ONTD

Oh No, They Didn’t, also known as ONTD, is the largest community on LiveJournal with over 100,000 members. The organization focuses on celebrity gossip and pop culture, with most of its articles aggregated from other gossip blogs.

The site formed a venture with pop culture blog network Buzz Media in July 2010,

The site boasted over 300,000 page views daily based on a 2008 Popmatters post, although it has considerably diminished in recent years. When LiveJournal raised the remark limit on posts from 5000 to 10,000 comments, ONTD contained the first post to reach this new limit.

Origin of ONTD

The community came into existence in 2004 by teens Erin Lang, Bri Draffen, and Breniecia Reuben.

ONTD publishes a mean of 100 member posts every day, with most articles getting between 100 and 500 remarks on average.

The community moderators post a weekly article called” Free for All Friday” (or” FFAF”) that enables members to post hyperlinks remarks. These free-for-all articles have often enlarged to include community discussion posts for significant pop culture events such as the Academy Awards, the Olympics (called” Free for All Olympics” or” FFAO” posts), and Saturday Night Live seeing posts.

As well as members submitting the articles themselves, ONTD depends heavily on user involvement in the comments section. It is where members may express their views on posts. Members often illustrate their reaction to a particular news item. Submitting an animated GIF image represented their feelings.

“Death Of Michael Jackson” post on ONTD

After the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, according to MSNBC,” users expressed their collective grief by posting a Fantasia Barrino GIF in ONTD. It is where the American Idol star wails and flails her arms wildly.” Other users expressed concern over the continued usage of a popular GIF shot out of the music video”Thriller.” It was a scene of Jackson eating popcorn, an image posted on the community in anticipation of a controversial or”flame-worthy topic.”

ONTD boycotted KPOP. Again and again, I have CALLED them OUT in their racism, and my posts on ONTD have attracted international media recognition into the cause. KPOP is dismissing the global community, and we must show them that until they create a CHANGE, we will NOT allow KPOP to be encouraged in any way, shape, or FORM on Oh No They Didn’t.

Awards and recognition of ONTD

ONTD won the very best Gossip Blog award in the 2008 Weblog Awards. They defeated other favorite celebrity blogs like D-Listed, Perez Hilton, and TMZ, with a whopping 44 percent vote.

The Swedish paper Metro described the neighborhood as” Gossip on steroids.” The newspaper also noted that the reader could” find a good deal of highlights using a high quantity of articles. It was before newspapers get their hands on it. 

The A.V. Club cited ONTD as a” favorite time-wasting website.” And they wrote that” the comments section can occasionally be more amusing than the articles themselves.” In December 2009, the users of ONTD called” jackals” since the stories posted on the site came from other sources. In response, the users embraced the word and used the term in later posts, in addition to manipulating their icons to add photos of their animals. 

Another bizarre, I read on ONTD.

Sudan Allows Alcohol Consumption After 30 Years of Islamic Law

Sudan abolished a law against apostasy, which carried the death penalty and hammering prohibitions on drinking alcohol. It abolished some of their most infamous restrictions of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist rule.

Authorities also have officially outlawed female genital mutilation, a measure previously announced. Justice Minister Nasir Aldin Abdul Bari said Saturday in an interview on state T.V. It was the first widely publicized explanation of these amendments made weekly.

“We are eager to demolish any discrimination that was enacted from the old regime and to proceed toward equality of citizenship along with a democratic transformation,” Abdul Bari said.

The punishments

Punishment by whipping, commonly enacted by morality police for alleged infractions during Bashir’s reign, was also abolished. This article I read in ONTD shocked me.

Bashir turned Sudan into an international pariah after seizing power in 1989. The army in April, a year amid mass protests, overthrew him. The youth that drove the demonstrations have since pushed ahead with a low-level revolution against the nation’s social conservatism. It left the transitional authorities of military and civilian officials rushing to catch up.

The New law

Under the new laws, Sudan’s Christians would drink, import, and sell alcohol, Abdul Bari said.

In one of the most notorious cases of the apostasy law employed, a pregnant woman in 2014 received a death sentence. It was after refusing to renounce her religion in favor of Islam. She became free and abandoned Sudan after an international outcry.

The justice minister said that the government is analyzing calls to hand over Sudanese citizens wanted by the International Criminal Court. It included Bashir, who detains for corruption for two years. However, whined by The Hague-based association alleged war crimes in Darfur.

“The entire government is analyzing the many ways of how to prosecute the Darfur crimes,” Abdul Bari stated, however, has” in generally accepted the principle of them emerging in the front of the ICC.”

Exclusives on ONTD

ONTD was the first online community to break the news of Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy, following leaking OK! Magazine’s front page cover. And it was the first to report that Kirk Acevedo had announced via his Facebook status update he is no more with the Fox play, Fringe.

When the rumors of Jon from Jon and Kate Gosselin’s infidelity started emerging in February 2009, a photograph of Jon became viral on ONTD. It showed him posing by two young women in a neighborhood pub. National gossip publications picked up the information and posted a screengrab of ONTD in Star and U.S. Weekly.

Britney Spears news on ONTD

The most scandalous and notable events got nicknames to distinguish them in future articles. 

The most prominent was the January 2008 hospitalization of Britney Spears. Hostage Brituation’08 from the community members dubbed it. This nickname was afterward picked up and used by Rolling Stone. 

The abuse case between singers Rihanna and Chris Brown was dubbed Domestic Disturbia’09 by the community members. It starts a meme (“Gokey is a douche”) linked to some buddies of American Idol contestant Danny Gokey. It included his negative remarks and pictures regarding fellow contestant Adam Lambert. 

The forced removal of”#gokeyisadouche” from Twitter’s trending themes list prompted a debate on Twitter’s censorship.

Betty White

The community on ONTD was also in charge of a hoax that claimed actress Betty White was no more. Following a post titled” Renner, Just Happy to Be Here” was approved to the community, It was the first poster edited the post to reveal a screengrab of a TMZ post claiming White had died.

Fake news

Users exhibited shock and confusion, before slowly realizing the post was a fake when not only did the source connection only go to TMZ’s most important site. But the post mentioned, “chances of foul play and drug misuse, and grandparents that Betty White does not have.” 

Community moderators deleted the article within 40 minutes, but not before” Betty White” became a Twitter trending subject. Fans urged each other to tweet #BettyWhiteFacts along with other complementary messages about White rather than dispersing further death rumors.

 Lindsay Lohan had an affair with Tommy Mottola.

Another noteworthy hoax involved a fake Twitter screenshot of Michael Lohan saying his daughter Lindsay Lohan had an affair with Tommy Mottola when she was 17, and she had HIV. 

ONTD deleted the article. Perez Hilton reported on the screenshot as if it were accurate, and other gossip sites followed. Michael thought that the screenshot was real and that someone had murdered his Twitter accounts. Lindsay refused to believe her father was naive, stating.

“He is a grown man and has done the same things on T.V./interviews, why wouldn’t he lie Twitter, and everywhere else!” 

The moderators of ONTD later apologized for the scandal. They were” pretty appalled to find out that NONE of the other gossip or news sites posted the story. They bothered to check for accuracy and have yet to post a retraction or apology for spreading such a vicious rumor.” 

It exceeded ONTD’s formerly unknown limit on comments. Finally, this resulted in almost a week of downtime to the community, while LiveJournal worked to repair the issue. 

The amount of traffic the community received brought all of LiveJournal’s servers down. It resulted in downtime for the entire domain. During that time, members migrated temporarily to on once again. 

Mosquitoes news

Florida mosquitoes: Florida has approved the release of 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes

Local officials in Florida approved the release of 750 million mosquitoes, genetically modified to reduce local populations.

The purpose is to reduce the number of mosquitoes that carry diseases such as the Zika virus.

After years of debate, a pilot job’s green-lighting drew a swift outcry from environmental groups, who cautioned unintended consequences.

One group condemned the plan as a general public” Jurassic Park experimentation.”

Activists warn of possible damage to ecosystems and the possible creation of hybrid, insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.

However, the company says that there will be no adverse risk to people or the environment, and factors into a slate of government-backed studies. This news got viral in ontd.

The strategy to release the mosquitoes from 2021 in the Florida Keys, a series of islands, stems months following federal regulators accepted the modified mosquitoes. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes disperse deadly diseases to people such as hepatitis, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. So the aim is to discharge the male, altered mosquitoes that will hopefully breed with wild female mosquitoes.

Nevertheless, the males carry a protein that will kill off any female offspring until they reach the adult biting era. Males, which only feed on nectar, will endure and pass on the enzymes.

Over time, the aim is to lessen Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the area and lessen disease spread to humans.

Florida Keys Mosquito Control District

On Tuesday, officials at the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) gave final approval to release 750 million modified mosquitoes over two years.

The program has many critics, such as nearly 240,000 people who signed a petition on Change.org slamming Oxitec’s strategy to utilize U.S. states” as a testing ground for all these mutant bugs.”

According to Oxitec’s site, the business has found positive outcomes in running field trials in Brazil. Additionally, it intends to deploy them in Texas beginning in 2021 and has gained national approval, but not local or state consent, according to reports.

In a statement denouncing the job, environmental group Friends of the Earth said: “The release of genetically engineered mosquitoes will put Floridians, the environment, and endangered species in danger during a pandemic.” There were a lot of shares from ONTD to other social media.

However, an Oxitec scientist told A.P. news agency: “We’ve released over a billion of our mosquitoes through recent years. There’s not any potential for danger to the environment or humans”.

The Aedes aegypti is invasive to southern Florida and breeds in metropolitan areas where they reside in standing water pools. In several locations, such as the Florida Keys, they have developed a resistance to pesticides.

World Council of Churches appeals to Turkey.

World Council of Churches appeals to Turkey on mosque decision

The World Council of Churches has called on Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to undo his decision to turn the famous Hagia Sophia memorial back into a mosque.

The Unesco World Heritage site in Istanbul has been a museum since 1934.

The president announced his decision on Friday after a court judgment that annulled its museum status.

The Hagia Sophia, built 1,500 years back as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, transformed into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.

Since then, no more religious services at the site, but devout Muslims have long campaigned for worship to be allowed.

Some questions raised on ONTD “What does the letter say?”

The Geneva-based World Council of Churches says it represents over 500 million Christians.

The correspondence is from Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary, that says that the Council feels” grief and dismay.”

“By deciding to convert the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque, you have reversed that favorable indication of Turkey’s willingness. And changed it to a sign of grief and division.”

He writes that the decision” will inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions, and mistrust, endangering our efforts to attract people of different faiths together at the table of dialogue and co-operation.”

“In the interests of promoting mutual understanding, respect, dialogue and co-operation, and averting cultivating old animosities and divisions, we urgently appeal to you to reconsider and reverse your decision,” the letter continues.

What has President Erdogan stated?

The Council of State decided, Turkey’s highest administrative body, after a petition from an NGO – the Association for the Protection of Historical Monuments and the Environment.

Ottoman Sultan Mehmed owned the building.

The issue has emphasized the battle between those who want Turkey to stay secular and President Erdogan’s conservative religious foundation.

He defended his own decision on Friday by stressing that the nation had exercised its sovereign right in converting back the building into a mosque.

“Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia is going to be open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said.

Today Turkey had”435 churches and synagogues open for worship” while” few buildings that our ancestors built in Eastern Europe and Balkans stand now.”

What other reaction was there?

Unesco expressed profound sorrow at the move and called for Turkey to open conversation” without delay.”

The head of the Eastern Orthodox Church has condemned the movement.

Greece, home to several millions of Orthodox followers, called it an” open provocation into the civilized world.”

In Russia, the Church to the world’s biggest Orthodox Christian community promptly expressed regret that the Turkish court hadn’t considered its concerns when ruling on Hagia Sophia.

And Turkey’s most famous writer, Orhan Pamuk, told the BBC: “There are millions of secular Turks like me who cries against this, but no one hears their voices.

History of a worldwide icon

Hagia Sophia’s complex history started in the Year 537. It was when Byzantine emperor Justinian built the huge Church overlooking the Golden Horn harbor. The article was nice posted on ONTD.

With its massive dome, it was going to be the world’s largest Church and building.

It remained in Byzantine hands for centuries aside from a brief moment in 1204 when Crusaders raided the town.

In 1453, at a devastating blow to the Byzantines, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captured Istanbul (formerly Called Constantinople). And also the victorious conqueror performed Friday prayers inside Hagia Sophia.

The Ottomans soon converted the building into a mosque. It included four minarets into the outside and covering elaborate Christian icons and gold mosaics using Arabic religious calligraphy panels.

After centuries in the Center of the Muslim Ottoman empire, it became a museum in 1934 in a driveway. The purpose was to make Turkey more secular.

Today Hagia Sophia is Turkey’s most popular tourist site, bringing more than 3.7 million people per year.

ONTD

Oh No, They Didn’t, also known as ONTD, is the largest community on LiveJournal with over 100,000 members. The organization focuses on celebrity gossip and pop culture, with most of its articles aggregated from other gossip blogs.

The site formed a venture with pop culture blog network Buzz Media in July 2010,

The site boasted over 300,000 page views daily based on a 2008 Popmatters post, although it has considerably diminished in recent years. When LiveJournal raised the remark limit on posts from 5000 to 10,000 comments, ONTD contained the first post to reach this new limit.

Origin of ONTD

The community came into existence in 2004 by teens Erin Lang, Bri Draffen, and Breniecia Reuben.

ONTD publishes a mean of 100 member posts every day, with most articles getting between 100 and 500 remarks on average.

The community moderators post a weekly article called” Free for All Friday” (or” FFAF”) that enables members to post hyperlinks remarks. These free-for-all articles have often enlarged to include community discussion posts for significant pop culture events such as the Academy Awards, the Olympics (called” Free for All Olympics” or” FFAO” posts), and Saturday Night Live seeing posts.

As well as members submitting the articles themselves, ONTD depends heavily on user involvement in the comments section. It is where members may express their views on posts. Members often illustrate their reaction to a particular news item. Submitting an animated GIF image represented their feelings.

“Death Of Michael Jackson” post on ONTD

After the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009, according to MSNBC,” users expressed their collective grief by posting a Fantasia Barrino GIF in ONTD. It is where the American Idol star wails and flails her arms wildly.” Other users expressed concern over the continued usage of a popular GIF shot out of the music video”Thriller.” It was a scene of Jackson eating popcorn, an image posted on the community in anticipation of a controversial or”flame-worthy topic.”

ONTD boycotted KPOP. Again and again, I have CALLED them OUT in their racism, and my posts on ONTD have attracted international media recognition into the cause. KPOP is dismissing the global community, and we must show them that until they create a CHANGE, we will NOT allow KPOP to be encouraged in any way, shape, or FORM on Oh No They Didn’t.

Awards and recognition of ONTD

ONTD won the very best Gossip Blog award in the 2008 Weblog Awards. They defeated other favorite celebrity blogs like D-Listed, Perez Hilton, and TMZ, with a whopping 44 percent vote.

The Swedish paper Metro described the neighborhood as” Gossip on steroids.” The newspaper also noted that the reader could” find a good deal of highlights using a high quantity of articles. It was before newspapers get their hands on it. 

The A.V. Club cited ONTD as a” favorite time-wasting website.” And they wrote that” the comments section can occasionally be more amusing than the articles themselves.” In December 2009, the users of ONTD called” jackals” since the stories posted on the site came from other sources. In response, the users embraced the word and used the term in later posts, in addition to manipulating their icons to add photos of their animals. 

Another bizarre, I read on ONTD.

Sudan Allows Alcohol Consumption After 30 Years of Islamic Law

Sudan abolished a law against apostasy, which carried the death penalty and hammering prohibitions on drinking alcohol. It abolished some of their most infamous restrictions of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist rule.

Authorities also have officially outlawed female genital mutilation, a measure previously announced. Justice Minister Nasir Aldin Abdul Bari said Saturday in an interview on state T.V. It was the first widely publicized explanation of these amendments made weekly.

“We are eager to demolish any discrimination that was enacted from the old regime and to proceed toward equality of citizenship along with a democratic transformation,” Abdul Bari said.

The punishments

Punishment by whipping, commonly enacted by morality police for alleged infractions during Bashir’s reign, was also abolished. This article I read in ONTD shocked me.

Bashir turned Sudan into an international pariah after seizing power in 1989. The army in April, a year amid mass protests, overthrew him. The youth that drove the demonstrations have since pushed ahead with a low-level revolution against the nation’s social conservatism. It left the transitional authorities of military and civilian officials rushing to catch up.

The New law

Under the new laws, Sudan’s Christians would drink, import, and sell alcohol, Abdul Bari said.

In one of the most notorious cases of the apostasy law employed, a pregnant woman in 2014 received a death sentence. It was after refusing to renounce her religion in favor of Islam. She became free and abandoned Sudan after an international outcry.

The justice minister said that the government is analyzing calls to hand over Sudanese citizens wanted by the International Criminal Court. It included Bashir, who detains for corruption for two years. However, whined by The Hague-based association alleged war crimes in Darfur.

“The entire government is analyzing the many ways of how to prosecute the Darfur crimes,” Abdul Bari stated, however, has” in generally accepted the principle of them emerging in the front of the ICC.”

Exclusives on ONTD

ONTD was the first online community to break the news of Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy, following leaking OK! Magazine’s front page cover. And it was the first to report that Kirk Acevedo had announced via his Facebook status update he is no more with the Fox play, Fringe.

When the rumors of Jon from Jon and Kate Gosselin’s infidelity started emerging in February 2009, a photograph of Jon became viral on ONTD. It showed him posing by two young women in a neighborhood pub. National gossip publications picked up the information and posted a screengrab of ONTD in Star and U.S. Weekly.

Britney Spears news on ONTD

The most scandalous and notable events got nicknames to distinguish them in future articles. 

The most prominent was the January 2008 hospitalization of Britney Spears. Hostage Brituation’08 from the community members dubbed it. This nickname was afterward picked up and used by Rolling Stone. 

The abuse case between singers Rihanna and Chris Brown was dubbed Domestic Disturbia’09 by the community members. It starts a meme (“Gokey is a douche”) linked to some buddies of American Idol contestant Danny Gokey. It included his negative remarks and pictures regarding fellow contestant Adam Lambert. 

The forced removal of”#gokeyisadouche” from Twitter’s trending themes list prompted a debate on Twitter’s censorship.

Betty White

The community on ONTD was also in charge of a hoax that claimed actress Betty White was no more. Following a post titled” Renner, Just Happy to Be Here” was approved to the community, It was the first poster edited the post to reveal a screengrab of a TMZ post claiming White had died.

Fake news

Users exhibited shock and confusion, before slowly realizing the post was a fake when not only did the source connection only go to TMZ’s most important site. But the post mentioned, “chances of foul play and drug misuse, and grandparents that Betty White does not have.” 

Community moderators deleted the article within 40 minutes, but not before” Betty White” became a Twitter trending subject. Fans urged each other to tweet #BettyWhiteFacts along with other complementary messages about White rather than dispersing further death rumors.

 Lindsay Lohan had an affair with Tommy Mottola.

Another noteworthy hoax involved a fake Twitter screenshot of Michael Lohan saying his daughter Lindsay Lohan had an affair with Tommy Mottola when she was 17, and she had HIV. 

ONTD deleted the article. Perez Hilton reported on the screenshot as if it were accurate, and other gossip sites followed. Michael thought that the screenshot was real and that someone had murdered his Twitter accounts. Lindsay refused to believe her father was naive, stating.

“He is a grown man and has done the same things on T.V./interviews, why wouldn’t he lie Twitter, and everywhere else!” 

The moderators of ONTD later apologized for the scandal. They were” pretty appalled to find out that NONE of the other gossip or news sites posted the story. They bothered to check for accuracy and have yet to post a retraction or apology for spreading such a vicious rumor.” 

It exceeded ONTD’s formerly unknown limit on comments. Finally, this resulted in almost a week of downtime to the community, while LiveJournal worked to repair the issue. 

The amount of traffic the community received brought all of LiveJournal’s servers down. It resulted in downtime for the entire domain. During that time, members migrated temporarily to on once again. 

Mosquitoes news

Florida mosquitoes: Florida has approved the release of 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes

Local officials in Florida approved the release of 750 million mosquitoes, genetically modified to reduce local populations.

The purpose is to reduce the number of mosquitoes that carry diseases such as the Zika virus.

After years of debate, a pilot job’s green-lighting drew a swift outcry from environmental groups, who cautioned unintended consequences.

One group condemned the plan as a general public” Jurassic Park experimentation.”

Activists warn of possible damage to ecosystems and the possible creation of hybrid, insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.

However, the company says that there will be no adverse risk to people or the environment, and factors into a slate of government-backed studies. This news got viral in ontd.

The strategy to release the mosquitoes from 2021 in the Florida Keys, a series of islands, stems months following federal regulators accepted the modified mosquitoes. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes disperse deadly diseases to people such as hepatitis, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. So the aim is to discharge the male, altered mosquitoes that will hopefully breed with wild female mosquitoes.

Nevertheless, the males carry a protein that will kill off any female offspring until they reach the adult biting era. Males, which only feed on nectar, will endure and pass on the enzymes.

Over time, the aim is to lessen Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the area and lessen disease spread to humans.

Florida Keys Mosquito Control District

On Tuesday, officials at the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) gave final approval to release 750 million modified mosquitoes over two years.

The program has many critics, such as nearly 240,000 people who signed a petition on Change.org slamming Oxitec’s strategy to utilize U.S. states” as a testing ground for all these mutant bugs.”

According to Oxitec’s site, the business has found positive outcomes in running field trials in Brazil. Additionally, it intends to deploy them in Texas beginning in 2021 and has gained national approval, but not local or state consent, according to reports.

In a statement denouncing the job, environmental group Friends of the Earth said: “The release of genetically engineered mosquitoes will put Floridians, the environment, and endangered species in danger during a pandemic.” There were a lot of shares from ONTD to other social media.

However, an Oxitec scientist told A.P. news agency: “We’ve released over a billion of our mosquitoes through recent years. There’s not any potential for danger to the environment or humans”.

The Aedes aegypti is invasive to southern Florida and breeds in metropolitan areas where they reside in standing water pools. In several locations, such as the Florida Keys, they have developed a resistance to pesticides.

World Council of Churches appeals to Turkey.

World Council of Churches appeals to Turkey on mosque decision

The World Council of Churches has called on Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to undo his decision to turn the famous Hagia Sophia memorial back into a mosque.

The Unesco World Heritage site in Istanbul has been a museum since 1934.

The president announced his decision on Friday after a court judgment that annulled its museum status.

The Hagia Sophia, built 1,500 years back as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, transformed into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.

Since then, no more religious services at the site, but devout Muslims have long campaigned for worship to be allowed.

Some questions raised on ONTD “What does the letter say?”

The Geneva-based World Council of Churches says it represents over 500 million Christians.

The correspondence is from Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary, that says that the Council feels” grief and dismay.”

“By deciding to convert the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque, you have reversed that favorable indication of Turkey’s willingness. And changed it to a sign of grief and division.”

He writes that the decision” will inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions, and mistrust, endangering our efforts to attract people of different faiths together at the table of dialogue and co-operation.”

“In the interests of promoting mutual understanding, respect, dialogue and co-operation, and averting cultivating old animosities and divisions, we urgently appeal to you to reconsider and reverse your decision,” the letter continues.

What has President Erdogan stated?

The Council of State decided, Turkey’s highest administrative body, after a petition from an NGO – the Association for the Protection of Historical Monuments and the Environment.

Ottoman Sultan Mehmed owned the building.

The issue has emphasized the battle between those who want Turkey to stay secular and President Erdogan’s conservative religious foundation.

He defended his own decision on Friday by stressing that the nation had exercised its sovereign right in converting back the building into a mosque.

“Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia is going to be open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said.

Today Turkey had”435 churches and synagogues open for worship” while” few buildings that our ancestors built in Eastern Europe and Balkans stand now.”

What other reaction was there?

Unesco expressed profound sorrow at the move and called for Turkey to open conversation” without delay.”

The head of the Eastern Orthodox Church has condemned the movement.

Greece, home to several millions of Orthodox followers, called it an” open provocation into the civilized world.”

In Russia, the Church to the world’s biggest Orthodox Christian community promptly expressed regret that the Turkish court hadn’t considered its concerns when ruling on Hagia Sophia.

And Turkey’s most famous writer, Orhan Pamuk, told the BBC: “There are millions of secular Turks like me who cries against this, but no one hears their voices.

History of a worldwide icon

Hagia Sophia’s complex history started in the Year 537. It was when Byzantine emperor Justinian built the huge Church overlooking the Golden Horn harbor. The article was nice posted on ONTD.

With its massive dome, it was going to be the world’s largest Church and building.

It remained in Byzantine hands for centuries aside from a brief moment in 1204 when Crusaders raided the town.

In 1453, at a devastating blow to the Byzantines, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captured Istanbul (formerly Called Constantinople). And also the victorious conqueror performed Friday prayers inside Hagia Sophia.

The Ottomans soon converted the building into a mosque. It included four minarets into the outside and covering elaborate Christian icons and gold mosaics using Arabic religious calligraphy panels.

After centuries in the Center of the Muslim Ottoman empire, it became a museum in 1934 in a driveway. The purpose was to make Turkey more secular.

Today Hagia Sophia is Turkey’s most popular tourist site, bringing more than 3.7 million people per year.