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![Chemical Weapons Testing - Rare Top Secret US Military Film [FULL VIDEO]](http://web.archive.org./web/20130303162906im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uzimDDtM0aE/default.jpg "Chemical Weapons Testing - Rare Top Secret US Military Film [FULL VIDEO] This rare vintage US government Film shows deadly Chemical Weapons Testing and provides discussion of the effects and potential military applications. Subscribe for new video updates: www.youtube.com Join the club: www.facebook.com")
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Air Raid on Bari
The air raid on Bari was an air attack by German bombers on Allied forces and shipping in Bari, Italy, on 2 December 1943 during World War II. In the attack, 105 German Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Luftflotte 2, achieving complete surprise, bombed shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian campaign, sinking 27 cargo and transport ships and a schooner in Bari harbor.
The attack, which lasted a little more than one hour, put the port out of action until February 1944 and was called the "Little Pearl Harbor". The release of mustard gas from one of the wrecked cargo ships added to the loss of life. For various reasons, the British and American governments covered up the presence of mustard gas and its effects on victims of the raid.
In 1943, during the Italian Campaign, the port of Bari in southern Italy served as an important logistics hub for Allied forces. Crucial ammunition, supplies, and provisions were unloaded from ships at the port, then transported to Allied forces attempting to capture Rome and push German forces out of the Italian peninsula to the north.
wn.com/Air_Raid_on_Bari -
Albania
Albania (
i/ælˈbeɪniə/ al-BAY-nee-ə, Albanian: Shqipëri/Shqipëria; Gheg Albanian: Shqipnia), officially known as the Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika e Shqipërisë pronounced Albanian pronunciation: [ɾɛpuˈblika ɛ ʃcipəˈɾiːs]), is a country in Southern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. It is less than 72 km (45 mi) from Italy, across the Strait of Otranto which links the Adriatic Sea to the Ionian Sea.
Albania is a member of the UN, NATO, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Council of Europe, World Trade Organisation, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and one of the founding members of the Union for the Mediterranean. Albania has been a potential candidate for accession to the European Union since January 2003, and it formally applied for EU membership on 28 April 2009.
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Algeria
Coordinates: 28°N 2°E / 28°N 2°E / 28; 2
Algeriai/ælˈdʒɪəriə/ (Arabic: الجزائر, al-Jazā'ir; Berber: ⴷⵣⴰⵢⴻⵔ Dzayer), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria (الجمهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية, al-Jumhūriyyah al-Jazāʾiriyyah ad-Dīmuqrāṭiyyah ash-Shaʿbiyyah), also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a large country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.
When referring to its land area, Algeria is the largest country in Africa, Maghreb and the Arab World. It is also the largest of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea; it is also the tenth-largest country in the world. The country is bordered in the northeast by Tunisia, in the east by Libya, in the west by Morocco, in the southwest by Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali, in the southeast by Niger, and in the north by the Mediterranean Sea. Its size is almost 2,400,000 square kilometres (926,645 sq mi) with an estimated population of 37.1 million as of 2012. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC and the United Nations. The country is also a founding member of the Arab Maghreb Union.
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Argentina
Argentinai/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
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Bari
Bari
listen (help·info) (Bari dialect: Bare; from Latin: Barium) is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia (or, in Italian, Puglia) region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas. The city itself has a decreasing population of about 320,000, as of 2009, over 116 km², while the fast-growing urban area counts 653,028 inhabitants over 203 km². The metropolitan area counts 1 million inhabitants.
Bari is made up of four different urban sections. To the north is the closely built old town on the peninsula between two modern harbours, with the splendid Basilica of Saint Nicholas, the Cathedral of San Sabino (1035–1171) and the Swabian Castle built for Frederick II, which is now also a major nightlife district. To the south is the Murat quarter (erected by Joachim Murat), the modern heart of the city, which is laid out on a rectangular grid-plan with a promenade on the sea and the major shopping district (the via Sparano and via Argiro).
wn.com/Bari -
Battle of Legnica
The Battle of Legnica (Polish: Bitwa pod Legnicą), also known as the Battle of Liegnitz (German: Schlacht von Liegnitz) or Battle of Wahlstatt (German: Schlacht bei Wahlstatt), was a battle between the Mongol Empire and the combined defending forces of European fighters that took place at Legnickie Pole (Wahlstatt) near the city of Legnica in the Silesia province of the Kingdom of Poland on 9 April 1241.
A combined force of Poles, Czechs and Germans under the command of the Polish duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia, supported by feudal nobility and a few knights from military orders sent by the Pope, attempted to halt the Mongol invasion of Europe. The battle came two days before the Mongol victory over the Hungarians at the much larger Battle of Mohi.
As with many historical battles, the exact details of force composition, tactics, and the actual course of the battle are lacking and sometimes contradictory.
A modern revisionist interpretation is that it was a crushing defeat for the Eastern European forces where they suffered heavy casualties. It is known that the Mongols had no intentions at the time of extending the campaign westward, because they went to the Kingdom of Hungary to help the main Mongol army in the conquest of the country.
wn.com/Battle_of_Legnica -
Belgium
Belgium (i/ˈbɛldʒəm/ BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups, the Dutch-speakers, mostly Flemish (about 60%), and the French-speakers, mostly Walloons (about 40%), plus a small group of German-speakers. Belgium's two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region, officially bilingual, is a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.
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Bhopal disaster
The Bhopal disaster (commonly referred to as Bhopal gas tragedy) was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. A leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from the plant resulted in the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people. The toxic substance made its way in and around the shantytowns located near the plant. Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Others estimate 3,000 died within weeks and another 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases. A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
UCIL was the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), with Indian Government controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1994, the Supreme Court of India allowed UCC to sell its 50.9 percent share. Union Carbide sold UCIL, the Bhopal plant operator, to Eveready Industries India Limited in 1994. The Bhopal plant was later sold to McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001.
wn.com/Bhopal_disaster -
Bolimów
Bolimów [bɔˈlimuf] is a village in Skierniewice County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. It is the seat of the Gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Bolimów. It lies approximately 14 kilometres (9 mi) north of Skierniewice and 58 km (36 mi) north-east of the regional capital Łódź. The village has a population of 930. It gives its name to the protected area known as Bolimów Landscape Park.
Its history dates back to at least the 15th century, when it was considered a town, but it lost its city rights around 1870.
It was the place where poison gas weapons were used for the first time, during First World War, when on 31 January 1915, during the Battle of Bolimov, the German army shelled Russian army positions with xylyl bromide; the attack was relatively unsuccessful due to low temperature which prevented the gas from vaporising and spreading.
A much larger attack with poison gas occurred in the nearby area on 31 May 1915, and Russian army suffered much higher casualties (over several thousand dead).
wn.com/Bolimów -
Burma
Burma
i/ˈbɜrmə/ BUR-mə, also known as Myanmar i/ˌmjɑːnˈmɑr/ MYAHN--MAR, is a country in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. One-third of Burma's total perimeter of 1,930 kilometres (1,200 mi) forms an uninterrupted coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. At 676,578 km2 (261,227 sq mi), it is the 40th largest country in the world and the second largest country in Southeast Asia. Burma is also the 24th most populous country in the world with over 60.28 million people.
Burma is home to some of the early civilizations of Southeast Asia including the Pyu and the Mon. In the 9th century, the Burmans of the Kingdom of Nanzhao, entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Empire in the 1050s, the Burmese language and culture slowly became dominant in the country. During this period, Theravada Buddhism gradually became the predominant religion of the country. The Pagan Empire fell due to the Mongol invasions (1277–1301), and several warring states emerged. In the second half of the 16th century, the country was reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty which for a brief period was the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Burma as well as Manipur and Assam. The country was colonized by Britain following three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885).
wn.com/Burma -
Cambodia
Cambodia (i/kæmˈboʊdiə/;Khmer: ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា, Kampuchea, IPA: [kɑmˈpuˈciə]), officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total landmass of 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 sq mi), it is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest.
With a population of over 14.8 million, Cambodia is the 68th most populous country in the world. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced by around 95% of the Cambodian population. The country minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and 30 various hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh; the political, economic, and cultural center of Cambodia. The kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni, a monarch chosen by the Royal Throne Council, as head of state. The head of government is Hun Sen, who is currently the longest serving leader in South East Asia and has ruled Cambodia for over 25 years.
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Canada
Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km2 (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
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Chechnya
The Chechen Republic ( /ˈtʃɛtʃɨn/; Russian: Чече́нская Респу́блика, Chechenskaya Respublika; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika), commonly referred to as Chechnya (/ˈtʃɛtʃniə/; Russian: Чечня́, Chechnya; Chechen: Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria (English: Land of Minerals), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. Population: 1,268,989 (2010 Census).
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continues in the mountains and southern regions of the republic.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
wn.com/China -
Egypt
Egypti/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (Arabic: مصر, Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: [mɑsˤɾ] ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, Kīmi ; Sahidic Coptic: ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, Kēme), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: جمهوريّة مصر العربيّة (help·info), is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its over 81 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
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England
Englandi/ˈɪŋɡlənd/ is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, while the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world. The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law—the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world—developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's Royal Society laid the foundations of modern experimental science.
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Ethiopia
Ethiopia (
/ˌiːθiˈoʊpiə/) (Ge'ez: ኢትዮጵያ ʾĪtyōṗṗyā), officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With its capital at Addis Ababa, it is also the most populous landlocked nation in the world.
Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history, and the Ethiopian dynasty traces its roots to the 2nd century BC. Ethiopia is also one of the oldest sites of human existence known to scientists today, having yielded some of humanity's oldest traces. It may be the region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond. Alongside Rome, Persia, China and India, the Ethiopian Aksum Empire was considered one of the great world powers of the 3rd century. During the Scramble for Africa, Ethiopia was the only African country beside Liberia that retained its sovereignty as a recognized independent country, and was one of only four African members of the League of Nations. After a brief period of Italian occupation, Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. When other African nations received their independence following World War II, many of them adopted the colors of Ethiopia's flag, and Addis Ababa became the location of several international organizations focused on Africa.
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France
France (Englishi/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] (
listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).
Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
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Germany
Germany (i/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
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Halabja
Halabja (Kurdish: ههڵهبجه Helebce), is a Kurdish town in Northern Iraq, located about 150 miles (240 km) north-east of Baghdad and 8–10 miles from the Iranian border.
The town lies at the base of what is often referred to as the greater Hewraman region stretching across the Iran-Iraq border. The Kurds in the city of Halabja generally speak only the Sorani dialect of Kurdish, but some residents of the surrounding villages speak the Hewrami dialect.
Halabja has a long history. The cemetery includes the tombs of several historical figures, such as Ahmed Mukhtar Jaf, Tayar Bag Jaf and Adila Khanim. In August 2009, three 17th century tombs were discovered in the Ababile district of the town.
This suggests that the town is somewhat older than indicated by some sources, which claim that it was built by the Ottoman Empire circa 1850. However, modern developments date from the early 20th century. The post office opened in 1924 and the first school opened the following year. The Qaysari Pasha and Hamid Bag bazaars were built in 1932. Electricity did not reach the city until 1940.
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Hispaniola
Hispaniola (Spanish: La Española) is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt.
Hispaniola is the site of the first European colonies in the New World, which were founded by Christopher Columbus on his voyages in 1492 and 1493. It is the ninth-most-populous island in the world, and the most populous in the Americas. It is the second largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba) and the 22nd-largest island in the world.
The island bears various names originated by its native people, the Taíno Amerindians. When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492 he named it Hispana in Latin and La Isla Española, meaning "The Spanish Island", in Spanish.Bartolomé de las Casas shortened the name to "Española", and when Pietro Martyr d'Anghiera detailed his account of the island in Latin, he translated the name as Hispaniola. Because Anghiera's literary work was translated into English and French in a short period of time, the name "Hispaniola" is the most frequently used term in English-speaking countries for the island in scientific and cartographic works.
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India
India (i/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.
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Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
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Iraq
Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ ori/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.
Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.
Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.
Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.
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Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[neutrality is disputed] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
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Italy
Italyi/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
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Japan
Japani/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
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Kuwait
Kuwait, officially the State of Kuwaiti/kuːˈweɪt/ (Arabic: دولة الكويت, Dawlat al-Kuwayt) is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the Arabic أكوات ākwāt, the plural of كوت kūt, meaning a fortress built near water. The country covers an area of 17,820 square kilometers (6,880 sq mi) and has a population of about 3.5 million.
Historically, the region was the site of Characene, a major Parthian port for trade between Mesopotamia and India. The Bani Utbah tribe were the first permanent Arab settlers in the region, and laid the foundation of the modern emirate. By the 19th century, Kuwait came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, and after World War I, it emerged as an independent sheikhdom under the protection of the British Empire. Kuwait's large oil fields were discovered in the late 1930s.
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Libya
Libya (Arabic: ليبيا Lībyā), Berber: ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ) is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the third largest country in Africa by area, and the 17th largest in the world. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica.
In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.
As a result of the Libyan civil war, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which had at that time been in existence for 34 years, collapsed and Libya entered a period of governance by a transitional administration called the National Transitional Council. The NTC has stated its intention to oversee the first phase of a transition to constitutional democracy, after which it claims it will dissolve in favor of a representative legislature.
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NATO
Coordinates: 50°52′34.16″N 4°25′19.24″E / 50.8761556°N 4.4220111°E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.
For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.
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Nazi Germany
The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.
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Netherlands
The Netherlands (i/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] (
listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
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New York
New York (/njuː ˈjɔrk/; locally IPA: [nɪu ˈjɔək] or [nuː ˈjɔɹk] ( listen)) is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. New York is the 27th most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 7th most densely populated of the 50 United States. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the west and north, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. Alone, it makes up over 40 percent of the population of New York state. It is known for its status as a center for finance and culture and for its status as the largest gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York City is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.
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New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km2), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
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New Zealand
New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa) is an island country located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses ‒ that of the North and South Islands ‒ as well as numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans.
During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of both animal and plant life. Most notable are the large number of unique bird species, many of which became extinct after the arrival of humans and introduced mammals. With a mild maritime climate, the land was mostly covered in forest. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions caused by the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates clashing beneath the earth's surface.
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North Korea
Coordinates: 40°00′N 127°00′E / 40°N 127°E / 40; 127 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK; Chosŏn'gŭl: 조선민주주의인민공화국), commonly referred to as "North Korea" ( listen), is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea. The Amnok, or Yalu, and the Tumen rivers form the border between North Korea and China. A section of the Tumen River in the far northeast is the border with Russia.
The peninsula was governed by the Korean Empire until it was annexed by Japan after the Russo-Japanese War in 1910. It was divided into Soviet- and American-occupied zones in 1945, after the end of World War II. North Korea refused to participate in a United Nations–supervised election held in the south in 1948, which led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones. North and South Korea each claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean Peninsula, which led to the Korean War of 1950. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 ended the fighting; but the two countries are officially still at war against each other, for a peace treaty was never signed. Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.
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North Yemen
North Yemen is a term used to designate the Yemen Arab Republic (1962–1990), its predecessor, the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (1918–1962), and their predecessors that exercised sovereignty over the territory that is now the north-western part of the state of Yemen in southern Arabia.
Neither state ever self-designated as "North Yemen" and the term only came into general use when the Federation of South Arabia gained independence as the People's Republic of Yemen in 1967 making such a distinction necessary. Prior to 1967, both states were known in short form simply as "Yemen." In 1970, South Yemen changed its name to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen thus eliminating any directional reference in either of the Yemens' official names but the existence of two Yemens preserved the North Yemen and South Yemen designations in popular parlance. Alternate forms were "Yemen (Sanaa)" for North Yemen and "Yemen (Aden)" for South Yemen after their respective capital cities.
The merger of the two Yemens in 1990 ended the term's association with an independent state but "North Yemen" continues to be used to refer to the area of the former Yemen Arab Republic and its history and, anachronistically, to pre-1967 polities and events (e.g., the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen or the North Yemen Civil War).
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Ohaeawai
Ohaeawai is a small village at the junction of State Highway 1 and State Highway 12 in the Far North District of New Zealand, some 250 km from Auckland. Nearby is the site of the bloody Battle of Ohaeawai fought at Pene Taui's pā during the Flagstaff War in 1845. The therapeutic mercurial waters of the minor health spa of Ngawha Springs are in a small thermal area to the west, where the new Northland prison is situated. The village is the centre of a rich farming district, with the town of Kaikohe further west and the Bay of Islands a short drive to the east.
St. Michael's Anglican Church was built on the site of Pene Taui's Pā. During the Battle of Ohaeawai the pā was fortified by Te Ruki Kawiti; the outcome of the battle is considered to be a defeat of the British colonial forces. St. Michael's Anglican Church is 5 miles (8.0 km) from Kaikohe and 2 miles (3.2 km) from the township of Ohaeawai; it stands on a gentle rise a short distance west of the main road. The locality is usually called Ngawha, from the hot springs in the neighbourhood. Cowan (1922) asserts that the site of the church (and earlier pā) is the true Ohaeawai; the European township which has appropriated the name should properly be known as Taiamai.
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Okinawa Prefecture
Okinawa Prefecture (沖縄県, Japanese: Okinawa-ken?, Okinawan: Uchinaa-ken) is one of Japan's southern prefectures. It consists of hundreds of the Ryukyu Islands in a chain over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long, which extends southwest from Kyūshū (the southwesternmost of Japan's main four islands) to Taiwan. Okinawa's capital, Naha, is located in the southern part of Okinawa Island. The disputed Senkaku Islands (Mandarin: Diaoyu Islands) are administered as part of Okinawa Prefecture.
The oldest evidence of human existence in the Ryukyu islands was discovered in Naha and Yaese. Some human bone fragments from the Paleolithic era were unearthed, but there is no clear evidence of Paleolithic remains. Japanese Jōmon influences are dominant in the Okinawa Islands, although clay vessels in the Sakishima Islands have a commonality with those in Taiwan.
The first mention of the word Ryukyu was written in the Book of Sui. This Ryukyu might refer to Taiwan, not the Ryukyu islands.[citation needed]Okinawa was the Japanese word depicting the islands, first seen in the biography of Jianzhen, written in 779. Agricultural societies begun in the 8th century slowly developed until the 12th century. Since the islands are located in the center of the East China Sea relatively close to Japan, China and South-East Asia, the Ryūkyū Kingdom became a prosperous trading nation. Also during this period, many Gusukus, similar to castles, were constructed. The Ryūkyū Kingdom had a tributary relationship with the Chinese Empire beginning in the 15th century.
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Pakistan
Pakistan (i/ˈpækɨstæn/ or i/pɑːkiˈstɑːn/; Urdu: پاکستان) (Urdu pronunciation: [paːkɪˈst̪aːn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان), is a sovereign country in South Asia. It sits at the crossroads of the strategically important regions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west and north, Iran to the southwest and China in the far northeast. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and it shares a marine border with Oman.
The territory of modern Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures, including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and has undergone invasions or settlements by Hindu, Persian, Indo-Greek, Islamic, Turco-Mongol, Afghan and Sikh cultures. Thus the area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Indian Mauryan Empire, the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and the British Empire. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and India's struggle for independence, Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims from the regions in the east and west of India where there was a Muslim majority. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a new constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. A civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh.
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Porton Down
Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ. On maps, Porton Down has a "Danger Area" surrounding the entire complex.
It is home to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, known as Dstl. Dstl is an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the site is believed to be one of the United Kingdom's most sensitive and secretive government facilities for military research, including CBRN defence. The Dstl site occupies 7,000 acres (28 km²).
It is also home to the Health Protection Agency's Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response as well as a small science park which includes companies such as Tetricus Bioscience and Ploughshare Innovations.
The site is commonly confused with the UK's nearby CBRN training facility, the Defence CBRN Centre at Winterbourne Gunner.
Porton Down was set up to provide a proper scientific basis for the British use of chemical warfare, in response to the earlier German use of this means of war in 1915. Work at Porton started in March 1916. At the time, only a few cottages and farm buildings were scattered on the downs at Porton and Idmiston.
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Russia
Russiai/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
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Sevastopol
Sevastopol ( /ˌsɛvəˈstoʊpəl/ or /səˈvæstəpoʊl/; previously Sebastopol; Ukrainian and Russian: Севасто́поль; Crimean Tatar: Aqyar) is one of two cities with special status in Ukraine (the other being the capital, Kiev), located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 (2001). Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa.
The unique geographic location and navigation conditions of the city's harbours make Sevastopol a strategically important naval point. It is also a popular seaside resort and tourist destination, mainly for visitors from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. The city, formerly the home of the Russian then Soviet Black Sea Fleet, is now home to a Ukrainian naval base and a Russian naval base in facilities leased by the Russian Navy. The headquarters of both the Ukrainian Naval Forces and Russia's Black Sea Fleet are located in the city. In 1993, the city was the subject of a territorial dispute between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
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South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the State of Vietnam (1949–55) and later as the Republic of Vietnam (1955–75). Its capital was Saigon. The terms South Vietnam and North Vietnam became common usage in 1954 at the time of the Geneva Conference, which partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist zones at the 17th parallel. The United States was an ally of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
South Vietnam's origins can be traced to the French colony of Cochinchina, which consisted of the southern third of Vietnam and was a subdivision of French Indochina. After World War II, the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed the establishment of a Communist nation in Hanoi. In 1949, non-communist Vietnamese politicians formed a rival government in Saigon led by former emperor Bao Dai. Bao Dai was deposed by Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955, who proclaimed himself president after a referendum. After Diem was deposed in a military coup in 1963, there was a series of short-lived military governments. General Nguyen Van Thieu led the country from 1967 until 1975. The Vietnam War began in 1959 with an uprising by Viet Cong forces supplied by North Vietnam. Fighting climaxed during the Tet Offensive of 1968, when there were over 1.5 million South Vietnamese soldiers and 500,000 U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam. Despite a peace treaty concluded in January 1973, fighting continued until the North Vietnamese army overran Saigon on 30 April 1975.
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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Spain
Spain (i/ˈspeɪn/ SPAYN; Spanish: España, pronounced: [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state and a member of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; to the north and north east by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal.
Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. Furthermore, the town of Llívia is a Spanish exclave situated inside French territory. With an area of 504,030 square kilometres (194,610 sq mi), it is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France, and the fourth largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and France.
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Sparta
Coordinates: 37°4′55″N 22°25′25″E / 37.08194°N 22.42361°E / 37.08194; 22.42361
Sparta (Doric Σπάρτα; Attic Σπάρτη Spartē), or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece.
Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431 and 404 BC, Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, from which it emerged victorious, though at great cost. Sparta's defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Sparta's prominent role in Greece. However, it maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC.
Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which completely focused on military training and excellence. Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates (Spartan citizens, who enjoyed full rights), Mothakes (non-Spartan free men raised as Spartans), Perioikoi (freedmen), and Helots (state-owned serfs, enslaved non-Spartan local population). Spartiates underwent the rigorous agoge training and education regimen, and Spartan phalanges were widely considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical world.
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Sudan
Sudan (i/suːˈdæn/ or /suːˈdɑːn/;Arabic: السودان, as-Sūdān), officially the Republic of the Sudan (Arabic: جمهورية السودان, Jumhūrīyat as-Sūdān), sometimes called North Sudan, is an Arab state in North Africa (sometimes also considered to be part of the Middle East). It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. The population of Sudan is a combination of indigenous inhabitants of Nile Valley, and descendants of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula. Due to the process of Arabisation common throughout the rest of the Arab World, today Arab culture predominates in Sudan. The majority of the population of Sudan adheres to Islam. The Nile divides the country between east and west sides.
The people of Sudan have a long history extending from antiquity which is intertwined with the history of Egypt. Sudan suffered seventeen years of civil war during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) followed by ethnic, religious and economic conflicts between the Muslim Arab northern Sudanese and the mostly animist and Christian Nilotes of Southern Sudan. This led to the Second Sudanese Civil War in 1983. Because of continuing political and military struggles, Sudan was seized in a bloodless coup d'état by colonel Omar al-Bashir in 1989, who thereafter proclaimed himself President of Sudan. The civil war ended with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement which granted autonomy to what was then the southern region of the country. Following a referendum held in January 2011, South Sudan seceded on 9 July 2011 with the consent of Sudan's President al-Bashir.
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Syria
Syria (/ˈsɪriə/ ( listen) SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘Arabīyah as-Sūriyyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.
In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, 87% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians. Major ethnic minorities in Syria include Kurds (9%), Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens and Circassians. The majority of the population is Arab (90%).
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Taiwan
Taiwan (i/ˌtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN; Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China now governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa), which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the capital city and economic and cultural centre of the country, and New Taipei is the most populous city.
The earliest evidence of inhabitation of Taiwan dates back to the late Paleolithic era. The island of Taiwan was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before being colonized in the 17th century by the Dutch and the Spanish Empire. The first Han Chinese polity on Taiwan began when Koxinga's troops defeated Dutch forces and established the Kingdom of Tungning. The island was subsequently ruled by the Qing Dynasty after the kingdom's defeat in the Battle of Penghu in 1683, a period that lasted for over 200 years. Following Japan's victory over the Qing Dynasty in the first Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
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Tambov Rebellion
The Tambov Rebellion (Soviet misnomer Antonovshchina) which occurred between 1920 and 1921 was one of the largest and best-organized peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War. The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and part of the Voronezh Oblast, less than 300 miles southeast of Moscow. The leader of the rebellion, Pyotr Mikhailovich Tokmakov, was a former officer of the Russian Imperial Army, who had earlier been decorated with the highest Order of St. George. In Soviet history the rebellion was referred to as Antonov's mutiny or the Antonovschina, although Aleksandr Antonov, a former official of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, was only the Chief of Staff of one of the rebel armies. The movement was later portrayed by the Soviets as a sort of anarchical banditry like other anti-Soviet movements who opposed them during this period.
The rebellion was caused by the forced confiscation of grain by the Bolshevik authorities, a policy known in Russian as "prodrazvyorstka". In 1920 the requisitions were increased from 18 million to 27 million poods in the region. This caused the peasants to reduce their grain production knowing that anything they did not consume themselves would be immediately confiscated. Filling the state quotas meant death for many by starvation. The revolt began on 19 August 1920 in a small town of Khitrovo where a military requisitioning detachment of the Red Army appropriated everything they could and "beat up elderly men of seventy in full view of the public". The peasant army was known as the Antonovtsi or "Blue Army", as opposed to the "White Army" (anti-communist army), "Red Army" (communist army), "Green Army" (armed peasant groups) and "Black Army" (anarchists of Ukraine and Russia)—all taking part in the Civil War.
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Thailand
Thailand ( /ˈtaɪlænd/ TY-land or /ˈtaɪlənd/;Thai: ประเทศไทย, RTGS: Prathet Thai), officially the Kingdom of Thailand (Thai: ราชอาณาจักรไทย, RTGS: Ratcha Anachak Thai; IPA: [râːt.tɕʰā ʔāːnāːtɕàk tʰāj] ( listen)), formerly known as Siam (Thai: สยาม; RTGS: Sayam), is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea to the southwest.
The country is a constitutional monarchy, headed by King Rama IX, the ninth king of the House of Chakri, who, having reigned since 1946, is the world's longest-serving head of state and the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history. The king of Thailand is titled Head of State, Head of the Armed Forces, the Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and the Defender of all Faiths.
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The Hague
The Hague (Dutch: Den Haag pronounced [dɛnˈɦaˑχ] ( listen), officially 's-Gravenhage pronounced [ˈsχraˑvə(n)ˌɦaˑɣə] ( listen)) is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants (as of 1 September 2011), and more than one million inhabitants including the suburbs, it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Located in the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is in the centre of the Haaglanden conurbation and lies at the southwest corner of the larger Randstad conurbation.
The Hague is the seat of the Dutch government and parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State, but the city is not the capital of the Netherlands which constitutionally is Amsterdam. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands lives at Huis ten Bosch and works at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague. Most foreign embassies in the Netherlands and 150 international organisations are located in the city, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which makes The Hague one of the major cities hosting the United Nations, along with New York, Vienna and Geneva.
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Thermonuclear weapon
The Teller–Ulam design is the nuclear weapon design concept used in most of the world's nuclear weapons. It is colloquially referred to as "the secret of the hydrogen bomb" because it employs hydrogen fusion, though in most applications the bulk of its destructive energy comes from uranium fission, not hydrogen fusion. It is named for its two chief contributors, Edward Teller and Stanisław Ulam, who developed it in 1951 for the United States, with certain concepts developed with the contribution of John von Neumann. It was first used in multi-megaton-range thermonuclear weapons. As it is also the most efficient design concept for small nuclear weapons, today virtually all the nuclear weapons deployed by the five major nuclear-armed nations use the Teller–Ulam design.
Its essential features, which officially remained secret for nearly three decades, are: 1) separation of stages into a triggering "primary" explosive and a much more powerful "secondary" explosive, 2) compression of the secondary by X-rays coming from nuclear fission in the primary, a process called the "radiation implosion" of the secondary, and 3) heating of the secondary, after cold compression, by a second fission explosion inside the secondary.
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
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Vietnam
Vietnam ( listen), formally the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam; listen), is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 91.5 million inhabitants as of 2012, it is the world's 13th-most-populous country, and the eighth-most-populous Asian country. The name Vietnam translates as "South Viet", and was officially adopted in 1945. The country is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east.
The Vietnamese became independent from Imperial China in 938 AD, following the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive Vietnamese royal dynasties flourished as the nation expanded geographically and politically into Southeast Asia, until the Indochina Peninsula was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. The First Indochina War eventually led to the expulsion of the French in 1954, leaving Vietnam divided politically into two states, North and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified, with heavy foreign intervention, during the Vietnam War, which ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
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West Germany
West Germany (German: Westdeutschland) is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.
During this period, West Germany and the communist East Germany were divided by the Inner German border. After 1961, West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. The enlarged Federal Republic of Germany with sixteen states (known simply as "Germany") is thus the continuation of the pre-1990 Federal Republic of Germany.
The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France (the "Western Zones"). The city of Bonn was its provisional capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone (the East Zone, or Ostzone) was held by the Soviet Union. The parts of this zone lying east of the Oder-Neisse were in fact annexed by the Soviet Union and communist Poland; the remaining central part around Berlin became the communist German Democratic Republic (abbreviated GDR; in German Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) with its de facto capital in East Berlin. As a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interwar democratic Weimar Republic.
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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
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Alfred Thayer Mahan
Alfred Thayer Mahan (September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) was a United States Navy flag officer, geostrategist, and historian, who has been called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His concept of "sea power" was based on the idea that countries with greater naval power will have greater worldwide impact; it was most famously presented in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (1890). The concept had an enormous influence in shaping the strategic thought of navies across the world, especially in the United States, Germany, Japan and Britain, ultimately causing a European naval arms race in the 1890s, which included the United States. His ideas still permeate the U.S. Navy Doctrine.
Several ships have been named USS Mahan, including the lead vessel of a class of destroyers.
Alfred Thayer Mahan was born in West Point, New York, to Dennis Hart Mahan (a professor at the United States Military Academy) and Mary Helena Mahan. He attended Saint James School, an Episcopal college preparatory academy in western Maryland. He then studied at Columbia for two years where he was a member of the Philolexian Society debating club and then, against his parents' wishes, transferred to the Naval Academy, where he graduated second in his class in 1859.
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Berber people
Berbers (Berber: ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⴻⵏ Imazighen / Imaziɣen) are the indigenous ethnic group of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic linguistic family. Today, varieties of Maghrebi colloquial Arabic are spoken by a large portion of Berbers besides the Berber language itself. Foreign languages like French are used by the educated in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Spanish is also known by some Berbers in Morocco and in the annexed Western Sahara and Italian in Libya. This presence of European languages was due to Europe's occupation and colonization of the Berber world. Today, most Berber-speaking people live in Morocco and Algeria, smaller Berber-speaking populations are scattered throughout Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali and Niger, as well as various diasporas living in Europe.
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Bushmen
The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe. The word Bushmen is sometimes associated with a negative meaning & they prefer to be called the San people. These people were traditionally hunter-gatherers, part of the Khoisan group and are related to the traditionally pastoral Khoikhoi. Starting in the 1950s, and lasting through the 1990s, they switched to farming as a result of government-mandated modernization programs as well as the increased risks of a hunting and gathering lifestyle in the face of technological development. There is a significant linguistic difference between the northern Bushmen living between Okavango (Botswana) and Etosha (Namibia), extending into southern Angola on the one hand and the southern group in the central Kalahari towards the Molopo, who are the last remnant of the extensive autochthonous San of South Africa.
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Chechnya
The Chechen Republic ( /ˈtʃɛtʃɨn/; Russian: Чече́нская Респу́блика, Chechenskaya Respublika; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika), commonly referred to as Chechnya (/ˈtʃɛtʃniə/; Russian: Чечня́, Chechnya; Chechen: Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria (English: Land of Minerals), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. Population: 1,268,989 (2010 Census).
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continues in the mountains and southern regions of the republic.
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David Hume
David Hume (7 May [O.S. 26 April] 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." A prominent figure in the sceptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively "impressions" or direct sensations and fainter "ideas", which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by "custom"; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self", he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
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Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney (born January 30, 1941) served as the 46th Vice President of the United States (2001–2009), under George W. Bush.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney was primarily raised in Sumner, Nebraska, and Casper, Wyoming. He began his political career as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger, eventually working his way into the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations, where he served the latter as White House Chief of Staff. In 1978, Cheney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming; he was reelected five times, eventually becoming House Minority Whip. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, holding the position for the majority of Bush's term. During this time, Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other actions.
Out of office during the Clinton presidency, Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is of predominantly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot, ancestry; Cheney's 8th great-grandfather, William Cheney, immigrated from England to Massachusetts in the 17th century. Although not a direct descendant, he is collaterally related to Benjamin Pierce Cheney (1815–1895), the early American expressman. Cheney is a very distant cousin of both Harry S. Truman and Barack Obama; the three share a common ancestor in Mareen Duvall, a Huguenot who fled from France to England in the 17th century and later settled in Maryland. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a softball star in the 1930s; Cheney was one of three children.
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Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko (born August 17, 1932) is an American historian and author.
Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University (B.A. 1954) and the University of Wisconsin (M.S. 1955), married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at SUNY-Buffalo. In 1970 he joined the York University History Department in Toronto and is now an emeritus professor of history there.[citation needed]
Kolko's research interests include American political history, the Progressive Era, and foreign policy in the 20th century. He has been called "an incisive critic of the Progressive Era and its relationship to the American empire."
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Gerhard Schrader
Dr. Gerhard Schrader (25 February 1903–1990) was a German chemist specializing in the discovery of new insecticides, hoping to make progress in the fight against hunger in the world. Dr. Schrader is best known for his accidental discovery of nerve agents such as sarin and tabun, and for this he is sometimes called the "father of the nerve agents".
Schrader grew up in Bortfeld, near Wendeburg, Germany, studied chemistry at TU Braunschweig, and was later employed at the Bayer AG division of IG Farben.
Dr. Schrader discovered several very effective insecticides, including bladan (the first fully synthetic contact insecticide), and parathion (E 605). In 1936, while employed by the large German conglomerate IG Farben, he was experimenting with a class of compounds called organophosphates, which killed insects by interrupting their nervous systems. Instead of a new insecticide, he accidentally discovered tabun, an enormously toxic organophosphate compound still sometimes stockpiled today as a nerve agent. During World War II, under the Nazi regime, teams led by Dr. Schrader discovered two more organophosphate nerve agents, and a fourth after the war:
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Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples (also called Teutonic or Gothic in older literature) are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.
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Hajime Sugiyama
Hajime Sugiyama (杉山 元, Sugiyama Hajime / Sugiyama Gen?, 1 January 1880 – 12 September 1945) was a field marshal who served as successively as chief of the Army General Staff, and minister of war in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II between 1937 and 1944. As War Minister in 1937, he was one of the principal architects of the China Incident or second Sino-Japanese War. Later, as Army Chief of Staff in 1940 and 1941, he was a leading advocate of expansion into Southeast Asia and later preventive war against the United States.
Born to a former samurai family from Kokura (now part of Kitakyushu City), Fukuoka Prefecture, Sugiyama was commissioned as a lieutenant in the infantry in 1901 after graduation from the 12th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, and served in the Russo-Japanese War.
After graduating from the 22nd class of the Army Staff College in 1910 and serving on the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, Sugiyama was posted as military attaché to the Philippines and Singapore in 1912. Promoted to major in 1913, he was posted again as military attaché to British India in 1915. During this time, he also visited Germany, and became acquainted with the use of aircraft in combat in World War I.
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Hans von Seeckt
Johannes Friedrich "Hans" von Seeckt (22 April 1866 – 27 December 1936) was a German military officer noted for his organization of the German Army (Reichswehr) during the Weimar Republic.
Seeckt was born in Schleswig on April 22, 1866 to an old Pomeranian family, which had been ennobled in the eighteenth century. Though the family had lost its estates, Seeckt was "a thorough-going aristocrat" and his father was an important general within the German Army, finishing his career as military governor of Posen. Seeckt followed his father into military service, joining the Army in 1885 at the age of 18. He served in the elite Kaiser Alexander Guard Grenadiers, then joined the Prussian General Staff in 1897.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Seeckt held the rank of colonel and served as chief of staff in the German III Army Corps. Seeckt marched with the Corps in the German offensive, and "distinguished himself" in fighting near Soissons, then in March 1915, he became chief of staff to General August von Mackensen of the German Eleventh Army. With the Eleventh Army, Seeckt fought in the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, where he was credited with engineering Mackensen's breakthrough, and received the Pour le Mérite, Prussia's highest military honor.
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Henry III of England
Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272) was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready. England prospered during his reign and his greatest monument is Westminster, which he made the seat of his government and where he expanded the abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor. He is the first of only five monarchs to reign in the Kingdom of England or its successor states for 50 years or more, the others being Edward III (1327–1377), George III (1760–1820), Victoria (1837–1901) and Elizabeth II (1952–present).
He assumed the crown under the regency of the popular William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, but the England he inherited had undergone several drastic changes in the reign of his father. He spent much of his reign fighting the barons over Magna Carta and the royal rights, and was eventually forced to call the first "parliament" in 1264. He was also unsuccessful on the Continent, where he endeavoured to re-establish English control over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine.
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Hew Strachan
Brigadier Professor Hew Francis Anthony Strachan, DL, FRSE, FRHS (born 1 September 1949 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Scottish military historian, well known for his work on the administration of the British Army and the history of the First World War. He is a brigadier and Member of Council of the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers).
As a merchant seaman for three months in 1968, Strachan worked his passage around the world on Ben Line Steamers Ltd. In 1973, he worked as a member of a Sudan antiquities survey. He was educated at Rugby School, then Corpus Christi College, Cambridge with a B.A., 1971 and M.A. 1975. He was elected a research fellow of the college 1975, and after a one year stint as senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1978/79 he returned to the college and became admissions tutor and then senior tutor. He has been a life fellow of the college since 1992.
His early work focused on the History of the British Army, and he was awarded the Templer Medal for "From Waterloo to Balaclava" and the Westminster Medal for "The Politics of the British Army". Commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a history of the First World War to replace C.R.M.F Cruttwell's one-volume A History of the Great War, 1914-1918, Strachan completed the first of three volumes, The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms in 2001 to wide acclaim and is acknowledged as one of the world's authorities on the subject. Accompanying the print publication of his one volume survey The First World War (2004) was a multi-part documentary series for television entitled The First World War, with some episodes being titled after the chapters in the written work. This set was also released on DVD by Image Entertainment.
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Iranian peoples
The Iranian peoples (Iranic peoples) are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. Their historical areas of settlement were on the Iranian plateau, and comprised most of Iran and certain areas of Central Asia such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and most of Afghanistan, some parts of western Pakistan, northern Iraq and eastern Turkey, and scattered parts of the Caucasus Mountains. Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian plateau, and stretches from Pakistan's Indus River in the east to eastern Turkey in the west, and from Central Asia and the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south – a region that is sometimes called the Iranian cultural continent, or Greater Persia by scholars, and represents the extent of the Iranian languages and influence of the Persian People, through the geopolitical reach of the Persian empire.
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James Wolfe Ripley
James Wolfe Ripley (December 10, 1794 – March 16, 1870) was an American soldier, serving as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was instrumental in the early days of the war in modernizing the artillery's ordnance. However, Ripley also delayed the introduction of repeating rifles into U.S. arsenals, an act has been widely criticized by later historians.
Ripley was born in Windham County, Connecticut. He graduated at West Point in 1814, was commissioned second lieutenant of artillery, and took part in the defense of Sacketts Harbor. In 1817–18 he served under Jackson during the Seminole War and the invasion of Florida as a first lieutenant. He was promoted to captain in 1825.
In 1832-33, Ripley commanded the Federal forces in Charleston harbor at the time of the nullification movement in South Carolina. He was promoted to major of ordnance in 1838. He commanded the Kennebec arsenal between 1833 and 1842. Between 1842 and 1854, Ripley was superintendent of the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts. In 1854 he was transferred to the Watertown Arsenal as commandant of the facility, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Then he was chief of ordnance of the Pacific Coast Department and inspector of arsenals.
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Jan Długosz
Jan Długosz (1 December 1415, Stara Brzeźnica – 19 May 1480, Kraków; also known as Joannes, Ioannes or Johannes Longinus or Dlugossius) was a Polish priest, chronicler, diplomat, soldier, and secretary to Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Kraków.
Jan Długosz is best known for his Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae (The Annals of Jan Długosz), covering events in southeastern Europe, but also in Western Europe, from 965 to 1480, the year he died. His work was first printed in 1701-1703. Whenever he bothers to mention himself in the book, he writes of himself in the third person. He belonged to the Wieniawa coat-of-arms.
Długosz was a canon at Kraków, educated in the University of Krakow. He was sent by King Casimir IV Jagiellon of Poland on diplomatic missions to the Papal and Imperial courts, and was involved in the King's negotiations with the Teutonic Knights during the Thirteen Years' War (1454–66) and at the peace negotiations.
In 1434, Długosz's uncle, the first pastor at Klobuck, appointed him to take over his position as canon of St. Martin church at Klobuck. The town was in the Opole territory of Silesia, but had recently been conquered by Władysław II Jagiełło. Długosz stayed until 1452 and while there, founded the canonical monastery.
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Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001. A leading conservative, he helped organize and fund the conservative resurgence in the 1970s, aiding Ronald Reagan's quest for the White House and helping many local and regional candidates.
A journalist by training, Helms was the longest-serving popularly-elected Senator in North Carolina's history, and was widely credited with shifting the one-party state dominated by the Democrats into a competitive two-party state. The Helms-controlled National Congressional Club's state-of-the-art direct mail operation raised millions for Helms and other conservative candidates allowing Helms to outspend his opponents in most of his campaigns.
An unreconstructed Southern conservative, he began his political career in the Democratic Party in the days when many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. He moved to the Republican party in the 1970s. Helms was the most stridently conservative politician of the post 1960 era, especially in opposition to federal intervention into what he considered state affairs (integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act). Helms tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (Italian pronunciation: [leoˈnardo da ˈvintʃi] pronunciation (help·info); April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
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Max Cleland
Joseph Maxwell Cleland (born August 24, 1942) is an American politician from Georgia. Cleland, a Democrat, is a disabled US Army veteran of the Vietnam War, a recipient of the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for valorous action in combat, and a former U.S. Senator. From 2003 to 2007, he served on the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a presidentially appointed position. He is currently the secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
As of 2011[update] Cleland is the last Democrat from Georgia to serve a full term in the United States Senate.
Cleland was born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 24, 1942. He grew up in Lithonia and graduated from Stetson University, class of 1964, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. He went on to receive a Master's degree from Emory University.
Cleland then served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, attaining the rank of Captain. He was awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for valorous action in combat, including during the Battle of Khe Sanh on April 4, 1968.
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв, tr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲejəvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof] ( listen); born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the Soviet Union, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been born during the Communist rule.
Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.
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Māori people
The Māori (Māori pronunciation: [ˈmaːɔɾi], English: /ˈmaʊəri/) are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand. The Māori originated with settlers from eastern Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages at some time before 1300 CE. Over several centuries in isolation, the Polynesian settlers developed a unique culture that became known as the "Māori", with their own language, a rich mythology, distinctive crafts and performing arts. Early Māori formed tribal groups, based on eastern Polynesian social customs and organisation. Horticulture flourished using plants they introduced, and later a prominent warrior culture emerged.
The arrival of Europeans to New Zealand starting from the 17th century brought enormous change to the Māori way of life. Māori people gradually adopted many aspects of Western society and culture. Initial relations between Māori and Europeans were largely amicable, and with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 the two cultures coexisted as part of a new British colony. Rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s. Social upheaval, decades of conflict and epidemics of introduced disease took a devastating toll on the Māori population, which went into a dramatic decline. But by the start of the 20th century the Māori population had begun to recover, and efforts were made to increase their standing in wider New Zealand society. Traditional Māori culture has enjoyed a revival, and a protest movement emerged in the 1960s advocating Māori issues.
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Richard Kuhn
Richard Kuhn (December 3, 1900 – August 1, 1967) was an Austrian-German biochemist and Nobel laureate.
Kuhn was born in Vienna, Austria where he attended grammar school and high school. His interest in chemistry surfaced early; however he had many interests and decided late to study chemistry. Between 1910 and 1918 he was a schoolmate of Wolfgang Pauli, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1945. Beginning in 1918 Kuhn attended lectures at the University of Vienna in chemistry. He finished his chemistry studies at University of Munich and received his doctoral degree in 1922 with Richard Willstätter for a scientific work on enzymes.
After graduating Kuhn continued his scientific career, first in Munich, then at the ETH Zurich and from 1929 onwards at the University of Heidelberg, where he was head of the chemistry department beginning in 1937. In 1928 he married Daisy Hartmann and the couple subsequently had two sons and four daughters.
Kuhn's areas of study included: investigations of theoretical problems of organic chemistry (stereochemistry of aliphatic and aromatic compounds; syntheses of polyenes and cumulenes; constitution and colour; the acidity of hydrocarbons), as well as extensive fields in biochemistry (carotenoids; flavins; vitamins and enzymes). Specifically, he carried out important work on vitamin B2 and the antidermatitis vitamin B6.
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate work at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937, and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife, Pat Nixon, moved to Washington to work for the federal government in 1942. He subsequently served in the United States Navy during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California in 1962. In 1968, he ran again for the presidency and was elected.
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Rick Atkinson
Rick Atkinson (born 1952, in Munich) is an American journalist and author whose contributions led to four Pulitzer Prizes.
Atkinson was born in Munich. His father was an United States Army officer and he grew up at military posts. He earned his bachelor degree from East Carolina University in 1974 and a master of art degree from the University of Chicago in 1976. His first reporting job was at The Morning Sun in Pittsburg, Kansas He started working at the Kansas City Times in 1977. He won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for articles including a series on the West Point Class of 1966. He also contributed to the Times overall effort which won it another Pulitzer Prize the same year for the coverage of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.
In 1983 he worked for The Washington Post where he covered The Pentagon and the 1984 Presidential election and was national editor for two years. He went on book leave in 1988 to finish The Long Gray Line, which he had begun reporting on in Kansas City. He returned to the Post in 1989 and was the paper's lead reporter in the 1991 Gulf War. He went on leave again to finish a book about the war Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. In 1993 he returned to the Post as its Berlin bureau covering conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia. The Post won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series conceived by Atkinson on shootings by the District of Columbia police department.
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Ronald Maddison
Leading Aircraftman Ronald George Maddison (c.1933 – 6 May 1953) was a twenty-year-old Royal Air Force engineer who died while acting as a volunteer human "guinea pig", testing nerve agents at Porton Down, in Wiltshire, England. After substantial controversy, his death was the subject of an inquest 51 years after the event.
Maddison, from Consett, County Durham, died within 45 minutes of having twenty drops (200 mg) of sarin placed onto a cloth draped on his arm during an experiment at Porton Down. Five subjects entered a sealed gas chamber at 10:17 a.m. All were fitted with respirators. Within twenty minutes, Maddison began to complain that he did not feel well. Three minutes later, Maddison collapsed and began gasping for breath, at which point the scientists removed him from the chamber and took off his gas mask. They injected him with atropine after they witnessed an asthma-like attack and convulsions. Maddison also complained of going deaf. An ambulance took him to a local medical facility. The sarin's effects blocked the flow of air into Maddison's lungs, ultimately starving his brain and tissues of oxygen. On 16 May, at an inquest ordered by the British Home Office, his death was declared accidental.
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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( /ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.
Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
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Solon
Solon ([pronunciation?]; Ancient Greek: Σόλων, c. 638 BC – 558 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens. His reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy.
Knowledge of Solon is limited by the lack of documentary and archeological evidence covering Athens in the early 6th century BC. He wrote poetry for pleasure, as patriotic propaganda, and in defence of his constitutional reforms. His works only survive in fragments. They appear to feature interpolations by later authors and it is possible that fragments have been wrongly attributed to him (see Solon the reformer and poet). Ancient authors such as Herodotus and Plutarch are the main source of information, yet they wrote about Solon long after his death, at a time when history was by no means an academic discipline. Fourth century orators, such as Aeschines, tended to attribute to Solon all the laws of their own, much later times. Archaeology reveals glimpses of Solon's period in the form of fragmentary inscriptions but little else. For some scholars, our "knowledge" of Solon and his times is largely a fictive construct based on insufficient evidence while others believe a substantial body of real knowledge is still attainable. Solon and his times can appear particularly interesting to students of history as a test of the limits and nature of historical argument.
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Stéphane Courtois
Stéphane Courtois (born November 25, 1947) is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books. The Black Book of Communism, a book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold million of copies and is considered a standard work on communist genocides.
Courtois is a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in the Géode (group of study and observation of democracy) at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, as well as a Professor at the Catholic Institute of Higher Studies – ICES. He is editor of the journal Communisme, which he co-founded with Annie Kriegel in 1982, and part of the Cercle de l'Oratoire think tank.
As a student, from 1968 to 1971, Courtois was a Maoist, although he later became an outspoken anti-communist and a strong supporter of democracy, pluralism, human rights, and Rechtsstaat.
Courtois argues that communism and national socialism are slightly different totalitarian systems, and that communism is responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the 20th century. He also argues that the National Socialists adopted their repressive methods from Soviet methods. According to Courtois, "a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has [...] prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world".
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Sun Tzu
Sun Wu (simplified Chinese: 孙武; traditional Chinese: 孫武; pinyin: Sūn Wǔ), style name Changqing (長卿), better known as Sun Tzu or Sunzi (simplified Chinese: 孙子; traditional Chinese: 孫子; pinyin: Sūnzǐ; pronounced [swə́n tsɨ̀]), was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher who is traditionally believed to be the author of The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. Sun Tzu has had a significant impact on Chinese and Asian history and culture, both as an author of The Art of War and through legend.
Sun Tzu, also known as Sun Tze or Sun Wu in other translations, was a historical figure whose authenticity is questioned by historians. Traditional accounts place him in the Spring and Autumn Period of China (722–481 BC) as a military general serving under King Helü of Wu, who lived c. 544–496 BC. Modern scholars accepting his historicity place the completion of The Art of War in the Warring States Period (476–221 BC), based on the descriptions of warfare in the text, and on the similarity of text's prose to other works completed in the early Warring States period.
wn.com/Sun_Tzu -
Taíno people
The Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. It is thought that the seafaring Taínos are relatives of the Arawak people of South America. The Taíno language is a member of the Arawakan language family, which ranges from South America across the Caribbean.
At the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492, there were five Taíno chiefdoms and territories on Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic), each led by a principal Cacique (chieftain), to whom tribute was paid. Puerto Rico also was divided into chiefdoms. As the hereditary head chief of Taíno tribes, the cacique was paid significant tribute. Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called guanin, living in square bohíos instead of the round ones that the villagers inhabited, and sitting on wooden stools when receiving guests. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the largest Taíno population centers may have contained over 3,000 people each.
The Taínos were historically enemies of the neighboring Carib tribes, another group with origins in South America who lived principally in the Lesser Antilles. The relationship between the two groups has been the subject of much study. For much of the 15th century, the Taíno tribe was being driven to the northeast in the Caribbean (out of what is now South America) because of raids by Caribs. Many Carib women spoke Taíno because of the large number of female Taíno captives among them.
wn.com/Taíno_people -
Vil Mirzayanov
Vil Mirzayanov was a Russian chemist who now lives in the United States.
Mirzayanov was employed by the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology. He was fired and imprisoned on charges of treason for having revealed the existence of illegal chemical weapons experimentation in Russia contravening the Chemical Weapons Convention. He was released because the details he had released were already known.
wn.com/Vil_Mirzayanov -
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, Hon. RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jenny Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.
wn.com/Winston_Churchill -
World War I
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
wn.com/World_War_I -
Yevgenia Albats
Dr. Yevgenia Markovna Albats (Russian: Евгения Марковна Альбац, born 5 September 1958) is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer and radio host. As of year 2011, she workes as a chief editor of The New Times magazine.
Albats' father, Mark Yevgenyevich Albats, was a member of a GRU military reconnaissance team during World War II, residing in German-occupied Ukraine. In 1943 he was wounded and discharged from the Army. Afterward he worked as an engineer at a scientific institution, designing radiolocation systems for the Soviet Army. Albats' mother, Yelena Izmaylovskaya, was an actress and a radio news host. Albats' elder sister, Tatyana Komarova, is a television host/anchor.
Yevgenia Albats graduated from the Department of Journalism of Moscow State University in 1980. One of her classmates and friends was Anna Politkovskaya, who would become an investigative journalist and was assassinated in 2006.
Albats started her professional work as a science observer writing about astrophysics and particle physics for the Izvestia newspaper's Sunday supplement, Nedelya. From 1986 – 1992 she worked for the Moscow News. In 1996–2006 she worked for Izvestia (led the weekly column We and Our Children) and Novaya Gazeta.
wn.com/Yevgenia_Albats -
Yoshiaki Yoshimi
Yoshiaki Yoshimi (吉見 義明, Yoshimi Yoshiaki?, born 1946) is a professor of Japanese modern history at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan. Yoshimi is a founding member of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's war responsibility.
He was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and he studied at the University of Tokyo.
Yoshimi has done major work on the study of war crimes perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the first part of the Shōwa period. He has published his research on the use of chemical weapons by the Army, ordered by Emperor Shōwa himself.
Yoshimi is mostly noted for his work regarding the comfort women. He found the first documentary evidence in the Defense Agency Library of Tokyo that the Imperial Japanese Army established and ran "comfort stations". One of these was a notice written on 4 March 1938 by the adjutants to the Chiefs of Staff of the North China Army and Central China Expeditionary Army titled "Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations". The gist of the document is as below:
"Many agents should have required special attention. Some of them accentuated the name of the armies as much as they might hurt the credibility of the armies and cause misunderstanding among the public, others recruited women without control through war correspondents or entertainers, and others selected the wrong agents who took a kidnapping approach to recruit women so that the polices arrested them.
In the future, the armies in the field should control recruiting and select the agencies circumspectly and properly, and should build up a closer connection with the local polices and the local military polices in the implementation of recruiting.
Take special care not to have problems which have the potential to damage the armies' credibility or are not acceptable to social standards."
wn.com/Yoshiaki_Yoshimi
[SLAYER - 1984 - "Haunting The Chapel"]
[Hanneman / King]
Tragic minds are terrified
Life as if a grave
Silent death marks high and full
The wings of revelation
Haunting death from chemicals
Errant is as one
Annihilation must be swift
The soil with our destruction
Counts on the throne must be watching from Hell
Waiting no bastion of side
Soldiers defeated by death with the spell
Bodies lie dormant, no life
Rising, betook with the lands where they fell
Demons are ready to die
Laughing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
I will miss your fucking peace, lined up in death row
Generals with their slaughtered beasts, diminished from this hell
Banished from the dying world, loath of Hell awaits
Dark, some more helpless pray to immortality
Counts on the throne must be watching from Hell
Waiting no bastion of side
Soldiers defeated with help from the spell
Bodies lie dormant, no life
Rising, these souls, from the lands where they fell
Demons are ready to die
Laughing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
(Fuck it up)
Limbs you take
The torture just as truth entitled fights
Terminate
Humans' amputations due
Men fall
Deadly give the reason to the need
Sacrifice
Still the soul has left the corpse to Hell
(Ahahahaha)
Mummied by regions, lying in dusk, fall victim to this game
Bloodshed my corpse, reigning in lust, taking with all thee of blame
Fall stead thy spirit, farther they fall, soon they will join us in Hell
See the blood burning, the gates are ablaze, Satan is eager to burn
Counts on the throne must be watching from Hell
Waiting no bastion of side
Soldiers defeated with help from the spell
Bodies lie dormant, no life
Rising, these souls, with the lands where they fell
Demons are ready to die
Laughing to see where the sleeping souls lie
Chemical warfare
Down at the arsenal they keep the nerve gasses
Guarded day and night by caged white rabbits
Been sitting there for years
I'm gonna have at it
I cut through the fence, run right in and grab it
Go crazy crazy crazy crazy:
Now I got my own mustard gas in my pocket
Climb on a tree on a branch and drop it
On a country club full of Saturday golfers
So I can watch them die chokin' shakin'in convulsions
Go crazy crazy crazy crazy
Crazy crazy crazy crazy:
Chemical Warfare Chemical Warfare
Chemical Warfare Warfare Warfare
Panic in the air
See the headless chickens runnin'
Golf carts head on crashin'
Crackin' heads wide open
Scratch the grass, mister, you can't breath
And roll and writhe in a sandtrap
Starting to heave
Claw those clubs, lemme see you seethe
Crazy Crazy Crazy Crazy Crazy Crazy
Chemical Warfare Chemical Warfare
Chemical Warfare Warfare Warfare
Yellow air
Yellow clouds
Blowin' down down down the fairway
Sensitive to the touch
Mowin' down the putting green
Heading straight for the big clubhouse
Where the stuffed country club
Effervescent ladies, so carefree
Relax, pose by the pool
Limber limp with a dry martini
The with space-heist in your faced
Moon break man if volcano planets
Voices and beginning end in war fears
And the silver-arm in black deconstructions
Within your solid discovering the chemical warfare
Mechanics of hyper fractal directive
Resistance torn it blood fades the dysfunction
Calculated primal as instinct the resolved face designs
Resist in survival pendulum war faces
Advices the bleed iniquity by the whispers
As should lexical the space human drifters by your defiantex
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Slayer - Chemical Warfare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:05
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
Slayer-10000 views hell yeah thanks to all that has watched!
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare
Slayer-10000 views hell yeah thanks to all that has watched!
Deadliest weapon : VX nerve gas
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:16
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
A documentary about one of the deadliest chemical agent : VX gas
http://wn.com/Deadliest_weapon_VX_nerve_gas
A documentary about one of the deadliest chemical agent : VX gas
- published: 03 Jan 2009
- views: 697010
- author: broubies
Dead Kennedys Chemical Warfare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:54
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
Cool Song!!!!
http://wn.com/Dead_Kennedys_Chemical_Warfare
Animal Weapons: Episode 1 - Chemical Warfare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 42:18
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
This episode explores the insidious nature of chemical warfare employed by many animals. All manner of snakes, spiders, lizards and marine life have developed venoms, either as weapons of attack or defense. FULL DOCUMENTARY Keywords: inland, taipan, king, brown, snake, australian, bulldog, ant, scorpion, sydney, funnel, web, spider, gila, monster, coral, snake, blue, ringed, octopus, venom, poison, kill, attack
http://wn.com/Animal_Weapons_Episode_1_Chemical_Warfare
This episode explores the insidious nature of chemical warfare employed by many animals. All manner of snakes, spiders, lizards and marine life have developed venoms, either as weapons of attack or defense. FULL DOCUMENTARY Keywords: inland, taipan, king, brown, snake, australian, bulldog, ant, scorpion, sydney, funnel, web, spider, gila, monster, coral, snake, blue, ringed, octopus, venom, poison, kill, attack
- published: 08 Apr 2009
- views: 742562
- author: wildvisuals
Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:07
- Updated: 28 Feb 2013
Training Vid
http://wn.com/Nuclear,_Biological,_Chemical_Warfare
Slayer - Chemical Warfare and Raining Blood (Live at AOL Sessions 2010)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
"Raining Blood" is a song by the American thrash metal band Slayer. Written by Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King for the 1986 studio album Reign in Blood, the concept deals with religion, specifically said to be about overthrowing Heaven. Originally released on the Reign in Blood track listing on October 7, 1986, it was released as a single later that year. The song is one of the only tracks on Reign in Blood that is longer than three minutes, itself being four minutes and seventeen seconds long. The piece ends with a minute of rain sound effect, concluding Reign in Blood. Described as a "classic" by Allmusic,[1] it is noticed by fans as one of Slayer's most popular songs. As an almost permanent addition to their live sets, King and Hanneman said it was their favorite song to play live. There have been many appearances of the song in the media and elsewhere, including the South Park episode, "Die Hippie, Die" and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, said to be one of the hardest songs in the Career Mode setlist. There is also a live appearance of the song in the compilation albums both Headbangers Ball and Hard N' Heavy Vol. 61. It was also covered by Tori Amos and sampled as riffs in Lil Jon's "Stop Fuckin Wit' Me". Haunting the Chapel is an EP released by the thrash metal band Slayer in 1984 through Metal Blade and Enigma Records. Slayer's debut album Show No Mercy became Metal Blade's highest selling, leading to producer Brian Slagel wanting to release an EP. Recorded in ...
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_and_Raining_Blood_Live_at_AOL_Sessions_2010
"Raining Blood" is a song by the American thrash metal band Slayer. Written by Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King for the 1986 studio album Reign in Blood, the concept deals with religion, specifically said to be about overthrowing Heaven. Originally released on the Reign in Blood track listing on October 7, 1986, it was released as a single later that year. The song is one of the only tracks on Reign in Blood that is longer than three minutes, itself being four minutes and seventeen seconds long. The piece ends with a minute of rain sound effect, concluding Reign in Blood. Described as a "classic" by Allmusic,[1] it is noticed by fans as one of Slayer's most popular songs. As an almost permanent addition to their live sets, King and Hanneman said it was their favorite song to play live. There have been many appearances of the song in the media and elsewhere, including the South Park episode, "Die Hippie, Die" and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, said to be one of the hardest songs in the Career Mode setlist. There is also a live appearance of the song in the compilation albums both Headbangers Ball and Hard N' Heavy Vol. 61. It was also covered by Tori Amos and sampled as riffs in Lil Jon's "Stop Fuckin Wit' Me". Haunting the Chapel is an EP released by the thrash metal band Slayer in 1984 through Metal Blade and Enigma Records. Slayer's debut album Show No Mercy became Metal Blade's highest selling, leading to producer Brian Slagel wanting to release an EP. Recorded in ...
- published: 18 Jan 2011
- views: 34870
- author: 23Mati
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Remaster 2012)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:03
- Updated: 26 Feb 2013
the multitracks bitrate is 80-100 so you can hear this soundcloud.com download here
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_Remaster_2012
the multitracks bitrate is 80-100 so you can hear this soundcloud.com download here
- published: 24 Apr 2012
- views: 12271
- author: vlad36883
Chemical Warfare - South Africa
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 26:10
- Updated: 24 Jan 2013
7 January 2000 An examination of the chemical and biological Programme developed under the apartheid regime in the 80's.
http://wn.com/Chemical_Warfare_South_Africa
7 January 2000 An examination of the chemical and biological Programme developed under the apartheid regime in the 80's.
- published: 10 Jan 2008
- views: 6409
- author: journeymanpictures
Chemical Weapons Testing - Rare Top Secret US Military Film [FULL VIDEO]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:27
- Updated: 18 Feb 2013
Chemical Weapons Testing - Rare Top Secret US Military Film [FULL VIDEO] This rare vintage US government Film shows deadly Chemical Weapons Testing and provides discussion of the effects and potential military applications. Subscribe for new video updates: www.youtube.com Join the club: www.facebook.com
http://wn.com/Chemical_Weapons_Testing_Rare_Top_Secret_US_Military_Film_FULL_VIDEO_
Chemical Weapons Testing - Rare Top Secret US Military Film [FULL VIDEO] This rare vintage US government Film shows deadly Chemical Weapons Testing and provides discussion of the effects and potential military applications. Subscribe for new video updates: www.youtube.com Join the club: www.facebook.com
- published: 15 Aug 2012
- views: 5502
- author: Bright Enlightenment
CHEMICAL BROTHERS: Free Syrian Army 'Possesses Chemical Weapons'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:44
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
*!AMTV MEDIA NOW LIVE!* www.amtvmedia.com SUBSCRIBE NOW!! www.youtube.com SUBSCRIBE TO AMTVmedia!!! www.youtube.com REFERENCES: Welcome back to AMTV News, I'm your anchor Topher Morrison. It's Tuesday, January 1st, 2013. Visit www.AMTVMedia.com and www.GreeneWave.com for links to referenced sources. AMTVMedia.com, home of the AMTV Network. The Voice of Independents. DESCRIPTION: In today's video, Topher Morrison covers Syria's chemical brotherhood amidst civil war. He also delves into alternative banking, drones, origin of species and much more! www.greenewave.com www.amtvmedia.com
http://wn.com/CHEMICAL_BROTHERS_Free_Syrian_Army_'Possesses_Chemical_Weapons'
*!AMTV MEDIA NOW LIVE!* www.amtvmedia.com SUBSCRIBE NOW!! www.youtube.com SUBSCRIBE TO AMTVmedia!!! www.youtube.com REFERENCES: Welcome back to AMTV News, I'm your anchor Topher Morrison. It's Tuesday, January 1st, 2013. Visit www.AMTVMedia.com and www.GreeneWave.com for links to referenced sources. AMTVMedia.com, home of the AMTV Network. The Voice of Independents. DESCRIPTION: In today's video, Topher Morrison covers Syria's chemical brotherhood amidst civil war. He also delves into alternative banking, drones, origin of species and much more! www.greenewave.com www.amtvmedia.com
- published: 03 Jan 2013
- views: 4325
- author: cgreene34
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Subtitulos Español) HD
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:14
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Subtitulos Español) HD Álbum: Haunting the Chapel (1984) Vídeo: The Unholy Alliance (2007)
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_Subtitulos_Español_HD
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Subtitulos Español) HD Álbum: Haunting the Chapel (1984) Vídeo: The Unholy Alliance (2007)
- published: 01 Dec 2010
- views: 14699
- author: Auschwitz692
The Alchemist - That'll Work (Instrumental)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:20
- Updated: 02 Mar 2013
Chemical Warfare
http://wn.com/The_Alchemist_That'll_Work_Instrumental
Slayer Chemical Warfare Live (Decade Of Aggression)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:25
- Updated: 19 Feb 2013
Slayer Chemical Warfare Live (Audio) This Goes up to 1080p HD and its audio LOL awesome All Credit to Slayer
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_Live_Decade_Of_Aggression
Slayer Chemical Warfare Live (Audio) This Goes up to 1080p HD and its audio LOL awesome All Credit to Slayer
- published: 01 Sep 2011
- views: 4782
- author: IVIetaliJake
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Live Rock Am Ring 2005) HD
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:15
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
Slayer: Es una agrupación musical de thrash metal estadounidense fundada en 1981 por los guitarristas Jeff Hanneman y Kerry King en Huntington Park, California. Para completar su formación, King y Hanneman reclutaron al bajista y vocalista de origen chileno Tom Araya y al baterista de origen cubano Dave Lombardo. Éste último ha estado fluctuando dentro y fuera de la banda durante varios años. Slayer alcanzó la fama gracias a la edición de Reign in Blood, calificado como «el álbum más heavy[2] de todos los tiempos» según la revista Kerrang!.[3] Gracias a esta fama, el grupo fue incluido durante los años ochenta dentro de los Cuatro grandes del thrash metal junto con Metallica, Megadeth y Anthrax. Rock am Ring: es un festival de música rock que se celebra anualmente en el circuito de Nürburgring en Alemania. Es el mayor festival de Alemania y uno de los mayores de Europa. Tracklist 01.- Disciple 02.- Stain of Mind 03.- Chemical Warfare 04.- Hell Awaits 05.- Mandatory Suicide 06.- War Ensemble 07.- Blood Red 08.- Dead Skin Mask 09.- Show no Mercy 10.- Raining Blood 11.- South of Heaven 12.- Angel of Death
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_Live_Rock_Am_Ring_2005_HD
Slayer: Es una agrupación musical de thrash metal estadounidense fundada en 1981 por los guitarristas Jeff Hanneman y Kerry King en Huntington Park, California. Para completar su formación, King y Hanneman reclutaron al bajista y vocalista de origen chileno Tom Araya y al baterista de origen cubano Dave Lombardo. Éste último ha estado fluctuando dentro y fuera de la banda durante varios años. Slayer alcanzó la fama gracias a la edición de Reign in Blood, calificado como «el álbum más heavy[2] de todos los tiempos» según la revista Kerrang!.[3] Gracias a esta fama, el grupo fue incluido durante los años ochenta dentro de los Cuatro grandes del thrash metal junto con Metallica, Megadeth y Anthrax. Rock am Ring: es un festival de música rock que se celebra anualmente en el circuito de Nürburgring en Alemania. Es el mayor festival de Alemania y uno de los mayores de Europa. Tracklist 01.- Disciple 02.- Stain of Mind 03.- Chemical Warfare 04.- Hell Awaits 05.- Mandatory Suicide 06.- War Ensemble 07.- Blood Red 08.- Dead Skin Mask 09.- Show no Mercy 10.- Raining Blood 11.- South of Heaven 12.- Angel of Death
- published: 09 Jul 2010
- views: 246582
- author: Theheavymusic91
Syrian Rebels: West 'Creating' Chemical Weapons Stories
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:14
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
*!AMTV MEDIA NOW LIVE!* www.amtvmedia.com SUBSCRIBE NOW!! www.youtube.com SUBSCRIBE TO AMTVmedia!!! www.youtube.com REFERENCES: Welcome back to AMTV News, I'm your anchor Topher Morrison. It's Wednesday, November 21st, 2012. [GEOPOLITICS/WORLD] BREAKING - Syrian Rebels: 'West Fabricating Chemical Weapons Stories' WTOP, CBS www.wtop.com Capturing every corner of alternative media watch AMTV News Monday -- Friday. For more videos like these visit AMTVMedia.com, home of the AMTV Network. The Voice of Independents. DESCRIPTION: In today's video, Topher Morrison covers Syria and the barrage of news that claims Bashar al-Assad is mixing chemicals intended to use on his own people. In fact rebels have purportedly similar weapons and have threatened to use them. www.greenewave.com www.amtvmedia.com
http://wn.com/Syrian_Rebels_West_'Creating'_Chemical_Weapons_Stories
*!AMTV MEDIA NOW LIVE!* www.amtvmedia.com SUBSCRIBE NOW!! www.youtube.com SUBSCRIBE TO AMTVmedia!!! www.youtube.com REFERENCES: Welcome back to AMTV News, I'm your anchor Topher Morrison. It's Wednesday, November 21st, 2012. [GEOPOLITICS/WORLD] BREAKING - Syrian Rebels: 'West Fabricating Chemical Weapons Stories' WTOP, CBS www.wtop.com Capturing every corner of alternative media watch AMTV News Monday -- Friday. For more videos like these visit AMTVMedia.com, home of the AMTV Network. The Voice of Independents. DESCRIPTION: In today's video, Topher Morrison covers Syria and the barrage of news that claims Bashar al-Assad is mixing chemicals intended to use on his own people. In fact rebels have purportedly similar weapons and have threatened to use them. www.greenewave.com www.amtvmedia.com
- published: 06 Dec 2012
- views: 10630
- author: cgreene34
Chemical Warfare Civil Defense "What to Do in a Gas Attack" 1942 Clorox World War II 14min
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:17
- Updated: 12 Feb 2013
more at quickfound.net "Explains what war gas is, how it is used by the enemy, and how simple household items, such as bicarbonate of soda and bleaching solution, may be used to prevent casualties." "On civil defense precautions against gas attacks and first aid measures to be used after exposure to gas. Illustrates how a house can be sealed against gas and cautions occupants to go upstairs to escape fumes. First aid measures include blotting exposed skin areas with a household bleach solution, gargling and rinsing the eyes with a 2 percent baking soda solution, and showering thoroughly." Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). en.wikipedia.org ...World War II Despite article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty, article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare and a resolution adopted against Japan by the League of Nations on 14 May 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons. Because of fear of retaliation however, those weapons were never used against Westerners, but against other Asians judged "inferior" by the imperial propaganda. According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and ...
http://wn.com/Chemical_Warfare_Civil_Defense_What_to_Do_in_a_Gas_Attack_1942_Clorox_World_War_II_14min
more at quickfound.net "Explains what war gas is, how it is used by the enemy, and how simple household items, such as bicarbonate of soda and bleaching solution, may be used to prevent casualties." "On civil defense precautions against gas attacks and first aid measures to be used after exposure to gas. Illustrates how a house can be sealed against gas and cautions occupants to go upstairs to escape fumes. First aid measures include blotting exposed skin areas with a household bleach solution, gargling and rinsing the eyes with a 2 percent baking soda solution, and showering thoroughly." Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). en.wikipedia.org ...World War II Despite article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty, article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare and a resolution adopted against Japan by the League of Nations on 14 May 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons. Because of fear of retaliation however, those weapons were never used against Westerners, but against other Asians judged "inferior" by the imperial propaganda. According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and ...
- published: 22 Jun 2012
- views: 1727
- author: Jeff Quitney
Slayer - Chemical Warfare
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:19
- Updated: 22 Feb 2013
Slayer - Chemical Warfare
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (live 1985)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:11
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
(live 1985)
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_live_1985
Slayer - Chemical Warfare/Raining Blood (Subtitulos Español) HD
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:22
- Updated: 25 Feb 2013
Slayer - Chemical Warfare/Raining Blood (Subtitulos Español) HD Álbum: Haunting the Chapel (1984)/ Reign In Blood (1986) Vídeo: Live AOL Music Sessions (2010)
http://wn.com/Slayer_Chemical_Warfare_Raining_Blood_Subtitulos_Español_HD
Slayer - Chemical Warfare/Raining Blood (Subtitulos Español) HD Álbum: Haunting the Chapel (1984)/ Reign In Blood (1986) Vídeo: Live AOL Music Sessions (2010)
- published: 02 Jul 2010
- views: 66392
- author: Auschwitz692
Chemical Warfare: Iain Stewart vs Habanero Chilli - How to Grow a Planet - Episode 1 - BBC Two
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:58
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
More about this programme: www.bbc.co.uk When dinosaurs evolved they posed a threat to the plant kingdom. They were the biggest herbivores ever to live on land and many of them travelled in groups, stripping plants of their leaves. In response to herbivory, plants developed defences, the most obvious being thorns and spikes. They then went on to evolve chemical weapons, in the form of foul tasting chemicals and toxins. Chillis contain a chemical called capsaicin, which is essentially a toxin.
http://wn.com/Chemical_Warfare_Iain_Stewart_vs_Habanero_Chilli_How_to_Grow_a_Planet_Episode_1_BBC_Two
More about this programme: www.bbc.co.uk When dinosaurs evolved they posed a threat to the plant kingdom. They were the biggest herbivores ever to live on land and many of them travelled in groups, stripping plants of their leaves. In response to herbivory, plants developed defences, the most obvious being thorns and spikes. They then went on to evolve chemical weapons, in the form of foul tasting chemicals and toxins. Chillis contain a chemical called capsaicin, which is essentially a toxin.
- published: 02 Feb 2012
- views: 4451
- author: BBC
When ANT armies clash, they use CHEMICAL WARFARE, suicide bombings and other war strategies
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:43
- Updated: 01 Mar 2013
More OMG Facts! omg-facts.com (8 Facts DAILY!) More from OMG Facts Twitter twitter.com Facebook: facebook.com Tumblr: omgfactsofficial.tumblr.com Our Second Channel youtube.com More about Gaby (the host) :D twitter.com GabySpartz.com Videos produced by twitter.com
http://wn.com/When_ANT_armies_clash,_they_use_CHEMICAL_WARFARE,_suicide_bombings_and_other_war_strategies
More OMG Facts! omg-facts.com (8 Facts DAILY!) More from OMG Facts Twitter twitter.com Facebook: facebook.com Tumblr: omgfactsofficial.tumblr.com Our Second Channel youtube.com More about Gaby (the host) :D twitter.com GabySpartz.com Videos produced by twitter.com
- published: 02 Mar 2012
- views: 231579
- author: OMGFactsOfficial
Chemical Weapon Munitions Dumped at Sea
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:47
- Updated: 19 Feb 2013
Between 1918 and 1970, the US alone dumped CW agents in waters worldwide on at least 74 occasions. These disposals were no small undertaking, taking one fair example from this tour, in 1945 the US military dumped 1154 55ga drums of arsenic trichloride, 375T of adamsite smoke candles, 75852 4.2in distilled mustard shells, ~56000 smoke canisters, and ~23000 smoke projectiles. This represents only one of dozens of dumpings conducted off the US coast. While some dumping operations were carefully undertaken, including the keeping of detailed records; other dumping operations were done haphazardly with no or minimal written accounts of the disposal locations, quantities disposed or depths. So far the staff at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (cns.miis.edu) have located and chronicled 127 locations where either human exposure to or disposal of chemical weapons agents and munitions has occurred. We are virtually certain there are more disposal sites requiring attention hence we present this material in hopes of garnering further interest into this subject. Through this tour, we hope to highlight the global nature of this problem by showing you example disposal sites located around the globe; in locations ranging from the Bay of Bengal to areas west of San Francisco. The interactive map is located at cns.miis.edu
http://wn.com/Chemical_Weapon_Munitions_Dumped_at_Sea
Between 1918 and 1970, the US alone dumped CW agents in waters worldwide on at least 74 occasions. These disposals were no small undertaking, taking one fair example from this tour, in 1945 the US military dumped 1154 55ga drums of arsenic trichloride, 375T of adamsite smoke candles, 75852 4.2in distilled mustard shells, ~56000 smoke canisters, and ~23000 smoke projectiles. This represents only one of dozens of dumpings conducted off the US coast. While some dumping operations were carefully undertaken, including the keeping of detailed records; other dumping operations were done haphazardly with no or minimal written accounts of the disposal locations, quantities disposed or depths. So far the staff at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (cns.miis.edu) have located and chronicled 127 locations where either human exposure to or disposal of chemical weapons agents and munitions has occurred. We are virtually certain there are more disposal sites requiring attention hence we present this material in hopes of garnering further interest into this subject. Through this tour, we hope to highlight the global nature of this problem by showing you example disposal sites located around the globe; in locations ranging from the Bay of Bengal to areas west of San Francisco. The interactive map is located at cns.miis.edu
- published: 04 Aug 2009
- views: 14781
- author: MontereyInstitute
Syria Chemical Weapons: NWO FALSE FLAG ATTACK
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:02
- Updated: 02 Feb 2013
The truth exists and its not on TV.
http://wn.com/Syria_Chemical_Weapons_NWO_FALSE_FLAG_ATTACK
photo: Malacañang Photo Bureau / Jay Morales
01 Mar 2013
TERESA CEROJANO. Associated Press= MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Shooting erupted in a Malaysian village that has been occupied by nearly 200 members of a Filipino clan for three weeks, but the Malaysian home minister denied Friday that his forces were responsible. Members of a Muslim royal clan from the southern Philippines landed in a coastal village in Malaysia's Sabah state on Feb ... He said his plan was "to fight." ... --- ... World news....(size: 3.0Kb)
photo: WN / Imran Nissar
02 Mar 2013
Srinagar, March 02.. Two local policemen were killed by separatist guerrillas in a hit-and-run attack in Kupwara district of north Kashmir Saturday. A senior police officer told IANS that militants fired from close range at two constables of an armed battalion near the bus stand in Handwara town, 75 kilometres from here this morning ... The area has been cordoned off and searches have started in the town....(size: 2.1Kb)
photo: AP / Hussein Malla
03 Mar 2013
Syrian president Bashar Assad has accused the British government of being "naive, confused and unrealistic" in its approach to the conflict in his country and warned of dire consequences if the West armed its rebels. In an interview with the Sunday Times Mr Assad said Britain was sacrificing peace talks to push for an end to an EU arms embargo, which would allow rebels to be armed ... "We do not expect an arsonist to be a firefighter." ... ....(size: 2.3Kb)
photo: AP / Andres Kudacki
02 Mar 2013
. March 2, 2013 . Updated. March 2, 2013 12.01pm. Comments (0) E-mail Print. Tweet. Page 1 of 1. MADRID (AP) — Real Madrid beat Barcelona for the second time in five days, earning a 2-1 win Saturday which will do little to prevent its fierce rival from reclaiming the Spanish league title but should boost Jose Mourinho's team ahead of its critical Champions League trip to Manchester United ... He later hit the woodwork with another free kick ... ....(size: 8.8Kb)
Buffalo News
03 Mar 2013
During the nine weeks of training, the soldiers studied the Army mission, history, tradition and core values, physical fitness, and received instruction and practice in basic combat skills, military weapons, chemical warfare and bayonet training, drill and ceremony, marching, rifle marksmanship, armed and unarmed combat, map reading, field tactics, ......(size: 3.9Kb)
Canberra Times
02 Mar 2013
Relief … Elaine Kelly with her sons. Photo. Janie Barrett. NINETEEN people, including four children, were rescued from the roof of a Pyrmont apartment building after a fire broke out in the basement car park ... ''[A burning car] generates smoke such as hydrogen phosphine, which they use in chemical warfare, and it also generates carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.'' ... with AAP. ....(size: 1.6Kb)
LA Daily News
02 Mar 2013
"A lot of these homemade gas masks are things that people actually made to protect themselves from some kind of chemical warfare even though they probably wouldn't "Social Fabric" features seven emerging and mid-career American artists who utilize fabric-based art as a means to question systems of labor, economy, and politics....(size: 9.0Kb)
The Examiner
28 Feb 2013
Today, retired Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf was laid to rest at West Point ... 27 in Tampa, Fla ... The U.S ... H. Norman Schwarzkopf ... Gen ... However, he was overruled by the Bush White House, in part due to fears that American troops could be subjected to chemical warfare by a desperate regime, and that removal of the dictator could lead to wider regional instability given the diverse ethnic factions that live in Iraq and neighboring countries....(size: 10.4Kb)
Huffington Post
28 Feb 2013
attorneys on businesses selling pot for medicinal use ... The state's four U.S ... While all marijuana use is illegal under federal law, U.S ... "This poll ... ___ ... Army Chemical Corps, where American soldiers were given an array of mind-bending drugs, including an exceptionally potent synthetic marijuana derivative ... Cannabis, an army chemical warfare specialist concluded, "is probably the most potent anti-epileptic known to medicine." ... ....(size: 15.2Kb)
Independent online (SA)
26 Feb 2013
London - In Allah’s name, what is wrong with us Muslims? And why do we find it so hard to ask that question of ourselves? What will it take to break the heavily curtained window of denial? ... I don’t find them funny, nor do most British Muslims ... In sum, they give three key reasons ... I cry as I read – as many must when been reminded of the chemical warfare used against Iraqis and the suffering of Palestinians ... Racism? ... ....(size: 5.5Kb)
Newstrack India
24 Feb 2013
American and British military commanders have planned to seize or destroy Syria's chemical weapons if the country slides into further chaos ... Alternative options include the using special forces and troops trained in chemical warfare to secure WMD sites in Syria if and when the government eventually collapses ... Chemical Industries ... Coal Chemical Complex So ... Bengal Chemical ....(size: 2.2Kb)
Zeenews
24 Feb 2013
American and British military commanders have planned to seize or destroy Syria's chemical weapons if the country slides into further chaos. They fear that nerve agents and chemical ... Alternative options include the using special forces and troops trained in chemical warfare to secure WMD sites in Syria if and when the government eventually collapses....(size: 1.9Kb)
The Siasat Daily
24 Feb 2013
American and British military commanders have planned to seize or destroy Syria’s chemical weapons if the country slides into further chaos. They fear that nerve agents and chemical ... Alternative options include the using special forces and troops trained in chemical warfare to secure WMD sites in Syria if and when the government eventually collapses....(size: 3.0Kb)
North Jersey
22 Feb 2013
Star Telegram
20 Feb 2013
"I used to get very, very antsy ... The dogs are also taught to sense when their owners -- many like Oldham dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder -- are feeling stress by picking up on chemical changes in their bodies, said Valerie Fry, who trained Duchess for Oldham ... Hard work ... During the Gulf War, he was exposed to sarin, a nerve agent used in chemical warfare, which caused him to lose the ability to sense when he is hungry....(size: 6.9Kb)
The Examiner
20 Feb 2013
Today, the YA author anthology we've all been waiting for has finally hit shelves! ... Attached are five story excerpts shared by authors Melissa Marr, Veronica Roth, Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine and Beth Revis. Others whose work appears in the book include Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, Carrie Ryan and Nancy Holder ... Survivors dodge chemical warfare and cruel gods; they travel the reaches of space and inhabit underground caverns ... Tweet ... ....(size: 4.8Kb)
BBC News
20 Feb 2013
Among Hottentot golden moles, penis size, it seems, does matter to the female of the species. Female Hottentot golden moles use the size of male golden moles' penises as a guide to their suitability as a mate, scientists have discovered. A long penis makes a male mole more attractive and raises his chances of fathering offspring ... Measuring up ... How do animals use their tactile sense? Watch tenrecs engage in chemical warfare ... ....(size: 5.0Kb)
For other uses, see Chemical warfare (disambiguation).
| This article forms part of the series |
| Lethal agents |
|---|
| Blood agents |
| Cyanogen chloride (CK) |
| Hydrogen cyanide (AC) |
| Blister agents |
| Ethyldichloroarsine (ED) |
| Methyldichloroarsine (MD) |
| Phenyldichloroarsine (PD) |
| Lewisite (L) |
| Sulfur mustard (HD, H, HT, HL, HQ) |
| Nitrogen mustard (HN1 · HN2 · HN3)) |
| Nerve agents |
| G-Agents |
| Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB) Soman (GD), Cyclosarin (GF) |
| GV |
| V-Agents |
| EA-3148, VE, VG, VM, VR, VX |
| Novichok agents |
| Nettle agents |
| Phosgene oxime (CX) |
| Pulmonary agents |
| Chlorine |
| Chloropicrin (PS) |
| Phosgene (CG) |
| Diphosgene (DP) |
| Incapacitating agents |
| Agent 15 (BZ) |
| DMHP |
| EA-3167 |
| Kolokol-1 |
| Riot control agents |
| Pepper spray (OC) |
| CS |
| CN (mace) |
| CR |
| Weapons of mass destruction |
|---|
 |
| By type |
| Biological, Chemical, Nuclear, Radiological |
| By country |
| Proliferation |
| Biological, Chemical, Nuclear, Missiles |
| Treaties |
| List of treaties |
 Book ·  Category |
Chemical warfare (CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (warfare or weapons). None of these fall under the term conventional weapons which are primarily effective due to their destructive potential. Chemical warfare does not depend upon explosive force to achieve an objective. Rather it depends upon the unique properties of the chemical agent weaponized. A lethal agent is designed to injure or incapacitate the enemy, or deny unhindered use of a particular area of terrain. Defoliants are used to quickly kill vegetation and deny its use for cover and concealment. It can also be used against agriculture and livestock to promote hunger and starvation. With proper protective equipment, training, and decontamination measures, the primary effects of chemical weapons can be overcome. Many nations possess vast stockpiles of weaponized agents in preparation for wartime use. The threat and the perceived threat have become strategic tools in planning both measures, and counter–measures.
Contents
|
Definition[link]
Chemical warfare is different from the use of conventional weapons or nuclear weapons because the destructive effects of chemical weapons are not primarily due to any explosive force. The offensive use of living organisms (such as anthrax) is considered biological warfare rather than chemical warfare; however, the use of nonliving toxic products produced by living organisms (e.g. toxins such as botulinum toxin, ricin, and saxitoxin) is considered chemical warfare under the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Under this Convention, any toxic chemical, regardless of its origin, is considered a chemical weapon unless it is used for purposes that are not prohibited (an important legal definition known as the General Purpose Criterion).[1]
About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled as chemical warfare agents during the 20th century. The entire class known as Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions have been scheduled for elimination by the CWC.[2]
Under the Convention, chemicals that are toxic enough to be used as chemical weapons, or that may be used to manufacture such chemicals, are divided into three groups according to their purpose and treatment:
- Schedule 1 – Have few, if any, legitimate uses. These may only be produced or used for research, medical, pharmaceutical or protective purposes (i.e. testing of chemical weapons sensors and protective clothing). Examples include nerve agents, ricin, lewisite and mustard gas. Any production over 100 g must be notified to the OPCW and a country can have a stockpile of no more than one tonne of these chemicals.
- Schedule 2 – Have no large-scale industrial uses, but may have legitimate small-scale uses. Examples include dimethyl methylphosphonate, a precursor to sarin but which is also used as a flame retardant and Thiodiglycol which is a precursor chemical used in the manufacture of mustard gas but is also widely used as a solvent in inks.
- Schedule 3 – Have legitimate large-scale industrial uses. Examples include phosgene and chloropicrin. Both have been used as chemical weapons but phosgene is an important precursor in the manufacture of plastics and chloropicrin is used as a fumigant. The OPCW must be notified of, and may inspect, any plant producing more than 30 tonnes per year.
Technology[link]
| Agents | Dissemination | Protection | Detection | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900s | Chlorine Chloropicrin Phosgene Mustard gas |
Wind dispersal | Gas masks, urinated-on gauze | Smell |
| 1910s | Lewisite | Chemical shells | Gas mask Rosin oil clothing |
|
| 1920s | Projectiles w/ central bursters | CC-2 clothing | ||
| 1930s | G-series nerve agents | Aircraft bombs | Blister agent detectors Color change paper |
|
| 1940s | Missile warheads Spray tanks |
Protective ointment (mustard) Collective protection Gas mask w/ Whetlerite |
||
| 1950s | ||||
| 1960s | V-series nerve agents | Aerodynamic | Gas mask w/ water supply | Nerve gas alarm |
| 1970s | ||||
| 1980s | Binary munitions | Improved gas masks (protection, fit, comfort) |
Laser detection | |
| 1990s | Novichok nerve agents |
Although crude chemical warfare has been employed in many parts of the world for thousands of years,[3] "modern" chemical warfare began during World War I - see Poison gas in World War I.
Initially, only well-known commercially available chemicals and their variants were used. These included chlorine and phosgene gas. The methods used to disperse these agents during battle were relatively unrefined and inefficient. Even so, casualties could be heavy, due to the mainly static troop positions which were characteristic features of trench warfare.
Germany, the first side to employ chemical warfare on the battlefield,[4] simply opened canisters of chlorine upwind of the opposing side and let the prevailing winds do the dissemination. Soon after, the French modified artillery munitions to contain phosgene – a much more effective method that became the principal means of delivery.[5]
Since the development of modern chemical warfare in World War I, nations have pursued research and development on chemical weapons that falls into four major categories: new and more deadly agents; more efficient methods of delivering agents to the target (dissemination); more reliable means of defense against chemical weapons; and more sensitive and accurate means of detecting chemical agents.
Chemical warfare agents[link]
See also: List of chemical warfare agents
A chemical used in warfare is called a chemical warfare agent (CWA). About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled as chemical warfare agents during the 20th and 21st-centuries. These agents may be in liquid, gas or solid form. Liquid agents are generally designed to evaporate quickly; such liquids are said to be volatile or have a high vapor pressure. Many chemical agents are made volatile so they can be dispersed over a large region quickly.
The earliest target of chemical warfare agent research was not toxicity, but development of agents that can affect a target through the skin and clothing, rendering protective gas masks useless. In July 1917, the Germans employed mustard gas. Mustard gas easily penetrates leather and fabric to inflict painful burns on the skin.
Chemical warfare agents are divided into lethal and incapacitating categories. A substance is classified as incapacitating if less than 1/100 of the lethal dose causes incapacitation, e.g., through nausea or visual problems. The distinction between lethal and incapacitating substances is not fixed, but relies on a statistical average called the LD50.
Persistency[link]
One way to classify chemical warfare agents is according to their persistency, a measure of the length of time that a chemical agent remains effective after dissemination. Chemical agents are classified as persistent or nonpersistent.
Agents classified as nonpersistent lose effectiveness after only a few minutes or hours or even only a few seconds. Purely gaseous agents such as chlorine are nonpersistent, as are highly volatile agents such as sarin and most other nerve agents. Tactically, nonpersistent agents are very useful against targets that are to be taken over and controlled very quickly.
Apart from the agent used, the delivery mode is very important. To achieve a nonpersistent deployment, the agent is dispersed into very small droplets comparable with the mist produced by an aerosol can. In this form not only the gaseous part of the agent (around 50%) but also the fine aerosol can be inhaled or taken up by the skin.
Modern doctrine requires very high concentrations almost instantly in order to be effective (one breath should contain a lethal dose of the agent). To achieve this, the primary weapons used would be rocket artillery or bombs and large ballistic missiles with cluster warheads. The contamination in the target area is only low or not existent and after four hours sarin or similar agents are not detectable anymore.
By contrast, persistent agents tend to remain in the environment for as long as several weeks, complicating decontamination. Defense against persistent agents requires shielding for extended periods of time. Non-volatile liquid agents, such as blister agents and the oily VX nerve agent, do not easily evaporate into a gas, and therefore present primarily a contact hazard.
The droplet size used for persistent delivery goes up to 1 mm increasing the falling speed and therefore about 80% of the deployed agent reaches the ground, resulting in heavy contamination. This implies, that persistent deployment does not aim at annihilating the enemy but to constrain him.
Possible targets include enemy flank positions (averting possible counter attacks), artillery regiments, commando posts or supply lines. Possible weapons to be used are wide spread, because the fast delivery of high amounts is not a critical factor.
A special form of persistent agents are thickened agents. These comprise a common agent mixed with thickeners to provide gelatinous, sticky agents. Primary targets for this kind of use include airfields, due to the increased persistency and difficulty of decontaminating affected areas.
Classes[link]
Chemical weapons are inert agents that come in four categories: choking, blister, blood and nerve.[6] The agents are organized into several categories according to the manner in which they affect the human body. The names and number of categories varies slightly from source to source, but in general, types of chemical warfare agents are as follows:
| Class of agent | Agent Names | Mode of Action | Signs and Symptoms | Rate of action | Persistency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nerve |
|
Inactivates enzyme acetylcholinesterase, preventing the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the victim's synapses and causing both muscarinic and nicotinic effects |
|
VX is persistent and a contact hazard; other agents are non-persistent and present mostly inhalation hazards. | |
| Asphyxiant/Blood |
|
|
Immediate onset | Non-persistent and an inhalation hazard. | |
| Vesicant/Blister |
|
Agents are acid-forming compounds that damages skin and respiratory system, resulting burns and respiratory problems. |
|
|
Persistent and a contact hazard. |
| Choking/Pulmonary | Similar mechanism to blister agents in that the compounds are acids or acid-forming, but action is more pronounced in respiratory system, flooding it and resulting in suffocation; survivors often suffer chronic breathing problems. |
|
Immediate to 3 hours | Non-persistent and an inhalation hazard. | |
| Lachrymatory agent | Causes severe stinging of the eyes and temporary blindness. | Powerful eye irritation | Immediate | Non-persistent and an inhalation hazard. | |
| Incapacitating |
|
Causes atropine-like inhibition of acetylcholine in subject. Causes peripheral nervous system effects that are the opposite of those seen in nerve agent poisoning. |
|
|
Extremely persistent in soil and water and on most surfaces; contact hazard. |
| Cytotoxic proteins |
Non-living biological proteins, such as: |
Inhibit protein synthesis |
|
4-24 hours; see symptoms. Exposure by inhalation or injection causes more pronounced signs and symptoms than exposure by ingestion | Slight; agents degrade quickly in environment |
There are other chemicals used militarily that are not scheduled by the Chemical Weapons Convention, and thus are not controlled under the CWC treaties. These include:
- Defoliants that destroy vegetation, but are not immediately toxic to human beings. Some batches of Agent Orange, for instance, used by the United States in Vietnam, contained dioxins as manufacturing impurities. Dioxins, rather than Agent Orange itself, have long-term cancer effects and for causing genetic damage leading to serious birth deformities.
- Incendiary or explosive chemicals (such as napalm, extensively used by the United States in Vietnam, or dynamite) because their destructive effects are primarily due to fire or explosive force, and not direct chemical action.
- Viruses, bacteria, or other organisms. Their use is classified as biological warfare. Toxins produced by living organisms are considered chemical weapons, although the boundary is blurry. Toxins are covered by the Biological Weapons Convention.
Designations[link]
For more details on this topic, see chemical weapon designation.
Most chemical weapons are assigned a one- to three-letter "NATO weapon designation" in addition to, or in place of, a common name. Binary munitions, in which precursors for chemical warfare agents are automatically mixed in shell to produce the agent just prior to its use, are indicated by a "-2" following the agent's designation (for example, GB-2 and VX-2).
Some examples are given below:
| Blood agents: | Vesicants: |
|---|---|
|
|
| Pulmonary agents: | Incapacitating agents: |
|
|
| Lachrymatory agents: | Nerve agents: |
|
Delivery[link]
The most important factor in the effectiveness of chemical weapons is the efficiency of its delivery, or dissemination, to a target. The most common techniques include munitions (such as bombs, projectiles, warheads) that allow dissemination at a distance and spray tanks which disseminate from low-flying aircraft. Developments in the techniques of filling and storage of munitions have also been important.
Although there have been many advances in chemical weapon delivery since World War I, it is still difficult to achieve effective dispersion. The dissemination is highly dependent on atmospheric conditions because many chemical agents act in gaseous form. Thus, weather observations and forecasting are essential to optimize weapon delivery and reduce the risk of injuring friendly forces.
Dispersion[link]
Dispersion is placing the chemical agent upon or adjacent to a target immediately before dissemination, so that the material is most efficiently used. Dispersion is the simplest technique of delivering an agent to its target. The most common techniques are munitions, bombs, projectiles, spray tanks and warheads.
World War I saw the earliest implementation of this technique. The actual first chemical ammunition was the French 26 mm cartouche suffocante rifle grenade, fired from a flare carbine. It contained 35g of the tear-producer ethylbromacetate, and was used in autumn 1914 – with little effect on the Germans.
The Germans on the other hand tried to increase the effect of 10.5 cm shrapnel shells by adding an irritant – dianisidine chlorosulfonate. Its use went unnoticed by the British when it was used against them at Neuve Chapelle in October 1914. Hans Tappen, a chemist in the Heavy Artillery Department of the War Ministry, suggested to his brother, the Chief of the Operations Branch at German General Headquarters, the use of the tear-gases benzyl bromide or xylyl bromide.
Shells were tested successfully at the Wahn artillery range near Cologne on 9 January 1915, and an order was placed for 15 cm howitzer shells, designated ‘T-shells’ after Tappen. A shortage of shells limited the first use against the Russians at Bolimów on 31 January 1915; the liquid failed to vaporize in the cold weather, and again the experiment went unnoticed by the Allies.
The first effective use were when the German forces at the Second Battle of Ypres simply opened cylinders of chlorine and allowed the wind to carry the gas across enemy lines. While simple, this technique had numerous disadvantages. Moving large numbers of heavy gas cylinders to the front-line positions from where the gas would be released was a lengthy and difficult logistical task.
Stockpiles of cylinders had to be stored at the front line, posing a great risk if hit by artillery shells. Gas delivery depended greatly on wind speed and direction. If the wind was fickle, as at Loos, the gas could blow back, causing friendly casualties.
Gas clouds gave plenty of warning, allowing the enemy time to protect themselves, though many soldiers found the sight of a creeping gas cloud unnerving. This made the gas doubly effective, as, in addition to damaging the enemy physically, it also had a psychological effect on the intended victims.
Another disadvantage was that gas clouds had limited penetration, capable only of affecting the front-line trenches before dissipating. Although it produced limited results in World War I, this technique shows how simple chemical weapon dissemination can be.
Shortly after this "open canister" dissemination, French forces developed a technique for delivery of phosgene in a non-explosive artillery shell. This technique overcame many of the risks of dealing with gas in cylinders. First, gas shells were independent of the wind and increased the effective range of gas, making any target within reach of guns vulnerable. Second, gas shells could be delivered without warning, especially the clear, nearly odorless phosgene– there are numerous accounts of gas shells, landing with a "plop" rather than exploding, being initially dismissed as dud high explosive or shrapnel shells, giving the gas time to work before the soldiers were alerted and took precautions.
The major drawback of artillery delivery was the difficulty of achieving a killing concentration. Each shell had a small gas payload and an area would have to be subjected to saturation bombardment to produce a cloud to match cylinder delivery. A British solution to the problem was the Livens Projector. This was effectively a large-bore mortar, dug into the ground that used the gas cylinders themselves as projectiles - firing a 14 kg cylinder up to 1500 m. This combined the gas volume of cylinders with the range of artillery.
Over the years, there were some refinements in this technique. In the 1950s and early 1960s, chemical artillery rockets and cluster bombs contained a multitude of submunitions, so that a large number of small clouds of the chemical agent would form directly on the target.
Thermal dissemination[link]
Thermal dissemination is the use of explosives or pyrotechnics to deliver chemical agents. This technique, developed in the 1920s, was a major improvement over earlier dispersal techniques, in that it allowed significant quantities of an agent to be disseminated over a considerable distance. Thermal dissemination remains the principal method of disseminating chemical agents today.
Most thermal dissemination devices consist of a bomb or projectile shell that contains a chemical agent and a central "burster" charge; when the burster detonates, the agent is expelled laterally.
Thermal dissemination devices, though common, are not particularly efficient. First, a percentage of the agent is lost by incineration in the initial blast and by being forced onto the ground. Second, the sizes of the particles vary greatly because explosive dissemination produces a mixture of liquid droplets of variable and difficult to control sizes.
The efficacy of thermal detonation is greatly limited by the flammability of some agents. For flammable aerosols, the cloud is sometimes totally or partially ignited by the disseminating explosion in a phenomenon called flashing. Explosively disseminated VX will ignite roughly one third of the time. Despite a great deal of study, flashing is still not fully understood, and a solution to the problem would be a major technological advance.
Despite the limitations of central bursters, most nations use this method in the early stages of chemical weapon development, in part because standard munitions can be adapted to carry the agents.
Aerodynamic dissemination[link]
Aerodynamic dissemination is the non-explosive delivery of a chemical agent from an aircraft, allowing aerodynamic stress to disseminate the agent. This technique is the most recent major development in chemical agent dissemination, originating in the mid-1960s.
This technique eliminates many of the limitations of thermal dissemination by eliminating the flashing effect and theoretically allowing precise control of particle size. In actuality, the altitude of dissemination, wind direction and velocity, and the direction and velocity of the aircraft greatly influence particle size. There are other drawbacks as well; ideal deployment requires precise knowledge of aerodynamics and fluid dynamics, and because the agent must usually be dispersed within the boundary layer (less than 200–300 ft above the ground), it puts pilots at risk.
Significant research is still being applied toward this technique. For example, by modifying the properties of the liquid, its breakup when subjected to aerodynamic stress can be controlled and an idealized particle distribution achieved, even at supersonic speed. Additionally, advances in fluid dynamics, computer modeling, and weather forecasting allow an ideal direction, speed, and altitude to be calculated, such that warfare agent of a predetermined particle size can predictably and reliably hit a target.
Protection against chemical warfare[link]
Ideal protection begins with nonproliferation treaties such as the Chemical Weapons Convention, and detecting, very early, the signatures of someone building a chemical weapons capability. These include a wide range of intelligence disciplines, such as economic analysis of exports of dual-use chemicals and equipment, human intelligence (HUMINT) such as diplomatic, refugee, and agent reports; photography from satellites, aircraft and drones (IMINT); examination of captured equipment (TECHINT); communications intercepts (COMINT); and detection of chemical manufacturing and chemical agents themselves (MASINT).
If all the preventive measures fail and there is a clear and present danger, then there is a need for detection of chemical attacks,[7] collective protection,[8][9][10] and decontamination. Since industrial accidents can cause dangerous chemical releases (e.g., the Bhopal disaster), these activities are things that civilian, as well as military, organizations must be prepared to carry out. In civilian situations in developed countries, these are duties of HAZMAT organizations, which most commonly are part of fire departments.
Detection has been referred to above, as a technical MASINT discipline; specific military procedures, which are usually the model for civilian procedures, depend on the equipment, expertise, and personnel available. When chemical agents are detected, an alarm needs to sound, with specific warnings over emergency broadcasts and the like. There may be a warning to expect an attack.
If, for example, the captain of a US Navy ship believes there is a serious threat of chemical, biological, or radiological attack, the crew may be ordered to set Circle William, which means closing all openings to outside air, running breathing air through filters, and possibly starting a system that continually washes down the exterior surfaces. Civilian authorities dealing with an attack or a toxic chemical accident will invoke the Incident Command System, or local equivalent, to coordinate defensive measures.[10]
Individual protection starts with a gas mask and, depending on the nature of the threat, through various levels of protective clothing up to a complete chemical-resistant suit with a self-contained air supply. The US military defines various levels of MOPP (mission-oriented protective posture) from mask to full chemical resistant suits; Hazmat suits are the civilian equivalent, but go farther to include a fully independent air supply, rather than the filters of a gas mask.
Collective protection allows continued functioning of groups of people in buildings or shelters, the latter which may be fixed, mobile, or improvised. With ordinary buildings, this may be as basic as plastic sheeting and tape, although if the protection needs to be continued for any appreciable length of time, there will need to be an air supply, typically a scaled-up version of a gas mask.[9][10]
Decontamination[link]
Decontamination varies with the particular chemical agent used. Some nonpersistent agents, such as most pulmonary agents such as chlorine and phosgene, blood gases, and nonpersistent nerve gases (e.g., GB) will dissipate from open areas, although powerful exhaust fans may be needed to clear out buildings where they have accumulated.
In some cases, it might be necessary to neutralize them chemically, as with ammonia as a neutralizer for hydrogen cyanide or chlorine. Riot control agents such as CS will dissipate in an open area, but things contaminated with CS powder need to be aired out, washed by people wearing protective gear, or safely discarded.
Mass decontamination is a less common requirement for people than equipment, since people may be immediately affected and treatment is the action required. It is a requirement when people have been contaminated with persistent agents. Treatment and decontamination may need to be simultaneous, with the medical personnel protecting themselves so they can function.[11]
There may need to be immediate intervention to prevent death, such as injection of atropine for nerve agents. Decontamination is especially important for people contaminated with persistent agents; many of the fatalities after the explosion of a WWII US ammunition ship carrying mustard gas, in the harbor of Bari, Italy, after a German bombing on 2 December 1943, came when rescue workers, not knowing of the contamination, bundled cold, wet seamen in tight-fitting blankets.
For decontaminating equipment and buildings exposed to persistent agents, such as blister agents, VX or other agents made persistent by mixing with a thickener, special equipment and materials might be needed. Some type of neutralizing agent will be needed; e.g. in the form of a spraying device with neutralizing agents such as Chlorine, Fichlor, strong alkaline solutions or enzymes. In other cases, a specific chemical decontaminant will be required.[10]
Sociopolitical climate[link]
The study of chemicals and their military uses was widespread in China and India. The use of toxic materials has historically been viewed with mixed emotions and moral qualms in the West. The practical and ethical problems surrounding poison warfare appeared in ancient Greek myths about Hercules' invention of poison arrows and Odysseus's use of toxic projectiles. There are many instances of the use of chemical weapons in battles documented in Greek and Roman historical texts; the earliest example was the deliberate poisoning of Kirrha's water supply with hellebore in the First Sacred War, Greece, about 590 BC.[12]
One of the earliest reactions to the use of chemical agents was from Rome. Struggling to defend themselves from the Roman legions, Germanic tribes poisoned the wells of their enemies, with Roman jurists having been recorded as declaring "armis bella non venenis geri", meaning "war is fought with weapons, not with poisons." Yet the Romans themselves resorted to poisoning wells of besieged cities in Anatolia in the 2nd century BCE.[13]
Before 1915 the use of poisonous chemicals in battle was typically the result of local initiative, and not the result of an active government chemical weapons program. There are many reports of the isolated use of chemical agents in individual battles or sieges, but there was no true tradition of their use outside of incendiaries and smoke. Despite this tendency, there have been several attempts to initiate large-scale implementation of poison gas in several wars, but with the notable exception of World War I, the responsible authorities generally rejected the proposals for ethical reasons.
For example, in 1854 Lyon Playfair (later 1st Baron Playfair, GCB, PC, FRS (1 May 1818 – 29 May 1898), a British chemist, proposed using a cacodyl cyanide-filled artillery shell against enemy ships during the Crimean War. The British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as "as bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy."
Efforts to eradicate chemical weapons[link]
See also: List of chemical arms control agreements
| Nation | CW Possession | Signed CWC | Ratified CWC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Albania | Known | January 14, 1993 | May 11, 1994 |
| Burma (Myanmar) | Possible | January 13, 1993 | No |
| the People's Republic of China | Probable | January 13, 1993 | April 4, 1997 |
| Egypt | Probable | No | No |
| France | Probable | January 13, 1993 | March 2, 1995 |
| India | Known | January 14, 1993 | September 3, 1996 |
| Iran | Known | January 13, 1993 | November 3, 1997 |
| Israel | Probable | January 13, 1993 | No |
| Japan | Probable | January 13, 1993 | September 15, 1995 |
| Libya | Known | No | January 6, 2004 (acceded) |
| North Korea | Known | No | No |
| Pakistan | Probable | January 13, 1993 | October 28, 1997 |
| Russia | Known | January 13, 1993 | November 5, 1997 |
| Serbia and Montenegro |
Probable | No | April 20, 2000 (acceded) |
| Sudan | Possible | No | May 24, 1999 (acceded) |
| Syria | Known | No | No |
| Taiwan | Possible | n/a | n/a |
| United States | Known | January 13, 1993 | April 25, 1997 |
| Vietnam | Probable | January 13, 1993 | September 30, 1998 |
- August 27, 1874: The Brussels Declaration Concerning the Laws and Customs of War is signed, specifically forbidding the "employment of poison or poisoned weapons."
- September 4, 1900: The Hague Conference, which includes a declaration banning the "use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases," enters into force.
- February 6, 1922: After World War I, the Washington Arms Conference Treaty prohibited the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases. It was signed by the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, but France objected to other provisions in the treaty and it never went into effect.
- September 7, 1929: The Geneva Protocol enters into force, prohibiting the use of poison gas.
Chemical weapon proliferation[link]
Main article: Chemical weapon proliferation
Despite numerous efforts to reduce or eliminate them, some nations continue to research and/or stockpile chemical warfare agents. To the right is a summary of the nations that have either declared weapon stockpiles or are suspected of secretly stockpiling or possessing CW research programs. Notable examples include United States and Russia.
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney opposed the signing ratification of a treaty banning the use chemical weapons, a recently unearthed letter shows. In a letter dated April 8, 1997, then Halliburton-CEO Cheney told Sen. Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that it would be a mistake for America to join the Convention. "Those nations most likely to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention are not likely to ever constitute a military threat to the United States. The governments we should be concerned about are likely to cheat on the CWC, even if they do participate," reads the letter,[14] published by the Federation of American Scientists.
The CWC was ratified by the Senate that same month. Since then, Albania, Libya, Russia, the United States, and India have declared over 71,000 metric tons of chemical weapon stockpiles, and destroyed about a third of them. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States and Russia are supposed to eliminate the rest of their supplies of chemical weapons by 2012. But that looks unlikely– the U.S. government estimates remaining stocks will be destroyed by 2017.[citation needed]
History[link]
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Generations of warfare
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Ancient to medieval times[link]
Chemical weapons have been used for millennia in the form of poisoned spears and arrows, but evidence can be found for the existence of more advanced forms of chemical weapons in ancient and classical times.
A good example of early chemical warfare was the late Stone Age (10 000 BC) hunter-gatherer societies in Southern Africa, known as the San.[citation needed] They used poisoned arrows, tipping the wood, bone and stone tips of their arrows with poisons obtained from their natural environment. These poisons were mainly derived from scorpion or snake venom, but it is believed that some poisonous plants were also utilized. The arrow was fired into the target of choice, usually an antelope (the favourite being an eland), with the hunter then tracking the doomed animal until the poison caused its collapse.
Ancient Greek myths about Hercules poisoning his arrows with the venom of the Hydra Monster are the earliest references to toxic weapons in western literature. Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, allude to poisoned arrows used by both sides in the legendary Trojan War (Bronze Age Greece).[13]
Textual and Literary Evidence[link]
Some of the earliest surviving references to toxic warfare appear in the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata.[15]
The "Laws of Manu," a Hindu treatise on statecraft (c. 400 BC) forbids the use of poison and fire arrows, but advises poisoning food and water. Kautilya's "Arthashastra," a statecraft manual of the same era, contains hundreds of recipes for creating poison weapons, toxic smokes, and other chemical weapons. Ancient Greek historians recount that Alexander the Great encountered poison arrows and fire incendiaries in India at Indus Basin in the 4th century BC.[13]
Sun Tzu's "Art of War" (c. 200 BC) advises the use of fire weapons. In the 2nd century BC, writings of the Mohist sect in China describe the use of bellows to pump smoke from burning balls of mustard and other toxic vegetables into tunnels being dug by a besieging army. Other Chinese writings dating around the same period contain hundreds of recipes for the production of poisonous or irritating smokes for use in war along with numerous accounts of their use. From these accounts we know of the arsenic-containing "soul-hunting fog", and the use of finely divided lime dispersed into the air to suppress a peasant revolt in AD 178.
The earliest recorded use of gas warfare in the West dates back to the 5th century BC, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Spartan forces besieging an Athenian city placed a lighted mixture of wood, pitch, and sulfur under the walls hoping that the noxious smoke would incapacitate the Athenians, so that they would not be able to resist the assault that followed. Sparta was not alone in its use of unconventional tactics in ancient Greece: Solon of Athens is said to have used hellebore roots to poison the water in an aqueduct leading from the River Pleistos around 590 BC during the siege of Kirrha.[13]
Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentions usage of poisonous gas by the Mongol army in 1241 in the Battle of Legnica. However, his report is not firsthand, as he was born in the 15th century. According to Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev, Długosz's chronicle is unclear as to what kind of device or gas was used, giving only a description of a noxious smell. Rather, he suggests, this is a repeat of the trope of the Mongols' bad smell as an excuse for their annihilation of European defenders.[16]
Historian and philosopher David Hume, in his history of England, recounts how in the reign of Henry III (r.1216 - 1272) the English Navy destroyed an invading French fleet, by blinding the enemy fleet with "quicklime," the old name for calcium oxide. D’Albiney employed a stratagem against them, which is said to have contributed to the victory: Having gained the wind of the French, he came down upon them with violence; and throwing in their faces a great quantity of quicklime, which he purposely carried on board, he so blinded them, that they were disabled from defending themselves.[17]
Archaeological Evidence[link]
There is archaeological evidence that the Sasanians deployed chemical weapons against the Roman army in 3rd century AD/CE. Research carried out on the collapsed tunnels at Dura-Europos in Syria suggests that the Iranians used bitumen and sulfur crystals to get it burning. When ignited, the materials gave off dense clouds of choking gases which killed 20 Roman soldiers in a matter of 2 minutes.[18]
Rediscovery[link]
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During the Renaissance, people again considered using chemical warfare. One of the earliest such references is from Leonardo da Vinci, who proposed a powder of sulfide of arsenic and verdigris in the 15th century:
- throw poison in the form of powder upon galleys. Chalk, fine sulfide of arsenic, and powdered verdegris may be thrown among enemy ships by means of small mangonels, and all those who, as they breathe, inhale the powder into their lungs will become asphyxiated.
It is unknown whether this powder was ever actually used.
In the late 15th century, Spanish conquistadors encountered a rudimentary type of chemical warfare on the island of Hispaniola. The Taíno threw gourds filled with ashes and ground hot peppers at the Spaniards to create a blinding smoke screen before launching their attack.[19]
In the 17th century during sieges, armies attempted to start fires by launching incendiary shells filled with sulfur, tallow, rosin, turpentine, saltpeter, and/or antimony. Even when fires were not started, the resulting smoke and fumes provided a considerable distraction. Although their primary function was never abandoned, a variety of fills for shells were developed to maximize the effects of the smoke.
In 1672, during his siege of the city of Groningen, Christoph Bernhard van Galen, the Bishop of Münster, employed several different explosive and incendiary devices, some of which had a fill that included Deadly Nightshade, intended to produce toxic fumes. Just three years later, August 27, 1675, the French and the Germans concluded the Strasbourg Agreement, which included an article banning the use of "perfidious and odious" toxic devices.[citation needed]
In June 1845, British troops attacking Maori trenches and bunkers at Ohaeawai in New Zealand fired shells containing an unknown type of poison gas from their cannon and mortars. The Maori withstood the bombardment and won the battle.[citation needed]
In 1854, Lyon Playfair, a British chemist, proposed a cacodyl cyanide artillery shell for use against enemy ships as way to solve the stalemate during the siege of Sevastopol. The proposal was backed by Admiral Thomas Cochrane of the Royal Navy. It was considered by the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, but the British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as "as bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy." Playfair’s response was used to justify chemical warfare into the next century:[citation needed]
- There was no sense in this objection. It is considered a legitimate mode of warfare to fill shells with molten metal which scatters among the enemy, and produced the most frightful modes of death. Why a poisonous vapor which would kill men without suffering is to be considered illegitimate warfare is incomprehensible. War is destruction, and the more destructive it can be made with the least suffering the sooner will be ended that barbarous method of protecting national rights. No doubt in time chemistry will be used to lessen the suffering of combatants, and even of criminals condemned to death.
Later, during the American Civil War, New York school teacher John Doughty proposed the offensive use of chlorine gas, delivered by filling a 10 inch (254 millimeter) artillery shell with 2 to 3 quarts (2 to 3 liters) of liquid chlorine, which could produce many cubic feet (a few cubic meters) of chlorine gas. Doughty’s plan was apparently never acted on, as it was probably[citation needed] presented to Brigadier General James Wolfe Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, who was described as being congenitally immune to new ideas.[says who?]
A general concern over the use of poison gas manifested itself in 1899 at the Hague Conference with a proposal prohibiting shells filled with asphyxiating gas. The proposal was passed, despite a single dissenting vote from the United States. The American representative, Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, justified voting against the measure on the grounds that "the inventiveness of Americans should not be restricted in the development of new weapons."
World War I[link]
Main article: Poison gas in World War I
The Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague Convention of 1907 forbade the use of "poison or poisonous weapons" in warfare, yet more than 124,000 tons of gas were produced by the end of World War I. The French were the first to use chemical weapons during the First World War, using tear gas.
The Germans' first use of chemical weapons were shells containing xylyl bromide that were fired at the Russians near the town of Bolimów, Poland in January 1915.[20] The first full-scale deployment of chemical warfare agents was during World War I, originating in the Second Battle of Ypres, April 22, 1915, when the Germans attacked French, Canadian and Algerian troops with chlorine gas. Deaths were light, though casualties relatively heavy.
A total 50,965 tons of pulmonary, lachrymatory, and vesicant agents were deployed by both sides of the conflict, including chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas. Official figures declare about 1,176,500 non-fatal casualties and 85,000 fatalities directly caused by chemical warfare agents during the course of the war.[21]
To this day unexploded World War I-era chemical ammunition is still uncovered when the ground is dug in former battle or depot areas and continues to pose a threat to the civilian population in Belgium and France and less commonly in other countries. The French and Belgian governments have had to launch special programs for treating discovered ammunition.[citation needed]
After the war, most of the unused German chemical warfare agents were dumped into the Baltic Sea, a common disposal method among all the participants in several bodies of water. Over time, the salt water causes the shell casings to corrode, and mustard gas occasionally leaks from these containers and washes onto shore as a wax-like solid resembling ambergris. Even in this solidified form, the agent is active enough to cause severe burns to anybody coming into contact with it.[citation needed]
Interwar years[link]
After World War I chemical agents were occasionally used to subdue populations and suppress rebellion.
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, the Ottoman government collapsed completely, and the former empire was divided amongst the victorious powers in the Treaty of Sèvres. The British occupied Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and established a colonial government.
In 1920, the Arab and Kurdish people of Mesopotamia revolted against the British occupation, which cost the British dearly. As the Mesopotamian resistance gained strength, the British resorted to increasingly repressive measures. Much speculation was made about aerial bombardment of major cities with gas in Mesopotamia, with Winston Churchill, then-Secretary of State at the British War Office, arguing in favor of it.[22]
In 1925, sixteen of the world's major nations signed the Geneva Protocol, thereby pledging never to use gas in warfare again. Notably, in the United States, the Protocol languished in the Senate until 1975, when it was finally ratified.
The Bolsheviks also employed poison gas in 1921 during the Tambov Rebellion. An order signed by military commanders Tukhachevsky and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko stipulated: "The forests where the bandits are hiding are to be cleared by the use of poison gas. This must be carefully calculated, so that the layer of gas penetrates the forests and kills everyone hiding there."[23]
During the Rif War in Spanish Morocco in 1921–1927, combined Spanish and French forces dropped mustard gas bombs in an attempt to put down the Berber rebellion. (See also: Chemical weapons in the Rif War)
In 1935, Fascist Italy used mustard gas during the invasion of Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. Ignoring the Geneva Protocol, which it signed seven years earlier, the Italian military dropped mustard gas in bombs, sprayed it from airplanes, and spread it in powdered form on the ground. 150,000 chemical casualties were reported, mostly from mustard gas.
World War II[link]
Despite article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty, article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare[24] and a resolution adopted against Japan by the League of Nations on 14 May 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons. Because of fear of retaliation however, those weapons were never used against Westerners, but against other Asians judged "inferior" by the imperial propaganda.
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937 but in the spring of 1938, however the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of sneeze and nausea gas (red), and from summer 1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communists Chinese troops.[25]
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, the chemical weapons were authorized by specific orders given by Emperor Showa himself, transmitted by the chief of staff of the army. For example, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938.[26]
They were also profusely used during the invasion of Changde. Those orders were transmitted either by prince Kotohito Kan'in or general Hajime Sugiyama.[27]
The Imperial Japanese Army used mustard gas and the recently-developed blister agent Lewisite against Chinese troops and guerrillas. Experiments involving chemical weapons were conducted on live prisoners (Unit 731 and Unit 516). The Japanese also carried chemical weapons as they swept through Southeast Asia towards Australia.
Some of these items were captured and analyzed by the Allies. Greatly concerned, Australia covertly imported 1,000,000 chemical weapons from the United Kingdom from 1942 onwards[28] [1][29] [2].[30][31][32][33]
Shortly after the end of World War I, Germany's General Staff enthusiastically pursued a recapture of their preeminent position in chemical warfare. In 1923, Hans von Seeckt pointed the way, by suggesting that German poison gas research move in the direction of delivery by aircraft in support of mobile warfare. Also in 1923, at the behest of the German army, poison gas expert Dr. Hugo Stolzenberg negotiated with the USSR to build a huge chemical weapons plant at Trotsk, on the Volga river.
Collaboration between Germany and the USSR in poison gas continued on and off through the 1920s. In 1924, German officers debated the use of poison gas versus non-lethal chemical weapons against civilians. Even before World War II, chemical warfare was revolutionized by Nazi Germany's discovery of the nerve agents tabun (in 1937) and sarin (in 1939) by Gerhard Schrader, a chemist of IG Farben.
IG Farben was Germany's premier poison gas manufacturer during World War I, so the weaponization of these agents can not be considered accidental.[34] Both were turned over to the German Army Weapons Office prior to the outbreak of the war.
The nerve agent soman was later discovered by Nobel Prize laureate Richard Kuhn and his collaborator Konrad Henkel at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg in spring of 1944.[35][36] The Nazis developed and manufactured large quantities of several agents, but chemical warfare was not extensively used by either side. Chemical troops were set up (in Germany since 1934) and delivery technology was actively developed.
Recovered Nazi documents suggest that German intelligence incorrectly thought that the Allies also knew of these compounds, interpreting their lack of mention in the Allies' scientific journals as evidence that information about them was being suppressed. Germany ultimately decided not to use the new nerve agents, fearing a potentially devastating Allied retaliatory nerve agent deployment. Fisk, Robert (December 30, 2000), "Poison gas from Germany", Independent, http://www.zmag.org/hussein.htm [dead link]
William L. Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, writes that the British high command considered the use of chemical weapons as a last-ditch defensive measure in the event of a Nazi invasion of Britain.
On the night of December 2, 1943, German Ju 88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships– among them SS John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas intended for use in retaliation by the Allies if German forces initiated gas warfare. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it– which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment improper for those suffering from exposure and immersion.
The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war (in the opinion of some, there was a deliberate and systematic cover-up). According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen"[37] out of 628 mustard gas military casualties.[38] The large number of civilian casualties among the Italian population were not recorded. Part of the confusion and controversy derives from the fact that the German attack was highly destructive and lethal in itself, also apart from the accidental additional effects of the gas (it was nicknamed "The Little Pearl Harbor"), and attribution of the causes of death between the gas and other causes is far from easy.[39][40]
Rick Atkinson, in his book The Day of Battle, describes the intelligence that prompted Allied leaders to deploy mustard gas to Italy. This included Italian intelligence that Adolf Hitler had threatened to use gas against Italy if the state changed sides, and prisoner of war interrogations suggesting that preparations were being made to use a "new, egregiously potent gas" if the war turned decisively against Germany. Atkinson concludes that "No commander in 1943 could be cavalier about a manifest threat by Germany to use gas."
North Yemen[link]
The first attack of the North Yemen Civil War took place on June 8, 1963 against Kawma, a village of about 100 inhabitants in northern Yemen, killing about seven people and damaging the eyes and lungs of twenty-five others. This incident is considered to have been experimental, and the bombs were described as "home-made, amateurish and relatively ineffective". The Egyptian authorities suggested that the reported incidents were probably caused by napalm, not gas.
There were no reports of gas during 1964, and only a few were reported in 1965. The reports grew more frequent in late 1966. On December 11, 1966, fifteen gas bombs killed two people and injured thirty-five. On January 5, 1967, the biggest gas attack came against the village of Kitaf, causing 270 casualties, including 140 fatalities. The target may have been Prince Hassan bin Yahya, who had installed his headquarters nearby. The Egyptian government denied using poison gas, and alleged that Britain and the US were using the reports as psychological warfare against Egypt. On February 12, 1967, it said it would welcome a UN investigation. On March 1, U Thant said he was "powerless" to deal with the matter.
On May 10, the twin villages of Gahar and Gadafa in Wadi Hirran, where Prince Mohamed bin Mohsin was in command, were gas bombed, killing at least seventy-five. The Red Cross was alerted and on June 2, it issued a statement in Geneva expressing concern. The Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Berne made a statement, based on a Red Cross report, that the gas was likely to have been halogenous derivatives - phosgene, mustard gas, lewisite, chloride or cyanogen bromide.
The gas attacks stopped for three weeks after the Six-Day War of June, but resumed on July, against all parts of royalist Yemen. Casualty estimates vary, and an assumption, considered conservative, is that the mustard and phosgene-filled aerial bombs caused approximately 1,500 fatalities and 1,500 injuries.[citation needed]
Cold War[link]
After World War II, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing the three German nerve agents of the day (tabun, sarin, and soman), prompting further research into nerve agents by all of the former Allies. Although the threat of global thermonuclear war was foremost in the minds of most during the Cold War, both the Soviet and Western governments put enormous resources into developing chemical and biological weapons.
There is some evidence suggesting that Vietnamese troops used phosgene gas against Cambodian resistance forces in Thailand during the 1984-1985 dry-season offensive on the Thai-Cambodian border.[41][42][43]
Developments by the Western governments[link]
In 1952, researchers in Porton Down, England, invented the VX nerve agent but soon abandoned the project. In 1958 the British government traded their VX technology with the United States in exchange for information on thermonuclear weapons; by 1961 the U.S. was producing large amounts of VX and performing its own nerve agent research. This research produced at least three more agents; the four agents (VE, VG, VM, VX) are collectively known as the "V-Series" class of nerve agents.
Also in 1952 the U.S. Army patented a process for the "Preparation of Toxic Ricin", publishing a method of producing this powerful toxin.
During the 1960s, the U.S. explored the use of anticholinergic deliriant incapacitating agents. One of these agents, assigned the weapon designation BZ, was allegedly used experimentally in the Vietnam War[citation needed]. These allegations inspired the 1990 fictional film Jacob's Ladder.
Herbicidal warfare[link]
Main article: Herbicidal warfare
In 1961 and 1962 the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy vegetation and food crops in South Vietnam. Between 1961 and 1967 the US Air Force sprayed 12 million US gallons of concentrated herbicides, mainly Agent Orange (containing dioxin as an impurity in the manufacturing process) over 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of foliage and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicides were sprayed over food crops. Besides destroying vegetation used as cover by the NLF and destroying food crops the herbicide was used to drive civilians into RVN-controlled areas.[45]
In 1997, an article published by the Wall Street Journal reported that up to half a million children were born with dioxin related deformities, and that the birth defects in North Vietnam were fourfold those in the South. The use of Agent Orange may have been contrary to international rules of war at the time. It is also of note that the most likely victims of such an assault would be small children. A 1967 study by the Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres (15,000 km²) of land had been destroyed, killing 1000 peasants and 13,000 livestock.
Exposure and chemical disarmament[link]
Between 1967 and 1968, the U.S. decided to dispose of obsolete chemical weapons in an operation called Operation CHASE, which stood for "cut holes and sink 'em." Several shiploads of chemical and conventional weapons were put aboard old Liberty ships and sunk at sea.
In 1969, 23 U.S. servicemen and one U.S. civilian stationed in Okinawa, Japan, were exposed to low levels of the nerve agent sarin while repainting the depots' buildings. The weapons had been kept secret from Japan, sparking a furor in that country and an international incident. These munitions were moved in 1971 to Johnston Atoll under Operation Red Hat.
A UN working group began work on chemical disarmament in 1980. On April 4, 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons. U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a bilateral treaty on June 1, 1990, to end chemical weapon production and start destroying each of their nation's stockpiles. The multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was signed in 1993 and entered into force (EIF) in 1997.
In December, 2001, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, NIOSH, National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL), along with the U.S. Army Research, Development Engineering Command Edgewood Chemical/Biological Center (ECBC), and the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first of six technical performance standards and test procedures designed to evaluate and certify respirators intended for use by civilian emergency responders to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon release, detonation, or terrorism incident. To date NIOSH/NPPTL has published six new respirator performance standards based on a tiered approach that relies on traditional industrial respirator certification policy, next generation emergency response respirator performance requirements, and special live chemical warfare agent testing requirements of the classes of respirators identified to offer respiratory protection against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) agent inhalation hazards. These CBRN respirators are commonly known as open-circuit self-contained breathing apparatus (CBRN SCBA), air-purifying respirator (CBRN APR), air-purifying escape respirator (CBRN APER), self-contained escape respirator (CBRN SCER) and loose or tight fitting powered air-purifying respirators (CBRN PAPR). Current NIOSH-approved/certified CBRN respirator concept standards and test procedures can be found at the webpage.[46]
United States Senate Report[link]
A 1994 United States Senate Report, entitled "Is military research hazardous to veterans health? Lessons spanning a half century,"[47] detailed the United States Department of Defense's practice of experimenting on animal and human subjects, often without their knowledge or consent. This included:
- Approximately 60,000 [US] military personnel were used as human subjects in the 1940s to test the chemical agents mustard gas and lewisite. "Mustard" section,[47]
- Between the 1950s through the 1970s, at least 2,200 military personnel were subjected to various biological agents, referred to as Operation Whitecoat. Unlike most of the studies discussed in this report, Operation Whitecoat was truly voluntary. "Seventh" section,[47]
- Between 1951 and 1969, Dugway Proving Ground was the site of testing for various chemical and biological agents, including an open air aerodynamic dissemination test in 1968 that accidentally killed, on neighboring farms, approximately 6,400 sheep by an unspecified nerve agent."Dugway" section,[47]
Project SHAD[link]
From 1962 to 1973, the Department of Defense planned 134 tests under Project 112, a chemical and biological weapons "vulnerability-testing program." In 2002, the Pentagon admitted for the first time that some of tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just harmless stimulants.[48]
Specifically under Project SHAD, 37 secret tests were conducted in California, Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland and Utah. Land tests in Alaska and Hawaii used artillery shells filled with sarin and VX, while Navy trials off the coasts of Florida, California and Hawaii tested the ability of ships and crew to perform under biological and chemical warfare, without the crew's knowledge. The code name for the sea tests was Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense -- "SHAD" for short.[48]
In October 2002, the Senate Armed Forces Subcommittee on Personnel held hearings, as the controversial news broke that chemical agents had been tested on thousands of American military personnel. The hearings were chaired by Senator Max Cleland, former VA administrator and Vietnam War veteran.
Developments by the Soviet government[link]
Due to the secrecy of the Soviet Union's government, very little information was available about the direction and progress of the Soviet chemical weapons until relatively recently. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov published articles revealing illegal chemical weapons experimentation in Russia.
In 1993, Mirzayanov was imprisoned and fired from his job at the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, where he had worked for 26 years. In March 1994, after a major campaign by U.S. scientists on his behalf, Mirzayanov was released.[49]
Among the information related by Vil Mirzayanov was the direction of Soviet research into the development of even more toxic nerve agents, which saw most of its success during the mid-1980s. Several highly toxic agents were developed during this period; the only unclassified information regarding these agents is that they are known in the open literature only as "Foliant" agents (named after the program under which they were developed) and by various code designations, such as A-230 and A-232.[50]
According to Mirzayanov, the Soviets also developed weapons that were safer to handle, leading to the development of the binary weapons, in which precursors for the nerve agents are mixed in a munition to produce the agent just prior to its use. Because the precursors are generally significantly less hazardous than the agents themselves, this technique makes handling and transporting the munitions a great deal simpler.
Additionally, precursors to the agents are usually much easier to stabilize than the agents themselves, so this technique also made it possible to increase the shelf life of the agents a great deal. During the 1980s and 1990s, binary versions of several Soviet agents were developed and are designated as "Novichok" agents (after the Russian word for "newcomer").[51] Together with Lev Fedorov, he told the secret Novichok story exposed in the newspaper Moscow News.[52]
Iran–Iraq War[link]
See also: Iraqi chemical warfare
The Iran–Iraq War began in 1980 when Iraq attacked Iran. Early in the conflict, Iraq began to employ mustard gas and tabun delivered by bombs dropped from airplanes; approximately 5% of all Iranian casualties are directly attributable to the use of these agents.[citation needed]
Chemical weapons employed by Saddam Hussein killed and injured numerous Iranians, and possibly Iraqis. According to Iraqi documents, assistance in developing chemical weapons was obtained from firms in many countries, including the United States, West Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France.[53]
About 100,000 Iranian soldiers were victims of Iraq's chemical attacks. Many were hit by mustard gas. The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 80,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions.[54][55][56]
Main article: Halabja poison gas attack
Shortly before war ended in 1988, the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja was exposed to multiple chemical agents, killing about 5,000 of the town's 50,000 residents.[57]
During the Gulf War in 1991, Coalition forces began a ground war in Iraq. Despite the fact that they did possess chemical weapons, Iraq did not use any chemical agents against coalition forces. The commander of the Allied Forces, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, suggested this may have been due to Iraqi fear of retaliation with nuclear weapons.[citation needed]
Falklands War[link]
Technically, the reported employment of tear gas by Argentine forces during the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands constitutes chemical warfare.[58] However, the tear gas grenades were employed as nonlethal weapons to avoid British casualties. The barrack buildings the weapons were used on proved to be deserted in any case. The British claim that more lethal, but legally-justifiable as they are not considered chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention, white phosphorus grenades were used.[59]
Sri Lanka[link]
There have been reports of the Sri Lankan military's usage of deadly chemical weapons (in 2008 - 2009) on civilians in its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).[60][61][62]
Terrorism[link]
For many terrorist organizations, chemical weapons might be considered an ideal choice for a mode of attack, if they are available: they are cheap, relatively accessible, and easy to transport. A skilled chemist can readily synthesize most chemical agents if the precursors are available.
The earliest successful use of chemical agents in a non-combat setting was in 1946, motivated by a desire to obtain revenge on Germans for the Holocaust. Three members of a Jewish group calling themselves Dahm Y'Israel Nokeam ("Avenging Israel's Blood") hid in a bakery in the Stalag 13 prison camp near Nuremberg, Germany, where several thousand SS troops were being detained. The three applied an arsenic-containing mixture to loaves of bread, sickening more than 2,000 prisoners, of whom more than 200 required hospitalization.
In July 1974, a group calling themselves the Aliens of America successfully firebombed the houses of a judge, two police commissioners, and one of the commissioner’s cars, burned down two apartment buildings, and bombed the Pan Am Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, killing three people and injuring eight. The organization, which turned out to be a single resident alien named Muharem Kurbegovic, claimed to have developed and possessed a supply of sarin, as well as 4 unique nerve agents named AA1, AA2, AA3, and AA4S. Although no agents were found at the time he was arrested in August 1974, he had reportedly acquired "all but one" of the ingredients required to produce a nerve agent. A search of his apartment turned up a variety of materials, including precursors for phosgene and a drum containing 25 pounds of sodium cyanide.[63]
The first successful use of chemical agents by terrorists against a general civilian population was on June 27, 1994, when Aum Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic group based in Japan that believed it necessary to destroy the planet, released sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan, killing eight and harming 200. The following year, Aum Shinrikyo released sarin into the Tokyo subway system killing 12 and injuring over 5,000.
On 29 December 1999, four days after Russian forces began assault of Grozny, Chechen terrorists exploded two chlorine tanks in the town. Because of the wind conditions, no Russian soldiers were injured.[64]
In 2001, after carrying out the attacks in New York City on September 11, the organization Al Qaeda announced that they were attempting to acquire radiological, biological and chemical weapons. This threat was lent a great deal of credibility when a large archive of videotapes was obtained by the cable television network CNN in August 2002 showing, among other things, the killing of three dogs by an apparent nerve agent.[65]
On October 26, 2002, Russian special forces used a chemical agent (presumably KOLOKOL-1, an aerosolized fentanyl derivative), as a precursor to an assault on Chechen terrorists, ending the Moscow theater hostage crisis. All 42 of the terrorists and 120 of the hostages were killed during the raid; all but one hostage, who was killed, died from the effects of the agent.
In early 2007 multiple terrorist bombings have been reported in Iraq using chlorine gas. These attacks have wounded or sickened more than 350 people. Reportedly the bombers are affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq[66] and have used bombs of various sizes up to chlorine tanker trucks.[67] United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks as, "clearly intended to cause panic and instability in the country."[68]
Demilitarisation of Chemical Weapon stocks[link]
See also: Destruction of chemical weapons and Chemical Weapons Convention
The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and the Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, or the Geneva Convention, is an International treaty which prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare. Signed into International Law at Geneva on June 17, 1925 and entered into force on February 8, 1928, this treaty states that chemical and biological weapons are "justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world."[69]
The most recent arms control agreement in International Law, the Convention of the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, or the Chemical Weapons Convention, outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. It is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an intergovernmental organisation based in The Hague.[70]
India[link]
In June 1997, India declared that it had a stockpile of 1044 tonnes of sulphur mustard in its possession. India's declaration of its stockpile came after its entry into the Chemical Weapons Convention, that created the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and on January 14, 1993 India became one of the original signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention. By 2005, from among six nations that had declared their possession of chemical weapons, India was the only country to meet its deadline for chemical weapons destruction and for inspection of its facilities by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.[71][72] By 2006, India had destroyed more than 75 percent of its chemical weapons and material stockpile and was granted an extension to complete a 100 percent destruction of its stocks by April 2009. On May 14, 2009 India informed the United Nations that it has completely destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons.[73]
Iraq[link]
See also: Iraqi chemical warfare
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, welcomed Iraq's decision to join the OPCW as a significant step to strengthening global and regional efforts to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons. The OPCW announced "The government of Iraq has deposited its instrument of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention with the Secretary General of the United Nations and within 30 days, on 12 February 2009, will become the 186th State Party to the Convention". Iraq has also declared stockpiles of chemical weapons, and because of their recent accession is the only State Party exempted from the destruction time-line.[74]
Japan[link]
During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Japan stored chemical weapons on the territory of mainland China. The weapon stock mostly containing mustard gas-lewisite mixture.[75] They weapons are classified as abandoned chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention and from September 2010 Japan has started their destruction in Nanjing using mobile destruction facilities in order to do so.[76]
Russia[link]
Russia signed into the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1995. Declaring an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons in 1997, by far the largest arsenal, consisting of blister agents: Lewisite, Sulfur mustard, Lewisite-mustard mix, and nerve agents: Sarin, Soman, and VX. Russia met its treaty obligations by destroying 1 percent of its chemical agents by the 2002 deadline set out by the Chemical Weapons Convention, but requested an extension on the deadlines of 2004 and 2007 due to technical, financial, and environmental challenges of chemical disposal. Since, Russia has received help from other countries such as Canada which donated C$100,000, plus a further C$100,000 already donated, to the Russian Chemical Weapons Destruction Program. This money will be used to complete work at Shchuch'ye and support the construction of a chemical weapons destruction facility at Kizner (Russia), where the destruction of nearly 5,700 tonnes of nerve agent, stored in approximately 2 million artillery shells and munitions, will be undertaken. Canadian funds are also being used for the operation of a Green Cross Public Outreach Office, to keep the civilian population informed on the progress made in chemical weapons destruction activities.[77]
As of July 2011, Russia has destroyed 48 percent (18,241 tonnes) of its stockpile at destruction facilities located in Gorny (Saratov Oblast) and Kambarka (Udmurt Republic) - where operations have finished - and Schuch'ye (Kurgan Oblast), Maradykovsky (Kirov Oblast), Leonidovka (Penza Oblast) whilst installations are under construction in Pochep (Bryansk Oblast) and Kizner (Udmurt Republic).[78][79]
United States[link]
On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare. He issued a decree halting the production and transport of all chemical weapons which remains in effect. From May 1964 to the early 1970s the USA participated in Operation CHASE, a United States Department of Defense program that aimed to dispose of chemical weapons by sinking ships laden with the weapons in the deep Atlantic. After the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, Operation Chase was scrapped and safer disposal methods for chemical weapons was researched, with the U.S. destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralisation at Tooele Army Depot.[80]
The U.S. ratified the Geneva Protocol which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons on January 22, 1975. In 1989 and 1990, the U.S. and the Soviet Union entered an agreement to both end their chemical weapons programs, including binary weapons. In April 1997, the United States ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, this banned the possession of most types of chemical weapons. It also banned the development of chemical weapons, and required the destruction of existing stockpiles, precursor chemicals, production facilities, and their weapon delivery systems.
The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s with the removal of outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ or Agent 15) at the beginning of 1988. In June 1990 the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Treaty came into effect. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan made an agreement with the Chancellor, Helmut Kohl to remove the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons from Germany. In 1990, as part of Operation Steel Box, two ships were loaded with over 100,000 shells containing Sarin and VX where taken from the U.S. Army weapons storage depots such as Miesau and then-classified FSTS (Forward Storage / Transportation Sites) and transported from Bremerhaven Germany to Johnston Atoll in the pacific, a 46-day nonstop journey.[81]
In May 1991, President George H.W. Bush committed the United States to destroying all of its chemical weapons and renounced the right to chemical weapon retaliation. In 1993, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which required the destruction of all chemical weapon agents, dispersal systems, and production facilities by April 2012. The U.S. prohibition on the transport of chemical weapons has meant that destruction facilities had to be constructed at each of the U.S.'s nine storage facilities. The U.S. met the first three of the four deadlines set out in the treaty, destroying 45% of its stockpile of chemical weapons by 2007. Due to the destruction of chemical weapons, under the United States policy of Proportional Response, an attack upon the United States or its Allies would trigger a force-equivalent counter-attack. Since the United States only maintains nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction, it is the stated policy that the United States will regard all WMD attacks (Biological, chemical, or nuclear) as a nuclear attack and will respond to such an attack with a nuclear strike.[82]
As of 2011, stockpiles have been eliminated at 6 of the 9 chemical weapons depots and 89% of the 1997 stockpile has been destroyed. The U.S. anticipates closure of one more depot and a total of 90% stockpile reduction by the treaty deadline of April 2012. Destruction will not begin at the two remaining depots until after the treaty deadline and will use neutralization, instead of incineration.
See also[link]
Media related to Chemical warfare at Wikimedia Commons
- Agreement on Destruction and Non-production of Chemical Weapons and on Measures to Facilitate the Multilateral Convention on Banning Chemical Weapons
- Area denial weapons
- Biological warfare
- Chemical Ali
- Chemical Weapons Convention
- Churchill's advocacy of chemical strike against German cities
- Exotic pollution
- Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions
- List of chemical warfare agents
- List of highly toxic gases
- Ronald Maddison
- Psychochemical weapon
- Saint Julien Memorial
- Sardasht (A town attacked with chemical weapons during the Iran–Iraq War.)
- Stink bomb
- USAMRICD
- Weapons of mass destruction
- Zyklon B
Notes[link]
- ^ "Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC): Annexes and Original Signatories". Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. http://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/175492.htm. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
- ^ Disarmament lessons from the Chemical Weapons Convention
- ^ Syed, Tanya (2009-01-19), Ancient Persians 'gassed Romans', BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7837826.stm, retrieved 2009-02-21
- ^ Irwin, Will (22 April 1915), "The Use of Poison Gas", New York Tribune, http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1915/chlorgas.html
- ^ Johnson, Jeffrey Allan (1990), The Kaiser's Chemists: Science and Modernization in Imperial Germany, University of North Carolina Press
- ^ Gray, Colin. (2007). Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare. Page 269. Phoenix. ISBN 0-304-36734-6.
- ^ Griffin Davis (May 24, 2006), "CBRNE - Chemical Detection Equipment", EMedicine, http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/TOPIC924.HTM, retrieved 2007-10-22
- ^ US Department of Defense (2 June 2003) (PDF), Multiservice Tactics, Techniques, and Procedure for NBC Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Protection (FM 3-11.4 / MCWP 3-37.2 / NTTP 3-11.27 / AFTTP(I) 3-2.46), GlobalSecurity.org, FM 3-11.4, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/army/fm/3-11-4/fm3-11-4.pdf, retrieved 2007-10-22
- ^ a b Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2002-09-12), Protecting Building Environments from Airborne Chemical, Biologic, or Radiologic Attacks, http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/441190, retrieved 2007-10-22
- ^ a b c d US Department of Defense (29 September 2000) (PDF), Multiservice Tactics, Techniques, and Procedure for NBC Defense of Theater Fixed Sites, Ports, and Airfields (FM 3-11.34/MCRP 3-37.5/NWP 3-11.23/AFTTP(I) 3-2.33), GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/army/fm/3-11-34/fixedsites.pdf, retrieved 2007-10-22
- ^ Ciottone, Gregory R; Arnold, Jeffrey L (January 4, 2007), "CBRNE - Chemical Warfare Agents", EMedicine, http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/TOPIC852.HTM, retrieved 2007-10-22
- ^ Adrienne Mayor, "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" Overlook-Duckworth, 2003, rev ed with new Introduction 2008
- ^ a b c d Mayor 2003
- ^ In Surprise Testimony Cheney Renews Opposition to CWC, United States Senate, 1997-04-08, http://www.fas.org/cw/cwc_archive/cheneyletter_4-8-97.pdf, retrieved 2009-01-04.
- ^ ed. by M. Bothe ...; Michael Bothe, Natalino Ronzitti, Allan Rosas (1998), The New Chemical Weapons Convention - Implementation and Prospects, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p. 17, ISBN 90-411-1099-2
- ^ M. Tynyshpaev, Istoriya Kazakhskogo Naroda, Qazaq Universiteti, Almaty, 1993. p. 219
- ^ David Hume, History of England, Volume II.
- ^ Science Daily, dated January 19, 2009 Sciencedaily.com
- ^ Charles C. Mann (2011), 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Random House Digital, p. 9, ISBN 978-0-307-59672-7, http://books.google.com/books?id=IqaMEWNvsJQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
- ^ "The First World War" (a Channel 4 documentary based on the book by Hew Strachan)
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- ^ Libcom.org, Libcom 1804-2003: History of Iraq
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- ^ "Washington Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare - World War I Document Archive". Wwi.lib.byu.edu. http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Washington_Treaty_in_Relation_to_the_Use_of_Submarines_and_Noxious_Gases_in_Warfare. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ Yuki Tanaka, Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1988, p. 16-17
- ^ Y. Yoshimi and S. Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryô II, Kaisetsu, Jugonen Sensô Gokuhi Shiryoshu, 1997, p.27-29
- ^ Yoshimi and Matsuno, idem, Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, p.360-364
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- ^ Corum, James S., The Roots of Blitzkrieg, University Press of Kansas, USA, 1992, pp.106-107.
- ^ Schmaltz, Florian (2005), Kampfstoff-Forschung im Nationalsozialismus Zur Kooperation von Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten, Militär und Industrie, Wallstein Verlag
- ^ Schmaltz, Florian (2006), "Neurosciences and Research on Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction in Nazi Germany", Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 15 (3): 186–209, DOI:10.1080/09647040600658229, PMID 16887760
- ^ US Naval Historical Center, Naval Armed Guard Service: Tragedy at Bari, Italy on 2 December 1943, http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq104-4.htm
- ^ Niderost, Eric (Full text), World War II: German Raid on Bari, HistoryNet.com, http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-german-raid-on-bari.htm
- ^ Infield, Glenn B. Infield, Disaster at Bari
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- ^ Getipm.com
- ^ Anatomy of a War by Gabriel Kolko, ISBN 1-56584-218-9 pages 144-145
- ^ CDC.gov
- ^ a b c d Staff, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, US Senate (December 8, 1994), Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans' Health? Lessons spanning half a century, 103d Congress, 2d Session - Committee Print - S. Prt. 103-97, http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/rockrep.cfm
- ^ a b Philip Huang (October 17, 2002), "Sickening strategy", Oregon Daily Emerald, http://www.dailyemerald.com/2.2378/sickening-strategy-1.222877
- ^ Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future, 1994. ISBN 0-374-18104-7 (see pages 325–328)
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- ^ Federov, Lev; Mirzayanov, Vil (1992), "A Poisoned Policy", Moscow News (weekly No. 39)
- ^ Lafayette, Lev (July 26, 2002), "Who armed Saddam?", World History Archives, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/040.html
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- ^ Death Clouds: Saddam Hussein’s Chemical War Against the Kurds
- ^ The Argentine Fight for The Falklands, Lieutenant-Commander Sanchez-Sabarots
- ^ Falkland Islanders at war, Bound, Graham, Pen and Sword Books Limited, ISBN 1-84415-429-7.
- ^ Tamilinsight.org
- ^ Sri Lankan Army finds chemical warfare equipment
- ^ Rumors the Sri Lankan military used chemical weapons
- ^ "T Is for Terror: A mad bomber who stalked Los Angeles in the ’70s could be the poster boy for the kind of terrorist the FBI fears today", Newsweek Web Exclusive, 9 July 2003, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3070093
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- ^ "India to destroy chemical weapons stockpile by 2009". DominicanToday.com. http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2007/12/30/26543/India-to-destroy-chemical-weapons-stockpile-by-2009. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "India destroys its chemical weapons stockpile". Zeenews.india.com. 2009-05-14. http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/india-destroys-its-chemical-weapons-stockpile_531700.html. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "Iraq Joins the Chemical Weapons Convention". Opcw.org. http://www.opcw.org/news/article/iraq-joins-the-chemical-weapons-convention. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "Abandoned Chemical Weapons (ACW) in China". Nti.org. http://www.nti.org/db/china/acwpos.htm. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "Ceremony Marks Start of Destruction of Chemical Weapons Abandoned by Japan in China". Opcw.org. http://www.opcw.org/news/article/ceremony-marks-start-of-destruction-of-chemical-weapons-abandoned-by-japan-in-china/. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "Canada Contributes to Russia’s Chemical Weapons Destruction Programme". Opcw.org. http://www.opcw.org/news/article/canada-contributes-to-russiarsquos-chemical-weapons-destruction-programme/. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/tucker41.pdf
- ^ "Research Library: Country Profiles: China Chemical". NTI. http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/russia/chemical/index.html/. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ "Rocky Mountain Arsenal | Region 8 | US EPA". Epa.gov. http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/co/rkymtnarsenal/. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
- ^ The Oceans and Environmental Security: Shared U.S. and Russian Perspectives.
- ^ "Not with Impunity: Assessing US Policy for Retaliating to a Chemical or Biological Attack". Airpower.maxwell.af.mil. http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/spr03/conley.html. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
References[link]
- CBWInfo.com (2001). A Brief History of Chemical and Biological Weapons: Ancient Times to the 19th Century. Retrieved Nov. 24, 2004.
- Chomsky, Noam (Mar. 4, 2001). Prospects for Peace in the Middle East, page 2. Lecture.
- Cordette, Jessica, MPH(c) (2003). Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2004.
- Croddy, Eric (2001), Chemical and Biological Warfare, Copernicus, ISBN 0-387-95076-1
- Smart, Jeffery K., M.A. (1997). History of Biological and Chemical Warfare. Retrieved Nov. 24, 2004.
- United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session. (May 25, 1994). The Riegle Report. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2004.
- Gerard J Fitzgerald. American Journal of Public Health. Washington: Apr 2008. Vol. 98, Iss. 4; p. 611
Further reading[link]
- Leo P. Brophy and George J. B. Fisher; The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959; L. P. Brophy, W. D. Miles and C. C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (1959); and B. E. Kleber and D. Birdsell, The Chemical Warfare Service in Combat (1966). official US history;
- Gordon M. Burck and Charles C. Flowerree; International Handbook on Chemical Weapons Proliferation 1991
- L. F. Haber. The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War Oxford University Press: 1986
- James W. Hammond Jr; Poison Gas: The Myths Versus Reality Greenwood Press, 1999
- Jiri Janata, Role of Analytical Chemistry in Defense Strategies Against Chemical and Biological Attack, Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry, 2009
- Ishmael Jones, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, Encounter Books, New York 2008, revised 2010, ISBN 978-1-59403-382-7. WMD espionage.
- Benoit Morel and Kyle Olson; Shadows and Substance: The Chemical Weapons Convention Westview Press, 1993
- Adrienne Mayor, "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" Overlook-Duckworth, 2003, rev ed with new Introduction 2008
- Geoff Plunkett, Chemical Warfare in Australia, Australian Military History Publications, 2007
- Jonathan B. Tucker. Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda (2006)
External links[link]
- Chemical weapons and international humanitarian law
- ATSDR Case Studies in Environmental Medicine: Cholinesterase Inhibitors, Including Insecticides and Chemical Warfare Nerve Agents U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Russian Biological and Chemical Weapons, about the danger posed by non-state weapons transfers
- Gaddum Papers at the Royal Society
- Chemical Weapons stored in the United States
- The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW
- Chemical Warfare in Australia
- Classes of Chemical Agents U.S. National Library of Medicine
- Chemical warfare agent potency, logistics, human damage, dispersal, protection and types of agents (bomb-shelter.net)
- "'War of Nerves': A History of Chemical Weapons" (interview with Jonathan Tucker from National Public Radio Talk of the Nation program, May 8, 2006
- Chemical weapons in World War II
- "Our Army's Defense Against Poison Gas." Popular Science, February 1945, pp. 106–111.
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