Swobodin v Brně

En la madrugada del 27 de septiembre de 1975, cinco antifascistas eran fusilados en Madrid, Barcelona y Burgos, en cumplimiento de las penas de muerte dictadas en los correspondientes consejos de guerra sumarísimos, celebrados muy pocos días antes, entre el 28 de agosto y el 19 de septiembre.
  Todos los fusilados fueron brutalmente torturados durante […]

Ballan is a blacksmith who accepted to participate in Jerusalem’s Crusades to clean his sins and his suicided wife’s ones.
Within some days, he got noblesse titles, lost his faith and, influenced by Saladin’s justice, and became more tolerant. But the fanaticism of his rivals forced him to be the first Saladin’s ennemy.
The movie is […]

A New Delhi cent joueurs d’échecs se sont réunis. Les meilleurs du monde… virtuellement! Il ne manquait que le ‘quarteron’ des “K” : Kramnik, Kasparov , Karpov et plus le plus brillant de tous, Kamsky. Parmi les cent il y avait les Russes Dreev, Khalifman, Morozevitch, Bezgodov, Galkin, Rustemov, Grischuk, Utnasunov; l’Espagnol Chirov, le […]

A man is interviewed by a “Verification Committee.”
“What kind of family do you come from?”
“A rich, Jewish family.”
“And your wife?”
“A German aristocrat.”
“Have you ever been to the West?”
“I spent most of my life in England.”
“How did you make a living there?”
“A friend supported me.”
“Where did you get the money from?”
“He owned a textile factory.”
“Who […]

In the 1930s Paul Keres (1916-1975) of Estonia emerged as one of the top chessplayers in the world. When Germany invaded Estonia in 1939, Keres was asked to participate in chess tournaments for Nazi propaganda.
Once Estonia was “liberated” and became a Soviet republic, the authorities accepted that he come back to the USSR, providing […]

Year in Roma used to start at March and end at January; and months were named as the following:

March: Martius: God of war.
April: Aprilis from aperire, “to open,” in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to “open”.
May: named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman […]

El propósito de abolir el pasado ya ocurrió en el pasado y es una de las pruebas de que el pasado no se puede abolir. El pasado es indestructible; tarde o temprano vuelven todas las cosas, y una de las cosas que vuelven es el proyecto de abolir el pasado”.
Jorge Luis Borges

It’s amazing that the Molotov Cocktail, referring to the Soviet (stalinist) minister Vyacheslav Mikhailowicz Skryabin - Molotov -, was never useful for the USSR!
It had been used first by the Spanish Nationalists against the T-26 Soviet tanks (1936-1939), then in the Winter war by Finnish against the Red Army.
When the USSR invaded Hungary in […]

The name of the former president of ex-Zaire was Joseph Désiré Mobutu; as Mobutu means (in Swahili, I think) “rooster” (cock), he set a name to himself: Mobutu sese seko kuku ngbendu wa za banga which means: “The rooster who sings victory, the warrior who moves from a conquest to another and no one […]

La mejor película mejicana para mí es La Ley de los Herodes.
En 1949, El alcade de un pequeño pueblo es linchado por sus abusos de poder. El Gobernador decide nombrar a Juan Vargas, encargado de un basurero y antiguo militante del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), como sucesor del puesto; Vargas trata de hacer su […]

Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend - if you have one.
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend second - if there is one.
Churchill’s reply

O nome “Fátima” é muçulmano, porém este nome existe no Portugal e no Brasil e é considerado como católico; alias, há uma cidade santa no Portugal chamando-se Fátima.
Aqui está a historia do nome:
Fátima era filha de um chefe árabe, raptada por um guerreiro português que se apaixonou pela moça. ela se converteu ao cristianismo […]

Letoponyme est Tunisa ou Tuneisa. Il désignait une petite ville dont l’emplacement n’a pu encore être défIni. Or, il semble bien s’agir d’une localité côtière se situant sur un petit cap. Le mot berbère thaunza signifie en effet, initialement, toupet — entendons une mèche de cheveux s’avançant sur lefront - ; mais il signifie aussi, secondairement, […]

I always wondered why did the Nazi army siege Leningrad (St Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Volgograd). Was it because of their strategic sites, or simply because they have been named after the famous communist leaders?
Certainly, Leningrad was the most important city (with Moscow) in the USSR, but why Stalingrad? Why not Kazan, Astrakhan or Gorky) […]

Even wondered about the origin of the word “ok”? Some people say that the word “okay” is an acronym of “Oll Korrect“; however, a probable approach is that, during the American Civil War, there was a custom to write in the daily report the number of deads; if none, they wrote 0 killed, or […]