1977 — Bokassa Crowns Himself Emperor

On December 4, 1977, Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor Bokassa I in a lavish ceremony at Bangui's stadium, renaming his country the Central African Empire. The spectacle copied Napoleon Bonaparte's 1804 coronation and cost over twenty million dollars, spent in one of the poorest countries on Earth.

No foreign head of state attended, and the splendor could not hold. The empire collapsed two years later, when France backed Bokassa's overthrow. The coronation endures as a stark lesson in contrasts: a fortune spent on one man's crown in a nation that could least afford it, and an empire proclaimed in a stadium that lasted barely two years before it fell.