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Benin was the birthplace of Voodoo that we all know loads about having watched Live and Let Die, and was transplanted to the Caribbean and Florida, amazingly enough, by the slave trade.

Also 51 languages are spoken there.

And someone can buy a helluva lot of yams with ?1900 of my cash there!!!!

The country Benin was named after the famous British explorer, Brigadier Benjamin Conrad Finsbury, a close friend of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The local name was originally Dahomey.


Finsbury took photographs on his travels and would send them by courier to the Prince who was also one of his benefactors. Prince Albert would often show these pictures sent back from darkest Africa to the Queen. When he showed her a picture of the bepithhelmeted Finsbury posing with topless local women in Dahomey he explained, ?This is Ben in Dahomey.?


Victoria?s Victorian sensibilities were shocked by the brazenness of the women in the picture and she only heard, ?This is Ben in?? before fainting dead away.


Apparently she treasured the picture for the rest of her life and would pass it around at tea parties explaining to her guests, ?This is Benin.?

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