Taj Mahal is Hindu Monument: Prof Marvin Mills, Reputed New York Architect.
@LostTemple7 @DivineElement

1.Professor Marvin H. Mills, a leading New York architect and professor of architecture at the Pratt Institute had studied the Taj Mahal in detail. Here is part of his letter published in The New York Times. 👇👇

2.“New information and analysis have come forth to constitute a compelling argument that the Taj was actually a former Hindu palace occupied and converted to a tomb by the Moguls…There are many other inconsistencies in the Taj legend. The building to its left is now a mosque.

3.Had it been built originally as a mosque it would almost certainly have been oriented directly to Mecca,instead of due west.The four“minarets”that surround Taj mausoleum r inappropriate,for they logically should have been in front of the“mosque”for convenient calls to prayer.”

4.Through the letter, he had appealed thus, “The origin of the Taj can best be determined through scientific dating by carbon-14 and thermoluminescence, which the Archeological Survey of India should be urged to undertake.”
According to Prof Mills,

Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*.

The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.

Me, for @NatGeo + thread!

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg—nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II—headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing expedition on January 23, 1959. 1/x

One student turned back after experiencing joint pain.

He never saw his friends again.

2/x

The team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people. Ominous, sure - but these were experienced mountain hikers. 3/x

The nine were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. 4/x

Charles Ponzi and the Postal Service

The story of the man who put the 'Ponzi' in 'Ponzi scheme'

/THREAD/

1/ Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, a.k.a. Charles Ponzi, was an italian swindler and con-artist.

Born in 1882 in Italy, he became notorious for his money-making fraudulent schemes in North America in the 1920s.

2/ He arrived in Boston in late 1903 with $2.50 in his pocket.

After many professional failures, he moved to Montreal in 1907 and started working as a bank teller at Banco Zarossi, where he rose to the position of bank manager.

3/ This is where he first witnessed the bank's scheme, where Zarossi was funding interest payments using deposits from newly opened accounts instead of investment profits.

4/ Ponzi served 3 years in jail for check forgery and returned to the US after his release.

However, he got involved in smuggling illegal immigrants into the country landing in prison for another 2 years, moving back to Boston after that.

THE BATTLE OF PRATAPGARH (10 Nov, 1659)

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's impeccable military genius and matchless courage humbled the Adil Shahi Sultanate.

The beginning of what was to come later for the M0ghuls from one of the most indefatigable defenders of Dharma!

(Thread)

Shivaji’s growing influence in Maval region, made him a threat to the Adil Shahi ruler of Bijapur who sought to restrain him. The man who was given the responsibility of this mission, was their commander, Afzal Khan. Afzal was a formidable warrior known for his ruthlessness.(1)

His strategy was to bring Shivaji out into the plains, where he held an advantage, compared to the rocky Deccan terrain. Afzal attacked the holy town of Pandharpur, and later demolished the temple of Bhavani at Tuljapur to instigate Shivaji in a bid to bring him out.(2)

Shivaji was angry but remained patient. Knowing that he could not defeat Bijapuri Sultanate in an open battle, Shivaji moved to Pratapgarh fort, located on rocky heights, surrounded by thick forests of Jawali.(3)

This set the pattern for future Maratha attacks, using guerrilla warfare against larger invading armies rendering them ineffective in unfavorable terrain.(4)

What is Hazara Genocide, let's have a look.

February 9, 2001:

8 passenger were shot dead & five severely wounded when they were traveling in a van en route from Hazara Town to Alamdar road. Later, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for the attack.

#ShiaHazaraCallsPMIK

June 8, 2003:

Twelve Young Hazara police cadets were killed when two assailants opened fire on their vehicle. The attack occurred on Saryab Road and left nine others injured.

July 4, 2003:

Quetta mosque bombing: Fifty five people were killed and over 150 were injured in an attack on worshipers during Friday Prayers on Mekongi road Quetta

March 2, 2004:

At least 60 people were killed and more than 100 critically injured when a religious procession of the Shia Muslims was attacked with extensive open-firing which followed an explosion by rival Sunni extremists at Liaquat Bazaar in Quetta on Tenth of Muharram.

January 10, 2007:
Agha Ghulam Ali, aged 25, owner of the famous fruit juice outlet in Pakistan. His father Agha Abbas Ali had also been murdered by the same Sunni Muslim terrorist organization in May 2002.

RANI TARABAI the nemesis of Aurangzeb

The forgotten warrior queen who didn't allow the tyrant to trample upon Hindu rule which was passing through its darkest phase. Courage and resilience. A falling empire, personal tragedies and a vicious enemy. None could shake her.

(Thread)

Tarabai, the Maratha queen (1675-1761), is perhaps one of the most important contributors to the breakup of the M0ghul empire. She prevented the Maratha rule from disintegrating when it was at its lowest with almost all forts in M0ghul hands.(1)

Aurangzeb’s dream of a pan India dominion was destroyed in the hills and forts of western Deccan.(2)

First she survived the M0ghul onslaught, later on carrying the battle into M0ghul territory, raiding and then creating permanent outposts. Had she buckled there may not have been Maratha hegemony in the 18th century, which reduced the M0ghul control to a small area.(3)

She was the daughter of Hambir Rao Mohite, Shivaji’s cmdr in chief, and got married to Shivaji’s younger son Rajaram. She was well trained in sword fighting, archery, cavalry, military strategy, diplomacy and other subjects of statecraft.(4)

1857 - There was chaos and bloodshed all around. Britishers were not safe in Delhi. Yamuna used to be massive because there were no dams and canals. /1

There is a British couple running for life. A Lalaji offered to help. He said, ‘I have a plan that can save your life. You cross Yamuna and reach Rampur or a safe heaven.’ But how does one cross Yamuna ? The city is up in arms. People will kill us./3

Lala ji said ‘See I am a very good swimmer. You piggback me and I will swim you across Yamuna.‘ It is a dark night Lalaji takes the couple to the bank of Yamuna. One by one, they piggyride Lalaji and cross Yamuna. Lalaji ensures that safe passage./4

Unfortunately, the British win the war. The British resorted to massacre to massacre in Delhi. A few days later the British couple returns to Delhi. The couple summons Lala ji. They asked Lala ji ‘What can we do for you ?” Lalaji said, ’kuchh nahin Sab.’/5

Next day Lalaji is summoned again. The British officials are also present. The man says, “Lalaji, this is a token amount of 50,000/-rupees in cash. In addition, you are appointed the Kotwal of Ferozepur.” Lalaji is very happy and goes to Ferozepur./6

It's now over half a century since 1970, and I'm starting to wonder if we should bring back its concept of gracious modern living...

You see we've grown so used to Swedish-style modernism that we've sort of forgotten that maximalism, rather than minimalism, was once the sign of a cultured abode.

The 1970s in many ways reached back to the rich ideas of Victorian decor: heavy, autumnal and cluttered. Home was meant to be a baroque and sensual experience, rather than a 'machine for living in.'

Gaudy was certainly in by 1970: colour choices for interior design were rich and varied, with every room becoming a boutique of signature design.

Experimentation and adventurism were also coming to the fore: now we had landed on the Moon surely we should start to live like astronauts on Earth.

The greatest treasure looted from the Ethiopian people at Maqdala in 1868 isn't in the BL or V&A. The Kwer'ata Re'esu, the most sacred icon of the Ethiopian people, was stolen by a representative of the Queen, later sold by his heirs & remains hidden in a bank vault today. 1/10

The original painting, by an unknown Renaissance master, was brought to Ethiopia in the 16th century and became the talismanic icon of the Ethiopian people, a symbol of Imperial authority. Oaths were sworn on it & it was carried into battle at the head of the Emperor’s army. 2/10

Copes of the Kwer'ata Re'esu icon are ubiquitous in early Ethiopian art - here is one painted in the so-called Second Gondarene style in a late 17th century manuscript. 3/10

Its importance to the Ethiopian people is incalculable. In 1744 it was captured in a battle with Sudanese Muslims & later returned on payment of a ransom. James Bruce, a visitor to Ethiopia in 1768, wrote: "all Gondar was drunk with joy" on the return of the "quarat rasou”. 4/10

After the Siege of Maqdala it was stolen from the Emperor Tewodros' palace by Sir Richard Rivington Holmes of the BM, later the Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle, who took the painting - not for the British Museum or the Royal Collection - but for his own private collection. 5/10

Excerpts from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. to help shed light on the way to go as regard the #EndSARS #ReformPoliceNG protest going on across the country.

A thread.

Before the Boycott started, Martin Luther King Jr. thought about the morality of the method of protesting - the Boycott.

In spite of the fact that the Black community had a legitimate demand, they still thought about the morality of their method.

Would anyone suffer unjustly?

On the first day of the protest, Martin Luther King Jr. noticed that at the peak of the morning traffic, no more than eight Negro passengers rode the bus.

Almost everyone in the Black community cooperated.

Now, what happened next?

Leaders in the community discussed the need for some organisation to guide and direct the protest because everything happened spontaneously.

They decided to elect officers and Martin Luther King Jr. was made the President of the Association.

They formed an ad hoc organisation called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).

1/ ISSA AREMU: THE IRREPRESSIBLE COMRADE 60

It was sometime in October 1984. I had just been admitted to study Economics at the University of Port Harcourt. After processing my papers and having been registered, [...]

#OutsideTheBox

2/ I proceeded to the Students Affairs Office where the halls of residence were allotted. After the fairly long process, I ended up at the Nelson Mandela Hall. My new hall of residence had 6 blocks: A to F, and each block comprised 4 floors with multiple rooms.

3/ Each room had three well-built double beds, the type you see in today’s five-star hotels and one single 6 spring bed for the ‘jambites’, as year one students were then called. To put it simply, Nelson Mandela Hall was well sought after at that time.

4/ On arriving the hall, I was assigned to block C, Room 308 by the Hall Warden. I knocked and entered the room where I met this young final year Economics student who displayed a very good command of English language and radiated knowledge all over him.

5/ I was impressed by the way he welcomed and helped onboard me in the hostel. I was also happy that he was a senior Economics student and I immediately figured he would be helpful with settling down in my academic discipline.

Here I share what I witnessed about the uproar concerning the remarks of Rajinikanth on Periyar.The new film 'Darbar' by Rajinikanth washed out in Hindi, but that does not mean that on Twitter or national politics he can not trend. The new uproar is over his remarks at the .

50th anniversary celebration of Thuglaq, a Tamil political newspaper, about Periyar E. V. Ramaswamy.Referring to how Thuglak wrote about the intellectual patriarch of Tamil Nadu political parties such as DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra

Kazhagam), Rajinikanth, who floated his own political party, when he organised a rally in Salem in 1971 where Hindu holy deities were allegedly displayed in a lewd way.This is how the actor mentioned the incident at the Thuglak event when he was speaking:
"In 1971, in Salem,

Periyar organised a rally featuring the undressed images of Lord Sriramachandramoorthy and Sita with a sandal garland. No other source wrote something about the protest, but Cho printed it on the front page of the paper and denounced it vehemently.Because of the publicity, the

ruling DMK government at the time got a bad reputation. DMK confiscated these copies of Thuglaq because they did not want others to hear about the protest."Many Dravidian groups staged protests and filed complaints with the police against Rajinikanth saying he "insulted Periyar."

As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/

After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/

Every person on the left believes they just survived the parallel to the rise of Nazism in Germany and they defeated it.

They stopped it.

They believe all Republicans are 1950's white racists.

They feel empowered to live out their Civil Rights warrior fantasies.

To India! We go together with one of the most original minds of the late antique and early medieval world: Cosmas Indicopleustes. Cosmas thought that the world was a box. He thought that god resided in its lid. But he also travelled a large part of that box! 1/ #medievaltwitter

Cosmas was born at the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century probably in Alexandria, the great city of Roman Egypt. We actually don’t know his real name, Cosmas the India-Sailor is a monicker he got around 9th century. 2/

We know though that he became a merchant in Constantinople. From there he traveled south to Egypt and then to the kingdom of Aksum, modern day Ethiopia. He is best informed about the topography of the region and there is little doubt that he visited it in person. 3/

He is called the India-Sailor because of his description of the current-day Malabar coast and Sri Lanka. But has he made it that far? Was it even viable in the sixth century? 4/

Cosmas does mention detailed descriptions of the South Asian fauna and flora like the hog-deer which he has “seen and eaten”. He also knows coconuts and pepper and seems to have understood if not witnessed how they were harvested. 5/

Why and how did the ancient Egyptians build pyramids?

Pyramids were built for religious purposes. The Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to believe in an afterlife. Most were built as tombs for the pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.

Most accepted construction hypotheses are based on the idea that it was built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid.

All the pyramids were built by Egyptian workers and Imhotep was the architect of the first pyramid and the Saqqara step pyramid. He also built the pyramid of Djoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet. He was later deified as the god of medicine throughout Egypt in the Late Period.

It is not known who designed the Great Pyramid, but the man responsible for supervising its complex construction was Hemiunu, Khufu’s nephew, a senior civil servant who acted as the pharaoh’s vizier.

Despite the mystery surrounding Giza, Hemiunu himself was a flesh-and-blood man, as shown by his decidedly lifelike—and fleshy—statue, found in his tomb in Giza’s west cemetery.

There was no stigma around 1982 coup; Kenya was already sliding to the abyss. My fourth thread on Railaphobia in Kikuyuland. LONG THREAD, FREE TO DISCARD

As alluded to in a previous thread, Moi was very popular when he inherited the power from Jomo. He played an important historical role in dismantling Kikuyu hegemony that peaked at Kenyatta’s death. The whole nation supported him thinking it was all driven by national interest

Just that time he was very popular, he made a lot of decisions that laid the ground for his future dictatorship which he was cunningly planning for. Like civil servants’ union and university staff union were proscribed. This time, President's word was law and Moi took advantage

To compensate lack of charisma, Moi resorted to populist roadside decrees that would make people happy. In the process, he was making so many policy decisions at the spur of the moment. Some were so expensive to the country economically and politically

Among such decisions was to ban traditional liquor. The implications were enormous to this day – the gvt spends so much time and resources following up people and pouring liquors. It was a prime opportunity for gvt agencies to meddle in peoples social and economic lives

How to not run/and run a business:

In 1976, my family was Big Thompson River flood. 2 hotels survived -locally owned one we were in, which let people stay free & doubled up rooms, & Holiday Inn, which tripled rates. I’ve never again stayed in HI for 45 years because of that..1

...we’ve seen the opposite in Texas disaster - a community minded business that wins public affection & is better managed than the state. @HEB is beloved in TX, more so since the recent crisis. In a town where people were in financial trouble, HEB gave away groceries for free...2

...literally, you would walk into the store, head to the cashier, and they would thank you and send you on your way. They were prepared for a disaster. Why? Because at the beginning of the pandemic, this grocery store chain -GROCERY STORES! - commissioned John’s Hopkins to do...3

...a pandemic report that correctly predicted how things would go (badly), consulted experts on how best to keep their workers and customers safe, and then spent the money required to get it done. They shared all of their information with mass killer Governor @GregAbbott_TX.../4

....a man they did not know how already deep-sixes a report put together specifically for the state to show how to open up safely. Just like his ignoring the 2011 warnings about an electricity collapse and the need for Abbott’s bagmen at the energy companies to spend money to...5