The Battle of Red Cliffs was a decisive battle at the end of the Han
Dynasty, immediately prior to the period of the Three Kingdoms in China in
the northern winter of 208 CE between the allied forces of the southern
warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and the numerically superior forces of the
northern warlord Cao Cao. Liu Bei and Sun Quan successfully frustrated Cao
Cao's effort to conquer the land south of the Yangtze River and reunite the
territory of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The allied victory at Red Cliffs
ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, gave them control of the
Yangtze, and provided a line of defence that was the basis for the later
creation of the two southern kingdoms of Shu Han and Eastern Wu. For these
reasons, it is considered a decisive battle in Chinese history. Descriptions
of the battle differ widely on details; in fact, even the location of battle
is still fiercely debated. The most detailed account of the battle comes
from the biography of Zhou Yu in the 3rd-century historical text Records of
Three Kingdoms. An exaggerated and romanticised account is also a central
event in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical
Novels of Chinese literature.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Red_Cliffs
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1698:
Most of London's Palace of Whitehall, the main residence of the English
monarchs dating from 1530, was destroyed by fire.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Whitehall)
1854:
Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang discovered the McDonald
Islands, an uninhabited, barren island located in the Southern Ocean about
two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heard_Island_and_McDonald_Islands)
1884:
The Fabian Society, an intellectual movement whose purpose is to advance the
socialist cause by gradualist and reformist methods rather than
revolutionary means, was founded in London.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society)
1973:
Last of the Summer Wine, the longest running sitcom in the world, premiered
as an episode of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_of_the_Summer_Wine)
1989:
In the Second Gulf of Sidra incident over the Gulf of Sidra in the
Mediterranean Sea, two American F-14A Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23
Flogger Es that appeared to be attempting to engage them.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Sidra_incident_(1989)<http://en.wik…
)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
affable (adj) 1. Friendly, courteous, sociable; receiving others kindly
and conversing with them in a free and friendly manner.
2. Mild; benign.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affable)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without
feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the
very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical. --Isaac Newton
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton)