History

Lawyer who shot himself (by accident) while trying to proof someones innocence

AMONG the other officials of the Tibetan government, he stood out somewhat. No silk robes; no long plait; no five-inch earrings. Instead, short back’n’sides, and a business suit in which it was difficult to bow, sit cross-legged, or mount a horse. In the street people stared at his fair hair, and Tibetan friends refused to use his shampoo in case they, too, came to look like that.

Robert Ford was hired by the Tibetans in 1948 to create a modern communications network: more modern, that is, than treks by mule over the highest mountains in the world. His brief, bestowed with the Dalai Lama’s blessing, was to put the eastern stronghold of Chamdo in touch with the capital, Lhasa—and Tibet in touch with the outside world. Incidentally, he would help Tibet survive as a free country in the face of Chinese incursions. To Tibetans he was “Phodo Kusho” (Ford Esquire). The Chinese, when they caught him, called him an imperialist spy.

His life in Chamdo was fascinating, but hard. He learned to tolerate countless cups of butter-tea, as well as the lethal chang beer. A letter home would take five weeks to arrive, and even a message to Lhasa 15 days. But ham radio gave him friends round the world—including, by happy chance, a tailor in his home town of Burton-on-Trent. Conditions permitting, he could talk to his parents every Wednesday. Training Tibetans to understand radio was harder. Ordinary folk would search for the man in the box; high officials would bow to the microphone and present it with white scarves. There were very few clocks in Chamdo with which to fix two-way conversations. Instead, he had to time his broadcasts by the position of the sun.

As the Chinese army advanced in 1950, he was asked to put prayer flags on his aerial masts. Against Chinese machineguns and artillery, the Tibetans relied almost entirely on the gods. Aeroplanes were feared, because they might disturb the spirits of the upper air. Mr Ford took part in what ceremonies he could, but never felt he fitted into that religious scene. He was not only the loneliest Briton in the world but also, he wrote, the loneliest Christian.

In October 1950, Chamdo fell. Phodo Kusho could have escaped the country, but adventure was what he had gone to Tibet to find—not having found it with motorbikes, or in his job as a radio instructor for the RAF, or even in his 1943 posting to India. Besides, he felt unable to abandon his Tibetan staff and friends. At least the outside world should know that Tibet had not meekly surrendered. He made for Lhasa by riding over a precipitous 15,000-feet pass, mostly in the dark; only to find that, on the other side, the Chinese were waiting for him. He was imprisoned, enduring countless interrogations, for five years.

His captors were convinced he had poisoned the Geda Lama, a Tibetan priest with close ties to the Chinese. Mr Ford had in fact refused to treat him, though he was the best doctor in Chamdo, having learned first aid in the Boy Scouts; by contrast, the best the medical monks could do was recommend use of the Dalai Lama’s urine.

As well as that, his radio activities convinced the Chinese he was a spy; which he was not. How would Britain react, they demanded, if the Chinese sent someone to foment separatism in Wales? And what was the meaning of cryptic messages in his logs such as SRI OM CONDK PR? “Sorry old man, conditions poor,” he tried to explain. “Nonsense! How do you spell ‘sorry’?” snapped his interrogator.

The Chinese did not kill him. Instead, they tried to make him a Communist true believer by relentless psychological torture. His imprisonment grew harsher, until it was solitary confinement in a room under a staircase, overrun with rats. Threats of violence accelerated, until every morning he woke wondering whether this was the day on which he would be shot. Gradually, he resolved that only a confession (albeit phoney and partial) would save his life and sanity. He schooled himself in Maoist jargon, glibly denouncing imperialism, practising self-criticism and confessing to thought-crimes—all while displaying “truthfulness, dogmatic conformity and, above all, sincerity”. After four years he was allowed to write to his parents, who had feared he was dead. A year later he was considered reformed, and was deported to Hong Kong. Everest, he learned then, had been climbed—but “by a handful of brave individuals, not because a Party was glorious or a Chairman great”. Slowly, he began to decontaminate his mind all over again.

After retiring from Britain’s foreign service, he became an outspoken advocate for Tibet. As the years went by, his status grew: as the only surviving Westerner with first-hand knowledge of the country before the Chinese invasion, he was well placed to rebut the occupiers’ propaganda. Yes, China had probably raised living standards. Yes, progress in the old Tibet had been slow. But “a healthy well-fed robot is a poor substitute for a human being.”

His friend, the present Dalai Lama, led the mourning for his death. A few months earlier, one of the only foreigners the Tibetan government had ever employed received the country’s highest honour, the Light of Truth award—and also the last of his salary, a 100-srang note, still owing to him from before his arrest.

Five years ago, Donald J Harris, father of Kamala Harris, revealed his belief that he is descended from Hamilton Brown, born in Ballymoney around 1776. Brown emigrated to Jamaica and ran sugar plantations. He owned scores of slaves, some treated harshly.

In an essay by Harris, published by the Jamaica Global Online website, the Stanford University professor wrote: "My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (nee Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town)." Donald J Harris emigrated to the US from Jamaica in 1961.

That story has been given fresh impetus since Joe Biden paved the way for Kamala Harris to become the Democratic presidential candidate. In recent weeks, a County Antrim historian said he had found documentation shedding further light on Hamilton Brown.

Stephen McCracken told the local newspaper, the Ballymoney Chronicle, that he had discovered letters connecting Brown to his birthplace in Bracough, a townland just outside Ballymoney. He told the newspaper that Brown was "a seriously bad man, who travelled to London a few times to campaign against the abolition of slavery".

The Irish Times picked up on the story, as did the Belfast Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

"I've been getting a wee bit of abuse over it," McCracken told the Irish Times. "People have been asking me why I've publicised it."

When I asked him for an interview, he declined, citing an abusive backlash via social media, including Kamala Harris supporters accusing him of trying to wreck her campaign.

Right-wing and pro-Trump memes have circulated since 2019, painting the Harris family as "descended from slave owners", without any context. These tropes deliberately ignore the ugly explanation that slave owners commonly raped their female slaves, explaining why many black Jamaicans have European genes.

In the ultra-polarised world of American politics, Kamala supporters were allegedly hitting out at those publicising her heritage, seeing it as ammunition for further MAGA propaganda.

Meanwhile, the Ballymoney Chronicle carried a follow-up piece practically debunking the original claim of lineage. A qualified genealogist told the paper that the links were "unproven", and said Hamilton Brown was not recorded as getting married or having children.

When I asked that genealogist for an interview - they agreed. The next day they abruptly cancelled, calling the story "a pile of nonsense".

I asked McCracken for further details of his research. He stopped replying.

A third historian told me he didn't think existing documentation would ever prove the link. "You'd need DNA testing," he said.

I felt like I was encountering a wall of silence from others in Ballymoney. Multiple phone calls, messages and emails to a high-profile local DUP councillor went unanswered. A Sinn Fein colleague seemed unaware of the story and not overly interested in an interview. Ballymoney business owners declined to arrange interviews, or were not returning calls.

Repeated attempts to visit Ballymoney were abandoned due to rioting in Belfast. Another journey was aborted after the Sky News satellite van suffered a blow-out on a particularly inhospitable stretch of road.

The story was starting to feel a bit cursed.

...

You can’t visit the "Barack Obama Plaza" motorway service station outside Moneygall, Co Offaly, without a sense of the faintly ridiculous Irish enthusiasm for presidential heritage. Petrol and a chicken fillet roll downstairs, Obama visitor centre upstairs.

Yet, half a decade on from Donald J Harris’s revelation, there isn’t a solitary sign of the transatlantic connection in Ballymoney. Not a mural, a sign, a US flag or an enterprising cafe with a Kamala-themed name.

But some locals were happy to talk.

In the W & J Walker hardware shop, paint brushes from both the "Hamilton" and "Harris" brands hung serendipitously side-by-side.

"People around here like family trees," said worker Joanne Donnell. "They like to go back to the original people."

"It’ll bring a bit of excitement to the town," her sister Rhonda Lafferty said. "We get a lot of visitors here from America, this summer especially."

Neither woman seemed concerned that Hamilton Brown was a slave owner. "People take these things with a pinch of salt," said Joanne. "It was a long time ago."

Winifred Mellot owns the bustling The Winsome Lady clothes shop. A popular figure, she is also the long-serving president of the Ballymoney Chamber of Commerce. She doesn't think Brown's slave-owning past should sour any future celebrations.

The world’s oldest known picture story is a cave painting almost 6,000 years older than the previous record holder, found about 10km away on the same island in Indonesia, an international team of archaeologists has said.

The painting, believed to be at least 51,200 years old, was found at Leang Karampuang cave on the east Indonesian island of Sulawesi, researchers from Griffith University, Southern Cross University and the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency wrote in the journal Nature.

Samples were collected in 2017, but weren’t dated until earlier this year.

The previous record holder was a lifesize picture of a wild pig believed to be created at least 45,500 years ago in a cave at Leang Tedongnge.

The recently discovered painting is of three therianthropes – or human-animal hybrids – and a wild pig.

This topic arose more than once in the communication of the Archbishop with the Nazis. In 1943, he stood up against the planned genocide of the Athenian Jewish community and was threatened with a shooting. The Primate replied, “The Greek hierarchs are not shot. They are hanged. Please respect this tradition.”

The Archbishop continued to harshly denounce the invaders in his sermons. Once the head of the collaborationist government Georgios Tsolakoglou told him, “Be careful, or the Germans will shoot you.” Again, His Eminence Damaskinos said, “It is the military who are shot. The hierarchs are hanged, and I am ready for it.”

Inhabitants of the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá are well-known for their practice of ritual human sacrifice. The most prevalent notion in the popular imagination is that of young Maya women being flung alive into sink holes as offerings to the gods. Details about the cultural context for these sacrifices remain fuzzy, so scientists conduced genetic analysis on ancient remains of some of the sacrificial victims to learn more. That analysis confirmed the prevalence of male sacrifices, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature, often of related children (ages 6 to 12) from the same household—including two pairs of identical twins.

Chichén Itzá ("at the mouth of the well of the Itzá") is located in Mexico's eastern Yucatán. It was one of the largest of the Maya cities, quite possibly one of the mythical capital cities (Tollans) that are frequently mentioned in Mesoamerican literature. It's known for its incredible monumental architecture, such as the Temple of Kukulcán ("El Castillo"), a step pyramid honoring a feathered serpent deity. Around the spring and fall equinoxes, there is a distinctive light-and-shadow effect that creates the illusion of a serpent slithering down the staircase. There is also a well-known acoustical effect: clap your hands at the base of the staircases and you'll get an echo that sounds eerily like a bird's chirp—perhaps mimicking the quetzal, a brightly colored exotic bird native to the region and prized for its long, resplendent tail feathers.

The Great Ball Court (one of 13 at the site) is essentially a whispering gallery: even though it is 545 feet long and 225 feet wide, a whisper at one end can be heard clearly at the other. The court features slanted benches with sculpted panels depicting aspects of Maya ball games—which were not just athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices of players by decapitation.

"Evidence of ritual killing is extensive throughout the site of Chichén Itzá and includes both the physical remains of sacrificed individuals as well as representations in monumental art," the authors of the new Nature paper wrote. Decapitation was just one method of sacrifice favored by the Maya over various historical periods. The Maya were equally fond of cutting out the still-beating hearts of victims, accessing the organ either from below the diaphragm or through the sternum. There were also rituals that involved binding victims to a stake and shooting arrows at a white target painted on the heart.

The site features underground rivers with natural sinkholes, called cenotes, providing water to the local inhabitants. One of those is known as the Cenote Sagrado ("Sacred Cenote"), or the Well of Sacrifice, some 200 feet (60 meters) wide and surrounded by sheer cliffs. As its name implies, the Maya would regularly sacrifice valuable objects and the occasional human by tossing them into the sinkhole to appease the Maya rain god, Chaac. (If the 89-foot (27-meter) fall didn't kill them, drowning would.)

I refer to the Reuters mischievous article, “India Hindu group toughens stance on mosque-temple disputes,” published in the Stabroek News, (28/1/2024). The article makes mention of the “razing of the Ayodhya mosque,” as the BBC, New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Al Jazeera have done, without any reference to the fact, as established by the Archaeological Survey of India and accepted by the Supreme Court of India in its 2019 judgment, that the mosque was built over a huge temple.

The article further goes on to say that, “Hindu groups have for decades said that Muslim Moghul rulers built monuments and places of worship after destroying ancient Hindu structures.” This is not just a claim. The evidence for the Hindu position is evident to the naked eyes in hundreds of cases, especially in northern India where Moghul (Mongol) religious persecution – of Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains – was most intense, a persecution boastfully documented in memoirs of several Moghul rulers themselves. For example, walking around the Gyanvapi Mosque – an interesting Sanskrit name for a mosque – one can see evidence of Hindu architecture. Interesting also to note is that a mere wall separates the famous Kashi Vishwanath Mandir from the mosque.

The razing of indigenous places of worship and other institutions and superimposing on them places of worship belonging to invading and conquering armies is not something peculiar to India. Historical evidence is replete with examples in Europe where the religious landscape is littered with pre-Christian pagan monuments that were either destroyed or converted into Christian churches and cathedrals. The best, living examples of this destruction or as some Christian sources euphemistically say “conversion” can be seen in Rome and Greece.

Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed academic research, but it does make reference to something that is universally and indisputably known when it says, “Eventually the prime sites of the pagan temples were very often occupied for churches, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, literally “Saint Mary above Minerva” in Rome, Christianised about 750, being simply the most obvious example. The Basilica of Junius Bassus was made a church in the late fifth century.”

The same article tells us that in Greece, “the occupation of pagan sites by Christian monasteries and churches was ubiquitous.”

On the other hand, with the rise of Islam, the first casualty was the Ka’aba itself which was once sacred to Arabian pagans and polytheists. When Jerusalem was captured the Dome of the Rock was built on the Temple Mount on which could be found the Jewish Temple. Later came the Al Aqsa Mosque. However it was in Europe that the systematic conversion of churches into mosques reached a frenzy. Alphabetically, Wikipedia lists Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Cyprus where as late as 1974 following the Turkish invasion “church-to-mosque conversion” reached a peak. In Greece, there are scores of examples of this conversion. Many other European countries suffered the same fate.

Of course, the most recent example of this takeover is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. Built as a cathedral as early as 537 CE in Constantinople it was converted sometime in the mid-15th century into a mosque and remained so until 1935 when it was made into a museum. In 2020, the Turkish government declared it once again to be a mosque. All Pope Francis could do was to express “regret.” After all, Christianity was guilty of the same iconoclastic sin.

Ancient Egyptians may have tried to treat cancer with surgery, according to a new study that has uncovered the earliest known evidence of a procedure for the disease.

Texts dating back thousands of years describe ancient Egyptians’ advanced knowledge of medicine, including identifying and treating numerous diseases and traumatic injuries, using prostheses and dental fillings.

But it was not believed that they knew how to treat cancer, until now.

Studying ancient skulls, scientists discovered cut marks around cancerous lesions – appearing to provide evidence of experimental treatments or medical explorations of the disease.

Lead author Prof Edgard Camaros from the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, told The National that the team’s research “changes our understanding of the history of medicine”.

“This is the earliest known, at least for the moment, surgical procedure related to a cancerous tumour,” he said.

“Was it a treatment or a postmortem intervention? We cannot tell, but clearly they were trying to deal with it.”

Researchers made the discovery as part of efforts to understand more about the role of cancer in the past and how prevalent it was in ancient societies.

They studied two Egyptian skulls in the University of Cambridge’s Duckworth Collection. One, from between 2687 and 2345BC, belonged to a male aged 30 to 35. The other, from between 663 and 343BC, belonged to a female who was older than 50 years.

The man’s skull showed evidence of a large lesion consistent with excessive tissue destruction, a condition known as neoplasm. There were also 30 or so small and round metastasised lesions scattered across the skull, with cut marks, which appeared to be from surgery.

The Battle of Puebla took place on 5 May 1862, near the city of Puebla during the French intervention in Mexico. The battle ended in a victory for the Mexican Army over the occupying French forces. The French eventually overran the Mexicans in subsequent battles, but the Mexican victory at Puebla against a much better equipped and larger[1] French army provided a significant morale boost to the Mexican army and also helped slow the French army's advance towards Mexico City. There were a total of 10,540 soldiers in the war. 462 French soldiers died in combat. Only 83 Mexican soldiers died in the battle.