Do you know of the insane piece of history when China tried to kill all the sparrows in their country?
Join me on a #HistoryTour to revisit the Four Pests Campaign a mind bending action by Mao Zedong & the Chinese that resulted in disaster!
A crazy history 🧵
This story starts in the early 1900s when China was under Japanese occupation & in continuous civil war & high rate of poverty & hunger.
At this time, Russian Revolution had already succeeded & Communism was seen as a success story amongst Chinese Intellectuals.
2/n
The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and it grew powerful in protest against the Japanese & as a potential hope for the common people
Mao Zedong was the popular leader of the Communist party & the face of the rebellion for a few decades.
3/n
The Japanese were finally thrown out by 1949 & the CCP came to power in China under the leadership of Mao. Mao's main goals were to unify China, drive a cultural revolution & invigorate the agrarian economy
By the 1950s China had severe famines & high rate of hunger deaths 4/n
As part of the economic & social reform, Mao introduced the 'Great Leap Forward' initiative where he wanted to increase crop yields, remove poverty & improve quality of life through people communes ( a collection of people to work towards specific goals ) 5/n
As part of the Great Leap Forward, a crazy idea emerged!
Mao identified that certain animals were only pests without any use to humankind.
He decided to kill them all!
Rats , Mosquitoes , Flies & Sparrows were the 4 pests that he declared to be made extinct 6/n
Mosquitoes brought Malaria
Rats brought Plague
Flies brought contamination
Sparrows ate grains
So, Mao started the 4 Pests campaign & called all people to come forward & kill these 4 pests!
7/n
Posters were made. Tools were given. Schools, communes, offices were all encouraged to work together
And the people responded to his war call
Estimated 1.5 billion rats, 24 million pounds of Mosquitoes, 220 million pounds of flies were killed over the next couple of years! 8/n
Special focus was given to Sparrows. Mao accused sparrows of eating 2kg of grain each every year & blamed them for the famine
People were called to shoot sparrows, hit stones, destroy their nests on trees, make noise with pans such that they are disturbed & die without rest! 9/n
Millions of people set upon this & it became so widespread that across China sparrows started dying enmasse.
It was so successful that sparrows started going to Embassy compounds of other nations as they were extraterritorial - only place where locals couldnt hunt them! 🥴 10/n
So many sparrows nested in the Embassy of Poland that China asked them to open up for hunting. When Poland refused , the locals surrounded the embassy with drums to make noise to disturb the sparrows that the Poles relented & had to use shovels to clean the dead sparrows!! 12/n
Sparrows were driven to near extinction.
But by 1960, the famine still raged. There was no end to hunger but something worse happened.
Sparrows not only ate grains, but they ate insects also!
With no sparrows around, a Locust boom happened!!
13/n
Without a natural predator, billions of locusts started destroying crops across China resulting in complete ecological disaster.
All grains gone.
A simple famine became acerbated to become - The Great Chinese Famine. An estimated 55 million people died from it 😥
14/n
Anhui, a fertile agricultural province had 20% death rate. One in 5 people died. Govt was over reporting grain numbers & diverting people to such measures like killing sparrows. The people believed it but finally had to face the brunt of corruption & stupid ecological decisions
The govt eventually realized their mistake & imported 250,000 sparrows from Soviet Union 🤦♂️
But the damage was done
History teaches us that nature is in balance on its own & making it bend to human whims leads to disaster!
RT this story if you liked it & pls follow for more!
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What is happening in Manipur?
Who is fighting with whom?
Why?
The answer involves history & geography.
A simple explainer 🧵
Manipur is full of mountains. And one large valley in the middle called the Imphal Valley.
The mountains are mainly populated by the Kuki people and the Naga people.
The valley is populated by a third clan - the Meitei people.
2/n
Basis historical evidences, its the Meitei & the Naga who have lived in this area from earlier times. A large expansion of Kuki tribe happened during the British era who encouraged more Kuki settlers to balance power against other tribes as part of their 'Divide and Rule policy'
#OnThisDay July 15th, 1799 - A remarkable discovery of a single slab of stone changed our understanding of human history!
It was the finding of the 'Rosetta Stone' by Napoleon's army while trying to build a fort!
Join me on a history tour to visit this crazy story! 🧵
The story starts all the way around 3000 BC when the ancient Pharaonic Egyptian civilization started. We know the Pyramids & the Sphinx but another major relic from then are the Hieroglyphics - an advanced pictorial script that the Egyptians used in their wall inscriptions!
2/n
It was the main script for communication for those in the Nile Delta for more than 2000 years & it was mainly pictorial mixed with grammar and syllables.
But by 300 BC Egypt was under Greek rule, hieroglyphics was being slowly forgotten for the new Greek & Latin scripts 3/n
Lets say you've a simple well in your backyard. One day suddenly you find out that it's hiding a 1000 yr old historic monument!
Imagine the shock & thrill you'll feel as it unravels
Join me to hear one such actual wonder story in Ep3 of #ArtTreasuresofIndia
Rani Ki Vav! 🧵
First the story. 11thC AD. Modern day Gujarat was ruled by the Chaulukya Dynasty with Bhima I as it's king & Udayamati as it's queen. The landscape was part desert & arid like. Water management was a key priority & creating water bodies was a very royal act! 2/n
As Bhima I died, Udayamati was grieving him. It was the time when everyone built temples. But Udayamati decided to build an inverted temple of sorts. 65m long & 20m wide and 28m deep strucutre!
A step well built by the queen in memory of her king - Rani Ki Vav!
This time we travel back 1000 years ago to look at an artwork of astounding beauty commissioned by Rajendra Chola, the all conquering Chola emperor
Join me on a tour to visit the 'Chandesa Anugraha Murthi' - an Indian art marvel
🧵
First the story. In the Chola country, along the banks of the river Vanni in a small village a pious man Yajnadatta is blessed with a son who is named Vicharasarman.
Vicharasarman was very intelligent & one day he sees the village cowherd beating the cows.
2/n
Angry at him, Vicharasarman takes upon himself to tend the village's cows & his love ends up producing a bounty of milk.
Seeing the excess milk going waste, he builds a sand Linga & starts bathing it with the milk everyday & meditates upon Lord Shiva in front of it
3/n
India is facing a poor monsoon this year with many states with deficit rainfall 😰
One of the main reasons for this worrisome situation is the 'El Nino' weather system which has set in this year
Join me in this Geography Explainer on what El Nino is & how it impacts you! 🧵
First lets understand how monsoons form due to winds from the pacific ocean. The Pacific covers almost half the surface area of earth & affects global climate
In a normal year, warm winds blow across the pacific in western direction - from South America to Aus to Asia
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As summer progresses, these warm winds heat up the ocean near India which leads to more evaporation in these waters & leads to formation of the monsoon cloud systems & we promptly get monsoon rains across the country at the start of June