Spanish Civil War. The war began after a pronunciamiento (declaration of opposition) by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces, under the leadership of José Sanjurjo, against the elected government of the Second Spanish Republic, at the time under the leadership of President Manuel Azaña. People's Olympiad. The Spanish Armada. Throughout 1587 and early 1588, rumours that Philip of Spain was assembling a massive fleet to conquer England and Ireland were spreading like wildfire.
Reports came to Ireland mainly from the crews of trading ships returning from the ports of Spain and France. English intelligence sources confirmed these rumours but Elizabeth evidently believed that a war situation could be avoided, even up to early 1588, when the massive fleet was nearing readiness to sail from Lisbon. From the outset, the fleet seemed destined for bad luck. After a month at sea, little progress had been made due to unfavourable winds. Food which was badly packed had already gone rotten and drinking water had gone stagnant. The emergence of supremacist puritanism in modern Islam – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics. The real challenge that confronts Muslim intellectuals today is that political interests have come to dominate public discourses to the point that moral investigations and thinking have become marginalized in modern Islam.
Myanmar. The ancient Chinese exam that inspired modern job recruitment. 22 July 2013Last updated at 19:41 ET In Victorian England, getting a job was all about who you knew.
But have things really changed that much, asks Lucy Kellaway. Getting an office job can be a complicated process. Remembering Sri Lanka's Black July. 23 July 2013Last updated at 02:16 GMT The mob violence that erupted after an attack on 13 soldiers triggered a 26-year civil war Thirty years ago, Tamil separatists stepping up militant attacks in northern Sri Lanka killed 13 soldiers who reported for duty only a day earlier.
Over the next few days, mobs of the Sinhalese majority took revenge, killing between 400 and 3,000 Tamils around the country and triggering a civil war that lasted 26 years and sent hundreds of thousands of Tamils into exile. The BBC's Charles Haviland reports on the legacy of what came to be known as Black July. Bastille Day: How peace and revolution got mixed up. 13 July 2013Last updated at 19:54 ET By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris Monarchists did not want France's national day to be remembered as a day of bloodshed, historians say When the French parade on Sunday for their national day they will be marking the fall of the Bastille prison-fortress on 14 July 1789.
Everyone knows that. Or do they? In fact there is a surprising twist in the story of this proud Republican anniversary. House of Habsburg. The House takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland by Count Radbot of Klettgau, who chose to name his fortress Habsburg.
Difference Between UK, Britain, And England. Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s - In Focus. Fractured by internal conflict and foreign intervention for centuries, Afghanistan made several tentative steps toward modernization in the mid-20th century.
In the 1950s and 1960s, some of the biggest strides were made toward a more liberal and westernized lifestyle, while trying to maintain a respect for more conservative factions. Though officially a neutral nation, Afghanistan was courted and influenced by the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War, accepting Soviet machinery and weapons, and U.S. financial aid. Viewpoint: Could one man have shortened the Vietnam War? 8 July 2013Last updated at 23:58 GMT Konrad Kellen was an unknown defence analyst who might have changed the course of the Vietnam War if only people had listened to him, argues Malcolm Gladwell.
Listening well is a gift. The ability to hear what someone says and not filter it through your own biases is an instinctive ability similar to having a photographic memory. Remembering the veterans of 'forgotten war' 10 July 2013Last updated at 19:59 ET By Stephen Robb BBC News The British contingent was mostly made up of young national servicemen Just a handful of years after World War II ended, the US, Britain, China and many more countries became embroiled in another conflict lasting three years and whose death toll is thought to be in the millions.
Yet the Korean War is often referred to as the "forgotten war" by British veterans of it. Io9. Which protectorates are not listening to the US via the Snowden situation?
Well, since when have the South American countries started thumbing their nose at their "friend" to the North? America started losing its grip there when they stopped installing their own regional administrators - twenty, even ten years ago, they'd have lined up to prevent Snowden from travelling there. Historically, Hong Kong would have handed him straight over, Ireland wouldn't have even considered asylum, nor would Germany and France have had so many ministers line up to say it was Europes job to protect him. Genocide in the 20th Century. Adolf Hitler to his Army commanders, August 22, 1939: "Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my 'Death's Head Units' with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language.