Reading time: 12 minutes
One of the most unusual forces ever to join the fighting in Europe: the 25,000 Brazilian soldiers and pilots of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. An idea born out of political necessity, the āSmoking Snakesā played a brief, important, and fascinating role in the fighting in Europe.
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Sino-Vietnamese war was a short, nasty conflict fought between China and Vietnam in early 1979. Largely forgotten by almost everybody including the belligerents, it was a side plot of the Sino-Soviet split, itself a sideshow to the Cold War. Letās go over the events before, during and after the war to see what it was all about.
This lesson we will be learning about the Etruscans, which were a Mediterranean civilization during the 6th to 3rd century BCE.
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Reading time: 2 minutes
Landāwhether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or cityāis central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doingāand have doneāwith the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
Reading time: 9 minutes
On the night of 4 November 1605, a man calling himself John Johnson was found in the vaults beneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Under questioning, Johnson ā whose real name was Guy Fawkes ā admitted that he and his co-conspirators planned to use the gunpowder to blow up the House during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November. If successful, this plot ā which became known as the Gunpowder Treason, or Gunpowder Plot ā would have killed not only King James I (and VI) but members of his family, his chief ministers, and the Members of Parliament in attendance at the state opening. This was treason on an unprecedented scale ā an attempt to destroy both the king and his government.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Five hundred years ago, on March 31 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began a sojourn in a part of South America that has been known as Patagonia ever since. MagellanāsĀ five-month long overwinterĀ in a natural harbour that has become known asĀ Puerto San JuliĆ”nĀ was part ofĀ the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Reading time: 7 minutes General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, a career military officer, was appointed...
Read MoreIn this lesson we will be learning about the war of Spanish succession.
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Reading time: 7 minutes
The North African campaigns during the Second World War have a reputation for being ācleanā wars, free from the atrocities we see when studying the Eastern front or the Pacific theatre. However, when we look a little more closely, we can see this romanticized image is a little tarnished in places; weāll take a look at what the historical record can tell us, as well as some details shared by Australian veterans of the conflict.
Reading time: 2 minutes
A look at the book Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece, 1941 – Revised Edition, by Peter Ewer: the largely unknown story of an Anzac force which fought in Greece during World War II.
Reading time: 7 minutes
A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, often bearing unusual, surprising, or sometimes downright hilarious nicknames. In many cases, itās clear where the sobriquet originated, while other examples hold a less-obvious significance.
Reading time: 8 minutes
One of the more impressive feats of arms during the second World War was the way in which the people of Crete fought a guerrilla campaign against the German occupation force. With help from the allies, the Cretans — men, women and even children — fought a brutal and bloody campaign against the invader. In this article, we look at what happened through the eyes of some of the people who participated, Cretan, British and Australian.
Reading time: 10 minutes
For three long years, as Britain and her allies first clung to survival and then clawed victory out of the face of overwhelming odds, a single island held out hope in the Mediterranean. Malta, just 17 miles long and 9 miles wide, with its neighboring island of Gozo had long stood as a fortress in the sea for whoever could hold it. Over the centuries, Malta had withstood Moorish, Turkish, and French sieges and fallen under a variety of civilisations dating back thousands of years.
Reading time: 5 minutes
1915 was a critical year for Australians, and not just because of the pride and myth-making associated with Gallipoli. Today we struggle to capture a sense of the profound shock and anxiety the landing at Anzac Cove brought to Australia. But it was this, together with a wider understanding that the war was not going well, that defined 1915 and drew Australians ever deeper into the vortex of total war.
Reading time: 8 minutes
The battle of El Alamein in late 1942 was the turning point for the North African campaign, which saw the fighting rage back and forth between Libya and Egypt. As with most of the battles in the region, Australians played a vital role in the eventual Allied victory. In this article, we go over their experiences during this pivotal battle.
In this lesson we will be learning about Balkan history from the late 19th century through to the war in the 1990’s.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.
Rachel Wood, Australian National University Radiocarbon dating has transformed our understanding...
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Reading time: 6 minutes
While in antiquity instances of bribery remained the exception ā and were heavily punished ā thereās plenty of evidence to suggest that attempts to manipulate the outcome of the competitions are as old as the Games themselves.
In this lesson we will be learning about Napoleon’s exile and return to power resulting in his final defeat during the 100 days war.
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