Geography and History
Vimy is a farming town, situated some 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Arras, at the junction of the D51 and the N17 roads. It is situated on the crest of Vimy Ridge, a prominent feature overlooking the Artois region.
The town was first mentioned in 1183 as Viniarcum and was the scene of much fighting during the fourteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries among the French, English, Dutch and Spanish forces.
The ridge was the scene of fierce fighting in the First World War. Seized by the Germans in 1914, it was the subject of a French assault in 1915. In 1917 the Battle of Vimy Ridge took place southeast of Vimy and was an important battle of the First World War for Canadian military history. The town was practically destroyed during the fighting in the area.
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“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
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