RethinKnoww

 Rash Behari Bose was born on the 25th of May, 1886 in the Bengal province of India. As a teenager, he was expelled out of school for questioning the ways of teaching in British India--the revolutionary zeal burned inside him from a young age. A few years later, he ran away from home; his objective was to enter the British army, learn their techniques and use it against them. After being denied entry into the infantry because of his Bengali lineage, he obtained a job as a clerk in  Fort William  (a British military station) but was forced to conceal his identity. Bose's secret was, however, discovered later and he was shamefully kicked out of his job; unmoved, Bose swore to take revenge. He went onto get a job at a research institute in Dehradun, where he taught other young men how to make bombs and use firearms. In 1912, he was forced to go incognito after being identified as one of the perpetrators of a bomb attack against the British Viceroy . R.B. Bose The uprising o...

Baarle-Nassau-Hertog is a quiet and relaxed town located in a rather overlooked part of Northern Europe. The town is home to one of the most obscure international borders in the world-- and yeah, as a result of that, is located both in Belgium and the Netherlands. Just look at the images below and you'll get a better sense of the situation. Like always, I'll keep this one short and sweet. The Belgian side of the town is known as Baarle-Hertog and the Dutch side as Baarle-Nassau; a casual line made up of white crosses runs across town and separates the two countries.                                So how did this extraordinary situation come into being?  To answer this we'll need to go back to the 12th century.  The History In 1198, the Duke of Brabant(a province in the Netherlands) gave away most of his land in Baarle to the Count of Nassau(then the Lord of Breda). Some pieces of land although rema...

Background For centuries, goods from the east were brought in by Arab merchants at Constantinople (now Istanbul), where they were sold off to European traders at profitable amounts. These traders, in turn, transported the goods, mostly spices and fabrics, across Europe.  But this well-established trading cycle collapsed in 1453 when the Turks captured Constantinople and stopped the free passage of goods from the Indian subcontinent and the Far East. The Turks demanded unreasonably high taxes and didn't guarantee safety against pirates, making it very difficult for the Europeans to trade peacefully. Out of desperation, the Europeans started to look for an alternate route to India and beyond. Map of Trade Routes around Turkey, ca.1028 European Merchants (15th Century AD) The Journey begins... During the 1450s, Prince Henry, "The Navigator" of Portugal was making significant attempts to find a different route to India. He believed that going southwards along the African coa...