JULY 9th, 1868…..the 14th Amendment was ratified….granting citizenship and equal protection under the law….to all born or naturalized in the U.S. …..this pivotal changed shaped America’s future legal and civil rights landscape
FROM THE 2nd CENTURY…..Roman engineers mixed volcanic ash, lime and seawater….to make concrete that gains strength underwater…..many Roman harbor structures are still standing….and outlasting modern cement.
BEFORE HE DIED IN 1924…..Franz Kafka made a final request…. “Burn everything”…..his novels, letters and notebooks…..he wanted them destroyed unread…..but his closest friend, Max Brod refused and instead….he published Kafka’s unfinished works…..The Trial, The Castle, Amerika….books that would reshape modern literature…..Kafka died in obscurity….today his name defines an entire genre “The Kafkaesque”…..a world of surreal dread, silent suffering, and bureaucratic nightmares….the twist is almost too perfect….he wrote of voices trapped, erased, and misunderstood…..then became one himself….his voice was meant to burn….instead, it became immortal.
IN THE 10th CENTURY…..Scribes in North Africa created to Quran….so lavish it seemed carved from light….gold ink on indigo parchment, made not just to be read….but to awe….each page was a work of devotion….angular Kufic script….glowing against a midnight blue….written for a caliph, a palace or perhaps God alone…..but over the centuries the book vanished….it wasn’t burned….it was broken…..scattered folio by folio, trimmed, sold and separated…..today, its surviving leaves are spread across museums and collections worldwide….what remains is fragmented but unmistakable….even in pieces the Blue Quran is still one of the most breathtaking books ever made.
THE KONG FAMILY…..Direct descendants of Confucius…..maintain the world’s longest recorded genealogy…..an 80-volume update published in 2009…..lists over two million registered descendants…..across 83 generations and 2,500+ years…..it also began formally including women and overseas branches….and much of it has since been digitized.
DID YOU KNOW….that the ancient Chinese invented a remarkably advanced device to detect distant earthquakes?…..known as the seismoscope, it was created by Zhang Heng in A.D. 132…..and could register seismic activity from hundreds of miles away….with surprising accuracy.
IN 1666….13,000 houses burned after a baker’s spark ignited an inferno….only nine people lost their lives….but the Great Fire halted the plague….and forced London to rebuild in stone
OSCAR WILDE….Didn’t write “De Profundis” in a study…..he wrote it in a prison cell….one page a day, under lock and key…..in 1895, he was sentenced to two years of hard labor for “gross indecency”…..once the most celebrated writer in England…..he now sat alone, forbidden from speaking, forbidden from writing freely….finally he was allowed to compose a letter…..one sheet each morning and taken away each night….he poured himself into it….fifty thousand words….no draft….no edits….”Just truth”…..a work of sorrow, rage and redemption….written in chains….and now it’s one of the most powerful documents in literary history.
ORIGINATING FROM A SPONTANEOUS MUTATION…..in Queen Victoria….hemophilia B spread throughout her daughter’s and into the houses of Germany, Russia and Spain….the defective F9 gene she transmitted…..caused the deaths of nine princes….sparking significant political and succession crisis across Europe…..her female descendants were asymptomatic carriers….who passed on the deadly disorder.
DID YOU KNOW….Not a single engineer made it off the Titanic….they stayed and kept the power on…..so others could escape….Joseph Bell was the Chief Engineer Officer on the RMS Titanic….his staff consisted of 24 engineers….6 electrical engineers….two boilermakers….a plumber and a clerk….none survived the sinking.
IN ENGLISH….A “French exit”…..is to sneak out of a party without telling anyone….in French it is know as…. “partir á l´anglaise”…..to leave the English way
IN 1883…..America had over 144 different time systems….cities just 200 miles apart…..could differ by 30 minutes…..on November 18th……the “Day of Two Noons”…..railroads synced their clocks nationwide…..creating the time zones we use today.