Dietrich was bisexual. She became an American citizen in 1937.
Northern Kurdistan
Northern Kurdistan, or Turkish Kurdistan, is the part of Kurdistan which is in Turkey, in the Middle East. To the south-west is Syrian Kurdistan, and to the south-east is Iraqi Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan.
Mount Etna
Mount Etna is a volcano on the east coast of Sicily, part of southern Italy. It is the largest active volcano in Europe. Mount Etna erupts every few years.
Etna's most destructive eruption in historic times started on 11 March 1669. It produced lava flows that destroyed 10 villages and reached the town of Catania five weeks later, on 15 April. Many buildings were destroyed and few people were killed.
Major twentieth century eruptions occurred in 1928, 1949, 1971, 1983 and 1992, as well as the 2001 eruption. In 1971, it buried the Etna Observatory (built in the late 19th century) under lava. The 1992 eruption saw the town of Zafferana threatened by a lava flow, but successful diversion efforts saved the town with the loss of only one building a few hundred metres outside it.
In 2002–2003, the biggest series of eruptions for many years threw up a huge column of ash that could easily be seen from space and fell as far away as Libya, on the far side of the Mediterranean Sea. Seismic activity in this eruption caused the eastern flanks of the volcano to slip by up to two metres, and many houses on the flanks of the volcano were damaged. The eruption also destroyed the Rifugio Sapienza, a ski resort on the southern flank of the volcano.
Rojava
Rojava, or Western Kurdistan, or Syrian Kurdistan, is a part of divided Kurdistan in the Middle East. It consists of three areas called 'cantons' in Northern Syria but the Syrian government is not in control there. Instead, since a revolution which happened early on in the Syrian Civil War, it has had its own independent government, although it does not claim to be a new independent country, calling itself a 'federal autonomous region' inside of Syria instead.
Many people in Rojava are Kurds, but there are also many different ethnic groups living there, such as Turkmen, Arabs, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Yezidis. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group in Syria. Before the civil war, many human rights organizations such as Amnesty International said that the Syrian government treated the Kurds very poorly. Kurds in Syria are not allowed to officially use the Kurdish language, and also not allowed to register children with Kurdish names, start businesses that do not have Arabic names, build Kurdish private schools, or publish any books or other materials written in Kurdish. But this is no longer enforced due to the civil war.
This gave the Kurds many reasons to support a revolution against the government. They also needed to organize an army to defend themselves from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which almost took control of Rojava because the government could not defend it due to the civil war. ISIL is still at war with Rojava. As of 2017, there is a truce between Rojava and the Syrian government. The United States have given money and weapons to Rojava to help defeat ISIL but some say that they are supporting ISIL.
Rojava is claiming to be a democracy. It has a constitution which says that women's rights and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities have to be respected. In the Middle East this is very unusual. There are two military organisations one for men, the YPG, and an army for women, the YPJ.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group ("group of people") in the world that does not have its own state. The Kurds are traditionally nomadic ("with no fixed living place") and live in a region in Asia called Kurdistan. Most of Kurdistan is mountainous. There are parts of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and in Syria. There is discussion in academia about the origins ("start") and migrations ("movements of people") of the Kurds in history. Many other groups have also lived in Kurdistan in the past. The ancestors of modern Kurds probably arrived in Iran in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Kurdistan was part of the empire of the Medes, then the Achaemenid Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Roman and Byzantine empire, and then the Sassanid Empire.
In the 7th century AD, the Muslim conquests of the Ancient Near East meant that Kurdistan became part of the Rashidun Empire. The Kurdish tribes ("social groups") in Upper Mesopotamia and the western Iranian plateau fought against the attacking armies for a time. Most Kurds became part of the Shafi`ite division of Islam. In the three centuries after this, some Kurds gained some autonomy ("self-rule") for their culture and politics, in the time of the Umayyad Caliphate and the following Abbasid Caliphate.
The Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty ("line of rulers") rose to power in the 10th century, as the power of the Abbasid Caliphate fell. The first Ayyubid ruler was Saladin. He was greatly famous for taking back Jerusalem for the Muslims in the Siege of Jerusalem in 1187. His empire took over much of Syria and the Near East. In 1193, Saladin died and was buried in Damascus, where some of his soldiers then chose to live. The "Kurdish quarter" ("an area in the city") where these soldiers lived was a place where Kurdish language and culture was in existence into the 20th century. In the 11th century, Krak de Chevaliers, a castle ("military building made strong against attack") in the Alawite Mountains, was named "fortress of the Kurds" or "Castle of the Kurds".
The armies of the Mongol Empire attacked Ayyubid Syria in the middle of the 13th century. The Mamluks overcame the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. In the early 16th century, the Mamluks lost control of Syria when the Ottoman Empire overcame them in war.
Sharaf Khan Bidlisi wrote the "Sharafnama" in 1596. The "Sharafnama" was an epic history of the Kurds from the 13th century to the late 16th century. In the "Saharfnama", Sharaf Khan Bidlisi wrote that Kurdistan was the country between the Persian Gulf and the "vilayets" ("local government" "areas") of Malatya and Marash (modern Kahramanmaraş). Sharaf Khan Bidlisi thought that the Lurs people were Kurds and that Kurdistan was very large. He wrote that parts of the "vilayets" of Diyarbakır, Mosul, "Persian Iraq", "Arabic Iraq", Fars Province, Azerbaijan, Lesser Armenia, and Greater Armenia were part of Kurdistan. Ahmad Khani wrote the "Mem û Zîn" in 1692. He wrote that Kurdistan was about the same size. Haji Qadir Koyi wrote poetry in the 19th century. He wrote that northern Syria was part of Kurdistan. He also wrote that Kurdistan contained the cities of Nusaybin (ancient Nisibis) and Alexandretta (İskenderun). Alexandretta is a port ("harbour city") on the Mediterranean Sea.
At the start of the 17th century, the Ottoman Sultans ordered Kurds from different parts of their empire to move to the area around the Euphrates river. These Kurds were told to live on both sides of the river. The western side of the river and the town of Kobanî were where most of these Kurds lived afterwards. In the 18th century, some of these Kurdish people in Greater Syria (also named "Bilad al-Sham") kept their Kurdish culture and their relations with Kurds in other parts of Kurdistan. Other Kurdish tribes were assimilated ("taken in") by Arab tribes who also lived there.