February 26 in History

Claudius Ptolemy, better known mononymously as Ptolemy, was a Greco-Roman who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, originally entitled Mathēmatikḗ Syntaxis. The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more commonly known as the Tetrábiblos.

Chandragupta I was a monarch of the Gupta Empire, who ruled in northern and central India. His title "Mahārājadhirāja" suggests that he was the first suzerain ruler of the dynasty. It is not certain how he turned his small ancestral kingdom into an empire, although a widely accepted theory among modern historians is that his marriage to the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi helped him extend his political power. Their son Samudragupta further expanded the Gupta Empire.

Valentinian I (Latin: Valentinianus; 321 – 17 November 375), sometimes known as Valentinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 364 to 375. He is the second-last emperor to govern the empire as a whole, albeit only from February to March of 364, after which he appointed Valens to rule over the Eastern half of the empire, while he remained in control of the West. The founder of the Valentinian dynasty, he is noted for his successful campaigns on the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Born into a military family in Pannonia, Valentinian rose through the ranks under emperors Constantius II, Julian and Jovian. Following Jovian's early death, Valentinian was proclaimed emperor, and he subsequently selected his brother Valens as co-emperor. During his reign, he fought successfully against the Alamanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians, strengthening the border fortifications and conducting campaigns across the frontiers. In addition, he dispatched his general Theodosius the Elder to suppress a revolt in Africa and the Great Conspiracy, a coordinated assault on Roman Britain by Picts, Scoti, and Saxons. Valentinian suffered a fatal stroke at a meeting with Quadi envoys in Pannonia, with his sons Gratian and Valentinian II succeeding him in the western half of the empire.

The Battle of Kemej (Hungarian: kemeji csata) was an internal conflict between Solomon, King of Hungary and his cousin Duke Géza, took place on 26 February 1074 near Kemej in present-day Heves County. As a result of a betrayal, Géza was defeated, but he managed to flee from the advancing and overwhelming royal army.

The Battle of Benevento was a major medieval battle fought on 26 February 1266, near Benevento in present-day Southern Italy, between the forces of Charles I of Anjou and those of King Manfred of Sicily. Manfred's defeat and death resulted in Charles' conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, effectively ending the rule of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the Italian Peninsula and marking the rise of the royal Capetian House of Anjou. The engagement was part of the conflict which pitted Guelphs against Ghibellines.

The Ava Kingdom (Burmese: အင်းဝပြည်, pronounced [ʔɪ́ɰ̃wa̰ kʰɪʔ]; INN-wa pyi) also known as Inwa Kingdom or Kingdom of Ava was the dominant kingdom that ruled upper Burma (Myanmar) from 1365 to 1555. Founded in 1365, the kingdom was the successor state to the petty kingdoms of Myinsaing, Pinya and Sagaing that had ruled central Burma since the collapse of the Pagan Kingdom in the late 13th century. Like the small kingdoms that preceded it, Ava may have been led by Bamarised Shan kings who claimed descent from the kings of Pagan. Scholars debate that the Shan ethnicity of Avan kings comes from mistranslation, particularly from a record of the Avan kings' ancestors ruling a Shan village in central Burma prior to their rise or prominence.

Willem Janszoon captained the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing Duyfken from Bantam, Java. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC), Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands in 1598, and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602. In 1606, he sailed from Bantam to the south coast of New Guinea, and continued down what he thought was a southern extension of that coast, but was in fact the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula of northern Queensland. He travelled south as far as Cape Keerweer, where he battled with the local Aboriginal people and several of his men were killed. As a consequence, he was obliged to retrace his route up the coast towards Cape York and then returned to Banda. Janszoon did not detect the existence of the Torres Strait, which separates Australia and New Guinea. Unknown to the Dutch, explorer Luís Vaz de Torres, working for the Spanish Crown, sailed through the strait only four months later. However, Torres did not report seeing the coast of a major landmass to his south and is therefore presumed not to have seen Australia. Because the two separate observations of Janszoon and Torres were not matched, Dutch maps did not include the strait until after James Cook's 1770 passage through it, while early Spanish maps showed the coast of New Guinea correctly, but omitted Australia. Overall, his voyage was not immediately recognized as significant at the time, as the Dutch East India Company was primarily interested in finding a faster route to the Spice Islands. However, Janszoon's voyage paved the way for further exploration of the Australian continent by the Dutch and other European powers.

The Galileo affair was an early 17th century political, religious, and scientific controversy regarding the astronomer Galileo Galilei's defence of heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. It pitted supporters and opponents of Galileo within both the Catholic Church and academia against each other through two phases: an interrogation and condemnation of Galileo's ideas by a panel of the Roman Inquisition in 1616, and a second trial in 1632 which led to Galileo's house arrest and a ban on his books. In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) describing the observations that he had made with his new, much stronger telescope, amongst them the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations and additional observations that followed, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Galileo's opinions were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be both scientifically indefensible and heretical. Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued (incorrectly) that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth. In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which defended heliocentrism while describing geocentrists as "simpletons". Responding to mounting controversy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to house arrest. At this point, heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas after the trial. The affair was complex, with Pope Urban VIII originally being a patron and supporter of Galileo before turning against him. Urban initially gave Galileo permission to publish on the Copernican theory so long as he treated it as a hypothesis, but after the publication of the Dialogue in 1632, the patronage was broken off. Historians of science have since corrected numerous false interpretations of the affair.

The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed for Indian Ocean trade, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times.

The first Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark, was built on Slotsholmen in 1745 as a new main residence for King Christian VI of Denmark-Norway. It was built on the same site as its predecessor, Copenhagen Castle, which had assumed a monstrous appearance and started to crumble under its own weight after several extensions.

Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief restoration during the Hundred Days in 1815. He rose to prominence as a general during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe and the Middle East during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a statesman, he implemented numerous legal and administrative reforms in France and Europe. Born on the island of Corsica to a family of Italian origin, Napoleon moved to mainland France in 1779 and was commissioned as an officer in the French Royal Army in 1785. He supported the French Revolution in 1789 and promoted its cause in Corsica. He rose rapidly through the ranks after winning the siege of Toulon in 1793 and defeating royalist insurgents in Paris on 13 Vendémiaire in 1795. In 1796 he commanded a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies in the War of the First Coalition, scoring decisive victories and becoming a national hero. He led an invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1798, which served as a springboard for his rise to political power. In November 1799 Napoleon engineered the Coup of 18 Brumaire against the French Directory and became First Consul of the Republic. He won the Battle of Marengo in 1800, which secured France's victory in the War of the Second Coalition, and in 1803 he sold the territory of Louisiana to the United States. In December 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, further consolidating his power. The breakdown of the Treaty of Amiens led to the War of the Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered the coalition with a decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon defeated Prussia at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt in 1806, marched his Grande Armée into Eastern Europe, and defeated the Russians in 1807 at the Battle of Friedland. Seeking to extend his trade embargo against Britain, Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and installed his brother Joseph as King of Spain in 1808, provoking the Peninsular War. In 1809 the Austrians again challenged France in the War of the Fifth Coalition, during which Napoleon consolidated his dominance over Europe after winning the Battle of Wagram. In the summer of 1812 he launched an invasion of Russia. After forcing the Russians to abandon Moscow following the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon briefly occupied the city before conducting a catastrophic retreat of his army that winter. In 1813 Prussia and Austria joined Russia in the War of the Sixth Coalition, in which Napoleon was decisively defeated at the Battle of Leipzig. The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba and the Bourbons were restored to power. Ten months later Napoleon escaped from Elba with around a thousand men and marched on Paris, reclaiming control of the country. His opponents responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died of stomach cancer in 1821, aged 51. Since his death, Napoleon has maintained a prominent place in historical research and popular culture. He is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history, and Napoleonic tactics are still studied at military schools worldwide. His legacy endures through the legal and administrative reforms he enacted in France and Western Europe, most notably the Napoleonic Code. He established a system of public education, abolished the vestiges of feudalism, emancipated Jews and other religious minorities, abolished the Spanish Inquisition, enacted the principle of equality before the law for an emerging middle class, and centralized state power at the expense of religious authorities. His conquests also acted as a catalyst for political change and the development of nation-states. However, he remains controversial because of his role in wars that devastated Europe, his looting of conquered territories, and his mixed record on civil rights. He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and imprisoned critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in French colonies, banned the entry of black people and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.

The Beach Pneumatic Transit was an early technology demonstrator for underground public transit in New York City. Running on pneumatic power, it was built by Alfred Ely Beach between 1869 and early 1870. The original terminus resided in the basement of the Rogers Peet Building in Lower Manhattan, near the old City Hall station. A one-car shuttle carried riders between the building and a dead end approximately 300 feet (91 m) away. Despite ambitious plans to construct stations along a five-mile route to Central Park, the project never expanded beyond the short demonstration track and closed in 1873.

The Empire of Japan , also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the period of Japanese history spanning 79 years, starting with the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868, and ending with ratification of the Constitution of Japan on 3 May 1947. From August 1910 to September 1945, it included mainland Japan, Okinawa, the Kurils, Karafuto, Korea, and Taiwan. The South Seas Mandate and concessions were de jure not internal parts of the empire but dependent territories. In the closing stages of World War II, with Japan defeated alongside the rest of the Axis powers, the formalized surrender was issued on 2 September 1945, in compliance with the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies, and the empire's territory subsequently shrunk to cover only mainland Japan. However, Okinawa was later returned to Japan in 1972.

Kinemacolor was the first commercially successful colour motion picture process. Used commercially from 1909 to 1915, it was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. It was a two-colour additive colour process, photographing a black-and-white film behind alternating red/orange and blue/green filters and projecting them through red and green filters. It was demonstrated several times in 1908 and first shown to the public in 1909. From 1909 on, the process was known and trademarked as Kinemacolor and was marketed by Charles Urban's Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which sold Kinemacolor licences around the world.

HMHS Britannic was the third and final vessel of the White Star Line's Olympic class of ocean liners and the second White Star ship to bear the name Britannic. She was the younger sister of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic and was intended to enter service as a transatlantic passenger liner. She operated as a hospital ship from 1915 until her sinking near the Greek island of Kea, in the Aegean Sea in November 1916. At the time Britannic was the largest hospital ship in the world, and the largest vessel built in Ireland.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era, when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson made significant economic reforms and led the United States through World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonian idealism. Born in Staunton, Virginia, Wilson grew up in the Southern United States during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. After earning a PhD in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University, Wilson taught at several colleges prior to being appointed president of Princeton University, where he emerged as a prominent spokesman for progressivism in higher education. Wilson is considered one of the founding fathers of the field of public administration due to his 1887 article "The Study of Administration". Wilson served as the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, during which he broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms. In the 1912 election, Wilson defeated the incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft, and the third-party nominee and former president Theodore Roosevelt, becoming the first Southerner to win the presidency since Zachary Taylor in the 1848 election. During his first year as president, Wilson authorized the widespread imposition of racial segregation inside the federal bureaucracy, and his opposition to women's suffrage drew protests. His first term was largely devoted to pursuing the passage of his progressive New Freedom domestic agenda. His first major priority was the Revenue Act of 1913, which began the modern income tax, and the Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the U.S. declared neutrality as Wilson tried to negotiate peace between the Allied and Central Powers. Wilson was narrowly re-elected in the 1916 election, defeating Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes. In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in response to its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that sank American merchant ships. Wilson concentrated on diplomacy, issuing the Fourteen Points that the Allies and Germany accepted as a basis for post-war peace. He wanted the off-year elections of 1918 to be a referendum endorsing his policies but instead the Republicans took control of Congress. After the Allied victory in November 1918, Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson successfully advocated for the establishment of a multinational organization, the League of Nations, which was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles that he signed; back home, he rejected a Republican compromise that would have allowed the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty and join the League. Wilson had intended to seek a third term in office but had a stroke in October 1919 that left him incapacitated. His wife and his physician controlled Wilson, and no significant decisions were made. Meanwhile, his policies alienated German- and Irish-American Democrats and the Republicans won a landslide in the 1920 election. In February 1924, he died at age 67. Into the 21st century, historians have criticized Wilson for supporting racial segregation, although they continue to rank Wilson as an above-average president for his accomplishments in office. Conservatives in particular have criticized him for expanding the federal government, while others have praised him decreasing the power of large corporations and have credited him for establishing modern liberalism.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany in the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 under his leadership marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout the ensuing conflict, Hitler was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and was central to the perpetration of the genocide of about six million Jews in the Holocaust as well as the deaths of millions of other victims.

Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (13 April 1892 – 5 December 1973) was a Scottish radio engineer and pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watson-Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Meteorological Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio waves given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as high-frequency direction finding (HFDF or "huff-duff"). Although well publicized, the system's enormous military potential was not developed until the late 1930s. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio transmitter in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the threat of German U-boats during World War II. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats. In 1935, Watson-Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible, but Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances. This led to a February 1935 demonstration of signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft. Watt led the development of a practical version of this device, which entered service in 1938 under the code name Chain Home. This system provided the vital advance information that helped the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain. After the success of his invention, Watson-Watt was sent to the U.S. in 1941 to advise on air defence after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. He returned and continued to lead radar development for the War Office and Ministry of Supply. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, knighted in 1942 and awarded the US Medal for Merit in 1946.

The February 26 incident (Japanese: 二・二六事件, Hepburn: Ni Ni-Roku Jiken), also known as the 2–26 incident, was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan on 26 February 1936. It was organized by a group of young Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) officers with the goal of purging the government and military leadership of their factional rivals and ideological opponents. Although the rebels succeeded in assassinating several leading officials (including two former prime ministers) and in occupying the government center of Tokyo, they failed to assassinate Prime Minister Okada Keisuke or secure control of the Imperial Palace. Their supporters in the army made attempts to capitalize on their actions, but divisions within the military, combined with Imperial anger at the coup, meant they were unable to achieve a change of government. Facing overwhelming opposition as the army moved against them, the rebels surrendered on 29 February. Unlike earlier examples of political violence by young officers, the coup attempt had severe consequences. After a series of closed trials, 19 of the uprising's leaders were executed for mutiny and another 40 were imprisoned. The radical Kōdōha faction lost its influence within the army, while the military, now free from infighting, increased its control over the civilian government, which had been severely weakened by the assassination of key moderate and liberal-minded leaders.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East respectively.

Charles Vincent Massey (February 20, 1887 – December 30, 1967) was a Canadian diplomat and statesman who served as the 18th governor general of Canada from 1952 to 1959. Massey was the first governor general of Canada to be born in Canada. Massey was born into an influential Toronto family and was educated in Ontario and England, obtaining a degree in history and befriending future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King while studying at the University of Oxford. He was commissioned into the military in 1917 for the remainder of the First World War and, after a brief stint in the Canadian Cabinet, began his diplomatic career, serving in envoys to the United States and United Kingdom. Upon his return to Canada in 1946, Massey headed a royal commission on the arts between 1949 and 1951, which resulted in the Massey Report and subsequently the establishment of the National Library of Canada and the Canada Council of the Arts, among other grant-giving agencies. In 1952 he was appointed Governor General by King George VI on the recommendation of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, to replace the Viscount Alexander of Tunis as viceroy, and he occupied the post until succeeded by Georges Vanier in 1959. On September 16, 1925, Massey was sworn into the King's Privy Council for Canada, giving him the accordant style of The Honourable. However, Massey was later, as a former Governor General of Canada, entitled to be styled for life with the superior form of The Right Honourable. He subsequently continued his philanthropic work and founded Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Massey Lectures before he died on December 30, 1967.

Alitalia - Società Aerea Italiana S.p.A., operating as Alitalia, was an Italian airline which was once the flag carrier and largest airline of Italy. The company had its head office in Fiumicino, in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital. The airline was owned by the Government of Italy as a nationalized business from its founding in 1946 until it was privatized in 2009. However, it struggled with profitability whilst operating as a private company, including failed negotiations to sell to other private parties. The airline entered extraordinary administration in 2017 following many years of financial losses. The Italian government eventually took back ownership of the airline in March 2020.

Kyiv, also spelt Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both banks of the Dnieper River. As of January 2022, the population of Kyiv was 2,952,301, making it the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyiv is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural center. It is home to high-tech industries, higher education institutions, and historical landmarks. The city has an extensive public transport system, which includes the Kyiv Metro.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or UNSECGEN) is the de facto head of the United Nations who oversees the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, which also represents all 193 nations on the global stage. While the president of the Security Council chairs its meeting, the secretary-general acts as the Security Council's executive officer who oversees the implementation of its decisions and mandates. The role of the secretary-general and of the secretariat is laid out by Chapter XV (Articles 97 to 101) of the United Nations Charter. However, the office's qualifications, selection process and tenure are open to interpretation; they have been established by custom.

The Superliner is a type of bilevel intercity railroad passenger car used by Amtrak, the national rail passenger carrier in the United States. Amtrak commissioned the cars to replace older single-level cars on its long-distance trains in the Western United States. The design was based on the Budd Hi-Level cars used by the Santa Fe Railway on its El Capitan trains. Pullman-Standard built 284 cars, known as Superliner I, from 1975 to 1981; Bombardier Transportation built 195, known as Superliner II, from 1991 to 1996. The Superliner I cars were the last passenger cars built by Pullman.

Foreign relations between Egypt and Israel, which dated back to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War culminated in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and was followed by the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty a year after the Camp David Accords, mediated by U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Full diplomatic relations were established on January 26, 1980, and the formal exchange of ambassadors took place one month later, on February 26, 1980, with Eliyahu Ben-Elissar serving as the first Israeli Ambassador to Egypt, and Saad Mortada as the first Egyptian Ambassador to Israel. Egypt has an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate in Eilat. Israel has an embassy in Cairo and a consulate in Alexandria. Their shared border has two official crossings, one at Taba and one at Nitzana. The crossing at Nitzana is for commercial and tourist traffic only. The two countries' borders also meet at the shoreline of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. Peace between Egypt and Israel has lasted for more than forty years and Egypt has become an important strategic partner of Israel. In January 2011, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister known for his close ties to Egyptian officials, stated that "Egypt is not only our closest friend in the region, the co-operation between us goes beyond the strategic." Nevertheless, the relationship is sometimes described as a "cold peace", with many in Egypt skeptical about its effectiveness. According to a 2019–2020 survey, 13% of Egyptians support diplomatic recognition of Israel while 85% oppose. The Arab-Israeli conflict kept relations cool and anti-Israeli incitement is prevalent in the Egyptian media.

The Iran–Contra affair or Iran–Contra scandal, also referred to as the Iran Initiative or Contragate, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendments, a series of laws passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretly using non-appropriated funds.

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994 in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan with support from Turkey. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the Karabakh Movement.

On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef and associates carried out a van bomb terrorist attack below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The approximately 1,500-pound (680 kg) urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to make the North Tower collapse onto the South Tower, taking down both skyscrapers and killing tens of thousands of people. While it failed to do so, it was successful in killing six people, including a pregnant mother, and caused over a thousand injuries. About 50,000 people were evacuated from the buildings that day. The attack was planned by a group of terrorists including Yousef, Ahmed Ajaj, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed A. Salameh, Eyad Ismoil, Nidal Ayyad, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Ajaj, Abouhalima, Ayyad, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives. In November 1997, two more were convicted: Ramzi Yousef, the organizer behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the van carrying the bomb. Emad Salem, an FBI informant and a key witness in the trial of Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah, stated that the bomb itself was built under supervision from the FBI. During his time as an FBI informant, Salem recorded hours of telephone conversations with his FBI handlers. In tapes made after the bombing, Salem alleged that an unnamed FBI supervisor declined to move forward on a plan that would have used a "phony powder" to fool the conspirators into believing that they were working with genuine explosives.

Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London. It was one of England's oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Francis Baring, a British-born member of the German–British Baring family of merchants and bankers.

The New York Philharmonic is an American symphony orchestra based in New York City. Known officially as the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., and globally known as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, it is one of the leading American orchestras popularly called the "Big Five". The philharmonic's home is David Geffen Hall, at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was an African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic-American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, 2012, Martin was walking back to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an altercation occurred and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket, which carries passengers and a source of heat, in most cases an open flame caused by burning liquid propane. The heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant, since it has a lower density than the colder air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom, since the air inside the envelope is at about the same pressure as the surrounding air. In modern sport balloons the envelope is generally made from nylon fabric, and the inlet of the balloon is made from a fire-resistant material such as Nomex. Modern balloons have been made in many shapes, such as rocket ships and the shapes of various commercial products, though the traditional shape is used for most non-commercial and many commercial applications.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during armed conflicts. It was officially established on 8 October 1932 as an auxiliary air force of British India which honoured India's aviation service during World War II.

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population in the world as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor.