It was no ordinary library. The University of Cape Town’s Jagger Reading Room, destroyed by a runaway fire this week, was a beacon of African history and intellect.

The African studies section of the 1930s library was engulfed by flames on Sunday when a fire sparked on the foothills of the city’s iconic Table Mountain spread to the nearby campus.

Parquet-floored and lined with columns, the vast room housed a unique collection of African books and archives under its domed ceiling.

The more than 85,000 books and 3,000 films were renowned across the continent and beyond.

Academics and alumni voiced their distress on Tuesday as university staff started assessing the extent of the damage.

“The library is the heart of a university,” said Cameroonian professor Divine Fuh, head of the university’s Institute of Humanities in Africa.

With African knowledge having been “devalued for years, for centuries” the library also offered a “symbolic” space beyond its practical use, said Fuh.

Students voiced their dismay in messages on social media.

Some shared images of bright orange flames shooting through the library’s tall paned windows, plumes of smoke billowing from the roof.   

“I’m so heartbroken and sore over the UCT fire. Seeing pictures of the library on fire is sending me through the roof. My mind was shaped in that institution,” tweeted Paballo Chauke, a South African who also studied at Oxford University.

A new documentary film has revealed the “completely unknown” story of six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic and adds a new chapter to the history of the world’s most famous ship.

With Oscar-winning director James Cameron as executive producer, “The Six” has earned glowing reviews in China and trended on social media.

Director Arthur Jones hopes it will have the same impact when it is screened overseas and finally dispel myths that have endured for more than a century.

For the Briton and lead researcher Steven Schwankert, “The Six” gives a voice, life and faces to a small band of Chinese men who were among about 700 people to survive the Titanic’s sinking in 1912.

Jones said that a painstaking project stretched over several countries and years began as little more than a joke between the long-time friends, both of whom are based in China.

“Steven came to me and said that we should do the Chinese Titanic story with the Chinese guys who were on the Titanic,” Jones, 47, said.

“I thought he was joking because I thought it was just one of those things that we would laugh about.

“I looked it up, and it was true. But initially my thought was: I don’t know if the world needs another Titanic film or another Titanic documentary.”

Jones said they knew they were onto something when they mentioned it to Chinese friends.

“They were just amazed that there’s this completely unknown story from Titanic, it just seemed an extraordinary thing,” he said.

Touching artwork is strictly forbidden in most museums, let alone buying it and taking it home. But the Design Museum in London wants visitors to do precisely that.

It has transformed its gift shop to create what it describes as “the world’s first artist-designed supermarket” as a way of getting around lockdown rules.

Under the government’s plan to ease restrictions, museums in England have to remain shut until May 17 at the earliest, even as gyms, hairdressing salons and pubs have reopened.

But the west London museum has avoided weeks of further closure by converting its gift shop into a store selling essential items.

Proceeds from the five-day exhibition, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, will go towards a fund for artists and designers.

Images of empty shelves and shortages of toilet paper and pasta at supermarkets marked the start of the pandemic in the UK last March.

But the Design Museum shop and its products are far from mundane: clean lines of brightly coloured jars and cans are neatly arranged on the shelves, with nothing out of place.