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In Vietnamese <i>ha long</i> means ‘descending dragon’, and legend has it that Halong Bay was formed by a gigantic dragon which plunged into the Gulf of Tonkin, creating thousands of limestone outcrops by the lashing of its tail. Geologists tend to dismiss this theory, arguing that the myriad islands that dot Halong Bay and extend all the way north to the Chinese frontier are the product of selective erosion of the seabed over millennia.
In Vietnamese <i>ha long</i> means ‘descending dragon’, and legend has it that Halong Bay was formed by a gigantic dragon which plunged into the Gulf of Tonkin, creating thousands of limestone outcrops by the lashing of its tail. Geologists tend to dismiss this theory, arguing that the myriad islands that dot Halong Bay and extend all the way north to the Chinese frontier are the product of selective erosion of the seabed over millennia.
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia, near the eastern boundary of Europe.<br/><br/> Marked by constant close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest (nearly 2.2 million personnel) and bloodiest (1.7–2 million wounded, killed or captured) battles in the history of warfare. The heavy losses inflicted on the German Wehrmacht make it arguably the most strategically decisive battle of the whole war. It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II; German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses.
In 717-718, Kibi was part of the Japanese mission to Tang China (Kentoshi) along with Abe no Nakamaro and Genbo.<br/><br/> Kibi stayed in China for 17 years before returning to Japan. He is credited with bringing back a number of things, introducing the game of Go to Japan for the first time, as well as the art of embroidery.
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.<br/><br/> 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. 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.<br/><br/> 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.
The Battle of Luzon was a land battle fought as part of the Pacific Theater of Operations of World War II by the Allied forces of the U.S., its colony the Philippines, and allies against forces of the Empire of Japan. The battle resulted in a U.S. and Filipino victory.<br/><br/> The Allies had taken control of all strategically and economically important locations of Luzon by March 1945, although pockets of Japanese resistance held out in the mountains until the unconditional surrender of Japan.
The Battle of Manila from 3 February to 3 March 1945, fought by American, Filipino and Japanese forces, was part of the Philippines' 1945 campaign.<br/><br/> The one-month battle, which culminated in a terrible bloodbath and total devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific theater, and ended almost three years of Japanese military occupation in the Philippines (1942–1945). The city's capture was marked as General Douglas MacArthur's key to victory in the campaign of reconquest.
Yashima Gakutei was a Japanese artist and poet who was a pupil of both Totoya Hokkei and Hokusai. Gakutei is best known for his kyoka poetry and surimono woodblock works.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年, 30 April 1839 – 9 June 1892, also named Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇 芳年) was a Japanese artist.<br/><br/> He is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing. He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.<br/><br/> Eimei nijūhasshūku (英名 二十八 衆句 or ‘28 Famous Murders with Verse’), also known as the 'Bloody Prints', is a collection of Japanese ukiyo-e from the 1860s, which depicted gruesome acts of murder or torture based on historical events or scenes in Kabuki plays. Although most of the works are solely violent by nature, it is perhaps the first known example of ero guro or the erotic grotesque in Japanese culture, an art sub-genre which depicts either erotic or extreme images of violence and mutilation.
The Second Indochina War, known in America as the Vietnam War, was a Cold War era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and part of their wider strategy of containment.<br/><br/> The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. U.S. military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive.<br/><br/> U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the US-Vietnam War.
The Shihon choshoku yamai no soshi ('Diseases and Deformities', 紙本著色病草紙) is a late Heian (12th century) hand scroll (emakimono) consisting of colour paintings on paper that has, at some time, been cut into ten separate sections. They are preserved in the Kyoto National Museum and are listed as a National Treasure of Japan.
The Astana Graves (Chinese: 阿斯塔那古墓, Pinyin: Āsītǎnà Gǔmù) are a series of underground tombs located 6km from the ancient city of Gaochang, and 42km from Turpan, in Xinjiang, China. The tombs were used by the inhabitants of Gaochang, both commoners and locals, for about 600 years from 200 CE – 800 CE.<br/><br/> The complex covers 10 square kilometres and contains over 1,000 tombs. Different plots for separate castes and families are marked by gravel dividers. Due to the arid environment many important artifacts have been well preserved at the tombs, including natural mummies.<br/><br/> A typical tomb is entered by a 10 metre sloping staircase. The tombs are not very large, usually only 2 metres high. Some tombs also have murals inside. The deceased were laid on a small raised platform in the back of the tomb, surrounded by possessions and even food.<br/><br/> Their faces were covered by cloths, some of which have distinct Persian motifs. A small funeral brick was placed to next to each body, on which was written the person’s name and other biographical information. These bricks have been incredibly useful for historians to date the tombs’ finds. There are also various Tang Dynasty figurines and silk paintings in graves.
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 Battle of Khalkhyn Gol was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet–Japanese Border War fought between the Soviet Union, Mongolia and the Empire of Japan in 1939. The conflict was named after the river Khalkhyn Gol, which passes through the battlefield. In Japan, the decisive battle of the conflict is known as the Nomonhan Incident (Nomonhan Jiken) after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria.<br/><br/> The battles resulted in total defeat for the Japanese Sixth Army. Casualty estimates vary widely: Some sources say the Japanese suffered 45,000 or more soldiers killed with Soviet casualties of at least 17,000. The Japanese officially reported 8,440 killed and 8,766 wounded, while the Soviets initially claimed 9,284 total casualties.<br/><br/> Although this engagement is little known in the West, it had profound implications on the conduct of World War II. It may be said to be the first decisive battle of World War II, because it determined that the two principal Axis Powers, Germany and Japan, would never geographically link up their areas of control through Russia. The defeat convinced the Imperial General Staff in Tokyo that the policy of the North Strike Group, favoured by the Imperial Japanese Army, which wanted to seize Siberia as far as Lake Baikal for its resources, was untenable. Instead the South Strike Group, favored by the Imperial Japanese Navy, which wanted to seize the resources of Southeast Asia, especially the petroleum and mineral-rich Dutch East Indies, gained ascendancy, leading directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor two and a half years later in December 1941.
The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west.<br/><br/> Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han (also known as the Western Han Dynasty), when in 76 BCE the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu, Yutian (Khotan), Sulei (Kashgar), and a group of states in the Tarim basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan mountains.<br/><br/> Ptolemy spoke of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a 'Kasia Regio', probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar is formed.<br/><br/> The country’s people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam. The celebrated Old Uighur prince Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam late in the 10th century and his Uighur kingdom lasted until 1120 but was distracted by complicated dynastic struggles.<br/><br/> The Uighurs employed an alphabet based upon the Syriac and borrowed from the Nestorian, but after converting to Islam widely used also an Arabic script. They spoke a dialect of Turkic preserved in the Kudatku Bilik, a moral treatise composed in 1065.
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.
Ypres occupied a strategic position during World War I because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France. In the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915), the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front (they had used it earlier at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915) and captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as colonial tirailleurs. The gas used was chlorine gas. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was also used for the first time near Ieper in the autumn of 1917
The Second Indochina War, known in America as the Vietnam War, was a Cold War era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and part of their wider strategy of containment.<br/><br/> The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. U.S. military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive.<br/><br/> U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the US-Vietnam War.
Ypres occupied a strategic position during World War I because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France. In the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915), the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front (they had used it earlier at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915) and captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as colonial tirailleurs. The gas used was chlorine gas. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was also used for the first time near Ieper in the autumn of 1917
Go (Japanese name), known as 'weiqi' in Chinese and 'baduk' in Korean, is an ancient board game for two players that is noted for being rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules.
Seoul is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of more than 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the developed world. The Seoul Capital Area, which includes the surrounding Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province, is the world's second largest metropolitan area with over 25.6 million people, home to over half of South Koreans along with 632,000 international residents.<br/><br/>During the Korean War, Seoul changed hands between the Chinese-backed North Korean forces and the UN-backed South Korean forces several times, leaving the city heavily damaged after the war. One estimate of the extensive damage states that after the war, at least 191,000 buildings, 55,000 houses, and 1,000 factories lay in ruins. In addition, a flood of refugees had entered Seoul during the war, swelling the population of Seoul and its metropolitan area to an estimated 2.5 million, more than half of them homeless.
Emperor Go-Saga (Go-Saga-tennō, April 1, 1220 – March 17, 1272) was the 88th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. This reign spanned the years 1242 through 1246. Go-Saga's final resting place is designated as an Imperial mausoleum (misasagi) at Saa no minami no Misasagi in Kyoto.
Ypres occupied a strategic position during World War I because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France. In the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915), the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front (they had used it earlier at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915) and captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as colonial tirailleurs. The gas used was chlorine gas. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was also used for the first time near Ieper in the autumn of 1917
Ypres occupied a strategic position during World War I because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France. In the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915), the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front (they had used it earlier at the Battle of Bolimov on 3 January 1915) and captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as colonial tirailleurs. The gas used was chlorine gas. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was also used for the first time near Ieper in the autumn of 1917
Starting with the California Gold Rush in the late 19th century, the United States—particularly the West Coast states—imported large numbers of Chinese migrant laborers. Early Chinese immigrants worked as gold miners, and later on large labor projects, such as the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad.<br/><br/> Chinese migrant workers encountered considerable prejudice in the United States, especially by the people who occupied the lower layers in white society, because Chinese 'coolies' were used as a scapegoat for depressed wage levels by politicians and labor leaders.<br/><br/> In the 1870s and 1880s various legal discriminatory measures were taken against the Chinese. These laws, in particular the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, were aimed at restricting further immigration from China. The laws were later repealed by the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943.
Go (Japanese), known as <i>weiqi</i> in Chinese and <i>baduk</i> in Korean, is an ancient board game for two players that is noted for being rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules.
Go (Japanese name), known as 'weiqi' in Chinese and 'baduk' in Korean, is an ancient board game for two players that is noted for being rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules.
In Thai Theravada Buddhism young men are usually expected to ordain into the monkhood at some point in their life. Ordination into the Buddhist monkhood has never implied a lifetime commitment and most men usually only spend a short time in the temple.<br/><br/> Entering the monkhood, even for a short time, is believed to bring great merit to the ordained as well as his parents.
In Thai Theravada Buddhism young men are usually expected to ordain into the monkhood at some point in their life. Ordination into the Buddhist monkhood has never implied a lifetime commitment and most men usually only spend a short time in the temple.<br/><br/> Entering the monkhood, even for a short time, is believed to bring great merit to the ordained as well as his parents.
Justin Perkins (1805-1869) was born on a farm in Massachusetts, and educated at Amherst and the Andover Theological Seminary. From 1833 until shortly before his death in 1869, he served as missionary to the Nestorian Christians of Qajar Iran (1794-1925) under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. He was the first American missionary in Qajar Iran, as well as an eminent scholar of Syriac. He developed an alphabet for the writing of modern Syriac, which was the Nestorians' vernacular, and established a press at Urmia (spelled Oroomiah by Perkins) in western Azerbaijan to print his translations of the New Testament (1846) and the Old Testament (1852) in both liturgical and modern Syriac.<br/><br/> Urmia, sometimes spelled, Orumieh, during the majority of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925–1979) called Rezaiyeh), is a city in Northwestern Iran and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province. The city lies on an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chay river (City River). Urmia is the 10th most populated city in Iran with a population of about 600,000. The population is predominantly Azerbaijani with significant Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian minorities.