1.
Slovakia
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Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Slovakias territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks, the capital and largest city is Bratislava. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samos Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra. In the 10th century, the territory was integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary, which became part of the Habsburg Empire. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a separate Slovak Republic existed in World War II as a client state of Nazi Germany. In 1945, Czechoslovakia was reëstablished under Communist rule as a Soviet satellite, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution ended authoritarian Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The country maintains a combination of economy with universal health care. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the Eurozone on 1 January 2009, Slovakia is also a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. The Slovak economy is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and its legal tender, the Euro, is the worlds 2nd most traded currency. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes, in 2016, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 165 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 11th in the world. Slovakia is the world’s biggest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone, the car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia’s industrial output, and a quarter of its exports. Radiocarbon datingputs the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BC and these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave near Bojnice, the most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice, Hubina and these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The Bronze Age in the territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BC
2.
Vehicle registration plates of Slovakia
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There are three design varieties that are in valid use. Between 1 April 1997 and 30 April 2004, the contained the Coat of Arms of Slovakia in the top left corner. The two district identifiers were separated from the serials by a dash, on 1 May 2004, Slovakia joined the European Union. In order to harmonise the visual look of the plates with the rest of the EU, the Slovak Coat of Arms was replaced by the so-called euroband, the country code SK was inserted into the euroband. The number 0 and letter O have been differentiated as well, the Slovak Coat of Arms has returned to the plates replacing the dash while keeping the EU part intact. Regular plates are the most commonly used of all the types and they contain seven characters starting with the district code followed by a series of 3 numbers and 2 letters. The number series used are between 001 and 999, the letter series are between AA-XZ and ZA-ZZ. 999AZ is followed by 001BA through 999BB etc, only Bratislava has reached 999ZZ as of February 2011. Where limited space warrants it, two-line plates can be used on a vehicle, a block of combinations is set aside from the regular plate range as required. Trailer plates follow the format of the regular plates XX-NNNLL except in case the first serial letter is always Y. The registrations would thus start 001YA, continuing through 999YA and 001YB to 999YZ, any build of trailer whether a mobile home or cargo trailer can use these plates. As of February 2011, Bratislava is nearing the end of its YZ series, two-line plates also exist with a block of combinations set aside for them in each district. Motorcycle plates follow the same coding and use the series as the regular plates. For example, DS-125AC can be both a regular plate and a motorcycle plate, the only difference is their size. Motorcycles use two different sizes both of which are smaller than the regular size, personalized plates are optional in Slovakia for an extra fee. The format must include the two letter code and 5 other characters in either XX-LLLLL, XX-LLLLN or LLLNN format. Unlike in any type of plates, the use of Q and W is possible. Plates are not allowed to any political, religious or offensive message
3.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
4.
Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
5.
Gorals
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The Gorals are an ethnographic group primarily found in their traditional area of southern Poland, northern Slovakia, and in the region of Cieszyn Silesia in the Czech Republic. There is also a significant Goral diaspora in the area of Bukovina in western Ukraine and in northern Romania, as well as in Chicago, in Poland, the community inhabits the geographical region of Podhale of the Tatra Mountains and parts of the Beskids. In present-day Slovakia they live in 4 separate groups, in northern Spiš, Orava and Kysuce, the main settlements of Gorals include, Zakopane Poronin Murzasichle Zawoja Gorals share features with other Carpathian Slavic highlander groups, including Hutsuls, Lemkos, and Boykos. The various dialects spoken by the Gorals descend from Proto-Slavic from the Eastern Lechitic, Old Polish area, in other words, the language, called the Podhale dialect, is of Polish origin, but has been influenced by Slovak in recent centuries. Jabłonkowanie, a feature similar to mazurzenie, occurs in some Silesian dialects. 14th- and 15th-century palatal consonant pronunciation features are preserved in the Podhale dialect, K. Dobroslowski asserted that the Podhale dialect had loan-words from Romanian and Albanian, as well as similar belief system elements, music and material culture. In the 16th and 17th centuries Gorals settled the upper Kysuca, Orava rivers and these territories were part of the northern Kingdom of Hungary. The mountainous regions were settled with pastoral Slavs with the Vlach law, in 1803–19, Gorals migrated to Bukovina. During World War II, Nazi Germany sought to Germanize the Gorals, along with the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, Nazi racial theorists considered the 27,000 strong Goral population as a separate ethnic group from the Poles. Termed Goralenvolk, they were deemed part of the Greater Germanic Race, the Gorals and other West Slavic peoples of the Carpathians show little northern, Germanic, influence, as opposed to other regions of Poland. Carleton S. Coon grouped the Gorals with the Hutsuls in the corner of Poland. In the 19th century, Polish scholars viewed the Gorals as linguistically close to the Poles and it was noted that Gorals social and economic life resembled that of Vlach shepherd culture. This Goral festival preserves the traditions of the Polish nationality group in Zaolzie and it is the largest cultural and folklore festival in Zaolzie area gathering thousands of spectators each day of festivities. However, in none of the towns and villages of the area the Poles form a majority, in this respect the village of Hrčava, with vast majority of citizens declaring Czech nationality, can be mentioned. In this village the Poles form only a 2% minority, local Gorals formed a majority in the past. They speak the dialect in everyday communication. Historically, the issue of their identity has been controversial. Gorals, like many other peasant communities in Central Europe, determined their own identities within the nation state system during the 19th
6.
Czechs
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Ethnic Czechs were called Bohemians in English until the early 20th century, referring to the late Iron Age tribe of Celtic Boii and the land Bohemia. The Czech diaspora is found in numbers in the United States, Canada, Israel, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Italy. The Czech ethnic group is part of the West Slavic subgroup of the larger Slavic ethno-linguistical group, the West Slavs have origin in early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. The West Slavic tribe of Bohemians settled in the area of Bohemia during the migration period and they formed an independent principality in the 9th century, the Duchy of Bohemia, under the Přemyslid dynasty. According to mythology, the father of the Czech people were Forefather Čech. The Czech are closely related to the neighbouring Slovaks, the Czech–Slovak languages form a dialect continuum rather than being two clearly distinct languages. Czech cultural influence in Slovak culture is noted as having much higher than the other way around. Czech people have a history of coexistence with Germanic people. The Czech National Revival took place in the 18th and 19th centuries aiming to revive Czech language, culture, the Czech were the initiators of Pan-Slavism. The Czech ethnonym was the name of a Slavic tribe in central Bohemia that subdued the tribes in the late 9th century. The origin of the name of the tribe itself is unknown, according to legend, it comes from their leader Čech, who brought them to Bohemia. Research regards Čech as a derivative of the root čel-, the Czech ethnonym was adopted by the Moravians in the 19th century. The name Bohemia is Germanic, English used that name until after the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the population of the Czech lands has been influenced by different human migrations that wide-crossed Europe over time. In their Y-DNA haplogroups, which are inherited along the male line,34. 2% of Czech males belong to R1a, which is particularly common in a large region extending from South Asia and Southern Siberia to Central Europe and Scandinavia. The population of the Czech Republic descends from diverse peoples of Slavic, Celtic and Germanic origin, presence of West Slavs in the 6th century during the Migration Period has been documented on the Czech territory. Slavs settled in Bohemia, Moravia and Austria sometime during the 6th or 7th centuries, according to a popular myth, the Slavs came with Forefather Čech who settled at the Říp Mountain. The Duchy of Bohemia emerged in the late 9th century, in 880, Prague Castle was constructed by Prince Bořivoj, founder of the Přemyslid dynasty and the city of Prague was established. Vratislav II was the first Czech king in 1085 and the duchy was raised to a kingdom under Ottokar I in 1198
7.
Romani people
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The Romani are widely known among English-speaking people by the exonym Gypsies, which some people consider pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity. Romani are dispersed, with their populations in Europe – especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe including Turkey, Spain. Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas, there are an estimated one million Roma in the United States, and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the nineteenth century from eastern Europe. Brazil also includes some Romani descended from people deported by the government of Portugal during the Inquisition in the colonial era, in migrations since the late nineteenth century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada. In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora, the Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large, many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two, those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani. French bohème, bohémien, from the Kingdom of Bohemia, whence they came, Rom means man or husband in the Romani, it has the variants dom and lom, related with the Sanskrit words dam-pati, dama, lom, lomaka loman, roman. Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma, Sanskrit सिनधु is a river or stream of water in general. In particular, it denotes the river Indus and the country around it, in the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning man of the Roma ethnic group or man, husband, with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni, however, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of all genders. Romani is the adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as a name, while others do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group. Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a r, i. e. rrom. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/, the rr spelling is common in certain institutions, or used in certain countries, e. g. Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians. In the English language, Rom is a noun and an adjective, while Romani is also a noun, both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy. Romani was initially spelled Rommany, then Romany, while today the Romani spelling is the most popular spelling, occasionally, the double r spelling mentioned above is also encountered in English texts. The term Roma is increasingly encountered during recent decades, as a term for the Romani people
8.
Lutheranism
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway
9.
Vacuum tube
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In electronics, a vacuum tube, an electron tube, or just a tube, or valve, is a device that controls electric current between electrodes in an evacuated container. Vacuum tubes mostly rely on thermionic emission of electrons from a hot filament or a cathode heated by the filament and this type is called a thermionic tube or thermionic valve. A phototube, however, achieves electron emission through the photoelectric effect, the simplest vacuum tube, the diode, contains only a heater, a heated electron-emitting cathode, and a plate. Current can only flow in one direction through the device between the two electrodes, as electrons emitted by the travel through the tube and are collected by the anode. Adding one or more control grids within the tube allows the current between the cathode and anode to be controlled by the voltage on the grid or grids, Tubes with grids can be used for many purposes, including amplification, rectification, switching, oscillation, and display. In the 1940s the invention of devices made it possible to produce solid-state devices, which are smaller, more efficient, more reliable, more durable. Hence, from the mid-1950s solid-state devices such as transistors gradually replaced tubes, the cathode-ray tube remained the basis for televisions and video monitors until superseded in the 21st century. However, there are still a few applications for which tubes are preferred to semiconductors, for example, the used in microwave ovens. One classification of vacuum tubes is by the number of active electrodes, a device with two active elements is a diode, usually used for rectification. Devices with three elements are used for amplification and switching. Additional electrodes create tetrodes, pentodes, and so forth, which have additional functions made possible by the additional controllable electrodes. X-ray tubes are vacuum tubes. Phototubes and photomultipliers rely on electron flow through a vacuum, though in those cases electron emission from the cathode depends on energy from photons rather than thermionic emission, since these sorts of vacuum tubes have functions other than electronic amplification and rectification they are described in their own articles. A vacuum tube consists of two or more electrodes in a vacuum inside an airtight enclosure, most tubes have glass envelopes, though ceramic and metal envelopes have been used. The electrodes are attached to leads which pass through the envelope via an airtight seal, Tubes were a frequent cause of failure in electronic equipment, and consumers were expected to be able to replace tubes themselves. In addition to the terminals, some tubes had an electrode terminating at a top cap. The principal reason for doing this was to avoid leakage resistance through the tube base, the bases were commonly made with phenolic insulation which performs poorly as an insulator in humid conditions. There was even a design that had two top cap connections
pronunciation (help·info); until 1918 Čatca, Czača, Hungarian: Csaca, Polish: Czadca) is a district town in northern Slovakia, near the border with Poland and the Czech Republic.
