Thread by @ekverstania

[THREAD] Black and White photo gallery

Two exceptionally tall brothers from Kashmir who worked as bodyguards to a king in the early 20th century.

Stevie Nicks, American singer, songwriter and producer.

The oldest and youngest Boer War prisoners exiled by the British to the island of St. Helena. (Some of my relatives were sent there too. They were forced to drink copper sulphate.)

Note the boys' toys.

QAnon apophenia sheets

A bunny shaped cloud.

One of my unfinished drawings.

A cat wearing a Darth Vader helmet.

A kangaroo.

Photoshopped picture of Rudi Giuliani appearing shocked about what @SethAbramson wrote about him in #ProofOfCorruption (a trilogy about the crimes of Donald Trump).

@SethAbramson A stacker reclaimer being built in Saldanha in 2008. I was teaching some of the engineers the finer details of project scheduling software in nearby Langebaan.

@SethAbramson Me on my hotel bed in during a 2011 work trip to a mining town in the north of Zambia near the border to the DRC.

@SethAbramson Two dogs with their owner (date and name unknown; from the Libby Hall collection)

Emily Hobhouse, humanitarian activist known for raising the alarm on concentration camps established by the British, where nearly 50,000 people died (many of them women and children).

Art Nouveau houses in Russia.

Dave Courtney: pornographer, wife-beater, violence and weapons enthusiast, knuckle-dusting debt collector, dungeon owner, illegal firearms owner, gangster funeral security organiser, autism charity sponsor and host of autistic children.

Pressure guage at a swimming pool in my area, with logs for fire in the background.

Trees in my neighbourhood at sunrise, a year ago.

King Leopold II of Belgium, one of the cruelest perpetrators of mass atrocities by a colonial ruler ever. (If you Google him, please be prepared to be horrified for the rest of your life.)

Ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinski (born in 1890). Nijinski was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 29 and didn't dance again after that. His diary has been published, and provides insight into his inner life.

Storage space under construction in an industrial area in Cape Town about 3 years ago.

Himba woman. (Name not known.)

My piano, a Fritz Kuhla, which I inherited from my grandmother. My mother had it tuned about two years ago and it still sounds fantastic, even though it's over 100 years old. The wood is diseased walnut, hence the patterns. I play it every day and my mother sometimes does too.

Uh, I accidentally created a fork in the thread. It continues here.

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1437880444159250440

Patients outside during the flu pandemic of 1918. Medical teams reported that this helped more than anything else, perhaps because exposure to sunlight allowed for the formation of cholecalciferol (vitamin D), which plays an important role in surviving some viral diseases.

Lauren, a student from Cape Town, photographed in 2018 at an outing for autistic friends at the Taalmonument in Paarl.

The biography of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo. Vilified by President Jacob Zuma's supporters after she accused him of rape, she was forced to flee South Africa. She secretly returned to South Africa and died of illness.

More about this book by @RediTlhabi: goodreads.com/book/show/3624…

After applying in 1966, Marie van Brittan Brown was granted a patent for her closed circuit TV security system in 1969.

It included a two-way microphone to talk to visitors without opening the door, and a panic button to alert the police of a possible emergency.

Cat on a roof.

Photographer: Daniel Jensen unsplash.com/@dallehj

Italian platform shoes from about half a millennium ago. (Oh, haha, you thought modern 6-inch heels are a bit too much? Puhleeze, doll!)

More about the history of platform shoes: collectorsweekly.com/articles/these…

A neighbour's gable