loveismyrevolution:

detenebrate:

0xymoronic:

shitarianasays:

theeyesinthenight:

the-sonic-screw:

platinumpixels:

volpesvolpes:

unseilie:

sarahvonkrolock:

gaysexagainstawall:

them-days-was-olden-as-fuck:

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the old new Madagascar. 

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there. 

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it. 

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”

Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”

Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.

Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world. 

WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL

When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.

Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!

Wow. This is cool knowledge!

clarabosswald:

zubenpics:

madmaudlingoes:

unexplained-events:

The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. If you were to look at this, you would die instantly. 

The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.

Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing, this picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. The Elephant’s Foot is almost as if it is a living creature.

Friendly reminder that this blob of core material was so hot and dense, it melted/burned through three floors of the building before coming to rest in the lowest basement.

And there’s now a unique species of black mold that feeds off the gamma radiation it produces.

Is no one else seriously freaked out by that mold? No? Just me, then?

wiki article about the mold

johngreenhateblog:

i-am-babulous:

anightvaleintern:

thesylverlining:

literally in my 1st grade book that I read and learned about her for the first time, it described her as “a woman named rosa. rosa’s feet were tired.” 

that’s it. rosa’s feet were tired. 

that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface, and it’s so important that we know the rest.

Correction:  Rosa Parks was not only a trained activist, she and her activist buddies were specifically trying to recreate an incident that had happened earlier.

You see, the actual, spontaneous, unplanned incident was done nine months earlier by a black girl named Claudette Colvin.  She was in the section designated for black people, however, the front became crowded and she was told to move to make way for a white woman (who was actually fine with standing as it turns out, to show how adamantly racist the bus driver was).  She refused and was arrested.

Rosa Parks was a secretary at one of many chapters of NAACP and they had seen the incident but they had multiple reasons for not wanting to publicize it when it happened.  One was that Claudette was a minor.  Another possibility is that Claudette had some marks on her past that could have been considered questionable or immoral and they wanted someone that white people couldn’t pick apart as a villain or a thug for when it happened.

So they staged the incident all over again with Rosa Parks as the victim and when it played out just like they thought, they slammed it with as much attention and media as they could to publicize it.

I remember the first time I read about her, she was described as tired.

The next time, it was “she wasn’t physically tired. She was tired of giving up her position as a person to a man who probably didn’t work as hard as she did that day.”

There was never anything about Claudette Colvin, which is horrible.

i feel like saying that claudette colvin ”had some marks on her past” really takes the fact that it was because she was a pregnant, unmarried 15 year old girl that she was considered unfit for being publicly known. referring to the misogyny that young girls face for being pregnant and unmarried as ”some marks on her past” implies that it was some criminal act she committed, and not that society applies a warped stigmatization to the sexuality of women and girls – especially black women and girls – and both ignores and demeans claudette colvin’s experiences and the oppression forced upon her on multiple axes.