Weekly History Quiz No.315

1. Known as “Nasser’s Vietnam”, which country saw an Egyptian military intervention from 1962 to 1970?
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85th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinios Gorge – A Tough Fight

Reading time: 16 minutes
85 years ago today hundreds of young Australians and New Zealanders were digging into the dry soil of central Greece, preparing to meet the advancing juggernaut of the German army. They fought hard, buying the time the rest of the Allied force needed to withdraw in good order further south.
The battle of Pinios Gorge, also known as the battle for the Tempi valley, was a pivotal rearguard action fought by Anzac troops – mostly made up of Australians – from the 17th to the 18th of April, 1941. Though successful in its main goal, delaying the German advance toward the central Greek town of Larisa, it was also a case study of the things that can go wrong in the fog of war.

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Weekly History Quiz No.314

1. The Battle of Tel El Eisa was a significant engagement in which larger battle that involved many Australian troops?
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How to party like an ancient Greek

Reading time: 4 minutes
Parties in ancient Greece were wild, with evidence of copious alcohol and sex. That’s the popular idea that endures today. But there were different types of parties at the time. Not all involved lots of alcohol and debauchery. Some featured moderate eating and drinking, and intellectual conversation. So what actually went on at these parties? And how exactly do you party like an ancient Greek?

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Military History

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Apongo was a rebel leader in Jamaica – a diary entry sheds light on his west African origins

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes For over three centuries, between 1526 and 1866, at least 10.5 million Africans were forcibly trafficked to the Americas in the transatlantic slave trade. Over half of them (with known places of departure) left from a 3,000km stretch of the west African coast between what are today Senegal and Gabon. Scholars trying to uncover the lives of these diasporic Africans are forced to work with historical records produced by their European and American enslavers. These writers mostly ignored Africans’ individual identities. They gave them western names and wrote about them as products belonging to a set of supposedly distinct “ethnic” brands.

Political and Economic History

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Worker Power: How the Black Death Revolutionised Workers’ Rights

Reading time: 7 minutes Despite afflicting the world in a serious measure for less than a decade, the black death, also known as the plague, is both one of the deadliest diseases to ever set upon humankind, and likely the most famous. Between 1348 and 1351, in just 3 years, it’s estimated that the black death reduced the population of England from 4.8 million to 2.6 million, down by roughly 46%.

Social and Cultural History

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Battleship Potemkin at 100: how the Soviet film redrew the boundaries of cinema

Reading time: 5 minutes Eisenstein’s growing international status did little to protect him at home. As the 1920s gave way to the 1930s, the tides of Stalinist cultural policy began to turn sharply against him. Eisenstein’s approach was profoundly out of step with the new aesthetic of Socialist Realism, which demanded clear narratives, heroic characters and unambiguous political messaging. Where his signature technique, montage, was dynamic and dialectical, Socialist Realism insisted on straightforward storytelling and easily digestible moral lessons. As a result, Eisenstein found himself accused of obscurity, excess and political unreliability.

History Quizzes

WWII History Quiz

Who was an Official Australian Photographer during both WWI and WWII, as well as accompanying three Antarctic Expeditions?

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History Guild would like to acknowledge the Boonwurrung people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are based, and pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.