Its roots are in the second world war and the mutual loathing of both teams and sets of fans intensified after "The Mother of all Defeats", when the Germans famously triumphed over the Dutch in the 1974 World Cup final.
As Syria's civil war has intensified, thousands of children have died in brutal attacks and many more have been injured, traumatised or forced to flee their homes.
The momentum for change on abortion laws has intensified since the Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar died from blood poisoning after a Galway hospital refused to terminate her pregnancy last autumn.
Prayers, led by a man with a pair of cymbals, started as slow chanting then accelerated and intensified as the sound of the cymbals rose from a tinkle to a crash before falling silent again.
There have been rumours of a feature-length version of the popular BBC series for a number of years now, intensified recently by the reunion of the characters in Back and Forth, the short film currently showing at the millennium dome in the Skyscape cinema.
The rage only intensified when it became known that the killer was Mohamed Merah, a young French citizen of Algerian origin.
Most importantly, throughout the 1950s, as violence between the French authorities and Algerian nationalists intensified, Camus found himself endlessly compromised.
In the past few weeks these projections, combined with their own polling, have led Labour strategists to calculate that seats such as Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Finchley and Golders Green, and Battersea are now in contention – and Labour's "ground war" has been intensified accordingly.
The first fatal accident for 12 years involving a grand prix driver initially brought with it a stunned reaction, intensified by the spectacular incident on Friday when the Brazilian Rubens Barrichello emerged with comparatively minor injuries after losing control of his Jordan and crashing at more than 120mph.
As the fighting between police and the banlieusards intensified, riots broke out in major cities across France.
Losses from Libya and from Iran under intensified sanctions since mid-2012 have so far accounted for the largest portion of supply disruptions from the region over the past two years, with smaller additional losses from Iraq, Yemen and Sudan, and war-torn Syria.
