The Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict that took place from
February 1988 to May 1994, in the small ethnic enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority
ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by the Republic of Armenia
against the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and
Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, became enveloped in a
protracted, undeclared war in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as
Azerbaijan attempted to curb a secessionist movement in
Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of
uniting itself with Armenia and a referendum was held with the vast
majority of the Karabakh population voting in favor of independence.
The demand to unify with Armenia, which proliferated in the late 1980s,
began in a relatively peaceful manner; however, in the following
months, as the Soviet Union's disintegration neared, it gradually grew
into an increasingly violent conflict between the two ethnic groups,
resulting in claims of ethnic cleansing by all sides. Full-scale
fighting erupted in the late winter of 1992. By the end of the war in
1994, the Armenians were in full control of most of the enclave and
also held and currently control approximately 9% of Azerbaijan's
territory outside the enclave. A Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed
in May 1994 and peace talks, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, have
been held ever since by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_War>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
216 BC:
Second Punic War: Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated a
numerically superior Roman army, near the town of Cannae in Apulia in
southeast Italy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae>
1870:
Tower Subway, one of the world's first underground tube railways,
opened beneath the River Thames in London.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Subway>
1903:
In present-day Republic of Macedonia and Greece, the Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization started the Ilinden Uprising
against the Ottoman Empire .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilinden-Preobrazhenie_Uprising>
1980:
A terrorist bomb exploded at the Central Station of Bologna, Italy,
killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_massacre>
1989:
The Indian Peace Keeping Force began killing 64 minority Sri Lankan
Tamil civilians over a two-day period in Valvettiturai, Sri Lanka.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Valvettiturai_massacre>
1990:
Iraq invaded Kuwait, overrunning the Kuwaiti military within two days,
and eventually sparking the outbreak of the Gulf War seven months
later.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
akimbo (adj):
With a crook or bend; with the hand on the hip and elbow turned outward
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/akimbo>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its
citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that
the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to
disturb the peace.
--James Baldwin
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Baldwin>