I'm going to talk about the sahiqat (صاحقات) genre. In the pre-modern #Arab world this was the genre of sapphic or lesbian stories. It was regarded as the purest form of love because of how impossible it was.
Different than Western sapphic love stories, it re-affirmed their devotion to God. For example the most famous couple are al-Zarqa and Hind bint al-Nu'man.
#OnThisDay, 2 Aug 1855, Elizabeth Ann Holman goes on trial in Plymouth, UK, for being a suspicious person because she was discovered to be a woman disguised as a man. The case is dismissed. As is a second charge against her for wearing trousers in 1858.
Hi to all #history readers and lovers. I am developing a daily history puzzle with all of my heart. You have to guess a year with the help of 4 historical events. Afterwards you get interesting links to these events.
I would be glad if you check it out. It is called #PastPuzzle - Thank you! :)
wanna give a huge shout-out to Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky for gifting us some absolutely stunning colour photographs from Russia in the 1910s.
YEAH YOU READ THAT RIGHT. he took three photographs of each subject, through coloured filters, and then projected the images again through the filters and superimposed them.
and thus, we have colour photography of early 20th century Russia. and it's beautiful.
stole your meme, yadda yadda cuz GLUE PEOPLE is who we once called ELDERS.
a hallmark of #fascism is the belief #history is a thing that lives outside of us; and that, thru violent means, only the “winners” write and impose as The Truth.
but History isn’t a thing.
history exists in being, living, doing.
books, archives, GIT repos are great, but give us a false sense of security. when “life happens”, we need Elders to wing solutions.
Maybe this (and the #catholicchurch forcing him to publicly revoke his findings) is why somebody decided to steal this part of his body when he was moved years after his death.
From now on, this picture will be awarded by me to anybody who is talking bullshit that was scientifically proven wrong already.
This past week, 99 years ago, Miles Dewey Davis III was born in Alton, Illinois.
On November 12, 1989, on 60 Minutes, Harry Reasoner asked him if Black musicians were better at jazz and blues because of slavery. The question could’ve gone sideways.
Released last Friday, a digital reconstruction of the Titanic chronicles a never-before-seen view of the wreck that is “accurate to the rivet,” a statement says.
Very early #OnThisDay, 12 Apr 1944, Odette Wilen parachutes into France to work as a wireless operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supports the French resistance.
Wireless operators were at the greatest risk of discovery, as their position could be triangulated whenever they were transmitting messages back to London.
Wilen evades capture by minutes and escapes over the Pyrenees. She lives until 2015.
Another week. Another museum. This week the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. I came here largely to see this one tool chest.
It's the Mästermyr toolchest. A 1000 year old chest filled with blacksmithing and woodworking tools. It's an incredibly important find. Beautifully preserved in the bog. The tools are wonderful. I'd seen pictures and read about these tools, but to see them up close. That hack saw is exquisite.
#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly. Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.
In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
Hello, I'm new to Mastadon and looking to meet people interested in medieval Silk Road history, especially of women and non-western historical fiction.
To sort of give you an idea of the weird stuff I'm into, here's a post I did about stories written in the Medieval Silk Road that feature women and are available in English:
The Silk Road had men and women of all walks of life. It also was one of history’s most literate eras and places, prior to the modern age. One of the reasons that we know that is from the sto…
If you too love daydreaming about socialism, you'll probably love this book as much as I did! It's informative and well-researched, and also colorful and fun to read, and it made me nostalgic for public housing and a comprehensive welfare state. Some quick highlights (1/) #socialism #Germany #history
I’m researching the life of my 5 x great grandfather Samuel Cottrell. This will be an interesting challenge because Samuel, a non-conformist, managed to avoid all the censuses taken in the 1800s
Samuel was born on 11 July 1796 to John Cottrell and Mary Teek. He was baptised on 2 October 1796 at Saint Luke’s Old Street, Finsbury, London.
During this research, I hope to learn more about London as well.
Many of the locations of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' can still be seen today. Scrooge's counting house is thought to be in Newman's Court, in the City of London. "The ancient tower of a church" is described, whose "gruff old bell was always slyly peeping down at Scrooge out of a #gothic window." That church has been identified as St Michael's Cornhill, which looms over Newman's Court. In addition, Bob Cratchit heads home via nearby Cornhill, where he "went down a slide" on the ice "at the end of a line of boys, twenty times, in honour of it being Christmas Eve." Scrooge's "usual melancholy tavern" where he takes his "melancholy dinner" is thought to be Simpson's Tavern in nearby Ball Court, which has been trading since 1757. The door knocker which turns into the ghostly head of Jacob Marley was apparently inspired by one in Craven Street, near Charing Cross, where Dickens worked as a boy in a shoe-blacking factory. #Christmas #literature #history #folklore #Yule #books #London
Jan Palach se upálil na protest proti sovětské okupaci a následné apatii, která zavládla ve společnosti. Po jeho smrti složil Bohdan Mikolášek protestsong Ticho youtube.com/watch?v=JI80WlxnKE… #music #history „Oheň, světlo, dým a krátký život s ním hořely dlouho a hořet budou dál. Plamen cizích vin a já dobře vím - jako vy tu zprávu: zemřel živý člověk aby mrtví zůstali žít.“
On this day in 1983, the ARPANET network officially switched to using the TCP/IP protocol, effectively creating the Internet.
"January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other."
Journalist Carl von Ossietzky was a constant voice against Nazism and rising militarism in 1920s and 1930s Germany. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for it — and he died for it. In this long read for Atavist, Kate McQueen tells his story. "They may condemn us, today, tomorrow, the day after, [and] we will accept it,” he once wrote. “But our pride will be in … becoming more energetic, sharper, denser and tougher. That’s why we are journalists.”
The first text message was sent on this day in 1992 by then a 22-year-old engineer Neil Papworth to wish "Merry Christmas" to his colleague.
"It didn't feel momentous at all. For me it was just getting my job done on the day and ensuring that our software that we'd been developing for a good year was working OK."
On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history is sent: Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, uses a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.
#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars.
Not included in the 1974 Nobel prize for the discovery, Bell received a £3m prize for her work in 2018. She's used it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
Matching dinosaur footprints in Cameroon and Brazil record a time when Africa and South America were still connected & herds could wander between them.
I'm not saying the very same dinosaur was stomping around in both Cameroon and Brazil...but it's possible.
I remember David Graeber's insight into #voting being a big 'Aha' moment for me:
"Majoritarian democracy was, in its origins, essentially a military institution. . . .
"It is of obvious relevance that Ancient Greece was one of the most competitive societies known to history. It was a society that tended to make everything into a public contest . . . So it might not seem entirely surprising that they made political decision-making into a public contest as well. Even more crucial though was the fact that decisions were made by a populace in arms. . . . [I]f a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. . . . [E]ven if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest." #history #politics #democracy
I've been checking out a fair bunch of videos by the YT channel "#Revolution and #Ideology”. They succinctly put what they do in their About as: "Jared (#History) and Nick (#Sociology) discuss history and theories related to revolution and #SocialChange." What I appreciate is that they have conversations about source texts through quotation, not simplified summaries. #Philosophy #Anthropology youtube.com/channel/UCB9N6fHt-…
George Lucas got the idea for Princess Leia's iconic "space buns" from Mexican revolutionary women. Specifically Clara de la Rocha, a total badass.
Clara's descendant recounted:
"She crossed a river on horseback…and was able to take out a power station in order to allow the rebel forces to attack during night without being seen."
On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters attached 43 weather balloons to his lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped himself into the chair.
Later, when a reporter asked what made him decide to take a patio chair aloft, Walters explained:
#TIL that in 1929, JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, gifted his work's copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
"Through this gift, Peter Pan’s magic made an unprecedented leap from the realm of fiction into reality and the hospital began to receive royalties every time a production of the play was on, as well as from the sale of Peter Pan books and other products."
The famous #graduation song is a send-off fit for a king! It was originally written for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1901, but evolved to be used during ceremonies for accomplished graduates.
For Brits, ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ evokes nostalgia for a vanished, golden age. But Americans experience it as a stirring sendoff into a hopeful future.
17 May is Día das Letras Galegas (Galician Literature Day).
#OnThisDay, 17 May 1863, María Rosalía Rita de Castro's poetry is published. It’s the first publication by a single author in Galician for 400 years. The public holiday was introduced to celebrate the centenary of Rosalia de Castro's work.
Very early #OnThisDay, 6 May 1944, Marguerite 'Peggy' Knight parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French resistance.
Knight fought her way out of an attempted capture, and returned to the UK in September 1944.
#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1967, Katherine Switzer becomes the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon as a registered runner, despite the organiser physically trying to stop her.
Also, some interesting @thunderbird trivia: In 2004, internet access wasn't nearly as widespread as it is now, so Mozilla offered to send installation CD-ROMs to users for $5.95.
