Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Google news archive search - History brought alive

Google news has a new feature - ability to search archives of newspapers and magazines going back over 200 years. For now, the sources seem to be mostly Time, Guardian and Washington Post, of which the first two are free but the Post is pay-per-view. But Time alone is good enough. You can read reports of historic events as they happened and understand how they were viewed while they were happening. Be it Hitler's rise in Germany or India's struggle for independence.

Speaking of latter, there is a school of thought among some Indians that Gandhi's role in India getting freedom from British isn't as great as it is made out to be, that the second world war played a bigger role in Britain's decision to leave India, etc. Couple of reports from Time in 1930 - one on Gandhi's Dandi march and the other on 1930 Man of the Year is enough to show that Gandhi's independence movement had become a major threat to the British long before Hitler had even come to power in Germany. So much for the revisionists.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Like father, like son

Read a nice article on Mohammad Ayazuddin, a 14-year-old promising cricketer from Hyderabad. If this kid goes on to play for India, that's one thing that will probably get me hooked to cricket all over again. The same gaping mouth, same open-chested stance, loose grip, apparently he even nods with a bowed head like his father. Go Ayaz!