Let's Fire Up Those Neurons!

Exactly! It almost does. Hence the trickery with the other clues.

 

Time to put Puzzle-8063 to bed!

Answer: "The Great Cat Massacre". This was a historical event that took place in 1730 in Paris, when a group of print-shop workers ran amok and killed every cat they could lay their hands on. Why, you ask? You can read about it in the titular essay "The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin" in Robert Darnton's (historian, Princeton) book (PDF here). This essay is an excellent example of micro-history, as are the other essays in the book. The book is at once scholarly and very well written. Cerebral entertainment of a high order!

 

I couldn't get it

 

Clues:

Top Row:
(1) The very famous Mir Zakah coin depicting Alexander the Great commemorating his Indian conquests. This coin is unique in that it is thought to be the only one with a true likeness of Alexander! It was found in a well at Mir Zakah, Afghanistan in 1947. Elephants are used on coins to mark conquests in India or Africa. Alexander is also wearing an elephant headdress, although that is not apparent in the picture. You can read all about it here and here and here. The hope was that neurites would find their way to Alexander because an elephant almost automatically means Asia or Africa.

(2) This is a very sophisticated clue, in which cat = Cat and printer= Printer !!!

(3) A 17th century engraving depicting a printshop. In case the small size proved confusing, the picture below it is a different rendition with the folios foregrounded! The massacre was instigated by revolting printshop workers.

Bottom Row:
(4) This clue was designed to be a little oblique and tricky. The hope was that you would google "Person", "Earth", "Moon" . The top hit would be about weight on the earth vs on the moon, from which a diligent neurite would have worked out "mass" i.e. the wieght of an object is diferent on the earth and the moon, but the mass is the same.

(5) The little inset map is Israel. The red dot marks the ancient city of Acre, a UNESCO world heritage site. The idea was for you to google "outline-maps of countries", match the distinctive shape to Israel and then google "cities in northern Israel". Acre would be top of the list. The aerial view would confirm it. You should know me well enough by now to expect that I would not mislead with non-searchable maps to some obscure province and whatnot without additional hints!!

Now Mass + Acre = Massacre.

(6) The last pic is again a printshop. It gives a hint to the aproximate period and emphasized "print" because the folios are right up front.

(7) Additional clues in Post-8077: Catholic Mass.

4047 = square-meters/acre
4840 = square-yards/acre
43560 = square-feet/acre
If you were to put the number "43560" into Google, the conversion pops up right away!



Since we have already had the Jallianwala Bagh massacre etc. represented in earlier puzzles, I took a different route!
Enjoy the essays - happy reading!!

 

You could have asked for more clues!

Anyway, it doesn't matter Viswa! The puzzle is merely an excuse to share a very interesting event, essay, book.

 

I truly enjoyed reading about it which I know is the purpose of the puzzle.

It is so easy after I read your clues in #8084 to understand how you derived the word "Massacre". I got Alexander and Cat but not Massacre. For some reason, I was not splitting the word Massacre into Mass and Acre. My brain is too underdeveloped to derive "Mass" from stick images. @gauri was asking about why won't you initially share the clue about the Mass in the Church but even then, I didn't get it. I was wondering why Soka is talking about Greek, then about Jews and then about Christians. F Grade for me. Perhaps, a clue like Nixon firing the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General would have triggered Massacre for me.

Viswa

 

BTW, I neglected to point out that "The Great Cat Massacre" came to mind as I read some posts on the QPQ thread, around here, about another cat looking for trouble!

 

I knew exactly what discussion triggered your puzzle. I knew it was something to do with cat. But I roamed around Croatia and Dubrovnik and went down the path of archived content.

Viswa

 

This is by no means unusual. So it is with any research, any foray into the unknown. Achieving a truly open mind is very difficult. There is always a residue of the known that robs you of a fresh perspective. Perhaps puzzles are good exercises for that reason alone!

 

I had the Cat Massacre story. I also had Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The wiki had the words "Rome's greatest defeat", "a turning-point in world history" etc etc I figured it could fit as the great massacre you were talking about. Second time, I had substituted 'Alexander Yannai' (even the cat pic had a relevance in his story)!