“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,700 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. “Close to the western summit, there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was doing at that altitude.”

ON JUNE 20, 1631, ‘Barbary’ pirates raided Baltimore, taking 107 men, women, and children into slavery. It was the largest such raid on an Irish or British settlement since Viking times, writes Richard Collins