Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On October 8, 1480, Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, stood up to the Tatars led by Akhmat Khan of the Great Horde, the successor to the “Golden Horde,” in an epic stand known as the “Great Stand on the Ugra River,” one of the high points of Russian military history.  This great battle occurred before Russia was a unified country or group of countries led by a single monarch which came to be known as the Czar or Tsar, a Russian adaptation of the Roman title “Caesar.”  (Note: The Germans also appropriated the title of Caesar…

A Brief History On October 3, 1952, (October 2 local date), the British became the third country to boast the possession of atomic weapons when Operation Hurricane resulted in a successful nuclear blast in the Monte Bello Islands of Western Australia.  The United States had first achieved nuclear fission in bomb form on July 16, 1945, in a famous/infamous blast called the Trinity test in the desert of New Mexico, the culmination of a joint Allied effort to design and field an atomic bomb, an effort that the United Kingdom had contributed to.  So why was the UK not included…

A Brief History On October 1, 1994, the Pacific island nation of Palau entered an agreement with the United States called “a Compact of Free Association with the United States,” maintaining its independence while reaping some of the territorial benefits of being part of the “American Empire.”  While the average American is probably not familiar with the most populous of the 340 islands that make up the country, and probably never heard of the capital city of Ngerulmud, those familiar with the US vs. Japan Pacific War during World War II may be familiar with the island of Peleliu, the…

A Brief History On September 11, 2001, the fanatical Islamist terror group, al-Qaeda, carried out coordinated attacks against the United States, resulting in the crashing of a fully occupied jetliner into the Pentagon, the hijacking and subsequent crash of another jetliner, and the crashing of yet another two jetliners into the World Trade Center, taking down two of the tallest buildings in the world.  Lost were nearly 3000 innocent lives with another 6000 people injured.  About $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure was also destroyed.  For what? Digging Deeper Apparently misguided Islamists see the United States as an enemy…

A Brief History On September 9, 1991, the Tajik SSR declared its independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as part of the disintegration of the USSR and became the sovereign nation of Tajikistan.  The first part of the name of the new nation is no mystery, it reflects the majority ethnicity of the people in that region, people calling themselves Tajiks.  The ending part of the name of the country, and the names of so many other countries in the region, “stan,” derives from the Persian word for “place.”  Thus, Tajikistan pretty much means “Place of the…