Résultats lu par "Colin Fluxman" dans Toutes les catégories

The relationship between Scotland and England has always been rocky. For most of their history, they have been at loggerheads and frequently at war, and, even after the Act of Union of 1707 which united the two nations, there were at least four Scottish uprisings. Today, the Scottish threat to separate from the post-Brexit UK is well-known. England has historically viewed the northern nation as a threat, and Scotland for its part has feared, with justification, its richer and more powerful neighbor.

Whereas for much of human history slavery was somewhat arbitrary, in its later forms, it often had a discriminatory component, typically based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. This distinction shows how the practitioners of slavery justified the practice in terms of ideology, and Slavic people were discriminated against within the Ottoman Empire. Slavs had lived in the lands of today’s Eastern European region for centuries.

While D-Day is one of the most famous events of the war, it is widely overlooked that about two months after the landings in Normandy, there was a second Allied landing in France. On August 15, 1944, a combined US-French force landed in southern France on the beaches of the Côte d'Azur as part of Operation Dragoon. In just over four weeks of fighting, the Allied landing led to the liberation of most of southern France and to one of the most audacious and successful Allied operations of World War II. What followed remains a controversial part of the end of the war in Europe.

Given the personalities involved, the Third Crusade is among the most famous of the Crusades, and the Battle of Jaffa occurred on August 8, 1192 on the site of an ancient port that is now the oldest part of the city of Tel-Aviv, Israel. It was the encounter that brought the Third Crusade to a conclusion, and though it is not one of the better-known battles of the Crusades and certainly not the most spectacular in terms of battle numbers, it helped shape how the Middle East would look going forward.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, and the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today, but of all the world’s civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In the past decade especially, there has been a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ended in 2012.

Before any type of unified political entity named Israel existed, the Jewish groups whose descendants would later form Israel identified themselves by their particular tribe. If asked their nationality or country of origin, they would likely identify themselves as Danites (from the tribe of Dan; Ex. 31:6) or Ephraimites (from the tribe of Ephraim; Judg. 12:5), etc.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most controversial hotbeds of conflict in the 21st century, but wars are nothing new to this area of the world. This remains important in the modern world, because for many complex political, religious, and social reasons, the ancient history of the region plays a role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Although borders changed, there has historically been a significant difference between the Mediterranean coast of Canaan and its hilly interior. This listen sheds light on just how far back history stretches around Gaza.

By the second century CE, Londinium was a large Roman city, with tens of thousands of inhabitants using villas, palaces, a forum, temples, and baths. The Roman governor ruled from the city in a basilica that served as the seat of government. What was once a 30 acre outpost now spanned 300 acres and was home to nearly 15,000 people, including Roman soldiers, officials and foreign merchants.

To many in the ancient world, their gods and goddesses were all around them and could be seen daily in nature, which meant that nearly every kind of animal, both domestic and wild, was associated with a god or goddess. In places like Egypt and Greece, deities and other mythological characters were often depicted with human bodies and animal heads, and various Greek religious rituals relied on sacrificing animals. Animals were constantly involved in the core elements of Greek society and cults.

Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world’s first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world.

Hans Memling, a painter from Flanders, is the holder of an unfortunate record. He painted a triptych, The Last Judgment, commissioned by Medici banker Angelo Tani. The paintings were intended for a new chapel in Fiesole in Tuscany, near the city of Florence. However, in April 1472, the ship on which they were being transported from Bruges to Florence was intercepted by Polish privateer and Danzig Town Council leader Paul Beneke.

Did you know that Plymouth was named by the explorer John Smith in 1608? Twelve years later, in 1620, the Pilgrims started their journey from Plymouth, England, and were blown off course, landing in Plymouth, North America. As if it was a sign from God, the Pilgrims decided not to continue their journey but to settle right where they landed, starting one of the earliest American communities.

People associate the story of ancient Jericho with walls, and for those who are Biblically inclined, they think of the walls that God brought tumbling down to the sound of trumpets. For historians who are more archaeologically oriented, it may suggest the prehistoric walls uncovered by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger between 1907 and 1911.

The human psyche is one of the most complex, unpredictable, enigmatic, and therefore riveting phenomena in existence, one that psychologists have been working on deciphering since the dawn of modern science. To better understand the multifaceted intricacies of human behavior, and to unlock the secrets of the conscious mind and the subconscious, ambitious professionals in the field have conducted numerous groundbreaking - and at times, problematic - psychological experiments.

If you want to discover the captivating history of Mercia, then pay attention...The Kingdom of Mercia lasted for more than 500 years. Such a long period of time brought change to all aspects of Mercian life, and it is the role of history and this audiobook to follow that change through the centuries. But it wasn’t just the kings and queens that changed. The events of the period resonated within social and cultural life, religious beliefs, artistic expression, and trade. Everything evolved under the patronage of Mercia.

For hundreds of years, Palmyra’s wealth was a testament to its greatness, and its leaders displayed their political acumen by playing the middleman between the powerful Roman and Parthian Empires. As a result, the Palmyrenes built an eclectic culture that was as sophisticated as any of their contemporaries, but eventually the leadership of Palmyra overestimated their power and the greatness of their city quickly came crumbling down. One of the most significant females in late antiquity was Zenobia, who for just a few short years in the late 3rd century CE ruled the wealthy Palmyra.

The classical world was full of many great and influential cities, ranging from Rome and Alexandria to Athens and Sparta. There were many more that enjoyed periods of prominence, yet they were often ephemeral, seeing their fortunes rise and fall due to their connection to a ruling dynasty. Smyrna was one of the various cities that enjoyed brief yet important periods of influence in which they spawned important dynasties, were the scenes of history-changing battles, and were the sites of great advances in philosophy, science, and economics.

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program’s 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit. By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world’s most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly $2 billion more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed.

As the Canaanites established themselves in most of the Levant and the Hurrians carved out space for themselves in northwestern Syria, a West Semitic ethnic group known as the Amorites entered Mesopotamia and Syria from the Arabian Desert. The movement of the Amorites and Hurrians coincided with the collapse of the Ur III Dynasty after 2004 BCE (Haywood 2005, 28), although it is not known for sure if the collapse of Ur III led to the movement of peoples, or if the movement at least partially led to the collapse.

While the Moors have always been associated with Spain due to their lengthy stay on the Iberian Peninsula, the most famous battle they were involved in was actually fought in modern France. While the Franks were consolidating a kingdom there, Muslim forces were pushing out of North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century, and by the dawn of the 730s, the Umayyad dynasty had expanded its territory from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees, a series of seasonally snow-capped mountains in Europe that forms a border between the nations of Spain and France.