This week, 33 years ago, Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, was assassinated in a French-backed coup. He aspired to an egalitarian, feminist society, and an economy built on self-sufficiency, ecological regeneration, and independence from Western powers.

Happy Friday! I'm @khowaga, and I'm talking about the social history of medicine and disease in #Egypt. Today's topic is the cholera of 1883. (1/19)

#tweetistorian #twitterstorians #histmed #epitwitter

It goes like this.

According to popular legend, Patient Zero of the 1883 cholera epidemic was a mason in his mid-forties named Ḥassan Nūr-al-Dīn, who lived in the port city of Damietta (34,000 people). (2/19)

Nūr-al-Dīn rarely traveled outside of Damietta, but on the morning of Thursday, June 21, he took the local train to the next major town upriver, Manṣūra (30,000 people) for a weekend trip. The next day, Friday, he began to feel unwell. (3/19)

After a fitful night, he went to the station to return home on Saturday. His condition deteriorated rapidly: on boarding the train he exhibited no symptoms, but by reaching the hamlet of Rās al-Khalīg, about an hour later, he had become violently ill. (4/19)

By the time the train arrived in Damietta, he was so weak that he had to be carried home from the station. He arrived at his house before sunset, died shortly before midnight and was buried promptly the next day, Sunday, June 24. (5/19)

In 1937, a trucker got frustrated waiting for his cargo to be unloaded. He later sold his company for $1.1 billion.

Here’s the story of how Malcom McLean made a billion dollars and which startup could be following in his footsteps. (Inspired by our episode with @laurabehrenswu)

In the early 1950s, the shipping industry was a dying business.

New York’s docks were handling half as much domestic cargo in the early 1950s as they had been in the depressed 1930s.

In thirty years, no one had invested significant money in coastal shipping.

Why?

As McLean found out, loading ships was difficult and slow.

A truck or train would deliver items to the port. Each item was unloaded separately, recorded, and carried to storage.

When a ship was ready, each item was taken from storage, counted again, and hauled on-board.

The cost of this labor was significant. As one expert at the time explained:

“A four-thousand-mile voyage for a shipment might consume 50 percent of its costs in covering just the two ten-mile movements through two ports.”

Yet, despite the industry’s issues, it felt little pressure to change.

Foreigners were barred from operating domestically. Cartels ran international routes. And gov. subsidies eased the pain of labor costs.

Reshaping the industry needed an outsider.

Enter Malcolm McLean.

Some thoughts on @UKLabour... Many consider Sir Winston Churchill as Britain's greatest PM, yet he succumbed to a huge election defeat in 1945, right after spearheading Britain and its allies to victory in WWII. But how and why did this come about? 1/9

Some say that Churchill was the perfect leader for the job at hand – winning a war. Once war was over having completed a seemingly impossible mission; he had little direction, he was redundant, and society sought new leadership for a new era. 2/9

Some say that Churchill’s unwillingness to adapt caused his defeat. The movement for social reform grew throughout the war and reached a climax with the publication of the Beveridge Report. Churchill missed an opportunity to take on those reforms, and another 5 yrs as PM 3/9

Instead of backing them, he attempted to scare people away from the reforms and socialism as a positive force for good. The party centred the election around Churchill the ‘war lord’. Whilst Labour and Atlee brought the reforms to the centre of their campaign. 4 /9

Following the end of the war, the national conversation centred around issues of housing, health, and employment. Atlee and the Labour Party tuned in and devised a comprehensive manifesto for social change and justice. 5/9