Every time your phone tells you where you are, it is using a mathematical model of the shape of the Earth.
A Black woman from rural Virginia spent decades building that model by hand, and almost nobody knew her name until she was in her eighties.
Gladys West. She grew up in a sharecropping family in Dinwiddie County and understood early that the alternatives were the tobacco fields or the factory. She finished top of her high school class, which came with a scholarship, and took it.
Her work was satellite geodesy: taking the raw data coming down from orbit and using it to compute, correction by correction, the true irregular shape of the Earth. Not a sphere. Not even a neat ellipsoid. A lumpy thing with gravitational highs and lows.
That model is the foundation the Global Positioning System sits on. You cannot locate a point on a surface until you know precisely what the surface is.
She did this for decades, largely unremarked, and retired in 1998.
She was recognised in 2018, when her sorority mentioned her biography at a function and someone realised what was in it.
The Air Force inducted her into its Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. She earned a PhD in her seventies.
@Brosferatuoi@Hattusilis_III@CptAllenHistory I gotta something for you.
Zuheir Mohsen (one of the early leaders of Palestine) Said in an interview:
“The Palestinian people does not exist… The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”
@simomzansi@rich_toronto Okay research this,
Said by Zuheir Mohsen (one of the early leaders of Palestine)
“The Palestinian people does not exist… The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”
Verify it for yourself.
@callOutUrBS_@rich_toronto 1. Palestine Never accepted the deal
2. The Romans named it Palestine because Isreal revolt against Roman rule, it was Judea (name of a tribe in Isreal)
3. The Arab who invaded in the 7th century started calling themselves Palestine only after 1947.
@NYKnicks124@rich_toronto Not really, Palestine were Arab invaders who invaded Israel in the 7th century.
There were no Palestine in 700bc, 500bc, 300bc, Arabs started existing in that land around 700AD
@Garyfctsonly@rich_toronto history didn't start in 1947
Isreal lived in that land 1700 years before the Arab invasion in the 7th century.
Isreal took the land back in 1947.
There were only Jews in that land for thousands of years before Arab invasion.
Arab invasion 700 AD
Isreal took it back 1947
@rich_toronto What's worst is that the Arab Muslim only start existing in Isreal during the Arab invasion around the 7th century AD, about 1700 years after.
But online craps keep saying, "the land belongs to Palestine"
There was no Palestine 300BC when Alexander the Great colonized Isreal.
We don do this for you, my Naija people. 🇳🇬 Na $9 you fit use change your life. E only cost around ₦13,000. I understand the struggle.
No talk say I no tell you o. No come be too late Edward.
@Brosferatuoi@Hattusilis_III@CptAllenHistory And Ancestral lands means they're actually the indigenous people of the land.
When it's the native Americans, "it's Their Ancestral land"
When it's the Jews "Ancestral lands is ridiculous" Hypocrites.