Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
MacPherson’s tireless efforts to promote Russian sport earned him a unique Imperial honour, and the enmity of the Communists.
Arthur Davidovitch MacPherson (1870-1919) was born in St Petersburg. He played a key part in establishing both Association football and tennis in his native land, helping Tsar Nicholas II to send a clear signal that Imperial Russia was becoming a modern and liberal society – the last thing the Communists wanted to see.
British factory workers started a historic three-cornered league in the Russian city of St Petersburg.
In the 19th century, Russia’s Tsars began to recognise the link between freedom, trade and prosperity. Merchants from Britain and other European neighbours were encouraged to relocate industries such as shipping, steel and textiles to Imperial Russia’s increasingly open society, and none was more important than Association football.
A marble statue in Venice bears witness to Europe’s long history of brave defeats and fruitless victories.
The Piraeus Lion has seen some remarkable history pass before his eyes, from the days when Scandinavian and English mercenaries were taking the fight to the Normans in Italy, to the day when the Turks came knocking imperiously on the doors of Vienna.
The earliest Christians longed to celebrate the resurrection together at Passover, but that was not as easy as it sounds.
To keep Easter together during the Biblical festival of Passover was the shared dream of all the earliest Christian churches. But everyone seemed to have questions about how and when to celebrate the most important feast of the year, and no one seemed to have answers.
A Danish soldier in the seventeenth century imposes the severest sentence he can think of.
Flensburg is now in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, but until 1864 it was Flensborg, an important harbour town in the Kingdom of Denmark. At one time, brewing was a major industry, and if this story is to be believed, to be deprived of a drop of Flensborg beer was as much as man could bear.
The Nazi-collaborating Vichy government in France paid Rugby League the supreme compliment: they banned it.
In France, Rugby League is not perhaps the most fashionable code of Rugby. But it does have the proud distinction of having been banned by the Nazis’ French friends, making it a form of the game with special appeal to those who see themselves as a bit of a rebel.