1.
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
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Districts of the Czech Republic
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In 1960, Czechoslovakia was re-divided into districts often without regard to traditional division and local relationships. In the area of the Czech Republic, there were 75 districts, a reform in effect since January 2003 replaced the districts with 204 Municipalities with Extended Competence (obce s rozšířenou působností, also obce III. Stupně - third-level municipalities, unofficially also called little districts which took over most of the administration of the district authorities. Some of these are divided between Municipalities with Commissioned Local Authority. The old districts still exist as units and remain as seats of some of the offices, especially courts, police. In 2007 the borders of the districts were slightly adjusted and 119 municipalities are now within different districts, regions of the Czech Republic ISO 3166-2, CZ http, //www. czso. cz/lexikon/mos2003. nsf/index
3.
Jihlava
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Jihlava is a city in the Czech Republic. There is also a Jewish cemetery, containing some remarkable monuments including the tombstone of the parents of Gustav Mahler, the citys German name, Iglau, is derived from the German word for hedgehog, Igel, hence the hedgehog on the coat of arms. According to legend, already in the year 799 silver was mined in Iglau, king Ottokar I established a mint, and Iglau was granted extensive privileges from early times onwards. An old Slavic settlement upon a ford was moved to a hill where the mining town was founded by king Václav I. Medieval mines surrounded by mining settlements were localized outside the walls of the medieval town, in the era of the Hussite Wars, Jihlava remained a Catholic stronghold and managed to resist a number of sieges. Later at Jihlava, on 5 July 1436, a treaty was made with the Hussites, a marble relief near the town marks the spot where Ferdinand I, in 1527, swore fidelity to the Bohemian estates. During the Thirty Years War Jihlava was twice captured by the Swedes, in 1742 it fell into the hands of the Prussians, and in December 1805 the Bavarians under Wrede were defeated near the town. In 1860 it became the home of Bohemian-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. Until World War I the town was an important Austro-Hungarian Army military centre, in 1914 the I, II and III. Battalion of the Moravian Infantry Regiment No.81 and the Second Battalion of the Landwehr infantry regiment number 14 were the garrison troops, after World War I the town constituted a German language island within Slavic speaking Moravia. This affected local politics as it remained the centre of the second largest German-speaking enclave in the republic of Czechoslovakia. The Volksdeutsche of Iglau / Jihlava relied on peaceful opposition to the Czech military occupation of their region, unsuccessful in getting their right to self-determination recognized and incorporated into the new Czechoslovakian state instead, many of the indigenous Germans took to more nationalistic politics. Thereafter extremist political figures like Hans Krebs, editor of the Iglauer Volkswehr newspaper, became prominent with the rise of Nazism, the area remained, until the end of World War II, a distinctive regional folk culture reflecting hundreds of years of local customs. The local dialect of German was a branch of Mitteldeutsch. Musicians often used homemade instruments and original groups of four fiddles, typical folk dances were the Hatschou, Tuschen and Radln. Peasant women like wearing old pairische Scharkaröckchen costumes with shiny dark skirts, after the end of World War II, and following the Beneš decrees, these German speakers were evicted, it is estimated that hundreds died on the arduous trek to Austria. The town was repopulated with Czech and Moravian settlers favoured by the new Communist regime, after 1951, the town was the site of several Communist show trials, which were directed against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the rural population. In the processes eleven death sentences were passed and 111 years of prison sentences imposed, all the convicted persons were rehabilitated after the Velvet Revolution
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
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Central European Summer Time
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It corresponds to UTC + two hours. Other names which have been applied to Central European Summer Time are Middle European Summer Time, Central European Daylight Saving Time, and Bravo Time. Since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed between 1,00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1,00 on the last Sunday of October, the following countries and territories use Central European Summer Time. In addition, Libya used CEST during the years 1951–1959, 1982–1989, 1996–1997, European Summer Time Other countries and territories in UTC+2 time zone Other names of UTC+2 time zone
