#3/thread on Angkor wat

Christianity and islam may be the largest religion of today’s world but Sanatan dharm has the largest religious monument in the world in the form of Angkor wat. It is situated in combodia and spread across over 400 acres / 1.6 km².

It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, which encouraged an international effort to save the complex.
It was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. In Khmer, the Cambodian language, Angkor means "city" and Wat means "temple grounds".

So Angkor Wat means "Temple City". Its original name was Vrah Vishnuloka or Parama Vishnuloka, meaning the sacred dwelling of Vishnu in Sanskrit.
But, it gradually turned into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century & is still used for worship today.

Angkor Wat was initially designed and constructed in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II, as the king’s state temple and capital city. It was built without the aid of any machinery, as there was no machinery available at that time.

Evidence for these dates comes in part from inscriptions, which are vague, but also from the architectural design and artistic style of the temple and its associated sculptures.

Another aspect is that the five central towers of Angkor Wat symbolize the peaks of Mount Meru,

Made by NickHintonn 2 apr. 2018

Here’s a thread about The Black Tom explosion: a terrorist attack on American soil and major event in US history. However, no one has heard of it and I believe it’s proof that our timeline may be changing.

On July 30th, 1916, in Jersey City, German agents destroyed American ammunition supplies by setting them on fire. The incident is famous for causing damage to the Statue of Liberty.

The fires caused the ammunition supplies to explode, lodging fragments in buildings miles away including the Statue of Liberty and the clock tower of The Jersey Journal, stopping the clock at 2:12 am.

The explosion caused windows to shatter as far as 25 miles away, including thousands in lower Manhattan. Some window panes in Times Square were shattered. Even stained glass windows in St. Patrick's Church were destroyed.

The explosion was so strong is registered as a 5.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. It could be felt as far away as Philadelphia. The explosion cracked the outer wall of Jersey City's City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge was shaken. People as far away as Maryland were woken up.

I doubt there are many outside of Norway that know that the Norwegian pop group A-ha was critical in the introduction of electric car incentives in Norway. I certainly didn't. Read on...

In 1989, two members of the group, Morten Harket and Magne Furuholmen were in Switzerland with environmentalist Frederic Hauge, when they came across a hobby-converted Fiat Panda. Stated range: 45 km. They snapped it up and imported it to Norway.

Photo: In Switzerland (Bellona)

On arrival in Norway, the regs didn't accommodate the registration of electric cars so it couldn't legally be driven on the road. Since it had a propane-fuelled heater, just like a motorhome, they registered it as a motorhome.

Moreover, in contrast to petrol cars, diesel cars paid registration fees based on how far they were driven, and our heroes thought this should also apply to electric cars. So the two-seater Swiss-converted Fiat Panda was registered as a diesel motorhome in Norway.

They managed (somehow) to avoid paying the one-off registration fee in 1990, and ever since then electric cars have been exempted this now-substantial fee.
Source:

Paul Warburg attended as the American representative, at the Treaty of Versailles conference, where his brother Max was on the German side of the bargaining table…. Before World War II, Max Warburg served on the board of directors of I.G. Farben, the giant German chemical firm.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix is a powerful tool for prioritizing your time and unlocking growth in your career, startup, business, relationships, or life.

A thread on how it works and how it can change your life...

Dwight D. Eisenhower was an American military officer and politician.

He was a five-star general in the United States Army and the first Supreme Commander of NATO.

After his military career, he was elected as the 34th President of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961.

In both his military and civilian careers, Eisenhower stood out for his prolific productivity.

His secret?

Eisenhower observed that people often confuse the urgent with the important. He did not.

"What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important."

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix is a visualization tool that forces you to differentiate between the urgent and the important.

It allows you to prioritize your time accordingly and unlock new productivity and growth.

Let's cover the basics of how it works...

First, we have to define "urgent" and "important."

An "urgent" task is one that requires immediate, focused attention.

An "important" task is one that promotes or furthers your long-term values, goals, or principles.

Remember: Tasks can be both urgent and important.

Today is Jayanti of Satyendranath Bose or more popularly known as S.N.Bose. Well known for the Bose-Einstein condensate theory. And also a class of particles called Bosons named after him by Paul Dirac. One of the great scientists of modern era.

But then again to call S.N.Bose just a scientist, would be akin to calling Leonardo Da Vinci a mere painter. Much like his other namesake and contemporary, J.C.Bose, he was a polymath, equally adept in music, literature,mineralogy.

The multi facted genius was born on January 1, 1894 in a middle class Kolkata family, his father Surendranath Bose, an accountant in the East India Railway Company. The only son in a family that had six daughters after him.

Bought up by his mother Amodini Devi, he later joined the New Indian School in the Goabagan neigbhorhood of Kolkata. Seeing his skills at mathematics, his father encouraged him more by giving problems to solve.

Joining the prestigious Hindu School in 1907 at the age of 13, he soon got recognition as an oustanding student in maths and science. His maths teacher, believed he could be the next Pierre Laplace.

A Thanksgiving story to warm your pluralistic hearts:

It was the early 1990s, the days before Washington DC had meters in taxis. A famine was raging in Somalia. And I was working in my first job out of college: a brief stint working for an organization that focused on the Middle East peace process.

I was heading to my parents’ house. I was standing in front of a mailbox near my office. I was holding a stack of papers with Hebrew writing on them. I hailed a cab.

I was aware that on the mailbox behind me was a large sign from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals with an image of a turkey and the words: “Thanksgiving is Murder on Turkeys.”

It was the period right around Thanksgiving.

A cab pulled up, and I got in the front seat—because in the days before metered cabs in DC, drivers were allowed to pick up more than one fare, and someone else was already occupying the back seat.

In 1637, the Dutch Republic erupted into a speculative fever over an unlikely item...the tulip.

Tulip Mania has become a legend synonymous with market euphoria and bubbles. But is this tale all it's cracked up to be?

Who's up for a story?

👇👇👇

1/ The tulip is a spring-blooming flower native to the valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia.

It is believed to have been introduced to Europe in 1554, when an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor sent tulip bulbs and seeds to Vienna from the Ottoman Empire.

2/ Tulips gained in popularity as people were attracted to their rich color and ability to grow in sub-optimal conditions.

They soon became a coveted status symbol for the wealthy.

The Semper Augustus, with its colorful, flame-like streaks, was the most desired of them all.

3/ By the early 1600s, the Dutch Republic was entering a golden age.

Many financial innovations popped up during this time - the first stock exchange, for example.

But it was another financial innovation that would propel tulips into historical lore: the futures contract.

4/ As tulips grow slowly and may take several years to bloom, paper contracts were written that entitled the buyer to the future tulips.

These contracts were freely-traded.

So in addition to the physical market for tulip bulbs, a thriving paper market was established.

On 23 September 1984 the BBC broadcast the apocalypse: the story of nuclear war and its effects on the people of Sheffield. Filmed on a shoestring budget it still causes nightmares to this day.

This thread is not for the squeamish.

This the story of Threads...

In 1965 the BBC had filmed The War Game, a fictional docu-drama about a nuclear attack on Britain. However under pressure from the government the BBC withdrew it from screening. It was finally released in 1966 as a film in selected theatres.

For many years the withdrawal of The War Game had rankled many at the BBC. Surely it was a public broadcaster's duty to show the public what the reality of nuclear war would mean. Finally in 1982 they did so.

A Guide To Armageddon was a documentary for the BBC's peak-time science series Q.E.D. Produced by Mick Jackson it graphically depicted the effect of a one megaton explosion on London. It also explored how well people could survive such a blast if they were in a fallout shelter.

Jackson had carefully researched his subject and knew how under-prepared the UK was for nuclear war. The physical and psychological effects of atomic attack would catapult what was left of Britain back to a 14th century mode of living, a time when bubonic plague killed millions.

The Kushana Empire was founded by Mahārājādhirāja Kujula Kadphises, a Shaivite Hindu convert from his ancestral Steppe religion of the Yüeh-chih. He was not a Buddhist, as popularly believed.

A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.

The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.

Emperor Kuja Kadphises had converted to Shaivism, a Mathura inscription from the Tōkrī Tīla mound (Maṭ village) clears up previous confusion (Based on him being called "satyadharmasthita" or 'steadfast in the true dharma' people speculated he was a Buddhist)

This is incorrect.

The Mathura inscription applied the same epithet to Emperor Huvishka (satyadharmasthita) but explicitly says the Kingdom was conferred upon its founder by Lord Shiva (Sarva is the epithet of Shiva). This makes it clear Kujula Kadphises had adopted Shaivism & the Kharoshti script.

This also makes sense, when we realize his son, Emperor Vima Kadphises was also a devoted Hindu Shaivite (and in his coins we clearly see a trishulin ithyphallic shiva with a tiger skin).

So his son had just been continuing his father's tradition & upbringing.

1. This is a thread about the Bristol Beaufighter & how it was the most important (if not the absolute ‘best’) heavy fighter of the SWW. Beaufighter origins go back to the Bristol Type 142 ‘Britain First’ built as a publicity stunt for Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere in 1935.

2. With a top speed of 278mph, this was considerably faster than the Hawker Fury, which could only manage 207mph. A specification for a fast medium bomber was issued for a revised version of the 142M, named the Blenheim.

3. By the time the war started all-metal monoplane fighters had eclipsed the performance of the Blenheim. Serious shortcomings in operational capabilities of all RAF aircraft were revealed during early wartime aerial activity, leading to heavy losses of aircraft & crews.

4. Lack of defensive armament, armour & self-sealing tanks were added to the problems of looming obsolescence. The huge number of aircraft ordered from shadow factories, along with delays to replacement models, kept the Blenheim in the front line much longer than it should have.

5. Fighter Command had 7 Blenheim IF squadrons at the outbreak of war. These were dual purpose day/night units, but by early 1940 were operating primarily as night fighters. The need to provide cover for east coast convoys led to the formation of 4 ‘trade protection’ squadrons.

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.

As debt crises mount across Africa, his ideas are more vital now than ever. I wrote about Sankara's legacy in these two pages from The Divide:

Today, Sankara's legacy is inspiring a new generation of revolutionary thinkers and activists across the continent and beyond. As Sankara himself put it, with uncanny prescience, “You can assassinate revolutionaries, but you cannot kill ideas”.

Sankara knew his assassination was coming. Speaking to African leaders at the OAU, he said "I would like this conference to clearly declare that we will not repay the debt; we must do it together, to avoid being assassinated individually..."

"...If Burkina Faso is the only one to refuse, I will not be here at the next conference."

Today is Jayanti of Udham Singh, the man who assasinated General O Dwyer, responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the atrocities that followed, a true hero.

His real name was Sher Singh, born on Dec 26, 1899, to a poor peasant family in Punjab’s Sangrur district. His father, Tehl Singh, worked as a railway gate keeper at a level crossing in the Uppali village of Punjab.

Having lost both his parents when he was small, he along with his brother Mukta Singh, grew up in the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar. Following the Sikh initiation rites, he got the name of Udham Singh.

In 1919, he left the orphanage after passing the matriculation exam. In that year Punjab was in turmoil, with massive protests breaking out against the British rule.

Around 1500 Indian civilians, in Amritsar, protesting against the deportation of nationalist leaders, Dr.Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal Dang, were brutally massacred at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. While Gen Dyer led the carnage, he was backed by the Lt. Governor O’Dwyer.

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)

(Thread)

To My Old Master: this letter was written in August 1865 by former slave Jourdan Anderson to his old master, Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, who had the audacity to send him a letter asking that he return to work on the plantation.

See next tweets.

"Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me... 1/

... than anybody else can.

I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. 2/

I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. 3/

It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. 4/

A challenge with society in general is a facile understanding of the word “coup.” When the population at large thinks of a coup, they imagine a violent military (Chile, 1973) or paramilitary (Cuba, 1959) overthrow of the government.
Coups are often far more complex and nuanced.

So, let’s talk about the autogolpe—the “self coup” (a perfect example of how some words in Spanish are objectively better than their English equivalents). An autogolpe is, at its simplest, when a duly elected leader revolts against his *own* government to consolidate power.

He (it’s always been a “he”) usurps powers that traditionally reside with the legislative and judiciary bodies, and of course, maintains that power beyond his elected term.

This kind of coup requires a lot of prep work. Generally speaking, you can’t just up and announce your takeover overnight. Instead, you have to spend a few years undermining federal institutions so that, when the time comes, they are powerless and/or unwilling to stop you.

How? You start by installing loyalists in key positions and courting *personal* loyalty within your party.
“Oh, everybody does that!”
Not exactly. Key positions in a democracy, for example, require approval from the legislative body.
So you have to work around that.

“Thread: History of Valentines Day”

Ancient historical sources have claimed the existence of several saints by the name of St.Valentines who died on Feb 14. Among them, two were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D.
#valentinesday2021

[1]

It was the time when the Christian persecution was common. Another legendary account states that under the rule of Claudius II, Rome was involved in the bloody campaigns, therefore, to maintain a strong army, Claudius II banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

[2]

The reason of forbidding marriages was forced by the reluctance of people to join military because of their strong attachment to their wives. But St. Valentine defied the orders of the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus and married couples secretly to spare the husbands from war.

[3]

A few claims have reported that St.Valentine endorsed illegal relationships which could end up into a marriage. When it was discovered by the emperor, St. Valentine was arrested and condemned to have his head cut off.

[4]

An order of Belgian monks spent almost three centuries to explore the lives of saints by the name of St.Valentines from archives around the world. Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but the two different versions of one saint’s...

[5]

On this day in 1945 Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the largest concentration and death camp. 1.1 million people, 90% of them Jews, were murdered there. Today it is an international day of commemoration, to honor the memory of all victims of Nazi extermination.

A few things to keep in mind on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:

1) The Soviet liberation of Auschwitz is a deeply symbolic event, but it is worth noting that allied forces were liberating Nazi camps until May of 1945. Unspeakable suffering and death continued for months

I bring this up because the popular perception of events is informed by primary school practices which present them with clean start and stop dates. Useful for repeating dates, but less useful for having an understanding of what forces you unleash and what it takes to unwind them

When we talk about the lessons of the Holocaust, too many fall into the trap of "if it's not identical to Auschwitz, it's not worth invoking the Holocaust."

The seeds for the Holocaust were laid long before Auschwitz was opened, and the Holocaust continued after its liberation.

2) Every year on this date you can reliably expect a debate on what it is we are commemorating. A small but loud group of people use this date as an opportunity to play suffering olympics. Resist the urge to engage with these fools.