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Rare centuries-old gold coin from Netherlands found by metal detectorist in Poland
A man using a metal detector discovered a centuries-old Dutch coin on the southern coast of Poland earlier this week, museum officials announced.
The coin, a golden ducat, is from the Netherlands, according to a post on social media from the Museum of the History of the Kamieńska Land. The coin is dated to the year 1777, and was found on the site of the oldest Dominican monastery along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea.
The man who found the coin was identified as Polish resident Maciej Ruzik. Ruzik is a member of the area Exploration Association, and had been searching the area in an effort to find artifacts. The discovery of the coin “proves the city’s incredibly rich history,” the museum said. Maciej told a local newspaper that he was “very emotional” about the find.
“It is a great discovery,” he said.
The coin shows a knight standing with his sword raised in one hand and several arrows in the other. The front of coin has the year written on it, and an inscription that translates to “In harmony even from small things great grow,” according to the museum.
The back of the coin has another inscription that could indicate what province it was issued in, the museum said.
The Republic of the Netherlands functioned from 1581 to 1795, the museum said, meaning that this coin is from the last decades of the republic’s existence.
Official said this is the first coin of its kind found in Poland. Similar golden ducats were distributed in Poland in the 1830s, the museum said, but the knight’s head on the front was replaced with a small Polish eagle. In general, golden ducats were strong currency used in international trade for centuries. The elaborately decorated coins were accepted around the world, and the Royal Dutch Mint continues to annually mint them, according to the organization’s website.
The discovery comes about a month after a medieval sword with a mysterious inscription was found at the bottom of a Polish river, which some experts believe may have belonged to the Vikings.
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New Zealand reclaims world record for largest mass haka
New Zealand on Sunday reclaimed the world record for the largest mass haka after more than 6,000 people performed the legendary Maori war dance, dethroning France.
The record was broken in deafening fashion at Eden Park rugby stadium in Auckland, where thousands of men, women and children combined on the pitch to complete the traditional native challenge involving vigorous movements, stamping feet and rhythmic shouting.
An adjudicator confirmed that 6,531 participants had performed the ‘Ka Mate’ haka, a rendition made famous by the All Blacks rugby team, who perform it immediately before Test matches.
France had held the world record since September 2014 when 4,028 people slapped their thighs and bellowed the chant following a rugby match in France Brive-la-Gaillarde, southwestern France.
Auckland organizers had hoped for up to 10,000 participants but were nevertheless pleased the record had been reclaimed by New Zealand, where the haka is regarded as a national treasure.
“We want to bring the mana (pride) of the haka back home,” Michael Mizrahi, director of the Auckland attempt, told AFP. “It’s not just that we want to take it off the French, it’s like a national treasure that somebody has taken from us. It’s got enormous meaning for us as New Zealanders.”
He added: “Some things should be culturally sacred.”
Previous attempts involving crowds of more than 5,000 on New Zealand soil failed because Guinness World Records officials didn’t ratify them, Mizrahi said.
This time around, an adjudicator was flown to Auckland.
The Ka Mate haka was composed around 1820 by the warrior chief Te Rauparaha to celebrate his escape from a rival tribe’s pursuing war party.
Under New Zealand law, a Maori tribe, the Ngati Toa, based in Porirua just outside Wellington – are recognized as the cultural guardians of the Ka Mate haka.
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Malcolm Gladwell on “Revenge of the Tipping Point”
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Malcolm Gladwell’s life has changed; he has not
On Tuesday, a new Malcolm Gladwell book comes out. And if history is any guide, it will be a bestseller. “They’re stories about ideas,” he said. “They have characters. They have plots. I’m usually trying to say something about the world.”
His first book, “The Tipping Point,” published in 2000, established the Gladwell recipe: he explores a theme through anecdotes and little-known scientific studies. “‘Tipping Point’ was about the epidemic as an incredibly useful way of understanding how ideas move through society,” Gladwell said. “And epidemics have rules. Let’s learn the rules, right?”
His seven New York Times bestsellers have sold 23 million copies in North America alone. His fee for corporate speeches is $350,000. His fans have downloaded a quarter-billion episodes of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” and he founded a company called Pushkin Industries to produce it.
In other words, Gladwell has come a long way from the small Canadian town where he grew up, son of a British father and a Jamaican mother, whom he describes as “subversive,” someone who would write notes to excuse her son from class with a blank space. “I would just fill out the date,” said the man who skipped a lot of school.
He attended the University of Toronto, but his best education was the ten years he worked for the Washington Post. “I knew nothing about newspapers,” he said. “I was so raw. I was 23, I think, or 24. Bob Woodward was two rows away from me. I learned at the feet of the greatest journalists of my generation.”
In 1996, Gladwell joined The New Yorker. He wrote about why, in the 1990s, New York’s crime rate plummeted in an article called, “The Tipping Point.” A book followed. It introduced a recurring Gladwellian theme: hidden patterns in the way the world works.
He’s a world-class contrarian, about college (“You should never go to the best institution you get into, never; go to your second or your third choice. Go to the place where you’re guaranteed to be in the top part of your class”); about working from home (“It’s not in your best interest to work at home. … If you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live, right? Don’t you want to feel part of something?”); about football (“I think the sport is a moral abomination”).
Gladwell says he enjoys being provocative: “Of course!” he said. “I like poking the bear. I mean, journalists should poke the bear.”
Gladwell’s fans love his storytelling, and the A-ha! moments they bring. His critics, on the other hand, have described his writing as “generalizations that are banal, obtuse, or flat wrong,” and “simple, vacuous truths [dressed] up with flowery language.” “I’m with the idea that not everyone’s gonna like my work,” Gladwell said. “100% of people don’t like anything.”
In a 2021 “Sunday Morning” interview, Gladwell said, “I would rather be interesting than correct.” He called that “an overly provocative way of saying things! No, I think what I meant was, if I turn out not to be right, I’m not devastated. I accept that as the price of doing business.”
Gladwell often turns his mistakes into new chapters or podcast episodes. In “The Tipping Point,” he explained that New York’s crime drop was the result of “broken windows policing.” As he described it, “Little crimes were tipping points for big crimes.” But that philosophy led to New York’s policy of “stop and frisk.”
“Doing 700,000 police stops a year of young Black and Hispanic men is deeply problematic,” Gladwell said. “We were wrong. I was part of that. I’m sorry.”
Which brings us to the new book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point.” “The original ‘Tipping Point’ is a very optimistic, rosy book about the possibilities for using the laws of epidemics to promote positive social change,” he said. “In the last 25 years, I spent a lot of time thinking about the other side of that problem, which is, what happens when people use the laws of epidemics in ways that are malicious or damaging or self-interested?”
The book’s stories range from topics as obscure as cheetah reproduction, to stories as big as the Holocaust. He writes that almost nobody talked about the Holocaust, or even called it that, until NBC aired a miniseries called “Holocaust” in 1978. “And what changed happened like [snaps fingers]. I mean, it was just there was a tipping point in our understanding of the Holocaust,” he said.
This book arrives at a tipping point in Gladwell’s own life. In a span of five years, he got engaged, had two children, turned 61, and moved from Manhattan to pastoral Hudson, New York. “It’s a lot to handle. There isn’t a single person who ever lived whose parents did not say, ‘This is a lot!'” he laughed. “I have become the person that, you know, I once despised, and nothing makes me happier.”
He also despises Ivy League colleges, accusing them of prioritizing their own reputations over focusing on their students.
Has parenthood affected his outlook on any of the things that he’s written about before? “Well, it’s prepared me for the possibility that I will be a massive hypocrite!” Gladwell laughed. “So, you know, it’s one thing to write about what you should do with your kids when you don’t have them.”
For all his success, Malcolm Gladwell maintains that nothing has changed in his approach, his work ethic, or his contrarianism. “It hasn’t changed what I do,” he said. “I don’t farm out my research; I still go on reporting trips. It hasn’t gotten old. In fact, my great regret is I don’t have time to do more.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
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Story produced by Wonbo Woo. Editor: Remington Korper.