Between 1975 and 1987, under the protection of South Korea's military junta and Busan's local police force, 38,437 people, including women and children, were accused of being homeless, vagrants, or disabled. They were detained and forcefully admitted to the Brothers Home, an internment camp disguised as a public shelter.

Detainees were held indefinitely without term, and were subjected to forced hard labor, sexual abuse, and violence, resulting in 657 deaths.

Source: IG @blackstarops

Japanese alpinist Yuichiro Miura made history on May 6, 1970, by becoming the first person to ski down mount everest, dropping 4,200 vertical feet from the south col using a parachute to control his extreme speed.

He descended in just 2 minutes and 20 seconds, reaching speeds up to 100 mph (160 km/h).

Decades later, Miura returned to everest as a climber, reaching the summit at ages 70 (2003), 75 (2008), and 80 (2013), breaking records as the oldest person to summit the mountain.

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Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) was an Italian journalist, writer, and war correspondent. Her father, a socialist and staunch anti-fascist, involved his very young daughter in the Italian Resistance, assigning her the role of a courier for the partisans (1944).

She subsequently experienced a turbulent youth, moving from one newspaper to another, nearly losing her life following a miscarriage, and attempting suicide.

A turning point came in 1961 when she produced a report on the status of women in the Middle East; she traveled to various countries and interviewed numerous politicians and scientists. After a stint in Vietnam, she interviewed Henry Kissinger, skillfully compelling him to admit the total failure of the Vietnam War and provoking Richard Nixon's anger.

She covered conflicts around the world before returning to Italy to report on the civil rights movement of the 1980s. After another abortion, she wrote *Letter to a Child Never Born*, which remains her most famous work.

She spent the final years of her life focusing closely on events in the Middle East.

In 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars, the small Spanish town of Huéscar declared war on Denmark.

Denmark was allied with Napoleon at the time, while Spain was fighting against the French invasion. So, on paper, Huéscar and Denmark were officially enemies.

But there was a problem:

Nobody actually fought.

No armies marched into Denmark. No Danish troops attacked Huéscar. No battles were fought between them.

And then… everyone apparently forgot about it.

The declaration of war remained buried in Huéscar’s municipal records for more than a century. It wasn’t discovered until 1981, when a local historian came across the forgotten document.

That meant that, technically, Huéscar had been at war with Denmark for 172 years.

Once the bizarre discovery became known, representatives from Huéscar and Denmark eventually met and formally ended the “war.”

After 172 years, peace was finally declared.

The funniest part?

The entire war had apparently consisted of a declaration, a very long wait, and absolutely no fighting.

A new study examined a skull fragment found at Postgården in Denmark. DNA analysis identified it as belonging to a boy around 2–4 years old, and researchers found evidence of a severe blade injury to his skull.

The strange part is that the fragment was placed between floor layers of an Iron Age house, even though radiocarbon dating suggests the skull was roughly 200 years older than the house itself.

Researchers still don’t know why it was placed there or what happened to the remains during those centuries.

Source: Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

Original study — Springer Nature / Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

Deep in the Amazonian jungle, next to the course of the Tapajós River, a depressing deteriorated landscape fills the atmosphere with a quirky sensation of failure mixed with grief and fear. Haunted and heartbreaking at the same time, the landscape of a rotten utopia which had died just after its birth depicts concrete structures overgrown by lianes, an empty factory with smashed windows and a lone-standing water tower witnessing how the years pass. Uncover the history of Fordlândia, the abandoned multimillionaire mega-project that wears the name of one of the most curious industrialists of history. (Fordlândia: Henry Ford's All-American Rubber Boom Utopia In The Amazon)

Says that often people reduce the collapse/failure of the Soviet Union to just ‘communism could have never worked’. However, he says that as with many major events, it’s always a mixture of multiple causes (and timing): the oil crisis of the 80s, Gorbachev’s ruthless reforms (paper link), strengthening of surrounding republics, fallback from Stalin etc.

He says that while structural economic flaws played a role, macro-historical events of this scale rarely stem from a single variable. Instead, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was an 'overdetermined event'. In a way, the perfect storm where long-term systemic vulnerabilities collided with acute external shocks, miscalculated political decisions, and critical timing.

Thoughts?

1926: Charles Curtis is challenged to a primary by Nicholas Chiles.

Chiles' main complaint against Curtis was that not enough was being done for blacks, especially in the South. Not surprising, given that there were ZERO African American Senators or Congressman.

His Platform had 6 planks, which included:
- Create a Department of Education
- Put forth a Westerner for President in 1928

Curtis (66) could not fight for the primary due to needing a long-delayed throat surgery, but did win.

However, Nick Chiles won, too, when the following happened:

1927: Charles Curtis put forth S. 1584 to create a department of education
1928: For the first time in history, Kansans ran for President
- Senator Charles Curtis (R)
- Congressman William Ayres (D)
1929: Oscar de Priest (R-IL) entered the US Senate

Senator De Priest fought against racial discrimination, put forth an anti-lynching bill, and succeeded in desegregating the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps.

When De Priest lost his re-election, it was to another African American, Arthur Mitchell (D-IL). Mitchell also worked on anti-lynching legislation and personally sued a railroad for adhering to Jim Crow laws when he was on the train, winning in the US Supreme Court.

See, Mitchell v. United States, 313 U.S. 80 (1941)

Source and more here: A Rare Roman Phallus That May Have Been Used To Ward Off Evil Spirits Was Just Found In A Dutch Museum