🚑 HISTORICAL PARAMEDICS 🚑
HARK A PROPER AMBULANCE; WE MUST FLEE
Soviet Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev stuck in space during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
Unable to return home, he ended up having to stay in space until further notice.
The cosmonaut eventually returned back to earth on March 25, 1992, after 10 months in orbit - to a nation that was very different to what it was when he had left. The Soviet Union had fractured into 15 nations, presidents had changed, and even his hometown of Leningrad had become St. Petersburg.
Interestingly, at the time, Krikalev was supposed to serve in the military reserves, and was almost issued a warrant for desertion – before the army realised that their reserve soldier was not even on the planet.
TODAY IN HISTORY – On June 18, 1983, the Space Shuttle Challenger carried astronaut Sally Ride into Earth orbit, launching her into history as the first American woman in space. It was seventh space shuttle mission, lasting 6 days, 2 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds. When the shuttle returned, Dr. Ride said, “I’m sure it was the most fun that I’ll ever have in my life.”
(NASA)
“For Latin-speakers call the chickpea a ‘cicer’. […] And when, as governor of Sicily, he was having a silver offering-plate made to the gods, [Cicero] had the first two of his names (the Marcus and the Tullius) inscribed, but instead of the third, as a joke he ordered the artisan to carve a chickpea next to the letters.”
— Plutarch, Life of Cicero, 1.4, 1.6
(via ciceronian)

Many Brazilians wept after their 200-year-old National Museum was destroyed in a devastating fire last September. Twenty million objects, many of them irreplaceable, were thought to have been lost. But eight months later, staff have salvaged more treasures than they expected, and there are hopes that one of the great museums of the world can be brought back to life.
Suddenly, a shout echoes round the blackened, roofless shell of the once-elegant room.
A tall young man in white helmet and black gloves is standing triumphantly on a pile of smashed tiles and plaster. Cradled in his palm is a small piece of carved stone with ancient hieroglyphics.
E.M. Forster (1879-1970) about Mohammed el-Adl // Sappho (c. 630-c. 570 BC) // Gordon Bowsher to Gilbert Bradley (soldiers in WWII) // Richard Siken (1967-)
what she says: i’m fine
what she means: it’s 2 am and I can’t stop thinking about the Pied Piper. Initially i thought it was just an old faerie tale but i’ve been reading up on it and it turns out that at some point in the town of Hamelin, a bunch of children really did go missing all at once in fact a stained glass window in the local church in 1300 was made to tell the story AND Hamelin’s written history literally BEGINS in 1384 with the sentence “it is 100 years since our children left.” There are a ton of theories about what the piper could actually represent but historians are pretty much convinced that something did take away children en masse in the 1200s in Hamelin and to this day we still use the phrase “it’s time to pay the piper.” When will we pay him? Who was he???? Like okay I see the theories but what if some flute paying faerie really just led a bunch of kids away in 1284 I cannot get over this.
turns out my grandfather is not a veteran of the 1612 Polish-Muscovite War, “The Time of Troubles” is just how Los Angeles psychoanalysts refer to the transition from the Freudian to the Kleinian paradigm in the 1970s