In May 1893 a man is thrown out of a train on the platforms of the train station of Pietermaritzburg a little city of South Africa for daring to sit in a first-class compartment. This young Indian lawyer is named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

While the Viking raids have come one after another in the Occident for almost a century in November 885 hundreds of Scandinavian boats sailing towards Burgundy present themselves before the walls of Paris and besiege the city.

In July 1799 during the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria the French soldiers of lieutenant Bouchard discover by chance at Rosetta a large black stone. It is in fact the fragment of a stele engraved in honor of King Ptolemy V including three writing systems: Greek Demotic and hieroglyphs.

In the spring of 1943 after the successive failures of Moscow and Stalingrad the armies of the Reich go on the offensive again. Considered the greatest tank battle in History this event represents a real turning point of World War II on the Eastern Front.

1916 the Great War far away from the trenches in the sand of the Middle East war has a very different face. With a handful of intrepid men Thomas Edward Lawrence leads the revolt of the Arabs alongside Sharif Hussein against the Ottoman Empire.

Rented by the BP oil company to drill an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes on April 20 2010 before sinking into the ocean and causing a gigantic oil spill. At issue: negligence in the maintenance and in the tests carried out.

August 5 1962 South Africa. After several months on the run the Black leader Nelson Mandela is arrested by the South African police and incarcerated on Robben Island a fortress-like jail off Cape Town. He doesn’t know it at that time but it is only the beginning of his penitential ordeal.

In 1415 the Portuguese launch an era of explorations that will lead to the European discovery of the world. The competition is intense between France and the United Kingdom for the possession of North America and the West Indies for the Indian colonies but also for Science.

Since the end of the 19th century Indochina has been a flourishing colony the gem of the French Empire. However the Second World War turns everything upside down. At the end of the war the Viet Minh movement announces its independence.

University of Glasgow Scotland 1763. A young engineer tries in vain to fix a steam engine before finally understanding what is wrong with it. James Watt still doesn’t know it but he will soon revolutionize the world of industry.

July 31 1784 Paris. Denis Diderot has just passed away and with him the memory of the biggest editorial epic of the Age of Enlightenment: Encyclopedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences Arts and Crafts.

In 814 BC the exiled Phoenician queen Dido founds the city of Carthage on the African Coast. The city develops and takes the lead of a maritime empire based on trade. Carthage dominates the Western Mediterranean. But in the third century BC she finds herself opposed to the Roman Republic.