Dune systems are often protected areas because of their high ecological and often tourist value. There are many, and some well known. But, without a doubt, the most singular of all is the one that can be found in La Teste-de-Buch, on the coast of Aquitaine, in the southwest of France: the Great Dune of […]
Jorge Álvarez
Degree in History and Diploma in Archival and Library Science. Founder and director of Apuntes magazine (2002-2005). Creator of the blog El Viajero Incidental. Travel and tourism blogger since 2009 in Viajeros. Editor of LBV Magazine.
Posted inModern Era
How the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars were cleaned up
Year 1807, at the end of the bloody battle of Eylau: the French soldier Jean Baptiste de Marbot wakes up, after several hours unconscious, covered in blood and on a cart, surrounded by corpses. He is completely naked and only keeps his hat because all his clothes and belongings have been taken away because he […]
Posted inSecond World War
Martha Ellis Gellhorn, the only woman to land in Normandy on D-Day
Many readers will probably know who Martha Ellis Gellhorn was, but for those who don’t, they just need to know that she’s not one of those characters who sometimes force their way into war movies. She was the only woman, as far as is known, who landed in Normandy on D-Day covering World War II […]
Posted inAncient Rome
The 5 Great Last Battles of the Western Roman Empire
Historically, the year 476 A.D. is considered to be the end of the Western Roman Empire, its last emperor being Romulus Augustulus. It was not something that happened suddenly but as a result of an evolutionary process initiated centuries ago, along which Rome suffered a progressive weakening for many reasons, some external and others internal, […]
Posted inAncient Rome
Priscus of Panium, the Roman historian who attended a banquet with Attila
The breakthrough of the Huns in Europe shook the foundations of the Roman Empire, which did not hesitate to nickname its chief the Scourge of God for the audacity of trying to conquer Constantinople and Rome itself. The irony is that, since the Hun people were fundamentally nomadic, the primary sources for knowing those facts […]
Posted inHistory, Modern Era
Thurn und Taxis, the family that controlled Europe’s postal mail until the 18th century
When we call a taxi we are not only asking for a transport service; implicitly, we evoke the surname of an illustrious aristocratic family of German origin that received the privilege of exploiting in monopoly the postal services of the Holy Roman Empire at the end of 1489. At least that is what the popular […]
Posted inSecond World War
Kohima, the fiery battle that prevented the Japanese from invading India
“Walker, go and tell Sparta that their children lie here for obeying their laws.” That splendid phrase of Simonides, which, in its multiple translations, constitutes the epigraph of the monument to Leonidas in the Thermopylae, is too juicy not to take advantage of it in other war memorials with the corresponding changes. It is what […]
Posted inSecond World War
The World War II airmen who survived falls from thousands of feet high.
In 1972 a Serbian hostess named Vesna Vulović became famous and is registered in the Guinness Book of Records for having survived the fall of her plane from over 32,000 feet in altitude. But this is not a unique case; several more are known, one of them just a year earlier, the German teenager Juliane […]
Posted inModern Era, Second World War
The Japanese ambassador to Berlin who involuntarily made Normandy landings easier to the Allies
Although intelligence services were consecrated above all in the Cold War, they had already had more or less important roles throughout History. In that sense, it is possible to consider among the best agents that have ever existed, one that operated during the Second World War, providing a thousand and a half reports to the […]
Posted inAncient Egypt
Ibn Wahshiyya, the Nabataean who could have translated Egyptian hieroglyphs before Champollion
Today we are going to discover an almost unknown individual, a good representative from other times, who may have been the first to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs almost nine centuries earlier than is believed. We are referring to the Arab scholar Ibn Wahshiyya. In mid-September 1822, Jean-François Champollion managed to finish off the work […]
