HackneyBooks

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HackneyBooks

HackneyBooks

@HackneyBooks

Books Stories News Natter

Hackney Katılım Haziran 2017
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Ludwig Wittgenstein | Philosopher 📖
Ludwig Wittgenstein | Philosopher 📖@Wittgensteinnn·
"A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push."
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Anish Moonka
Anish Moonka@anishmoonka·
In 2009, one English village lost both its phone box and its mobile library in the same year. One local came up with a fix so simple it accidentally became a national movement: take the empty phone box, fill it with books, leave the door unlocked. The village is Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset, population about 800. The council had just cut the mobile library, and BT was quietly removing payphones across the country. Parish councillor Bob Dolby and his wife Lyn bought the empty box from BT for one pound, fitted it with four wooden shelves, filled it with around 100 donated books, and left the door open. The library ran 24 hours a day, on the honour system, with no librarian and no fines. The BBC ran the story. Within two years, other villages were copying the idea. Today, more than 7,200 red phone boxes across Britain have been saved this same way. The box itself has a much older story. It was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea Power Station. He won a 1924 contest to create one standard phone box for Britain. His first version went up in London in 1926. In 1935, the Post Office asked him for a smaller, cheaper version to mark King George V's 25 years on the throne. That second version is the one you see on every postcard and tourist mug. About 60,000 were installed between 1936 and 1968. Roughly 11,700 are still standing. By the 1990s, Britain had 100,000 phone boxes of every kind. Mobile phones gutted the numbers. Only about 3,000 traditional red kiosks are still working. With BT switching off the old phone network in 2025, the rest were headed for the scrapheap. BT had already started saving them. In 2008, they quietly launched a scheme called Adopt a Kiosk. Any parish council or registered charity can take over an unused phone box for £1. BT removes the phone, hands over the keys, and even keeps the small light inside working for free. The community covers any repairs. The Twentieth Century Society went further and got more than 3,000 of the most historic boxes officially heritage-listed, which means they can never be torn down. The saved boxes have become every kind of thing you can think of. About 800 hold defibrillators, the small machines that can save someone in cardiac arrest. Others became mini art galleries, local history museums, even a one-metre-wide gin bar called The Wee Bar in the Scottish village of Kilberry, with room for three drinkers. The model works because phone boxes are almost always in the middle of a village, right next to the post office and the pub. Scott originally wanted his boxes painted silver, with a greeny-blue interior. The Post Office overruled him and picked red, because their postboxes were already red. A century later, that one decision is the reason these boxes are famous enough to be worth saving.
Science girl@sciencegirl

Many villages across the UK have repurposed iconic red telephone boxes into tiny community libraries, where you can take a book and leave one for someone else to enjoy too if you want to

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Dr Jo Ball
Dr Jo Ball@DrJEBall·
A #Roman military luggage-tag, which marked out whatever it was attached to as belonging to Julius Candidus of the Legio XX (Valeria Victrix) - a handy way to make sure you didn't lose your military kit or personal belongings #Archaeology
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MaaikeDx 🖌
MaaikeDx 🖌@RembrandtsRoom·
In 1925, Aldous Huxley called Piero della Francesca's Resurrection "the greatest picture in the world". Because he had read the essay as a teen, Lieutenant Anthony Clarke told British troops during WW2 to stop firing - and so saved the fresco. I have sat in front of it for hours.
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Dr. M.F. Khan
Dr. M.F. Khan@Dr_TheHistories·
In 1938, a farmer plowing his field in Akaki village near Nicosia, Cyprus 🇨🇾, hit something hard with his plow. It was a piece of ancient mosaic. The Cyprus Department of Antiquities came out, marked the location, and then left. They had other sites to prioritize. The mosaic stayed buried for 78 more years. In 2014, archaeologists returned to the site and discovered the remains of a large Roman cistern measuring 33 by 46 feet. In the summer of 2015, they found a section of mosaic on the south side of the cistern. By August 2016, they had fully uncovered the floor. It was a chariot racing scene from a Roman hippodrome, and it was spectacular. The mosaic measures 36 feet long and 13 feet wide. It dates to the first half of the 4th century AD. It depicts four quadrigae, chariots pulled by teams of four horses. Each chariot has a driver and four horses racing at full speed. The chariots are shown in different colors representing the four factions of professional racers in ancient Rome. The Blues, Greens, Reds, and Whites were rival teams that competed in the hippodrome, and fans of each faction were famously passionate about their favorites. Riots sometimes broke out between rival factions. Each chariot is accompanied by two inscriptions written in ancient Greek. One inscription gives the name of the charioteer, and the other gives the name of one of the horses. The names usually express some special characteristic about the driver or the horse. Some of the names identified include Kosmion, Protogenis, Pegaso, Polytalanto, Amphidromos, Bache, and Polyphemos. Standing between the chariots on the track are two men. One is holding a whip, and the other is holding a vessel of water. There is also a figure on horseback. These were likely officials or attendants associated with the race. The scene shows three cones topped with egg-shaped objects at the center of the track. These were lap counters. Three columns in the distance hold up dolphin figures with what appears to be water flowing from them. This matches descriptions of actual Roman hippodromes, where dolphins and eggs were used to count laps during races. The entire scene is bordered by intricate geometric designs. At the western end of the floor is another mosaic showing nine medallions arranged in a circle, each containing the bust of a female figure. These are the nine Muses, each identifiable by the symbols they hold. The hippodrome was extremely important in ancient Roman times. It was not just a place for sports competitions. It was where the emperor appeared before the people and projected his power. The races were massive public spectacles that drew enormous crowds. Chariot racing was the most popular sport in the Roman Empire. The hippodrome comes from the Greek words hippos, meaning horse, and dromos, meaning course. It was an open-air stadium used in ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantine civilizations for chariot and horse races. This mosaic is the only one of its kind ever found in Cyprus. Out of the hundreds of ancient mosaic floors discovered around the world, only about seven depict chariot races at the hippodrome with this level of detail. Only two have been discovered in Greece, and seven have been found elsewhere in the Roman Empire, including North Africa, France, and Spain. Racing scenes like this are extremely rare in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. The discovery is particularly exciting because it was found inland, about 20 miles west of Nicosia, in a remote area far from the coast. The mosaic was likely part of the floor of a large villa belonging to a wealthy nobleman during Roman rule of Cyprus. Cyprus was an extremely prosperous island in antiquity. It produced copper, and according to one prominent theory, the island got its name from the Greek word for copper. Cyprus also produced timber from its forests and pottery, many examples of which have been found in neighboring countries. #drthehistories
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Hiroshi Suzuki
Hiroshi Suzuki@AmbJapanUK·
Great pleasure to join a meeting between Vice Minister @mextjapan Masuko and @Jacqui_Smith1, Minister for Skills and for Women and Equalities @educationgovuk. Enjoyed productive discussions on Japan-UK education cooperation. 🇯🇵🤝🇬🇧
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