Events to Remember. Famous Photography. And Stuff.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

EVENTS to REMEMBER. Fall of the Berlin Wall: October 3, 1990. West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a reunified country. The Berlin Wall or Die Berliner Mauer was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Photo credit: The Guardian. ☮️🇩🇪☮️

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHY. In the years after the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the ouster of the Taliban regime, Associated Press photographer Rodrigo Abd spent months on assignment there and learned how to use a traditional Afghan “box camera,” a handmade street camera and darkroom in one. He returned this year to document how Afghan life has changed in peacetime, for better and worse, since U.S. troops left and the Taliban returned to power. (Text: Associated Press.) 🇦🇫🇦🇫🇦🇫

FAMOUS EVENTS. Oktoberfest is a beer festival held annually in Munich, Bavaria in Germany. Running from mid- or late-September to around the first Sunday in October, the boozefest attracts more than six million international and national visitors. Locally, it is called d'Wiesn, after the colloquial name for the fairgrounds, Theresienwiese. Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture, having been held since the year 1810. 🍻🇩🇪🍻

MOMENTS in HISTORY. Old trains and railway tracks. Those old, old trains that we often see in movies are very mystifying. An early (1500s) railway in Austria’s Hohensalzburg Fortress used wooden rails and hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel. The line still exists and remains operational. The U.S. railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827. 🚉🚂🚉

PEOPLE and CULTURE. Bollywood refers to the majority Hindi language film industry based in Mumbai, India. Bollywood is a part of the larger Indian cinema, which also includes South Indian cinema and other smaller film industries. The most popular genre is masala, which is generally musical melodrama or mix of action, comedy and romance. On average, Indian cinema produces 1,900 feature films a year, which is clearly bigger than Hollywood’s 500 movies annually. 🎥🇮🇳📽

TRAGIC MOMENTS to REMEMBER. Attica Prison Riot. At the state prison in Attica, upstate New York. The riot started on September 9, 1971, and ended on September 13 with the highest number of fatalities in the history of United States prison uprisings. 43 men died: 33 inmates and 10 correctional officers and employees, mostly by gunfire. The Attica Uprising has been described as a historic event in the prisoners' rights movement. (Photo credit: NPR.) ☮️☮️☮️

FAMOUS PLACES. Bleecker Street is an east–west street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street today is very popular for music venues and comedy, and a center for bohemia. The street is named after the family name of banker Anthony Lispenard Bleecker and writer Anthony Bleecker, through whose family farm the street ran. My favorite night spots at Bleecker: The Bitter End. 🎼🎤🗽

MOMENTS to REMEMBER. On August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast near Buras, Louisiana, bringing floods that devastated New Orleans. The devastating Category 5 Atlantic hurricane caused 1,836 fatalities and damage estimated between $97.4 billion to $145.5 billion. In the image above, taken by David J. Phillip of the Associated Press, floodwaters from the hurricane fill the streets near downtown New Orleans. 🌬💨💦

FAMOUS EVENTS. Every last Wednesday of August, revelers hurl tomatoes at each other in Spanish town’s “La Tomatina.” Some 15,000 people, including many tourists, pasted each other with tomatoes per Spain’s annual “Tomatina” street battle for entertainment purposes. The festival is held in the Valencian town of Buñol, in the east of Spain. Since 1945, it has been held on the last Wednesday of August, during a week of festivities in Buñol. Ole! 🍅🇪🇸🍅

FAMOUS PLACES. Banaue Rice Terraces. Terraces that were carved into the mountains of Banaue in Ifugao province in the Philippines, by the ancestors of the Igorot people. Occasionally called the "Eighth Wonder of the World,” the terraces is were built with minimal equipment, largely by hand, located approximately 4,900 feet above sea level. These are fed by an ancient irrigation system from the rainforests above the terraces. (Photo: Lux Travel DMC.) ⛰🇵🇭⛰