"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why Is the Rook so Short?
Sort:
"Those very philosophers even in the books which they write about despising glory, put their own names on the title-page. In the very act of recording their contempt for renown and notoriety, they desire to have their own names known and talked of."
"The real problem of humanity ... we have Palaeolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and godlike technology."
E. O. Wilson
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
Voltaire
"Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest"
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."
Terry Pratchett
"Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got"
“The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed during war.”
"You are what you click"
"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
W.B. Yeats
"I'd rather be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right."
Elon Musk
On this day in 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle; during this time, he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes. He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organizations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro’s seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro’s right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed U.S. domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries. Castro later described him as “an artist of revolutionary warfare.”
Guevara resigned—some say he was dismissed—from his Cuban government post in April 1965, possibly over differences with Castro about the nation’s economic and foreign policies. Guevara then disappeared from Cuba, traveled to Africa and eventually resurfaced in Bolivia, where he was killed. Following his death, Guevara achieved hero status among people around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism and revolution. A 1960 photo taken by Alberto Korda of Guevara in a beret became iconic and has since appeared on countless posters and T-shirts. However, not everyone considers Guevara a hero: He is accused, among other things, of ordering the deaths of hundreds of people in Cuban prisons during the revolution.
On this day oct 09,1635
Religious dissident Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court of Massachusetts. Williams had spoken out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Indian land.
After leaving Massachusetts, Williams, with the assistance of the Narragansetttribe, established a settlement at the junction of two rivers near Narragansett Bay, located in present-day Rhode Island. He declared the settlement open to all those seeking freedom of conscience and the removal of the church from civil matters, and many dissatisfied Puritans came. Taking the success of the venture as a sign from God, Williams named the community “Providence.”
Among those who found a haven in the religious and political refuge of the Rhode Island Colony were Anne Hutchinson–like Williams, she had been exiled from Massachusetts for religious reasons–some of the first Jews to settle in North America, and the Quakers. In Providence, Roger Williams also founded the first Baptist church in America and edited the first dictionary of Native-American languages.
9 october 1934 French minister of foreign affairs Louis Barthou and King of Jugoslavia Alexander I were killed in terrorist act in Marseilles. Barthou supported the idea of the Eastern Pact - treaty, inteded to unite France, Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in opposition to Nazi Germany. He could to prevent the WWII. But Barthou was killed by a random police shooting, not a murderer.
Russian-English phrasebook. Early XX century (before 1918).
On this day oct 10,1780
A powerful storm slams the islands of the West Indies, killing more than 20,000 people, on this day in 1780. Known as the Great Hurricane of 1780, it was the deadliest storm ever recorded.
At the time of the Great Hurricane, the American Revolution was winding down and British and French naval forces were fighting to control the West Indies. It was already a perilous area of the world for ships–it is estimated that about one of every 20 ships sent to the West Indies was lost at sea during the era. British Admiral George Radney had a fleet of 12 warships patrolling the islands when the hurricane approached. The ships were no match for the storm and eight sank in the St. Lucia harbor, killing hundreds of sailors. Radney later wrote: “The strongest buildings and the whole of the houses, most of which were stone, and remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of the wind, and were torn up to their foundations; all the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had I not been an eyewitness, nothing could have induced me to have believed it. More than six thousand persons perished, and all the inhabitants are entirely ruined.” Only two houses in all of St. Lucia remained standing. There were even some reports that bark was stripped from trees in some locations. Generally, this only occurs if winds are in excess of 200 miles per hour.
The French fared no better, losing an estimated 40 ships and 4,000 soldiers.
Martinique and Barbados had the highest casualty rates: The best guess is that upwards of 9,000 people perished in Martinique from a huge storm surge. In Barbados, 4,000 people were killed. More than 1,000 people also died in Jamaica.
Fun Fact
A 12-year-old girl from Ethiopia was kidnapped by four men on her way from school. A week later the whole group was accosted by three lions who chased the men away and stayed with the girl without harming her, only leaving when the police arrived, looking for her.
On this day oct 11,1984
1984 First American Woman to walk in Space
Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan undertook a 3.5-hour long space walk with fellow astronaut David Leestma while on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-G. The spacewalk was performed to demonstrate the possibility of refueling a satellite. STS-41-G was the first flight mission to carry two women astronauts - Sullivan and Sally Ri
"Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight?"