7min clip - The earthquake that changed history

7min clip - How Custard Tarts (Pastel de Nata) Are Made in Portugal With A 100-Year-Old Recipe | Regional Eats

6min 50sec clip - How One Of Portugal’s Rarest Cheeses - São Jorge - Is Made On A Remote Volcanic Island | Regional Eats

18min 26sec clip - Portugal’s Insane Plan to Double Its Territory

How Sousa Mendes #saved up to 30,000 people from the #Nazis with a rubber #stamp

"In the spring of 1940, when the Nazis overran France from the north, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country towards the south. In order to cross the border they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and together with a flood of other refugees, tens of thousands of Jews besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get that life-saving piece of paper. 

The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion. The Portuguese government – which had little desire to accept any of these refugees – sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and dismissed him from the foreign office. 

 Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had a deep reverence for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust." (from "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" by Yuval Noah Harari 

Start reading it for free: https://amzn.eu/cnXbtD2 )

5min 12sec #bbcreel clip - The mysterious 'inverted tower' steeped in Templar myth

text from source page " Steeped in strange symbology, the breath-taking 'inverted tower', or initiation well, found at the heart of Sintra's Quinta da Regaleira celebrates Portugal's unique historical connection to the mysterious and enigmatic Knights Templar. "