Posts

These interesting facts about INdia explore the rich culture and history of the largest democracy on Earth. Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 1 of 28The Taj Mahal took 22,000 laborers 20 years to complete.Wikimedia Commons 2 of 28Nobody produces more movies than India with Bollywood regularly putting out more than 1,600 movies every year.Adam Jones/Flickr 3 of 28By some measures, 11 of the 12 cities with the worst air pollution on Earth are all in India....

According to Smithsonian Magazine, Homer’s Iliad was the first to mention them in the eighth century B.C. He described them as “antianeirai,” which many scholars have translated as “the opposite of men,” “antagonistic to men,” and “the equal of men.” Herodotus called the descendants of these marriages the Sauromatae, or Sarmatians. Writing in the fifth century B.C., he said “the women of the Sauromatae have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands…in war taking the field and wearing the very same dress as the men…....

Koonalda Cave is a sacred, protected site for Australia’s Mirning people, with cave art drawn by Ice Age humans indicating some of the earliest signs of Aboriginal life in the region. TwitterA section of the limestone paintings in Koonalda Cave. The nearly treeless desert region of the Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia contains some of the country’s most significant ancient artworks: a series of Ice Age finger paintings on the limestone walls of Koonalda Cave dating back nearly 30,000 years....

Since 2015, Ana Makahununiu has convinced dozens of members of an Aboriginal community that their cultural beliefs are akin to devil worship. ABC News/Scott MitchellMakahanuniu arrived in Wangkatjungka in 2015. A year after that, her devotees burned “satanic” personal and cultural items once sacred to their Aboroginal heritage. Tongan preacher Ana Makahununiu first arrived at the Aboriginal community of Wangkatjungka, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, in 2015. Since then, the “prophetess” has baptized dozens of locals — who have then set fire to sacred indigenous artifacts that they now consider “satanic....

Today, Donald Trump continues to claim ignorance with regard to the harm caused by white supremacy movements. After the violence that occurred this weekend — during which more than 30 people were injured and three were killed at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — Donald Trump made a statement that people on both sides of the political spectrum took issue with: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides,” he said....

As her last wish, Evelyn McHale didn’t want anyone to see her body, but the photo of her death has lived on for decades as “the most beautiful suicide.” Evelyn McHale’s dying wish was that no one sees her body. She wanted her family to remember her body the way it was before she jumped off the 86th-floor Observation Deck of the Empire State Building. Wikimedia Commons / YouTubeSide by side of the final photograph of Evelyn McHale and the Empire State Building....

It’s been long known that urine is both sterile and a great fertilizer. For “ecofeminist” baker Louise Raguet, it’s also the secret ingredient to making a great loaf of bread. PixabayThe public urine is diluted 20 times before being used as an ingredient in Raguet’s Goldilocks bread. A group of scientists in France spearheading a sustainability movement have veered into somewhat controversial territory. According to The New York Post, engineer and self-proclaimed “ecofeminist” Louise Raguet is using women’s urine collected from public toilets — to bake bread....

Genetically modified mosquitoes are now being deployed to fight their wild counterparts who are spreading the resurgent dengue fever. Itchy bites and a whiny buzz aren’t the only annoying problems caused by mosquitoes. The possibility of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks has some researchers fighting back with an unusual weapon: mosquitoes themselves. Researchers at UK-based company Oxitec Ltd. are testing a new method that uses genetically modified mosquitoes to control outbreaks of dengue fever....

Excalibur possibly found, ancient city to be washed away, pre-Pyramid ruins discovered in Canada, mysterious manuscript decoded, new Holocaust revelations come to light. Girl Finds Sword In Lake Where King Arthur’s “Excalibur” Was Thrown, According To Legend SWNS.com One little girl was thoroughly surprised when she found a sword in the exact lake that legend says King Arthur’s sword Excalibur was left. The Scotsman reports that Matilda Jones, aged seven, from Doncaster, England was on a trip to Cornwall with her father when she found the sword....

As one of the world’s largest potter’s fields, Hart Island is home to over one million unmarked graves. Wikimedia CommonsHart Island from the air. Manhattan Island and the surrounding Boroughs are hardly ever quiet. The city that never sleeps is bustling with people, day in and day out, locals on their way to work and tourists on their way to the see the sights. It can be hard to imagine any place in New York City being quiet or empty, and truly there are few places that fit that description....

From Shirley Temple to the Two Coreys, these iconic child actors endured hardships invisible in their onscreen lives. It is no secret that the lives of Hollywood performers are often fraught with difficulties. But when the performers in question are children, the results of living in the spotlight are often even more tragic. Indeed, the intense scrutiny that comes with maturing in Hollywood has spelled the downfall of some of the industry’s most beloved child actors....

After Michel And Edmond Navratil made it off the doomed ship, they were all alone. But their story was far from over. Library of CongressMichel (right) and Edmond Navratil in April 1912, just after the Titanic sank and before they were identified and retrieved by their mother. From the start, Michel Navratil Sr.’s story stood out from the thousands of others about European immigrants who dreamt of a better life in America....

For decades, the lives of Soviet citizens hung on the whims of Trofim Lysenko, a man who believed that plants could be taught to bloom in winter and that nature could be mastered by raw force. Wikimedia CommonsSoviet scientist Trofim Lysenko brought ruin to millions based on his utterly illogical beliefs about the behavior of plants. To the earliest leaders of the Soviet Union, nothing seemed impossible. They had toppled their old order and fended off the combined armies of the world’s great powers in World War I....

In recent years, impoverished families in Bangkok, Thailand have turned disused, deteriorating airplanes into makeshift homes. Families like these often gather trash and recycling, which they can sell for a couple dollars a day, in order to get by. But that’s certainly not enough to pay rent, so they remain on the outskirts of society, living in ruins. That said, according to The World Bank and the United Nations, Thailand is one of recent history’s great success stories in terms of economic growth and poverty eradication....

Roughly 750,000 died during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s and many ended up in mass graves across the Soviet Union. Ukrainian Institute of National Memory/ FacebookThe mass grave contains thousands of remains. As workers began to expand the Odessa airport in Ukraine, they came across a stomach-churning find — skeletons. Now, historians say that this former landfill was actually a mass grave — possibly Ukraine’s largest — and could contain up to 20,000 people....

The Methuselah tree is so well protected as the oldest tree in the world that its location has remained unknown to the public since its discovery in 1957. Wikimedia CommonsCalifornia’s Methuselah grove, which is home to the Methuselah tree, widely considered to be the oldest tree in the world. To protect the tree, its location has remained undisclosed, meaning no confirmed photos of it are publicly available. Deep in the White Mountains of the Inyo Valley in eastern California, at a location that remains secret to this day, lies the oldest tree in the world....

Source: China It’s fair to say that at some point in our lives, we’ve all had a collection that, if others saw it, might make them question our sanity. For you, it might be old magazines, cigarette lighters or even, say, antique seat cushions. But for a handful of people, a collection is not complete until they possess those items–however obscure–in their entirety. Welcome to some of the weirdest collections in the world....

The unusual enemies battled to the death, resulting in an unusual post-mortem pose. Facebook/Reptile HunterThe king cobra and python in the aftermath of their lethal battle. King cobras and reticulated pythons are scary enough on their own, but what about when they engage in an epic battle to the death? A photo that surfaced on Facebook this weekend shows just what happens when the two serpents find themselves in a rare meeting....

Taylor Schabusiness told police they would “have fun” trying to find all of her lover’s limbs and organs. Brown County JailTaylor Schabusiness was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, and third-degree sexual assault. When Green Bay police officers in Wisconsin responded to a call on Feb. 23, they rushed to the 800 block of Stony Brook Lane and entered a house of horrors. According to The Daily Beast, they discovered a man’s head and “male organ” in a bucket and charged 24-year-old Taylor Schabusiness with murder....

In the 1930s, Japan launched the so-called “Fugu Plan” to draw in tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in order to bolster the country’s economic prosperity. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Noemi Faingersch SinclairFamilies like this one in Harbin, China made up the thousands-strong Jewish communities which Japanese officers hoped to replicate in their empire. From the moment it was conceived, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was viciously anti-Semitic, packed with false charges of a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world....