(Newswire.net — August 17, 2017) —Former President Barack Obama’s tweet, which became the most liked tweet ever, is actually a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”.
”No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Obama wrote this on Saturday evening, Aug 13, under a photo of him greeting a group of children of different nationalities through a windowsill.
White House photographer during Obama’s administration, Pete Souza, took this photo in 2011, at a day care facility next to Obama’s younger daughter Sasha’s school in Bethesda in Maryland.
According to a Twitter spokesman, the former president’s tweet broke the record at about 10:07 Tuesday evening.
The tweet which previously held the title of the most liked tweet ever was singer Ariana Grande’s message after the terrorist attack following her concert in Manchester, England, on May 22nd, when suicide bomber Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old British-born Libyan, killed 22 people and injured 59 others.
The 23-year old pop star wrote on Twitter: “Broken. From the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.”
Ariana’s tweet scored a whopping 2.70 million likes, but Obama’s tweet beat it with an impresive 3.44 million.
Obama’s tweet now also stands fifth on the list of the most retweeted tweets, right after a teenager who needed retweets to get free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s.
Obama’s record breaking tweet was sent as a response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when three people lost their lives, and more than 20 were injured after a car ploughed into one group of anti-racism protesters.
The Charlottesville event drew the attention of both white supremacy and anti-racism groups. It was organized as a right-wing march, to rebel against the suggested removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, who was the commander of the pro-slavery Confederate Forces during the American Civil War.