Macy's
Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated with the Bloomingdale's department store chain; as of 2015, Macy's was the largest U. S. department store company by retail sales. As of February 2019, there were 584 full-line stores with the Macy's nameplate in operation throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, its flagship store is located at Herald Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The company had 130,000 employees and earned annual revenue of $24.8 billion as of 2017. Macy's has conducted the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City since 1924 and has sponsored the city's annual Fourth of July fireworks display since 1976. Macy's Herald Square is one of the largest department stores in the world; the flagship store covers an entire New York City block, features about 1.1 million square feet of retail space, includes additional space for offices and storage, serves as the endpoint for the Thanksgiving Day parade.
The value of Herald Square has been estimated at around $3 billion. Macy's was founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, who between 1843 and 1855 opened four retail dry goods stores, including the original Macy's store in downtown Haverhill, established in 1851 to serve the mill industry employees of the area, they all failed. Macy moved to New York City in 1858 and established a new store named "R. H. Macy & Co." on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, far north of where other dry goods stores were at the time. On the company's first day of business on October 28, 1858 sales totaled $11.08, equal to $320.27 today. From the beginning, Macy's logo has included a star, which comes from a tattoo that Macy got as a teenager when he worked on a Nantucket whaling ship, the Emily Morgan; as the business grew, Macy's expanded into neighboring buildings, opening more and more departments, used publicity devices such as a store Santa Claus, themed exhibits, illuminated window displays to draw in customers.
It offered a money back guarantee, although it accepted only cash into the 1950s. The store produced its own made-to-measure clothing for both men and women, assembled in an on-site factory. In 1875, Macy took on Robert M. Valentine, a nephew. La Forge of Wisconsin, the husband of a cousin. Macy died in 1877 from inflammatory kidney disease. La Forge died the following year, Valentine died in 1879. Ownership of the company remained in the Macy family until 1895, when the company, now called "R. H. Macy & Co.", was acquired by Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan Straus, who had held a license to sell china and other goods in the Macy's store. In 1902, the flagship store moved uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway, so far north of the other main dry goods emporia that it had to offer a steam wagonette to transport customers from 14th Street to 34th Street. Although the Herald Square store consisted of just one building, it expanded through new construction occupying the entire block bounded by Seventh Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, 34th Street on the south and 35th Street on the north, with the exception of a small pre-existing building on the corner of 35th Street and Seventh Avenue and another on the corner of 34th Street and Broadway.
This latter 5-story building was purchased by Robert H. Smith in 1900 for $375,000 – an incredible sum at the time – with the idea of getting in the way of Macy's becoming the largest store in the world: it is supposed that Smith, a neighbor of the Macy's store on 14th Street, was acting on behalf of Siegel-Cooper, which had built what they thought was the world's largest store on Sixth Avenue in 1896. Macy's ignored the tactic, built around the building, which now carries Macy's "shopping bag" sign by lease arrangement. In 1912, Isidor Straus died in the sinking of the Titanic at the age of 67 with Ida; the original Broadway store was designed by architects De Lemos & Cordes, was built in 1901–02 by the Fuller Company and has a Palladian facade, but has been updated in many details. There were further additions to the west in 1924 and 1928, the Seventh Avenue building in 1931, all designed by architect Robert D. Kohn, the newer buildings were Art Deco in style. In 2012, Macy's began the first full renovation of the iconic Herald Square flagship store at a reported cost of $400 million.
Studio V Architecture, a New York-based firm, was the overall Master Plan architect of the project. Studio V's design raised controversy over the nature of contemporary design and authentic restoration; the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1978. In the 1960s, Macy's built a store on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, in the New York City borough of Queens; this resulted in a round department store on 90 percent of the lot, with a small owned house on the corner. Macy's no longer occupies this building, which now contains the Queens Place Mall, with Macy's Furniture Gallery as a tenant. More distant acquisitions included Lasalle & Koch, Davison-Paxon-Stokes, L. Bamberger & Co. O'Connor Moffat & Company and John Taylor Dry Goods Co.. O'Connor Moffat was renamed Macy's San Francisco in 1947 becoming Macy's California, John Taylor was renamed
Kenzō Tange
Kenzō Tange was a Japanese architect, winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize for architecture. He was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, designed major buildings on five continents. Tange was an influential patron of the Metabolist movement, he said: "It was, I believe, around 1959 or at the beginning of the sixties that I began to think about what I was to call structuralism", a reference to the architectural movement known as Dutch Structuralism. Influenced from an early age by the Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier, Tange gained international recognition in 1949 when he won the competition for the design of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, he was a member of CIAM in the 1950s. He did not join the group of younger CIAM architects known as Team X, though his 1960 Tokyo Bay plan was influential for Team 10 in the 1960s, as well as the group that became Metabolism, his university studies on urbanism put him in an ideal position to handle redevelopment projects after the Second World War.
His ideas were explored in designs for Skopje. Tange's work influenced a generation of architects across the world. Born on 4 September 1913 in Osaka, Tange spent his early life in the Chinese cities of Hankow and Shanghai. In contrast to the green lawns and red bricks in their Shanghai abode, the Tange family took up residence in a thatched roof farmhouse in Imabari on the island of Shikoku. After finishing middle school, Tange moved to Hiroshima in 1930 to attend high school, it was here that he first encountered the works of Le Corbusier. His discovery of the drawings of the Palace of the Soviets in a foreign art journal convinced him to become an architect. Although he graduated from high school, Tange's poor results in mathematics and physics meant that he had to pass entrance exams to qualify for admission to the prestigious universities, he spent two years doing so and during that time, he read extensively about western philosophy. Tange enrolled in the film division at Nihon University's art department to dodge Japan's drafting of young men to its military and attended classes.
In 1935 Tange began the tertiary studies he desired at University of Tokyo's architecture department. He studied under Shozo Uchida. Although Tange was fascinated by the photographs of Katsura villa that sat on Kishida's desk, his work was inspired by Le Corbusier, his graduation project was a seventeen-hectare development set in Tokyo's Hibiya Park. After graduating from the university, Tange started to work as an architect at the office of Kunio Maekawa. During his employment, he travelled to Manchuria, participating in an architectural design competition for a bank, toured Japanese-occupied Jehol on his return; when the Second World War started, he left Maekawa to rejoin the University of Tokyo as a postgraduate student. He developed an interest in urban design, referencing only the resources available in the university library, he embarked on a study of Greek and Roman marketplaces. In 1942, Tange entered a competition for the design of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Memorial Hall.
He was awarded first prize for a design. The design was not realised. In 1946, Tange opened Tange Laboratory. In 1963, he was promoted to professor of the Department of Urban Engineering, his students included Kisho Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki, Hajime Yatsuka and Fumihiko Maki. Tange's interest in urban studies put him in a good position to handle post war reconstruction. In the summer of 1946 he was invited by the War Damage Rehabilitation Board to put forward a proposal for certain war damaged cities, he submitted plans for Maebashi. His design for an airport in Kanon, Hiroshima was accepted and built, but a seaside park in Ujina was not; the Hiroshima authorities took advice about the city's reconstruction from foreign consultants, in 1947 Tam Deling, an American park planner, suggested they build a Peace Memorial and preserve buildings situated near ground zero, that point directly below the explosion of the atomic bomb. In 1949 the authorities enacted the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Reconstruction Act, which gave the city access to special grant aid, in August 1949, an international competition was announced for the design of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Tange was awarded first prize for a design that proposed a museum whose axis runs through the park, intersecting Peace Boulevard and the atomic bomb dome. The building is raised on massive columns; the Centro Direzionale is a service center in Italy. The district is devoted to business; the project of the Centro Direzionale dates back to 1964. It was designed in 1982 by Tange; the layout includes 18 blocks of buildings, with high-rises up to 100 meters. There are office buildings as well as residential flats; the Center is meant to accommodate most, if not all, of the administrative offices of the city of Naples, such as the new Hall of Justice. It includes a pedestrian zone at ground level with shops and hotels. There is an underground parking facility with escalators running up into the middle of the large pedestrian concourse, an area adorned with fountains, greenery and a church; the Centro Direzionale is home to the tallest building in souther
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity and lack of variety of modern architecture in the international style advocated by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their book Learning from Las Vegas; the style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, modern classicism and deconstructivism. Postmodern architecture emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the perceived shortcomings of modern architecture its rigid doctrines, its uniformity, its lack of ornament, its habit of ignoring the history and culture of the cities where it appeared. In 1966, Venturi formalized the movement in his book and Contradiction in Architecture.
Venturi summarized the kind of architecture he wanted to see replace modernism: I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience, inherent in art... I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties... I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure", compromising rather than "clean"...accommodating rather than excluding... I am for messy vitality over obvious unity... I prefer "both-and" to "either-or", black and white, sometimes gray, to black or white... An architecture of complexity and contradiction must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. In place of the functional doctrines of modernism, Venturi proposed giving primary emphasis to the façade, incorporating historical elements, a subtle use of unusual materials and historical allusions, the use of fragmentation and modulations to make the building interesting. Venturi's wife, accomplished architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown, Venturi wrote Learning from Las Vegas, co-authored with Steven Izenour, in which they further developed their joint argument against modernism.
They urged architects take into consideration and to celebrate the existing architecture in a place, rather than to try to impose a visionary utopia from their own fantasies. This was in line with Scott Brown’s belief that buildings should be built for people, that architecture should listen to them. Scott Brown and Venturi argued that ornamental and decorative elements "accommodate existing needs for variety and communication"; the book was instrumental in opening readers' eyes to new ways of thinking about buildings, as it drew from the entire history of architecture—both high-style and vernacular, both historic and modern—and In response to Mies van der Rohe's famous maxim "Less is more", Venturi responded, to "Less is a bore." Venturi cited the examples of his wife’s and his own buildings, Guild House, in Philadelphia, as examples of a new style that welcomed variety and historical references, without returning to academic revival of old styles. In Italy at about the same time, a similar revolt against strict modernism was being launched by the architect Aldo Rossi, who criticized the rebuilding of Italian cities and buildings destroyed during the war in the modernist style, which had had no relation to the architectural history, original street plans, or culture of the cities.
Rossi insisted that cities be rebuilt in ways that preserved their historical fabric and local traditions. Similar ideas were and projects were put forward at the Venice Biennale in 1980; the call for a post-modern style was joined by Christian de Portzamparc in France and Ricardo Bofill in Spain, in Japan by Arata Isozaki. Robert Venturi was both a prominent theorist of postmodernism and an architect whose buildings illustrated his ideas. After studying at the American Academy in Rome, he worked in the offices of the modernists Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn until 1958, became a professor of architecture at Yale University. One of his first buildings was the Guild House in Philadelphia, built between 1960 and 1963, a house for his mother in Chestnut Hill, in Philadelphia; these two houses became symbols of the postmodern movement. He went on to design, in the 1960s and 1970s, a series of buildings which took into account both historic precedents, the ideas and forms existing in the real life of the cities around them.
Michael Graves designed two of the most prominent buildings in the postmodern style, the Portland Building and the Denver Public Library. He followed up his landmark buildings by designing large, low-cost retail stores for chains such as Target and J. C. Penney in the United States, which had a major influence on the design of retail stores in city centers and shopping malls. In his early career, he, along with the Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier, was considered one of the New York Five, a group of advocates of pure modern architecture, but in 1982 he turned toward postmodernism with the Portland Building, one of the first major structures in the style; the building has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The most famous work of architect Charles Moore is the Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans, a public square composed of an exuberant collection of pieces of famous Italian Renaissance architecture. Drawing upon the Spanish Revival architecture of the city hall, Moore designed the Beverly Hills Civic Center in a mixture of Spanish Revival, Art Deco and Post-Modern styles.
It includes courtyards, colonnades and buildings, with both open and semi-enclosed spaces and balconies. The Haas School of Bu
Neo-futurism
Neo-futurism is a late 20th to early 21st century movement in the arts and architecture. It could be seen as a departure from the attitude of post-modernism and represents an idealistic belief in a better future and "a need to periodize the modern rapport with the technological"; this avant-garde movement is a futuristic rethinking of the aesthetic and functionality of growing cities. The industrialization that began worldwide following the end of the Second World War gave wind to new streams of thought in life and architecture, leading to post-modernism, neo-modernism and neo-futurism. In the Western countries, futurist architecture evolved into Art Deco, the Googie movement and high-tech architecture, most into neo-futurism. Pioneered in the late 1960s and early 70s by American architects Buckminster Fuller and John C. Portman, Jr.. Although it was never built, the Fun Palace interpreted by architect Cedric Price as a "giant neo-futurist machine" influenced other architects, notably Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, whose Pompidou Centre extended many of Price's ideas.
Neo-futurism was relaunched in 2007 after the dissemination of "The Neo-Futuristic City Manifesto" included in the candidature presented to the Bureau International des Expositions and written by innovation designer Vito Di Bari, a former executive director at UNESCO), to outline his vision for the city of Milan at the time of the Universal Expo 2015. Di Bari defined his neo-futuristic vision as the "cross-pollination of art, cutting edge technologies and ethical values combined to create a pervasively higher quality of life". Jean-Louis Cohen has defined neo-futurism as "a corollary to technology, being the structures built today byproducts of new materials to create impossible forms." Etan J. Ilfeld wrote that in the contemporary neo-futurist aesthetics "the machine becomes an integral element of the creative process itself, generates the emergence of artistic modes that would have been impossible prior to computer technology." Reyner Banham's definition of "une architecture autre" is a call for an architecture that technologically overcomes all previous architectures but possessing an expressive form, as Banham stated about neo-futuristic "Archigram’s Plug-in Computerized City, form does not have to follow function into oblivion."
Inspired by Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia and pioneered from early 1960s and late 1970s by thought leader Hal Foster, French architect Denis Laming, American architects William Pereira and Charles Luckman and Danish architects Henning Larsen and Jørn Utzon. The neo-futurist avant-garde movement has been relaunched in 2007 by Expo 2015 Innovation Designer Vito Di Bari. Neo-Futurist architecture and art have been creatively inspired by Iraqi-British Pritzker Prize architect Zaha Hadid, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Italian Innovation Designer Vito Di Bari is considered the thought leader of the movement, his vision of the “cross-pollination of art and technology for a better world” has been defined by Steve Jobs as the "post-PC DNA" and it is shared by acclaimed architects and artists such as the youngest recipient of the Pritzker Prize Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa, architect of Ecoville in Curitiba and of the first rotating residential buildings Bruno de Franco, Design for Asia Award 2004-7-9 recipient Hong Kong Architect Gary Chang, Brazilian architect Rodrigo Ohtake, Lubetkin Prize Winner British designer Thomas Heatherwick, Design for Asia 2008 Award recipient Japanese artist Tokujin Yoshioka, Italian artist Mario Arlati, Polish artist Karina Smigla-Bobinski.
The relaunch of neo-futurism in the 21st century has been creatively inspired by the Iraqi-British Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and by Vito DiBari. Neo-futurist architects and artists are French architect Denis Laming. Neo-futurism has absorbed some of the high-tech architecture’s themes and ideas, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology іnto building design: technology and context is the focus of some architects of this movement such as Buckminster Fuller, Norman Foster, Kenzo Tange, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Frei Otto, Santiago Calatrava
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, sometimes referred to as Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world; the Irish Sea lies between Great Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world, it is the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017. The UK is constitutional monarchy; the current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 1952, making her the longest-serving current head of state.
The United Kingdom's capital and largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million. Other major urban areas in the UK include Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire conurbations, Greater Glasgow and the Liverpool Built-up Area; the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Belfast, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution; the nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the UK, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There are fourteen British Overseas Territories, the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed a quarter of the world's land mass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language and political systems of many of its former colonies; the United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world, it was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power, with considerable economic, military and political influence internationally, it is sixth in military expenditure in the world. It has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946.
It has been a leading member state of the European Union and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. The United Kingdom is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G20, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization; the 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term "United Kingdom" has been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was "Great Britain"; the Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, Scotland and Northern Ireland are widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom; some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Northern Ireland as "regions". Northern Ireland is referred to as a "province". With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice revealing one's political preferences"; the term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole; the term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed, with the BBC preferring to use Britain as shorthand only for Great Britain and the UK Government, while accepting that both terms refer to the United K
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
