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Palmanova is a town and municipality in northeastern Italy. It is an excellent example of a bastion / star fort of the design favoured in the Late Renaissance era. First built by the Venetians in 1593, the fort-town was designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi. A second phase of construction occurred between 1658 and 1690, with final fortifications completed under the Napoleonic domination of 1806-1813.
Quanzhou was established in 718 during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). In those days, Guangzhou was China's greatest seaport, but this status would be surpassed later by Quanzhou. During the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), Quanzhou was one of the world's largest seaports, hosting a large community of foreign-born inhabitants from across the Eurasian world.<br/><br/> Due to its reputation, Quanzhou has been called the starting point of the Silk Road via the sea. From the Arabic name form of the city, Zayton, the word satin would be minted. In The Travels of Marco Polo, Quanzhou (called Zayton, T'swan-Chau or Chin-Cheu) was listed as the departure point for Marco Polo's expedition to escort the 17-year-old Mongol princess bride Kököchin to her new husband in the Persian Ilkhanate.
Tulip mania or tulipomania (Dutch names include: tulpenmanie, tulpomanie, tulpenwoede, tulpengekte and bollengekte) was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed.<br/><br/> At the peak of tulip mania, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.<br/><br/> Although tulips are generally associated with the Netherlands, commercial cultivation of the flower began in the Ottoman Empire. The tulip, or lale (from Persian لاله, lâleh) as it is also called in Iran and Turkey, is a flower indigenous to a vast area encompassing arid parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The word tulip, which earlier appeared in English in forms such as tulipa or tulipant, entered the language by way of French tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend.
China Burma India Theater (CBI) was the name used by the United States Army for its forces operating in conjunction with British and Chinese Allied air and land forces in China, Burma, and India during World War II. Well-known US units in this theater included the Flying Tigers, transport and bomber units flying the Hump, the 1st Air Commando Group, the engineers who built Ledo Road, and the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), otherwise known as Merrill's Marauders.
The French established an opium franchise to put their new colony on a paying basis only six months after they annexed Saigon in 1862. Opium was imported from India, taxed at 10 percent of value, and sold by licensed Chinese merchants to all comers. Opium became an extremely lucrative source of income, and this successful experiment was repeated as the French acquired other areas in Indochina.<br/><br/> Shortly after the French established a protectorate over Cambodia (1863) and central Vietnam (1883), and annexed Tonkin (northern Vietnam, 1884) and Laos (1893), they founded autonomous opium monopolies to finance the heavy initial expenses of colonial rule. While the opium franchise had succeeded in putting southern Vietnam on a paying basis within several years, the rapid expansion of French holdings in the 1880s and 1890s created a huge fiscal deficit for Indochina as a whole.<br/><br/> Governor-General Paul Doumer reorganized the opium business in 1899, expanding sales and sharply reducing expenses. After consolidating the five autonomous opium agencies into the single Opium Monopoly, Doumer constructed a modern, efficient opium refinery in Saigon to process raw Indian resin into prepared smoker's opium. The new factory devised a special mixture of prepared opium that burned quickly, thus encouraging the smoker to consume more opium than he might ordinarily.<br/><br/> Under Doumer's direction, the Opium Monopoly made its first purchases of cheap opium from China's Yunnan Province so that government dens and retail shops could expand their clientele to include the poorer workers who could not afford the high-priced Indian brands. More dens and shops were opened to meet expanded consumer demand (in 1918 there were 1,512 dens and 3,098 retail shops).
Between 1970 and 1975 Norodom Sihanouk was nominally head of the Khmer Rouge-dominated Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (acronym from the French GRUNK), the opposition to Lon Nol's pro-American Khmer Republic. In 1973 he travelled from Beijing to the Khmer Rouge 'liberated zone' of Cambodia for propaganda purposes.<br/><br/> The Khmer Rouge, or Communist Party of Kampuchea, ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. It is remembered primarily for its brutality and policy of social engineering which resulted in millions of deaths. Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria). Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide. Several former Khmer Rouge cadres are currently on trial for war crimes in Phnom Penh.