"Civil War" is a song by the rock band Guns N' Roses, which originally appeared on the 1990 compilation Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal and later on the 1991 album Use Your Illusion II. It is a protest song on war, referring to all war as 'civil war' and that it only "feeds the rich while it buries the poor." In the song, singer Axl Rose asks, "What's so civil about war, anyway?"

"Civil War" was the brainchild of the Guns N' Roses artists Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan. Slash stated that the song was an instrumental he had written right before the band left for the Japanese leg of its Appetite for Destruction world tour. Axl wrote lyrics and it was worked into a proper song at a sound check in Melbourne, Australia. On September 27, 1993, Duff McKagan explained where the song came from in an interview on Rockline: "Basically it was a riff that we would do at sound-checks. Axl came up with a couple of lines at the beginning. And... I went in a peace march, when I was a little kid, with my mom. I was like four years old. For Martin Luther King. And that's when: "Did you wear the black arm band when they shot the man who said: 'Peace could last forever'?. It's just true-life experiences, really."

A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. The term is a calque of the Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.

A civil war is a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resources.

Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half year average of the 1900-1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century, while over 20 concurrent civil wars were occurring at the end of the Cold War, before a significant decrease as conflicts strongly associated with the superpower rivalry came to an end. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Burma (Myanmar), Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars.

Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller (July 4, 1911 – July 31, 2010) was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive. Miller was one of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of Artists and Repertoire at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as an accomplished player of the oboe and English horn, and recorded several highly regarded classical albums featuring his instrumental work, but he is best remembered as a conductor, choral director, television performer and recording executive.

Mitch Miller was born in Rochester, New York, on July 4, 1911, to a Jewish family. His mother was Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress, and his father, Abram Calmen Miller, a Russian-Jewish immigrant wrought-iron worker. He had four siblings, two of whom, Leon and Joseph, survived him.

Jay Ungar (born November 14, 1946) is an American folk musician and composer.

Ungar was born in the Bronx (New York City), the son of immigrant Jewish parents from Eastern Europe. He frequented Greenwich Village music venues during his formative period in the 1960s. In the late 1960s, he became a member of Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys and, later, the Putnam String County Band. Although he has often played with David Bromberg, he is probably best known for "Ashokan Farewell" (1982), originally composed as a lament, which was used as the theme tune to the Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War (1990). Many of his other compositions are familiar to contra dancers, notably "The Wizards' Walk."

In 1991, Ungar married fellow musician Molly Mason, whom he had first met during the 1970s, and they continue to perform together, with their band, Swingology, and occasionally Jay's daughter Ruth Ungar (her mother is Lyn Hardy) and her band The Mammals. Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, Ruth Ungar and Michael Merenda also perform together as the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band.

William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who was the first person to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the body by the heart, although blood circulation was described by Ibn al-Nafis earlier in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon (1242). After his death the William Harvey Hospital was constructed in the town of Ashford, several miles from his birthplace of Folkestone.

Harvey's father: Tom Harvey, was a jurat of Folkestone where he served the office of mayor in 1600. Records and personal descriptions delineate him as an overall calm, diligent and intelligent man whose "sons... revered, consulted and implicitly trusted in him... (they) made their father the treasurer of their wealth when they acquired great estates...(He) kept, employed and improved their gainings to their great advantage." Thomas Harvey's portrait can still be seen in the central panel of a wall of the dining-room at Rolls Park, Chigwell, in Essex.