Résultats Éditeur "Charles River Editors" dans Moderne

Separated by vast gulfs of political, cultural, and philosophical divergence, the three chief Allied nations of World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain - attempted to formulate a joint policy through a series of three conferences during and immediately after the conflict. The second meeting, named the Yalta Conference after its Black Sea venue, occurred in February 1945 and was both the most well-known and most influential of them all.

Cloak and dagger espionage, assassination, dangerous adventure, and strange deceptions such as the Operation Mincemeat plan wherein the corpse of a Welsh pauper fitted with a uniform and false papers deceived the Nazi hierarchy about the location of the Western Allies' first landing in Europe, all constitute as real a part of World War II's kaleidoscopically varied history as battles and clear-cut policies.

Of course,Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than four years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940. That said, it's widely overlooked today given how history played out that as the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought means to defend their territory against the rising menace of the Thousand-Year Reich.

Although the "women and children first" rule might seem like a common practice that has been observed for centuries, it was actually popularized by the 1852 shipwreck of the Royal Navy troopship HMS Birkenhead.

In the 17th century, the people of London could boast that they had developed some of the most advanced firefighting technology and methods in the world, including the use of primitive fire engines. There were even vendors of such machines who advertised in papers of their machines' abilities to quench great fires.

Tiananmen Square, a large city square in the center of Beijing, can be said to represent the essence of Chinese culture, being the site of several important events in the country's history. It is characterized as being a vast open ground centered on and defined by a series of monuments constructed over a period of 500 years. Named after the Tiananmen gate, one that means the "Gate of Heavenly Peace", the square is located towards the north of the gate, separating it from the Forbidden City.

Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the largest ship in the world, hit an iceberg, setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately make it history's most famous, and notorious, ship. The Titanic was neither the first nor last big ship to sink, so it's clear that much of its appeal stems from the nature of ship itself. Indeed, the Titanic stands out not just for its end but for its beginning, specifically the fact that it was the most luxurious passenger ship ever built at the time.

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet's reputation has within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is an incredibly staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir stands alongside Claude Monet at the very peak of Impressionist painting, and though neither of them can be credited with founding the movement (that honor likely goes to Edouard Manet or Edgar Degas), Renoir and Monet remain inextricably tied to the key characteristics of Impressionism: loose brushwork; outdoor painting; an emphasis on capturing natural light and shadow; and a focus on remaining in Paris and the surrounding countryside.

People love mysteries, which is a good thing, since history is so replete with them. This is especially true among seafaring people, and of all the mysteries of the deep, few rise to the level of the Mary Celeste. In many ways it is a story more suited for an episode of The X-Files than it is for any history book. There is the unlucky ship that began her sailing career under a cloud of bad fortune and accident.

Big Ben is one of the most recognizable symbols of Britain, and indeed one of the most famous structures in the world. A quintessential part of London, every movie set in London features an establishing shot of Big Ben, and many guidebooks of London have the clock tower as its cover photo. London and Big Ben are forever linked in the consciousness of the Western world.

Thinking of Spain as a modern nation state today distorts the complicated reality that the Iberian Peninsula faced in the past. Spain was a nation in progress, consisting of regions united under the Spanish crown, but with strong regional identities based on different historical and cultural experiences. The largest entities were the kingdoms of León and Castile, but Spain also included the kingdoms of Navarre, Andalusia, Granada, Jaén, Aragon, and Valencia.

People may know what's going on in Syria today, but how did Syria get to where it is today, at the forefront of the Arab Spring? The history of Syria in the last century is one of turbulence, violence, and political intrigue, with local religious sects battling for control of the land while foreign powers vied to maintain influence over the region. What resulted was a toxic and twisted mess that has precipitously affected the entire region, from Israel and Lebanon to Iran and Iraq.

Mention the 18th century Royal Navy and visions come to mind of swashbuckling sailors swinging from rope to rope while a red-faced captain in an even redder coat and a powdered wig shouts order and pitches fits. Such visions naturally fail to do full justice to a group of men who functioned, with little direction and even less support, on the seas for years at a time. Disney may enjoy portraying them sitting down to sumptuous feasts or cavorting with scantily clad native girls, but the opposite was true.

Standing in history like a milestone marking the boundary between one era and the next, the Potsdam Conference brought together the leaders of the three major Allied powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom - for the last time at the end of World War II and at the threshold of the Cold War. A follow up to the Yalta Conference just five months earlier, Potsdam attempted to work out the contours of the postwar world.

The outcome of the English Civil War was no doubt unthinkable to many across Europe before it actually happened, and the Battle of Edgehill represented the first sign that things might not go according to the typical plan. That year, the unthinkable happened when the king and Parliament broke with each other, raising their standards of war. The divinely appointed order was broken, and the result was bloodshed, terror, and chaos. Most notably, Edgehill would make clear that things might not simply go the king’s way.