Menelik II, who called himself "king of kings", became emperor of Ethiopia in 1889.
A year after his enthronement, news reached the Ethiopian nation of the first use of an electric chair to execute a criminal in New York. Menelik decided that his country should also have an electric chair, and ordered three of the new execution devices to be sent to Ethiopia.
Only that there was a small problem about the purchase, and that was that Ethiopia still did not have electricity. So what Menelik did after receiving the chairs was turn one of them into a throne for him.
It is difficult to know whether Menelik II wanted to prevent his purchase from being useless, or vainly took advantage of it to show his people that he was brave enough to sit on such a throne.
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