Records · c. 476,000 years ago
The world's oldest wooden structure is Zambian.
Did you know that at Kalambo Falls on the Zambia–Tanzania border, archaeologists found two interlocking logs deliberately notched and joined about 476,000 years ago, the oldest known wooden structure in the world, built before our own species existed.
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Science · c. 299,000 years ago
A 299,000-year-old skull from a Kabwe mine.
Did you know that the Broken Hill skull, found by Swiss miner Tom Zwiglaar in the Broken Hill mine at Kabwe in 1921, is about 299,000 years old and is still held in London despite Zambia's repeated requests for its return.
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Heritage · c. 2,000 years ago
Kasama hides hundreds of painted rock shelters.
Did you know that the Mwela Rocks just east of Kasama hold more than 1,000 recorded rock paintings, up to 2,000 years old, made by Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers sometimes identified as the Batwa or Twa.
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Heritage · c. AD 300
Iron and pottery arrived around AD 300.
Did you know that Bantu-speaking Iron Age farmers who settled Zambia from around the 3rd and 4th centuries AD brought iron smelting, pottery and crops, gradually absorbing or displacing the Stone Age hunter-gatherers already living there.
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Heritage · c. 15th–16th century
Zambezi graves full of gold and copper crosses.
Did you know that the rich Ing'ombe Ilede burials on a hill above the Zambezi, now dated mostly to the 15th and 16th centuries, held copper crosses, copper currency rods, a gold bead necklace and imported glass beads, evidence of long-distance trade.
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Heritage · c. 17th–18th century
The Bemba king must be a Crocodile.
Did you know that the Bemba paramount chief bears the title Chitimukulu, Chiti the Great, after the first king Chiti Muluba, and every holder must come from the Bena Ng'andu, the Crocodile clan, said to have migrated from the Luba Empire.
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Culture · c. 1740
A kingdom founded while chasing a murderer.
Did you know that the Lunda kingdom of Kazembe traces its origin to around 1740, when its first ruler left the empire of Mwata Yamvo chasing a murderer, and its Mutomboko festival each July still re-enacts the conquest of the Luapula Valley.
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Heritage · 1798
A Portuguese explorer died at Kazembe's court.
Did you know that the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda died within weeks of reaching Mwata Kazembe's Luapula capital in 1798, and his journal, carried back to Tete by his chaplain, was later translated into English by Richard Burton.
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Firsts · c. 1802–1814
Africans made the first recorded crossing of Africa.
Did you know that between about 1802 and 1814 two African traders working for the Portuguese, Pedro João Baptista and Amaro José, travelled from Kasanje in Angola to Tete and back via Kazembe's kingdom, reaching Tete in 1811 on an epic journey often called the first recorded crossing of Africa.
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Myth or fact · November 1835
An eclipse dates the Ngoni crossing.
Did you know that the Ngoni under Zwangendaba crossed the Zambezi northward in 1835, and the crossing can be dated because Ngoni oral tradition says it coincided with a solar eclipse, which historians place in late 1835.
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Language · c. 1840
Silozi descends from a conqueror's language.
Did you know that the Kololo, Sotho-speaking invaders led by Sebitwane, ruled the Lozi floodplain only from about 1840 to 1864, yet their language replaced the old Luyana tongue and became today's Silozi.
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Geography · 16 November 1855
Livingstone renamed 'the smoke that thunders'.
Did you know that David Livingstone first saw the Victoria Falls on 16 November 1855 from Livingstone Island on its lip, and named them after Queen Victoria, though locals already called them Mosi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders.
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Heritage · 1 May 1873
Livingstone's heart is buried in Zambia.
Did you know that after David Livingstone died at Chief Chitambo's village near Lake Bangweulu in May 1873, his heart was buried under a tree there while Susi and Chuma carried his body some 1,500 kilometres to the coast.
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Society · 1890
Lewanika thought he was signing with the Queen.
Did you know that the Lozi king Lewanika signed the Lochner Concession in 1890 believing it placed Barotseland under the protection of Queen Victoria, when in fact it granted rights to Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company.
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Myth or fact · early 1900s
A hunted antelope revealed a copper mine.
Did you know that prospector William Collier found the copper of what became the Roan Antelope mine at Luanshya after shooting a roan antelope that fell with its head resting on a rock of exposed copper ore.
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Firsts · 1905
Charles Darwin's son opened the Falls bridge.
Did you know that the Victoria Falls Bridge was opened on 12 September 1905 by the astronomer George Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, and was built so that spray from the falls would wet the passing trains, as Cecil Rhodes reportedly wished.
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Geography · 1907
Livingstone was the capital for nearly 30 years.
Did you know that the frontier town of Livingstone, founded next to the Victoria Falls, became the territory's capital in 1907 and remained the capital of Northern Rhodesia until the government moved to Lusaka in 1935.
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Geography · 1911
Two Rhodesias became one in 1911.
Did you know that the name Northern Rhodesia only came into use in 1911, when the British South Africa Company merged its two separately run territories, North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia, into a single administration.
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Heritage · 25 November 1918
World War I ended late in Zambia.
Did you know that German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck only learned of the First World War armistice on 14 November 1918 at the Chambeshi River in Northern Rhodesia, then marched to Abercorn, now Mbala, to surrender on 25 November.
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Society · 1 April 1924
A private company ruled Zambia until 1924.
Did you know that the British Colonial Office took over Northern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Company on 1 April 1924, ending 33 years of rule by a private chartered company over the territory.
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Geography · 1935
Lusaka is named after a Lenje chief.
Did you know that Lusaka, which became Northern Rhodesia's capital in 1935, began in 1905 as a railway water stop and takes its name from Chief Lusaaka, leader of a nearby Lenje village.
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Society · May 1935
Six miners died in the 1935 strike.
Did you know that the 1935 Copperbelt strike, sparked by a surprise tax increase, was one of the first major African workers' protests in colonial Africa, and six protesters were shot dead by police near Luanshya's Roan Antelope mine.
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Society · 1948
Zambia's first national party was founded in 1948.
Did you know that Africans in Northern Rhodesia formed their first territory-wide political party, the Northern Rhodesia Congress, in July 1948, with Godwin Lewanika, an aristocrat from Barotseland, as its first president.
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Firsts · 1950s
Walking safaris were born in Luangwa.
Did you know that the walking safari was pioneered in Zambia's Luangwa Valley by conservationist Norman Carr, who in 1950 persuaded Senior Chief Nsefu to set aside land and opened the territory's first public game-viewing camp.
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Society · 1955–1959
Kariba displaced 57,000 Tonga people.
Did you know that building the Kariba Dam in the late 1950s flooded the Gwembe Valley and forced around 57,000 Tonga people from their homes, and Tonga elders blamed the record 1957 floods on the angry river god Nyami Nyami.
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Nature · 1958–1964
Operation Noah saved over 6,000 animals.
Did you know that Operation Noah, launched as Lake Kariba filled from 1958, rescued more than 6,000 animals, from elephants to snakes, stranded on shrinking islands in the rising waters behind the new dam.
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Heritage · 18 September 1961
A UN chief died near Ndola.
Did you know that UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed when his plane crashed near Ndola on 18 September 1961, and a UN inquiry reported as late as 2024 that some governments still withheld crucial information.
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Society · 1961
Cha-cha-cha: Zambia's 1961 uprising.
Did you know that Kenneth Kaunda's Cha-cha-cha campaign of July 1961 used arson and road blockades across Northern Province to force Britain to grant Africans a real say in government.
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Society · 31 December 1963
The Federation died on New Year's Eve 1963.
Did you know that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which bound Northern Rhodesia to Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953, was formally dissolved on 31 December 1963, ten months before Zambian independence.
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Sport · 24 October 1964
One Olympics, two names for Zambia.
Did you know that Zambia became independent on 24 October 1964, the day the Tokyo Olympics closed, so its athletes entered the opening ceremony as Northern Rhodesia but marched out under a new Zambia placard.
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Myth or fact · 1960s
Zambia once had a homemade space programme.
Did you know that schoolteacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso launched a Zambian space programme in 1964, rolling trainee afronauts downhill in oil drums and planning to send a 17-year-old girl and two cats to the Moon and later Mars.
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Society · July–October 1964
A prophetess's church clashed with the state.
Did you know that clashes between the government and the Lumpa Church of prophetess Alice Lenshina in 1964 left between 700 and about 1,000 people dead months before independence, and Lenshina, never tried in court, spent most of her remaining years detained.
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Society · 1966
Zambia started with about 100 graduates.
Did you know that when Zambia became independent in 1964 it had only about a hundred university graduates, which made the opening of the University of Zambia on 12 July 1966 a national milestone.
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Nature · 1967–1968
Kariba's kapenta came from Lake Tanganyika.
Did you know that the tiny sardine-like kapenta fish was moved from Lake Tanganyika into Lake Kariba in 1967–68, where it thrived and became the basis of a major fishing industry and a staple food.
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Language · 16 January 1968
Zambia's money is called 'dawn'.
Did you know that the Zambian kwacha, introduced in 1968 to replace the pound, takes its name from the word for dawn in Nyanja, Bemba and Tonga, echoing the nationalist call for a new dawn of freedom, while ngwee means bright.
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Economy · 1970
The state seized control of copper in 1970.
Did you know that from January 1970 Zambia's state took majority control of the copper mines, later merged in 1982 into the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, which was broken up and sold off between 1997 and 2000.
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Society · 1972–1973
Zambia was a one-party state for 18 years.
Did you know that in 1973 Zambia became a one-party state under a new constitution, ushering in a Second Republic in which UNIP was the only legal party until December 1990.
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Economy · 1970–1975
China built Zambia's railway to the sea.
Did you know that the TAZARA railway, completed in 1975 to give landlocked Zambia an outlet to Dar es Salaam avoiding white-ruled Rhodesia, was financed by China and was then its largest single foreign-aid project.
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Sport · 19 September 1988
Zambia beat Italy 4–0 at the Olympics.
Did you know that Kalusha Bwalya scored a hat-trick as Zambia thrashed Italy 4–0 at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, one of the biggest upsets in Olympic football history.
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Society · 30 June–1 July 1990
A radio coup lasted only a few hours.
Did you know that in 1990 a young army lieutenant, Mwamba Luchembe, announced on national radio that the army had overthrown Kaunda, but the coup attempt was crushed within about three to four hours.
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Firsts · 31 October 1991
Kaunda accepted defeat after 27 years.
Did you know that Kenneth Kaunda lost the 1991 election to trade unionist Frederick Chiluba and handed over power peacefully after 27 years, one of the first such transfers in post-independence Africa.
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Sport · 1991
Matete was Zambia's first world champion.
Did you know that Samuel Matete won the 400 metres hurdles at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, making him Zambia's first world champion in athletics, and added Olympic silver in Atlanta in 1996.
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Sport · 27 April 1993
Zambia's team died in the 1993 crash.
Did you know that almost the entire Zambian national football team died when their military plane crashed off Libreville, Gabon, in April 1993, while captain Kalusha Bwalya survived because he was travelling separately from the Netherlands.
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Culture · 2005
Chewa masked dance is UNESCO heritage.
Did you know that Gule Wamkulu, the masked dance of the Chewa secret Nyau society performed in eastern Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique, was proclaimed a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005.
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Sport · 12 February 2012
Zambia won the cup near its tragedy site.
Did you know that Zambia won its first Africa Cup of Nations in 2012 in Libreville, Gabon, just a short distance from where its national team had perished in the 1993 plane crash.
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Firsts · October 2014
Zambia briefly had a white acting president.
Did you know that when Michael Sata died in office in 2014, vice-president Guy Scott became acting president, the first head of state of European descent in mainland Africa since F. W. de Klerk.
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Firsts · 2015
Zambia's first woman vice-president, 2015.
Did you know that Inonge Wina became Zambia's first female vice-president in 2015, more than fifty years after independence, serving under President Edgar Lungu until 2021.
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Economy · November 2020
First African pandemic-era debt default.
Did you know that in November 2020 Zambia became Africa's first coronavirus-era sovereign debt default when it skipped a US$42.5 million Eurobond payment, kicking off years of restructuring talks.
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Society · 12 August 2021
Hichilema won on his sixth try.
Did you know that Hakainde Hichilema won the presidency in 2021 at his sixth attempt, defeating incumbent Edgar Lungu by nearly a million votes in Zambia's third peaceful change of ruling party.
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Geography · 10 May 2021
Zambia and Botswana share a tiny border.
Did you know that the Kazungula Bridge opened in 2021 across the Zambezi at one of the world's shortest international borders, a river frontier of only about 135 metres where Zambia meets Botswana.
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Nature · 2024
Drought switched off Zambia's lights.
Did you know that Zambia's 2024 drought was so severe that the Kariba hydropower plant almost stopped, and households endured scheduled power cuts of up to 21 hours a day.
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Sport · 2024
Barbra Banda keeps scoring Olympic hat-tricks.
Did you know that striker Barbra Banda scored a hat-trick against Australia at the Paris 2024 Olympics, after two at Tokyo 2020, becoming the first woman to score back-to-back Olympic hat-tricks, and was named BBC Women's Footballer of the Year.
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Society · June 2025
A former president's burial went to court.
Did you know that former president Edgar Lungu died in South Africa in June 2025 and his body stayed there for over a year while his family and the Zambian government fought in court over where he should be buried.
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Society · 13 August 2026
Hichilema re-elected in the first round.
Did you know that Hakainde Hichilema won a second term in the 13 August 2026 election with just over 60 percent of the vote, beating Brian Mundubile outright and avoiding a run-off.
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Records ·
Victoria Falls: the world's largest falling curtain.
Did you know that the Victoria Falls are about 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high, forming what is often called the largest single sheet of falling water in the world, with spray visible from up to 50 kilometres away.
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Geography ·
Swim on the lip of Victoria Falls.
Did you know that from about September to December swimmers can bathe in the Devil's Pool, a natural infinity pool at the tip of Livingstone Island on the very lip of the Victoria Falls, kept safe by a rock barrier.
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Culture ·
The Lozi king escapes the flood by barge.
Did you know that during the Kuomboka ceremony the Lozi king, the Litunga, is paddled by about a hundred oarsmen from Lealui to higher ground at Limulunga in the black-and-white royal barge Nalikwanda as the Zambezi floods the Barotse plain.
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Language ·
Dozens of languages, seven recognised.
Did you know that Zambia is often said to have 72 languages and dialects, though linguists count around 40 indigenous languages, while English is the official language and seven, including Bemba, Nyanja and Tonga, are officially recognised.
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Culture ·
Zambia's staple is eaten by hand.
Did you know that nshima, the stiff maize-meal staple of Zambia, is rolled into a ball in the right hand and dipped into a relish called ndiyo in Nyanja or umunani in Bemba.
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Nature ·
Ten million bats descend on Kasanka.
Did you know that every year from October to December some ten million straw-coloured fruit bats gather in a small patch of swamp forest in Kasanka National Park, believed to be the largest mammal migration on Earth.
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Nature ·
Bangweulu is shoebill country.
Did you know that the prehistoric-looking shoebill, a giant stork-like bird with a clog-shaped beak, breeds in Zambia's Bangweulu Swamps, whose name is usually translated as where the water meets the sky.
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Nature ·
The black lechwe lives only in Zambia.
Did you know that the black lechwe, a dark water-loving antelope, lives only around the Bangweulu wetlands of northern Zambia, where around 36,000 were counted in 2020.
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Nature ·
Africa's second-biggest wildebeest migration.
Did you know that Liuwa Plain National Park in western Zambia hosts the second-largest wildebeest migration in Africa, and was once the hunting ground of the Lozi king Lewanika, who protected it in the 1880s.
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Geography ·
Zambia touches the world's longest lake.
Did you know that Lake Tanganyika, whose southern tip lies in Zambia at the port of Mpulungu, is the world's longest freshwater lake and its second deepest, plunging to about 1,470 metres.
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Records ·
Kariba is the biggest reservoir by volume.
Did you know that Lake Kariba, shared by Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir by volume, holding about 180 cubic kilometres of water.
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Geography ·
Eight neighbours and a river's name.
Did you know that landlocked Zambia shares borders with eight countries, Angola, Botswana, Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, and takes its name from the Zambezi River.
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Nature ·
Kafue is about the size of Wales.
Did you know that Kafue National Park covers about 22,400 square kilometres, making it Zambia's largest park and the second-largest national park in Africa, roughly the size of Wales.
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Economy ·
Copper earns most of Zambia's exports.
Did you know that Zambia mined about 763,000 tonnes of copper in 2022, making it one of Africa's top producers, and copper supplies roughly 70 percent or more of the country's export earnings.
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