France in WW2

It usually refers to eating food outside:
e.g. We ate an alfresco lunch on the patio.
or: Most summer evenings we eat alfresco.

Italian: al fresco = outdoors

alfresco means out-of-doors or in the open air :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Paris was liberated on the 25th of August 1944.
In fact, French people liberated the city.

After the success of operation Overlord, and with the quick advance of allied forces, the Resistance and ordinary people in France began to rise up against the German government. The Resistance put up barricades, and some skirmishes occurred between the people and the German army.

The allies did not try to get to Paris directly, preferring to head east towards Germany and South around Paris in order to surround it.

Hitler gave the order to destroy all strategic spots (bridges..) and monuments, in order to create a French "Stalingrad". But General Von Choltitz, the German Wehrmacht general in charge of Paris, hesitated to execute Hitler's orders, so Hitler decided to send an SS division to Paris.

Faced with the threat of the upcoming destruction of Paris, a French armoured division "la 2ieme division blindée" led by Général Leclerc, based in Argentan (200 kms west of Paris) decided to head to Paris, disobeying the orders of his superior (the American General Gerow). Initially, he was not helped by Eisenhower but made an audacious break through the German lines. Eisenhower, who felt that nothing could hold back Leclerc, decided to send the American fourth infantry division to reinforce Leclerc's 2ieme d.b.

Capitaine Raymond Dronne leading the 9th company of Leclerc's division was the first to enter Paris by "the Porte d'Italie" at 09:21 pm the 24th of August; after fighting several days without sleeping they reached the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) where the Resistance were based. General Von Choltitz surrendered to the French on the 25th of August in the "Gare Montparnasse"

These events were important because they prevented France from being ruled by an Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). The French Resistance, the popular uprising, the courage the French soldiers had shown in Italy, South Africa, and the South of France were considered by the allies to be enough to allow the French people to rule themselves.

Samba is one of the most popular forms of music in Brazil. It is widely viewed as Brazil's national musical style. (This is not to be confused with the Zamba. The Zamba is a style of Argentine music, and an associated dance, very different from its homophone, the Samba)

History

Samba's roots come from Africa, mainly Angola, where the dance semba was a predecessor of samba, and as importantly from Portugal and Europe, which made it possible for the relatively intricate harmonies found in samba to be developed out of European tradition.

Samba developed as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro (then the capital of Brazil) under the strong influence of immigrant black people from the Brazilian state of Bahia. The title "samba school" ("escola de samba") originates from samba's formative years. The term was adopted by larger groups of samba performers in an attempt to lend acceptance of samba and its performance; local campuses were often the practice/performance grounds for these musicians and "escola" gave early performers a sense of legitimacy and organization to offset samba's somewhat controversial social atmosphere. Despite some similarities, samba is not an offshoot of jazz and has distinctively different origins and line of development - one of the factors which adds to this is that Brazilian slave owners allowed their slaves to continue their heritage of playing drums (unlike U.S. slave owners who feared use of the drum for communications).

"Pelo Telefone" (1917), by Donga and Mauro Almeida, is generally considered the first samba recording. Its great success carried the new genre outside the black favelas. Who created the music is uncertain, but it was most probably the work of the group around Tia Ciata, among them Pixinguinha and João da Bahiana.

In the 1930s, a group of musicians led by Ismael Silva founded the first Samba School, Deixa Falar, in the neighborhood of Estácio de Sá. They transformed the musical genre to make it fit better the carnival parade. In this decade, the radio spread the genre's popularity all around the country, and with the support of the nationalist dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, samba became Brazil's "official music".

In the following years samba music developed in several directions, from the gentle samba-canção to the drum orchestras which accompany the carnival parade. One of these new styles was the bossa nova, made primarily by middle class white people. Bossa nova gained worldwide popularity through the works of João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among others, and arrived in North America via Gilberto's albums with American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, and Jobim's soundtrack to the 1959 film Black Orpheus.

In the 1960s, Brazil became politically divided with the arrival of a military dictatorship, and the leftist musicians of bossa nova started to gather attention to the music made in the favelas. Many popular artists were discovered at this time. Names like Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho & Guilherme de Brito, Velha Guarda da Portela, Zé Keti, and Clementina de Jesus recorded their first albums.

In the 1970s, samba returned strongly to the air waves with composers and singers like Paulinho da Viola, Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes, and Beth Carvalho dominating the hit parade. Great samba lyricists like Paulo César Pinheiro (especially in the praised partnership with João Nogueira) and Aldir Blanc started to appear around that time.

In the early 1980s, after having been eclipsed by the popularity of disco and Brazilian rock, Samba reappeared in the media with a musical movement created in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. It was the pagode, a renewed samba, with new instruments - like the banjo and the tan-tan - and a new language that reflected the way that many people actually spoke with the inclusion of heavy gíria (slang). The most popular artists were Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guineto, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Jorge Aragão, and Jovelina Pérola Negra.

Samba is extremely popular in Japan, especially in its more traditional forms; so much that some sambistas like Nelson Sargento, Monarco, and Wilson Moreira have recorded specifically for the Japanese market and frequently tour the country.

Today, samba is still one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil.

samba" class='external' title="http://www.answers.com/topic/samba

"comment" means "how" as in :

"how are you doing?" ? "comment allez-vous ?"

"how did you do that?" ?"comment as-tu fait cela ?"

"Comment ?!" will mean "How?!" most of the time, but it may mean "What?!"

There are probably other possibilities... provide full context if you wish a more accurate answer.