Time & Truth Hub

17/08/2026

Did you know that?

16/08/2026

Dawa Sherpa, a veteran Nepali mountain guide, was descending Mount Everest on May 29, 2026, near the end of the climbing season when he became separated from his group above Camp III, at roughly 7,500–7,600 meters. His bottled oxygen ran out, and he became so weak that he could no longer walk.

The last person known to have seen him, British climber Chris Thrall, encountered him resting on his backpack. Dawa was eventually considered unlikely to have survived, and his family in Kathmandu began traditional funeral rites.

But Dawa was still alive. For days, he endured freezing temperatures, extreme altitude and almost no food or water. He later said that he initially ate nothing, then began chewing ice despite the pain it caused his teeth. He also discovered a few chocolates in his pocket.

At some point during his descent, he fell into a deep crevasse and became trapped for roughly two and a half days, losing his backpack and boots in the fall. His situation seemed hopeless until an avalanche sent snow into the crevasse, raising the floor enough for him to climb out.

Once free, Dawa continued downward almost entirely through sheer determination. He found abandoned ropes that helped him negotiate sections of the mountain and slowly crawled toward Base Camp, severely weakened and injured. On the sixth day, a Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee cleanup team spotted a lone figure crawling near the Khumbu Icefall.

It was Dawa, alive, despite his family having already begun mourning him. He was taken to safety and eventually airlifted to Kathmandu, where doctors treated him for dehydration, frostbite and a fractured bone. Recalling the ordeal from his hospital bed, Dawa said he had believed he would die on the mountain.

16/08/2026

The Tonlé Sap River is a unique 120-kilometer-long waterway in Cambodia that connects the Tonlé Sap Lake to the Mekong River. It is famous for completely reversing its flow twice a year, acting as a giant natural flood reservoir that supports millions of people.

16/08/2026

During World War I, syphilis was more than a medical problem, it was a threat to military manpower. Soldiers who contracted serious venereal diseases could be hospitalized or removed from active duty, sometimes for extended periods. With millions of young men crowded into military camps and cities across Europe, prostitution and sexually transmitted infections became a major concern for military authorities.

France developed systems to monitor and treat prostitutes, while soldiers were warned repeatedly about the dangers of infection. Yet the absence of antibiotics made syphilis particularly dangerous. Treatment was difficult, prolonged, and often unreliable, meaning an infected soldier could be lost to the fighting for a considerable period.

One of the darker stories associated with wartime France is that some prostitutes who had severe syphilis reportedly charged higher prices, because infected soldiers could be taken away from the front lines. Whether this was a widespread practice is difficult to establish, and historians treat the claim cautiously. What is beyond dispute is the grim reality behind it: during WWI, a disease could keep a soldier out of combat almost as effectively as a battlefield wound.

16/08/2026

When a man in Spain reportedly learned that his neighbor had been hospitalized, he soon realized there was another problem waiting back at the apartment: the neighbor’s dog appeared to have been left without anyone regularly caring for it.

The dog could be seen on the balcony above his own, waiting while its owner was away. Rather than ignore the situation, the man began helping from below.

According to widely shared social media posts, he used the neighboring balconies to reach food and water up to the dog, returning repeatedly to make sure it had something to eat and drink. Photos showing him stretching upward toward the animal later circulated widely online.

He reportedly continued checking on and feeding the dog until its owner was eventually able to return home.

The images touched many viewers because there was nothing complicated about what he was doing. He simply noticed that an animal needed help and found a practical way to provide it.

The photographs show a neighbor reaching from one balcony toward a dog above, a small act of care that ensured the animal was not completely forgotten while its owner was away.

Sometimes kindness is simply noticing who has been left waiting and refusing to look away.

16/08/2026

In 1974, Chinese farmers digging a well accidentally discovered an underground army that had been hidden for over 2,000 years — thousands of life-sized soldiers standing guard, exactly where China's first emperor left them.

Qin Shi Huang, who unified China in 221 BC and became its first emperor, began preparing for his death almost as soon as he took power. He commissioned an enormous funerary complex, and buried alongside him were an estimated 8,000 terracotta soldiers, complete with horses, chariots, and weapons — meant to protect him in the afterlife the same way an army protected him in life. Remarkably, no two soldiers' faces are exactly alike, suggesting individual craftsmanship on a massive, almost industrial scale for the era.

The emperor's obsession with immortality was infamous — he reportedly died from mercury poisoning after consuming elixirs he believed would grant him eternal life. His tomb complex itself, believed to house his actual burial chamber, has still never been excavated, partly out of concern for preserving what lies inside and partly due to reports of dangerously high mercury levels in the soil.

What do you think is still waiting to be found in the unopened parts of the tomb?

16/08/2026