Mata Hari

 Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod (née Zelle, 7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917), better known by the stage name Mata Hari , was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I. She was executed by firing squad in France. The idea of a beautiful exotic dancer using her powers of seduction as a spy made her name synonymous with the femme fatale. Her story has inspired books, films, and other works. It has been said that she was convicted and condemned because the French Army needed a scapegoat, and that the files used to secure her conviction contained falsifications. Some have even stated that Mata Hari could not have been a spy and was innocent.

The Suez Crisis

 The Suez Crisis also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and as the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 5 November, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had earlier nationalised by transferring administrative control from the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company to Egypt's new government-owned Suez Canal Authority. Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to attain freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957.

Napoleon and Beethoven

 While Beethoven was labouring over the scorenof his third symphny, he decided to name the symphony after Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France. Where this idea came from is unclear. According to his biographer and sometime secretary Anton Schindler, it had first been suggested by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the French ambassador to Austria. But, according to Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries, the idea was the composer’s own. As Ries explained, Beethoven had the ‘highest esteem’ for Napoleon and ‘compared him to the greatest consuls of ancient Rome’. Whatever the case, Beethoven’s enthusiasm for Bonaparte was unflinching. As soon as the score was finished, in early 1804, he wrote the Italian words ‘Sinfonia intitolata Bonaparte’ (‘Symphony entitled Bonaparte’) on the cover and left the manuscript on a table so that all his friends could see. 

But Beethoven was in for a nasty surprise. Not long after putting the final touches to his symphony, Ries came to him with news that, on 18 May 1804, Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of France. Beethoven was furious. Flying into a rage, the composer shouted: ‘So he is no more than a common mortal! Now he, too, will tread underfoot all the rights of man [and] indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men [and] become a tyrant!’ Snatching up a pen, Beethoven then strode over to the score and scribbled out the title so violently that he tore through the paper. Thenceforth, the work would be known simply as the Sinfonia Eroica (the ‘Heroic’ Symphony).