1.
Carol I Mosque
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Grand Mosque of Constanța, originally known as the Carol I Mosque, is a mosque in Constanța, Romania. It is listed as a monument by the Romanian National Institute of Historical Monuments. The mosque is referred to by Constanțas Islamic community as the Kings Mosque, the Grand Mosque of Constanța stands on the site of the former Mahmudia Mosque, built in 1822 by Hafız Hüsseyin Pașa and named after Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II. The Grand Mosque of Constanța was commissioned in 1910 by Romanian King Carol I, the project was funded by the Romanian Government and entrepreneur Ion Neculcea, and finished construction in 1912. The mosque was inaugurated by Carol I on 31 May 1913. During the ceremony, Sultan Mehmed V bestowed the Order of the Medjidie upon chief architect Victor Ștefănescu, King Carol I also rewarded Ștefănescu with a watch. The mosque was built in Neo-Egyptian and Neo-Byzantine styles with elements of Neo-Romanesque architecture and its designer, George Constantinescu, modeled the mosque after the Konya Mosque in Anatolia. Victor Ștefănescu served as the architect for the project. Contractors used brick and stone materials for the proper, and reinforced concrete for the dome. The mosque was the first structure in Romania to be built using reinforced concrete, the main portal was constructed using stone from Dobrogea, while the door beneath was constructed from black marble inlaid with bronze. The interior columns were constructed from marble from Câmpulung, the minaret was built in Neo-Moorish style and has a height of 47 metres. The dome has a height of 25 metres and a diameter of 8 metres
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Romania
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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 back 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
4.
Counties of Romania
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A total of 41 counties, along with the municipality of Bucharest, constitute the official administrative divisions of Romania. They represent the countrys NUTS-3 statistical subdivisions within the European Union, most counties are named after a major river, while some are named after notable cities within them, such as the county seat. The earliest organization into județe of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia dates back to at least the late 14th century, for most of the time since modern Romania was formed in 1859, the administrative division system has been similar to the French departments one. The system has changed several times since then, and the number of counties has varied over time. The current format has largely been in place since 1968 as only small changes have made since then. The average countys land area is 5,809 square kilometres, with Timiș County the largest and Ilfov County the smallest. The municipality of Bucharest, which has the administrative level as that of a county, is both more populous and much smaller than any county, with 1,883,425 people and 228 square kilometres. The earliest organization into județe, and ținuturi, dates back at least to the late 14th century, inspired from the organization of the late Byzantine Empire, each județ was ruled by a jude, a person officially appointed with administrative and judicial functions. Transylvania was divided into counties headed by comes with administrative. Aside from the 1950–1968 period, this system has remained in place until today, until 1948, each județ was further divided into several plăși, each administered by a pretor. County borders were largely intact, with few adjustments, and the total number of counties was raised to 71. In 1938, King Carol II modified the law on the administration of the Romanian territory according to the fascist model, ten ținuturi were created, ruled by Rezidenți Regali, appointed directly by the Monarch. The ținuturi represented another layer of administration between counties and the country, as the county borders were not erased, due to the territorial changes during World War II, this style of administration did not last, and the administration at the județ level was reintroduced after the war. Between 1941–1944, Romania administered the territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers known as Transnistria, which consisted of 13 separate counties. After taking over the administration of the country in 1945, the Communist Party changed the model to that of the Soviet Union in 1950. Nevertheless, the county borders set then were different from those present during the interbellum. The county borders set in 1968 are still largely in place today, at present, Romania is divided into 41 counties and one municipality, these are assigned as the NUTS-3 geocode statistical subdivision scheme of Romania within the European Union. Each of the counties is further divided into cities and communes, the territorial districts of the Romanian judicial system overlap with county borders, thus avoiding further complication in the separation of powers on the government
5.
Social Democratic Party (Romania)
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The Social Democratic Party is the major social-democratic political party in Romania. PSD traces its origins to the Democratic National Salvation Front, a group established in 1992 from the post-communist National Salvation Front. In 1993 this merged with three parties to become the Party of Social Democracy in Romania. The present name was adopted after a merger with the smaller Romanian Social Democratic Party in 2001, since its formation, it has always been one of the two dominant parties of the country. The PDSR governed Romania from 1992 to 1996, while the PSDR was a coalition partner between 1996 and 2000. The party left government after Prime Minister Victor Ponta resigned in November 2015, the founder of the party, Ion Iliescu, became President of the Republic, in office from the end of Communism in 1989 to 1996, and again from 2000 to 2004. On 22 April 2016, Liviu Dragnea was found guilty for vote rigging in the 2012 referendum, dragneas electoral rights and party membership were not suspended, thus he refused to step down as President of the PSD, having the support of almost the entire party. FDSN won the 1992 elections and went on to govern Romania until 1996, on 10 July 1993 it took the name of Party of Social Democracy in Romania upon merger with the Socialist Democratic Party of Romania, the Republican Party and the Cooperative Party. From 1994 to 1996 the PDSR ruled in coalition with the right-wing Romanian National Unity Party and Greater Romania Party, PUNR had ministers in the cabinet chaired by Nicolae Văcăroiu from March 1994 to September 1996. PRM was not present at the Cabinet, but was given some posts in the State administration, the PDSR went into opposition after the 1996 election, which was won by the right-wing coalition Romanian Democratic Convention. PSDR merged with PDSR on 16 June 2001, and the party took its present name. Mircea Geoană was elected president of the party in April 2005 by delegates at a PSD Party Congress held in Bucharest and his victory represented a surprise defeat for former President Ion Iliescu, who was expected to defeat Geoană handily. On 17 April 2008, the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party announced they would form an alliance for the 2008 local elections. In February 2010, the Congress elected Victor Ponta as president, on 5 February 2011, the PSD formed a political alliance known as the Social Liberal Union with the Conservative Party and National Liberal Party. The USL was disbanded on 25 February 2014 with exit of the National Liberal Party which immediately entered opposition, a number of its current or former senior members have also been accused of corruption, interfering in the judiciary and using their political positions for personal enrichment. Alleged text transcripts of PSD meetings surfaced on an anonymous Web site just before the 2004 Romanian presidential election, Năstase and his ministers are shown talking about political involvement in corruption trials of the governments members, or involvement in suppressing disobedient media. Năstase stated that the transcripts were fake, but several party members, including former PSD president, adrian Năstase temporarily self-suspended himself from the position on 16 January 2006 pending investigation of a scandal provoked by his wealth declaration, where he was accused of corruption. Politicians of the party have occasionally employed utilitarian anti-Semitism and this means that politicians who may usually not be anti-Semites played off certain anti-Semitic prejudices, in order to serve their political necessities
6.
Metropolitan area
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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
7.
Romanians
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Romanians are natives of Romania that share a common Romanian culture, ancestry, and speak the Romanian language as a mother tongue, as well as by citizenship or by being subjects to the same country. Just under 89% of Romanias population identified as Romanian in the 2011 Romanian Census, in one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are also a minority in several nearby countries. Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, todays territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, the Roman administration withdrew two centuries later, under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi. Two theories account for the origin of the Romanian people, according to the first theory, the Romanians are descended from indigenous populations that inhabited what is now Romania and its immediate environs, Thracians and Roman legionnaires and colonists. This process was concluded by the 10th century when the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romanians was completed. The south-of-the Danube theory usually favours northern Albania and/or Moesia as the specific places of Romanian ethnogenesis. Small genetic differences were found among Southeastern European populations and especially those of the Dniester–Carpathian region. The genetic affinities among Dniester–Carpathian and southeastern European populations do not reflect their linguistic relationships, according to the report, the results indicate that the ethnic and genetic differentiations occurred in these regions to a considerable extent independently of each other. The entire Balkan peninsula was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, however, Moldavia and Wallachia were allowed a certain degree of temporary autonomy. Transylvania, a region inhabited by a slight majority of Romanian speakers had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918. The three principalities were united for several months in 1600 under the authority of Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave and this area fell to the Ottoman Turks by the 15th century. Up until 1541, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, in 1699 it became a part of the Habsburg lands. By the 19th century, the Austrian Empire was awarded by the Ottomans with the region of Bukovina and, in 1812, in 1821 and 1848, two rebellions occurred, and both failed, but they had an important role in the spreading of the liberal ideology. In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same ruler – Alexander John Cuza and were thus unified de facto, the newly founded Kingdom of Romania—led by the Hohenzollern prince Carol I—fought a War of Independence against the Ottomans, and was recognised in 1878. Although allied with Austria-Hungary, Romania refused to go to enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, in 1916, Romania joined the war on the side of the Triple Entente. As a result, at the end of the war, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina were awarded to Romania, resulting in Greater Romania. As of 1920, Romanian people were believed to number over 15 million in the Romania region, larger than the populations of Sweden, Denmark, the eastern territory losses were facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop German-Soviet non-aggression pact
8.
Tatars of Romania
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Tatars, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, have been present on the territory of todays Romania since the 13th century. According to the 2011 census,20,464 people declared their nationality as Tatar and they are the main factor of Islam in Romania. The roots of the Crimean Tatar community in Romania began with the Cuman migration in the 10th century, even before the Cumans arrived, other Turkic people like the Huns and the Bulgars settled in this region. The Tatars first reached the mouths of the Danube in the century at the height of the power of the Golden Horde. In 1241, under the leadership of Kadan, the Tatars crossed the Danube, the region was probably not under the direct rule of the Horde, but rather, a vassal of the Bakhchisaray Khan. It is known from Arab sources that at the end of the 13th century, another Arab scholar, Ibn Battuta, who passed through the region in 1330–31, talks about Baba Saltuk as the southernmost town of the Tatars. The Golden Horde began to lose its influence after the wars of 1352-1359 and at the time, in the 14th and 15th centuries the Ottoman Empire colonized Dobruja with Nogais from Bucak. Between 1593 and 1595 Tatars from Nogai and Bucak were also settled to Dobruja, toward the end of the 16th century, about 30,000 Nogai Tatars from the Budjak were brought to Dobruja. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783 Crimean Tatars began emigrating to the Ottoman coastal provinces of Dobruja, from 1783 to 1853 tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars and Nogais emigrated to the Rusçuk region which subsequently became known as Little Tartary. Following the Russian conquest of 1812, Nogais from Bucak also immigrated to Dobruja, Tatars who settled in Dobruja before the great exodus of 1860 were known as Kabail. They formed the Kabail Tatar squadron in the Nizam-ı Cedid army of sultan Selim III, Tatars together with Albanians served as gendarmes, who were held in high esteem by the Ottomans and received special tax privileges. The Ottomans additionally accorded a degree of autonomy for the Tatars who were allowed governance by their own kaymakam. The Giray dynasty multiplied in Dobruja and maintained their respected position, a Dobrujan Tatar, Kara Hussein, was responsible for the destruction of the Janissary corps on orders from Sultan Mahmut II. From 1877-1878 it is estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 Crimean Tatars emigrated from Dobruja to Anatolia, which continued in smaller numbers until World War I. Other reasons included the 1899 famine in Dobruja, a series of laws from 1880 to 1885 regarding confiscation of Tatar and Turkish land, a unique Crimean Tatar national identity in Dobruja began to emerge in the last quarter of the 19th century. When Ismail Gasprinski, considered by many to be the father of Crimean Tatar nationalism, however, it was the poet Mehmet Niyazi who is most credited with spreading nationalist ideas among the Tatars of Dobruja. In the wake of the fall of the Crimean Tatar government, many of these refugees were inspired to join the Prometheus movement in Europe which aimed for the independence of Soviet nationalities. During this period Mustecip Hacı Fazıl was the leader of community in Dobruja, in 1918, when he was 19 he went to Crimea to teach in Tatar schools and published the first Tatar journal in Dobruja, Emel from 1930 to 1940
9.
Turks of Romania
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The Turks of Romania, also known as Romanian Turks, are ethnic Turks who form an ethnic minority in Romania. According to the 2011 census, there were 28,226 Turks living in the country, an important event in the history of the Turkish population was however the Ottoman conquest of the region in the early 15th century. Hence, by the 17th century most of the settlements in Dobruja had Turkish names, in the nineteenth century, Turks and Tatars were more numerous in Dobruja than the Romanians. Dobromir, a commune in Constanța County, is the one in Romania with a Turkish majority. As an officially-recognised ethnic minority, Turks have one reserved for them in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. An important Turkish community also used to live until 1970 on the island of Ada Kaleh, after 1989, a significant number of Turkish entrepreneurs started investing and establishing business ventures in Romania, and a certain proportion chose to take up residence in Romania
10.
Romani people in Romania
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Romani people in Romania, Gypsy, constitute one of the countrys largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, they number 621,573 people or 3. 08% of the total population, the Romani people originate from the northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi and it shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali. Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India, in February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora, in Romani, the native language of the Romani, the word for people is pronounced or depending on dialect. Starting from the 1990s, the word has also officially used in the Romanian language. There are two spellings of the word in Romanian, rom, and rrom, the first spelling is preferred by the majority of Romani NGOs and it is the only spelling accepted in Romanian Academys Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române. The two forms reflect the fact that for some speakers of Romani there are two rhotic phonemes, /r/ and /ʀ/, in the government-sponsored writing system /ʀ/ is spelt rr. The final i in rromi is the Romanian plural, the traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, is țigani. The Romanian government supported the move on the grounds that many countries in the European Union use a variation of the word Țigan to refer to their Gypsy populations, the Romanian upper house, Senate, rejected the proposal. In combination with the Mongol invasion of Europe the first Romani had reached the territory of present-day Romania around the year 1241, at the beginning of the 14th century, when the Mongols withdrew from Eastern Europe, the Romani who were left were taken as prisoners and slaves. According to documents signed by Prince Dan I the first captured Romani in Wallachia dates back to year 1385, in fact, the Romani people, and the Romani language, have their origin in northern India. The presence of the Roms within the territory of present-day Romania dates back to the 14th century, the population of Roms fluctuated depending on diverse historical and political events. Until their liberation on February 20,1856, most Roms lived in slavery and they could not leave the property of their owners. Around the year 1850, about 102,000 Romani lived in the Danubian Principalities, after their liberation in 1856, a significant number of Roms left Wallachia and Moldavia. In 1886 the number of Roms was estimated at around 200,000, the 1899 census counted around 210,806 others, of whom roughly half were Romani. In Bessarabia, annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, the Roms were liberated in 1861, many of them migrated to other regions of the Empire, while important communities remained in Soroca, Otaci and the surroundings of Cetatea Albă, Chișinău, and Bălți. The 1918 union with Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina and Bessarabia increased the number of ethnic Romani in Romania, the first census in interwar Romania took place in 1930,242,656 persons were registered as Gypsies
11.
Lipovans
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Lipovans or Lippovans are Old Believers, mostly of Russian ethnic origin, who settled in the Moldavian Principality, and in the regions of Dobruja and Eastern Muntenia. According to the Romanian census of 2002, there are a total of 35,791 Lipovans in Romania, other suggestions include relations to the Slavic word Липа, lipa, meaning linden tree, or to Filippovka, a holiday name dedicated to Saint Philip. The Lipovans emigrated from Russia in the 18th century, as dissenters from the main Russian Orthodox Church and they settled along the Prut River in Moldavia and in the Danube Delta. They have maintained strong religious traditions which predate the reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church undertaken during the rule of Patriarch Nikon, when the Patriarch made changes to worship in 1652, some believers carried on worshipping in the old way. In that sense, they continued to speak Old Russian, to themselves with two fingers instead of three, and to keep their beards. The Russian government and the Orthodox Church persecuted them, and as a result some committed suicide by burning themselves, in 1876, the Lipovans were joined by members of the Skoptsy sect, who also emigrated to Romania to escape persecution. Lipovans were considered to be schismatic by the Russian Orthodox Church, the main centre of Lipovan community in Ukraine is the town of Vylkove, which has its own church, St Nicholas. In order to construct their homes, the Lipovans create islets of dry land by digging mud out from trenches, the house walls are made of reed and mud, and thatching is standard for the roofing. Because of the characteristics of materials, the buildings have a tendency to sink into the mud. For details on the Lipovans in Bulgaria, see Russians in Bulgaria, religious Freedom Report 1999 Zorile newspaper published in Romanian and Russian
12.
Greeks in Romania
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There has been a Greek presence in Romania for at least 27 centuries. At times, as during the Phanariote era, this presence has amounted to hegemony, at other times, the Greek presence in what is now Romania dates back as far as the apoikiai and emporia founded in and around Dobruja, beginning in the 7th century BC. Starting with the Milesian colony at Istros, the process reached its height after Tomis was founded in the 5th century BC, immediately after, and for the following centuries, they were stripped of their privileges by their new Roman masters, and followed the Empire into its crises. To this was added the exodus of Byzantine officials and commoners to the two countries, which were at the time under a rather relaxed Ottoman tutelage and they took opportunities to advance in office, and from early on included themselves in the inner circle of power. This meant not only the reliance of Princes on a new elite, the rapid change brought them much hostility from traditional boyars. With the early 18th century emergence of Phanariote rule over the Danubian Principalities, the outcome only served to stir up animosity, and the Ottomans were receptive to the demands, putting an end to the Phanariote system in 1822. In time, most Greeks lost their specificity and became fully integrated, the communities were largely prosperous and maintained specific cultural institutions, they attracted a new wave of arrivals when Greece was hit by the Civil War, in the late 1940s. Among the towns and communes in Romania with the highest proportions of Greeks as of 2011 are Izvoarele and Sulina, according to the Romanian census of 2002, the Greek community numbered 6,472 persons, most of whom live in Bucharest and its surrounding area. Next in line come the Dobruja counties of Tulcea and Constanța, the 1992 census however found 19,594 Greeks, this shows the tendency of assimilation. According to the General Secretariat for Greeks Abroad the Greek community in Romania numbers 14,000
13.
Armenians of Romania
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Armenians have been present in what is now Romania and Moldova for over a millennium, and have been an important presence as traders since the 14th century. Numbering only in the thousands in modern times, they were suppressed in the Communist era. The earliest traces of Armenians in what was later Moldavia are dated by 967, early Armenian Diasporas stemmed in the fall of the Bagratuni rule and other disasters, including the Mongol invasion. In 1572–1574, Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit was Hospodar of Moldavia, grandson of Stephen the Great, son of Bogdan III, Armenian expatriates were awarded tax exemptions at different times in the Danubian Principalities history. A considerable number of families in the Principalities were of Armenian descent. The Gregorian Armenians were given the right to build a church around 1638 – it was rebuilt and expanded in 1685, citizenship was bestowed on the community only with the decision taken by the international protectorate over the two countries to extend civil rights to all religious minorities. Armenians were present from early on in Transylvania, clearly attested in a document issued by Hungarian King Ladislaus IV the Cuman, here, they were even allowed to found their own trading towns, the most notable one being Gherla, called Armenopolis/Armenierstadt or Hayakaghak. The second important Armenian town in Transylvania is Dumbrăveni, the Ordinariate for Catholics of Armenian Rite in Romania is nowadays centered on Gherla, and is placed under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Roman-Catholic Church archbishops of Alba Iulia. Most Armenians from Transylvania has been magyarized in the last half of the 19th century, after the Armenian genocide of 1915, Romania was the first state to officially provide political asylum to refugees from the area. In 1940 about 40,000 Armenians lived in Romania, under communist rule, Armenians started to leave the country, and Nicolae Ceaușescus regime eventually closed all Armenian schools. The Armenian Apostolic community has a number of churches and a monastery in Romania, the church is under the jurisdiction of the See of Holy Echmiadzin of the Armenian Apostolic Church. As of 2002, there were 1,780 Armenians, many of them from mixed families, there is one Armenian church in Bucharest on what is called Strada Armenească. The origin of the church is from the 17th century, but the wooden building burnt in a fire in 1781. The newer structure was built starting 1911 through the efforts of Armenian immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, the new church opened in 1915. The church is run by bishop Datev Hagopian, the Armenian community exists since almost a thousand years, and the Armenian Apostolic Diocese has a history of at least 600 years. Also running is the Hagigadar Monastery established in 1512 with many visitors making it a tourist attraction, the community is celebrating the 500th anniversary of its establishment. Besides the church is a cultural center with the first floor being a library of Armenian old and new books and the second floor. The library was established by literary figure Hagop Sirouni, the origin of the existing Armenian community is basically Western Armenian
14.
Demonym
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A demonym is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place. It is a neologism, previously gentilic was recorded in English dictionaries, e. g. the Oxford English Dictionary, thus a Thai may be any resident or citizen of Thailand, of any ethnic group, or more narrowly a member of the Thai people. Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms, for example, a native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person, a Brit, or a Briton. In some languages, when a parallel demonym does not exist, in English, demonyms are capitalized and are often the same as the adjectival form of the place, e. g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. Significant exceptions exist, for instance the adjectival form of Spain is Spanish, English widely includes country-level demonyms such as Ethiopian or Guatemalan and more local demonyms such as Seoulite, Wisconsinite, Chicagoan, Michigander, Fluminense, and Paulista. Some places lack a commonly used and accepted demonym and this poses a particular challenge to those toponymists who research demonyms. The word gentilic comes from the Latin gentilis and the English suffix -ic, the word demonym was derived from the Greek word meaning populace with the suffix for name. National Geographic attributes the term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a recent work from 1990 and it was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals. However, in What Do You Call a Person From, a Dictionary of Resident Names attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names Names, A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, which is apparently where the term first appears. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language, the most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. Cairo → Cairene Cyrenaica → Cyrene Damascus → Damascene Greece → Greek Nazareth → Nazarene Slovenia → Slovene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. Kingston-upon-Hull → Hullensian Leeds → Leodensian Spain → Spaniard Savoy → Savoyard -ese is usually considered proper only as an adjective, thus, a Chinese person is used rather than a Chinese. Monaco → Monégasque Menton → Mentonasque Basque Country → Basque Often used for French locations, mostly they are from Africa and the Pacific, and are not generally known or used outside the country concerned. In much of East Africa, a person of an ethnic group will be denoted by a prefix. For example, a person of the Luba people would be a Muluba, the plural form Baluba, similar patterns with minor variations in the prefixes exist throughout on a tribal level. And Fijians who are indigenous Fijians are known as Kaiviti and these demonyms are usually more informal and colloquial. In the United States such informal demonyms frequently become associated with mascots of the sports teams of the state university system. In other countries the origins are often disputed and these will typically be formed using the standard models above
15.
Romanian language
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Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 million people as a native language, primarily in Romania and Moldova, and by another 4 million people as a second language. It has official status in Romania and the Republic of Moldova and it is one of the official languages of the European Union and the Latin Union. Romanian is a part of the Balkan-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin separated from the Western Romance during the 5th–8th centuries. To distinguish it within that group in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. Eastern Romance languages, like the branches of Romance languages, descend from Vulgar Latin. These vestiges of military usage are unique to Romanian in its language family. s. o, sat village, șes plain, a supune, tindă veranda, țară homeland a. s. o. This linguistic evidence challenges the Roeslerian theory, the vestiges from sermo castrensis particularize the Romanian language in the neolatin area, together with its isolated history. e. With Rom. māgurā and Alb. magulë etc, the Roman Empire withdrew from Dacia in 271–272 AD, leaving it to the Goths. The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of Proto-Romanian by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people who were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans south of the Danube, during the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the record in the early 16th century. The use of the denomination Romanian for our language and use of the demonym Romanians for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. In 1534, Tranquillo Andronico notes, Valachi nunc se Romanos vocant, francesco della Valle writes in 1532 that Romanians are calling themselves Romans in their own language, and he subsequently quotes the expression, Știi Românește. After travelling through Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania Ferrante Capecci accounts in 1575 that the population of these regions call themselves românești. Pierre Lescalopier writes in 1574 that those who live in Moldavia, Wallachia, the Transylvanian Saxon Johann Lebel writes in 1542 that Vlachi se numeau între ei Romuini and the Polish chronicler Stanislaw Orzechowski notes in 1554 that în limba lor walachii se numesc romini. In Palia de la Orăștie stands written «, că văzum cum toate limbile au și înfluresc întru cuvintele slăvite a lui Dumnezeu numai noi românii pre limbă nu avem. și le-au dăruit voo fraților români. », nevertheless, the oldest extant document written in Romanian remains Neacșus letter and was written using Cyrillic letters. There are no records of any documents written in Romanian from before 1521
16.
Vehicle registration plate
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A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate or a license plate, is metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric ID that uniquely identifies the owner within the issuing regions database. The first two letters indicate the state to which the vehicle is registered, the next two digit numbers are the sequential number of a district. Due to heavy volume of vehicle registration, the numbers were given to the RTO offices of registration as well, the third part indicates the year of registration of the vehicle and is a 4 digit number unique to each plate. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing agency. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the government holds a monopoly on the manufacturing of vehicle registration plates for that jurisdiction. Thus, it is illegal for private citizens to make and affix their own plates. Alternately, the government will merely assign plate numbers, and it is the owners responsibility to find an approved private supplier to make a plate with that number. In some jurisdictions, plates will be assigned to that particular vehicle for its lifetime. If the vehicle is destroyed or exported to a different country. Other jurisdictions follow a policy, meaning that when a vehicle is sold the seller removes the current plate from the vehicle. Buyers must either obtain new plates or attach plates they already hold, as well as register their vehicles under the buyers name, a person who sells a car and then purchases a new one can apply to have the old plates put onto the new car. One who sells a car and does not buy a new one may, depending on the laws involved, have to turn the old plates in or destroy them. Some jurisdictions permit the registration of the vehicle with personal plates, in some jurisdictions, plates require periodic replacement, often associated with a design change of the plate itself. Vehicle owners may or may not have the option to keep their original plate number, alternately, or additionally, vehicle owners have to replace a small decal on the plate or use a decal on the windshield to indicate the expiration date of the vehicle registration. Plates are usually fixed directly to a vehicle or to a frame that is fixed to the vehicle. Sometimes, the plate frames contain advertisements inserted by the service centre or the dealership from which the vehicle was purchased. Vehicle owners can also purchase customized frames to replace the original frames, in some jurisdictions licence plate frames are illegal
17.
Sulmona
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Sulmona is a city and comune of the province of LAquila in Abruzzo, Italy. It is in Valle Peligna, a plateau once occupied by a lake that disappeared in prehistoric times, Sulmona was one of the principal cities of the Peligni, as an independent tribe, but no notice of it is found in history before the Roman conquest. A tradition alluded to by Ovid and Silius Italicus, which ascribed its foundation to Solymus, the first mention of Sulmo occurs in the Second Punic War, when its territory was ravaged by Hannibal in 211 BC, who, however, did not attack the city itself. The writings of that rhetorical writer are not, however, to be taken literally, antonius as soon as he presented himself. Not much more is known historically of Sulmo, which, however, from the Liber Coloniarum we learn also that it had received the status of a colony, probably in the time of Augustus, though Pliny does not give it the title of a Colonia. Inscriptions, as well as the geographers and Itineraries, attest its continued existence as a municipal town throughout the Roman Empire, traditionally, the beginning of the Christian age in Sulmona is set in the 3rd century. The city was part of the diocese of Valva, while a Sulmonese bishop is known from the 5th century, one of the earliest bishops was Saint Pamphilus, an Italian pagan convert to Christianity in the 7th century from nearby Corfinium. He was elected bishop of Valva in 682 and died in 706 and he is the patron saint of Sulmona and is buried in the church dedicated to him, the present Sulmona Cathedral. Sulmona became a commune under the Normans. Despite that, it continued to expand and a new line of walls was added in the 14th century, in the 16th century a flourishing paper industry was started. In 1706 the city was razed by an earthquake. Much of the city was rebuilt in the prevailing elegant Baroque style of the 18th Century. Sulmona experienced a boom in the late 19th Century due its railway hub. The anarchist and labor organiser Carlo Tresca was born there in 1879 and was active in the Italian Railroad Workers Federation until emigrating to the US in 1904, sulmonas strategic position also made it a target for air raids during World War II. The railway station, the sections and parts of the old town were damaged. Campo 78 at Sulmona served as a POW camp in both world wars, the camp itself was built on a hillside and consisted of a number of brick barracks surrounded by a high wall. During World War II, conditions in Sulmona, as in many Italian camps, were good, regular rations of macaroni soup and bread were augmented by fresh fruit and cheese in the summer, and food parcels from the International Committee of the Red Cross were distributed regularly. For recreation, the laid out a football field, and they also had equipment for cricket
18.
Turku
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Turku is a city on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Southwest Finland. Turku, as a town, was settled during the 13th century and founded most likely at the end of the 13th century and it quickly became the most important city in Finland, a status it retained for hundreds of years. Because of its history, it has been the site of many important events. Along with Tallinn, the city of Estonia, Turku was designated the European Capital of Culture for 2011. In 1996, it was declared the official Christmas City of Finland, due to its location, Turku is a notable commercial and passenger seaport with over three million passengers traveling through the Port of Turku each year to Stockholm and Mariehamn. As of 31 December 2016, the population of Turku was 187,564, there were 318,168 inhabitants living in the Turku sub-region, ranking it as the third largest urban area in Finland after the Greater Helsinki area and Tampere sub-region. The city is bilingual as 5.2 percent of its population identify Swedish as a mother-tongue. The Finnish name Turku originates from an Old East Slavic word, tǔrgǔ, the word turku still means market place in some idioms in Finnish. The Swedish word for market place is torg, and was borrowed from Old East Slavic. The Swedish name Åbo may be a combination of å. As this pattern does not appear in any other Swedish place names in Finland, one theory is that it comes from Aabo, the Finnish rendition of the Russian Avram, which could also be the origin of the name of the river Aura. There is however an old legal term called åborätt, which gave citizens the right to live at land owned by the crown. In Finnish, the genitive of Turku is Turun, meaning of Turku, the Finnish names of organizations and institutes of Turku often begin with this word, as in Turun yliopisto for the University of Turku. Turku has a history as Finlands largest city and occasionally as the administrative center of the country. The citys identity stems from its status as the oldest city in Finland, originally, the word Finland referred only to the area around Turku. Although archaeological findings in the date back to the Stone Age. The Cathedral of Turku was consecrated in 1300, during the Middle Ages, Turku was the seat of the Bishop of Turku, covering the then eastern half of the Kingdom of Sweden until the 17th century. Even if Turku had no official status, both the short-lived institutions of Dukes and Governors-General of Finland usually had their Finnish residences there
19.
Yokohama
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Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan by population and most populous municipality of Japan. It is the city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the island of Honshu. It is a commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area. Yokohamas population of 3.7 million makes it Japans largest city after the Special Wards of Tokyo, Yokohama was a small fishing village up to the end of the feudal Edo period, when Japan held a policy of national seclusion, having little contact with foreigners. It was initially agreed that one of the ports to be opened to ships would be the bustling town of Kanagawa-juku on the Tōkaidō. However, the Tokugawa shogunate decided that Kanagawa-juku was too close to the Tōkaidō for comfort, the Port of Yokohama was officially opened on June 2,1859. Yokohama quickly became the base of trade in Japan. Kannai, the trade and commercial district, was surrounded by a moat. To protect British commercial and diplomatic interests in Yokohama a military garrison was established in 1862, with the growth in trade increasing numbers of Chinese also came to settle in the city. Recreational sports introduced to Japan by foreign residents in Yokohama included European style horse racing in 1862, cricket in 1863, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the port was developed for trading silk, the main trading partner being Great Britain. In 1887, a British merchant, Samuel Cocking, built the citys first power plant, at first for his own use, this coal-burning plant became the basis for the Yokohama Cooperative Electric Light Company. The city was incorporated on April 1,1889. The early 20th century was marked by growth of industry. Entrepreneurs built factories along reclaimed land to the north of the city toward Kawasaki, much of Yokohama was destroyed on September 1,1923 by the Great Kantō earthquake. The Yokohama police reported casualties at 30,771 dead and 47,908 injured, fuelled by rumours of rebellion and sabotage, vigilante mobs thereupon murdered many Koreans in the Kojiki-yato slum. Many people believed that Koreans used black magic to cause the earthquake, martial law was in place until November 19. Rubble from the quake was used to land for parks
20.
Brest, France
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Brest is a city in the Finistère département in Brittany in northwestern France. The city is located on the edge of continental Europe. Although Brest is by far the largest city in Finistère, the préfecture of the department is the much smaller Quimper, during the Middle Ages, the history of Brest was the history of its castle. Then Richelieu made it a military harbour, Brest grew around its arsenal, until the second part of the 20th century. Heavily damaged by the Allies bombing raids during World War II, at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the deindustrialization of the city was followed by the development of the service sector. Nowadays, Brest is an important university town with 23,000 students, Brest is also an important research centre, mainly focused on the sea, with among others the largest Ifremer centre, le Cedre and the French Polar Institute. Brest’s history has always been linked to the sea, the Académie de Marine was founded in 1752 in this city, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was built there. Every four years, Brest hosts the festival of the sea, boats and sailors. Nothing definite is known of Brest before about 1240, when a count of Léon ceded it to John I, in 1342, John IV, Duke of Brittany, surrendered Brest to the English, in whose possession it was to remain until 1397. The importance of Brest in medieval times was great enough to rise to the saying. With the marriage of Francis I of France to Claude, the daughter of Anne of Brittany, the advantages of Brests situation as a seaport town were first recognized by Cardinal Richelieu, who in 1631 constructed a harbor with wooden wharves. This soon became a base for the French Navy, jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under Louis XIV, rebuilt the wharves in masonry and otherwise improved the harbour. Fortifications by Vauban followed in 1680–1688 and these fortifications, and with them the naval importance of the town, were to continue to develop throughout the 18th century. In 1694, an English squadron under Lord Berkeley, was defeated in its attack on Brest. In 1917, during the First World War, Brest was used as the port for many of the troops coming from the United States. Thousands of such men came through the port on their way to the front lines, the United States Navy established a naval air station on 13 February 1918 to operate seaplanes. The base closed shortly after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, in the Second World War, the Germans maintained a large U-boat submarine base at Brest. In 1944, after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the city was almost totally destroyed during the Battle for Brest, with only a tiny number of buildings left standing
21.
Istanbul
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Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the countrys economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side, the city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, both hosting a population of around 14.7 million residents. Istanbul is one of the worlds most populous cities and ranks as the worlds 7th-largest city proper, founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city developed to become one of the most significant in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as a capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman and Byzantine, the Latin. Overlooked for the new capital Ankara during the period, the city has since regained much of its prominence. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in, arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established at the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network, considered a global city, Istanbul has one of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies in the world. It hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product. Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years, the first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin. He also attempted to promote the name Nova Roma and its Greek version Νέα Ῥώμη Nea Romē, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is now considered politically incorrect, even if not historically inaccurate, by Turks. By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu. The name İstanbul is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase εἰς τὴν Πόλιν and this reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was reflected by its Ottoman name Der Saadet meaning the gate to Prosperity in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first, a Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol plenty of Islam because the city was called Islambol or Islambul as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire
22.
Rotterdam
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Rotterdam is a city in the Netherlands, located in South Holland, within the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt river delta at the North Sea. Its history goes back to 1270 when a dam was constructed in the Rotte river by people settled around it for safety, in 1340 Rotterdam was granted city rights by the Count of Holland and slowly grew into a major logistic and economic centre. Nowadays it is home to Europes largest port and has a population of 633,471, ranking second in the Netherlands, just behind Amsterdam. The Greater Rijnmond area is home to approximately 1.4 million people, Rotterdam is part of the yet larger Randstad conurbation with a total population of 7,100,000. The city of Rotterdam is known for the Erasmus University, riverside setting, lively cultural life, the near-complete destruction of Rotterdams city centre during World War II has resulted in a varied architectural landscape including sky-scrapers, which are an uncommon sight in other Dutch cities. Rotterdam is home to some world-famous architecture from renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Piet Blom, Ben van Berkel and others. Recently Rotterdam was listed eighth in The Rough Guide Top 10 Cities to Visit, the port of Rotterdam is the largest cargo port in Europe and the 10th largest in the world. Rotterdams logistic success is based on its location on the North Sea. The rivers Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt give waterway access into the heart of Western Europe, the extensive distribution system including rail, roads, and waterways have earned Rotterdam the nickname Gateway to Europe, and, conversely, Gateway to the World in Europe. The settlement at the end of the fen stream Rotte dates from at least 900 CE. A dam on the Rotte or Rotterdam was built in the 1260s and was located at the present-day Hoogstraat, on 7 July 1340, Count Willem IV of Holland granted city rights to Rotterdam, which then had approximately 2,000 inhabitants. The port of Rotterdam grew slowly but steadily into a port of importance, becoming the seat of one of the six chambers of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the greatest spurt of growth, both in port activity and population, followed the completion of the Nieuwe Waterweg in 1872. The city and harbor started to expand on the bank of the river. The Witte Huis or White House skyscraper, inspired by American office buildings and built in 1898 in the French Château-style, is evidence of Rotterdams rapid growth, when completed, it was the tallest office building in Europe, with a height of 45 m. During World War I the city was the worlds largest spy centre because of Dutch neutrality, many spies who were arrested and executed in Britain were led by German secret agents operating from Rotterdam. MI6 had its main European office on de Boompjes, from there the British coordinated espionage in Germany and occupied Belgium. In WWI an average of 25,000 Belgian refugees lived in the city, as well as hundreds of German deserters, during World War II, the German army invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Adolf Hitler had hoped to conquer the country in just one day, the Dutch army was finally forced to capitulate on 15 May 1940, following Hitlers bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May and threatening to bomb other Dutch cities
23.
Odessa
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Odessa or Odesa is the third most populous city of Ukraine and a major seaport and transportation hub located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. Odessa is also a center of the Odessa Oblast and a multiethnic cultural center. Odessa is sometimes called the pearl of the Black Sea, the South Capital, the predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement, was founded by Hacı I Giray, the Khan of Crimea, in 1440 and originally named after him as Hacıbey. After a period of Lithuanian control, it passed into the domain of the Ottoman Sultan in 1529, in 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port, during the Soviet period it was the most important port of trade in the Soviet Union and a Soviet naval base. On 1 January 2000, the Quarantine Pier at Odessa Commercial Sea Port was declared a free port, during the 19th century, it was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. Its historical architecture has a style more Mediterranean than Russian, having heavily influenced by French. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance, the city of Odessa hosts both the Port of Odessa and Port Yuzhne, a significant oil terminal situated in the citys suburbs. Another notable port, Chornomorsk, is located in the same oblast, together they represent a major transport hub integrating with railways. Odessas oil and chemical processing facilities are connected to Russian and European networks by strategic pipelines, the city was named in compliance with the Greek Plan of Catherine the Great. It was named after the ancient Greek city of Odessos, which was believed to have been located here. Although Odessa is located in between the ancient Greek cities of Tyras and Olbia, Odessos is believed to be the predecessor of the present day city of Varna, Catherines secretary of state Adrian Gribovsky claimed in his memoirs that the name was his suggestion. Some expressed doubts about this claim, while others noted the reputation of Gribovsky as an honest and modest man, Odessa was the site of a large Greek settlement not later than the middle of the 6th century BC. Some scholars believe it to be a settlement established by Histria. Whether the Bay of Odessa is the ancient Port of the Histrians cannot yet be considered a settled question based on the available evidence, archaeological artifacts confirm extensive links between the Odessa area and the eastern Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Odessa region included various nomadic tribes, the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Yedisan Crimean Tatars traded there in the 14th century. During the reign of Khan Hacı I Giray of Crimea, the Khanate was endangered by the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks and, in search of allies, the site of present-day Odessa was then a fortress known as Khadjibey. It was part of the Dykra region, however, most of the rest of the area remained largely uninhabited in this period
24.
Boulogne-sur-Mer
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Boulogne-sur-Mer, often called Boulogne, is a city in Northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais, Boulogne lies on the Côte dOpale, a tourist coast on the English Channel, and is the most-visited location in its region after the Lille conurbation. Boulogne is its departments second-largest city after Calais, and the 60th largest in France and it is also the countrys largest fishing port, specialising in herring. Boulogne was the major Roman port for trade and communication with Britain, the citys 12th-century belfry is recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, while another popular attraction is the marine conservation centre Nausicaa. The French name Boulogne derives from the Latin Bononia, which was also the Roman name for Bologna in Italy, both places—and Vindobona —are thought to have derived from native Celtic placenames, with bona possibly meaning foundation, citadel, or granary. The French epithet sur-Mer distinguishes the city from Boulogne-Billancourt on the edge of Paris, in turn, the Boulogne in Boulogne-Billancourt originates from a church there dedicated to Notre-Dame de Boulogne, Our Lady of Boulogne. Boulogne-sur-Mer is in Northern France, at the edge of the Channel, Boulogne is a relatively important city of the North, exercising an influence on the Boulonnais territory. The coast consists of important tourist natural sites, like the capes Gris Nez and Blanc Nez, the hinterland is mainly rural and agricultural. Boulogne is close to the A16 motorway, metropolitan bus services are operated by Marinéo. The company Flixbus propose a bus line connecting Paris to Boulogne, there are coach services to Calais and Dunkerque. The city has railway stations, which the most important is Boulogne-Ville station, boulogne-Tintelleries station is used for regional transit. It is located near the university and the city centre, the former Boulogne-Maritime and Boulogne-Aéroglisseurs stations served as a boat connection for the railway. Boulogne currently has no cross channel ferry services since the closure of the route to Dover by LD Lines in 2010. The city is divided into parts, City centre, groups historic and administrative buildings. Fortified town, old-town where are a lot of monuments and also the city hall. It is surrounded by 13th-century ramparts very appreciated today by walkers, gambetta-Sainte-Beuve, tourist area situated in the northwest of the city, on the edge of the beach and the recreational harbour. Capécure, economic and industrial area, situated in the west of the city, saint-Pierre, former neighborhood of the fishermen, destroyed during the World War II and reconstructed after. Chemin Vert, zone borned in the 1950s, knowing today poverty and it is the neighborhood of Franck Ribéry
25.
Dobrich
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Dobrich is the eight most populated city in Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Dobrich Province and the capital of the region of Southern Dobrudzha. It is located in the part of the country,30 km west of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, not far from resorts such as Albena, Balchik. In January 2012, Dobrich was inhabited by 90,375 people within the city limits, the city is named after the Bulgarian medieval lord of the surrounding region - Dobrotitsa. Agriculture is the most developed branch of the economy, Dobrich Knoll on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Dobrich. A point of interest is the Dobrich TV Tower, the city is named after the 14th-century Dobrujan ruler Dobrotitsa, from the Slavic root dobr, good The first evidence of settlement in what is now Dobrich dates from the 4th or 3rd century BC. Ruins from 2nd to 4th centuries AD and the 7th to 11th centuries have also been found, during the 11th century, Pecheneg invasions devastated the interior of Dobruja, leaving many settlements in the region uninhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire. The settlement was founded for a time in the 16th century by the Turkish merchant Hacıoğlu Pazarcık. According to Ottoman data from 1646–1650, there were over 1,000 houses in the city, about 100 shops, at the beginning of the 19th century, the citys population reached 12,000, many of whom refugees from eastern Bulgaria after the Russo-Turkish Wars. The cultural appearance of the city was also formed, the first Orthodox church was built in 1843. The city was liberated from the Ottoman Empire on 27 January 1878, after the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913, Dobrich and the whole of Southern Dobruja were incorporated in Romania for a period until 1940. During that time, the city bore the name Bazargic, which is a transformation of the earlier Turkish name Hacıoğlu Pazarcık, and was centre of Caliacra County. On 25 September 1940, the Bulgarian army marched into the city after signing Treaty of Craiova on September 7,1940, date celebrated as the citys holiday, later changed to September 25. In 1949, during the period of Communist rule, Dobrich was renamed Tolbukhin after Marshal of the Soviet Union Fyodor Tolbukhin, on 19 September 1990, a presidential decree restored the citys old name of Dobrich. Despite the renewing of the name Dobrich architecturally maintains an ex-communist outlook even in the 21st century, the vehicle registration plate code for the region has also remained unchanged. The diocese was restored as a Latin titular bishopric, initially under the name Abrytus. The station is equipped with automatic monitoring devices measuring the quantities of carbon oxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfuric dioxide, the municipality is implementing a program for decreasing the quantities of dust particles, which was adopted by the municipal council in 2003. Surface water resources are insufficient in the region, the town is supplied with water from drill wells and water catchment areas located near the town. Eight pumping stations provide bacteria-free drinking water which does not even need further treatment, the water sources are in constant operation
26.
Thessaloniki
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Its nickname is η Συμπρωτεύουσα, literally the co-capital, a reference to its historical status as the Συμβασιλεύουσα or co-reigning city of the Eastern Roman Empire, alongside Constantinople. The city is renowned for its festivals, events and vibrant cultural life in general, Thessaloniki was the 2014 European Youth Capital. The city of Thessaloniki was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, an important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1430, and passed from the Ottoman Empire to modern Greece on November 8,1912, the citys main university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans. Thessaloniki is a popular tourist destination in Greece, among street photographers, the center of Thessaloniki is also considered the most popular destination for street photography in Greece. All variations of the name derive from the original appellation in Ancient Greek, i. e. Θεσσαλονίκη. The alternative name Salonica derives from the variant form Σαλονίκη in colloquial Greek speech, in local speech, the citys name is typically pronounced with a dark and deep L characteristic of Macedonian Greek accent. The name often appears in writing in the abbreviated form Θεσ/νίκη, the city was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and 26 other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonike, a half-sister of Alexander the Great, under the kingdom of Macedon the city retained its own autonomy and parliament and evolved to become the most important city in Macedon. After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC, the city later became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia. Later it became the capital of all the Greek provinces of the Roman Empire because of the importance in the Balkan peninsula. At the time of the Roman Empire, about 50 A. D. Later, Paul wrote two letters to the new church at Thessaloniki, preserved in the Biblical canon as First and Second Thessalonians. Some scholars hold that the First Epistle to the Thessalonians is the first written book of the New Testament, in 306 AD, Thessaloniki acquired a patron saint, St. Demetrius, a native of Thessalonica whom Galerius put to death. A basilical church was first built in the 5th century AD dedicated to St. Demetrius, in 379, when the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was divided between the East and West Roman Empires, Thessaloniki became the capital of the new Prefecture of Illyricum. In 390, Gothic troops under the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, led a massacre against the inhabitants of Thessalonica, by the time of the Fall of Rome in 476, Thessaloniki was the second-largest city of the Eastern Roman Empire. From the first years of the Byzantine Empire, Thessaloniki was considered the city in the Empire after Constantinople. With a population of 150,000 in the mid-12th century, the city held this status until its transfer to Venetian control in 1423. In the 14th century, the population exceeded 100,000 to 150,000
27.
Mobile, Alabama
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Mobile is the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. Alabamas only saltwater port, Mobile is located at the head of the Mobile Bay, Mobile is the principal municipality of the Mobile metropolitan area. This region of 412,992 residents is composed solely of Mobile County, Mobile is the largest city in the Mobile-Daphne−Fairhope CSA, with a total population of 604,726, the second largest in the state. As of 2011, the population within a 60-mile radius of Mobile is 1,262,907, Mobile began as the first capital of colonial French Louisiana in 1702. During its first 100 years, Mobile was a colony of France, then Britain, Mobile first became a part of the United States of America in 1813, with the annexation of West Florida under President James Madison. In 1861 Alabama joined the Confederate States of America, which surrendered in 1865, Mobile is known for having the oldest organized Carnival celebrations in the United States. The festival began to be celebrated in the first decade of the 18th century by its first French Catholic colonial settlers. Mobile was host to the first formally organized Carnival mystic society, known elsewhere as a krewe, to celebrate with a parade in the United States, in 2005 the first integrated mystic society had a parade for Mardi Gras. The city gained its name from the Mobile tribe that the French colonists encountered living in the area of Mobile Bay. The Mobile tribe, along with the Tohomé, obtained permission from the colonists, about seven years after the founding of the Mobile settlement, to settle near the fort. It was founded by French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne dIberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, Bienville was appointed as royal governor of French Louisiana in 1701. Mobiles Roman Catholic parish was established on July 20,1703, by Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, the parish was the first French Catholic parish established on the Gulf Coast of the United States. In 1704 the ship Pélican delivered 23 French women to the colony, though most of the Pélican girls recovered, numerous colonists and neighboring Native Americans contracted the disease in turn and died. This early period was also the occasion of the importation of the first African slaves, the population of the colony fluctuated over the next few years, growing to 279 persons by 1708, yet descending to 178 persons two years later due to disease. A new earth-and-palisade Fort Louis was constructed at the new site during this time, by 1712, when Antoine Crozat was appointed to take over administration of the colony, its population had reached 400 persons. The capital of La Louisiane was moved in 1720 to Biloxi, leaving Mobile to serve as a regional military and trading center. In 1723 the construction of a new fort with a stone foundation began and it was renamed Fort Condé in honor of Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Seven Years War, by this treaty, France ceded its territories east of the Mississippi River to Britain
28.
Trapani
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Trapani listen is a city and comune on the west coast of Sicily in Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Trapani, founded by Elymians, the city is still an important fishing port and the main gateway to the nearby Egadi Islands. Trapani was founded by the Elymians to serve as the port of the city of Erice. The city sits on a promontory jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea. It was originally named Drepana or Drépanon from the Greek word for sickle, carthage seized control of the city in 260 BC, subsequently making it an important naval base, but ceded it to Rome in 241 BC following the Battle of the Aegates in the First Punic War. Two ancient legends tell of mythical origins for the city, in the first legend, Trapani stemmed from the sickle which fell from the hands of the goddess Demeter while she was seeking for her daughter Persephone, who had been kidnapped by Hades. The second myth features Kronos, who eviscerated his father Ouranos, god of the sky, with a sickle which, falling into the sea, in ancient times, Saturn was the god-protector of Trapani. Today, Saturns statue stands in a piazza in the centre of the city, the city was badly damaged during World War II, when it was subjected to intense Allied bombardments. It has grown greatly since the end of the war, sprawling out virtually to the foot of Monte San Giuliano, tourism has grown in recent years due to the citys proximity to popular destinations such as Erice, Segesta, and the Egadi Islands. The comune of Trapani consists of two parts separated by the comune of Paceco. The northern part includes much of the city and some area, the much larger southern part includes the area of Marausa, half of Trapani-Birgi Airport. The comune does not include the suburbs of the urban area, such as Casa Santa. The comune of Trapani has a population of 70,000, less than the 80,000 of Marsala, the entire urban area of Trapani, including those parts in the comune of Erice, has over 90,000 residents. Much of Trapanis economy still depends on the sea, fishing and canning are the main local industries, with fishermen using the mattanza technique to catch tuna. Coral is also an important export, along with salt, marble, the nearby coast is lined with numerous salt-pans. The city is also an important ferry port, with links to the Egadi Islands, Pantelleria, Sardinia and it also has its own airport, the Trapani-Birgi Airport. Much of the old city of Trapani dates from the medieval or early modern periods. Many of the historic buildings are designed in the Baroque style
29.
Sidon
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Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 kilometres north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital, in Genesis, Sidon is a son of Canaan, a grandson of Noah. Its name coincides with the modern Arabic word for fishery, two castles there were cleaned and restored by the French in the early 20th century. Sidon has been inhabited very early in prehistory. It was one of the most important Phoenician cities, and it may have been the oldest, from there and other ports a great Mediterranean commercial empire was founded. Homer praised the skill of its craftsmen in producing glass, purple dyes and it was also from here that a colonizing party went to found the city of Tyre. Tyre also grew into a city, and in subsequent years there was competition between the two, each claiming to be the metropolis of Phoenicia. Glass manufacturing, Sidons most important enterprise in the Phoenician era, was conducted on a vast scale, the small shell of the Murex trunculus was broken in order to extract the pigment that was so rare it became the mark of royalty. In AD1855, the sarcophagus of King Eshmun’azar II was discovered, in this inscription the gods Eshmun and Ba‘al Sidon Lord of Sidon are mentioned as chief gods of the Sidonians. ‘Ashtart is entitled ‘Ashtart-Shem-Ba‘al ‘Ashtart the name of the Lord, a title found in an Ugaritic text. In the years before Christianity, Sidon had many conquerors, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, both Jesus and Saint Paul are said to have visited it, too. The city was conquered by the Arabs and then by the Ottoman Turks. Like other Phoenician city-states, Sidon suffered from a succession of conquerors, at the end of the Persian era in 351 BC, it was invaded by the emperor Artaxerxes III and then by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, when the Hellenistic era of Sidon began. Under the successors of Alexander, it enjoyed autonomy and organized games. When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins, the Romans also built a theater and other major monuments in the city. In the reign of Elagabalus a Roman colony was established there, during the Byzantine period, when the great earthquake of AD551 destroyed most of the cities of Phoenice, Beiruts School of Law took refuge in Sidon. The town continued quietly for the century, until it was conquered by the Arabs in AD636. On 4 December 1110 Sidon was captured, a decade after the First Crusade, by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem and it then became the centre of the Lordship of Sidon, an important lordship in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
30.
Lattakia
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Latakia, Lattakia or Latakiyah, is the principal port city of Syria, as well as the capital of the Latakia Governorate. Historically, it has also known as Lāŏdĭcḗa or Lāŏdĭcḗa ad Mắre. In addition to serving as a port, the city is a center for surrounding agricultural towns. According to the 2004 official census, the population of the city is 383,786 and it is the 5th-largest city in Syria after Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and Hama, and it borders Tartus to the south, Hama to the east, and Idlib to the north. Cape Apostolos Andreas, the tip of Cyprus, is about 68 miles away. Although the site has been inhabited since the 2nd millennium BCE, Latakia was subsequently ruled by the Romans, then the Ummayads and Abbasids in the 8th–10th centuries CE. Under their rule, the Byzantines frequently attacked the city, periodically recapturing it before losing it again to the Arabs, afterward, Latakia was ruled successively by the Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, and the Ottomans. Following World War I, Latakia was assigned to the French mandate of Syria and this autonomous territory became the Alawite State in 1922, proclaiming its independence a number of times until reintegrating into Syria in 1944. Like many Seleucid cities, Latakia was named after a member of the ruling dynasty, first named Laodikeia on the Coast by Seleucus I Nicator in honor of his mother, Laodice. In Latin, its name became Lāŏdĭcḗa ad Mắre, the original name survives in its Arabic form as al-Ladhiqiyyah, from which the French Lattaquié and English Latakia or Lattakia derive. To the Ottomans, it was known as Turkish, Lazkiye, the location of Latakia, the Ras Ziyarah promontory, has a long history of occupation. The Phoenician city of Ramitha was located here, known to the Greeks as Leukê Aktê. The city was described in Strabos Geographica, It is a city most beautifully built, has a good harbour, and has territory which, besides its other good crops, abounds in wine. Now this city furnishes the most of the wine to the Alexandreians, and while the summits are at a considerable distance from Lāŏdĭcḗa, sloping up gently and gradually from it, they tower above Apameia, extending up to a perpendicular height. The city was an important colonia of the Roman empire in ancient Syria for seven centuries and it was called Laodicea in Syria or Lāŏdĭcḗa ad mắre and was the capital of the Eastern Roman province of Theodorias from 528 AD until 637 AD. A sizable Jewish population lived in Lāŏdĭcḗa during the first century, the heretic Apollinarius was bishop of Lāŏdĭcḗa in the 4th century. The city minted coins from an early date, following the defeat of Antiochene forces at the Battle of Harran in 1104 the city was reoccupied by the Byzantines however they would again lose the city. Despite a treaty in 1108 with Bohemond promising to return Latakia to the Empire by 1110 it was firmly under the control of the Principality of Antioch
31.
Heraklion
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Heraklion is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete. It is the fourth largest city in Greece.3 km2, Heraklion is the capital of Heraklion regional unit. The Bronze Age palace of Knossos, also known as the Palace of Minos, is located nearby. The Arab raiders from Andalusia who founded the Emirate of Crete moved the capital from Gortyna to a new castle they called ربض الخندق rabḍ al-ḫandaq Castle of the Moat in the 820s. After the Byzantine reconquest, the city was known as Megalo Kastro or Castro. The ancient name Ηράκλειον was revived in the 19th century and comes from the nearby Roman port of Heracleum, english usage formerly preferred the classicizing transliterations Heraklion or Heraclion, but the form Iraklion is becoming more common. Heraklion is close to the ruins of the palace of Knossos, though there is no archaeological evidence of it, Knossos might well have had a port at the site of Heraklion as early as 2000 BC. They built a moat around the city for protection, and named the city ربض الخندق and it became the capital of the Emirate of Crete. The Saracens allowed the port to be used as a haven for pirates who operated against Imperial shipping. In 961, Byzantine forces under the command of Nikephoros Phokas, later to become Emperor, landed in Crete, after a prolonged siege, the city fell. The Saracen inhabitants were slaughtered, the city looted and burned to the ground, soon rebuilt, the town was renamed Χάνδαξ, Chandax, and remained under Greek control for the next 243 years. Chandax was renamed Candia and became the seat of the Duke of Candia, the city retained the name of Candia for centuries and the same name was often used to refer to the whole island of Crete as well. To secure their rule, Venetians began in 1212 to settle families from Venice on Crete, after the Venetians came the Ottoman Empire. During the Cretan War, the Ottomans besieged the city for 21 years, from 1648 to 1669, in its final phase, which lasted for 22 months,70,000 Turks,38,000 Cretans and slaves and 29,088 of the citys Christian defenders perished. The Ottoman army under an Albanian grand vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha conquered the city in 1669, under the Ottomans, the city was known officially as Kandiye but informally in Greek as Megalo Castro. During the Ottoman period, the harbour silted up, so most shipping shifted to Chania in the west of the island, in 1898, the autonomous Cretan State was created, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Prince George of Greece as its High Commissioner and under international supervision. During the period of occupation of the island by the Great Powers. At this time, the city was renamed Heraklion, after the Roman port of Heracleum, in 1913, with the rest of Crete, Heraklion was incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece
32.
Alexandria
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Alexandria is the second largest city and a major economic centre in Egypt, extending about 32 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country. Its low elevation on the Nile delta makes it vulnerable to rising sea levels. Alexandria is Egypts largest seaport, serving approximately 80% of Egypts imports and exports and it is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. Alexandria is also an important tourist destination, Alexandria was founded around a small Ancient Egyptian town c.331 BC by Alexander the Great. Alexandria was the second most powerful city of the ancient world after Rome, Alexandria is believed to have been founded by Alexander the Great in April 331 BC as Ἀλεξάνδρεια. Alexanders chief architect for the project was Dinocrates, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley. The city and its museum attracted many of the greatest scholars, including Greeks, Jews, the city was later plundered and lost its significance. Just east of Alexandria, there was in ancient times marshland, as early as the 7th century BC, there existed important port cities of Canopus and Heracleion. The latter was rediscovered under water. An Egyptian city, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore also and it continued to exist as the Egyptian quarter of the city. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt and never returned to his city, after Alexanders departure, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion. Although Cleomenes was mainly in charge of overseeing Alexandrias continuous development, the Heptastadion, inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage. In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and and it became Egypts main Greek city, with Greek people from diverse backgrounds. Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Tanakh, was produced there, in AD115, large parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Kitos War, which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. On 21 July 365, Alexandria was devastated by a tsunami, the Islamic prophet, Muhammads first interaction with the people of Egypt occurred in 628, during the Expedition of Zaid ibn Haritha. He sent Hatib bin Abi Baltaeh with a letter to the king of Egypt and Alexandria called Muqawqis In the letter Muhammad said, I invite you to accept Islam, Allah the sublime, shall reward you doubly. But if you refuse to do so, you bear the burden of the transgression of all the Copts
33.
Havana
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Havana is the capital city, largest city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet, the sluggish Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay. King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City in 1592, walls as well as forts were built to protect the old city. The sinking of the U. S. battleship Maine in Havanas harbor in 1898 was the cause of the Spanish–American War. Contemporary Havana can essentially be described as three cities in one, Old Havana, Vedado and the suburban districts. The city is the center of the Cuban government, and home to various ministries, headquarters of businesses, the current mayor is Marta Hernández of the Communist Party of Cuba. In 2009, the city/province had the third highest income in the country, the city attracts over a million tourists annually, the Official Census for Havana reports that in 2010 the city was visited by 1,176,627 international tourists, a 20% increase from 2005. Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, the city is also noted for its history, culture, architecture and monuments. As typical of Cuba, Havana also features a tropical climate, in May 2015, Havana was officially recognized as one of the New7Wonders Cities together with Vigan, Doha, La Paz, Durban, Beirut, and Kuala Lumpur. Most native settlements became the site of Spanish colonial cities retaining their original Taíno names, an alternate theory is that Habana is derived from the Middle Dutch word havene, referring to a harbour, etymologically related to the English word haven. All attempts to found a city on Cubas south coast failed, however, an early map of Cuba drawn in 1514 places the town at the mouth of this river. The town that became Havana finally originated adjacent to what was then called Puerto de Carenas, the quality of this natural bay, which now hosts Havanas harbor, warranted this change of location. Pánfilo de Narváez gave Havana – the sixth town founded by the Spanish on Cuba – its name, the name combines San Cristóbal, patron saint of Havana. Shortly after the founding of Cubas first cities, the served as little more than a base for the Conquista of other lands. Havana began as a port, and suffered regular attacks by buccaneers, pirates. The first attack and resultant burning of the city was by the French corsair Jacques de Sores in 1555, ships from all over the New World carried products first to Havana, in order to be taken by the fleet to Spain. The thousands of ships gathered in the bay also fueled Havanas agriculture and manufacture, since they had to be supplied with food, water. On December 20,1592, King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City, later on, the city would be officially designated as Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies by the Spanish Crown
34.
Shanghai
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Shanghai is the most populous city proper in the world, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. As one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the Peoples Republic of China, it is a financial centre and transport hub. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the eastern Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, as a major administrative, shipping and trading city, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and recognition of its favourable port location and economic potential. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade following the British victory over China in the First Opium War, the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1844 Treaty of Whampoa allowed the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The city then flourished as a center of commerce between China and other parts of the world, and became the financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. However, with the Communist Party takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries, and the citys global influence declined. In the 1990s, the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of the city, aiding the return of finance. The two Chinese characters in the name are 上 and 海, together meaning Upon-the-Sea. The earliest occurrence of this dates from the 11th-century Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence. There are disputes as to exactly how the name should be understood, Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪 in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎, a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean. This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today, another alternative name for Shanghai is Shēn or Shēnchéng, from Lord Chunshen, a third-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F. C. Huating was another early name for Shanghai. In AD751, during the dynasty, Huating County was established at modern-day Songjiang. Today, Huating appears as the name of a hotel in the city. The city also has various nicknames in English, including Pearl of the Orient, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Shanghai area belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu. During the Warring States period, Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu and he ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of Shen, two important events helped promote Shanghais development in the Ming dynasty
35.
Perugia
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Perugia is the capital city of both the region of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the river Tiber, and of the province of Perugia. The city is located about 164 kilometres north of Rome and 148 km south-east of Florence and it covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area. The region of Umbria is bordered by Tuscany, Lazio, the history of Perugia goes back to the Etruscan period, Perugia was one of the main Etruscan cities. Perugia is also a cultural and artistic centre of Italy. The famous painter Pietro Vannucci, nicknamed Perugino, was a native of Città della Pieve and he decorated the local Sala del Cambio with a beautiful series of frescoes, eight of his pictures can also be admired in the National Gallery of Umbria. Perugino was the teacher of Raphael, the great Renaissance artist who produced five paintings in Perugia, another famous painter, Pinturicchio, lived in Perugia. Galeazzo Alessi is the most famous architect from Perugia, the citys symbol is the griffin, which can be seen in the form of plaques and statues on buildings around the city. Perugia was an Umbrian settlement but first appears in history as Perusia, one of the 12 confederate cities of Etruria. Fabius Pictors account, utilized by Livy, of the carried out against the Etruscan League by Fabius Maximus Rullianus in 310 or 309 BC. At that time a thirty-year indutiae was agreed upon, however, in 295 Perusia took part in the Third Samnite War and was reduced, with Volsinii and Arretium, a number of lead bullets used by slingers have been found in and around the city. Negotiations with the besieging forces fell to the bishop, Herculanus. Totila is said to have ordered the bishop to be flayed and beheaded, st. Herculanus later became the citys patron saint. In the Lombard period Perugia is spoken of as one of the cities of Tuscia. Peter, acknowledged the validity of the statement and recognised the established civic practices as having the force of law. However this dominant tendency was rather an anti-Germanic and Italian political strategy, midway through the 14th century Bartholus of Sassoferrato, who was a renowned jurist, asserted that Perugia was dependent upon neither imperial nor papal support. Civic peace was constantly disturbed in the 14th century by struggles between the party representing the people and the nobles. A citadel known as the Rocca Paolina, after the name of Pope Paul III, was built, in 1797, the city was conquered by French troops. On 4 February 1798, the Tiberina Republic was formed, with Perugia as capital, in 1799, the Tiberina Republic merged to the Roman Republic
36.
Novorossiysk
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Novorossiysk is a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. It is the main port on the Black Sea and the leading Russian port for exporting grain. It is one of the few cities honored with the title of the Hero City, in antiquity, the shores of the Tsemess Bay were the site of Bata, an ancient Greek colony that specialized in the grain trade. It is mentioned in the works of Strabo and Ptolemy, among others, genoese merchants from the Ghisolfi family maintained a trade outpost there in the Middle Ages. Archaeological investigation of the area is in its infancy, but some interesting items have already been uncovered, from 1722, the bay was commanded by the Ottoman fortress of Sujuk-Qale or Soğucak. Named after the province of Novorossiya, the port formed a link in the chain of forts known as the Black Sea Coastal Line. During the rest of the 19th century, Novorossiysk developed rapidly and it was granted city status in 1866 and became the capital of the Black Sea Governorate, the smallest in the Russian Empire, in 1896. In December 1905, the city was the seat of the short-lived Novorossiysk Republic, from August 26,1918 until March 27,1920, Novorossiysk was the principal center of Denikins White Army. Denikins South Russian Government was moved to Crimea and many Whites escaped from Novorossiysk to Constantinople, most of the town was occupied by the German and Romanian Armies on September 10,1942. A small unit of Soviet sailors defended one part of the town, known as Malaya Zemlya, for 225 days beginning on February 4,1943, and the town was liberated by the Red Army on September 16,1943. The heroic defense of the port by the sailors allowed the Soviets to retain possession of the citys bay, Novorossiysk was awarded the title Hero City in 1973. In 1960, the town was commemorated in Dmitri Shostakovichs work Novorossiysk Chimes, in 2003, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree setting up a naval base for the Black Sea Fleet in Novorossiysk. Russia has allocated 12.3 billion rubles for the construction of the new base between 2007 and 2012, the construction of other facilities and infrastructure at the base, including units for coastal troops, aviation and logistics, will continue beyond 2012. In 2014 the naval base remained incomplete, completion is scheduled for 2016. The Russian lease on port facilities in Sevastopol, which, though the base of Russias Black Sea Fleet, is part of Ukraine, was set to expire in 2017. As a municipal division, the City of Novorossiysk is incorporated as Novorossiysk Urban Okrug, Novorossiysk has a humid subtropical climate. The city sprawls along the shore of the non-freezing Tsemess Bay and it is the busiest oil port in the Black Sea and the terminus of the pipeline from the Tengiz Field, developed by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Novorossiysk is also a city, dependent on steel, food processing
37.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
38.
Bulgarian language
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Bulgarian /bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, with the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Bulgarian became one of the official languages of the European Union. Development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods, prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian – a literary norm of the southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible, Middle Bulgarian – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar, present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing, as Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, the Slavic language. In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ. In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот, непонятен, ядро and others. As usual in cases, many other loans from French, English. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and linguistic chaos ensued. Eventually the eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography, the language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel. This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgarias, E. g. млеко – milk, хлеб – bread. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have ya, or an open e sound. The literary language norm, which is based on the Eastern dialects
39.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
40.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
41.
Dobruja
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Dobruja is a historical region shared today by Bulgaria and Romania. It is situated between the lower Danube River and the Black Sea, and includes the Danube Delta, Romanian coast, the territory of Dobruja is made up of Northern Dobruja, which is part of Romania, and Southern Dobruja, which belongs to Bulgaria. The territory of the Romanian region Dobrogea is now organised as the counties of Constanța and Tulcea, with an area of 15,500 km2. Its main cities are Constanța, Tulcea, Medgidia and Mangalia, Dobrogea is represented by dolphins in the coat of arms of Romania. The Bulgarian region of Dobrudzha is divided between the regions of Dobrich, Silistra, the villages, Konevo, Rainino, Terter and Madrevo. This part has an area of 7,565 km2, with a combined population of some 350,000 people. With the exception of the Danube Delta, a region located in its northeastern corner, Dobruja is hilly. The highest point is in the Țuțuiatu Peak in the Măcin Mountains, the Dobrogea Plateau covers most of the Romanian part of Dobruja, while in the Bulgarian part the Ludogorie Plateau is found. Lake Siutghiol is one of the most important lakes in Northern Dobruja, the Black Sea also exerts an influence over the regions climate, particularly within 40–60 kilometres from the coast. The average annual temperatures range from 11 °C inland and along the Danube to 11.8 °C on the coast, the coastal region of Southern Dobruja is the most arid part of Bulgaria, with an annual precipitation of 450 millimetres. Dobruja is a region once known for its windmills. About 85–90% of all experience some kind of wind, which usually comes from the north or northeast. The average wind speed is twice higher than the average in Bulgaria. Due to the precipitation and the proximity to the sea, rivers in Dobruja are usually short. However, the region has a number of shallow lakes with brackish water. The most widespread opinion among scholars is that the origin of the term Dobruja is to be found in the Turkish rendition of the name of a 14th‑century Bulgarian ruler and it was common for the Turks to name countries after one of their early rulers. Other etymologies have been considered, but never gained widespread acceptance, abdolonyme Ubicini believed the name meant good lands, derived from Slavic dobro, an opinion that was adopted by several 19th‑century scholars. I. A. Nazarettean combines the Slavic word with the Tatar budjak, a version matching contemporaneous descriptions was suggested by Kanitz, which connected the name with the Bulgarian dobrice
Romania
Constanța
listen); Greek: Κωνστάντζα or Κωνστάντια, Konstantia, Bulgarian: Кюстенджа or Констанца, Turkish: Köstence), historically known as Tomis (Ancient Greek: Τόμις),[3] is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Romania. It was founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region.
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Aktau, Kazakhstan
Alexandria, Egypt
Brest, France[32]
Dobrich, Bulgaria
Havana, Cuba
Istanbul, Turkey
Latakia, Syria
Makassar, Indonesia[33]
Mobile, United States
Novorossiysk, Russia
Odessa, Ukraine
Perugia, Italy
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Santos, Brazil
Shanghai, China
Sidon, Lebanon
Thessaloniki, Greece[34]
Turku, Finland
Yokohama, Japan[35]
The Honorary Consulate of Hungary
The Honorary Consulate of Norway
The Honorary Consulate of the Central African Republic
The Honorary Consulate of the United Kingdom
Constanța travel guide from Wikivoyage
