JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Personal blog of Jessica Zafra, author of The Collected Stories and the Twisted series
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Archive for the ‘History’

Where were you when…

August 21, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: Cosmic Things, History 11 Comments →

It’s the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Ninoy Aquino. “Do you remember where you were when you first heard that Ninoy had been shot?” asked my friend, the Princess Poulet. Yes I do. I remember that it was a weekend and I was at home with my mother. Everyone knew that Senator Aquino was arriving that day, so we expected to see the television coverage. But there was no TV coverage of the homecoming, and as the day wore on it was obvious that something bad had happened. Then there was the news bulletin that he’d been shot, allegedly by a hitman who was identified by the name sewn onto his underwear. 

Poulet’s innocent question quickly turned into a morbid game of Where Were You When. On September 11, 2001, when the first plane hit the tower, I was standing in front of an ATM on Wilson Street in Greenhills. My druid and I had just eaten a big dinner at a Chinese restaurant. She had noted that it was the Coptic New Year. Then as I was withdrawing money from the machine, my druid got a text message saying a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We thought it was a joke in very bad taste.

I was in front of the ATM at United Supermarket (it’s no longer there) in Greenbelt during the big earthquake of 1991. I had just withdrawn money when the ground began to shake violently, then swirl like the contents of a blender. There were aftershocks for days. I remember watching TV coverage of rescue workers retrieving people from collapsed buildings. One TV reporter shoved a microphone at a girl half-buried in rubble and asked, “How are you feeling?” 

Templar heirs sue the Pope

August 20, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: Antiquities, History 2 Comments →

A group claiming descent from the Knights Templar is suing Benedict XVI for 100 billion euro. They claim that when Clement V dissolved the order in 1307, the church seized over 9,000 properties including real estate, mills, and businesses. The Templars were a secret society of warrior-monks founded after the First Crusade to protect pilgrims en route to Jerusalem. They became spectacularly wealthy, financed wars, and incurred the ire of powerful enemies who tried them on charges of heresy, devil worship and sodomy. Many Templars, including their Grand Master, were burned at the stake.

The legal move by the Spanish group comes follows the unprecedented step by the Vatican towards the rehabilitation of the group when last October it released copies of parchments recording the trials of the Knights between 1307 and 1312. The papers lay hidden for more than three centuries having been “misfiled” within papal archives until they were discovered by an academic in 2001. The Chinon parchment revealed that, contrary to historic belief, Clement V had declared the Templars were not heretics but disbanded the order anyway to maintain peace with their accuser, King Philip IV of France.”

Experts have dismissed the lawsuit as cuckoo. If it prospers, does it mean we can sue the Catholic Church for seizing vast tracts of land in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period? 

The Penitents

August 07, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: Current Events, History 2 Comments →

Can children expiate the sins of their parents? Tanya Gold has a fascinating story in the Guardian about the penitents—Jews descended from Nazis. A descendant of Hitler’s half-brother has converted to Judaism and is living in Israel.

“Two years ago I read a strange little story in an obscure American magazine for Orthodox Jews, claiming that a descendant of Adolf Hitler had converted to Judaism and was living in Israel. I had heard rumours in Jewish circles for years about “the penitents” – children of Nazis who become Jews to try to expiate the sins of their fathers. Could it be true? I dug further and discovered that a man with a family connection to Hitler does indeed live in Israel as an Orthodox Jew. Virtually unnoticed in the English-speaking world, he was exposed seven years ago in an Israeli tabloid. Then he sank from sight. I went to Israel to meet him – and on the way I was plunged into the strange subculture of the Nazi-descended Jews. . .”

The Name of the Rose

July 02, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: History, Science 1 Comment →

Biblical text-writing may have poisoned monks
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News. Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red. The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions…scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books…

Express to the afterlife

July 01, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: Current Events, History 6 Comments →

Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools, originally uploaded by saffysafina.

The lonely goatherd asks: Why is Sulpicio Lines still operating? Why hasn’t it been forcibly disbanded? With a record like theirs—some 7,000 passengers killed in about 23 years—why does anybody still travel with them? And has President Arroyo repeated President Aquino’s “No stone unturned” promise yet?

(1) I DON’T KNOW, but if someone has a sound theory, do post it. (2) Uhh, because its defenders argue that there aren’t enough vessels working in these 7,100 islands and a shipping line with a Titanic-type body count is better than no shipping line at all? (3) As far as I know, more people died in the sinking of Doña Paz than on 9/11, but no one declared war on unsafe transportation. It’s “bahala na” at its deadliest. (4) Aargh.

Why I think my cat Saffy may be Joseph Stalin.

June 03, 2008 By: jessicazafra Category: Cats, History 1 Comment →


Saffy is reading. . ., originally uploaded by 160507.

1. Stalin the Soviet dictator had many pseudonyms, including “K. Safin”. Saffy’s full name is Saffron Sassafras Safin.
2. Saffy answers to Stalin’s nicknames “Koba” and “Soso”.
3. Saffy constantly claims territory of her fellow cats Koosi and Mat.
4. Saffy very suspicious of Mat the aristocrat, accuses him of oppressing her.
5. Saffy is a terror.
6. Saffy believes she owns the means of production; sits on my keyboard while I am working.
7. Extreme charm alternating with extreme nuttiness.
8. Loves books, curls up on them.
9. Constantly plotting.
10. Likes poetry, especially if all the words are replaced with “meow”.