Rare Historical Photos

Thanks to TM and SK for these priceless pictures!

A boxing match on board the USS Oregon in 1897

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Here's his report card! 1896 - highest marks in Algebra - Physics - Geometry and lower marks in languages

Samurai taken between 1860 and 1880.

A shell shocked reindeer looks on as World War II planes drop bombs on Russia in 1941

Roy O. and Walt Disney on the day they opened Disney Studios. 

Young Bill Gates & The Microsoft staff in 1978. 11 people - 2 women 5 beards

The last known Tasmanian Tiger photographed in 1933. The species is now extinct.

A different angle taken of "Tank Man," the man who stood against a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square.

He is standing in the street between the tree trunk and the fleeing man.

You can see the tanks approaching from the right.

Winston Churchill out for a swim. Typical swim suit of the day

The London sky following a bombing and dogfight between British and German planes in 1940.

Martin Luther King, Jr removes a burned cross from his yard in 1960. The boy is his son.

Google begins. 34 people here

Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945.

A Native American overlooking the newly completed transcontinental railroad in 1868.

The Great San Francisco Fire and Earthquake of 1906.

A Japanese plane is shot down during the Battle of Saipan in 1944.

The original Ronald McDonald -- played by Willard Scott!

Hitler in Paris

Grounded aircraft on September 11, 2001 await orders.

British SAS back from a three month long patrol of North Africa, January 18, 1943.

Disneyland employee cafeteria in 1961.

The first McDonalds. - buy em by the bag ---- on the sign

Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.

California Iumberjacks work on Redwoods. Thousands of tree rings in these ancient trees each over 1000+ years old or even much older........such a shame - irreplaceable giants- national park treasures all gone but a few - what kind of men would do such a thing for over 100 years ---
Destroy something they cannot ever fix or replace for 2000 years?
It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1200-1800 years or more. ...
An estimated 95% or more of the original old-growth redwood forest has been cut.
In 1850, old-growth redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres
(8,100 acres by... 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the original redwood trees had been logged.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife on the day they were assassinated in 1914, the event that sparked World War I.

The 1912 World Series.

Bill and Hillary Clinton playing volleyball in 1975. A future US President

Elvis in the Army.

The first photo following the discovery of Machu Pichu in 1912.

Child laborers in 1880.

New York's Times Square in 1911.

Construction of Christ the Redeemer in Rio da Janeiro, Brazil, built between 1926-31.

Steamboats on the Mississippi River in 1907.

The Beatles meet Muhammad Ali. (Or was he still Cassius Clay?)

The construction of Disneyland

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Arnold Schwarzenegger on the day he received his American citizenship.

Fourteen year-old Osama bin Laden. He's second from the right. - bell bottom pants - pink car - expensive shops, nice threads, about 24 people out smiling --- looking hip for the day and not one woman has their face or head covered

Construction of the Statue of Liberty in 1884.

Men-made famine 1943

Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder; 1973; Bengali)

Director: Satyajit Ray

In 1971, George Harrison and friends including Ravi Shankar, did a mammoth concert to garner support to feed people affected by a civil war as well as a cyclone in 1970.

In 1943, 5 million people from the Bengali subcontinent died due to its most significant man-made famine. This story essentially is about this. It is not a docu-drama about the devastating effects of or the hopelessness of the calamity but rather a saga about human emotions and reactions to adversity.

Gangacharan Chakravarthy (Soumitra Chatterjee, a regular star in many of Ray's films) is a poor Brahmin who stays in the shack by the edge of a village. He gets on with life with his loving young wife, Ananga, teaching in a village school, treating villagers' ailments and performing religious rituals in return for villagers' respect and food supply. Ganga is respected for his intellect and his high caste.

The sight of flying planes seem to fascinate the simple-minded villagers, but a neighbouring villager warns of the imminent rise of the price of rice because of a looming war. Feeding the fighting Army seems to be the priority of the Government of the day. Slowly we see that as the price of rice increases and the supplies becoming scarce, the mild-mannered nature of villagers gradually changes. Somehow, Ananga still gets a little respect due to his caste.

Life becomes more difficult. Even at a time when hunger is still not satisfied, somehow man's flame for carnal pleasure remains not fizzled. The scariest looking bloke in the village who has a partially burnt face, working in a kiln and shunned by everyone has bargaining power as he has managed to smuggle a large pile of rice stock. 

Ganga has to start working to supplement income. Her friend, a married woman, Chutki, succumbs to scarface's sexual advances for exchange for food.

All her long-held believes about monogamy and chastity go down the drain as hunger builds up.

Even though people from lower caste are dying, the general public shun them. Ganga, the healing touch in him, decides to give a proper cremation for her. The movie ends with the shadow of a group of famine-stricken neighbouring villagers walks towards the Ganga household. Ganga laments that he has another 10 mouths to feed. His wife corrects him by saying '11' whilst rubbing her belly!

The more you watch Ray's movie, the more you appreciate Kurosawa's words - One who has seen the films of Satyajit Ray has lived on earth and has not seen the moon and the stars! How true... sheer pleasure!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How Man maintains his sanity?

The Virgin Spring (Swedish: Jungfrukällan) 1960
Director: Ingmar Bergman

Yet another movie questioning the silence of God on the happenings of daily life in the Ingmar Bergman fashion. This time it is set in medieval Sweden. I suppose it was the time when the people there are just exposed to the modern religion of Christianity and slowly trying to learn the mysterious ways that He works and trying to understand why.

It is at a time when they are some, usually the underprivileged and the powerless with less clout in society, who are still hoping for their pagan Norse deity Odin to release them from their miseries. In essence, the Christian God seems to be the possession of the bourgeois!

A rich Christian man's maiden daughter, Karin, is assigned to send candles to a church on horseback with her pagan maid. Along the way, they go separate ways. Karin continues the journey alone. Along the way, she bumps into three goatherd brothers. The kindhearted Karin offers them food. After taking her food, the elder two of the savage brothers mercilessly raped and killed her. They ripped her off her expensive tunics and scooted off. This event was watched by the maid but was too stunned to do anything. She just made herself home as if nothing happened.

After a few days, the goatherds who were wondering about took shelter at the rich man's shack, unknown to the visitors of the real owners of the house.

After feeding their visitors, the host discovers their guests' true identity. In a fit of rage, the father kills all three of the brothers.

The entourage of father, mother, maid finally make it to the site of the slain maiden. The grief-stricken father, obviously remorseful of hasty actions has a one on one monologue with God. This is the climax of the movie. He argues for the reason for the silence of God when the goatherds murdered her child and when he lost his cool seeking vengeance. At the end of the uncertainty, he, like what most mortals would do, decided that he would instead build a magnificent church at the site of the death of his daughter. As if like an auspicious symbol, when the dead girl's remains are lifted, the spring emerges from the earth beneath. The attendees cleanse their faces with it, giving piety to the whole idea.

The message I gather is that we, only feel frustrated by daily turns of events, blame and question God on his action and somewhat lack of, accept that He knows best, carry on glorifying Him and take things as they are...

That is the story of how Man maintains his sanity on life over the years in spite of all the calamities that he faces day in and day out...

Mollywood disaster movie

Dam 999 (2011)
In spite of having a band of renowned award winning film makers in the crew and many accolades to boast, the producers actually lost money making this movie. Before even hitting the silver screen, the movie industry fraternity gave threat their choice of actors and even a court injunction was out to ban its screening. Even though the movie is supposed to highlight the danger of dams and was dedicated to the 1/4 million people who perished in China dam mishap in 1975, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala thought that it would ignite the age old water squabble between the two states. The 999 in the title refers to the 9th September 2009 and it was supposed to depict nine types of human emotions.

Vimala Raman - a sight for sore eye

Unfortunately, I failed to appreciate these 9 emotions in this film. Perhaps it was the language in which I was watching, Tamil. This film actually comes in four languages, the original Malayalam, the dubbed Tamil, dubbed Hindi and dubbed English. To a certain extent, all the films are dubbed as the cast is a international type - Americans, Pakistani, Bollywood and Mollywood.

Special EFX

The props in the set look very impressive and the cinematography shows leaps of improvement from the usual fare that is churned out from the sub-continent.
Unfortunately, the movie tries to cover too many things here. They try to highlight advanced nature of Ayurvedic treatment, the advanced nature of Indian astronomic calculations, the corrupt politicians and of course the dangers of a mammoth man made dam all in 1 hour and a half.
Except for Rajit Kapoor, Vimala Raman and Ashish Vidyarthi, the rest of the actors did not really impress on the acting faculty.

Nationalism, Racism and Humanity

There have been some talk of late on the inhumane treatment of stray dogs by the city pounds. Then I heard of an NGO who is advocating counselling for children of refugees/illegal immigrants, that they should not be placed in the same place of incarceration as adults for fear of traumatizing these gentle souls for life. But then, I thought of most of the immigration population all around the world had done well for themselves and for the country that accepted them as guests. In fact, history has shown those who roam the streets of relatively stable societies with affluence, structured social structure and without a care in the world may end up as raving lunatics.
Then there are those on the other end who are out to squeeze out the last drop of blood and sweat of their foreign workers. Even though, they give their life and soul to the development of the country, these workers are considered lesser human beings by many. They were not born here, they say. I was here earlier, say others. What would happen to their children, you would say. Surely by then, the offspring would have the local lingo and customs. And other things would be mentioned that suspect their loyalty, their race, their whatever. If the workers fall ill or get debilitated enroute to elevate the status of the nation to one of the first world, the country feels that the non productive worker must be bundled back to his native country rather than letting him hog the system and over utilize the already depleted resources in the public hospital.
The other day, a friend, living in an up market guarded community relating an incident that happened recently.   Two occupants of above average intelligence and socioeconomic strata (obviously neither of the common sense and humanity faculties) were involved in a meaningless tiff. Animosity brewed gradually over trivial matters like one neighbour's dog peeing in the other's compound. Then the other became unhappy when the parking arrangement of one's vehicle impinged on the other's compound. One thing led to another which finally ended up with a noisy stand off!
We cannot even care for each other fellow human being but we seem to be more emphatic to animals! Ironic.. More like moronic!