1.
Moldova
–
Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian, Republica Moldova, listen, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, Bessarabia remained a province of the Russian Empire until 1917, when during the Russian Revolution it became an autonomous and then nominally independent Moldavian Democratic Republic. In 1918, following a vote of its assembly, Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania, the decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924, created within the Ukrainian SSR, on a territory east of Bessarabia, a so-called Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, the Soviets decided to split the region between a newly established Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian SSR. The Moldavian SSR included two-thirds of the territory of Bessarabia, on 27 August 1991, as part of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova. The current Constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994, the strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester river has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990. Its economy is the poorest in Europe in per capita terms, Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. The name Moldova derives from the Moldova River, the valley of this served as a political centre at the time of the foundation of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359. The origin of the name of the river remains unclear, the dogs name, given to the river, extended to the Principality. For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use the Romanian name, Moldova. Officially, the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations, in 2010, Oldowan flint tools were discovered at Bayraki that are 800, 000–1.2 million years old. This demonstrates that humans were present in Moldova during the early Paleolithic era. The inhabitants of this civilization, which lasted roughly from 5500 to 2750 BC, practiced agriculture, raised livestock, hunted, in antiquity, Moldovas territory was inhabited by Dacian tribes. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, and then Byzantine Empires. The Principality of Moldavia, established in 1359, was bounded by the Carpathian Mountains in the west, the Dniester River in the east, and the Danube River and Black Sea to the south. Its territory comprised the territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight counties of Romania. Like the present-day republic and Romanias north-eastern region, it was known to the locals as Moldova, Moldavia was invaded repeatedly by Crimean Tatars and, beginning in the 15th century, by the Turks. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, the title used in the document of 6 July 1600 was The King of the country of Romania, Ardeal and of all of Moldavia
Moldova
–
Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia between 1457 and 1504.
Moldova
–
Flag
Moldova
–
Soroca Fort was built on the site of the former
Genoese fortress Polihromia.
Moldova
–
Monument to the villagers who died in
World War II, the village
Cojușna,
Strășeni District
2.
Metropolitan area
–
As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. The Greater São Paulo is a term for one of the multiple definitions the large metropolitan area located in the São Paulo state in Brazil. A metropolitan area combines an urban agglomeration with zones not necessarily urban in character and these outlying zones are sometimes known as a commuter belt, and may extend well beyond the urban zone, to other political entities. For example, El Monte, California is considered part of the Los Angeles metro area in the United States, in practice, the parameters of metropolitan areas, in both official and unofficial usage, are not consistent. Population figures given for one area can vary by millions. A polycentric metropolitan area is one not connected by continuous development or conurbation, in defining a metropolitan area, it is sufficient that a city or cities form a nucleus that other areas have a high degree of integration with. The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines statistical divisions as areas under the influence of one or more major towns or a major city. However, this definition has become obsolete with the conurbation of several statistical divisions into a larger metropolitan areas. In Brazil, metropolitan areas are called metropolitan regions, each State defines its own legislation for the creation, definition and organization of a metropolitan region. The creation of a region is not intended for any statistical purpose, although the Brazilian Institute of Geography. Their main purpose is to allow for a management of public policies of common interest to all cities involved. They dont have political, electoral or jurisdictional power whatsoever, so living in a metropolitan region do not elect representatives for them. Statistics Canada defines a metropolitan area as an area consisting of one or more adjacent municipalities situated around a major urban core. To form a CMA, the area must have a population of at least 100,000. To be included in the CMA, adjacent municipalities must have a degree of integration with the core. As of the Canada 2011 Census, there were 33 CMAs in Canada, including six with a population over one million—Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. In Denmark the only area is Greater Copenhagen, consisting of the Capital Region of Denmark along with the neighboring regions Region Zealand. Greater Copenhagen has an population of 1.25 million people
Metropolitan area
–
Greater Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Metropolitan area
–
Paris (
France), one of Europe's major centres
Metropolitan area
–
Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area,
Israel
Metropolitan area
–
Perth, Western Australia, an isolated metropolitan area
3.
Eastern European Time
–
Eastern European Time is one of the names of UTC+02,00 time zone,2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time, so that it uses UTC+03,00 during the summer, a number of African countries use UTC+02,00 all year long, where it is called Central Africa Time, although Egypt and Libya also use the term Eastern European Time. The following countries, parts of countries, and territories use Eastern European Time all year round, Egypt, since 21 April 2015, used EEST from 1988–2010, Kaliningrad Oblast, since 26 October 2014, also used EET in years 1945 and 1991–2011. Libya, since 27 October 2013, switched from Central European Time, used year-round EET from 1980–1981, 1990–1996 and 1998–2012. Belarus, in years 1922–30 and 1990–2011 In Poland this time was used in years 1918–22, in time of World War II, Germany implemented MET in east occupied territories. Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol used EET as part of Ukraine in years 1991-94 and 1996-2014 Turkey, used EET in years 1910-1978, now uses year round DST timezone called Further-eastern European Time or Turkey Time. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also uses FET, sometimes, due to its use on Microsoft Windows, FLE Standard Time or GTB Standard Time are used to refer to Eastern European Time. Since political, in addition to geographical, criteria are used in the drawing of time zones. The EET time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, the easternmost part of the Republic of Macedonia, including the city of Strumica. The absolutely easternmost part of Serbia, in the Pirot District, the easternmost town in Norway, Vardø, lies at 30°51 E, which is located east of even of the central meridian of UTC+2, i. e. east of Istanbul and Alexandria. The Norwegian-Russian border is the place where CET borders Moscow time. There is a point at the Norway-Finland-Russia tripoint, near the town of Rayakoski. Belarus is located between 23°11′E and 32°47′E and is fully located with the physical UTC+2 area, but it uses UTC+3 year around. This also includes the city of Anapa, at the westernmost tip of the Krasnodar Krai near the entrance to the Sea of Azov, the Norway–Russia–Finland tri-zone point at Muotkavaara is surrounded by three different times in winter, two in summer. It had three time zones year-around before 2014, two of the four tripoints of Belarus and the tripoint of the Kaliningrad Region are surrounded by three different times in winter
Eastern European Time
–
light blue
4.
Daylight saving time
–
Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that evening daylight lasts an hour longer, while sacrificing normal sunrise times. Typically, regions that use Daylight Savings Time adjust clocks forward one hour close to the start of spring, American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin proposed a form of daylight time in 1784. New Zealander George Hudson proposed the idea of saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation, starting on April 30,1916, many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the energy crisis of the 1970s. The practice has both advocates and critics, DST clock shifts sometimes complicate timekeeping and can disrupt travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, heavy equipment, and sleep patterns. Computer software often adjusts clocks automatically, but policy changes by various jurisdictions of DST dates, industrialized societies generally follow a clock-based schedule for daily activities that do not change throughout the course of the year. The time of day that individuals begin and end work or school, North and south of the tropics daylight lasts longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the effect becoming greater as one moves away from the tropics. However, they will have one hour of daylight at the start of each day. Supporters have also argued that DST decreases energy consumption by reducing the need for lighting and heating, DST is also of little use for locations near the equator, because these regions see only a small variation in daylight in the course of the year. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season, unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some monasteries of Mount Athos and all Jewish ceremonies. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells, despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST, 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklins day. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him time to collect insects. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk and his solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament Robert Pearce, a select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearces bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915, william Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912. Starting on April 30,1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime, Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the year
Daylight saving time
–
Ancient
water clock that lets hour lengths vary with season.
Daylight saving time
–
G. V. Hudson invented modern DST, proposing it first in 1895.
Daylight saving time
–
Retailers generally favor DST.
United Cigar Stores hailed a 1918 DST bill.
Daylight saving time
–
William Willett independently proposed DST in 1907 and advocated it tirelessly.
5.
Eastern European Summer Time
–
Eastern European Summer Time is one of the names of UTC+3 time zone,3 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used as a daylight saving time in some European and Middle Eastern countries. During the winter periods, Eastern European Time is used, since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, previously the rules were not uniform across the European Union. Syria, since 1983 Ukraine, Moscow Summer Time in years 1981–89, regular EEST from 1992 In one year 1991 EEST was used also in Moscow, egypt has previously used EEST from 1957–2010 and 2014–2015. Turkey, has previously used EEST from 1970-1978 EEST, Moscow Summer Time from 1979–1983, and EEST from 1985-2016
Eastern European Summer Time
–
light blue
6.
Geographic coordinate system
–
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
Geographic coordinate system
–
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
7.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
–
Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
–
Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
–
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
8.
Romanization of Russian
–
Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
Romanization of Russian
–
Sergei Gonchar (Cyrillic: Сергей Гончар), an NHL and international ice hockey player, wearing a sweater with Roman characters
Romanization of Russian
–
A street sign in Russia with the name of the street shown in Cyrillic and Latin characters
9.
Romania
–
Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, the River Danube, Europes second-longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romanias Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest are marked by one of their tallest peaks, Moldoveanu, modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war, following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition towards democracy and it has been a member of NATO since 2004, and part of the European Union since 2007. A strong majority of the population identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are speakers of Romanian. The cultural history of Romania is often referred to when dealing with artists, musicians, inventors. For similar reasons, Romania has been the subject of notable tourist attractions, Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning citizen of Rome. The first known use of the appellation was attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, after the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a leader of the early 19th century. The use of the name Romania to refer to the homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861, in English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975, Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the region of the earliest European civilization. Evidence from this and other sites indicates that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage
Romania
–
Neacșu's letter from 1521, the oldest surviving document written in
Romanian.
Romania
–
Flag
Romania
–
Writ issued on 14 October 1465 by
Radu cel Frumos, from his residence in
Bucharest, indicating
Ottoman victory.
Romania
–
A 1917 British map showing territories with majority Romanian populations.
10.
Hungarian tribes
–
The ethnonym of the Hungarian tribal alliance is uncertain. According to one view, following Anonymuss description, the federation was called Hetumoger, though the word Magyar possibly comes from the name of the most prominent Hungarian tribe, the tribal name Megyer became Magyar referring to the Hungarian people as a whole. Written sources called Magyars Hungarians prior to the conquest of the Carpathian Basin when they lived on the steppes of Eastern Europe. The English term Hungarian is a derivative of the Latin Ungri or Ungari forms, according to András Róna-Tas the locality in which the Hungarians, the Manicha-Er group, emerged was between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains. Between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, the Magyars embarked upon their independent existence, around 830 AD, the seven related tribes formed a confederation in Etelköz, called Hétmagyar. Their leaders, the Seven chieftains of the Magyars, besides Álmos, included Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba and Töhötöm, presumably, the Magyar tribes consisted of 108 clans. The confederation of the tribes was led by two high princes, the kende and the gyula. The high princes were either elected by the leaders of the tribes or appointed by the Khagan of the Khazars who had been exerting influence over the Magyars, around 862 AD the seven tribes separated from the Khazars. Before 881 AD three Turkic tribes rebelled against the rule of the Khagan of the Khazars, but they were suppressed, after their defeat they left the Khazar Empire and voluntarily joined the Hétmagyar confederation. The three tribes were organised into one tribe, called Kabar, and later played the roles of vanguard. The joining of the three tribes to the previous seven created the On-ogur, one of the origins for the name Hungarian. The Hungarian social structure was of Turkic origin, moreover the Hungarian language was affected by Turkic linguistic influence, – A kezdetektől 1526-ig, főszerkesztő, Benda Kálmán Makkai, László. Transylvania in the medieval Hungarian kingdom, In, Béla Köpeczi, from the Beginnings to 1606, Columbia University Press, New York,2001, ISBN0880334797
Hungarian tribes
–
The appearance of Hungarian tribe names in settlement names (according to Sándor Török). It suggests where arriving Hungarians lived amongst other peoples and helps in reconstructing where arriving tribes settled
Hungarian tribes
–
The Blood oath in
Etelköz.
11.
Carpathian Basin
–
The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in Central Europe. It is a subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system. Most of the consists of the Great Hungarian Plain and the Little Hungarian Plain. The Pannonian Basin lies in the part of Central Europe. It forms a discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries - the Carpathian Mountains, the Alps, the Dinarides. The Rivers Danube and Tisza divide the basin roughly in half and it extends roughly between Vienna in the northwest, Zagreb in the southwest, Belgrade in the southeast and Satu Mare in the northeast. The name Pannonian comes from Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire, in English, the terms Pannonian Basin and Carpathian Basin are used synonymously. The name Pannonian is taken from that of Pannonia, a province of the Roman Empire, the historical province overlapped but was not coterminous with the geographical plain or basin. Pannonia Inferior covered much of the half of the basin. Pannonia Superior included the western fringe of the basin as well as part of the Eastern Alps, the southern fringe of the basin was in Dalmatia and Moesia. The eastern half of the basin was not conquered by the Romans, likewise, the parts north of the Danube were not in the empire, they were considered part of Germania, inhabited by the Quadi. The term Pannonian Plain refers to the parts of the Pannonian Basin as well as those of some adjoining regions like Lower Austria, Moravia, Bosnia. The lands adjoining the plain proper are also called peri-Pannonian. In Hungarian geographical literature various subdivisions of the Carpathian Mountains are also considered parts of the Carpathian Basin on the basis of traditional geopolitical divisions, julius Pokorny derived the name Pannonia from Illyrian, from the Proto-Indo-European root *pen-, swamp, water, wet. For its early settlers, the plain offered few sources of metals or stone, thus when archaeologists come upon objects of obsidian or chert, copper or gold, they have almost unparalleled opportunities to interpret ancient pathways of trade. The Pannonian plain is divided into two parts along the Transdanubian Mountains, the northwestern part is called Western Pannonian plain and the southeastern part Eastern Pannonian plain. The plain was named after the Pannon named Medes, various different peoples inhabited the plain during its history. In the first century BC, the parts of the plain belonged to the Dacian state
Carpathian Basin
–
The Pannonian Basin, enclosed by the
Carpathians, the
Transylvanian Plateau and
Dinaric Alps to the east, north and south
Carpathian Basin
–
Topography of the basin and surrounding mountains
Carpathian Basin
–
A farm on the
Hortobágy National Park
Carpathian Basin
–
The
Danube-Tisa-Danube Canal near the village of
Rumenka, close to
Novi Sad
12.
Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet
–
The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language in the Soviet Union and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989. Its re-introduction was decided by the Central Executive Committee of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on May 19,1938, Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is an indirect revival of its Romanian counterpart. Abandoned for a Latin-based alphabet during the Union-wide Latinisation campaign in 1932, it was reinstated as official in 1938, there were several requests to switch back to the Latin alphabet, which was seen more suitable for the Romance core of the language, in the Moldovan SSR. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is still the official and the only accepted alphabet in Transnistria for this language, all but one of the letters of this alphabet can be found in the modern Russian alphabet, the exception being the character zhe with breve, Ӂ ӂ. The following chart shows the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet compared with the Latin alphabet currently in use, IPA values are given for the post-1957 literary standard. Limba noastră Romanian alphabet Romanian Cyrillic alphabet Ӂ King, Charles, the Moldovans, Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture. The Politics of Language in Moldova, Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet – example text and comparison with Latin script Moldovan Cyrillic • Keyboard Layout for Windows
Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet
–
"Welcome" (Bine ați venit!) sign in Moldovan Cyrillic,
Tiraspol,
Transnistria 2012
13.
Russian Empire
–
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
Russian Empire
–
Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the
sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.
Russian Empire
–
Flag
Russian Empire
–
Empress
Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, continued the empire's expansion and modernization. Considering herself an
enlightened absolutist, she played a key role in the
Russian Enlightenment.
Russian Empire
–
Catherine II Sestroretsk Rouble (1771) is made of solid copper measuring 77 millimetres (3 3 ⁄ 100 in) (diameter), 26 millimetres (1 1 ⁄ 50 in) (thickness), and weighs 1.022 kg (2.25 lb). It is the largest copper coin ever issued.
14.
Kishinev pogrom
–
This article is part of the History of the Jews in Bessarabia. The most popular newspaper in Kishinev, the Russian-language anti-Semitic newspaper Бессарабец, published by Pavel Krushevan, and Crusade against the Hated Race. Another newspaper, Свет made similar insinuations and these allegations, and the prompting of the towns Russian Orthodox bishop, sparked the pogrom. The pogrom began on April 19 after congregations were dismissed from church services on Easter Sunday, in two days of rioting,47 Jews were killed,92 were severely wounded and 500 were slightly injured,700 houses were destroyed, and 600 stores were pillaged. The New York Times described the first Kishinev pogrom, The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, there was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, the Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500, the scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob, the local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded and those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews. This time the riots began as political protests against the Tsar, by the time the riots were over,19 Jews had been killed and 56 were injured. Jewish self-defense leagues, organized after the first pogrom, stopped some of the violence and this Pogrom was part of a much larger movement of 600 pogroms that swept the Russian Empire after the October Manifesto of 1905. The reason for this attitude is found in the fact that the Jews will not work in the field or engage in agriculture. They prefer to be money lenders, the situation in Russia, so far as the Jews are concerned is just this, It is the peasant against the money lender, and not the Russians against the Jews. There is no feeling against the Jew in Russia because of religion and it is as I have said—the Jew ruins the peasants, with the result that conflicts occur when the latter have lost all their worldly possessions and have nothing to live upon. There are many good Jews in Russia, and they are respected, Jewish genius is appreciated in Russia, and the Jewish artist honored. Jews also appear in the world in Russia. A memorial to the 1903 pogroms now stands in Kishinev, despite a worldwide outcry, only two men were sentenced to seven and five years and twenty-two were sentenced for one or two years. This pogrom was instrumental in convincing tens of thousands of Russian Jews to leave for the West or Palestine, as such, it became a rallying point for early Zionists, especially what would become Revisionist Zionism, inspiring early self-defense leagues under leaders like Zeev Jabotinsky
Kishinev pogrom
–
Herman S. Shapiro. "Kishinever shekhita, elegie" [Kishinev Massacre Elegy]. New York: Asna Goldberg, 1904. Irene Heskes Collection. The illustration in the center of this elegy depicts the April 1903 Kishinev massacre.
Kishinev pogrom
–
Funeral of copies of the
Sefer Torah which were damaged in the
Chişinău pogrom
Kishinev pogrom
–
The
US President Theodore Roosevelt to Tsar
Nicholas II of Russia: "Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews." A lithograph in relation to the first Kishinev pogrom. (Library of Congress)
Kishinev pogrom
–
A rejected petition to the Tsar of Russia by US citizens, 1903, now kept at the
US National Archives
15.
Written language
–
A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, a written language exists only as a complement to a specific spoken language, and no natural language is purely written. However, extinct languages may be, in effect, purely written if only their writings survive, written languages change more slowly than corresponding spoken languages. When at least one register of a language is strongly divergent from spoken language, however, that is still often considered as one language, between literary language and other registers, especially if the writing system reflects its pronunciation. Native readers and writers of English are often unaware that the complexities of English spelling make written English a somewhat artificial construct, the traditional spelling of English, at least for inherited words, preserves a late Middle English phonology that is no ones speech dialect. Vol.1, Coexisting contemporary civilizations, Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, signs - Books - Networks virtual exhibition of the German Museum of Books and Writing, i. a. with a thematic module on written language
Written language
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
16.
German language
–
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
German language
–
Old Frisian (Alt-Friesisch)
German language
–
The widespread popularity of the
Bible translated into German by
Martin Luther helped establish modern German
German language
–
Examples of German language in
Namibian everyday life
German language
–
German-language newspapers in the U.S. in 1922
17.
Polish language
–
Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
Polish language
–
The oldest printed text in Polish – Statuta synodalia Episcoporum Wratislaviensis printed in 1475 in
Wrocław by Kasper Elyan.
Polish language
–
Polish
Polish language
–
The
Jakub Wujek Bible in Polish, 1599 print
18.
Ukrainian language
–
Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
Ukrainian language
–
Miniature of
St Luke from the
Peresopnytsia Gospels (1561).
Ukrainian language
–
Ukrainian-speaking world
Ukrainian language
–
The 1921 Soviet recruitment poster. It uses traditional Ukrainian imagery with Ukrainian-language text: "Son! Enroll in the school of
Red commanders, and the defense of
Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."
Ukrainian language
–
Anti-russification protest. The banner reads "For Ukrainian Children – a Ukrainian school!".
19.
Yiddish language
–
Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script, the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קדש, the term Yiddish, short for Yiddish-Teitsch, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts. Modern Yiddish has two major forms, Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern, Mideastern, and Northeastern dialects, Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern, Midwestern, and Northwestern dialects, the term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture. Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish, 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities, the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. Exactly what German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed, both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreichs view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, recent linguistic research has finessed, contested, or challenged the Weinreich model, providing alternative approaches to the origins of Yiddish. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base, the two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East, wexlers model has met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Alternative theories recognize the extent of Yiddishs Germanic vocabulary. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany and its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews
Yiddish language
–
The calligraphic segment in the Worms Mahzor.
Yiddish language
–
A page from the Shemot Devarim (literally Names of Things), a Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary and thesaurus, published by Elia Levita in 1542
Yiddish language
–
American World War I -era poster in Yiddish. Translated caption: "Food will win the war – You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it – We must supply the
Allies with wheat – Let nothing go to waste". Colour lithograph, 1917. Digitally restored.
Yiddish language
–
An example of graffiti in Yiddish, Tel Aviv, Washington avenue.
20.
Monastery
–
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone. A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church or temple, a monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary. These may include a hospice, a school and a range of agricultural and manufacturing such as a barn. In English usage, the monastery is generally used to denote the buildings of a community of monks. In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics, historically, a convent denoted a house of friars, now more commonly called a friary. Various religions may apply these terms in specific ways. The earliest extant use of the term monastērion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, in England the word monastery was also applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, and were served by canons secular, however, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Westminster Abbey was for a time a cathedral, and was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation. They are also to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St Georges Chapel, in most of this article, the term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. In the Roman Catholic religion and to some extent in certain branches of Buddhism, there is a more specific definition of the term. Buddhist monasteries are generally called vihara, viharas may be occupied by males or females, and in keeping with common English usage, a vihara populated by females may often be called a nunnery or a convent. However, vihara can also refer to a temple, in Tibetan Buddhism, monasteries are often called gompa. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a monastery is called a wat, in Burma, a monastery is called a kyaung. A Christian monastery may be an abbey, or a priory and it may be a community of men or of women. A charterhouse is any monastery belonging to the Carthusian order, in Eastern Christianity, a very small monastic community can be called a skete, and a very large or important monastery can be given the dignity of a lavra. The great communal life of a Christian monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the life of an anchorite. In Hinduism monasteries are called matha, mandir, koil, or most commonly an ashram, jains use the Buddhist term vihara
Monastery
–
The
Monastery of Santa María del Parral of the
Hieronymites monks in
Segovia,
Spain
Monastery
–
Monastery of St. Nilus on
Stolbnyi Island in
Lake Seliger near
Ostashkov,
Russia, ca. 1910
Monastery
–
Tengboche Buddhist monastery,
Nepal
Monastery
–
Rumtek Monastery,
Gangtok Sikkim
21.
Moldavia
–
Moldavia is a historical region, and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river. The western half of Moldavia is now part of Romania, the eastern side belongs to the Republic of Moldova, the original and short-lived reference to the region was Bogdania, after Bogdan I, the founding figure of the principality. Dragoș was accompanied by his female hound called Molda, when reached the shores of an unfamiliar river. The dogs name would have given to the river and extended to the country. The old German Molde, meaning open-pit mine the Gothic Mulda meaning dust, dirt, a Slavic etymology, marking the end of one Slavic genitive form, denoting ownership, chiefly of feminine nouns. In several early references, Moldavia is rendered under the composite form Moldo-Wallachia, Ottoman Turkish references to Moldavia included Boğdan Iflak and Boğdan. See also names in other languages, the name of the region in other languages include French, Moldavie, German, Moldau, Hungarian, Moldva, Russian, Молдавия, Moldaviya, Turkish, Boğdan Prensliği, Greek, Μολδαβία. The inhabitants of Moldova were Christians, archaeological works revealed the remains of a Christian necropolis at Mihălășeni, Botoșani county, from the 5th century. The place of worship, and the tombs had Christian characteristics, the place of worship had a rectangular form with sides of 8 and 7 meters. Similar necropolis and place of worship were found at Nicolina, in Iași The Bolohoveni, the chronicle shows that this land is bordered on the principalities of Halych, Volhynia and Kiev. Archaeological research also identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region, Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voscodavti, Voloscovti, Volcovti, Volosovca and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper. The Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniil Romanovichs troops, in the early 13th century, the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the regions territory. On the border between Halych and the Brodniks, in the 11th century, a Viking by the name of Rodfos was killed in the area by Vlachs who supposedly betrayed him. In 1164, the future Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, was prisoner by Vlach shepherds around the same region. In 1342 and 1345, the Hungarians were victorious in a battle against Tatar-Mongols, the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentioned Moldavians as having joined a military expedition in 1342, under King Władysław I, against the Margraviate of Brandenburg. In 1353, Dragoș, mentioned as a Vlach Knyaz in Maramureș, was sent by Louis I to establish a line of defense against the Golden Horde forces of Mongols on the Siret River and this expedition resulted in a polity vassal to Hungary, centered around Baia. His realm extended north to the Cheremosh River, while the part of Moldavia was still occupied by the Tatar Mongols. After first residing in Baia, Bogdan moved Moldavias seat to Siret, disfavored by the brief union of Angevin Poland and Hungary, Bogdans successor Lațcu accepted conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1370, but his gesture was to remain without consequences
Moldavia
–
Neamț Citadel
Moldavia
Moldavia
–
Căpriana Monastery (1429)
Moldavia
–
Suceava Seat Fortress
22.
Ottoman Empire
–
After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
Ottoman Empire
–
Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Painting from 1523.
Ottoman Empire
–
Flag (1844–1923)
Ottoman Empire
–
Battle of Mohács in 1526
Ottoman Empire
–
Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha defeats the
Holy League of
Charles V under the command of
Andrea Doria at the
Battle of Preveza in 1538.
23.
Bessarabia Governorate
–
Bessarabia was an oblast and later a guberniya in the Russian Empire. The Governorate was disbanded in 1917, with the establishment of Sfatul Ţării, the latter united with Romania in April 1918. Around 70% of the territory of the former governorate now belongs to the Republic of Moldova, as the Russian Empire noticed the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, it occupied the eastern half of the autonomous Principality of Moldavia, between the Prut and Dniester rivers. This was followed by six years of warfare, which were concluded by the Treaty of Bucharest, the Russians used the name Bessarabia for the whole region rather than the southern area. Bessarabia had an area of 45,630 km², more than the rest of Moldavia, in 1818, a special autonomous region was created, which had both Romanian and Russian as languages used in the local administration. Bănulescu-Bodoni also obtained permission for opening a seminary and a printing press, nicholas I of Russia, crowned in 1825, began a campaign of reforms which had the goal of gaining more control over the western provinces. Autonomy of the region was retracted in 1829, with the new constitution written by the governor of New Russia and Bessarabia, Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. In 1834, Romanian was banned in schools and government facilities, and soon, books, the press and those who fought the changes could be exiled to Siberia. The constitution no longer made the usage of Romanian compulsory for public announcements and in 1854, also around 1850, Romanian was no longer used in schools and the importation of books from Moldavia and Wallachia was banned. Integration within the Russian Empire continued with the introduction of the zemstva in 1869, although this system was meant to increase the participation of the locals in civic affairs, it was run by Russians and other non-Moldavian functionaries brought from across the Empire. Romania became independent in 1878, but millions of ethnic Romanians lived outside its borders and as such it had aspirations toward Transylvania, as well as Bessarabia. In 1856, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Russia was forced to return a significant territory in southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, which joined Wallachia in 1859 to form Romania. The Romanian politicians and public were angered by this action, Romanian politician Mihail Kogălniceanu accused Russia of deception and of treating an ally like a conquered province. He even started a memorandum against Russia to try to influence the Western governments, denouncing not only the annexation of Southern Bessarabia, despite this, none of the European powers wanted to risk a conflict with Russia. According to the Treaty of Berlin, Romania gained Dobruja as a compensation for the loss of Southern Bessarabia, despite being a larger territory, Romanians considered it an unfair exchange and accepted it reluctantly, because there was no other alternative. Bessarabia was the most backward of the provinces of the Russian Empire. In 1897, literacy was just 15. 4% for the whole Bessarabia, with only 6% of ethnically Moldavians being literate, as of 1920, an estimated ten percent of men and one percent of women were able to read and write. Thus, by the 1880s only 23 schools remained, as a result, the literature and cultural life stagnated, only a few notable literary figures arising from Bessarabia, among them being Alexandru Hasdeu, Constantin Stamati and Teodor Vîrnav
Bessarabia Governorate
–
Bessarabia Governorate, 1883
Bessarabia Governorate
–
Ethnic groups in the European part of the Russian Empire before World War I.
24.
Russian Revival architecture
–
Sometimes, Russian Revival style is often erroneously called Russian or Old-Russian architecture, but the majority of Revival architects did not directly reproduce the old architectural tradition. Like the romantic revivals of Western Europe, the Russian revival was informed by a scholarly interest in the monuments of the nation. The historicism resonated with the nationalism and pan-Slavism of the period. The state took an interest in the endeavour by sponsoring a series of folios published as Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudavstva depicting antiquities, by this time the Moscow Archaeological Society undertook research on the subject, formalising it as a field of study. A series of conferences was instituted from 1869 to 1915. Perhaps the Society’s most significant achievement was the publication of the Kommissii po sokhraneniiu drevnikh pamyatnikov in 6 volumes between 1907 and 1915, next year, in 1827, Stasov completed a larger five-domed Church of the Tithes in Kiev. The Russo-Byzantine idea was carried forward by Konstantin Thon with the approval by Nicholas I. Thons style embodied the idea of continuity between Byzantium and Russia, perfectly matching the ideology of Nicholas I, in 1838, Nicholas I pointed out Thons book of model designs to all architects, more enforcement followed in 1841 and 1844. Official enforcement of Byzantine architecture was, in fact, very limited, it applied only to new construction and, to a lesser extent. Private and public construction proceeded independently, Thons own public buildings, like the pseudo-Renaissance Nikolaevsky Terminal, lack any Byzantine features. A closer look at churches constructed in Nicholas reign reveals many first-rate neoclassical buildings, like the Elokhovo Cathedral in Moscow by Yevgraph Tyurin. Official Byzantine art was not absolute in Nicholas reign, it is scarce in our days, as the Byzantine churches, another direction taken by the Russian Revival style was a reaction against official Thon art, influenced by romanticism, Slavophilism and detailed studies of vernacular architecture. The forerunner of this trend in design was Alexey Gornostaev, notable for reinventing Northern Russian tented roof motif augmented with Romanesque. An early extant example in architecture is the wooden Pogodinsky cottage in Devichye Pole, Moscow. The Emancipation reform of 1861 and subsequent reforms of Alexander II pushed the liberal elite into exploring the roots of national culture, the first result of these studies in architecture was a birth of folk or Pseudo-Russian style, exemplified by 1870s works of Ivan Ropet and Viktor Hartmann. These artists, in alliance with Narodnik movement, idealized the peasant life, another factor was the rejection of western eclectics that dominated civil construction of 1850s-1860s, a reaction against decadent West, pioneered by influential critic Vladimir Stasov. Ivan Zabelin, a theorist of the movement, declared that Russian Khoromy, grown naturally from peasants log cabins, beauty of a building is not in its proportions, but on the contrary, in the difference and independence of its parts. Wood was the material, since many fantasies could not be physically built in masonry
Russian Revival architecture
–
Thon 's
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow, 1839-60
Russian Revival architecture
–
Igumnov House
Russian Revival architecture
–
The oldest statement of Russian Revival, 1826
Alexander Nevsky church in
Potsdam
Russian Revival architecture
–
Pogodin's Cottage, Moscow, 1856
25.
Avraam Melnikov
–
Abram or Avraam Melnikov was a Russian Neoclassical architect associated with the late phase of the Empire style. His teachers at the Imperial Academy of Arts included Andreyan Zakharov and he graduated with a gold medal and went to further his studies in Italy. Melnikov became de facto Dean of the Academy in 1831 but was not officially appointed until 1843, Melnikov collaborated with sculptor Ivan Martos on the pedestals for his statues of Minin and Pozharsky in Red Square and Duc de Richelieu at the top of the Potemkin Stairs in Odessa. Apart from the Imperial School of Jurisprudence and the Old Believer Church of St. Nicholas, Melnikovs major buildings are in New Russia, the Saviour Cathedral in Rybinsk is based on Melnikovs design that had won the architectural competition for St. Isaacs Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It was also Melnikov who won the competition for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, neither design was approved by Alexander I of Russia. His successor, Nicholas I, also preferred the Russo-Byzantine designs of Konstantin Thon to the supposedly ponderous Late Neoclassical style espoused by Melnikov, media related to Avraam Ivanovich Melnikov at Wikimedia Commons
Avraam Melnikov
–
Saviour Cathedral, Rybinsk
Avraam Melnikov
–
Old Believer Church of St. Nicholas,
St. Petersburg
Avraam Melnikov
–
Nativity Cathedral, Chişinău
Avraam Melnikov
–
Kazan Cathedral,
Yaroslavl
26.
Tiraspol
–
Tiraspol is internationally recognised as the second largest city in Moldova, but is effectively the capital and administrative centre of the unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The city is located on the bank of the Dniester River. Tiraspol is a hub of light industry, such as furniture. The modern city of Tiraspol was founded by the Russian generalissimo Alexander Suvorov in 1792, the city celebrates its anniversary every year on October 14. The toponym consists of two ancient Greek words, Τύρας, Tyras, the Ancient name for the Dniester River, and polis, i. e. a city. Tyras, also spelled Tiras, was a colony of the Greek city Miletus, probably founded about 600 BC, of no great importance in early times in the 2nd century BC, it fell under the dominion of indigenous kings whose names appear on its coins. It was destroyed by the Thracian Getae about 50 BC, in 56 AD the Romans restored the city and made it part of the colonial province of Lower Moesia. A series of its coins exist that feature heads of Roman emperors from Domitian to Severus Alexander, soon after the time of the latter, the city was destroyed again, this time by the invasion of the Goths. Its government was in the hands of five archons, a senate, a popular assembly, the images on its coins from this period suggest a trade in wheat, wine and fish. The few inscriptions extant are mostly concerned with trade, such ancient archeological remains are scanty, as the city site was built over by the great medieval fortress of Monocastro or Akkerman. During the Middle Ages, the area around Tiraspol was a zone between the Tatars and the Moldavians, and inhabited by both ethnic groups. The Russian Empire conquered its way to the Dniester River, taking territory from the Ottoman Empire, in 1792 the Russian army built fortifications to guard the western border near a Moldavian village named Sucleia. Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov is considered the founder of modern Tiraspol, the city took its name from Tyras, the Greek name of the Dniester River on which it stands. In 1828 the Russian government established a house in Tiraspol to try to suppress smuggling. The customs house was subordinated to the chief of the Odessa customs region and it began operations with 14 employees. They inspected shipments of bread, paper, oil, wine, sugar, fruits, after the Russian Revolution, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in Ukraine in 1924, with Balta as its capital. The republic had Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian as its official languages and its capital was moved in 1929 to Tiraspol, which remained the capital of the Moldavian ASSR until 1940. In 1940, following the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Tiraspol
Tiraspol
Tiraspol
Tiraspol
27.
Ungheni
–
Ungheni, with a population of 35,157, is the seventh largest town in Moldova and the seat of Ungheni District since 2003. There is a bridge across the Prut and a checkpoint to Romania. There is another town with the same name in Romania. The first historical mention of Ungheni dates to 20 August 1462, a railway between Ungheni and Chişinău was built in 1875 by Russia in preparation for the Russo-Turkish War. After World War II, the route through Ungheni became the main connection between the USSR and Romania. In 1876 after the flooding of the river Prut the railway bridge that linked Moldova. Railway Department invited Gustave Eiffel in Bessarabia to redesign and rebuild the bridge, nowadays it is still a strategic structure under the supervision of the frontier guard. Unghiul Expresul de Ungheni Euronova TV UNGHENI. TV Radio Chişinău 93.8 FM Vocea Basarabiei 100.1 FM Anatolie Arhire Constantin Bejenaru I. A. L.371, ISBN 978-0-8108-5607-3
Ungheni
–
Ungheni
Ungheni
–
Eiffel Bridge, Ungheni
Ungheni
–
Around 1900
28.
Carol Schmidt
–
Carol Schmidt was an Imperial Russian politician in what is now Moldova. He served as mayor of Chișinău and he was a Bessarabian German and is considered one of the best mayors Chișinău ever had. Karl Schmidt – Geschichte eines deutschen Humanisten aus Bessarabien
Carol Schmidt
–
Carol Schmidt
Carol Schmidt
–
Monument of Carol Schmidt in
Chișinău
Carol Schmidt
–
Chișinău City Hall
Carol Schmidt
–
1889: Carol Schmidt (center) is reading
29.
Antisemitism
–
Antisemitism is hostility, prejudice, or discrimination directed against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite, Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism. The root word Semite gives the impression that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic people. However, the compound word antisemite was popularized in Germany in 1879 as a term for Judenhass Jew-hatred. Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, the origin of antisemitic terminologies is found in the responses of Moritz Steinschneider to the views of Ernest Renan. As Alex Bein writes, The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, avner Falk similarly writes, The German word antisemitisch was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase antisemitische Vorurteile. Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renans false ideas about how Semitic races were inferior to Aryan races and he coined the phrase the Jews are our misfortune which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Jonathan M. Hess, the term was used by its authors to stress the radical difference between their own antisemitism and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism. In 1879 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum, vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet in which he used the word Semitismus interchangeably with the word Judentum to denote both Jewry and jewishness. The pamphlet became very popular, and in the year he founded the Antisemiten-Liga. The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, In February 1881, a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums speaks of Anti-Semitism as a designation which recently came into use, on 19 July 1882, the editor says, This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old. The related term philosemitism was coined around 1885, from the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The term is confusing, for in modern usage Semitic designates a language group, though antisemitism has been used to describe bigotry against people who speak other Semitic languages, the validity of such usage has been questioned. The term may be spelled with or without a hyphen, for example, Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to the notion that there is an entity Semitism which anti-Semitism opposes. Objections to the usage of the term, such as the nature of the term Semitic as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s. Because of this bad nature, Jews have to be not as individuals. Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies, Jews bring disaster on their host societies or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist, bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest
Antisemitism
–
Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition
Antisemitism
–
Antisemitic caricature by C.Léandre (France, 1898) showing
Rothschild with the world in his hands
Antisemitism
–
1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "candidat antisémite"
Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation)
Antisemitism
–
Jews (identified by the mandatory
Jewish badge and
Jewish hat) being burned during the
Black Death in 1348.
30.
Tsar
–
Tsar /zɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/, also spelled tzar, csar, or czar, is a title used to designate certain Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, occasionally, the word could be used to designate other secular supreme rulers. Simeon II, the last Tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have borne the title Tsar, the title Tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, Caesar. In the history of the Greek language, basileus had originally meant something like potentate and it gradually approached the meaning of king in the Hellenistic Period, and it came to designate emperor after the inception in the Roman Empire. Thus, tsar was not only used as an equivalent of Latin imperator but was used to refer to Biblical rulers. From this ambiguity, the development has moved in different directions in the different Slavic languages, thus, the Bulgarian language and Russian language no longer use tsar as an equivalent of the term emperor/imperator as it exists in the West European tradition. Currently, the term refers to native sovereigns, ancient and Biblical rulers, as well as monarchs in fairy tales. The title of king is sometimes perceived as alien and is by some Russian-speakers reserved for European royalty, foreign monarchs of imperial status, both inside and outside of Europe, ancient as well as modern, are generally called imperator, rather than tsar. Biblical rulers in Serbian are called цар and in Croatian kralj, in the Polish language however tsar is always used as imperator, never as king. The term tsar is very used to refer to the Russian rulers after Peter the Great. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, the sainted Boris I is sometimes retrospectively referred to as tsar, because at his time Bulgaria was converted to Christianity. However, the tsar was actually adopted and used for the first time by his son Simeon I. Since in Byzantine political theory there was place for two emperors, Eastern and Western, the Bulgarian ruler was crowned basileus as a spiritual son of the Byzantian basileus. In Latin sources the Emperor of Bulgaria is sometimes designated Emperor of Zagora, various additional epithets and descriptions apart, the official style read Emperor and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks. During the five-century period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, the sultan was referred to as tsar. This may be related to the fact that he had claimed the legacy of the Byzantine Empire or to the fact that the sultan was called Basileus in medieval Greek, after Bulgarias liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, its new monarchs were at first autonomous prince. With the declaration of independence, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria adopted the traditional title tsar in 1908. However, these titles were not generally perceived as equivalents of emperor any longer, in the Bulgarian as in the Greek vernacular, the meaning of the title had shifted
Tsar
–
Reception of the Tsar of Russia in the
Moscow Kremlin.
Tsar
–
Redrawing of the
epitaph of ichirgu boila Mostich. Translation (the title Tsar is enclosed): “Here lies
Mostich who was
ichirgu-boil during the reigns of Tsar Simeon and Tsar Peter. At the age of eighty he forsook the rank of ichirgu boila and all of his possessions and became a monk. And so ended his life.” Now in the Museum of Preslav.
Tsar
–
Tsar
Dušan of Serbia
Tsar
–
Władysław IV of Poland was the Tsar of Russia during the
Time of Troubles, when the
Polish forces occupied
Moscow.
31.
Nicholas II of Russia
–
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic, Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader, whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. The Anglo-Russian Entente, designed to counter German attempts to influence in the Middle East. Nicholas approved the Russian mobilisation on 30 July 1914, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and it is estimated that around 3,300,000 Russians were killed in World War I. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son, Nicholas, the recovered remains of the Imperial Family were finally re-interred in St. Petersburg, eighty years to the day on 17 July 1998. In 1981, Nicholas, his wife and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five siblings, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael. Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexanders death in 1894 and he was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and his maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mothers siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece, Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as Nikolasha and Nicholas the Tall, while the Tsar was Nicholas the Short. In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mothers siblings would come from the United Kingdom, Germany. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, in 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle
Nicholas II of Russia
–
Tsar Nicholas II, in the uniform of a
Royal Navy Admiral of the Fleet, c. 1909
Nicholas II of Russia
–
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia with his physically similar cousin,
King George V of the United Kingdom (right), in German military uniforms in Berlin before the war; 1913
Nicholas II of Russia
–
Tsarevich Nicholas in Japan (1891)
Nicholas II of Russia
–
Official engagement photograph of Nicholas II and Alexandra, April 1894
32.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
–
Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
–
Flag
United States
–
The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
–
The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
33.
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt successfully overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle and he integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements into a cowboy persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard College and his first of many books, The Naval War of 1812, established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the faction of Republicans in New Yorks state legislature. Returning a war hero, he was elected governor of New York in 1898, the state party leadership distrusted him, so they took the lead in moving him to the prestigious but powerless role of vice presidential candidate as McKinleys running mate in the election of 1900. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously across the country, helping McKinleys re-election in a victory based on a platform of peace, prosperity. Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt succeeded to the office at age 42, making conservation a top priority, he established a myriad of new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nations natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal and he greatly expanded the United States Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies, but many of his efforts and much of his legislative agenda were eventually blocked in Congress. Roosevelt successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the presidency, after leaving office, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa and toured Europe. Returning to the United States, he became frustrated with Tafts approach, failing to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, Roosevelt founded his own party, the Progressive, so-called Bull Moose Party, and called for wide-ranging progressive reforms. The split among Republicans enabled the Democrats to win both the White House and a majority in the Congress in 1912, Republicans aligned with Taft nationally would control the Republican Party for decades. Frustrated at home, Roosevelt led an expedition to the Amazon basin. During World War I, he opposed President Woodrow Wilson for keeping the country out of the war, and offered his military services, although planning to run again for president in 1920, Roosevelt suffered deteriorating health and died in early 1919. Roosevelt has consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest American presidents. Historians admire Roosevelt for rooting out corruption in his administration, but are critical of his 1909 libel lawsuits against the World and his face was carved into Mount Rushmore, alongside those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27,1858, at East 20th Street in New York City and he was the second of four children born to socialite Martha Stewart Mittie Bulloch and glass businessman and philanthropist Theodore Roosevelt Sr
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Theodore Roosevelt at age 11
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Roosevelt's taxidermy kit
Theodore Roosevelt
–
Roosevelt as NY State Assemblyman, 1883
34.
October Manifesto
–
The Manifesto was issued by Emperor Nicholas II, under the influence of Sergei Witte, on 30 October 1905 as a response to the Russian Revolution of 1905. According to his memoirs Witte did not force the Tsar to sign the October Manifesto, while France, Great Britain, and the United States had chosen democracy in one form or another, the Russian Empire maintained its ancient autocratic government, headed by the Tsar. Russia had in the early 1890s, under guidance of Minister of Finance Sergei Witte, embarked on a programme of industrialisation through foreign investments. However the rapid growth in industry during this period was not met by political reform, nonetheless, peasants still formed 80 percent of the population and, despite the emancipation of the serfs, agrarian problems were still marked. Russia, remaining a mostly agricultural economy, created economic issues, the conflict created by Russia’s economic and political issues climaxed in the months prior to October 1905, also known as the Russian Revolution of 1905. On January 22,1905, peaceful protesters attempted to bring a petition to the Tsar, however this protest was violently put down outside the winter palace when guards were ordered to fire on the protesters. The result of the violent revolt of the protest would be known as Bloody Sunday, the violent reaction to the protest increased the tension throughout Russia further. Unrest amongst the Russian people followed Bloody Sunday, by the thousands people refused to go to work and general strike crippled the Empire. Unrest eventually spread to the Russian countryside where peasants began to burn their masters manors as the Russian people revolted against the autocracy, with Russia’s communication, transportation and public services crippled by the strikes, Nicholas II was forced to act before he lost power completely. Although Russia was at a standstill with violent revolts terrorizing the nation. Nicholas felt that it was not his place to limit a system created by his ancestors and is quoted as saying I cannot squander a legacy that is not mine to squander. Nicholas could not bring himself to understand that the Russian people wished to limit his power, the Manifesto also introduced universal male suffrage in Russia which was common in Western countries at the time. This document, although granting basic rights to the Russian people, instead the Manifesto just stated that the people now had basic rights and a voice in legislation. One provision of the Manifesto was the creation of a body in Russia. The legislative body known as the Duma was flawed from its inception, one major flaw of the Duma was that the Tsar maintained the power to veto any legislation that he wished. The Duma was also weakened by the influence of the Russian bureaucracy, as well as the fact that the body could be disbanded by Nicholas if he, the October Manifesto divided opposition to the Emperor. The Kadets were appeased by the idea of having freedom of speech and a representative government. Successes of the Manifesto were immediate and short-lived, the strikes and much of the violence ended almost as soon as it was published
October Manifesto
–
Demonstration 17 October 1905 by
Ilya Repin (
Russian Museum.
St. Petersburg).
35.
October Revolution
–
It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
October Revolution
–
Red Guards at Vulkan factory in 1917
October Revolution
–
Bolshevik (1920), by
Boris Kustodiev
October Revolution
–
A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters.
October Revolution
–
Cruiser
Aurora
36.
Moldavian Democratic Republic
–
The Sfatul Țării was its legislative body, while the Council of Directors General, renamed the Council of Ministers after the Declaration of Independence, was its government. The Peasants Congress, which place in October 1917, voted Mimi out. This move was planned by Alexander Kerenski, who sent Inculeț, as soon as the Peasants Congress, which had no legal power, voted, Kerenski formally replaced Mimi with Inculeț. When Inculeț arrived in Chișinău to take power, he faced the opposition of the nobility. When the republic was proclaimed, Criste stepped down and passed his powers to Inculeț. The Sfatul Țării of Bessarabia was elected in October–November 1917, and it proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic as a federal subject of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. In the context of the October Revolution, the Russian Army on the Romanian Front disintegrated, the large number of retreating soldiers increased the level of anarchy in Bessarabia, leaving the National Council with only minimal authority over the territory. As the General Staff of the Romanian Front was unable to send any troops, attempts were made to organize a Moldavian National Guard, furthermore, most of the army corps nominally subjected to the National Council came under Bolshevik influence. However, in mid-January Romanians entered the country, engaged in battles with the Moldavian and Bolshevik troops, discouraged by the fact that the Romanian troops were already present in Chișinău, many minority deputies abstained from voting. The union was confirmed in the Treaty of Paris, the new leadership and Council was put in place after the country was declared independence by Daniil Ciugureanu, as President of the Council of Ministers. The Sfatul Țării was initially composed of 120 elected members, although numbers were later increased to 135. For example, on 9 April, there were 138 legislators, of which 125 took part in the vote, Vladimir Criste, Director General for Internal Affairs. Ștefan Ciobanu, Director General for Education, teofil Ioncu, Director General for Finance. Nicolae N. Codreanu, Director General for Railways, major Teodor Cojocaru, Director General for Armed Forces. Mihail Savenco, Director General for Justice, E. Grinfeld, Director General for Industry and Trade. Ion Pelivan, Director General for Foreign Affairs, union of Bessarabia with Romania Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Russian Revolution of 1917 Odessa Soviet Republic Iona Yakir
Moldavian Democratic Republic
–
Map of the Moldavian Democratic Republic
Moldavian Democratic Republic
–
Flag
Moldavian Democratic Republic
–
Sfatul Țării Palace.
Moldavian Democratic Republic
–
Sfatul Țării members in front of the
parliament building.
37.
Kingdom of Romania
–
The Kingdom of Romania was a constitutional monarchy which existed between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania. As such, it is distinct from the Romanian Old Kingdom. From 1859 to 1877, Romania evolved from a union of two vassal principalities under a single prince to a full-fledged independent kingdom with a Hohenzollern monarchy. During 1918-20, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Eastern Moldavia, in 1947 King Michael was compelled to abdicate and a socialist republic ruled by the Romanian Communist Party replaced the monarchy. The 1859 ascendancy of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as prince of both Moldavia and Wallachia under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire united an identifiably Romanian nation under a single ruler. On 5 February 1862 the two principalities were united to form the Principality of Romania, with Bucharest as its capital. On 23 February 1866 a so-called Monstrous coalition, composed of Conservatives and radical Liberals, the German prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was appointed as Prince of Romania, in a move to assure German backing to unity and future independence. He immediately adopted the Romanian spelling of his name, Carol, on 15 March 1881, as an assertion of full sovereignty, the Romanian parliament raised the country to the status of a kingdom, and Carol was crowned as king on 10 May. Abstaining from the Initial Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Romania entered the Second Balkan War in June 1913 against the Tsardom of Bulgaria,330,000 Romanian troops moved across the Danube and into Bulgaria. One army occupied Southern Dobrudja and another moved into northern Bulgaria to threaten Sofia, Romania thus acquired the ethnically-mixed territory of Southern Dobrudja, which it had desired for years. In 1916 Romania entered World War I on the Entente side, the term came into use after World War I, when the Old Kingdom was opposed to Greater Romania, which included Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. Nowadays, the term mainly has a historical relevance, and is used as a common term for all regions in Romania included in both the Old Kingdom and present-day borders. Romania delayed in entering World War I, but ultimately declared war on the Central Powers in 1916, War with the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 resulted in the occupation of Budapest by Romanian troops and the end of Béla Kuns Bolshevik regime. At the Paris Peace Conference, Romania received territories of Transylvania, part of Banat, Bessarabia, thus, Romania in 1920 was more than twice the size it had been in 1914. Although the country was satisfied and had no territorial claims, it aroused the enmity of Bulgaria, and especially Hungary. Greater Romania now encompassed a significant minority population, especially of Hungarians, by contrast, the prewar Romanian state had only one real minority, Jews, but nonetheless anti-Semitism was widespread. Transylvania had significant Hungarian and German population, and with a contemptuous attitude towards Romanians. Both groups were excluded from politics as the postwar Romanian regime passed an edict stating that all personnel employed by the state had to speak Romanian
Kingdom of Romania
–
Proclamation Act of the Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
–
Flag
Kingdom of Romania
–
1901 German map of the Old Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
–
Carol I of Romania
38.
Renovation
–
Renovation is the process of improving a broken, damaged, or outdated structure. Renovations are typically either commercial or residential, additionally, renovation can refer to making something new, or bringing something back to life and can apply in social contexts. For example, a community can be renovated if it is strengthened and revived, builders often renovate homes because it is a stable source of income. Wood is versatile and flexible, making it the easiest construction material for renovations, few homeowners or professional remodellers possess the skill and equipment that is required to alter steel-frame or concrete structures. Forest certification verifies that products have been sourced from well-managed forests. In North America, most structures are demolished because of forces such as zoning changes. Additionally, buildings that cannot be modified to serve the needs of the occupants are subject to demolition. Very few buildings on the continent are demolished due to structural degradation, the Athena Institute surveyed 227 commercial and residential buildings that were demolished in St. Paul, Minnesota, between 2000 and mid-2003. Thirty percent of the buildings were less than 50 years old, the four top reasons for demolition were “area redevelopment”, “building’s physical condition”, “not suitable for anticipated use”, and “fire damage”. Lack of maintenance was cited as the problem for 54 of the 70 buildings where physical condition was given as the reason for demolition. Most builders focus on building new homes, so renovating is typically an activity for such tradespeople. The processes and services required for renovations are quite specific and, once plans are signed off, renovations usually require all of the sub-trades that are needed for the construction of a new building. During renovation projects, flexibility is required from renovation companies to respond to unexpected issues that arise. Projects involving renovation require not just flexibility, but a plan that had agreed upon by multiple parties. The planning process will involve feedback from financial investors of the project, part of planning will also entail the collection of data for the completion of the project and then the project plan will be revised and given consent before continuing with renovations
Renovation
–
Truman's renovation of the White House, 17 May 1950
Renovation
–
renovated Church, now condominiums,
Watertown,
Massachusetts
39.
Stephen the Great Monument
–
The Stephen the Great Monument is a prominent monument in Chişinău, Moldova. The monument to Stephen the Great was designed by architect Alexandru Plămădeală in 1923 and it was erected near the main entrance of the Stephen the Great Park in Central Chişinău. The monument was completed in 1927 and opened on 29 April 1928, the total cost of the monument was 4.000.000 lei. A few days before the 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the monument was relocated to Vaslui, on August 25,1942, the monument was returned to Chişinău and taken back to Romania in 1944. In 1945, the Soviet authorities ordered the restoration of the monument to Chişinău, on 31 August 1989 the monument to Stephen the Great was returned to its original location, chosen by Alexandru Plămădeală in the 1920s. Flower-laying ceremonies are performed at the pedestal of this monument on each national holiday and on days of official top. Media related to Stephen the Great Monument, Chișinău at Wikimedia Commons The Monument to Stephen the Great The Monuments of Kishinev
Stephen the Great Monument
–
Stephen the Great Monument
40.
War in Transnistria
–
Fighting intensified on 1 March 1992 and, alternating with ad hoc ceasefires, lasted throughout the spring and early summer of 1992 until a ceasefire was declared on 21 July 1992, which has held. The conflict remained unresolved, but in 2011 talks were held under the auspices of the Organization for Security, however, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the territorial changes resulting from it have remained in place. It represents slightly more than one tenth of Moldovas territory, in the Moldavian SSR, as in many other parts of the Soviet Union, national movements became the leading political force. According to John Mackinlay and Peter Cross, who conducted a study based on casualty reports and they suggest that the conflict is more political in nature. On 31 August 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR enacted two laws, one of them made Moldovan the official language, in lieu of Russian, the de facto official language of the Soviet Union. It also mentioned a linguistic Moldo-Romanian identity, the second law stipulated the return to the Latin Romanian alphabet. Moldovan language is the used in the former Soviet Union for a virtually identical dialect of the Romanian language during 1940–1989. On 27 April 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR adopted the tricolour flag with the Moldavian coat of arms and changed the national anthem to Deșteaptă-te. The national anthem of Romania since 1989, later that year the words Soviet and Socialist were dropped and the name of the country was changed to Republic of Moldova. This possibility caused fears among the Russian-speaking population that it would be excluded from most aspects of public life, from September 1989, there were strong scenes of protests in the region against the central governments ethnic policies. The language laws presented a particularly volatile issue as a proportion of the non-Moldovan population of the Moldavian SSR did not speak Moldovan. The problem of the language in the MSSR had become a Gordian knot, being exaggerated and, perhaps. Some described the laws as discriminatory and criticized their rapid implementation. Others, on the contrary, complained the laws were not followed, on 2 September 1990, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed, Pridnestrovie being the name for Transnistria in Russian. On 22 December 1990 president Gorbachev signed a decree that declared void the decisions of the Second Congress of People Deputies of Transnistria from 2 September, for two months, Moldovan authorities refrained from taking action against this proclamation. Transnistria became one of the republics that appeared throughout the USSR, alongside Abkhazia, South Ossetia. These unrecognized states maintained close ties with each other, the first clash between the Moldovan government and separatists occurred on 3 November 1990 in Dubăsari. A police detachment was dispatched to clear a roadblock placed by the city residents on the bridge over the river Dniester that effectively cut the city off from the central government, in the resulting shootout, three residents of Dubăsari were killed, the first casualties of the conflict
War in Transnistria
–
PMR trucks on the bridge between Tiraspol and Bendery
War in Transnistria
–
Map of conflict region
War in Transnistria
–
Building still showing damage from the brief fighting in
Bendery during Transnistria's war for independence from Moldova
War in Transnistria
–
Bendery's war memorial
41.
Cold War
–
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
Cold War
–
Photograph of the
Berlin Wall taken from the West side. The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and to stop an economically disastrous drain of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.
Cold War
–
Allied troops in
Vladivostok, August 1918, during the
Allied intervention in the
Russian Civil War.
Cold War
–
The "
Big Three " at the Yalta Conference:
Winston Churchill,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Joseph Stalin, 1945.
42.
Botanica District
–
Sectorul Botanica is one of the five sectors in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. Botanica is one of the more scenic districts in Chișinău, it hosts a zoo, the local administration is managed by a pretor appointed by the city administration. It governs over a portion of the city of Chișinău itself, the town of Sîngera, the density of Russians and Ukrainians is little higher than on other districts of Chisinau. Outside Botanica itself there is housing for displaced persons and asylum seekers, Botanica is easily accessible from the rest of the city and also includes a shopping mall, Jumbo shopping centre. In Botanica is located the second stadium by capacity from Moldova, Zimbru Stadium
Botanica District
–
Bulevardul Dacia in Sectorul Botanica
Botanica District
–
Gates of Chișinău, the southern the entrance into the city lies in Sectorul Botanica
43.
1940 Vrancea earthquake
–
The 1940 Vrancea earthquake, also known as the 1940 Bucharest earthquake, occurred on Sunday,10 November 1940, in Romania, at 3,39 am, when the majority of the population was at home. The 1940 earthquake registered a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale and its epicenter lay in Vrancea zone at a depth of about 133 km.1940 was characterized by a very high seismic activity in Vrancea. In the first months of 1940 there were earthquakes of magnitude 4. 5–5 that occurred at depths of 130–160 km, on 24 June, there was an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 at a depth of 115 km, scarcely felt in Wallachia and Moldavia. There followed a period of relative calmness until 3 October, when an earthquake of magnitude 4. 7–5.0 occurred at a depth of 150 km. On the evening of 21 October, there were many earthquakes, only light damage, for example, cracks in walls and broken windows, was reported, but no casualties. This earthquake did not have immediate after shocks, at the beginning of November there were, however, several earthquakes over 4.0 at about 140–150 km depth. On 8 November, at 2 pm. less than two days before the earthquake, there was another earthquake of magnitude 5.5 at a depth of 145 km. A day later, in the afternoon of 9 November there were weak and local earthquakes, around the town of Panciu. The earthquakes effects were devastating in central and southern Moldova and Walachia, the number of casualties was estimated at 1,000 dead while 4,000 are believed to have been injured, mostly in Moldova. Because of the context in which it occurred, the number of victims was not known as this kind of information was censored during the war. The earthquake was felt in Bucharest, where 267 people were killed in the collapse of Carlton Bloc, a 14-story reinforced concrete structure, after the earthquake, the basement was engulfed in flames which hampered the intervention of rescue teams. Almost all ceilings of the concert halls collapsed, the American Embassy, the Posts hotel, the building of the Ministry of Agriculture and that of the General Staff were reported destroyed. According to the documents of the National Firefighters Museum,185 buildings completely collapsed in Bucharest, the Romanian General Association of Engineers undertook a detailed study of earthquake effects on reinforced concrete buildings. The main conclusion was that the used for constructing reinforced concrete buildings. Following the study, new rules were developed and applied to all postwar buildings, in Câmpina, a densely populated oil town, refinery chimneys toppled, houses collapsed, and pipelines burst, dousing the ground with a sticky and inflammable threat. In the heavily guarded Ploiești, a few fires broke out. In Chișinău were reported 78 deaths and 2,795 affected buildings, according to recorded testimonies, luminous phenomena were observed, both in the epicentral area and in regions that are far away from the epicenter. Time magazine said that about 98 bodies were extricated from under Carlton debris, while there were 357 killed, the rest of the countrys casualties were mostly in masonry buildings
1940 Vrancea earthquake
–
Rescue operations for survivors in Carlton Bloc
1940 Vrancea earthquake
44.
Epicenter
–
The term was coined by the Irish seismologist Robert Mallet. The word, however, is misused to mean center. In seismology, the epicenter is the point on the Earths surface directly above the point where the fault begins to rupture, however, in larger events, the length of the fault rupture is much longer, and damage can be spread across the rupture zone. During an earthquake seismic waves propagate spherically out from the hypocenter, outside of the seismic shadow zone both types of wave can be detected but, due to their different velocities and paths through the Earth, they arrive at different times. This distance is called the distance, commonly measured in °. Once epicentral distances have been calculated from at least three seismographic measuring stations, it is a matter to find out where the epicenter was located using trilateration. Epicentral distance is used in calculating seismic magnitudes developed by Richter. Epicenter is frequently misused when not employed in the context of seismology and it is often utilized as an alternative to centre. For example, Travel is restricted in the Chinese province thought to be the epicentre of the SARS outbreak, garners Modern American Usage gives several examples of such misuse. However, Garner notes that these misusages may be metaphorical uses of the term to describe focal points of unstable and potentially destructive environments
Epicenter
–
The epicentre is directly above the
earthquake 's
hypocentre (focus).
45.
Richter magnitude scale
–
The Richter magnitude scale assigns a magnitude number to quantify the size of an earthquake. As measured with a seismometer, an earthquake that registers 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times greater than an earthquake that registered 4.0 at the same distance. This means that, for instance, an earthquake of magnitude 5 releases 31.6 times as energy as an earthquake of magnitude 4. In the United States, the Richter scale was succeeded in the 1970s by the moment magnitude scale, the moment magnitude scale is now the scale used by the United States Geological Survey to estimate magnitudes for all modern large earthquakes. Richter derived his earthquake-magnitude scale from the apparent magnitude scale used to measure the brightness of stars and that fixed measure was chosen to avoid negative values for magnitude, given that the slightest earthquakes that could be recorded and located at the time were around magnitude 3.0. The Richter magnitude scale itself has no limit, and contemporary seismometers can register, record. M L was not designed to be applied to data with distances to the hypocenter of the earthquake that were greater than 600 km. Later, to express the size of earthquakes around the planet, Gutenberg and Richter developed a surface wave magnitude scale and these are types of waves that are recorded at teleseismic distances. The two scales were adjusted such that they were consistent with the M L scale and that adjustment succeeded better with the M s scale than with the M b scale. Each scale saturates when the earthquake is greater than magnitude 8.0, because of this, researchers in the 1970s developed the moment magnitude scale. The older magnitude-scales were superseded by methods for calculating the seismic moment, about the origins of the Richter magnitude scale, C. F. Richter said, I found a paper by Professor K. Wadati of Japan in which he compared large earthquakes by plotting the maximum ground motion against distance to the epicenter. I tried a similar procedure for our stations, but the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large, dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot the amplitudes logarithmically. I was lucky, because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil, the particular instrument used would become saturated by strong earthquakes and unable to record high values. The scale was replaced in the 1970s by the moment magnitude scale, for earthquakes adequately measured by the Richter scale, anything above 5 is classified as a risk by the USGS. Several scales have historically described as the Richter scale, especially the local magnitude M L. In addition, the body wave magnitude, m b, a couple of new techniques to measure magnitude are in the development stage by seismologists. All magnitude scales have been designed to give similar results
Richter magnitude scale
–
Charles Francis Richter, c. 1970
46.
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Moldavia, officially the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known to as Soviet Moldavia, was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on August 2,1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on June 28 of that year, and parts of the MASSR, an autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR. After the Declaration of Sovereignty on June 23,1990 and until 23 May 1991 it was known as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova. From 23 May 1991 until the declaration of independence on 27 August 1991, geographically, the Moldavian SSR was bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. On August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty, the secret protocol placed the Romanian province of Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. On June 26, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was thereafter created following the entrance of Soviet troops on June 28,1940. 90% of the territory of MSSR was on the bank of the river Dniester. As such, the strategically important Black Sea coast and Danube frontage were given to the Ukrainian SSR, considered more reliable than the Moldavian SSR, by the end of World War II the Soviet Union had reconquered all of the lost territories, reestablishing Soviet authority there. On June 22,1941, during the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union,10 people were killed in Răzeni by Soviet authorities, a memorial was opened in 2009. The Soviet authorities targeted several socio-economic groups due to their situation, political views. They were deported to or resettled in Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, according to a report by the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, no less than 86,604 people were arrested and deported in 1940-1941 alone. Modern Russian historians put forward a number of 90,000 for the same period. NKVD/MGB also struck at anti-Soviet groups, which were most active in 1944-1952, a de-kulakisation campaign was directed towards the rich Moldavian peasant families, which were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia as well. Religious persecutions during the Soviet occupation targeted numerous priests, after the Soviet occupation, the religious life underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the two World Wars. Other deportation campaigns were directed towards the ethnic Germans and religious minorities, collectivisation was implemented between 1949 and 1950, although earlier attempts were made since 1946. According to Charles King, there is evidence that it was caused by the Soviets and directed towards the largest ethnic group living in the countryside. The main cause was the Soviet requisitioning of large amounts of products, but it was also aggravated by war, the draught of 1946. With the regime of Nikita Khrushchev replacing that of Joseph Stalin, in the 1970s and 1980s Moldavia received substantial investment from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial, scientific facilities, as well as housing
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Nicolae Ceaușescu and
Ivan Bodiul in Chișinău, 1976
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Flag
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Distribution of major ethnic groups in Moldavian SSR, 1989
47.
Nazi Germany
–
Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
Nazi Germany
–
Hitler became Germany's head of state, with the title of
Führer und Reichskanzler, in 1934.
Nazi Germany
–
Flag
Nazi Germany
–
Joseph Goebbels,
Reich Minister of Propaganda
Nazi Germany
–
Ethnic Germans in
Saaz, Czechoslovakia, greet German soldiers with the
Nazi salute, 1938
48.
Strategic bombing
–
One of the aims of war is to demoralize the enemy, so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end, because the term has pejorative connotations, some, including the Allies of World War II, have preferred to use euphemisms such as will to resist and morale bombings. The theoretical distinction between tactical and strategic air warfare was developed between the two world wars, some leading theorists of strategic air warfare during this period were the Italian Giulio Douhet, the Trenchard school in the United Kingdom, and General Billy Mitchell in the United States. One of the aims of war is to demoralise the enemy, facing continual death, when such attacks were tried in the 1930s—in the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War—they were ineffective. Commentators observed the failures and some air forces, such as the Luftwaffe, Terror bombing is an emotive term used for aerial attacks planned to weaken or break enemy morale. Use of the term to refer to aerial attacks implies the attacks are criminal according to the law of war, or if within the laws of war are nevertheless a moral crime. The Allied governments usually described their bombing of cities with other such as area bombing or precision bombing. He then added in a remark that the raid also helped destroy what is left of German morale. Howard Cowan, an Associated Press war correspondent, filed a story about the Dresden raid, there were followup newspaper editorials on the issue and a longtime opponent of strategic bombing, Richard Stokes, MP, asked questions in the House of Commons on 6 March. The first bombing of a city was on the night of 24–25 August 1914, the first effective strategic bombing was pioneered by the Royal Naval Air Service in 1914. The mission was to attack the Zeppelin production lines and their sheds at Cologne, led by Charles Rumney Samson the force of four aircraft inflicted minor damage on the sheds. The raid was repeated a month later with more success. Within a year or so, specialized aircraft and dedicated bomber squadrons were in service on both sides. These were generally used for bombing, the aim was that of directly harming enemy troops, strongpoints, or equipment. Eventually, attention turned to the possibility of causing harm to the enemy by systematically attacking vital rear-area resources. The most well known attacks were those done by Zeppelins over England through the course of the war, in all, four people were killed and sixteen injured, and monetary damage was estimated at £7,740. German airships also bombed on other fronts, for example in January 1915 on Liepāja in Latvia, in 1915 there were 19 more raids, in which 37 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 181 people and injuring 455. London was accidentally bombed in May, and in July the Kaiser allowed directed raids against urban centers, there were 23 airship raids in 1916, in which 125 tons of ordnance were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691
Strategic bombing
–
Tokyo after the massive
firebombing attack on the night of March 9–10, 1945, the single most destructive raid in
military aviation history. The
bombing of Tokyo in World War II cut the city's industrial productivity by half.
Strategic bombing
–
A 1918 Air Raid rehearsal, evacuating children from a hospital.
Strategic bombing
–
German airship bombing
Calais on the night of 21–22 February 1915
Strategic bombing
–
Ruins of Guernica (1937)
49.
Holocaust
–
The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe, killings took place throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany, and across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovahs Witnesses, some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators, the persecution was carried out in stages, culminating in the policy of extermination of European Jews termed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Following Hitlers rise to power, the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, starting in 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of concentration camps. After the outbreak of war in 1939 both German and foreign Jews were herded into wartime ghettos, in 1941, as Germany began to conquer new territory in the East, all anti-Jewish measures radicalized. Specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings actions in less than a year, by mid-1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945, the most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20, 000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis, French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place, the term holocaust comes from the Greek adjective holókaustos, a variant of holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole animal is completely burnt. Often used substantively in apposition with the noun thysia, the term appears in a fragment of pseudo-Callisthenes, writing in Latin, Jerome Latinized the Greek word as a neuter noun holocaustum, using it to translate references to the Jewish burnt offering in his translations of Exodus and Leviticus. In his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Richard of Devizes, the English poet John Milton had used the word to denote a conflagration in his 1671 poem Samson Agonistes and the word gradually developed to mean a massacre thereon. The term was used in the 1950s by historians as a translation of the Jewish word shoah to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the television mini-series Holocaust is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978. The biblical word shoah, meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons including the offensive nature of the word holocaust which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom. The Nazis used the phrase Final Solution to the Jewish Question, all branches of Germanys bureaucracy were engaged in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, Michael Berenbaum, has called a genocidal state. Every arm of the countrys sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, as prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was in the eyes of the perpetrators, through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
Holocaust
–
Hungarian Jews are selected by Nazis to be sent to the
gas chamber at
Auschwitz concentration camp, May/June 1944.
Holocaust
–
Romani children in
Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments.
Holocaust
–
In Germany,
Sturmabteilung stormtroopers urge a national boycott of all Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933. These SA stormtroopers are outside
Israel's Department Store in Berlin to deter customers. The signs read: "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews." (" Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden! ") The store was later ransacked during
Kristallnacht in 1938, then handed over to a non-Jewish family.
Moldova.png)
listen), also known as Kishinev (Russian: Кишинёв, tr. Kishinyov), is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial center, and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc. According to the results of the 2014 census, the city of Chișinău is home to 532,513 residents,[3] the number of resident population in the Municipality of Chișinău (which includes other nearby communities) is 662,836.[3]
._(8257398062).jpg)
._(17821899839).jpg)
.jpg)
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}
.jpg)
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Travel guide from Wikivoyage
Learning resources from Wikiversity
