Is Sweden the real Switzerland?
- Hastings (England) 1 September 1949. Ritz Cinema premiered The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed and based on the script of writer Graham Green.
In one of the most famous scenes in the film, Harry Lime, a character played by Orson Welles, says: “You know what the other said. In Italy, during the 30 years that the supremacy of the Borgians lasted, there were wars, massacres, murders -- but also Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, however, there have been 500 years of love, democracy and peace. And what's the result? Cuckoo clock!”
These words are not in Greene's script; Orson Welles had to improvise them as a stuffing to fit the scene times. Although James Abbott McNeill Whistler or writer Geoffrey Household are considered potential sources, he himself said that he took them from an ancient Hungarian work.
In this phrase there are two historical errors: on the one hand, the Cuckoo clock was not invented by the Swiss, but by the Germans; on the other hand, when the film premiered, Switzerland officially ceased to participate in international conflicts just over a century ago. But, wrongly, in any kind of conflict, Switzerland is synonymous with neutrality.
Starting in 2021, in particular, it is 206 years when Switzerland is not at war with another country. The State of the Alps participated in the Napoleonic Wars, so it officially left its participation in international conflicts in the Vienna Assembly of 1815.Sin embargo, Sweden has been one more year in “peace”; two or three months before the Vienna Assembly, the war between Sweden and Norway ended with the signing of the peace treaty on 14 August 1814. Therefore, for a few months it can be said that the real Switzerland is Sweden.
Or there's no real Switzerland. Despite the fact that in 200 years the two States did not officially declare war on another State, Switzerland, among other things, maintained a three-week civil war in November 1847 and several Swedish army soldiers fought alongside the Germans during the Second World War.
Washington (EE.UU. ), 1807. The US Constitution banned transatlantic slave trade. This does not mean that slavery has been abolished, but that the main source of the slaves has been interrupted. Thus, slave women became the only way to “produce” new slaves.
So in 1845, in... [+]
A group of interdisciplinary researchers from the Free University of Berlin and the Zuse Institute have developed a complex mathematical model to better understand how Romanization spread in North Africa.
According to a study published in the journal Plos One, the model has... [+]
Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States launched an atomic bomb causing tens of thousands of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; although there are no precise figures, the most cautious estimates indicate that at least 210,000 people died at the end of that year. But in... [+]
While working at a site in the Roman era of Normandy, several archaeology students have recently made a curious discovery: inside a clay pot they found a small glass jar, of which women used to bring perfume in the 19th century.
And inside the jar was a little papelite with a... [+]
A team of researchers led by the Japanese archaeologist Masato Sakai of the University of Yamagata has discovered numerous geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert (Peru). In total, 303 geoglyphs have been found, almost twice as many geoglyphs as previously known. To do so, researchers... [+]
Born 2 October 1968. A few months earlier, the student movement started on June 22 organized a rally in the Plaza de las Tres Cultura, in the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco unit of the city. The students gathered by the Mexican army and the paramilitary group Olympia Battalion were... [+]
Tijarafe (Canary Islands), mid-14th century. When the first Catholic monks came to the area of the island of La Palma, the Awares, the local Aborigines, saw that they worshipped the sun, the moon and the stars.
And this has been confirmed by the archaeological campaigns carried... [+]
On the northern coast of Peru, in the deposit of Diamarca, mochica culture (c. 330-H. C. 800) have found a trunk room. This culture is known for its impressive architecture, vast religious imaginary and colorful walls full of details.
The room found confirms these... [+]
Maule, 1892. Eight women from the Salazar Valley headed home from the capital of Zuberoa, but on the way, in Larrain, they were shocked by the snow and all were killed by the cold. Of the eight, seven names have come: Felicia Juanko, Felipce Landa, Dolores Arbe, Justa Larrea,... [+]
The University of Nottingham has changed its name to the Master in Studies on Anglo-Saxons and Vikings: Medieval Higher Studies of England. The Anglo-Saxon England Journal of the University of Cambridge had also been previously renamed: It's the Early Medieval England Journal... [+]
Born 2 April 1970. The newspaper New York Herald published a letter with activist and broker Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927), in which he realized his candidacy for the U.S. presidential elections of 1872. It is the youngest candidate in history, who would be 34 years old on the... [+]
Treviño, 6th century. A group of hermits began living in the caves of Las Gobas and excavated new caves in the gorge of the Laño River, occupied since prehistory. In the next century, the community began to use one of the caves as a necropolis. In the 9th century they left the... [+]
The Atacama Desert Foundation has denounced on social networks the destruction of the geoglyphs of the area and, through several photographs, has shown the destruction that visitors who travel in 4x4 vehicles to the desert are causing. These are large geoglyphs made between 1000... [+]
Knustrup (Danimarka), 1546ko abenduaren 15a. Tycho Brahe astronomoa jaio zen. Besteak beste, Kopernikoren Ilargiari buruzko teoria hobetu zuen, errefrakzioei buruzko lehen taula osatu zuen eta Johannes Keplerren irakaslea izan zen.
Beraz, astronomiaren alorrean egindako... [+]
Although it was thought that in most of the cities of the Roman Empire there were jails, little remains have been found of the prisons of the time in the fields.
Recently, however, the archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen, Matthew Larsen, has identified the Roman... [+]