuni,
via wikipedia.