In 1962 the Dutch manufacturing company Philips first developed the audio cassette in Belgium. Twenty years before this in neighbouring Germany, the Nazis had secretly developed a portable audio recorder that allowed sound to be recorded and played. They called it the Magnetophon.

From 1975 to 1990 a very uncivil war raged in Lebanon. Groups fought one another, then fought alongside one another, then fought one another again. At times militias conducted joint operations in one town while exchanging fire in another, like the Royal Rumble spectacle of wrestling where multiple opponents fought one another in the ring. Though wrestling had a winner in the end.