Archive for the ‘History’ Category
40 years after Che’s death
October 9th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
As recorded in this item on the BBC web site, today is the 40th anniversary of the summary execution of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara following his capture the previous day by Bolivian army forces. Today Che’s body lies in the town of Santa Clara in Cuba. The next holiday for Vee and me – […]
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Remembering Tomas Masaryk
September 14th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, few people have probably heard of Tomas Masaryk but, in those two countries, he is warmly remembered as the founding father of the state of Czechoslovakia which existed from 1918 to 1993. Today is the 70th anniversary of his death and an opportunity for a wider audience to […]
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Remembering the Peterloo massacre
August 16th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Peterloo. You may never have heard of this incident. But I lived in Manchester until I was 23 and, during my university course, I spent a lot of time studying at the city’s Central Library in St Peter’s Square, the site of the Peterloo event. The Peterloo […]
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What caused the Tunguska explosion?
August 15th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
The force of the explosion was equivalent to twenty million tonnes of TNT and a thousand times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. An estimated sixty million trees were felled over an area of over two thousand square kilometres and yet apparently nobody was killed. It happened at 7.15 […]
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Why was Socrates put on trial?
July 31st, 2007 by Roger Darlington
I’ve recently watched a couple of programmes on Channel Four called “Athens: The truth About Democracy”. These programmes were presented by historian Bettany Hughes who would make any programme watchable. In fact, the subject matter itself was fascinating and the most intriguing question raised was why, in a society enjoying more freedom and democracy than […]
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We are all African
July 19th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
I’ve always thought that racism, as well as being morally repugnant, is intellectually illogical because, if you trace back anyone’s antecedents, you quickly arrive in another country and ultimately of course we all evolved from the first humans in Africa. This week, “Nature” magazine has published a study confirming our African origins. There’s a report […]
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The only WWII battle in North America
July 19th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
In spite of my long-standing interest in the Second World War, I had no idea until this week that there was a full-scale battle on North American soil. The location was the island of Attu at the western-most reaches of the Aleutian chain. The fighting was fierce and the death toll ran into thousands. You […]
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“Europe At War” (2)
July 11th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
At last I’ve finished reading the 500-page work “Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory” written by the British historian Norman Davies. The main theme of this work is that the western nations have failed to comprehend and acknowledge the scale of the battles and the deaths on the Eastern Front which are such as […]
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“Europe At War” (1)
June 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
One of the many subjects in which I am interested is history and I’ve just started reading the 500-page work “Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory” written by the British historian Norman Davies. This contains many fascinating facts, figures and insights. For instance, consider this table which sets out estimates of military war dead […]
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The Arab-Israeli conflict
May 4th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
How did it start and how will it finish? These are HUGE questions but, when I was on holiday in Israel recently, I read a very interesting book on the subject which I’ve now reviewed here.
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