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Pursuit Of The Graf Spee
''The Battle of the River Plate'' (a.k.a. ''Pursuit of the Graf Spee'' in the United States) is a 1956 British war film in Technicolor and VistaVision by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Bernard Lee and Peter Finch. It was distributed worldwide by Rank Film Distributors Ltd. The film's storyline concerns the Battle of the River Plate, an early World War II naval engagement in 1939 between a Royal Navy force of three cruisers and the German pocket battleship . Plot In the early months of the Second World War, Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' sends out merchant raiders to attack Allied shipping. The British Royal Navy responds with hunting groups whose mission is to stop these attacks. In time, the German battleship ''Admiral Graf Spee'' is discovered in the Atlantic, just off South America, by a trio of British cruisers. With its speed and destructive firepower, ''Graf Spee'' is a formidable ...
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Film Poster
A film poster is a poster used to promote and advertise a film primarily to persuade paying customers into a theater to see it. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature printed likenesses of the main actors. Prior to the 1980s, illustrations instead of photos were far more common. The text on film posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tagline, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, and other pertinent details to inform prospective viewers about the film. Film posters are often displayed inside and on the outside of movie theaters, and elsewhere on the street or in shops. The same images appear in the film exhibitor's pressbook and may also be used on websites, DVD (and historically VHS) packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspap ...
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Scuttling
Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull, typically by its crew opening holes in its hull. Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vessel from becoming a navigation hazard; as an act of self destruct, self-destruction to prevent the ship from being captured by an enemy force; as a blockship to restrict navigation through a Channel (geography), channel or within a harbor; to provide an artificial reef for divers and marine life; or to alter the flow of rivers. Notable historical examples Skuldelev ships (around 1070) The Skuldelev ships, five Viking ships, were sunk to prevent attacks from the sea on the Danish city of Roskilde. The scuttling blocked a major waterway, redirecting ships to a smaller one that required considerable local knowledge. Cog near Kampen (early 15th century) In 2012, a Cog (ship), cog preserved from the keel up to the decks in the silt was dis ...
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Río De La Plata
The Río de la Plata (; ), also called the River Plate or La Plata River in English, is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River at Punta Gorda, Colonia, Punta Gorda. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean and forms a funnel-shaped indentation on the southeastern coastline of South America. Depending on the geographer, the Río de la Plata may be considered a river, an estuary, a gulf, or a marginal sea. If considered a river, it is the widest in the world, with a maximum width of . The river is about long and widens from about at its source to about at its mouth. It forms part of Argentina–Uruguay border, the border between Argentina and Uruguay. The name Río de la Plata is also used to refer to the populations along the estuary, especially the main Port city, port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, where Rioplatense Spanish is spoken and tango culture developed. The coasts of the river are the most densely populated areas of Urugua ...
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Internment
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without Criminal charge, charges or Indictment, intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement ''after'' having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. The word ''internment'' is also occasionally used to describe a neutral country's practice of detaining belligerent Military, armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907#Hague Convention of 1907, Hague Convention of 1907. Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps or Concentration camp, concentration camps. The term ''concentration camp'' originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces ...
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Uruguay
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. It is part of the Southern Cone region of South America. Uruguay covers an area of approximately . It has a population of almost 3.5 million people, of whom nearly 2 million live in Montevideo metropolitan area, the metropolitan area of its capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city, Montevideo. The area that became Uruguay was first inhabited by groups of hunter gatherer, hunter gatherers 13,000 years ago. The first European explorer to reach the region was Juan Díaz de Solís in 1516, but the area was colonized later than its neighbors. At the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas, European arrival, the Charrúa were the predominant tribe, alongside other groups such as the Guaraní people ...
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Montevideo
Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . Montevideo is situated on the southern coast of the country, on the northeastern bank of the Río de la Plata. A Portuguese garrison was established in the place where today is the city of Montevideo in November 1723. The Portuguese garrison was expelled in February 1724 by a Spanish soldier, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst the Spanish people, Spanish-Portuguese people, Portuguese dispute over the Río de la Plata Basin, platine region. There is no official document establishing the foundation of the city, but the "Diario" of Bruno Mauricio de Zabala officially mentions the date of 24 December 1726 as the foundation, corroborated by presential witnesses. The complete independence from Buenos Aires as a real city was not ...
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Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dubouzet at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of about 52°S. The archipelago, with an area of , comprises East Falkland, West Falkland, and 776 smaller islands. As a British Overseas Territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, while the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs. The capital and largest settlement is Stanley, Falkland Islands, Stanley on East Falkland. The islands are believed to have been uninhabited prior to European discovery in the 17th century. Controversy exists over the Falklands' discovery and subsequent colonisation by Europeans. At various times, the islands have had French, British, Spanish, and Argentine settlements. Britain Reassertion of Britis ...
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Hans Langsdorff
Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff (20 March 1894 – 20 December 1939) was a German naval officer, most famous for his command of the German pocket battleship ''Admiral Graf Spee'' before and during the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of Uruguay in 1939. After the ''Panzerschiff'' () was unable to escape a pursuing squadron of Royal Navy ships, Langsdorff scuttled his ship. Three days later he died by suicide in his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Career Langsdorff was born on 20 March 1894 in Bergen, Germany on the island of Rügen. He was the eldest son in a family with legal and religious traditions rather than a naval tradition. In 1898, the family moved to Düsseldorf, where they were neighbours of the family of Graf (Count) Maximilian von Spee, who was to become a German naval hero (while losing his life) at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. Influenced by his honoured neighbours, Langsdorff entered the Kiel Naval Academy against his parents' wishes in ...
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Merchant Raider
Merchant raiders are armed commerce raiding ships that disguise themselves as non-combatant merchant vessels. History Germany used several merchant raiders early in World War I (1914–1918), and again early in World War II (1939–1945). The captain of a German merchant raider, Felix von Luckner, used the sailing ship SMS ''Seeadler'' for his voyage (1916–1917). The Germans used a sailing ship at this stage of the war because coal-fired ships had limited access to fuel outside of territories held by the Central Powers due to international regulations concerning refueling of combat ships in neutral countries. Germany sent out two waves of six surface raiders each during World War II. Most of these vessels were in the range. Many of these vessels had originally been refrigerator ships, used to transport fresh food from the tropics. These vessels were faster than regular merchant vessels, which was important for a warship. They were armed with six 15 cm (5.9 inch) naval ...
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Kriegsmarine
The (, ) was the navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official military branch, branches, along with the and the , of the , the German armed forces from 1935 to 1945. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, the grew rapidly during German rearmament, German naval rearmament in the 1930s. The 1919 treaty had limited the size of the German navy and prohibited the building of submarines. ships were deployed to the waters around Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) under the guise of enforcing non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War, non-intervention, but in reality supporting the Francoist Spain, Nationalists against the Second Spanish Republic, Spanish Republicans. In January 1939, Plan Z, a massive shipbuilding programme, was ordered, calling for surface naval parity with the United Kingdom, British Royal ...
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Pocket Battleship
The class was a series of three (armored ships), a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the officially in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The ships of the class, , , and , were all stated to displace in accordance with the Treaty, though they actually displaced at standard displacement. The design for the ships incorporated several radical innovations, including the first major use of welding in a warship and all- diesel propulsion. Due to their heavy armament of six guns and lighter weight, the British began referring to the vessels as "pocket battleships". The -class ships were initially classified as , but the reclassified them as heavy cruisers in February 1940. The three ships were built between 1929 and 1936 by the Deutsche Werke in Kiel and the in Wilhelmshaven, seeing much service with the German Navy. All three vessels served on non-intervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War. While on patrol, was attacked by Republ ...
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