During 1943 and early 1944 while the Allies were planning ‘Overlord’ for the D-Day invasion of France across the English Channel they were also planning a companion diversion called ‘Anvil’. This would be a smaller invasion of southern France from Italy in order to prevent the Germans from moving troops to northern France during the main invasion. As the date got closer it became obvious that this could not occur due to the tougher than expected continued fighting in Italy. However the end result was the same as the Germans had to reinforce their troops in Italy which kept some troops away from France. Rome was finally captured on June 5th which was the original planned date for Overlord which got delayed one day due to weather conditions. Russia was also supposed to start a major offensive in coordination with D-Day and that finally happened a couple weeks later.

(Book – The Second World War – Winston S. Churchill)

While the Allies were fighting the Germans in Italy Mt. Vesuvius erupted. It stopped air traffic for a few days but that is all.

(Book – The Second World War – Winston S, Churchill)

The books of the New Testament that were written by the apostle Paul are the earliest written documents about Christianity. They were written around 50 AD which is before all of the Gospels.

(The Great Courses – The New Testament)

After Italy surrendered to the Allies the Russians said that they wanted part of the Italian fleet that the Allies received. At the conference at Tehran it was agreed that the Russians would get one battleship, one cruiser, eight destroyers, four submarines and some mercantile ships. When the time came for the Allies to turn over the ships the Allies were concerned that the Italians would scuttle the ships rather than allow them to be sent to the Russians. The British offered to lend one of their battleships and the Americans offered to lend one of their cruisers until the Italian ships could be obtained. The Russians agreed to this but noted the lack of the other ships. The Italian ships were turned over after the war and the Russians returned the battleship and cruiser.

(Book – The Second World War – Winston S. Churchill)

When the Macedonian commander Ptolemy took control of Egypt, instead of ruling from  one of the usual Egyptian capitals like Thebes he established the city of Alexandria. When it was founded the city of Alexandria was considered outside of Egypt so that Egypt was ruled from a city of Greek speaking citizens outside of Egypt.

(The Great Courses – Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age)

When you press the accelerator in your car to move it in one direction you also push the earth in the other direction.

(The Great Courses – Physics in Your Life)

Many thousands of years ago there were wild horses in the America’s but they all died. They were then reintroduced in the 16th century by the Western Europeans.

(The Great Courses – The Physics of History)