Champa or Tsiompa was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is today central and southern Vietnam from the 2nd century AD before being absorbed and annexed by Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mạng in AD 1832. The kingdom was known variously as nagara Campa in the Chamic and Cambodian inscriptions, Chăm Pa in Vietnamese and 占城 in Chinese records; the Chams of modern Vietnam and Cambodia are the remnants of this former kingdom. They speak Chamic languages, a subfamily of Malayo-Polynesian related to the Malayic and Bali–Sasak languages. Champa was preceded in the region by a kingdom called Lâm Ấp, or Linyi, in existence since AD 192. Champa reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries AD. Thereafter, it began a gradual decline under pressure from Đại Việt, the Vietnamese polity centered in the region of modern Hanoi. In 1832, the Vietnamese emperor Minh Mạng annexed the remaining Cham territories. Hinduism, adopted through conflicts and conquest of territory from neighboring Funan in the 4th century AD, shaped the art and culture of the Champa kingdom for centuries, as testified by the many Cham Hindu statues and red brick temples that dotted the landscape in Cham lands.

Mỹ Sơn, a former religious center, Hội An, one of Champa's main port cities, are now World Heritage Sites. Today, many Cham people adhere to Islam, a conversion which began in the 10th century, with the Royals having adopted the faith by the 17th century. There are, Balamon Cham who still retain and preserve their Hindu faith and festivals; the Balamon Cham are one of only two surviving non-Indic indigenous Hindu peoples in the world, with a culture dating back thousands of years. The other is the Balinese Hinduism of the Balinese of Indonesia; the name Champa derived from the Sanskrit word campaka, which refers to Magnolia champaca, a species of flowering tree known for its fragrant flowers. The historiography of Champa relies upon three types of sources: Physical remains, including brick structures and ruins, as well as stone sculptures. Modern scholarship has been guided by two competing theories in the historiography of Champa. Scholars agree that Champa was divided into several regions or principalities spread out from south to north along the coast of modern Vietnam and united by a common language and heritage.

It is acknowledged that the historical record is not rich for each of the regions in every historical period. For example, in the 10th century AD, the record is richest for Indrapura; some scholars have taken these shifts in the historical record to reflect the movement of the Cham capital from one location to another. According to such scholars, if the 10th-century record is richest for Indrapura, it is so because at that time Indrapura was the capital of Champa. Other scholars have disputed this contention, holding that Champa was never a united country, arguing that the presence of a rich historical record for a given region in a given period is no basis for claiming that the region functioned as the capital of a united Champa during that period. Through the centuries, Cham culture and society were influenced by forces emanating from Cambodia, China and India amongst others. Lâm Ấp, a predecessor state in the region, began its existence in AD 192 as a breakaway Chinese colony. An official revolted against Chinese rule in central Vietnam, Lâm Ấp was founded in AD 192.

In the 4th century AD, wars with the neighbouring Kingdom of Funan in Cambodia and the acquisition of Funanese territory led to the infusion of Indian culture into Cham society. Sanskrit was adopted as a scholarly language, Hinduism Shaivism, became the state religion. From the 10th century AD onwards, Arab maritime trade in the region brought increasing Islamic cultural and religious influences. Champa came to serve as an important link in the spice trade, which stretched from the Persian Gulf to South China, in the Arab maritime routes in Mainland Southeast Asia as a supplier of aloe. Despite the frequent wars between Champa and Cambodia, the two countries traded and cultural influences moved in both directions. Royal families of the two countries intermarried frequently. Champa had close trade and cultural relations with the powerful maritime empire of Srivijaya and with the Majapahit of the Malay Archipelago. Evidence gathered from linguistic studies around Aceh confirms that a strong Champan cultural influence existed in Indonesia.

Linguists believe the Acehnese language, a descendant of the Proto-Chamic language, separated from the Chamicic tongue sometime in the 1st millennium AD. However, scholarly views on the precise nature of Aceh-Chamic relations vary; the people of Champa descended from seafaring settlers who reached the Southeast Asian mainland from Borneo about the time of the Sa Huỳnh culture, the predecessor of the Cham kingdom. The Cham language is part of the Austronesian family. According to one study, Cham is related most to modern Acehnese in northern Sumatra. To the Han Chi

Institutum Europeaum was a libertarian think tank based in Sint-Genesius-Rode, a suburb of Brussels, Belgium. The Institutum was founded and led by Michiel Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer and intellectual, in the late 1970s until his death in 2002. Institutum Europaeum was in the vanguard of the efforts to prevent the centralization and growth of power in the European Community/European Union, was active in arguing against European Monetary Union. One of its most influential efforts was publishing Professor Pascal Salin's, L'unité monétaire européenne: au profit de qui?, which contained a foreword by Nobel Prize winning Economist and libertarian thinker Friedrich Hayek. This work provided the impetus for a Conference held in Brussels organized by the Institutum on European Monetary Union and Currency Competition at which papers were presented by Salin and Hayek as well as fellow Nobel Prize laureate in economics Milton Friedman, other luminaries in the field of libertarian thought and Economics, such as Leonard Liggio, Pedro Schwartz, Lawrence White and others.

These papers were published together in a volume published by the Institutum Europaeum, Currency Competition and Monetary Union. Although these arguments were unsuccessful in halting European monetary union and the eventual adoption of the Euro, the warnings of the instability which European monetary union would create, would gain widespread credence decades after the predictions contained in the book became reality. More these efforts of the Institutum Europeaum were influential in the Eurosceptic movement, which prevented the United Kingdom from joining the Euro Zone, led to the growth of the Eurosceptic movement; the Institutum Europaeum was active in the anti-Federalist Bruges Group, sent representatives to its Congresses. In addition to its work relating to the European Community/European Union, the Institutum Europeaum was involved in promoting libertarian thought in Europe to those working for the EC/EU and its institutions. Van Notten represented the Institutum by lecturing on the virtues of liberty and limited government

The 2nd Regiment, Texas Infantry was an infantry regiment from Texas that served with Confederate States Army in the American Civil War. The regiment was organized by the Captain John Creed Moore who would become the regiment's 1st Colonel. Many of the men were from Galveston. Notable battles that the regiment has been involved in include the Battle of Shiloh, the Second Battle of Corinth, the Siege of Vicksburg; the regiment assaulted Battery Robinett, a redan protected by a five-foot ditch, sporting three 20-pounder Parrott rifles commanded by Lt. Henry Robinett. Colonel William P. Rogers, a Mexican–American War comrade of President Jefferson Davis, was among those killed in the charge. Rogers seized his colors to keep them from falling again and jumped a five-foot ditch, leaving his dying horse and assaulted the ramparts of the battery; when canister shot killed him, he was the fifth bearer of his colors to fall that day. The regiment was distinguished for its defense of a crescent-shaped fortification, which came to be known as the Second Texas Lunette.

The fortification was located in the center of the Vicksburg line of defense constructed to guard the Baldwin Ferry Road. The lunette was the subject of tremendous artillery bombardment and repeated Union assaults directed against the lunette on May 22, 1863. 2nd Texas Infantry Regiment 2nd Texas Lunette at Vicksburg The Second Texas Infantry: From Shiloh to Vicksburg, Joseph Chance, Eakin Press, 1984 Texas Civil War Confederate Units Texas in the American Civil War