The Romans. No surprise there. And this is why Mental Floss is mandatory daily reading around here.
And the lunatic emperor Caligula — famed for such crimes as wearing women’s clothes and murdering indiscriminately — was said to have habitually offered his digitus infamis to be kissed by his enemies, just to flaunt his imperial disdain. (Full post at Mental Floss)
Hey, it’s a Monday. We’re trying to begin the week on a positive note.
Charlie Chaplin and Gandhi meet in East London on September 23rd, 1931.
Mahatma Gandhi impressed Charlie Chaplin with his view that supreme independence meant shedding oneself of unnecessary things. (Bhawana Verma)
Sharad Pawar, the Union Minister Agriculture Minister is under pressure for not reigning in food prices. So he puts on his other hat as India’s cricket administrator to ‘send a message’ to the higher ups that he has other political alliance options. How? By bending before the divisive hate-monger Bal Thackeray to lift the ”ban” on Australian cricketers playing IPL matches.
Do either of them care about food prices or cricket? Chances are they don’t, or at least not as much as they care about keeping their bums in the seat of power.
What they both need is to sit down and watch INVICTUS. In it they might pick up lessons on how to inspire a nation to unity through a game. And perhaps find their inner Mandela in the process.
Always good to learn some history. And today, Feb 3, 1509, the Portuguese won a decisive naval battle against the Ottoman Empire near the port of Diu, India, which eventually led to the Portuguese’s main control of the Indian Ocean. We had no idea that Portugal in itself was that old. It was founded in 868! (Wikipedia)
The Nazis murdered more than a million people in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Today, the 27th of January, marks 65th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by the Soviet Red Army. (read full post at BBC)
PBS’s Auschwitz series is a must read. Especially for the many young Indian business students who snapped up copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as a valuable ‘management guide.’
“Auschwitz is unique,” explains series producer and writer Lawrence Rees. “It has a physical beginning in May 1940 and physical ending in January 1945, and is the site of the single largest mass murder in the history of humanity.”
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