The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. The museum was founded in 1816 with the legacy of the library and art collection of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam. The bequest included £100,000 "to cause to be erected a good substantial museum repository". The Fitzwilliam now contains over 500,000 items and is one of the best museums in the United Kingdom.The collection was initially placed in the Perse School building in Free School Lane. It was moved in 1842 to the Old Schools in central Cambridge, which housed the Cambridge University Library. The museum opened in 1848. A further large bequest was made to the university in 1912 by Charles Brinsley Marlay, including £80,000 and 84 paintings from his private collection. A two-storey extension to the south-east, paid for partly by the Courtauld family, was added in 1931, greatly expanding the space of the museum.
Richard Pankhurst (1927-2017), was a historian and founding member of the Institute of Ethiopic Studies. Pankhurst’s mother was the suffragette and anti-fascist Sylvia Pankhurst and his grandparents were Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst. It was through his mother’s protests concerning the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that he first became interested in the country. Growing up he met many Ethiopian refugees in London. Pankhurst studied economic history at the London School of Economics and in 1956 he went to Ethiopia to teach at the University College of Addis Ababa, subsequently becoming the founder and director of the Institute of Ethiopic Studies.
In 1976, after the death of Haile Selassie and the start of the Ethiopian Civil War, Pankhurst returned to England, teaching at SOAS and LSE but, in 1978, he became the Librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society, a position he kept for several years before returning to Ethiopia in 1987 and resuming his work at the Institute. He published numerous books and articles on a wide variety of topics related to Ethiopian history.
Pankhurst led the campaign for the return of the Obelisk of Axum to Ethiopia. It was re-erected in Axum in 2008. He was given an OBE in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas section of the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours. He was married to Rita (née Eldon) Pankhurst and had two children, Helen and Alula.
W.A.J. Semerjibashian was a judge working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was the author of Lij Eyasu and Haile Sellassie: Winnowing out the Myth published by Red Sea Press, U.S.A. in 1997 and also wrote on the Armenian community in Ethiopia. He was in Addis Ababa in 1946 but by 1983 was living in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.
Fratel Ezio Tonini was born in Terlago, Trento, Italy, in 1939. He became a member of the Comunità Pavoniana in 1956 and lived in Italy until 1969, before moving to Asmära, Ethiopia, in September 1970 and working within the Comunità Pavoniana and at the Asmära University, founded by the Comboni Missionary Sisters (Piae Matres Nigritiae) in 1958. Tonini helped to reorganize the library and the archives. He spent more than 45 years in Ethiopia and was very active during this long period in many positions as librarian, administrator, and educator. Tonini was dedicated to collecting rare manuscripts in Tǝgrǝñña and other Eritrean languages. He was also active in publishing books meant for students and young Eritreans working as staff in the library. He edited the journal Quaderni di Studi Etiopici (የኢትዮጵያጥነቶችመጽሔት።) which he founded in Asmära, and which was published by the ‘Centro di Studi Etiopici’ (‘Ethiopian Studies Centre’, መካነምርምራስለፍልጠትኢትዮጵያ), based at his library.