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Shah Abbas I and the founding of modern Iran (06/08)
Evidence of settled communities in Iran date back to at least the 5th millennium BC (as evidenced by 7,000 year-old
wine jars that have been excavated in the Zagros Mountains).
Cyrus the Great is credited with establishing the first unified empire during his 21 year reign beginning in 550 BCE. He is also remembered for the
Cyrus Cylinder (...
Some of the CIA's Biggest Blunders (06/08)
The Central Intelligence Agency has been riven by turf battles, political infighting, and the lack of qualified agents and analysts. But just as frequently, the CIA has been brought to its knees by thoroughly avoidable blunders…
from the (somewhat) droll…
In 1994, the station chief in Guatemala accused the American Ambassador, ...
Background (06/08)
Mark Mills is a novelist
and screenwriter whose credits
include the screenplay for
The Reckoning, which he
adapted from Barry Unsworth's
novel
Morality Play. His
first novel,
Amagansett,
set in the small
Long Island...
A Short History of Norway (05/08)
Norway is one of the three kingdoms in the geographical region known as Scandinavia (
map); the others being Denmark and Sweden. Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes described as Scandinavian because of their close geographical and historic connections with Scandinavia, although technically speaking these countries belong ...
Did you know? The US food supply chain factoids. (05/08)
- The average supermarket food item has traveled 1500 miles to reach our kitchens - that's further than most families go on vacation.
- If every US citizen ate just one meal a week from locally grown meat and roduce we would save 1.1 million barrels of oil every week!
- Six companies now ...
Jewish Homelands (05/08)
Over the years a number of different plans for a Jewish homeland have been proposed. A 1903 British proposal offered 5,000 square miles of the Mau Plateau (in what is now Kenya) to the Jewish people as a homeland. This offer, presented at the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, was in response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia. The ...
Uranium and Nuclear Power (05/08)
According to the
Uranium Information Center:- Over half of the world's production of uranium is from mines in Australia and Canada.
- 8 mining companies account for almost 80% of production.
- Nuclear energy supplies over 16% of the world's electricity.
- 31 countries use nuclear energy to generate electricity.
- 80% of France's electricity is from ...
Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (05/08)
Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (spelled Cixi in Pinyin; pronouced Tsoo Shee) had a bad reputation while she lived and after she died. However, in recent decades the tide of historical opinion has been shifting. Much of the West's view of Cixi comes from the writings of
Edmund Backhouse (1873-1944) who claimed to have had close contact with the ...
The Indian Caste System (05/08)
Without his violent act Balram Halwai, the hero of
The White Tiger, would have had trouble accessing upward social mobility because of the strict caste system in India. Many Westerners believe, because India is officially a democracy and the Indian constitution of 1949 banned it, that the caste system is a thing of the past, but in many ...
A short history of the French Resistance (05/08)
France capitulated to Germany on June 25 1940 and was divided into three key zones: A German occupation zone in the north and west, a small Italian occupation zone in the southeast and unoccupied collaborationist 'Vichy France' in the south (
map). The French Army was disbanded except for a small force to keep domestic peace, and the ...
Background (05/08)
Vanora Bennett became a
journalist by accident; having
learned Russian and been hired
out of university by Reuters she
was catapulted into the
adrenaline charged realm of
conflict reporting. She has
reported from Paris, Cambodia,
...
Fishing Facts (04/08)
Did you know:
- Today, the British know
the North Sea as muddy and
cold. It's always been cold,
but evidence suggests that
it wasn't always muddy. Just
100 years ago there were
vast oyster beds up to 120
miles...
A Short History of Czechoslovakia (04/08)
The lands now known as The Czech Republic and Slovakia were ruled by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire for about 300 years until the end of World War I and the collapse of the empire. In 1918, a union was proclaimed between the Czech lands and Slovakia to form the Czechoslovakian state, an idea that had been advocated by Czech and Slovak ...
Argentina: The Jewish community and the "Dirty War" (04/08)
Jews in Argentina
After being expelled from Spain in 1492, a number of Jews settled in Argentina where they assimilated into the general population, so by the mid 1800s there were few overt Jews in Argentina. When Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1810, the first president officially abolished the Inquisition and encouraged ...
A Short History of Colombia (04/08)
About twice the size of Texas with a population of 44 million, Colombia is
located just south of Panama (
map).
ith a per capita GDP of $8,400, 49% of the population live below the poverty
line. From 1510 the area that is now Colombia was part of the Spanish empire until a nine year uprising led by Simon Bolivar resulted in the...
Henry Norman Bethune (04/08)
Henry Norman Bethune (Mar 3, 1890 - Nov 12, 1939), known as Norman, was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario. He interrupted his studies at the University of Toronto to set up classes for immigrants in a bush lumber camp in northern Ontario and then, at the outbreak of World War I, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. While serving ...
A Short History of Vietnam Since 1975 (04/08)
Vietnam's history has been one of repeated invasions and resistance (
historic maps). For the millennium up to the early 10th century, Vietnam was controlled by the Chinese, until a final rebellion in 938 led to Vietnam achieving independence. Over the following centuries it repelled a number of Chinese invasion attempts, including three ...
Background info (03/08)
- The Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia (historically known as
Abyssinia) is located in east Africa, on
the 'Horn of Africa' (map).
Once an important trade route due to its
location on the Red Sea, it has been
landlocked since 1993 when the province
...
Thailand (03/08)
A unified Thai kingdom was established in the mid-14th century. Known as Siam until 1939, Thailand (
map) is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power. A bloodless revolution in 1932 led to a constitutional monarchy. Thailand allied itself with Japan during WWII but has been an ally of the US since....
Tyler Knox (03/08)
Tyler Knox is the pseudonym of former Philadelphia lawyer William
Lashner, known for his Victor Carl
legal thriller series. Lashner decided
to write under a new name not for the
purposes of 'rebranding or putting one
over my readers ..... but purely for the
freedom of...
Snooker (03/08)
Snooker is a very British sport, primarily played in the UK and various parts of the former colonies. The game bears some similarity to American Pool in that they both involve cues and balls, but Snooker is played on a table four times larger than the Pool table, the pockets are smaller and snooker players would say that the game is more ...
Gray Whales (02/08)
Adult
Gray Whales weigh 30-40 tons and measure about 45 feet (14 meters); they have dark skin with gray patches and white mottling, the calves are born dark gray to black (sometimes with distinctive white markings). They are baleen whales (with a series of 130-180 fringed overlapping plates hanging from each side of the upper jaw in lieu ...
The Tropics (02/08)
- The tropics are the geographic region of the Earth centered on the equator and limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere, at approximately 23°30' (23.5°) N latitude, and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at 23°30' (23.5°) S latitude. This region is also referred to as the ...
Turkey, The Ottoman Empire, and the Armenian Genocide. (02/08)
At its height the Ottoman Empire, which had its capital in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for about 600 years.
The 'golden age' of the Empire was in the 16th...
A Short History of Libya (02/08)
Libya is located on the Mediterranean coast in the North of Africa to the West of Egypt (
map). Much of the country lies within the Sahara Desert but the coastal areas have a Mediterranean climate with arable land in the plateaus. The earliest known settlers of the area were the Berber people, known as Libyans to the Greeks. Around the 7th...
A Short History of Northern Ireland (02/08)
English involvement in Ireland began around 1170 when Dermot Mac Murchada, King of Leinster (one of 4 Irish provinces) asked for Henry II's help to return him to the throne from which he'd been ousted (for more about Henry II, read
A Plantagenet Primer). Henry (great-grandson of William the Conqueror of Normandy) invaded but in the ...
Jodi Picoult (02/08)
Jodi Picoult is the bestselling
author of fourteen books to date. She
was born and raised on Long Island
before studying creative writing at
Princeton. While still a student she had
two short stories published in Seventeen
magazine. On being told that someone was
...
A Short History of the Gulag (01/08)
The Soviet system of forced labor camps known as the Gulag spanned nearly four decades of Soviet history and affected millions of individuals. GULAG is an acronym of Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagereian which, depending on the source, translates as 'The Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps' or 'Main Camp Administration'. The earliest camps...
Interesting Facts about Wales (01/08)
- Wales, located on the south-west peninsula of Great Britain (the main island of the United Kingdom - map) is one of the four constituent nations of the UK, the others are England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its population is about 3 million (5% of the UK).
- The Welsh language is a Celtic language, that traces its roots back at least ...
A Short History of Mumbai (Bombay) (01/08)
The port city of Mumbai, on the West coast of India, originally consisted of a series of islands which are now joined together through reclamation. Although the area had been inhabited for many thousands of years and had been an important trading port and a center for Hindu and Buddhist culture, the city as we know it today was founded by...
A Short History of Palestine (01/08)
The Canaanites are the earliest known civilization to live in the area of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, living in city-states such as Jericho around 3,000 BCE. Positioned close to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor the area was not only a meeting point for different cultures but also a battleground for various ...
Hamlet Summarized (11/07)
It's not at all necessary to be familiar with Hamlet to appreciate The Dead Fathers Club, but for those who would like to freshen their memories, here is a quick outline:
Hamlet's father, King Hamlet of Denmark, is recently dead. Claudius, the dead king's brother, becomes King and quickly marries King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude. Young Hamlet...
The Tsengel Tuvans (11/07)
To reach the homeland of the Tsengel Tuvans one has to travel to the furthest western corner of Mongolia, to the High Altai mountains to a province the size of the Netherlands, bordering China. More than 90% of the population of the area are Kazakh Muslims, the remaining 10% are Khalkh, Urinakhai, Khoshuud and Tuvans.
The Tuvans are a ...
Sir John Franklin and The North-West Passage (11/07)
The mythical North-West Passage held the imagination of Britain for most of the 19th century. At that time, before the great canals of Panama and Suez were built, trade with the lucrative markets in Asia was perilous and slow, with trade routes either flowing past the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, across to India, and thereby to the Far ...
Robert Kagan (11/07)
Robert Kagan is senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, transatlantic fellow at the
German Marshall Fund, and a columnist
for The Washington Post (he writes a
monthly column on
international affairs). He is also a
...
The sad tale of Ron Williamson & Dennis Fritz (11/07)
Ada, Oklahoma local boy
Ron Williamson achieved hero status when drafted by baseball's Oakland
Athletics in 1971, but within a couple of seasons his baseball dreams had been
dashed and he took to drowning his sorrows in alcohol. In 1978, having
twice been charged with rape and found not guilty, and having been left by his
...
The Mobile Bay Jubilee (11/07)
In "Titan" a man recalls a boyhood vacation spent on the coast of Alabama in which he experiences a
"Jubilee".
Jubilee is a natural phenomena that occurs in Mobile Bay from time to time, usually before dawn on a warm summer night, when large numbers of fish, crabs and shrimps swarm close to shore, making themselves ...
Flamenco Dancing (11/07)
Flamenco, which can be divided into cante ('the song'), baile ('the dance') and guitarra ('guitar'), is the traditional song and dance of the Gypsies (flamencos) of Andalusia in southern Spain. It is believed to have developed over several centuries from Gypsy, Moorish, Andalusian, and other roots (probably including northern India, as ...
The Knowledge (11/07)
It takes a central London cab driver an average of 34 months to gain
The Knowledge required to drive a licensed London taxi. Before they can receive their license they must know every street and the route between every street in a 6 mile radius of Charing Cross station (that's about 113 square miles) - and they need to be able to describe ...
A Brief History of Auschwitz (11/07)
Auschwitz was the name the Germans used for the Polish city of Oswiecim when they occupied it in WWII. The concentration camp was established nearby in June 1940, taking the name of the nearby town. The camp quickly expanded into three main parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz - a group of about 40 sub-...
What is a Gothic Novel? (10/07)
Definitions of a gothic novel abound but most sources agree that it is one in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of terror are pervasive, and where the action usually takes place in a dark, mysterious building, typically a castle built in the Gothic architectural style*.
Horace Walpole's
The Castle of Otranto (1764) is considered...
Pigeons and Doves (10/07)
- Pigeons and doves are one and the same thing, 'pigeon' is simply a French translation of the English word 'dove'.
- Pigeons have been domesticated for at least 5,000 years, probably closer to 10,000.
- It is said that a pigeon delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 BC.
- Pigeons are credited with saving thousands of soldiers' lives ...
A Short History of Modern China (10/07)
- In 1911 the Qing Dynasty was
overthrown, ending 2000 years of
imperial rule. There were many
revolutionary groups but the most
organized was founded by Dr Sun
Yat-sen.
- In WWI the Chinese government
sided with the Allies. In return
...
Background (10/07)
Michael Weisskopf is a senior correspondent for Time magazine,
working out of Washington D.C. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner
of a number of awards for journalism including the Daniel Pearl Award for
Courage and Integrity in Journalism. As an investigative reporter for the nation
section. he has scored many scoops, ...
Background (10/07)
There is a regrettably short excerpt from
All Aunt Hagar's Children at BookBrowse, but here are links to three complete short stories,
originally published in The New Yorker:
Bad Neighbors
A Rich Man
Old Boys, Old Girls.
Did you know?
- Edward P Jones has dedicated all three of his books to his mother, Jeanette.
- The '...
The 1950s (10/07)
While many in the USA experienced an unprecedented economic boom in the
1950s, what was happening elsewhere?
Europe: The division of Europe into West and East persisted.
The foundations for the European Community were laid. Rationing continued
in some Western countries (e.g. in Britain up until 1953), but post-war
...
A Short History of Biafra and Nigeria (09/07)
Located on the west coast of Africa,
Nigeria (
map)
is the most populous country in Africa
(~122 million in an area about double
that of California). It became a
state in 1960 when it declared its
independence from Britain. In 1966 a
series of coups ...
A Short History of Ethiopia (09/07)
The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (historically known as Abyssinia) is located in east Africa, on the 'Horn of Africa' (
map).
Once an important trade route due to its location on the Red Sea, it has been landlocked since 1993, when the province of Eritrea gained independence. It is the oldest independent country in Africa (and...
A Short History of Sierra Leone (09/07)
The Republic of Sierra Leone is a small country with a population of about
5.3 million on the west coast of Africa (
map) bordered by Guinea and Liberia (For more about Liberia visit
The Darling at BookBrowse and click the 'BookBrowse Says' link). The life expectancy of men is 39 years and women 42 years. The name is an
adaptation ...
