Part 1 left off with a king who couldn't go back inside a building, a capital on fire, and a country with no functioning government. Someone had to actually run Portugal.
That someone was a minor minister named Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo - a man almost nobody outside Portugal has heard of, who is about to become the most competent person you didn't know existed.

#historical #political #warfare

While looking at this map of European empires, I started reading about British India and came across three figures that really caught my attention:

• The Bengal Famine of 1943: roughly 2 ~3 million deaths, according to commonly cited historical estimates

• Indian soldiers in WWII: more than 2 million volunteers served in the British Indian Army,

• Colonial-era excess deaths: a 2022 study by Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel estimated 50~165 million excess deaths in India between 1881 and 1920, depending on the baseline used the widely repeated figure of 100 million is therefore an estimate, not an undisputed historical death toll

I find these numbers staggering, but I don't want to repeat statistics without understanding how they were calculated

information is beautiful!

On October 9, 1806, America lost a hidden genius — Benjamin Banneker, the self‑taught astronomer who helped map Washington D.C. and published his own almanacs. His story still shines among the stars.