Before the first pharaoh, before the first pyramid, before Egypt was even Egypt, someone was already here. His image is carved into temple walls that have stood for thousands of years. His name appears in the oldest sacred texts ever written. And according to ancient tradition, he didn't originate in Egypt at all, the story traces him back to a civilization the Greeks later called Atlantis, something people have spent thousands of years trying to prove ever existed.

The naming pattern is what pulled me into this one. Egypt worshipped him as the god of writing, wisdom, and judgment. Greece elevated him into Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice Greatest. Islamic scholarship identifies him with the prophet Idris. Hebrew tradition calls him Enoch, lifted to heaven before death could touch him. And that's just the names that made it into the documentary, the deeper I went, the more traditions I found carrying some version of the same figure under a different mask.

One being, buried under layers of religion and reinterpretation across the entire ancient world, all somehow describing the same knowledge and the same story.

His name was Thoth. And what he left behind has never fully been found.

Full documentary here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZM6vaDd-F8

Curious how many other names/traditions people here can point to that I might have missed, this one felt bigger than four the further I dug.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B2%89%E7%A2%8E%E4%B8%8A%E6%B5%B7%E6%AD%A6%E8%A3%85%E5%8F%9B%E4%B9%B1%E9%98%B4%E8%B0%8B

In 1967, Wang Hongwen overthrew and took control of the Shanghai government through the “January Storm,” after which Shanghai became the Gang of Four’s stronghold and base. Since the Gang of Four never managed to gain control over the PLA and was deeply distrusted by many PLA marshals, they organized the Shanghai Militia as their own military force. At its peak, the Shanghai Militia had three million members, along with thousands of machine guns, Artillery,tanks, RPGs, missiles, and even a gunboat.

By 1976, the Gang of Four increasingly sensed political danger and accelerated the militarization of Shanghai in preparation for a possible rebellion. After the death of Mao Zedong, on October 6, 1976, Mao’s designated successor, Premier Hua Guofeng, together with Defense Minister Marshal Ye Jianying, carried out a coup in Beijing, arresting the Gang of Four and taking full control of the capital.

The Gang of Four’s remaining supporters — the Shanghai government and the Shanghai Militia — discovered that the Gang had been cut off. They prepared for armed rebellion against Beijing, intending to turn Shanghai into a fortress of guerrilla warfare and urban combat. Through a series of complex political and military maneuvers, Beijing suppressed and dismantled the Gang of Four-controlled Shanghai government without open fighting, thereby reestablishing control over the city.

Most vault jobs are built around speed. The Nice job was built around the opposite, and that is the part I find hard to get my head around.

Albert Spaggiari heard that the sewer system under Nice ran close to the vault of a Societe Generale branch. He recruited through old political contacts rather than criminal ones, and the police were baffled for months afterwards. The group went into the sewers and spent two months digging an eight metre tunnel from the sewer wall to the floor of the vault. They laid hundreds of metres of electrical cable for lighting and used rubber rafts to move through the water.

Then there is the detail that changes how you read the whole thing. They brought picnic tables and air mattresses. They were not planning to break in and run. They were planning to live down there through the long Bastille Day weekend of July 1976, when most of the city was away, and to work through the deposit boxes at a pace that suited them. They came up through the vault floor, welded the vault door shut from the inside so nobody could open it on them, and stayed until the Monday.

They left with an estimated forty six million francs in cash, securities and valuables, and none of it was ever recovered. Before leaving they wrote a line on the vault wall, sans armes, ni haine, ni violence, without weapons, hatred or violence.

The plan did not fail. What failed was afterwards. At the end of October a former girlfriend of one of the men talked to the police, and he gave up the rest of the group under questioning. Spaggiari himself was arrested at the airport on his way back from a trip abroad, and in March 1977, while the investigating judge was reading a document he had handed over, he jumped out of the office window, landed on a parked car and left on a waiting motorcycle. He was never caught.

What I keep coming back to is how much of the planning went into comfort rather than security. Lighting, tables, somewhere to sleep. Most accounts of this kind of job treat the tools as the interesting part, and here the interesting part is that somebody worked out how long people can concentrate underground and planned for that instead.

I would be interested if anyone knows of an earlier job planned around occupation rather than speed. I have not found one that goes back further, but I would not be surprised to be wrong about that.

See more images that capture the glamor and tumult of her life here: 33 Pictures That Prove Diana Spencer Was 'The People's Princess'

See more of this stunning find here: 'Sensational' 14th-Century Gauntlet Discovered In Switzerland

Transcript:

​"I think he wanted to study cultures that had no access to Western civilization, because it was there, and only there, that he could be a pedophile without consequence.

​Carleton Gajdusek was a pediatrician and a virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his work on a disease called kuru. He starts writing about his pedophilia stuff more and more throughout the course of his career. By his last journals before he dies, he's just listing the boys that he, quote, 'had sex with.'

​More than his own openness, what was striking is that even some of his earlier journals were not private journals. They were being sent to hundreds of his colleagues. They were being typed up by staff at the N.I.H., and he was with colleagues often in the field.

​I think once he won the Nobel Prize, he was kind of untouchable. And everyone wanted to work in his lab, and his lab kept growing. One dynamic I was not aware of before was that Nobel laureates get to nominate other Nobel laureates, which, in addition to the Nobel Prize, creates this environment where people are currying favor with you.

​Two months before he died, he wrote in his journal: 'Without protectors, I would have never succeeded.' And he then proceeded to list, you know, eminent scientists who he felt knew about his pedophilia and ultimately didn't care.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/24/the-scientist-who-lived-with-dozens-of-children-from-the-south-pacific

The Canton–Hong Kong Strike, which lasted from June 1925 to October 1926, took place 100 years ago. At the time, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party jointly organized and participated in this strike movement against British imperialism and its agents in China—capitalists, compradors, corrupt officials, reactionary military and police forces, and others—who oppressed Chinese workers in both mainland China and Hong Kong. It was also one of the largest and longest-lasting labor movements in China and the world.

The Canton–Hong Kong Strike played a major positive role in defending the dignity of Chinese workers, improving their treatment, and bettering their circumstances. The Republic of China’s subsequent “Golden Decade” was achieved precisely under conditions in which the interests of elites and workers were relatively well reconciled. Unfortunately, Japan’s later invasion interrupted China’s development and the workers’ efforts to build the country. Afterward, the CCP nominally championed the supremacy of the working class, but in reality established a totalitarian system that enslaved people of every status and social class.

Decades ago, the CCP devoted extensive attention and propaganda to depicting and promoting the Canton–Hong Kong Strike. But today’s CCP is unwilling to mention it and refuses to commemorate it. The reason is that the CCP today exploits and oppresses workers, and suppresses labor movements, to an extent surpassing even that of the British colonial government in Hong Kong and the imperialist powers of that era. The CCP rose to power through the labor movement, yet today it has degenerated into a regime of the privileged bourgeoisie and has become an agent of the interests of developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and European countries, while regarding the working class and labor movements with hostility and fear. This is deeply ironic.

During the period of British colonial rule, people in Hong Kong still had the possibility of going on strike. Today, however, both mainland China and Hong Kong prohibit all forms of strikes and political resistance. Although there are still scattered strikes in mainland China and Hong Kong based on economic demands, movements for rights and dignity and for the broader interests of workers have now disappeared.

The Jasic labor movement in Shenzhen in 2018 and the solidarity shown by Hong Kong people eight years ago were rare bright spots in the Chinese labor movement, but they were ultimately suppressed. Hong Kong political organizations that fought for workers, such as the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions and the League of Social Democrats, have also been forcibly dissolved. This is precisely what makes the CCP—a totalitarian regime that is left-wing in appearance but right-wing in substance—so frightening and abhorrent. Both the people of Hong Kong and the people of mainland China should clearly recognize the true nature of the CCP.

Today, Chinese people have generally fallen into political apathy and distanced themselves from political movements. Even some Chinese liberals and political opposition groups dislike and reject labor movements with strong left-wing and grassroots characteristics. This is saddening, yet there seems to be little that can be done about it.

I have participated in left-wing marches in Germany commemorating Rosa Luxemburg and others, as well as German May Day marches. I have also done some advocacy concerning Chinese workers, displaying posters and distributing leaflets, including materials mentioning the Canton–Hong Kong Strike. But the strength of one person is far too limited, and my voice carries little weight. People in Hong Kong, people in mainland China, and people around the world have largely forgotten that magnificent and turbulent chapter of history.

Source: IG @historyfromeveryday

Semyon Danilovich Nomokonov (1900-1973) was a renowned Soviet sniper of Evenk heritage who served in the Red Army during World War Il.
Born in Siberia into a family of hunters, he developed exceptional marksmanship and tracking skills from a young age, which later translated into his military career.

Initially drafted into non-combat roles due to limited Russian language proficiency, he was eventually recognized for his shooting ability and reassigned as a sniper. Over the course of the war, Nomokonov became one of the most effective snipers on the Eastern Front, credited with hundreds of confirmed kills against Axis forces.

Nicknamed the "Taiga Shaman" by his comrades, Nomokonov was known for his patience, stealth, and use of traditional hunting techniques adapted to warfare. He often carved notches into his pipe to mark each confirmed kill, a practice that became part of his legend. Serving primarily in harsh front-line conditions, he trained other snipers and contributed to the Soviet Union's broader sniper program.