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  • The Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers) in 732 marked a definitive end to Muslim expansion in the West and symbolized the decline of the powerful Umayyad Caliphate, which had come to dominate much of the Mediterranean over the course of the previous century. Forces under the control of the celebrated miltary leader Charles Martel were able to...
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  • The Battle of Verdun was one of the most significant engagements of the First World War, and is widely recognized as one of the most brutal and costly battles in history. Like many of the battles in the four-year war of attrition, it was fought largely through trench warfare, with devastating human and material losses. Indeed, many historians now agree that...
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  • The decisive victory of the forces of the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put a stop to Napoleon Bonaparte's military ambitions, marked the end of the Hundred Days and saw the French emperor exiled to the island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The battle had major consequences across Europe: it marked a significant decline of French...
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  • There is arguably no group that has had as much of an influence on modern pop and rock music as the Beatles. The Liverpool-born band, made up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, burst onto the scene in the early 1960s and inspired such passionate devotion that the fervor surrounding them was dubbed “Beatlemania” by the...
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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 European Union is both one of the most influential and one of the most polarizing supranational bodies in the world. With its own monetary union, the Eurozone, and key rights including free movement throughout the 28 member states for EU citizens, its supporters see it as the most effective means of fostering international cooperation on the continent, while its...
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  • The Crusades were a religious, political and miltary conflict between the three great powers of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries: Catholic Europe, the Muslim world and the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The birth of Islam had a profound effect on the beginning of the Crusades, as the Muslim faith began to spread to the West and Muslim troops began to invade...
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  • In 79 AD, the Italian city of Pompeii was destroyed by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. This remains one of the largest volcanic eruptions in European history, and claimed between 10 000 and 20 000 victims. However, this tragedy has also provided archaeologists and researchers with an incredibly valuable historical source: the ash which covered Pompeii preserved organic matter that...
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  • The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 was a major turning point in European history: a fierce battle in this crucial trading city ended with the demise of the Byzantine Empire and the ascendency of the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the region in the following centuries. This transfer of power is essential for understanding the modern era in Western Europe, and is seen by...
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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 Hundred Years’ War was one of the most significant conflicts of the Middle Ages and spanned several generations. Known in particular for its scale (it involved many different factions and five generations of kings), the war marked the height and the decline of chivalry. It had a considerable impact on Europe, bringing European monarchies into the age of modernity...
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