The month of June carries plenty of World War II memories in Europe and beyond. Paris famously fell to the Nazis on 14 June 1940, and on 22 June 1941…

In the spring of 1861, a special envoy for Abraham Lincoln, the newly elected president of the United States, came to Damascus. He was carrying two…

Folklore has it that a delegation of West Beirutis called on Yasser Arafat before he departed from the Lebanese capital in August 1982.For nine days,…

Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed on 2 May 2011 in a special US operation in Pakistan during US President Barack Obama's tenure. He was…

In his memoirs, five-time Syrian premier Khaled al-Azm describes his first meeting with Abdulaziz Al Saud, the founding king of Saudi Arabia, in the…

Many rumours surrounded the 49-year-old Russian composer and musician Erast Belling, who came to Damascus in 1927, fleeing persecution in the Soviet…

During the last week of April 1945, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met their respective fates 48 hours apart.Mussolini had been the powerful prime…

Khalil al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, was one of the most familiar names to Palestinians growing up in the 1970s and 1980s—second only to…

Many say the upcoming presidential elections will set two precedents in US history. One is that it would be the first time a former president seeks…

In his 2005 book One Day in September, British author Simon Reeve describes the scene in Tel Aviv before launching Operation of Spring of Youth in…