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The casting of award-winning actor Denzel Washington as the legendary ancient general Hannibal Barca in an upcoming Netflix project has reportedly outraged Tunisians who argue it is racial recasting that erases their history. Netflix touted the film in a press release, about "the Carthaginian general who famously led an army of warriors and elephants across the Alps to fight the Roman Republic during the Second Punic War." Hannibal’s home region of Carthage is now within Tunisia, the northernmost state in Africa and considered to be part of the Arabic world. According to an English translation of French-language Tunisian news outlet...

On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion relating to a defense firm’s potential conflict of interest in the Michael Sussmann case. The conflict itself is certainly intriguing, with Sussmann’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins LLP (Latham) having represented potential witnesses in the case, including Perkins Coie, former Perkins Coie (and Clinton Campaign general counsel) Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and Hillary for America. The issue that made more noise, however, was Durham’s disclosure that Rodney Joffe – a contractor with deep ties to the Clintons, and what appears to be a deep hatred for Trump – had...

Republican Rome was pushed to the brink of collapse on August 2, 216 B.C., when the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilated at least 50,000 of its legionaries at the Second Punic War’s Battle of Cannae.

The year was 220 B.C. and the young Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca had to return to his winter quarters in Qart Hadasht - now Cartagena in southeast Spain - after taking Helmatica - now Salamanca in the northwest of the country - from the Vettones tribe. It was spring or summer, and the 27-year-old and his troops had to overcome two obstacles to get to their destination: firstly, the wide rivers and high mountains that were difficult for their 40 elephants to cross; the secondly, the hostile local Carpetani, Vettone and Olcade tribes, who sought revenge for the destruction of...

How Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with 30,000 soldiers was even harder than first thought as researchers find he took a perilous route on a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level ****** Soil containing traces of horse manure has been carbon dated to 218BC, the time of HannibalÂ’s crossing, and shows that he took the Col de la Traversette, a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level that links the Guil Valley in France with the Po Valley in Italy. Previous speculation that he took this direct route had been discounted because of its sheer difficulty, with gradients as...

Patrick N. Hunt discusses his new book on Hannibal and how much of his success was based on solid financing. Audio Player Few military leaders hold as much allure for historians as Hannibal Barca of Carthage (today’s Tunisia). Born in 247 B.C., he is still studied today because of his unparalleled ability to strategize and get inside the mind of his opponent in battle. Archaeologist Patrick N. Hunt, who had been the director of Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project, has written a new book about the legendary figure that is simply titled Hannibal. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel...

I went to the most famous battlefield in Western History, and had a surprise. Not a good one. It is a stomp, well off the path, to get to Cannae. The main train lines in Italy run up and down the coasts. Going inland, particularly in southeast Italy, is somewhat more episodic. My train had two cars. At the fourth stop, “Battle”, I got off.

PETA and Hannibal are urging Americans to go vegetarian this Thanksgiving by comparing turkey to human flesh. It used to be the joke that a Puritan (aka Pilgrim) was someone who lay awake at night worrying that someone, somewhere, was having a good time. There aren't many Puritans around these days. Instead, we have the joyless scolds at PETA, and some of their not-so-bright Hollywood pals, trying to ruin the holiday the Pilgrims originated. Just in time for Thanksgiving, creator Bryan Fuller and star Gillian Anderson of NBC's cannibal-themed show Hannibal joined forces with PETA to produce an ad against...

Spanish archaeology students have discovered a 2,200-year-old moat in what is now the Catalan town of Valls, filled with objects providing evidence of the presence of troops of the Carthaginian general Hannibal in the area. The moat, which surrounded the Iberian town of Vilar de Vals, contained coins and lead projectiles, researchers said in a statement. It is estimated the moat could have had a width of 40 metres (131 feet), a depth of five metres, and a length of nearly half a kilometre. Jaume Noguera from the Prehistory department at the University of Barcelona, and Jordi López, from the...

Hannibal Crosses The CarpathiansWhen did Hannibal cross the alps? According to http://carpenoctem.tv/military/hannibal.html it was in 218 B.C. Why did Hannibal take elephants to cross the alps? Hannibal took elephants across the Alps as weapons of war against the Romans. How many men crossed the alps with Hannibal? 50,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry, and about 30 elephants when he first began the ascent. How many elephants did Hannibal have before he crossed the alps? Fifty

... The New London Fire Chief said Lentz was pinned in between the steering wheel and the seat. As rescuers tried to cut her out, a medical team monitored her vitals and after 45 minutes, determined she was ‘failing and fast.’ After about an hour, Lentz asked rescue workers to pray out loud. That’s when they say a priest suddenly appeared. “He came up and approached the patient, and offered a prayer,” Chief Raymond Reed told KHQA-TV. “It was a Catholic priest who had anointing oil with him. A sense of calmness came over her, and it did us as...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

HANNIBAL, Missouri, February 3, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Criminals say that the most difficult part of a murder is what to do with the body. This was apparently true for an abortionist who operated a clandestine abortion facility from his home more than 60 years ago in the small town of Hannibal, Missouri. Contractors recently hired to renovate the old home discovered in the basement the remains of two tiny babies floating in a preservative solution inside two dusty jars with screw-on lids. “I know they did medical procedures and stuff,” said the property’s owner William C. Neff to Connecttristates.com. “I...

With the world melting down and the Bard semester heating up, I’ve fallen behind in my grand strategy posts; apologies to all and I hope to catch up with a post next week (during Bard’s spring break) on Machiavelli. But today’s business is still the Second Punic War, the conflict between Carthage and Rome that engulfed most of the Mediterranean world in what would prove to be the most important war in the history of what would, thanks to Rome’s victory, one day become western civilization. In the last post I wrote about how Rome had a grand strategy that...

From the Col du Mont Cenis in the north to the Col Agnel 35 miles (60km) almost due south of it three approach routes have been argued for. In the most recent study, Dr William Mahaney, a geomorphologist, and his colleagues have looked at the evidence from Classical sources. "As documented by Polybius and Livy in the ancient literature, Hannibal's army was blocked by a two-tier rockfall on the lee side of the Alps, a rubble sheet of considerable volume," they note in the journal Archaeometry. "The only such two-tier landform lies below the Col de la Traversette, 2,600...

BEYONCE performed for an hour on New Year's Eve at a party thrown by Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's son, Hannibal, who has a long record of violence against women. The multiple Grammy award-winning star, 28, performed five songs at the Nikki Beach club on the Caribbean island of St. Barts, it has been revealed. The crowd included her husband Jay-Z, Usher, Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Lindsay Lohan. The New York Post could not confirm how much Beyonce was paid for the gig, but last year, singer Mariah Carey reportedly pocketed $1m for performing at Nikki Beach. Some vacationers on...

Can anyone give the proper pronounciation for "Scipio", as in Scipio Africanus? Read the name for 40 years and have never heard it pronounced.

Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country during the 20th century. The money will be invested by Italy over a 25-year period. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday signed a "friendship pact" with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Under the pact, Italy agreed to compensate Libya for abuses it committed during its colonial rule of the North African country. Italy will invest $5 billion in Libya in a deal that effectively turns the page on colonial-era disputes that have long...

Libya's dictatoship of Kadhafi has decided to suspend its oil selling toward Switzerland after Swiss authorities arrested and briefly detained Kadhafi's son in Geneva, last week, under the charges of having beaten two employees. Khadafi's son, Hannibal, seeks revenge. The Libya National Oil Company announced Libya will cancel its oil sells to Switzerland. Libyan oil represents 48% of Switzerland's needs.

Excerpt - Libya has taken "worryingly retaliatory measures" against Switzerland following the recent arrest of leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son in Geneva, according to the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Col Gaddafi's government has recalled some of its diplomats from Switzerland, reduced flights between the countries, stopped processing visa requests from Swiss citizens, demanded the closure of Swiss firms in Libya and detained two Swiss citizens. Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has formally complained about the moves to her Libyan counterpart and has advised citizens not to travel to Libya. ~ snip ~