Has anyone ever tamed and ridden a zebra?

In Victorian times, Baron de Rothschild trained a set of four zebras to pull his carridge, and on at least one occasion arrived at Buckingham Palace by this means. I belive that he was the only person to achieve this.

Michael Lamm, Birmingham

Rosendo Ribeiro, one of Kenya first doctors, is reported to have ridden a zebra to make house calls in 1907. The 2005 film Racing Stripes is the story of a zebra that thinks he’s a racehorse and includes a great deal of zebra riding.

Timothy Mason, London

A remarkable American woman, Osa Johnson, lived in Kenya and left an extensive record of her experiences, which included riding zebras. Zebras have also been driven. A retired judge living in Lancashire on the fringe of the Lake District drove a team in recent times up until his death.

Bill Barrett, Stowmarket, Suffolk

Why do so many countries end in the letter “A”?

The Romans regularly used the -ia suffix for countries and provinces — Italia, Gallia, Germania, Graecia, Asia, etc. In English, some of these have actually lost the suffix (Britain, Gaul, Germany, Greece), but our classically educated Empire-builders continued to coin such place names as Nigeria (from the River Niger) and Rhodesia (from Cecil Rhodes). Canada is another case altogether: the likeliest origin is the comment on a medieval Portuguese map, southwest of Greenland: Ça Nada — “There is nothing here”!

Christopher Gibson, Blackpool

Many countries have names ending with the letter “A”, because the terminating letter connotes a feminine gender, like Europa (the name of the Greek goddess from whom the term Europe has been derived) and usually matriarchal, like Dostoevsky’s Mother Russia or Rabindranath Tagore’s Mother India. Germany is possibly an exception, being often called the Fatherland. Some central/south Asian countries end with -tan, meaning land and having an adjectival prefix.

Sam Banik, London