Just hours away from America’s biggest game of the year, the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams will square off in Super Bowl LVI. A thread on its exquisite Indian connection. (1/9)
When Paul Brown, an American football coach from Ohio, was fired by his previous employer, he founded his new franchise Cincinnati Bengals. (2/9)
Brown, named the franchise after another Cincinnati football team named Cincinnati Bengals who played between 1937 and 1942 and was forced to close down due to World War II. (3/9)
Benzoo, the Royal Bengal Tiger from West Bengal, a unique specimen of Cincinnati Zoo, was chosen as the mascot for the Bengals. Benzoo proudly enjoyed her Sunday outings to the stadium in front of 50,000 fans in the 70s. (4/9)
Now, the original Bengal team that played in the 1930s had a fascinating story behind their naming. When Hal Pennington, the founder of the newly formed Cincinnati Bengal, sat in his mother’s kitchen one late summer day in 1937, he observed a stove. (5/9)
The logo of the stove caught his attention - it was a mighty roaring Bengal Tiger. The stove line, manufactured between 1870 and 1940 by Floyd-Wells, was named Bengal Stoves. (6/9)
It is this Bengal Stove line that influenced the name of the franchise playing the Super Bowl LVI today. While why ‘Bengal Stove’ was named after a Bengal Tiger is not clearly understood, many believe it was due to the owner’s fascination with safaris. (7/9)
It is rumoured that the president once went on a safari to hunt the Bengal tigers, and he was enchanted with the beast leading to the name of his stove line. Note to remember: it was common for Americans in that era to visit India for Tiger ‘shikar’. (8/9)
This Government-issued advertisement in the "Field & Stream" magazine, USA in 1956 luring Americans to contact the local office (at NYC & SFO) for Tiger hunting information, is a testimony to the above. (9/9)
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Four years ago in Kerala, sixteen strangers walked into the Russian House in Thiruvananthapuram. They were from different districts, different walks of life. But they all carried one name that bound them together.
Gagarin. Yes, Gagarin.
So, What brought them together? 1/16
The name needs no introduction, or does it?
On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into space. For the world, it was history. For a section of Kerala’s left-leaning families, it was inspiration strong enough to echo in their children’s names. 2/16
Take P.D. Gagarin from Cherthala.
According to reports in Hindu and New Indian Express, he was born on that very day in 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut made his historic flight. His father, a communist and space enthusiast, named him Yuri Gagarin. 3/16
Long before she was a global icon, Mother Teresa walked the streets of Kolkata, and when she had nowhere to go, the city’s iconic Kali Temple opened its doors. On her birthday, we remember the unlikely home that started a journey of compassion that changed the world. Thread 1/19
When Mother Teresa began her work in Calcutta in 1948, she had almost nothing of her own. She wore a plain white cotton sari with a blue border and carried little more than conviction. 2/19
Her belief was simple yet radical: that the poor who lay unwanted on the pavements, the sick abandoned in the streets, and the dying left in filth deserved dignity in their final days. 3/19
Why does sugarcane taste so sweet in India today? India’s sugarcane wasn’t always this sweet. The reason it tastes the way it does today goes back to the stubborn brilliance of one woman who fought prejudice, doubt, and even war. Thread.
1/19
Janaki Ammal was born in 1897 in Kerala. At a time when most girls were expected to marry early, she chose science.
Botany became her world.
2/19
Janaki grew up in a large family with 19 siblings. Her father was not a scientist, but he loved tending gardens and writing about nature. From him, Janaki absorbed a way of looking at plants not just as crops, but as living wonders.
Open a Crayola box today and you’ll find hundreds of shades. But if you grew up in the 80s or 90s using Crayola art supplies, you might remember a crayon called Indian Red. And then, one day, it just disappeared. What exactly happened?
1/14
To answer that, you have to travel way beyond the Crayola factory in Pennsylvania…
all the way to a small town in Kerala, India.
In 1807, a Scottish man named Francis Buchanan was surveying the region for the East India Company.
2/14
So, who was Buchanan-Hamilton? think of him as a one-man research institute on foot: surgeon, botanist, surveyor. after Tipu Sultan’s fall, he was tasked to map and describe the south.
3/14
This year, a controversy broke out over a scene in Kesari 2. It allegedly misrepresented one of Bengal’s greatest freedom fighters, Khudiram Bose, by calling him Khudiram Singh. To understand why that name matters, we have to take a train to a small station in Bihar. Thread 1/19
The station has two platforms and is located in Samastipur district, part of the East Central Railway’s Sonpur division. To understand why the name mix-up hurt so deeply, we have to look beyond cinema. This small, unassuming train station may hold the answer. 2/19
It has worn several names over the years — Waini Railway Station, then Pusa Road Waini after the nearby agricultural university was built. Later, Waini was dropped. For decades, it was simply “Pusa Road.” 3/19
Rahul Gandhi’s startling claims of voter list fraud have sparked intense debate over India’s election integrity. Nearly a hundred years ago, a small West African country experienced one of the most extraordinary election frauds in history. What exactly took place? Thread 1/18
In 1927, Liberia went to the polls. On paper, it was just another general election. In reality, it would become a masterclass in how far those in power will go to hold on to it.
2/18
Liberia was small. Tucked away in West Africa. Founded a century earlier by freed African Americans.
Its ruling class — the Americo-Liberians — controlled everything: the courts, the military, foreign trade, and land.
3/18