1.
Cuba
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital, other cities include Santiago de Cuba. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of 109,884 square kilometres, prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, as a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batistas ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of human rights abuses. It is one of the worlds last planned economies and its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, according to the Human Development Index, Cuba is described as a country with high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America. It also ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care, the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant, authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Taíno, the Guanajatabey, and the Ciboney people. The ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, the Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D. When Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having a population of 150,000. The name Cuba comes from the native Taíno language and it is derived from either coabana meaning great place, or from cubao meaning where fertile land is abundant. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers, Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa, other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital
2.
Playground
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A playground, playpark, or play area is a place specifically designed to enable children to play there. While a playground is designed for children, some target other age groups. Berlins Preußenpark for example is designed for people aged 70 or higher, a playground might exclude children below a certain age. Common in modern playgrounds are play structures that many different pieces of equipment. Playgrounds often also have facilities for playing games of adult sports, such as a baseball diamond, a skating arena. In some parts of the United States, the term tot lot may be used, a type of playground called a playscape is designed to provide a safe environment for play in a natural setting. Through history, children played in their villages and neighbourhoods, especially in the streets, in the 19th century, developmental psychologists such as Friedrich Fröbel proposed playgrounds as a developmental aid, or to imbue children with a sense of fair play and good manners. In Germany, a few playgrounds were erected in connection to schools, the Outdoor Recreation League provided funds to erect playgrounds on parkland, especially following the 1901 publication of a report on numbers of children being run down by cars in New York City. Interventionist programs such as by the child savers sought to move children into controlled areas to limit delinquency, one of the first playgrounds in the United States was built in San Franciscos Golden Gate Park in 1887. In 1906 the Playground Association of America was founded and a year later Luther Gulick became president and it later became the National Recreation Association and then the National Recreation and Park Association. Neither do small back yards nor ornamental grass plots meet the needs of any, older children who would play vigorous games must have places especially set aside for them, and, since play is a fundamental need, playgrounds should be provided for every child as much as schools. This means that they must be distributed over the cities in such a way as to be walking distance of every boy and girl. Playgrounds were a part of urban culture in the USSR. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were playgrounds in almost every park in many Soviet cities, Playground apparatus was reasonably standard all over the country, most of them consisted of metallic bars with relatively few wooden parts, and were manufactured in state-owned factories. Some of the most common constructions were the carousel, sphere, seesaw, rocket, bridge, Playground design is influenced by the intended purpose and audience. Separate play areas might be offered to accommodate very young children, single, large, open parks tend to not to be used by older schoolgirls or less aggressive children, because there is little opportunity for them to escape more aggressive children. By contrast, a park that offers multiple play areas is used equally by boys, professionals recognize that the social skills that children develop on the playground often become lifelong skill sets that are carried forward into their adulthood. Independent research concludes that playgrounds are among the most important environments for children outside the home, most forms of play are essential for healthy development, but free, spontaneous play—the kind that occurs on playgrounds—is the most beneficial type of play
3.
Chalk
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Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is a salt called calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the accumulation of minute calcite shells shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores. Flint is very common as bands parallel to the bedding or as embedded in chalk. It is probably derived from sponge spicules or other organisms as water is expelled upwards during compaction. Flint is often deposited around larger fossils such as Echinoidea which may be silicified, Chalk as seen in Cretaceous deposits of Western Europe is unusual among sedimentary limestones in the thickness of the beds. Most cliffs of chalk have very few obvious bedding planes unlike most thick sequences of such as the Carboniferous Limestone or the Jurassic oolitic limestones. This presumably indicates very stable conditions over tens of millions of years, Chalk has greater resistance to weathering and slumping than the clays with which it is usually associated, thus forming tall steep cliffs where chalk ridges meet the sea. Chalk hills, known as chalk downland, usually form where bands of chalk reach the surface at an angle, because chalk is well jointed it can hold a large volume of ground water, providing a natural reservoir that releases water slowly through dry seasons. Chalk is mined from chalk deposits both above ground and underground, Chalk mining boomed during the Industrial Revolution, due to the need for chalk products such as quicklime and bricks. Abandoned chalk mines remain a popular tourist attraction due to their massive expanse, the Chalk Group is a European stratigraphic unit deposited during the late Cretaceous Period. It forms the famous White Cliffs of Dover in Kent, England, the Champagne region of France is mostly underlain by chalk deposits, which contain artificial caves used for wine storage. Some of the highest chalk cliffs in the occur at Jasmund National Park in Germany. Ninety million years ago what is now the chalk downland of Northern Europe was ooze accumulating at the bottom of a great sea. Chalk was one of the earliest rocks made up of particles to be studied under the electron microscope. Their shells were made of calcite extracted from the rich sea-water, as they died, a substantial layer gradually built up over millions of years and, through the weight of overlying sediments, eventually became consolidated into rock. Later earth movements related to the formation of the Alps raised these former sea-floor deposits above sea level, the chemical composition of chalk is calcium carbonate, with minor amounts of silt and clay. It is formed in the sea by plankton, which fall to the sea floor and are then consolidated and compressed during diagenesis into chalk rock
4.
Road surface
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Road surface or pavement is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, cobblestone and granite setts were extensively used, Road surfaces are frequently marked to guide traffic. Today, permeable paving methods are beginning to be used for low-impact roadways and walkways, asphalt, sometimes called flexible pavement due to the nature in which it distributes loads, has been widely used since the 1920s. The viscous nature of the bitumen binder allows asphalt concrete to sustain significant plastic deformation, most asphalt surfaces are laid on a gravel base, which is generally at least as thick as the asphalt layer, although some full depth asphalt surfaces are laid directly on the native subgrade. In areas with soft or expansive subgrades such as clay or peat. Depending on the temperature at which it is applied, asphalt is categorized as hot mix, warm mix, hot mix asphalt is applied at temperatures over 300 °F with a free floating screed. Warm mix asphalt is applied at temperatures of 200–250 °F, resulting in reduced energy usage, cold mix asphalt is often used on lower volume rural roads, where hot mix asphalt would cool too much on the long trip from the asphalt plant to the construction site. An asphalt concrete surface will generally be constructed for primary highways having an average annual daily traffic load greater than 1200 vehicles per day. Advantages of asphalt roadways include relatively low noise, relatively low cost compared with other paving methods, in the mid-1960s, rubberized asphalt was used for the first time, mixing crumb rubber from used tires with asphalt. Also, application of rubberized asphalt is more temperature-sensitive, and in many locations can only be applied at times of the year. Study results of the long-term acoustic benefits of rubberized asphalt are inconclusive, compared to traditional passive attenuating measures, rubberized asphalt provides shorter-lasting and lesser acoustic benefits at typically much greater expense. Concrete surfaces are created using a mix of Portland cement, coarse aggregate, sand. In many cases there will also be Portland cement substitutes added and this can reduce the cost of the concrete and improve its physical properties. The water allows the mix to combine molecularly in a reaction called hydration. Concrete surfaces have been refined into three types, jointed plain, jointed reinforced and continuously reinforced. The one item that each type is the jointing system used to control crack development. Jointed plain concrete pavements contain enough joints to control the location of all the expected shrinkage cracks, the concrete cracks at the joints and not elsewhere in the slabs. Jointed plain pavements do not contain any steel reinforcement, however, there may be smooth steel bars at transverse joints and deformed steel bars at longitudinal joints
5.
Morecambe
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Morecambe /ˈmɔːkəm/ is a town on Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, England, which had a population of 34,768 at the 2011 Census. The first use of the name Morecambe in modern times was by Whitaker in his History of Manchester and it next appears four years later in Antiquities of Furness where the bay is described as the Bay of Morecambe. That name is derived from the Roman name shown on maps prepared for them by Claudius Ptolemœus from his original Greek maps, at this distance in time it is impossible to say if the name was originally derived from an earlier language or from Greek. The Latin version describes the fourth inlet north from Wales on the west coast of England as Moriancabris Æsturis, the name next crops up as early as March 1862 on a steam locomotive built for the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway. It was not until 1889 that the legislation was passed to officially name the area as Morecambe, comprising the hamlets of Poulton, Bare. In 1894 the Urban District Council was formed, thus freeing Morecambe completely from its governance by the Borough of Lancaster until 1974 when Lancaster again took charge. Before the creation of Morecambe, Poulton acquired two suffixes, le Sands and briefly on Sands shown on at least one map, the reason for these additions stems from the dearth of names of townships in earlier times with the same name recurring over again. In the days before free movement of people, this was not so important, as travel became easier through first the turnpikes and later the railways, it became necessary to differentiate between the various towns with the same name, hence the additions. On 3 August 1928 the name changed again when the Corporation of Morecambe amalgamated with Heysham Urban District Council to form the borough of Morecambe and Heysham. In 1846, the Morecambe Harbour and Railway Company was formed to build a harbour on Morecambe Bay, close to the village of Poulton-le-Sands. The settlement expanded to absorb Poulton and the villages of Bare, the settlement started to be referred to as Morecambe, possibly after the harbour and railway. In 1889 the new name was officially adopted, Morecambe was a thriving seaside resort in the mid-20th century. While the resort of Blackpool attracted holiday-makers predominantly from the Lancashire mill towns, Morecambe had more visitors from Yorkshire, mill workers from Bradford and further afield in West Yorkshire would holiday at Morecambe, with some retiring there. This gave Morecambe the nickname Bradford On Sea, between 1956 and 1989 it was the home of the Miss Great Britain beauty contest. Morecambe suffered a decline after a series of incidents that damaged tourism. Two piers were lost, West End Pier was partly washed away in a storm in November 1977, in 1994, The World of Crinkley Bottom attraction in Happy Mount Park closed only thirteen weeks after opening. The ensuing Blobbygate scandal led to a battle between Lancaster City Council and TV star Noel Edmonds. The closures of Bubbles, Morecambes swimming pool, and the known as Frontierland soon followed
6.
Francis Willughby
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Francis Willughby was an English ornithologist and ichthyologist. He was a student, friend and colleague of the naturalist John Ray at Cambridge University, Ray saw Willughbys Ornithologia libri tres through the press after Willughbys sudden death. Willughby was born at Middleton Hall, Warwickshire to Sir Francis Willoughby and he studied at Bishop Veseys Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1667 he married Emma Barnard, daughter of Sir Henry Barnard of Bridgnorth, the first child, Francis, died at the age of nineteen, while his daughter Cassandra Willoughby married the Duke of Chandos, who was a patron of Mark Catesby. His second son was Thomas, who was created Baron Middleton by Queen Anne, at Cambridge Francis Willughby was taught by the naturalist John Ray. In 1662 they travelled to the west coast of England to study the breeding seabirds, between 1663 and 1666 they toured Europe together, travelling through the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. They separated at Naples and Willughby returned home via Spain, on returning to England they made plans to publish the results of their studies. Willughby died from pleurisy during the preparation of work, but Ray published Willughbys Ornithologiae libri tres in 1676. This is considered the beginning of scientific ornithology in Europe, revolutionizing ornithological taxonomy by organizing species according to their physical characteristics, Willughby and Ray were among the first to dismiss the older inaccuracies of Aristotle. Aristotle had claimed that swallows hibernated but Willughby and Ray wrote, To us it seems probable that they fly away into hot countries, viz. Egypt. Ray also published Willughbys De Historia piscium, in 2003 Willughbys scientific study of games was published, making generally available for the first time in-depth descriptions of a number of seventeenth century games. It was the first such work in the English language, and is comparable to the Spanish Libro de los juegos and he adds, The harder the ball is blown, the better it flies. They used to put quicksilver into it sometimes to keep it from lying still, the Willughby family seat, Wollaton Hall is now owned by the City of Nottingham. The Willughby papers are amongst the Middleton collection held at the Nottingham University Library, johnson, Joan, Excellent Cassandra, The Life and Times of the Duchess of Chandos. Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucester, England, poole, William, The Prae-Adamitae and the early Royal Society, Two Cases from the Periphery Willughby, Francis, Ornithologiae libri tres. Willughby, Francis, The ornithology of Francis Willughby
7.
Noah Webster
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Noah Webster, Jr. was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the Father of American Scholarship and Education and his blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read, secularizing their education. According to Ellis, he gave Americans a secular catechism to the nation-state, Webster was born in the Western Division of Hartford to an established family. His father Noah Sr. was a descendant of Connecticut Governor John Webster and his father was primarily a farmer, though he was also deacon of the local Congregational church, captain of the towns militia, and a founder of a local book society. After American independence, he was appointed a justice of the peace, Websters father never attended college, but he was intellectually curious and prized education. Websters mother spent long hours teaching her children spelling, mathematics, at age six, Webster began attending a dilapidated one-room primary school built by West Hartfords Ecclesiastical Society. Years later, he described the teachers as the dregs of humanity, Websters experiences there motivated him to improve the educational experience of future generations. At age fourteen, his church pastor began tutoring him in Latin, Webster enrolled at Yale just before his 16th birthday, studying during his senior year with Ezra Stiles, Yales president. His four years at Yale overlapped the American Revolutionary War and, because of shortages and threatened British invasions. Webster served in the Connecticut Militia and his father had mortgaged the farm to send Webster to Yale, but he was now on his own and had nothing more to do with his family. Webster lacked career plans after graduating from Yale in 1778, later writing that a liberal arts education disqualifies a man for business and he taught school briefly in Glastonbury, but the working conditions were harsh and the pay low. While studying law under future U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, Webster also taught full-time in Hartford—which was grueling, and ultimately impossible to continue. He quit his studies for a year and lapsed into a depression, he then found another practicing attorney to tutor him. As the Revolutionary War was still going on, he could not find work as a lawyer and he received a masters degree from Yale by giving an oral dissertation to the Yale graduating class. Later that year, he opened a private school in western Connecticut that was a success. Nevertheless, he closed it and left town, probably because of a failed romance. He then founded a school catering to wealthy parents in Goshen, New York and, by 1785, he had written his speller, a grammar book. Proceeds from continuing sales of the popular blue-backed speller enabled Webster to spend years working on his famous dictionary
8.
Oxford English Dictionary
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The Oxford English Dictionary is a descriptive dictionary of the English language, published by the Oxford University Press. The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, in 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the edition was published. Since 2000, an edition of the dictionary has been underway. The first electronic version of the dictionary was available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will probably appear in electronic form, Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than merely their present-day usages, therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used. The format of the OEDs entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects and this influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries, the dictionarys latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, as entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011. Despite its impressive size, the OED is neither the worlds largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language, the Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is the worlds largest dictionary, has similar aims to the OED and took twice as long to complete. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838, the official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716, trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips, later the same year, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor, on 12 May 1860, Coleridges dictionary plan was published and research was started
9.
Belo Horizonte
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Belo Horizonte is the sixth largest city in Brazil, the thirteenth largest city in South America and the eighteenth largest city in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, ranked as the third most populous area in Brazil. Belo Horizonte is the capital of the state of Minas Gerais and it is the first planned modern city in Brazil. The region was first settled in the early 18th century, but the city as it is today was planned and constructed in the 1890s. The city features a mixture of contemporary and classical buildings, and is home to several modern Brazilian architectural icons, in planning the city, Aarão Reis and Francisco Bicalho sought inspiration in the urban planning of Washington, D. C. The city has employed notable programs in urban revitalization and food security, the city is built on several hills and is completely surrounded by mountains. There are several parks in the immediate surroundings of Belo Horizonte. The Mangabeiras Park, located 6 km south-east from the city centre in the hills of Curral Ridge, has a view of the city. It has an area of 2.35 km2, of which 0.9 km2 is covered by the native forest, the Jambeiro Woods nature reserve extends over 912 hectares, with vegetation typical of the Atlantic forest. More than one hundred species of birds inhabit the reserve, as well as ten different species of mammals, Belo Horizonte was one of the host cities of the 1950 and the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Additionally, the city shared the host of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the term Grande BH denotes any of various definitions for the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. The legally defined Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte consists of 34 municipalities in total, the intense process of urbanization that is taking place in the metropolitan region has made some of the political boundaries between municipalities in the region obsolete. Belo Horizonte lies on a region of contact between different geological series of the Proterozoic, the geology largely comprises various crystalline rocks, which give rise to the varied morphology of the landscape. The archean rocks members of Belo Horizonte complex and supracrustal sequences of the Paleoproterozoic is predominant, the metasedimentary rocks has its area of occurrence on the south of Ribeirão Arrudas pipeline, constituting about 30% of the area of Belo Horizonte. The characteristics of this area are lithological diversities and rugged topography, which has its maximum expression in the Serra do Curral, the hills of Belo Horizonte are part of the Espinhaço Mountains and belong to the larger Itacolomi mountain chain. The highest point in the municipality is in the Serra do Curral, Belo Horizontes latitude at 1955South places it in the tropical zone. Yearly temperatures average between 9 and 35 °C, the Köppen climate classification of the region is tropical savanna climate and it borders on a humid subtropical climate. Belo Horizonte is located about 300 kilometres from the sea, even though inter-seasonal differences are not as pronounced as they are in temperate places, there is a contrast between spring and summer, and between fall and winter
10.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
11.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
12.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
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