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Time may pass but there are things that remain stubbornly unchanged. From century-proof buildings to, with the permission of climate change, meteorology. Another thing that remains unchanged is the reason of State, such as the one that justified the CIA supporting, since the second half of the 1940s, that Franco remain in power.
Messages in stone. If it were not for the trace left in stone by the cultures of Antiquity, our interpretation of their legacy would be totally different. Buildings such as the impressive Pantheon of Agrippa or the desert castles of Kyzyl Kum bear witness to the greatness of past cultures. Other smaller remains are of equally enormous importance, such as the Michaux stone, the Rosetta of cuneiform writing.
Recurrent droughts. Despite climate change, there are certain meteorological constants that remain. The drought that the eastern half of Catalonia is currently suffering has precedents, among which the most important is that of 1815-1827 due to its impact on society, the economy and politics. It is possible that specific circumstances are changing due to global warming, but the truth is that the climate always conditions human development.
The death of Charlemagne. Certain mysteries have continued throughout the centuries. The death of Charlemagne which led to the partition of his empire, for example. Despite the detailed chronicles about the death of the founding sovereign of Europe, historians have not been able to know the cause until very few years ago. The mystery is cleared up here.
A very murky matter. Another unsolved mystery, although much more recent, is that of one of the great crimes of the 20th century: the kidnapping and murder of the son of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. Although the matter ended with the execution of the German Bruno Richard Hauptmann, almost a century later a macabre theory points to the aviator himself as responsible. A gruesome story, seasoned with Nazi sympathies and Lindbergh’s interest in eugenics.
The CIA and Francoism. After the Second World War, the Franco regime was left in a compromised situation on the international stage. This CIA report, from 1948, analyzes Spanish foreign and internal policy and the economic and military resources of the regime. The analysis of US intelligence, which justifies support for Franco, contains considerably more successes than errors regarding the Spanish situation. Read in Conversation about history.
Trip to Byzantium. Ancient sites proposes this geolocated map of the most important Byzantine ruins and vestiges in the eastern Mediterranean, in countries such as Greece, Turkey or Albania. According to the authors, these are places that are worth visiting even though they are often not as well preserved or indicated as they should be.
Star Wars, second installment. The surprising revelation last February by the US administration that Russia had developed military technology with the capacity to destroy satellites has turned attention to the famous Star Wars promoted by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. It is not so much that in this case history repeats itself, but rather that sometimes it seems to come back like a boomerang.
Presented as a plan to protect the United States from space against a possible Soviet nuclear attack, the Strategic Defense Initiative was revealed years later as an American bluff. The program, soon known as Star Wars, was little about military research and much about propaganda device, to the point that its promoters included science fiction writers such as Robert A. Heinlein. Still, it is worth noting that it is surprisingly common for governments to seek advice from authors of this genre.
The operation sought to bleed the USSR economically and technologically while trying to confront this phantom threat. In fact, the history of confrontations in space has been much more about psychological warfare than anything else.
On this occasion, the United States seems to give credibility to the Russian threat, although couldn’t the same thing be happening as in the 1980s but in the opposite direction? Already in 2018, Putin threatened to resurrect Star Wars while presenting new weapons. Now the geopolitical situation has deteriorated extraordinarily and hostility is once again manifesting itself in all possible scenarios, real and imaginary.