We departed Muscat and are sailing to Mumbai, India.  The   Arabian Peninsula  is a largely ignored part of the world by most visitors.  Under 1.25 million square miles are most of the world's oil.  It is relatively small compared to the USA, which has 3.8 msm and 335 million people.  The AP has a population of 86 million. Saudi Arabia  36.5 million Yeman  33.7 million UAE  9.4 million Oman  4.6 million Kuwait  4.3 million Qatar  2.7 million Bahrain  1.5 million The cities with the two largest population are in Saudi Arabia:  Riyadh 7.5 million and Jeddah 4.8 million. However, in 1950 the population was only 9.5 million, mostly Bedouins in the desert.  Then oil was discovered,  first in Iran in 1908  by the British.  But the story of oil goes back to 600 BC, when the Chinese first found this liquid.  More recently, there was Colonel Edwin Drake's 1859 oil well in Pennsylvania, and within a decade came John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company.  Then in 1901, Spindletop i

China started it all, but their totalitarian form of government squelched any potential epidemics.  Yesterday, for example, they had 1938 new cases, or 1.3 new cases/million population.  Yet, they  just closed down Shenzhen , a city of 17.5 million.  Why?  A very small uptick in cases.  Much of Shanghai is also quarantined.   However, they are teaching Hong Kong a lesson, for that territory yesterday had 32,340 cases, a rate of 4267 new cases/million.   In comparison, the USA only had 5143 new cases, or 15 new cases/million South Korea led the world with 350,176 new cases, or 6826 new cases/million. On Saturday I posted on  WHO REALLY IS VLADIMIR PUTIN?   Today I feature the polar opposite world luminary, 44-year old  Volodymyr Zelensky : Born to Jewish parents, father a professor and mother an engineer, in Ukraine. His grandfather's father and three brothers died in the Holocaust. Earned a law degree from the Kyiv National Economic University. Met Olena in college, dated for eight