The Chichiri Museum, also known as the Museum of Malawi, is a historical and cultural museum located in Blantyre, Malawi. [1] Strictly Museum of Malawi refers to a group of five museums but Chichiri Museum (which is one of them) uses the name due to the breadth of its exhibits. [2]
The Society of Malawi started to campaign for a museum in the early 1950s. [2] The Museums of Malawi, initially known as the Nyasaland Museum, was established through legislation in May 1957 via Museum Ordinance No. 201. [2] The initial museum was housed at Mandala house in Blantyre. [2]
The current museum building was constructed in 1965 at Chichiri Hill in Blantyre, using funds from the Beit Trust and the Government of Malawi. [3] The cost of construction was 21,000 Malawian pounds. [2] The museum was formally opened by Kamuzu Banda on 29 June 1966. [2] Under the presidency of Kamuzu Band collecting was in some cases limited to avoid any risk of upsetting the government with the result that little collecting was done from groups associated with rebels. [2] Attempts to compensate for this have been made in post Banda collecting practices. [2]
In 2009 the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi supplied a hydroelectic exhibit that sits in the outdoor section of the museum. [2]
The museum has a transport collection displayed outdoors that includes a steam engine, a fire engine and a Europeans only bus. [2] Also outdoors is a Ndiwula hut in the syle of a Chewa rural homestead. [2] It was built in 1966 under the instructions of President Kamuzu Banda. [2]
The museum also displays the Machinga Meteorite which at the time of its fall was mistaken for a mozambique missile. [2] The meteorite weighs 93.2Kg and in 1984 was classified as a shocked L6c chondrite. [4] In 1990 a reanalysis classified it as a L6d. [5]
Politics of Malawi takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Malawi is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. There is a cabinet of Malawi that is appointed by the President of Malawi. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.
The Wold Cottage meteorite fell near Wold Cottage farm in 1795, a few miles away from the village of Wold Newton in Yorkshire, England.
Hastings Kamuzu Banda was the prime minister and later president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994. In 1966, the country became a republic and he became the first president as a result.
A chondrite is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified, by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primitive asteroids. Some such bodies that are captured in the planet's gravity well become the most common type of meteorite by arriving on a trajectory toward the planet's surface. Estimates for their contribution to the total meteorite population vary between 85.7% and 86.2%.
Blantyre is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with an enumerated 800,264 inhabitants as of 2018. It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, Lilongwe. It is the capital of the country's Southern Region as well as the Blantyre District.
Alfred Otto Carl Nier was an American physicist who pioneered the development of mass spectrometry. He was the first to use mass spectrometry to isolate uranium-235 which was used to demonstrate that 235U could undergo fission and developed the sector mass spectrometer configuration now known as Nier-Johnson geometry.
A micrometeorite is a micrometeoroid that has survived entry through the Earth's atmosphere. Usually found on Earth's surface, micrometeorites differ from meteorites in that they are smaller in size, more abundant, and different in composition. The IAU officially defines meteorites as 30 micrometers to 1 meter; micrometeorites are the small end of the range (~submillimeter). They are a subset of cosmic dust, which also includes the smaller interplanetary dust particles (IDPs).
Carbonaceous chondrites or C chondrites are a class of chondritic meteorites comprising at least 8 known groups and many ungrouped meteorites. They include some of the most primitive known meteorites. The C chondrites represent only a small proportion (4.6%) of meteorite falls.
Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric iron makes up the bulk of iron meteorites but is also found in other meteorites. Apart from minor amounts of telluric iron, meteoric iron is the only naturally occurring native metal of the element iron on the Earth's surface.
Meteoritics is the science that deals with meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. It is closely connected to cosmochemistry, mineralogy and geochemistry. A specialist who studies meteoritics is known as a meteoriticist.
The Kamuzu Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Blantyre, Malawi. It is currently used mostly for football matches. The stadium holds 20,000 people. This can be limited for safety reasons. Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers are tenants.
The Ensisheim meteorite is a stony meteorite that fell on November 7, 1492 in a wheat field outside the walled town of Ensisheim in then Alsace, Further Germany. The meteorite can still be seen in Ensisheim's museum, the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence. It is the oldest stony European meteorite fall from which there is still some meteoritic material preserved.
CI chondrites, also called C1 chondrites or Ivuna-type carbonaceous chondrites, are a group of rare carbonaceous chondrite, a type of stony meteorite. They are named after the Ivuna meteorite, the type specimen. CI chondrites have been recovered in France, Canada, India, and Tanzania. Their overall chemical composition closely resembles the elemental composition of the Sun, more so than any other type of meteorite.
John Lloyd Chipembere Lwanda is a Malawian medical doctor, writer, poet, researcher, publisher, and music producer. He is a published author and also a publisher of books and music. He was an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow Department of Primary Care until 2005. Lwanda did his history and social science PhD at the University of Edinburgh's Centre of African Studies.
The Malawian Defence Force is the state military organisation responsible for defending Malawi. It originated from elements of the British King's African Rifles, colonial units formed before independence in 1964.
Asteroidal water is water or water precursor deposits such as hydroxide (OH−) that exist in asteroids. The "snow line" of the Solar System lies outside of the main asteroid belt, and the majority of water is expected in minor planets. Nevertheless, a significant amount of water is also found inside the snow line, including in near-earth objects (NEOs).
CM chondrites are a group of chondritic meteorites which resemble their type specimen, the Mighei meteorite. The CM is the most commonly recovered group of the 'carbonaceous chondrite' class of meteorites, though all are rarer in collections than ordinary chondrites.
Gas-rich meteorites are meteorites with high levels of primordial gases, such as helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and sometimes other elements. Though these gases are present "in virtually all meteorites," the Fayetteville meteorite has ~2,000,000 x10−8 ccSTP/g helium, or ~2% helium by volume equivalent. In comparison, background level is a few ppm.
Malawi–Turkey relations are foreign relations between Malawi and Turkey. The Turkish ambassador in Lusaka, Zambia is also accredited to Malawi. Malawi is accredited to Turkey from its embassy in Berlin, Germany. Turkey has plans to open an embassy in Lilongwe.
