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<i>The History of the True Cross</i> or <i>The Legend of the True Cross</i> is a sequence of frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo. It is his largest work, and generally considered one of his finest, and an early Renaissance masterpiece.<br/><br/> Its theme, derived from the popular 13th century book on the lives of saints by Jacopo da Voragine, the <i>Golden Legend</i>, is the triumph of the True Cross – the legend of the wood from the Garden of Eden becoming the Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. This work demonstrates Piero’s advanced knowledge of perspective and colour, his geometric orderliness and skill in pictorial construction.
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement, was a proto-nationalist movement by the Righteous Harmony Society in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing foreign imperialism and Christianity.<br/><br/> The uprising took place in response to foreign spheres of influence in China, with grievances ranging from opium traders, political invasion, economic manipulation, to missionary evangelism. In China, popular sentiment remained resistant to foreign influences, and anger rose over the 'unequal treaties', which the weak Qing state could not resist.<br/><br/> Concerns grew that missionaries and Chinese Christians could use this decline to their advantage, appropriating lands and property of unwilling Chinese peasants to give to the church. This sentiment resulted in violent revolts against foreign interests.
By the mid-18th century, all of Mongolia had been incorporated into the area ruled by the Manchu Qing Dynasty. During the collapse of the Qing Dynasty Mongols established the Temporary Government of Khalkha on 30 November 1911, before the abdication of the last Qing emperor and the establishment of the Republic of China.<br/><br/> On 29 December 1911 Mongolia declared independence from the Qing Dynasty and this National Liberation Revolution ended 220 years of Manchu rule (153 years after the collapse of the Zunghar Khanate).<br/><br/> It is not clear whether this picture was taken in Outer Mongolia, which attained independence from China, or Inner Mongolia, which remained part of China.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: <i>Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion</i>), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (<i>Inquisicion espanola</i>), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. The regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: <i>Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion</i>), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (<i>Inquisicion espanola</i>), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. The regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.
Kenji Doihara (8 August 1883 – 23 December 1948) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II. He was instrumental in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1932.<br/><br/> As a leading intelligence officer he played a key role in the Japanese machinations leading to the occupation of large parts of China, the destabilization of the country and the disintegration of the traditional structure of Chinese society. He also became the mastermind behind the Manchurian drug trade, and the real boss and sponsor of every kind of gang and underworld activity in China.<br/><br/> After the end of World War II, he was prosecuted for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and was hanged in December 1948.
Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519), the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans (also known as King of the Germans) from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky.<br/><br/> He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from c. 1483. He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today's Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic State (IS), and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh, is a Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam.<br/><br/> The group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many individual countries. ISIL is widely known for its videos of beheadings of both soldiers and civilians, including journalists and aid workers, and its destruction of cultural heritage sites. The United Nations holds ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has charged the group with ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: <i>Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion</i>), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (<i>Inquisicion espanola</i>), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. The regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, is a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War.<br/><br/> During this period, hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered and 20,000–80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.
A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to fall swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single pass so that the head falls into a basket below.<br/><br/> The device is best known for its use in France, in particular during the French Revolution, where it was celebrated as the people's avenger by supporters of the revolution and vilified as the pre-eminent symbol of the Reign of Terror by opponents. The name dates from this period, but similar devices had been used elsewhere in Europe over several centuries.
Jan Hus, often referred to in English as John Hus or John Huss, was a Czech priest, philosopher, early Christian reformer and Master at Charles University in Prague. After John Wycliffe, the theorist of ecclesiastical Reformation, Hus is considered the first Church reformer, as he lived before Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli.<br/><br/> Hus was a key predecessor to Protestantism, and his teachings had a strong influence on the states of Western Europe, most immediately in the approval of a reformist Bohemian religious denomination, and, more than a century later, on Martin Luther himself. He was burned at the stake in 1415 for 'heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church'.
The Chinese Civil War was a conflict in China fought between forces loyal to the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China, and forces loyal to the Communist Party of China (CPC). The war began in August 1927, with Chiang Kai-Shek's Northern Expedition, and essentially ended when major active battles ceased in 1950.<br/><br/> The conflict eventually resulted in two de facto states, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China, both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of China.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: <i>Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion</i>), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (<i>Inquisicion espanola</i>), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. The regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.<br/><br/> The Inquisition was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.
The <i>Anwar-i Suhayli</i> or 'The Lights of Canopus', commonly known as the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i> in the West, is a Persian version of the ancient Indian collection of animal fables, the <i>Panchatantra</i>. It tells a tale of a Persian physician, Burzuyah, and his mission to India, where he stumbles upon a book of stories collected from the animals who reside there.<br/><br/> In a similar vein to the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, the fables in the manuscript are inter-woven as the characters of one story recount the next, leading up to three or four degrees of narrative embedding. Many usually have morals or offer philosophical glimpses into human behaviour, emphasising loyalty and teamwork.
Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg (December 29, 1885 – September 15, 1921) was a Baltic Swedish-Russian Yesaul (Cossack Captain), a Russian hero of World War I and Lieutenant-general at the time of civil war in Russia and Mongolia, who 'liberated' Mongolia from Chinese rule in February - March 1921. In June he invaded Southern Siberia trying to raise an anti-communist rebellion, but was defeated by the Red Army in August 1921.<br/><br/> An independent and brutal warlord in pursuit of pan-monarchist goals in Mongolia and territories east of Lake Baikal during the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Ungern von-Sternberg's goals included restoring the Russian monarchy under Michael Alexandrovich Romanov and the Great Mongol Empire, with Outer Mongolia under Bogd Khan as part of it. His opponents were mainly Communists.<br/><br/> Ungern-Sternberg often persecuted those who were helping his foes: all Reds and especially Jews. Following his Asiatic Cavalry Division collapse in Mongolia, Ungern-Sternberg was left by his Russian officers and taken prisoner by the Bolshevik's Red Army. He was tried and executed for his counter-revolutionary involvement in Novosibirsk.
The French colonial administration built Hoa Lo Prison in 1896. Originally intended to hold 450 prisoners, by the 1930s the number of detainees had soared to almost 2,000, the great majority political prisoners.<br/><br/> Hoa Lo Prison achieved notoriety during the Second Indochina War as a place of incarceration for downed US pilots, who ironically nicknamed the prison the ‘Hanoi Hilton’. American prisoners of war held at Hoa Lo between 1964 and 1973 include Pete Peterson, who would later become the first US Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1995; and John McCain, currently senior Republican Senator for Arizona and a recent presidential candidate, who was shot down over Hanoi in October, 1967.
Joseph Marchand (August 17, 1803 – November 30, 1835) was a French missionary in Vietnam, and a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society.<br/><br/> Marchand was born in Passavant, in the Doubs department of France. In 1833, he joined the Lê Văn Khôi revolt by Lê Văn Khôi, son of the late governor of southern Vietnam Lê Văn Duyệt. Khoi and Marchand vowed to overthrow Emperor Minh Mạng and replace him with My Duong, the son of Minh Mạng's late elder brother Nguyá»…n Phúc Cảnh, who were both Catholics. Marchand and Khoi appealed to the Catholics to join in overthrowing Minh Mạng and installing a Catholic emperor. They quickly seized the Citadel of Saigon and the uprising lasted two years.<br/><br/> He was arrested in 1835 in Saigon and martyred, by having his flesh pulled by tongs (the torture of the hundred wounds).
The JÄmiÊ¿ al-tawÄrÄ«kh, (Mongolian: Судрын чуулган, Sudar-yn Chuulgan; Arabic: جامع التواريخ ‎; Persian: جامع‌التواریخ ), ('Compendium of Chronicles') or Universal History is an Iranian work of literature and history written by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani at the start of the 14th century.
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: شاهنامه ŠÄhnÄmeh, 'The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran and related Perso-Iranian cultures. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.<br/><br/> The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement, was a proto-nationalist movement by the Righteous Harmony Society in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing foreign imperialism and Christianity.<br/><br/> The uprising took place in response to foreign spheres of influence in China, with grievances ranging from opium traders, political invasion, economic manipulation, to missionary evangelism. In China, popular sentiment remained resistant to foreign influences, and anger rose over the 'unequal treaties', which the weak Qing state could not resist.<br/><br/> Concerns grew that missionaries and Chinese Christians could use this decline to their advantage, appropriating lands and property of unwilling Chinese peasants to give to the church. This sentiment resulted in violent revolts against foreign interests.
The Tonkin Campaign (French: Campagne du Tonkin) was an armed conflict fought between June 1883 and April 1886 by the French against, variously, the Vietnamese, Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and the Chinese Guangxi and Yunnan armies to occupy Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and entrench a French protectorate there.<br/><br/> The campaign, complicated in August 1884 by the outbreak of the Sino-French War and in July 1885 by the Can Vuong nationalist uprising in Annam, which required the diversion of large numbers of French troops, was conducted by the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, supported by the gunboats of the Tonkin Flotilla. The campaign officially ended in April 1886, when the expeditionary corps was reduced in size to a division of occupation, but Tonkin was not effectively pacified until 1896.
The Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945) was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the war merged into the greater conflict of World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. Although the two countries had fought intermittently since 1931, total war started in earnest in 1937 and ended only with the surrender of Japan in 1945.<br/><br/> The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily and to secure its vast raw material reserves and other economic resources, particularly food and labour. Before 1937, China and Japan fought in small, localized engagements, so-called 'incidents'. Yet the two sides, for a variety of reasons, refrained from fighting a total war. In 1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria by Japan's Kwantung Army followed the Mukden Incident. The last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, marking the beginning of total war between the two countries.
'Slow slicing' (pinyin: língchí, alternately transliterated Ling Chi or Leng T'che), also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts, was a form of execution used in China from roughly 900 CE until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.<br/><br/> Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one's parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death. The latter as to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be 'whole' in a spiritual life after death.
China: Wang Xiaohe (1924-1948) arrested and led away by Kuomintang security forces in Shanghai, 30 September, 1948. He was executed the same day. Wang Xiaohe worked at the Shanghai Electric Power Company and was a union organiser and underground member of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Civil War was a conflict in China fought between forces loyal to the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China, and forces loyal to the Communist Party of China (CPC). The war began in August 1927, with Chiang Kai-Shek's Northern Expedition, and essentially ended when major active battles ceased in 1950.
The Great Leap Forward (simplified Chinese: 大跃进; traditional Chinese: 大èºé€²; pinyin: Dà yuè jìn) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China (CPC), reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization, and collectivization. Mao Zedong led the campaign based on the Theory of Productive Forces, and intensified it after being informed of the impending disaster from grain shortages.<br/><br/> Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the introduction of a mandatory process of agricultural collectivization, which was introduced incrementally. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions, and social pressure.<br/><br/> The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths. Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million to at least 45 million.<br/><br/> In subsequent conferences in 1960 and 1962, the negative effects of the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in the party conferences. Moderate Party members like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
'Slow slicing' (pinyin: língchí, alternately transliterated Ling Chi or Leng T'che), also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts, was a form of execution used in China from roughly 900 CE until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.<br/><br/> Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one's parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death. The latter as to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be 'whole' in a spiritual life after death.
In modern Chinese history, White Terror (Báisè KÇ’ngbù) describes a period of political suppression enacted by the Kuomintang party under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. It began in 1927 following the purge of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai.<br/><br/> On April 12, 1927, Chiang initiated a purge of Communists from the Shanghai Kuomintang and began large-scale killings in the 'Shanghai massacre of 1927'. Chiang's forces turned machine guns on 100,000 workers who had taken to the streets in labour union demonstrations, killing more than 5,000 people. Throughout April 1927 in Shanghai, more than 12,000 people were killed or had disappeared. The Chinese Communist Party was virtually extinguished. At the beginning of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party had about 60,000 members. By the end of the year, no more than 10,000 remained. Following the Shanghai massacres, Mao Zedong and the CCP adopted the road of agrarian revolution, based on the rural peasantry rather than the urban proletariat.
Yun Yat, alias Comrade At, was the wife of Son Sen, Defence Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. On October 9, 1975, the Standing Committee of Communist Party of Kampuchea placed her in charge of information and education. In 1977, she was appointed as Information Minister. On June 10, 1997 Khieu Samphan declared that Yun Yat and Son Sen had been arrested as spies of Hun Sen and Vietnam, and declared as traitors. Yun Yat, Son Sen and eight relatives were executed on June 15, 1997 on the orders of Pol Pot. Khmer Rouge photograph.
The 1915 Singapore Mutiny, also known as the 1915 Sepoy Mutiny, or Mutiny of the 5th Native Light Infantry was a mutiny involving up to half of 850 sepoys (Indian soldiers) against the British in Singapore during the First World War, linked with the 1915 Ghadar Conspiracy. The mutiny, on 15 February 1915, lasted nearly seven days and resulted in the deaths of 47 British soldiers and local civilians, before it was finally quelled by British forces and Allied naval detachments. It was an event that not only caught the British off-guard but also shook the foundation of British rule in Singapore. More than 200 sepoys were tried by court-martial, and 47 were executed.
'Slow slicing' (pinyin: língchí, alternately transliterated Ling Chi or Leng T'che), also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts, was a form of execution used in China from roughly 900 CE until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.<br/><br/> Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one's parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death. The latter as to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be 'whole' in a spiritual life after death.
During the Qing dynasty, criminal justice was based on extremely detailed Great Qing Legal Code. One element of the traditional Chinese criminal justice system is the notion that criminal law has a moral purpose, one of which is to get the convicted to repent and see the error of his ways.<br/><br/> In the traditional Chinese legal system, a person could not be convicted of a crime unless he has confessed. This often led to the use of torture, in order to extract the necessary confession. These elements still influence modern Chinese views toward law. All capital offenses were reported to the capital and required the personal approval of the emperor.
'An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon together With somewhat Concerning Severall Remarkable passages of my life that hath hapned [sic] since my Deliverance out of Captivity' is a book written by the English trader and sailor Robert Knox in 1681. It describes his experiences some years earlier on the South Asian island now best known as Sri Lanka and provides one of the most important contemporary accounts of 17th century Ceylonese life. Knox spent 19 years on Ceylon after being taken prisoner by King Rajasimha II.
The Shanghai Terror: In 1927, communists tried to end foreign rule, officially supported by the gangsters and the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists. Leaders of the Green Gang however entered into informal alliances with Chiang Kai-shek and the Shanghailander capitalists acted against the communists and organised labour unions. The nationalists had cooperated with gang leaders since the revolution of 1911. Many communists were killed in a major gangster surprise attack in April 1927 in the Chinese administered part of Shanghai, although sporadic fighting between gangsters and communists had occurred previously. Chinese Communist leader Zhou Enlai was fortunate to flee the city, because suspected left-wingers were executed on sight.
'An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon together With somewhat Concerning Severall Remarkable passages of my life that hath hapned [sic] since my Deliverance out of Captivity' is a book written by the English trader and sailor Robert Knox in 1681. It describes his experiences some years earlier on the South Asian island now best known as Sri Lanka and provides one of the most important contemporary accounts of 17th century Ceylonese life. Knox spent 19 years on Ceylon after being taken prisoner by King Rajasimha II.
The Shanghai Terror: In 1927, communists tried to end foreign rule, officially supported by the gangsters and the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists. Leaders of the Green Gang however entered into informal alliances with Chiang Kai-shek and the Shanghailander capitalists acted against the communists and organised labour unions. The nationalists had cooperated with gang leaders since the revolution of 1911. Many communists were killed in a major gangster surprise attack in April 1927 in the Chinese administered part of Shanghai, although sporadic fighting between gangsters and communists had occurred previously. Chinese Communist leader Zhou Enlai was fortunate to flee the city, because suspected left-wingers were executed on sight.
The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was the first great war of the 20th century which grew out of the rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea.<br/><br/> The major theatres of operations were Southern Manchuria, specifically the area around the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden, the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. The resulting campaigns, in which the Japanese military attained victory over the Russian forces arrayed against them, were unexpected by world observers. As time transpired, these victories would transform the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japan's recent entry onto the world stage.<br/><br/> The embarrassing string of defeats inflamed the Russian people's dissatisfaction with their inefficient and corrupt Tsarist government, and proved a major cause of the Russian Revolution of 1905.
The former Nanshi district, literally 'southern city', was the historic heart of Shanghai. It included the old, walled city as well as the nearby docklands on both sides of the Huangpu River. Shanghai County was established at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. A city wall was built to repel the Wokou, and this Ming Dynasty wall defined the extent of urban Shanghai for the next few centuries. In 1842, the area north of the old city was established as the British concession in Shanghai, which later became the Shanghai International Settlement. At the time, the concession was referred to by locals as the 'northern city' while the walled Chinese city was the 'southern city'. From this reference was later derived the name Nanshi or 'Southern city').
The JÄmiÊ¿ al-tawÄrÄ«kh, (Mongolian: Судрын чуулган, Sudar-yn Chuulgan; Arabic: جامع التواريخ ‎; Persian: جامع‌التواریخ ), ('Compendium of Chronicles') or Universal History is an Iranian work of literature and history written by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani at the start of the 14th century.
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement, was a proto-nationalist movement by the Righteous Harmony Society in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing foreign imperialism and Christianity.<br/><br/> The uprising took place in response to foreign spheres of influence in China, with grievances ranging from opium traders, political invasion, economic manipulation, to missionary evangelism. In China, popular sentiment remained resistant to foreign influences, and anger rose over the 'unequal treaties', which the weak Qing state could not resist.<br/><br/> Concerns grew that missionaries and Chinese Christians could use this decline to their advantage, appropriating lands and property of unwilling Chinese peasants to give to the church. This sentiment resulted in violent revolts against foreign interests.
John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a distinguished British–Dutch soldier and noted author. He was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, which then was in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scot and an officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his wife of presumed Dutch noble lineage, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen.<br/><br/> He lived most of his childhood in 'the Dutch Republic with his parents but spent time with his uncle in Scotland. His years in Surinam, on the northern coast of South America, were characterized by encounters with African slaves and colonial planters, as well as the exotic local flora and fauna.<br/><br/> He recorded his experiences in <i>The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam</i> (1796) which, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonization, became an important tool in the early abolitionist cause.
Impalement is the penetration of an organism by an object such as a stake, pole, spear or hook, by complete (or partial) perforation of the central body mass.<br/><br/>The Portuguese mercenary, Filipe de Brito, was executed by impalement at Syriam / Thanylin in 1613 (see CPA0022573).