Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the USSR and had a major impact on the path that Russia took at the end of the 20th century. He was a somewhat controversial figure, known in the West as the man who ended the Cold War while being one of the least popular 20th century leaders in Russia. This is understandable, as Gorbachev...
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John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States. Although he actively fought against Communism and established the Peace Corps, Kennedy is probably known most of all for his unexpected assassination in 1963, during his visit to Texas, when he was shot in the head by Lee Harvey Oswald. His murder sent shockwaves around the world. In just 50 minutes, you will...
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On 21 July 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the commander of the Apollo 11 spaceship, became the first person in history to set foot on the Moon. This crucial event marked the peak of the Space Race, which pitted the Cold War rivals the USA and the USSR against one another as they sent artificial satellites, probes and eventually humans...
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Richard Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century. Known in particular for the Watergate scandal, the affair that ended his political career, Nixon was a fierce anti-communist and was responsible for the end of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. In just 50 minutes, you will find out about...
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Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 and the leader of the USSR from 1924 to 1953. Known in particular for his rule of terror over the USSR, Stalin governed Russia with an iron fist, propelling the country into rapid industrialization through his infamous five-year plans, introducing forced labor camps known as...
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The Battle of Kursk was one of the major clashes between German and Soviet troops during the Second World War and one of the most important tank battles in history. Having launched Operation Barbarossa to invade the USSR in 1941, the Nazis sought to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front with this new offensive in the summer of 1943. However, the Red Army was...
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The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the major battles of the Second World War, and saw the German Wehrmacht and Stalin's Red Army fight savagely, often in close quarters, for control of the city. The combat also involved civilians and was unprecedented in its scale; the Battle of Stalingrad is now widely regarded as one of the largest and bloodiest battles in history. It marked...
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On 26 April 1986, the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, becoming the epicenter of a vast radioactive cloud which affected large swathes of Europe. The Chernobyl disaster remains the worst nuclear disaster in history: in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, hundreds of people suffered from acute radiation sickness, and in the decades that followed many...
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It is impossible to understand modern European history without first understanding the Cold War. Indeed, the tensions between the USA and the USSR, the two great powers to emerge from the Second World War, dominated the second half of the 20th century, resulted in a series of brutal proxy wars and brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war. The clash...
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The fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to almost 30 years of physical and ideological separation between the two halves of the German capital. Constructed at the height of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall symbolized the hostility between the capitalist powers in the West and the Communist powers in the East. Its fall saw people flood across...
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The Korean War was an internal war which led to a major confrontation between the Western Bloc and the Communist Bloc. The conflict lasted for three years and ended with no real winner, so the Korean Peninsula was divided into two states. In just 50 minutes, you will gain an understanding of why the war broke out and find out...
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The Yom Kippur War was fought in 1973 between a coalition of Arab countries, led by Egypt and Syria, and Israel. On the day of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Egyptian and Syrian troops attacked the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, which had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. The Yom Kippur War contributed to the...
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