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🌎 **The Population of the Americas in 1492 is Disputed**

_Needless to say, this is a brutally emotional and partisan topic, because to ask “how many people lived in the Americas in 1492?” is to ask “how great an atrocity was the European settlement of the Americas?”_

🔗 bookandsword.com/2025/07/20/th.

@histodons

🇺🇸 🇬🇧 **War Plan Red: The Forgotten U.S. Plot to Battle Britain**

"_The existence of War Plan Red highlights the intense atmosphere of suspicion and military planning that defined the early 20th century, a time when even America’s closest allies were viewed as potential rivals._"

🔗 historycollection.com/war-plan.

@histodons

🗺️ **The true size of countries**

Via @mapasmilhaud

"_Cartographic projections distort countries, which can lead us to believe that some countries are larger or smaller than others. Sometimes, this is not true._"

🔗 cartographerstale.com/p/the-tr.

📚 **This robot scans rare library books at 2,500 pages per hour**

"_Built in Austria, the bot does exactly what its name implies—it autonomously scans and digitizes manuscripts. But whereas it might take a single librarian days or weeks to scan a single book, the ScanRobot 2.0 can handle up to 2,500 per hour._"

🔗 popsci.com/technology/book-sca.

@bookstodon

Italian is a weird language when it comes to its word for "us".

In all major Romance languages, the word for "us" stems from Latin 'nōs', for example Spanish 'nos' and French 'nous'.

Italian, by contrast, uses an entirely different word for the unstressed form for "us": 'ci'.

My new infographic tells you the story of 'ci' and other plural pronouns:

A new study provides evidence that Egyptian donkeys were used in trade and ritualistically sacrificed by ancient Canaanites, while donkeys of local origin were used as food.

phys.org/news/2025-07-ritualis

An isotopic perspective on equid selection in cult at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti

📖 **Galileo’s Lost Star: Rare Book Breaks $1.5M at Auction**

"_Galileo’s rare first book on the 1604 supernova sold for $1.5 million at Christie’s, a stellar result for the scientist who changed how we see the heavens._"

🔗 antiquetrader.com/galileos-los.

@science@a.gup.pe @bookstodon

📖 **Concentration Camps: A Global History**

"_In popular perception, concentration camps are synonymous with genocide—racial extermination. Yet the great majority of them were not sites of genocide. Nor were they a Nazi invention. This book shows they were a global and transnational phenomenon, emerging on the colonial periphery of Britain, Spain, the USA, and Germany around 1900._"

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/9780192520906..

@histodons @bookstodon

🖥️ :youtube: **Karen Hao, "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI"

length: fifty-seven minutes and twenty-six seconds.

🔗 youtube.com/watch?v=-bSdBg6AhO.

📚 :youtube: **How to Understand Your Books (and remember everything)**

length: eleven minutes and nine seconds.

🔗 youtube.com/watch?v=YaKgr8iA-t.

@bookstodon

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