79 Facts About Haile Selassie

Haile Selassie I was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974.

Haile Selassie rose to power as Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia for Empress Zewditu from 1916.

Haile Selassie is widely considered a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history, and the key figure of Rastafari, a religious movement in Jamaica that emerged shortly after he became emperor in the 1930s.

Haile Selassie was a member of the Solomonic dynasty, which claims to trace lineage to Emperor Menelik I, believed to be the son of King Solomon and Makeda the Queen of Sheba.

Haile Selassie attempted to modernize the country through a series of political and social reforms, including the introduction of the 1931 constitution, its first written constitution, and the abolition of slavery.

Haile Selassie led the failed efforts to defend Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and spent most of the period of Italian occupation exiled in England.

Haile Selassie dissolved the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 1950, and annexed Eritrea into Ethiopia as one of its provinces, while fighting to prevent secession.

Haile Selassie has been criticized by some historians for his suppression of rebellions among the landed aristocracy, which consistently opposed his reforms; some critics have criticized Ethiopia's failure to modernize rapidly enough.

Haile Selassie's regime was criticized by human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, as autocratic and illiberal.

The Haile Selassie government relocated numerous Amharas into southern Ethiopia where they served in government administration, courts, and church.

Haile Selassie was known as a child as Lij Tafari Makonnen.

Haile Selassie was born on 23 July 1892, in the village of Ejersa Goro, in the Hararghe province of Ethiopia.

Haile Selassie's mother was paternally of Oromo descent and maternally of Gurage heritage, while his father was maternally of Amhara descent but his paternal lineage remains disputed.

Haile Selassie's mother was Woizero Yeshimebet Ali Abba Jifar, daughter of a ruling chief from Were Ilu in Wollo province, Dejazmach Ali Abba Jifar.

Haile Selassie's father was Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the grandson of King Sahle Selassie who was once the ruler of Shewa.

Ras Makonnen arranged for Tafari as well as his first cousin, Imru Haile Selassie, to receive instruction in Harar from Abba Samuel Wolde Kahin, an Ethiopian Capuchin monk, and from Dr Vitalien, a surgeon from Guadeloupe.

Haile Selassie pledged to rule justly through her Regent, Tafari.

Haile Selassie's position required that she arbitrate the claims of competing factions.

Haile Selassie occupied the same territory as the empress rather than going off to a regional kingdom of the empire.

Haile Selassie was crowned on 2 November 1930, at Addis Ababa's Cathedral of St George.

Haile Selassie introduced Ethiopia's first written constitution on 16 July 1931, providing for a bicameral legislature.

Haile Selassie issued his mobilization order on 3 October 1935:.

On 19 October 1935, Haile Selassie gave more precise orders for his army to his Commander-in-Chief, Ras Kassa:.

Haile Selassie made a solitary pilgrimage to the churches at Lalibela, at considerable risk of capture, before returning to his capital.

Haile Selassie appointed his cousin Ras Imru Haile Selassie as Prince Regent in his absence, departing with his family for French Somaliland on 2 May 1936.

Haile Selassie waited calmly for the hall to be cleared, and responded "majestically" with a speech considered by some among the most stirring of the 20th century.

Haile Selassie asserted that, because his "confidence in the League was absolute", his people were now being slaughtered.

Haile Selassie pointed out that the same European states that found in Ethiopia's favor at the League of Nations were refusing Ethiopia credit and materiel while aiding Italy, which was employing chemical weapons on military and civilian targets alike.

Haile Selassie failed to get what he most needed: the League agreed to only partial and ineffective sanctions on Italy.

Haile Selassie spent his exile years in Bath, England, in Fairfield House, which he bought.

The emperor and Kassa Haile Selassie Darge took morning walks together behind the 14-room Victorian house's high walls.

Haile Selassie stayed at the Abbey Hotel in Malvern in the 1930s, and his granddaughters and daughters of court officials were educated at Clarendon School for Girls in North Malvern.

Haile Selassie spoke out against the desecration of houses of worship and historical artifacts, and condemned the atrocities suffered by the Ethiopian civilian population.

Haile Selassie continued to plead for League intervention and to voice his certainty that "God's judgment will eventually visit the weak and the mighty alike", though his attempts to gain support for the struggle against Italy were largely unsuccessful until Italy entered World War II on the German side in June 1940.

In 1937, Haile Selassie was to give a Christmas Day radio address to the American people to thank his supporters when his taxi was involved in a traffic accident, leaving him with a fractured knee.

Haile Selassie was born in a stable instead of a palace, in a manger instead of a crib.

In September 2019 two blue plaques, commemorating Haile Selassie, were unveiled by his grandson, one at Fairfield House and one in Weston-super-Mare, where he has swum in the Tropicana pool.

On 18 January 1941, during the East African Campaign, Haile Selassie crossed the border between Sudan and Ethiopia near the village of Um Iddla.

On 5 May 1941, Haile Selassie entered Addis Ababa and personally addressed the Ethiopian people, exactly five years after the fascist forces entered Addis Ababa:.

On 27 August 1942, Haile Selassie confirmed the legal basis for the abolition of slavery that had been enacted by Italy throughout the empire and imposed severe penalties, including death, for slave trading.

Where Haile Selassie actually did succeed in effecting new land taxes, the burdens were often still passed by the landowners to the peasants.

Between 1941 and 1959, Haile Selassie worked to establish the autocephaly of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

In 1942 and 1945, Haile Selassie applied to the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church to establish the independence of Ethiopian bishops, and when his appeals were denied he threatened to sever relations with the Coptic Church of Alexandria.

In keeping with the principle of collective security, for which he was an outspoken proponent, Haile Selassie sent a contingent, under General Mulugueta Bulli, known as the Kagnew Battalion, to take part in the Korean War by supporting the United Nations Command.

Haile Selassie compromised, when practical, with the traditionalists in the nobility and church.

Haile Selassie tried to improve relations between the state and ethnic groups, and granted autonomy to Afar lands that were difficult to control.

Haile Selassie maintained cordial relations with the government of the United Kingdom through charitable gestures.

Haile Selassie sent aid to the British government in 1947 when Britain was affected by heavy flooding.

Haile Selassie contributed Ethiopian troops to the United Nations Operation in the Congo peacekeeping force during the 1960 Congo Crisis, to preserve Congolese integrity, per United Nations Security Council Resolution 143.

On 13 December 1960, while Haile Selassie was on a state visit to Brazil, his Kebur Zabagna forces staged an unsuccessful coup, briefly proclaiming Haile Selassie's eldest son Asfa Wossen as emperor.

The coup spurred Haile Selassie to accelerate reform, which was manifested in the form of land grants to military and police officials.

Haile Selassie would have none of the European attempts to draft a separate Constitution under which Eritrea would be governed, and wanted his own 1955 Constitution protecting families to apply in both Ethiopia and Eritrea.

In September 1961, Haile Selassie attended the Conference of Heads of State of Government of Non-Aligned Countries in Belgrade, FPR Yugoslavia.

In 1963, Haile Selassie presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the continent-wide African Union.

In 1964, Haile Selassie would initiate the concept of the United States of Africa, a proposition later taken up by Muammar Gaddafi.

On 4 October 1963, Haile Selassie addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations referring in his address to his earlier speech to the League of Nations:.

Haile Selassie was the only African head of state to attend the funeral.

In 1966, Haile Selassie attempted to replace the historical tax system with a single progressive income tax, which would significantly weaken the nobility who had previously avoided paying most of their taxes.

Outside of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie continued to enjoy enormous prestige and respect.

Haile Selassie visited China in October 1971, and was the first foreign head of state to meet Mao Zedong following the death of Mao's designated successor Lin Biao in a plane crash in Mongolia.

Human rights in Ethiopia under Haile Selassie's regime were poor.

Haile Selassie again went on television to agree to the army's demands for still greater pay, and named Endelkachew Makonnen as his new Prime Minister.

Haile Selassie was placed under house arrest briefly at the 4th Army Division in Addis Ababa.

On 28 August 1975, state media reported that Haile Selassie had died on 27 August of "respiratory failure" following complications from a prostate examination followed up by a prostate operation.

The prostate operation in question apparently had taken place months before the state media claimed, and Haile Selassie had apparently enjoyed strong health in his last days.

Three years after the military socialist Derg regime was overthrown the court charged them with genocide and murder, claiming that it had obtained documents attesting to a high-level order from the military regime to assassinate Haile Selassie for leading a "feudal regime".

In 1992, Haile Selassie's bones were found under a concrete slab on the palace grounds, Haile Selassie's coffin rested in Bhata Church for nearly a decade, near his great-uncle Menelik II's resting place.

Haile Selassie had six children with Menen Asfaw: Princess Tenagnework, Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen, Princess Zenebework, Princess Tsehai, Prince Makonnen, and Prince Sahle Selassie.

Prince Sahle Haile Selassie was married to Princess Mahisente Habte Mariam.

Today, Haile Selassie is worshipped as God incarnate among some followers of the Rastafari movement, which emerged in Jamaica during the 1930s under the influence of Leonard Howell, a follower of Marcus Garvey's "African Redemption" movement.

Haile Selassie is viewed as the messiah who will lead the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora to freedom.

Rastafari faith in the incarnate divinity of Haile Selassie began after news reports of his coronation reached Jamaica, particularly via the two Time magazine articles on the coronation the week before and the week after the event.

Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on 21 April 1966, and approximately one hundred thousand Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Palisadoes Airport in Kingston to greet him.

Haile Selassie arrived at the airport but was unable to come down the airplane's mobile steps, as the crowd rushed the tarmac.

Haile Selassie then returned into the plane, disappearing for several more minutes.

Haile Selassie defied expectations of the Jamaican authorities and never rebuked the Rastafari for their belief in him as God.

Haile Selassie spoke about his visit to Jamaica in 1966 and told Manley that he was totally dumbfounded by the Rastafarians' beliefs but that he had to be respectful of them.

In 1948, Haile Selassie donated 500 hectares of land at Shashamane, 250 kilometres south of Addis Ababa, to the Ethiopian World Federation Incorporated for the use of people of African descent who supported Ethiopia during the war, particularly those from the West.

Haile Selassie granted Rastafarians land on traditional Oromo domain hence today the Rastas are viewed by the locals as invaders.