Posts

Plataea (479 BC) - The battle where Western civilization hung in the balance:

Image
Plataea (479 BC) - The battle where Western civilization hung in the balance: The Battle of Plataea was fought between the united city-states of ancient Greece and the mighty Persian Empire, and while it was the most important battle of the Greco-Persian Wars, it is not nearly as well-known as three other battles. Thermopylae was a Greek defeat, and Marathon and Salamis, although Greek victories, were only temporary setbacks for Persia, which returned to the fight each time. Plataea, however, was decisive and effectively ended the Persian invasion. If the Greeks had lost this battle and become merely one more province of the Persian Empire, the cultural flourishing of Greece in the 5th century BC might not have taken place. This victory ensured the continued independence of the Greek city-states - permitting an astonishingly rich period of art, science, and philosophy to begin which would lay the foundations for Western civilization. So much was on the line and so stacked the odds seemed

The first case of shell-shock

Image
"It was while I was in this Field Hospital that I saw the first case of shell-shock. The enemy opened fire about dinner time, as usual, with his big guns. As soon as the first shell came over, the shell-shock case nearly went mad. He screamed and raved, and it took eight men to hold him down on the stretcher. With every shell he would go into a fit of screaming and fight to get away. A much larger number of soldiers with these symptoms were classified as 'malingerers' and sent back to the front-line. In some cases men committed suicide. Others broke down under the pressure and refused to obey the orders of their officers. Some responded to the pressures of shell-shock by deserting. Sometimes soldiers who disobeyed orders got shot on the spot. In some cases, soldiers were court-martialled. It is heartbreaking to watch a shell-shock case. The terror is indescribable. The flesh on their faces shakes in fear, and their teeth continually chatter. Shell-shock was brought about i

The catastrofic flood in 1987 caused 57,300sqk submerged affecting millions in Bangladesh.

Image
My granny told me stories of flood she experienced in her life. While describing the devastation, I can still remember, I saw her teary eyes. She mesmerized how fierce the wind force was, how her thatched hut fell down, how the goats washed away!! She had five pieces of rusty breads for the four family members from the relief fund.  No food, no clean water, no medication! People stood up the whole night and the whole day in the water logged huts, and then, they slept for a couple of hours on the banana rafts. Flood in Bangladesh in 1987 was a complete horror. It was also the year I was also born in, and my granny and my mother told me later, how hard it was to keep me alive.  I stole the photo to describe the memory.

In 1999, some people made a remarkable but horrible discovery near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina

Image
In 1999, some people made a remarkable but horrible discovery near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina. It was the bodies of  three Inca children who had been the victims of a ritual sacrifice. They were found with gold and silver statues aswell as food in a shrine over 20,000 ft above sea level. Evidence from their bodies show they were consuming alcohol and coca leaves during their final years and the girl in the picture still had coca leaves in her mouth. One of the victims had strangely been stuck by lightning after death. They were so well preserved from the cold conditions that there was still traces of a lung infection in the pictured girls lungs and lice in the hair of another, 500 years after their deaths. These people back then, including the children, believed they were doing the right thing; it was seen has an honour to be sacrificed and children were seen as the purest of beings, which is why they were selected.

On February 4th, 1999, Amadou Diallo

Image
On February 4th, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant was shot 41 TIMES by American police officers for bringing his wallet out to identify himself, as he couldn't speak English.  All 4 cops who shot him dead were found not guilty.

Volkswagen was founded

Image
Volkswagen was founded On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany–then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party–forms a new state-owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company.” Originally operated by the German Labor Front, a Nazi organization, Volkswagen was headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. In addition to his ambitious campaign to build a network of autobahns and limited access highways across Germany, Hitler’s pet project was the development and mass production of an affordable yet still speedy vehicle that could sell for less than 1,000 Reich marks (about $140 at the time). To provide the design for this “people’s car,” Hitler called in the Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche. In 1938, at a Nazi rally, the Fuhrer declared: “It is for the broad masses that this car has been built. Its purpose is to a

Auschwitz gets a new doctor: “the Angel of Death”

Image
Auschwitz gets a new doctor: “the Angel of Death” On May 24, 1943, the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, receives a new doctor, 32-year-old Josef Mengele, a man who will earn the nickname “the Angel of Death.” Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him. In 1934, already a member of the Nazi Party, he joined the research staff of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, and eager to advance his medical career by publishing “groundbreaking” work, he began experimenting on live Jewish prisoners. In the guise of medical “treatment,” he injected, or ordered others to inject, thousands of inmates with everything from petrol to chloroform. He also had a penchant for studying twins, whom he used to dissect. Mengele managed to escape imprisonment after the war, first by working as a farm stableman in Bavaria, then by making his way to South America. He became a