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The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials held in the Soviet Union at the instigation of Joseph Stalin between 1936 and 1938. The defendants included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the former leadership of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Moscow Trials led to the execution of many of the defendants, including most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks. The trials are generally seen as part of Stalin's Great Purge which was an attempt to rid the party of current or prior party oppositionists. Trotskyists were especially targeted, but not exclusively. Indeed any leading Bolshevik cadre from the period of the 1917 revolution or earlier who might even potentially become a figurehead for the growing discontent in the Soviet populace resulting from Stalin's incompetent mismanagement of the economy was targeted.
Zoroaster (Old Persian: Zarathustra, in modern Persian Zardosht) is generally thought to have lived about the 11th or 10th century BCE. Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Zoroaster as prophet. The term Zoroastrianism is, in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism (the worship of Ahura Mazda, exalted by Zoroaster as the supreme divine authority).<br/><br/> In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil originates from Him. Thus, in Zoroastrianism good and evil have distinct sources, with evil (druj) trying to destroy the creation of Mazda (asha), and good trying to sustain it. In some form, it served as the national- or state religion of a significant portion of the Iranian people for many centuries.
Zoroaster (Old Persian: Zarathustra, in modern Persian Zardosht) is generally thought to have lived about the 11th or 10th century BCE. Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Zoroaster as prophet. The term Zoroastrianism is, in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism (the worship of Ahura Mazda, exalted by Zoroaster as the supreme divine authority).<br/><br/> In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil originates from Him. Thus, in Zoroastrianism good and evil have distinct sources, with evil (druj) trying to destroy the creation of Mazda (asha), and good trying to sustain it. In some form, it served as the national- or state religion of a significant portion of the Iranian people for many centuries.
A mandarin (Chinese: 官; pinyin: guān; Vietnamese: quan) was a bureaucrat in imperial China, and also in the monarchist days of Vietnam where the system of Imperial examinations and scholar-bureaucrats was adopted under Chinese influence.
Bao Zheng is today respected as a symbol of justice in China. Throughout history, his largely fictionalized stories have appeared in a variety of different literary and dramatic genres, and have enjoyed sustained popularity. Bao Zheng was born into a scholar family in Hefei, Anhui province. At the age of 29, he passed the highest-level Imperial examination and became qualified as a Jinshi. He was a magistrate in Bian (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song dynasty. He is famous for his uncompromising stance against corruption among the government officials at the time. He upheld justice and refused to yield to higher powers.<br/><br/> After his death, Bao Zheng's stories were retold and preserved particularly in the form of performance arts such as Chinese opera and pingshu. Written forms of his legend appeared in the Yuan Dynasty in the form of Qu. In Ming Dynasty times the novel Bao Gong An increased his popularity and added a detective element to his legends. The Qing Dynasty novel The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants also added a wuxia (martial arts literature) twist to his stories. In opera or drama, he is often portrayed with a black face and a white crescent shaped birthmark on his forehead. In most dramatization of his stories, he used a set of guillotines, given to him by the emperor, to execute criminals.
Bao Zheng is today respected as a symbol of justice in China. Throughout history, his largely fictionalized stories have appeared in a variety of different literary and dramatic genres, and have enjoyed sustained popularity. Bao Zheng was born into a scholar family in Hefei, Anhui province. At the age of 29, he passed the highest-level Imperial examination and became qualified as a Jinshi. He was a magistrate in Bian (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song dynasty. He is famous for his uncompromising stance against corruption among the government officials at the time. He upheld justice and refused to yield to higher powers.<br/><br/> After his death, Bao Zheng's stories were retold and preserved particularly in the form of performance arts such as Chinese opera and pingshu. Written forms of his legend appeared in the Yuan Dynasty in the form of Qu. In Ming Dynasty times the novel Bao Gong An increased his popularity and added a detective element to his legends. The Qing Dynasty novel The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants also added a wuxia (martial arts literature) twist to his stories. In opera or drama, he is often portrayed with a black face and a white crescent shaped birthmark on his forehead. In most dramatization of his stories, he used a set of guillotines, given to him by the emperor, to execute criminals.
Born in Toledo, Spain, Alfonso was the eldest son of Ferdinand III of Castile and Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen, known in Spain as Beatriz de Suabia, through whom he was a cousin of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. In the period 1240–1250 he conquered several Muslim strongholds in Al-Andalus alongside his father, such as Murcia, Alicante and Cadiz. In the siege of Niebla (1262) he used cannon to defeat the Muslim defenders. This is the first recorded use of gunpowder for military purposes by Europeans - ironically a technqiue learned from his Muslim opponents.
Thomas Gardiner Corcoran (1900–1981) was one of several advisors in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's brain trust during the New Deal, and later, a close friend and advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson.<br/><br/> Corcoran was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and educated at Brown University and Harvard Law School. He clerked for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. at the United States Supreme Court in 1926-27. In 1932, after practicing corporate law in New York, Corcoran joined the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.<br/><br/> When Roosevelt began to take notice of his efforts, Corcoran was given a wider range of responsibilities than his official position as assistant general counsel allowed. He organized administrative agencies for various New Deal programs and assisted in drafting such legislation as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.<br/><br/> A protégé of Felix Frankfurter, Corcoran was considered the leader of the 'New Dealers', a group of young lawyers that became prominent within the Roosevelt administration in the wake of the renewed economic recession of 1937.
Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman Turkish: عبد الحميد ثانی, `Abdü’l-Ḥamīd-i sânî; Turkish: İkinci Abdülhamit; 22 September 1842 – 10 February 1918) was the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the last Sultan to exert effective autocratic control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Empire, including widespread pogroms and government massacres against the minorities of the Empire (named the Hamidian massacres after him) as well as an assassination attempt, ruling from 31 August 1876 until he was deposed shortly after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, on 27 April 1909. He was succeeded by his brother Mehmed V.<br/><br/> Despite his conservatism and belief in absolute monarchy, Abdul Hamid was responsible for some modest modernization of the Ottoman Empire during his long reign, including reform of the bureaucracy, the ambitious Hijaz Railway project, the establishment of a system for population registration and control over the press, and the founding of the first modern law school in 1898.<br/><br/> Often known as the Red Sultan or Abdul the Damned due to the atrocities committed against the Empire's minorities under his rule and use of a secret police to silence dissent, Abdul Hamid became more reclusive toward the end of his reign, his worsening paranoia about perceived threats to his personal power and his life leading him to shun public appearances.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). He is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed 'the world's most famous equation'). He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics 'for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect'. The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory.<br/><br/> Einstein was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and, being Jewish, did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the USA, becoming an American citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential development of 'extremely powerful bombs of a new type' and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project.<br/><br/> Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works. His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word 'Einstein' synonymous with genius.
In Islamic law, impotence comes under the category <i>al-uyub</i>, or 'defects'. In Sunni Islam, a man's inability to have sexual intercourse with his wife for physical reasons gives her the right to request the dissolution of the marriage in an Islamc court.<br/><br/> When a woman pleads the impotence of her husband and he denies the charge, the burden of proof rests on her to prove that he is impotent. In this instance, she has presented the judge with evidence in the form of a <i>zibik</i> or dildo.