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The Battle of Caporetto took place near the present day town of Kobarid, on the Austro-Italian front of World War I. Austro-Hungarian forces, reinforced by German units, were able to break into the Italian front line and rout the Italian army, which had practically no mobile reserves.

The battle was a demonstration of the effectiveness of the use of stormtroopers and the infiltration tactics developed in part by Oskar von Hutier. Italian losses were massive: 11,000 were killed, 20,000 wounded and 275,000 were taken prisoner. Also, 2,500 guns were captured by the Austrians. Austro-Hungarian and German forces advanced more than 100 km in the direction of Venice, but they were not able to cross the Piave River, where the Italians established a new defensive line.

This line was held during the subsequent Battle of the Piave River and later served as a springboard for the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. The battle led to the conference at Rapallo and the creation of the Supreme War Council, with the aim of improving Allied military co-operation and developing a unified strategy. The commander in charge of the Italian forces was forced to resign after the defeat.

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The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7, 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of the Republic of Venice, the Papacy, Spain, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights of Hospitaller and others, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman war galleys. The five-hour battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patras, off western Greece.

Victory gave the Holy League temporary control over the Mediterranean, protected Rome from invasion, and prevented the Ottomans from advancing into Europe. This was the last major naval battle fought solely between rowing vessels and a crucial turning point in the ongoing conflict between the Middle East and Europe, which has not been completely resolved. During the course of the battle, the Ottoman Commander’s ship was boarded and the Spanish tercios from three galleys and the Turkish janissaries from seven galleys fought on the deck of the Sultana.

Twice the Spanish were repelled with great loss, but on the third attempt, with reinforcements, they prevailed. The Turkish fleet suffered the loss of about 210 ships. On the Christian side, 20 galleys were destroyed and 30 were damaged so seriously that they had to be scuttled. The Holy League had suffered approximately 7,500 soldiers, sailors and rowers dead, but freed about as many Christian prisoners. Turkish casualties were around 25,000 and at least 3,500 were captured.

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The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Its route has changed many times and several routes have in the past concurrently used the name. Although, the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, the name has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel.

The two city names most intimately associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Istanbul, the original endpoints of the service. The original route, which first ran on October 4, 1883, was from Paris, Gare de l’Est, to Giurgiu in Romania via Munich and Vienna. On June 1, 1889, the first non-stop train to Istanbul left Paris and this continued until May 19, 1977. With the onset of World War I in 1914, Orient Express services were suspended and resumed in 1918 at the end of hostilities. This occurred again with the start of World War II in 1939 with service being suspended until 1945.

The current Orient Express does not serve Paris or Istanbul. Its immediate predecessor, a through overnight service from Paris to Vienna, ran for the very last time from Paris. Since then, the route, still called the “Orient Express,” has been shortened to start from Strasbourg instead. It is still possible to retrace the entire original Orient Express route with four separate trains.

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Elisabeth Amalie Eugene of the House of Wittelsbach, was the Empress consort of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary, being married to the Emperor Franz Joseph I. Her father was Maximilian Joseph, Duke in Bavaria, and her mother was Ludovika, Royal Princess of Bavaria.

Elisabeth had difficulty adapting to the strict etiquette practiced at Habsburg court. Regardless, she bore the Emperor three children. After several illnesses, Elisabeth began to use her beauty to gain influence on her husband. As a result, she and her husband were crowned King and Queen of Hungary in 1867. To ease her pain and illness, Elisabeth embarked on a life of travel. She not only became known for her beauty, but also for her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimes, passion for riding sports, and a series of reputed lovers.

On September 10, 1898, in Geneva, Switzerland, Elisabeth was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young anarchist named Luigi Lucheni, in an act of propaganda of the deed. Unaware of the severity of her condition, she boarded a steamship for Montreux and bled to death from a puncture wound to the heart. The strong pressure from her corset kept the bleeding back until it was removed and then the severity of the situation became apparent. She was buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna’s city center.

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Tivoli Gardens is a famous amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. It opened on August 15, 1843 and is one of the oldest amusement parks that has survived intact to the present day. The amusement park was first called “Tivoli and Vauxhall” alluding to the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris and to the Vauxhall Gardens in London, England.

Tivoli’s founder was Georg Carstensen who obtained a five-year charter to create the park with the use of roughly 15 acres of the fortified glacis outside Vesterport. From the beginning, Tivoli included a variety of attractions: buildings in the exotic style of an imaginary Orient: a theater, band stands, restaurants and cafes, flower gardens, and mechanical amusement rides like a merry-go-round and a primitive scenic railway. After dark, colored lamps illuminated the gardens.

In 1943, Nazi sympathizers attempted to break the Danish people’s spirit by burning many of Tivoli’s buildings, including the concert hall, to the ground. Undaunted, the Danes built temporary buildings and the park was back in operation after a few weeks. Tivoli is always evolving without abandoning its original charm or traditions. Walt Disney, during a trip overseas with his wife Lily, visited Tivoli Gardens. Disney was so impressed with the Danish amusement park that he immediately decided that Disneyland should try to emulate its happy atmosphere.

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Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is a Venezuelan-born leftist revolutionary and terrorist. After several bungled bombings, Ramirez Sanchez achieved notoriety for a 1975 raid on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, resulting in the deaths of three people. For many years, he was among the most wanted international fugitives. He is now serving a life sentence in Clairvaux Prison in northeast France.

Ramirez Sanchez was the given the nom de guerre Carlo when he became a member of the leftist Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Carlos was given the “Jackal” moniker by the press when the Frederick Forsyth novel The Day of the Jackal was reportedly found among his belongings. In 1973, Carlos was associated with the PFLP and he tried and failed to assassinate Jewish businessman and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, Joseph Sieff. Carlos also admitted responsibility for a failed bomb attack on the Bank Hapoalim in London and car bomb attacks on three French newspapers accused of pro-Israeli leanings.

Carlos participated in the planning for the attack on the headquarters of OPEC in Vienna. In December 1975, he led the six-person team that assaulted the meeting of the OPEC leaders and took over 60 hostages. He was subsequently expelled from the PFLP and formed his own group. Three days after minor surgery in the Sudan, his own bodyguards tranquilized and tied him up, and then handed him over to French agents on August 14, 1994.

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Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who reached the rank of colonel and was one of the leading officers of the failed July 20 plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. Stauffenberg found some aspects of the Nazi Party’s ideology repugnant; although he agreed with its nationalistic aspects, he never became a member of the party.

Stauffenberg’s part in the original plan required him to stay at the offices in Berlin from where he would phone regular army units all over Europe and the Reich in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organizations. However, he was forced to kill Hitler far away from Berlin and to trigger the military machine in Berlin during the office hours of the very same day.

He was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler by mid-1944 and the only officer to have the resolve and persuasive power to convince German military leaders to throw in the with the coup once Hitler was dead. On July 20, armed with two small bombs contained in a briefcase, Stauffenberg nearly succeeded in blowing up Hitler at a meeting but the dictator escaped with only slight injuries as he was shielded by the blast by a heavy, solid oak conference table.

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The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d’état committed by parts of the army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Civil War devastated Spain from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, ending with victory of the rebels and the founding of a dictatorship led by the Nationalist General Francisco Franco.

The supporters of the Republic gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico, while the followers of the First Rebellion, nacionales, received the support of the major European Axis powers – Italy, Germany, and Portugal. The war increased tensions in the lead-up to the Second World War. The advent of mass media allowed an unprecedented level of attention and so the war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.

On July 17, 1936, the nationalist-traditionalist rebellion, long feared by some in the popular front government, began. Exiled military officers suspected of conspiracy against the Republic took control of the Balearic and Canary Islands. Franco was flown to Spanish Morocco where the Spanish Army of Africa, led by Nationalist ranks, was almost unopposed in assuming control. The rising was intended to be a swift coup d’état, but was botched and the government was able to retain control of only part of the country.

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Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin became interested in constructing a “Zeppelin balloon” after the Franco-Prussia War of 1870-1871, where he witnessed French use of them to transport mail. He had also encountered Union Army Balloon Corps employed in 1863, during the American Civil War, as a military observer with the Union Army. He began to seriously pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890 at the age of 52.

Count Zeppelin presented his plans to an expert committee in 1894 but they showed little interest and so he was on his own in realizing his idea. Construction of the first Zeppelin began in 1899 in a floating assembly hall on the Bodensee in the Bay of Manzell, Friedrichshafen. The prototype airship LZ 1 had a length of 128m, was driven by two, 14.2-hp, Daimler engines and was controlled in pitch by moving a weight between its two nacelles.

The first Zeppelin flight occurred on July 2, 1900 over Bodensee and lasted only 18 minutes before LZ 1 was forced to land on the lake after the winding mechanism for the balancing weight broke. Two subsequent flights did little to convince possible investors and Zeppelin’s financial resources were depleted.

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The Battle of Berestechko was fought between rebellious Zaporozhian Cossack, Ukrainian peasant forces, and their Crimean Tatar allies led by Hetman Bohdan Kmhelnytsky, and a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth army under King John II casimir. It took place in Volhynia and lasted from June 28 to June 30, 1651. The number of Polish troops is uncertain. One of the Polish commanders wrote that the Polish army had 80,000 soldiers. Modern historians estimate their numbers to be 60,000 to 63,000 soldiers. It was the biggest battle in the 17th century.

The Cossacks had around 100,000 plus 40,000 Crimean Tatar cavalry and a few thousand Turks and Vlachs. Fighting was close with the core of Cossack infantry making up for the weakness of their cavalry. Much of the decisive fighting was by the infantry and dismounted dragoons of each side. On the first day of the battle, 2000 Polish cavalry supported by six pancerni cavalry companies and winged hussars repulsed the Tatars, who suffered heavy losses. On the second day, the Poles, encouraged by their victory, deployed all available cavalry but with no support from the infantry or artillery. The Tatar cavalry won. On the third and final day, 18 Polish cavalry companies attacked the Cossack-Tatar Army with the help of the artillery and were victorious.

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