Hundred Years War

For over three thousand years, there has been almost continual warfare throughout the world, including the Greek-Persian war in the fifth century BC, the Pelopoimesian War, Rome s batdes in Carthage three centuries later, the Christian-lslamic wars of the Middle Ages, the Hundred Years War between England and France, the American Revolution, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and now the Iraq war. 

According to at least one writer failure to achieve these things will mean that, for most Britons, post-industrial society will be a replay of the Hundred Years War in which they will [be] on the losing side , mainly as participants in a vast backwater economy. . . where unemployment, menial work, crafts, moonlighting, barter and brigandry are the standard forms of everyday life (Bellini, 1981). 

Kluger R (1997). Stroking the sow s ear. In Ashes to ashes America s hundred-year cigarette war, the public health, and the unabashed triumph of Philip Morris. Vintage Books, New York, pp 349-386... 

As is well known, Lavoisier s attacks on the phlogistic doctrine finally accomplished its abandonment, offering in its place a new perspective so totally different that it was commonly called the anti-phlogistic chemistry. This accomplishment was so dramatic that his contemporaries, supporters and opponents alike, recognized it as revolutionary. Two hundred years later the chemical revolution became one of the most studied events in the history of science. Henry Guerlac has been one of the most stimulating authors of Lavoisier s work in the post-war years of this century. His book Lavoisier — The Crucial Year s generated much additional study of Lavoisier, especially by his own students at Cornell University. ... 

For about one hundred years, and longer in some parts of the world, diethyl ether and chloroform had no rivals. This was despite major drawbacks, the main ones being the flammability and slow onset of diethyl ether, and the hepatotoxicity and cardiac arrhythmias induced by chloroform. New discoveries in organic fluorine chemistry at the end of World War II paved the way for the synthesis of modern fluorinated anaesthetic alkanes and ethers. 

Photochemistry first received some systematic attention well over one hundred years ago but it did not receive any great attention until after World War II. Free atoms and free radicals produced by photochemical means have been used for many years to study single steps which may form parts of complex mechanisms, but, in a way, the more fascinating problems of complex molecules which undergo reaction after absorption of radiation, without at any time passing thro ugh the stage of atoms and radicals, have only occupied the attention of chemists during recent years. 

From the time that they first used tools and tried to change their environment in other ways, humans have known that the world is made up of basic materials. Thousands of years later, ancient civilizations agreed on a few main elements such as fire and water that they thought were the building blocks of everything on Earth. The modern list of elements and their properties was discovered only in the past few hundred years. The simple yet elegant family tree of all matter, the periodic table of the elements, was finally uncovered in the nineteenth century. The building blocks of elements themselves—the reason that the periodic table is periodic—were not known until the early twentieth century, when subatomic particles were finally revealed. The most recent elements added to the periodic table did not exist at all until scientists identified them in the debris of war and created them from scratch in the middle of the twentieth century. 

Deterioration of ancient stonework appears to have accelerated very markedly in many places in the present century Winkler [109], whose treatise on the durability of stone is the major source for the material in this section, shows photographs of early eighteenth century sandstone statues in places close to the Rhine—Ruhr industrial region. After two hundred years, at the beginning of the present century, these statues had clearly delineated features of faces, hands, etc. Sixty years later, they appeared rough outlines, faceless and handless. If this deterioration indeed owes nothing to the military activities of two world wars, it is a remarkable illustration of the effects of industrial pollution of the atmosphere. 

For over a hundred years before the World War, hydrocyanic acid was known in industry as one of the most virulent of all poisons. During the latter part of 1915, in the race to produce more deadly chemical-warfan gases, it was inevitable that attention would be turned to this compound because of its high toxicity. The French w ere the first to consider it and were in fact its only exponent during the war. Since the practical difficulties encountered in its use in the field soon convinced the other belligerents that this gas was not suitable for war use, it was never used by them. 

Three of the remaining four subsidiaries of European companies listed in Table 1.1 were Rhine Valle first movers. Henkel, based in Diisseldorf, and Sol-vay, headquartered in Brussels, fifty miles from the Rhine, became the first movers during the 1880s in their respective industries. Both maintained their competitive capabilities for more than a hundred years. A third Rhine Valley pioneer was the forerunner of Akzo, Vereinigt Glanzstaff-Fabriken, a first mover in rayon and related artificial fabrics. Owing partly to World War II, the company did not participate in the polymer revolution in fibers and so... 

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