1.
Slovakia
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Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Slovakias territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks, the capital and largest city is Bratislava. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samos Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra. In the 10th century, the territory was integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary, which became part of the Habsburg Empire. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a separate Slovak Republic existed in World War II as a client state of Nazi Germany. In 1945, Czechoslovakia was reëstablished under Communist rule as a Soviet satellite, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution ended authoritarian Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The country maintains a combination of economy with universal health care. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the Eurozone on 1 January 2009, Slovakia is also a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. The Slovak economy is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and its legal tender, the Euro, is the worlds 2nd most traded currency. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes, in 2016, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 165 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 11th in the world. Slovakia is the world’s biggest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone, the car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia’s industrial output, and a quarter of its exports. Radiocarbon datingputs the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BC and these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave near Bojnice, the most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice, Hubina and these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The Bronze Age in the territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BC
2.
Nitra Region
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The Nitra Region is one of the administrative regions of Slovakia. It was first established in 1923 and from 1996 exists in its present borders and it consists of seven districts /okresy/ and 354 municipalities, from which 15 have a town status. The economy of the region focuses more on agriculture, than in other Slovak regions, Nitra is its seat, largest city, and cultural and economic center. This region with a history is situated in the southwest of Slovakia. It is divided into two sub-units, the Danubian Flat in the south-west, with part of the Žitný ostrov island. Major rivers are the Danube in the south, Váh in the south-west, Nitra in the part, Hron in the east. The population density in the region is 113 inhabitants per km², the largest towns are Nitra, Komárno, Nové Zámky and Levice. The city of Nitra is also the centre of whole region, the region - which is the warmest in Slovakia - reaches a high production of wheat, rye and vegetables. Significant industries are, the industry, with breweries in Topoľčany, Nitra and Hurbanovo, are machinery. The Nitra Region consists of 7 districts, there are 350 municipalities, of which 15 are towns. The Encyclopaedia of Slovakia and the Slovaks, bratislava, Slovakia, Encyclopaedic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
3.
Danube
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The Danube is Europes second-longest river, after the Volga River, and also the longest river in the European Union region. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe, the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries, the Latin name Dānuvius is one of a number of Old European river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu. Other river names from the root include the Dunajec, Dzvina/Daugava, Don, Donets, Dnieper, Dniestr. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means fluid, drop, in Avestan, in the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra. Known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning strong, in Latin, the Danube was variously known as Danubius, Danuvius or as Ister. The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris for the upper Danube and Istros for the lower Danube, the Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, the bringer of luck. The Latin name is masculine, as are all its Slavic names, the German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe wetland. Classified as a waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach. The Danube then flows southeast for about 2,800 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and its drainage basin extends into nine more. The highest point of the basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border. The land drained by the Danube extends into other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges, from its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tributaries are, The Danube flows through many cities, including four national capitals, more than any other river in the world. Danube remains a mountain river until Passau, with average bottom gradient 0. 0012%. Middle Section, From Devín Gate to Iron Gate, at the border of Serbia and Romania, the riverbed widens and the average bottom gradient becomes only 0. 00006%. Lower Section, From Iron Gate to Sulina, with average gradient as little as 0. 00003%, about 60 of its tributaries are also navigable. In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central, the amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was difficult by the NATO bombing of three bridges in Serbia during the Kosovo War
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Central European Summer Time
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It corresponds to UTC + two hours. Other names which have been applied to Central European Summer Time are Middle European Summer Time, Central European Daylight Saving Time, and Bravo Time. Since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed between 1,00 UTC on the last Sunday of March and 1,00 on the last Sunday of October, the following countries and territories use Central European Summer Time. In addition, Libya used CEST during the years 1951–1959, 1982–1989, 1996–1997, European Summer Time Other countries and territories in UTC+2 time zone Other names of UTC+2 time zone
6.
Vehicle registration plates of Slovakia
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There are three design varieties that are in valid use. Between 1 April 1997 and 30 April 2004, the contained the Coat of Arms of Slovakia in the top left corner. The two district identifiers were separated from the serials by a dash, on 1 May 2004, Slovakia joined the European Union. In order to harmonise the visual look of the plates with the rest of the EU, the Slovak Coat of Arms was replaced by the so-called euroband, the country code SK was inserted into the euroband. The number 0 and letter O have been differentiated as well, the Slovak Coat of Arms has returned to the plates replacing the dash while keeping the EU part intact. Regular plates are the most commonly used of all the types and they contain seven characters starting with the district code followed by a series of 3 numbers and 2 letters. The number series used are between 001 and 999, the letter series are between AA-XZ and ZA-ZZ. 999AZ is followed by 001BA through 999BB etc, only Bratislava has reached 999ZZ as of February 2011. Where limited space warrants it, two-line plates can be used on a vehicle, a block of combinations is set aside from the regular plate range as required. Trailer plates follow the format of the regular plates XX-NNNLL except in case the first serial letter is always Y. The registrations would thus start 001YA, continuing through 999YA and 001YB to 999YZ, any build of trailer whether a mobile home or cargo trailer can use these plates. As of February 2011, Bratislava is nearing the end of its YZ series, two-line plates also exist with a block of combinations set aside for them in each district. Motorcycle plates follow the same coding and use the series as the regular plates. For example, DS-125AC can be both a regular plate and a motorcycle plate, the only difference is their size. Motorcycles use two different sizes both of which are smaller than the regular size, personalized plates are optional in Slovakia for an extra fee. The format must include the two letter code and 5 other characters in either XX-LLLLL, XX-LLLLN or LLLNN format. Unlike in any type of plates, the use of Q and W is possible. Plates are not allowed to any political, religious or offensive message
7.
Hungarian language
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Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
8.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
9.
Serbian language
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Serbian is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the language of Serbia and one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it is a minority language in Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia. Standard Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, which is also the basis of Standard Croatian, Bosnian, the other dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian in southeastern Serbia, which is transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian. Serbian is practically the only European standard language with complete synchronic digraphia, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, who created the alphabet on phonemic principles. The Latin alphabet was designed by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1830, Serbian is a standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, of the South Slavic subgroup. Other standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian are Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin and it has lower intelligibility with the Eastern South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Macedonian, than with Slovene. The 2011 census show that 42. 88% still declare Serbian to be their native language, Standard Serbian language uses both Cyrillic and Latin script. Even in official government documents this constitutional requirement is rarely enforced, Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them. Media and publishers typically select one alphabet or another, for example, the public broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia, predominantly uses the Cyrillic script whereas the privately run broadcasters, like RTV Pink, predominantly use the Latin script. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors the Cyrillic one and these are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the first conditional and the second conditional, Serbian has active and passive voice. As for the verb forms, Serbian has one infinitive. Most Serbian words are of native Slavic lexical stock, tracing back to the Proto-Slavic language, there are many loanwords from different languages, reflecting cultural interaction throughout history. Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian, Russian, Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik in 1349. In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, however, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. The epic poems were written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to the 1950s
10.
Confluence
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In geography, a confluence is the meeting of two or more bodies of water. The term is used to describe the meeting of tidal or other non-riverine bodies of water. A one-mile portion of the Industrial Canal in New Orleans accommodates the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada is at the confluence of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. The junction of the Green River and Colorado River forms the heart of Canyonlands National Park in Utahs Canyon Country, the Sangam, near Allahabad, India, where the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna meet to create one of the holiest places in Hinduism. The Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, located in Pittsburgh, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers in Three Forks, Montana form the confluence of the Missouri River, one of the longest rivers in the United States. Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is at the confluence of the Gombak River and the Klang River. Passau known also as the Dreiflüssestadt, because the Danube River is joined there by the Inn River from the South, manaus, Brazil is on the Rio Negro near its confluence with the Amazon. It is the port and a hub for the regions extensive river system. Osijek, Croatia, is on the bank of the river Drava 25 km upstream of its confluence with the Danube. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia lies at the confluence of the Sava, the Hochelaga Archipelago, including the island and city of Montreal, is located at the confluence of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River in Quebec, Canada. Winnipeg, Canada, is at the confluence of the Red River, the area is referred to as The Forks by locals, and has been an important trade location for over 6000 years. The confluence of the rivers Danube and Morava in Devín on the border between Slovakia and Austria, triangle of Three Emperors, former tripoint in Europe. Cairo, Illinois, in the United States, where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River, St. Louis, Missouri, is built just south of the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. Lyon, France is located on the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers, lytton, British Columbia, Canada, is located at the confluence of the muddy Fraser River and the clearer Thompson River. The confluence between the Franklin River and Gordon River in south-western Tasmania The confluence of the Snake and Columbia River at the Tri-Cities of Washington, the confluence of the rivers Pivka and Rak is one of the largest subterranean confluences in Europe. The confluence at Lokoja, Nigeria, where the Niger and Benue rivers merge, the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, located at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. This merging point is the beginning of the Nile, columbus, Ohio, in the United States is at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers. Luang Prabang in Laos is at the confluence of the Mekong, River Kabul and River Swat at Attock, in Pakistan
11.
Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
12.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
13.
Treaty of Trianon
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The treaty regulated the status of an independent Hungarian state and defined its borders. It left Hungary as a state covering 93,073 square kilometres. Its population was 7.6 million, only 36% of the kingdoms population of 20.9 million. The areas that were allocated to neighbouring countries in total possessed a majority of non-Hungarian population, five of the pre-war kingdoms ten largest cities were drawn into other countries. The treaty limited Hungarys army to 35,000 officers and men, the principal beneficiaries of territorial division of pre-war Kingdom of Hungary were the Kingdom of Romania, the Czechoslovak Republic, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. One of the elements of the treaty was the doctrine of self-determination of peoples. In addition, Hungary had to pay war reparations to its neighbours, the treaty was dictated by the Allies rather than negotiated and the Hungarians had no option but to accept its terms. The Hungarian delegation signed the treaty under protest on 4 June 1920 at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, the treaty was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 24 August 1921. The modern boundaries of Hungary are the same as those defined by the Treaty of Trianon except for three villages that were transferred to Czechoslovakia in 1947, the Hungarian government terminated its union with Austria on 31 October 1918, officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. The de facto borders of independent Hungary were defined by the ceasefire lines in November–December 1918. On 1 December 1918, the National Assembly of Romanians in Transylvania declared union with the Kingdom of Romania, Slovakia, which became part of Czechoslovakia. That was signed on 6 December 1918, territories of Banat, Bačka and Baranja came under military control of the Kingdom of Serbia and political control of local South Slavs. The Great Peoples Assembly of Serbs, Bunjevci and other Slavs from Banat, Bačka, the ceasefire line had a character of temporary international border until the treaty. The city of Fiume was occupied by the Italian Army and its affiliation was a matter of international dispute between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Croatian-populated territories in modern Međimurje remained under Hungarian control after the agreement of Belgrade from 13 November 1918. After the Romanian Army advanced beyond this line, the Entente powers asked Hungary to acknowledge the new Romanian territory gains by a new line set along the Tisza river. Unable to reject these terms and unwilling to accept them, the leaders of the Hungarian Democratic Republic resigned, in spite of the country being under Allied blockade, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was formed and the Hungarian Red Army was rapidly set up. In the end, this invitation was not issued
14.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
15.
Schengen Area
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The Schengen Area is an area comprising 26 European states that have officially abolished passport and any other type of border control at their mutual borders. The area mostly functions as a country for international travel purposes. The area is named after the Schengen Agreement, States in the Schengen Area have eliminated border controls with other Schengen members and strengthened border controls with non-Schengen countries. Twenty-two of the twenty-eight European Union member states participate in the Schengen Area, three European microstates – Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City – can be considered de facto participants. The Schengen Area has a population of over 400 million people, as a result of the migration crisis ongoing as of early 2017, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden temporarily imposed controls on some or all of their borders with other Schengen states. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks and subsequent attacks in France, France declared a state of emergency, the Schengen Agreement was signed on 14 June 1985 by five of the ten EEC member states in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg. The Schengen Area was established separately from the European Economic Community, in 1990 the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Convention, which proposed the abolition of internal border controls and a common visa policy. The Agreements and the rules adopted under them were separate from the EC structures. As more EU member states signed the Schengen Agreement, consensus was reached on absorbing it into the procedures of the EU, the Agreement and its related conventions were incorporated into the mainstream of European Union law by the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, which came into effect in 1999. A consequence of the Agreement being part of European law is that any amendment and regulation is made within its processes, in which the non-EU members are not participants. The UK and Ireland have maintained a Common Travel Area since 1923, but beyond this the UK could not accept abolishing border controls, and were given a full opt-out from the area. While not signing the Schengen Treaty, Ireland has always looked more favourably on joining but has not done so to maintain the CTA, the Nordic members required Norway and Iceland to be included, which was accepted, and so a consensus could be reached. The Schengen Area consists of 26 states, including four which are not members of the European Union, two of the non-EU members, Iceland and Norway, are part of the Nordic Passport Union and are officially classified as states associated with the Schengen activities of the EU. Switzerland was subsequently allowed to participate in the manner in 2008. Liechtenstein joined the Schengen Area on 19 December 2011, de facto, the Schengen Area also includes three European micro-states – Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City – that maintain open or semi-open borders with other Schengen member countries. Two EU members – Ireland and the United Kingdom – negotiated opt-outs from Schengen, the remaining four EU member states – Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania – are obliged to eventually join the Schengen Area. However, before implementing the Schengen rules, each state must have its preparedness assessed in four areas, air borders, visas, police cooperation. This evaluation process involves a questionnaire and visits by EU experts to selected institutions, the only land borders with border controls between EU/EEA members, are those of Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, and the one at Gibraltar and those at the Channel Tunnel
16.
Hungarians in Slovakia
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Hungarians in Slovakia are the largest ethnic minority in the country. According to the 2011 Slovak census,458,467 people declared themselves Hungarians, Hungarians in Slovakia are concentrated mostly in the southern part of the country, near the border with Hungary. They form the majority in two districts, Komárno and Dunajská Streda, after the defeat of the Central Powers in the Western Front in 1918, the Treaty of Trianon was signed between the winning Entente powers and Hungary in 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference. The treaty greatly reduced the Kingdom of Hungarys borders, including ceding all of Upper Hungary, consequently, the newly created state contained areas that were overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarian. According to the 1910 census conducted in Austria–Hungary, there were 884,309 ethnic Hungarians, constituting 30. 2% of the population, in what is now Slovakia, the Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded 571,952 Hungarians. Czechoslovak and Hungarian censuses become target of discussion with political impact, according to official Hungarian definition from 1900, a mother tongue was defined as a language considered by a person as his own, the best spoken and mostly preferred. This definition did not match the definition of mother tongue, introduced subjective factors dependent on environment. More, in the atmosphere of raising magyarization a person could risk if he did not declare Hungarian language to be his favorite for a census commissar. Between 1880–1910, Hungarian population increased by 55. 9%, level of differences does not allow to explain this process by emigration or by population moves and natural assimilation during industrialization. In 16 northern counties, Hungarian population raised by 427,238 while majority Slovak population only by 95,603, after the creation of Czechoslovakia, people could declare their nationality more freely. Furthermore, censuses from Kingdom of Hungary and Czechoslovakia differed in a view on nationality of Jewish population, Czechoslovakia allowed Jews to declare separate Jewish nationality, while Jews were counted mostly as Hungarians in the past. In 1921,70,529 people declared Jewish nationality, population of larger towns like Košice or Bratislava was historically bilingual or trilingual and part of them used to declare the most popular or the most beneficial nationality in particular time. According to the Czechoslovak censuses, 15–20% of the population in Košice was Hungarian, but during the parliamentary elections, however, such comparisons are not fully reliable, because ethnic Hungarian parties did not necessarily present themselves to Slovak population as ethnic and had also Slovak subsidiaries. Finally, Hungarian state employees who refused to take an oath of allegiance had to decide between retirement and moving to Hungary, the same applies also for Hungarians who did not receive Czechoslovak citizenship, were forced to leave or simply did not self-identify with new state. Two famous examples of forced to leave were the families of Béla Hamvas. The numerous refugees necessitated the construction of new housing projects in Budapest, at the beginning of the school year 1918/1919, Slovakia had 3,642 elementary schools. Only 141 schools taught in Slovak language,186 in Slovak and this large deformation was a direct result of previous magyarization activities of Hungarian government. Also after system reform, Czechoslovakia provided several times larger educational network for Hungarian minority than Kingdom of Hungary did for the whole Slovak nation before 1918, due to the lack of qualified personnel among Slovaks, Hungarian teachers were replaced in large numbers by Czechs
17.
Serbs of Slovakia
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There is a small number of Serbs in Slovakia, mostly located in the southern town of Komárno, where they have been living since the 17th century. There has also been a minority in Bratislava, where many Habsburg Serbs studied. The number of Slovaks of Serb descent is hard to determine, the Association of Serbs in Slovakia claim that 2.784 Serbs, born outside Slovakia, currently live in Slovakia, while another 800 Slovaks are of Serb descent. According to the 2011 census, there were 698 Serbian nationals in Slovakia, branko Radivojevic, Slovak ice hockey player of Serb parentage Marko Milinkovic, Serbian expatriate football player Martin Tešovič, Slovak weightlifter of possible Serb origin. Marek Krajčovič Slovak sprint canoeist of possible Serb origin, mário Filipovič Slovak sport shooter of possible Serb origin. Miroslav Machovič Slovak swimmer of possible Serb origin, gavril Stefanović Venclović Serb priest, writer, poet, orator, philosopher, and illuminator. Pavle Davidović Serb general, Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, igor Matovič Slovak politician of possible Serb origin. Ministarstvo Republike Srbije za veze sa Srbima izvan Srbije, svaki drugi Srbin zivi izvan Srbije
18.
Slavic languages
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The Slavic languages are the Indo-European languages native to the Slavic peoples, originally from Eastern Europe. The Slavic languages are divided intro three subgroups, East, West, and South, which constitute more than twenty languages. Furthermore, the diasporas of many Slavic peoples have established isolated minorities of speakers of their languages all over the world, the number of speakers of all Slavic languages together is estimated to be 315 million. The Old Novgorod dialect may have reflected some idiosyncrasies of this group, mutual intelligibility also plays a role in determining the West, East, and South branches. Speakers of languages within the branch will in most cases be able to understand each other at least partially. The tripartite division of the Slavic languages does not take account the spoken dialects of each language. For example, Slovak and Ukrainian are bridged by the Rusyn of Eastern Slovakia, similarly, Polish shares transitional features with both western Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. The Croatian Kajkavian dialect is similar to Slovene than to the standard Croatian language. Within the individual Slavic languages, dialects may vary to a degree, as those of Russian, or to a much greater degree. The secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500–1000 BCE, the imposition of Church Slavonic on Orthodox Slavs was often at the expense of the vernacular. The use of such media hampered the development of the languages for literary purposes. Lockwood also notes that these languages have enriched themselves by drawing on Church Slavonic for the vocabulary of abstract concepts, the situation in the Catholic countries, where Latin was more important, was different. The Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski and the Croatian Baroque writers of the 16th century all wrote in their respective vernaculars, although Church Slavonic hampered vernacular literatures, it fostered Slavonic literary activity and abetted linguistic independence from external influences. Only the Croatian vernacular literary tradition nearly matches Church Slavonic in age, the most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk. The independence of Dubrovnik facilitated the continuity of the tradition, more recent foreign influences follow the same general pattern in Slavic languages as elsewhere and are governed by the political relationships of the Slavs. In the 17th century, bourgeois Russian absorbed German words through direct contacts between Russians and communities of German settlers in Russia, in the 19th century, Russian influenced most literary Slavic languages by one means or another. The Proto-Slavic language existed until around AD500, by the 7th century, it had broken apart into large dialectal zones
19.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
20.
Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
21.
Chalcolithic
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The Copper Age was originally defined as a transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The archaeological site of Belovode on the Rudnik mountain in Serbia contains the worlds oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting from 5000 BCE, the multiple names result from multiple recognitions of the period. Originally, the term Bronze Age meant that either copper or bronze was being used as the hard substance for the manufacture of tools. In 1881, John Evans, recognizing that the use of copper often preceded the use of bronze and he did not include the transitional period in the tripartite system of Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age but placed it at the beginning outside of it. He did not, however, present it as a fourth age, in 1884, Gaetano Chierici, perhaps following the lead of Evans, renamed it in Italian as the Eneo-litica, or Bronze-stone transition. The phrase was never intended to mean that the period was the one in which both bronze and stone were used. The Copper Age features the use of copper, excluding bronze, moreover, litica simply names the Stone Age as the point from which the transition began and is not another -lithic age. Subsequently, British scholars used either Evanss Copper Age or the term Eneolithic, around 1900, many writers began to substitute Chalcolithic for Eneolithic, to avoid the false segmentation. It was then that the misunderstanding began among those who did not know Italian, the -lithic was seen as a new -lithic age, a part of the Stone Age in which copper was used, which may appear paradoxical. Today Copper Age, Eneolithic and Chalcolithic are used synonymously to mean Evanss original definition of Copper Age, there was an independent invention of copper and bronze smelting first by Andean civilizations in South America extended later by sea commerce to the Mesoamerican civilization in West Mexico. The literature of European archaeology, in general, avoids the use of Chalcolithic, the Copper Age in the Middle East and the Caucasus began in the late 5th millennium BCE and lasted for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age. The transition from the European Copper Age to Bronze Age Europe occurs about the same time, an archaeological site in Serbia contains the oldest securely dated evidence of coppermaking from 7,500 years ago. In Serbia, an axe was found at Prokuplje, which indicates that humans were using metals in Europe by 7,500 years ago. Knowledge of the use of copper was far more widespread than the metal itself, the European Battle Axe culture used stone axes modeled on copper axes, even with imitation mold marks carved in the stone. Ötzi the Iceman, who was found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, examples of Chalcolithic cultures in Europe include Vila Nova de São Pedro and Los Millares on the Iberian Peninsula. Pottery of the Beaker people has found at both sites, dating to several centuries after copper-working began there. The Beaker culture appears to have copper and bronze technologies in Europe. The term Chalcolithic is not generally used by British prehistorians, who disagree whether it applies in the British context, in Bhirrana, the earliest Indus civilization site, copper bangles and arrowheads were found
22.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
23.
Celts
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The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe. Thus this area is called the Celtic homeland. The earliest undisputed examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names, Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century, coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge, survive in 12th century recensions. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a cohesive cultural entity. They had a linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use, Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels and the Celtic Britons of the medieval and modern periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival. The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί – to refer to a group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC. In the fifth century BC Herodotus referred to Keltoi living around the head of the Danube, the etymology of the term Keltoi is unclear. Possible roots include Indo-European *kʲel ‘to hide’, IE *kʲel ‘to heat’ or *kel ‘to impel’, several authors have supposed it to be Celtic in origin, while others view it as a name coined by Greeks. Linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel falls in the group. Yet he reports Celtic peoples in Iberia, and also uses the ethnic names Celtiberi and Celtici for peoples there, as distinct from Lusitani, pliny the Elder cited the use of Celtici in Lusitania as a tribal surname, which epigraphic findings have confirmed. Latin Gallus might stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally and its root may be the Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength”, hence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity” and Welsh gallu “to be able, power”. The tribal names of Gallaeci and the Greek Γαλάται most probably have the same origin, the suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection. Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae and this means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia, though it does refer to the same ancient region
24.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
25.
Pannonia
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Pannonia was an ancient province of the Roman Empire bounded north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia. Julius Pokorny believes the name Pannonia is derived from Illyrian, from the Proto-Indo-European root *pen-, swamp, water, the Ionian Danube fleet reached as far as Boio-Aria, populated until the late 8th century CE by Celts and Slavs under Aryan rulers. Pliny the Elder, in Natural History, places the eastern regions of the Hercynium jugum and he also gives us some dramaticised description of its composition, in which the close proximity of the forest trees causes competitive struggle among them. But even he—if the passage in question is not an interpolated marginal gloss—is subject to the legends of the gloomy forest and he mentions unusual birds, which have feathers that shine like fires at night. Medieval bestiaries named these birds the Ercinee, the first inhabitants of this area known to history were the Pannonii, a group of Indo-European tribes akin to Illyrians. From the 4th century BC, it was invaded by various Celtic tribes, little is heard of Pannonia until 35 BC, when its inhabitants, allies of the Dalmatians, were attacked by Augustus, who conquered and occupied Siscia. The country was not, however, definitively subdued by the Romans until 9 BC, when it was incorporated into Illyricum, the frontier of which was thus extended as far as the Danube. After the rebellion was crushed in AD9, the province of Illyricum was dissolved, the date of the division is unknown, most certainly after AD20 but before AD50. The proximity of dangerous barbarian tribes necessitated the presence of a number of troops. Some time between the years 102 and 107, between the first and second Dacian wars, Trajan divided the province into Pannonia Superior, and Pannonia Inferior. According to Ptolemy, these divisions were separated by a line drawn from Arrabona in the north to Servitium in the south, later, the whole country was sometimes called the Pannonias. Pannonia Superior was under the legate, who had formerly administered the single province. Pannonia Inferior was at first under a praetorian legate with a single legion as the garrison, after Marcus Aurelius, it was under a consular legate, the frontier on the Danube was protected by the establishment of the two colonies Aelia Mursia and Aelia Aquincum by Hadrian. In the 4th-5th century, one of the dioceses of the Roman Empire was known as the Diocese of Pannonia. It had its capital in Sirmium and included all four provinces that were formed from historical Pannonia, as well as the provinces of Dalmatia, following the Migrations Period in the middle of the 5th century, Pannonia was ceded to the Huns by Theodosius II. After the collapse of the Hunnic empire in 454, large numbers of Ostrogoths were settled by Emperor Marcian in the province as foederati, afterwards, it was again invaded by the Avars in the 560s, the Slavs, who first settled c. This language and the culture became extinct with the arrival of the Magyars. The native settlements consisted of pagi containing a number of vici, the cities and towns in Pannonia were, The country was fairly productive, especially after the great forests had been cleared by Probus and Galerius
26.
Transdanubia
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Transdanubia is a traditional region of Hungary. Transdanubia can also refer to the 21st and 22nd districts of Vienna, the borders of Transdanubia are the Danube River, the Drava and Mura rivers, and the foothills of the Alps roughly along the border between Hungary and Austria. Transdanubia comprises the counties of Győr-Moson-Sopron, Komárom-Esztergom, Fejér, Veszprém, Vas, Zala, Somogy, Tolna, Baranya and this article deals with Transdanubia in this geographical meaning. Before the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 the present-day regions of Burgenland, the three villages of Rusovce, Jarovce and Čunovo also belonged to Transdanubia before the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947. Transdanubia is essentially a Hungarian geographical concept so these ceased to be parts of it when they were annexed by neighbouring countries. Transdanubia is a NUTS territorial unit in the European Union, consisting of Central Transdanubia, Western Transdanubia, Pest county and Budapest belong to the region of Central Hungary. It has an area of 37,000 km2 and a population of around 3.1 million, the territory of the region is 38,000 km², and it comprises almost half of the whole territory of Hungary. The terrain is varied with gentle hills, valleys, basins, mountains and plains. The main geographical formations are the Transdanubian Mountains, the half of the Little Alföld, the Alpokalja, the Transdanubian Hills. The main rivers are the Danube, Drava, Rába, Zala, in the middle of Transdanubia lies the biggest freshwater lake of Central Europe, the Lake Balaton. Other importants lakes are the Lake Velence and the Lake Fertő, historically the counties of Transdanubia were Moson, Győr, Sopron, Vas, Zala, Veszprém, Fejér, Komárom, Esztergom, Somogy, Tolna and Baranya. They comprised the so called Districtus Trans-Danubianus from the beginnings of the 18th century, the boundaries of these counties, established by Stephen I of Hungary remained unchanged for almost 900 years until 1920. Transdanubia has been populated since the Stone Age, between 10 BCE and 434 CE, it was part of the Roman Empire. With some present-day Austrian and Croatian territories, it comprised the Province of Pannonia, in the Age of Migrations it was occupied by the Huns, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Gepids, Avars, Franks and the Slavic peoples. In 900 Pannonia was occupied by the Magyars and after 1000 became part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Transdanubia has been one of the most important regions of Hungary since the 11th century. Esztergom has been the capital of the country since 1001 until today. Other important medieval cities were Veszprém, Pécs, Győr and Sopron, after the devastating Mongol invasion new castles were built, and King Béla IV of Hungary established a new royal capital at Buda, next to the Danube. The regions rich heritage is seen everywhere from the little village churches to the old castles, monasteries
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Celemantia
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Celemantia was a Roman castellum and settlement on the territory of the present-day municipality Iža, some 4 km to the east of Komárno in Slovakia. It is the biggest known Roman castellum in present-day Slovakia and it was a part of the Roman Limes, the frontier-zone of the Empire. A Germanic settlement Celemantia in this area is mentioned by Claudius Ptolemaios in the 2nd century AD, the construction of the castellum started in the 2nd half of the 1st century. It was conquered during the Marcomannic Wars and burned down by Germanic tribes and it ceased to exist around 400. The ruins were very well visible up to the late 18th century, according to a local legend, a Roman soldier, Valentin, kept his mistresses in the fortress. The fictitious story explains the origin of the name Leányvár, meaning Girl Castle in Hungarian. However the name refers to the fact that the ruins of the castle were donated by King Béla IV of Hungary to the Dominican nuns of Margitsziget who later built a small fortress among them
28.
Pannonian Avars
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The Pannonian Avars /ˈævɑːrz/ also known as the Obri, the Abaroi and Varchonitai, and the Pseudo-Avars and Varchonites, were a group of Eurasian nomads of unknown origin during the early Middle Ages. The name Pannonian Avars, is used to them from the Avars of the Caucasus – who may or may not have been an unrelated people. They established the Avar Khaganate, which spanned the Pannonian Basin and considerable areas of Central and they were ruled by a khagan, who was assisted by an entourage of professional warriors. The language or languages spoken by the Avars are now unknown, denis Sinor states that most of the Avar words used in contemporaneous Latin or Greek texts, appear to have their origins in Siberian languages, especially Tungusic languages and Mongolian. There is also evidence, however, that ruling and subject clans spoke a variety of languages, proposals by scholars include Caucasian, Iranian, Tungusic, Hungarian and Turkic. A few scholars suggest that Proto-Slavic became the lingua franca of the Avar Khaganate, according to Gyula László, the late 9th century Pannonian Avars spoke a variety of Old Hungarian, thereby forming an Avar-Hungarian continuity with then newly arrived Hungarians. The earliest clear reference to the Avar ethnonym comes from Priscus the Rhetor,463, the Šaragurs, Onogurs and Ogurs were attacked by the Sabirs, who had been attacked by the Avars. In turn, the Avars had been driven off by people fleeing man-eating griffins coming from the ocean, whilst Priscus accounts provide some information about the ethno-political situation in the Don-Kuban-Volga region after the demise of the Huns, no unequivocal conclusions can be reached. Denis Sinor has argued that whoever the Avars referred to by Priscus were, they differed from the Avars who appear a century later, during the time of Justinian. The next author of late antiquity to discuss the Avars, Menander Protector in the 6th century, each time, the Turks appear angered at the Byzantines for having made an alliance with the Avars, whom the Turks saw as their subjects and slaves. Turxanthos, a Turk prince, calls the Avars Varchonites and escaped slaves of the Turks, many more, but somewhat confusing, details come from Theophylact Simocatta, who wrote c. 629, but detailed the two decades of the 6th century. For it is by a misnomer that the barbarians on the Ister have assumed the appellation of Avars, so, when the Avars had been defeated some of them made their escape to those who inhabit Taugast. Taugast is a city, which is a total of one thousand five hundred miles distant from those who are called Turks. These make their habitations in the east, by the course of the river Til, the earliest leaders of this nation were named Var and Chunni, from them some parts of those nations were also accorded their nomenclature, being called Var and Chunni. Then, while the emperor Justinian was in possession of the royal power and these named themselves Avars and glorified their leader with the appellation of Chagan. Let us declare, without departing in the least from the truth, for this reason they honoured the fugitives with splendid gifts and supposed that they received from them security in exchange. In point of fact even up to our present times the Pseudo-Avars are divided in their ancestry, some bearing the time-honoured name of Var while others are called Chunni
29.
Gesta Hungarorum
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Gesta Hungarorum may also refer to Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, written by Simon of Kéza. Gesta Hungarorum, or The Deeds of the Hungarians, is the first extant Hungarian chronicle and it was written by an unidentified author who has traditionally been called Anonymus in scholarly works. According to most historians, the work was completed between around 1200 and 1230, the Gesta exists in a sole manuscript from the second part of the 13th century, which was for centuries held in Vienna. It is part of the collection of Széchényi National Library in Budapest, Anonymus did not mention the opponents of the conquering Hungarians known from sources written around 900, but he wrote of the Hungarians fight against rulers unknown from other sources. According to a theory, he used place names when naming the opponents of the Hungarians. Among the Hungarians, oral tradition—songs and ballads—preserved the memory of the most important historical events, the Gesta Hungarorum, or The Deeds of the Hungarians, is the first extant Hungarian chronicle. Its principal subject is the conquest of the Carpathian Basin, but it also narrates the background and they say that the first Hungarian Chronicle was completed in the second half of the 11th century or in the early 12th century. The existence of this ancient chronicle is proven by later sources, the Illuminated Chronicle from 1358 refers to the ancient books about the deeds of the Hungarians in connection with the pagan uprisings of the 11th century. The earliest Hungarian Chronicle was expanded and rewritten several times in the 12th–14th centuries, the work exists in a sole manuscript. The codex is 17 by 24 centimetres in size and contains 24 folios, the first page of the codex originally contained the beginning of the Gesta. It was blanked because the scribe had made mistakes when writing the text, the work was written in a Gothic minuscule. The style of the letters and decorations, including the initial on its first page. Scribal errors suggest that the extant manuscript is a copy of the original work, the history of the manuscript up until the early 17th century is unknown. It became part of the collection of the Imperial Library in Vienna between 1601 and 1636, in this period, the court librarian Sebastian Tengnagel registered it under the title Historia Hungarica de VII primis ducibus Hungariae auctore Belae regis notario. Tengnagel also added numbers to both the folios and the chapters, the codex was bound with a leather book cover, impressed with a double-headed eagle, in the late 18th century. The manuscript, which was transferred to Hungary in 1933 or 1934, is held in the Széchényi National Library in Budapest, the author of the Gesta Hungarorum has been known as Anonymus ever since the publication of the first Hungarian translation of his work in 1790. The author described himself as P who is called magister, and sometime notary of the most glorious Béla, the identification of this King Béla is subject to scholarly debate, because four Hungarian monarchs bore this name. Most historians identify the king with Béla III of Hungary who died in 1196, Anonymus dedicated his work to the most venerable man N who had been his schoolmate in an unspecified school
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Stephen I of Hungary
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Stephen I, also known as King Saint Stephen, was the last Grand Prince of the Hungarians between 997 and 1000 or 1001, and the first King of Hungary from 1000 or 1001 until his death in 1038. The year of his birth is uncertain, but many details of his life suggest that he was born in or after 975 in Esztergom, at his birth, he was given the pagan name Vajk. The date of his baptism is unknown and he was the only son of Grand Prince Géza and his wife, Sarolt, who was descended from the prominent family of the gyulas. Although both of his parents were baptized, Stephen was the first member of his family to become a devout Christian and he married Gisela of Bavaria, a scion of the imperial Ottonian dynasty. After succeeding his father in 997, Stephen had to fight for the throne against his relative, Koppány and he defeated Koppány mainly with the assistance of foreign knights, including Vecelin, Hont and Pázmány, but also with help from native lords. He was crowned on 25 December 1000 or 1 January 1001 with a crown sent by Pope Sylvester II, in a series of wars against semi-independent tribes and chieftains—including the Black Hungarians and his uncle, Gyula the Younger—he unified the Carpathian Basin. He protected the independence of his kingdom by forcing the troops of Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor. Stephen established at least one archbishopric, six bishoprics and three Benedictine monasteries, thus the Church in Hungary developed independently of the archbishops of the Holy Roman Empire and he encouraged the spread of Christianity with severe punishments for ignoring Christian customs. His system of administration was based on counties organized around fortresses. Hungary, which enjoyed a period of peace during his reign, became a preferred route for pilgrims. He survived all of his children and he died on 15 August 1038 and was buried in his new basilica, built in Székesfehérvár and dedicated to the Holy Virgin. His death caused civil wars which lasted for decades and he was canonized by Pope Gregory VII, together with his son, Emeric, and Bishop Gerard of Csanád, in 1083. Stephen is a saint in Hungary and the neighboring territories. In Hungary, his feast day is also a holiday commemorating the foundation of the state. Stephens birth date is uncertain because it was not recorded in contemporaneous documents, Hungarian and Polish chronicles written centuries later give three different years,967,969 and 975. Géza promoted the spread of Christianity among his subjects by force, however, this identification is not unanimously accepted, historian György Györffy states that it was not Sarolts father, but his younger brother, who was baptized in the Byzantine capital. Stephen was born as Vajk, a derived from the Turkic word baj, meaning hero, master. Stephens Greater Legend narrates that he was baptized by the saintly Bishop Adalbert of Prague, however, Saint Adalberts nearly contemporaneous Legend, written by Bruno of Querfurt, does not mention this event
31.
Matthias Corvinus
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Matthias Corvinus, also called Matthias I, was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490. After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and he was the son of John Hunyadi, Regent of Hungary, who died in 1456. In 1457, Matthias was imprisoned along with his brother, Ladislaus Hunyadi. Ladislaus Hunyadi was executed, causing a rebellion that forced King Ladislaus to flee Hungary, after the King died unexpectedly, Matthiass uncle Michael Szilágyi persuaded the Estates to unanimously proclaim Matthias king on 24 January 1458. He began his rule under his uncles guardianship, but he took control of government within two weeks. As king, Matthias waged wars against the Czech mercenaries who dominated Upper Hungary and against Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, in this period, the Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia and Bosnia, terminating the zone of buffer states along the southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary. Matthias signed a treaty with Frederick III in 1463, acknowledging the Emperors right to style himself King of Hungary. The Emperor returned the Holy Crown of Hungary with which Matthias was crowned on 29 April 1464, in this year, Matthias invaded the territories that had recently been occupied by the Ottomans and seized fortresses in Bosnia. He soon realized he could expect no aid from the Christian powers. Matthias introduced new taxes and regularly collected extraordinary taxes and these measures caused a rebellion in Transylvania in 1467, but he subdued the rebels. The next year, Matthias declared war on George of Poděbrady, the Hussite King of Bohemia, and conquered Moravia, Silesia, and Lausitz, but he could not occupy Bohemia proper. The Catholic Estates proclaimed him King of Bohemia on 3 May 1469, instead, they elected Vladislaus Jagiellon, the eldest son of Casimir IV of Poland. A group of Hungarian prelates and lords offered the throne to Vladislauss younger brother Casimir, having routed the united troops of Casimir IV and Vladislaus at Breslau in Silesia in late 1474, Matthias turned against the Ottomans, who had devastated the eastern parts of Hungary. He sent reinforcements to Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia, in 1476, Matthias besieged and seized Šabac, an important Ottoman border fort. He concluded a treaty with Vladislaus Jagiellon in 1478, confirming the division of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown between them. Matthias waged a war against Emperor Frederick and occupied Lower Austria between 1482 and 1487, Matthias patronized art and science, his royal library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was one of the largest collections of books in Europe. With his patronage, Hungary became the first country to embrace the Renaissance from Italy, as Matthias the Just, the monarch who wandered among his subjects in disguise, he remains a popular hero of Hungarian folk tales. Matthias was born in Kolozsvár on 23 February 1443 and he was the second son of John Hunyadi and his wife, Elisabeth Szilágyi
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Ottoman wars in Europe
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The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars in the 13th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman Wars in the 14th century. Much of this period was characterized by Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire made further inroads into Central Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, culminating in the peak of Ottoman territorial claims in Europe. The Ottoman–Venetian Wars spanned four centuries, starting in 1423 and lasting until 1718, the island of Corfu under Venetian rule remained the only Greek island not conquered by the Ottomans. Nevertheless, Ottoman armies were able to hold their own against their European rivals until the half of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century the Ottomans were confronted with insurrection from their Serbian and this occurred in tandem with the Russo-Turkish wars, which further destabilized the empire. The final retreat of Ottoman rule came with the First Balkan War, Constantinople fell in 1453 after the Battle of Varna and the Second Battle of Kosovo. The remaining Greek state fell in 1461, sofia fell in 1382, followed by the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire Tarnovgrad in 1393, and the northwest remnants of the state after the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. Much of Serbia fell to the Ottomans by 1459, the Kingdom of Hungary made a partial reconquest in 1480, the Ottomans took much of Albania in the 1385 Battle of Savra. The 1444 League of Lezhë briefly restored one part of Albania, until Ottomans captured complete territory of Albania after capture of Shkodër in 1479 and Durrës in 1501. It has been argued that Albanian resilience halted the Ottoman advance along the Eastern flank of the Western Civilization, Sultan Mehmet II died in 1481, merely two years after the collapse of the Albanian resistance and one year after he launched an Italian campaign. Ottoman Empire first reached Bosnia in 1388 where they were defeated by Bosnian forces in the Battle of Bileca, after the fall of Serbia in 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where the Bosnians participated through Vlatko Vuković, the Turks began various offensives against the Kingdom of Bosnia. The Bosnians defended themselves but without much success, Bosnians resisted strongly in the Bosnian Royal castle of Jajce, where the last Bosnian king Stjepan Tomašević tried to repel the Turks. The Ottoman army conquered it after a few months of the siege of Jajce, in 1463, the House of Kosača held Herzegovina until 1482. The Ottomans meanwhile reached the river Neretva and having conquered Herzegovina in 1482, they encroached upon Croatia, a decisive Ottoman victory at the Battle of Krbava field shook all of Croatia. However, it did not dissuade the Croats from making persistent attempts at defending themselves against the attacks of the superior Ottoman forces. After almost two hundred years of Croatian resistance against the Ottoman Empire, the victory in the Battle of Sisak marked the end of Ottoman rule, the Viceroys army, chasing the fleeing remnants at Petrinja in 1595, sealed the victory. The Kingdom of Hungary, which at the time spanned the area from Croatia in the west to Transylvania in the east, was gravely threatened by Ottoman advances. The origins of such a deterioration can be traced back to the fall of the ruling dynasty and their subsequent replacement with the Angevin
33.
Habsburg Monarchy
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The Monarchy was a composite state composed of territories within and outside the Holy Roman Empire, united only in the person of the monarch. The dynastic capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, from 1804 to 1867 the Habsburg Monarchy was formally unified as the Austrian Empire, and from 1867 to 1918 as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The two entities were never coterminous, as the Habsburg Monarchy covered many lands beyond the Holy Roman Empire, the monarchy had no official name. The entity had no official name, Austrian Empire, This was the official name. Note that the German version is Kaisertum Österreich, i. e. the English translation empire refers to a territory ruled by an emperor, Austria-Hungary, This was the official name. An unofficial popular name was the Danubian Monarchy also often used was the term Doppel-Monarchie meaning two states under one crowned ruler, Crownlands or crown lands, This is the name of all the individual parts of the Austrian Empire, and then of Austria-Hungary from 1867 on. The Hungarian parts of the Empire were called Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen or Lands of Holy Stephens Crown, the Bohemian Lands were called Lands of the St. Wenceslaus Crown. Burgenland came to Austria in 1921 from Hungary, Salzburg finally became Austrian in 1816 after the Napoleonic wars. Vienna, Austrias capital became a state January 1,1922, after being residence, Upper and Lower Austria, historically, were split into Austria above the Enns and Austria below the Enns. Upper Austria was enlarged after the Treaty of Teschen following the War of the Bavarian Succession by the so-called Innviertel, formerly part of Bavaria. Hereditary Lands or German Hereditary Lands or Austrian Hereditary Lands, In a narrower sense these were the original Habsburg Austrian territories, i. e. basically the Austrian lands, in a wider sense the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were also included in the Hereditary lands. The term was replaced by the term Crownlands in the 1849 March Constitution, within the Habsburg Monarchy, each province was governed according to its own particular customs. Until the mid 17th century, not all of the provinces were even necessarily ruled by the same members of the family often ruled portions of the Hereditary Lands as private apanages. An even greater attempt at centralization began in 1849 following the suppression of the revolutions of 1848. For the first time, ministers tried to transform the monarchy into a bureaucratic state ruled from Vienna. The Kingdom of Hungary, in particular, ceased to exist as a separate entity, in this system, the Kingdom of Hungary was given sovereignty and a parliament, with only a personal union and a joint foreign and military policy connecting it to the other Habsburg lands. When Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed, it was not incorporated into either half of the monarchy, instead, it was governed by the joint Ministry of Finance. Austria-Hungary collapsed under the weight of the various unsolved ethnic problems that came to a head with its defeat in World War I, to these were added in 1779 the Inn Quarter of Bavaria, and in 1803 the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen
34.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
35.
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor
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Ferdinand I was Holy Roman Emperor from 1558, king of Bohemia and Hungary from 1526, and king of Croatia from 1527 until his death. Before his accession, he ruled the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in the name of his brother, Charles V. Also, he served as Charles representative in Germany and developed useful relationships with German princes. Ferdinand was able to defend his realm and make it more cohesive. His flexible approach to Imperial problems, mainly religious, finally brought more result than the more confrontational attitude of his brother, Ferdinands motto was Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus, Let justice be done, though the world perish. Ferdinand shared his customs, culture, and even his birthday with his maternal grandfather Ferdinand II of Aragon and he was born, raised, and educated in Spain, and did not learn German when he was young. In the summer of 1518 Ferdinand was sent to Flanders following his brother Charless arrival in Spain as newly appointed King Charles I the previous autumn. He returned in command of his brothers fleet but en route was blown off-course and he was Archduke of Austria from 1521 to 1564. Though he supported his brother, Ferdinand also managed to strengthen his own realm, by adopting the German language and culture late in his life, he also grew close to the German territorial princes. After the death of his brother-in-law Louis II, Ferdinand ruled as King of Bohemia and Hungary. Ferdinand also served as his brothers deputy in the Holy Roman Empire during his brothers many absences, according to the terms set at the First Congress of Vienna in 1515, Ferdinand married Anne Jagiellonica, daughter of King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary on 22 July 1515. Therefore, after the death of his brother-in-law Louis II, King of Bohemia and of Hungary, at the battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, the success was only partial, as the Diet refused to recognise Ferdinand as hereditary lord of the Kingdom. The Croatian nobles unanimously elected Ferdinand I as their king in the 1527 election in Cetin, in Hungary, Nicolaus Olahus, secretary of Louis, attached himself to the party of Ferdinand but retained his position with his sister, Queen Dowager Mary. Ferdinand was elected King of Hungary by a rump Diet in Pozsony in December 1526, the throne of Hungary became the subject of a dynastic dispute between Ferdinand and John Zápolya, Voivode of Transylvania. They were supported by different factions of the nobility in the Hungarian kingdom, Ferdinand also had the support of his brother, the Emperor Charles V. Ferdinand defeated Zápolya at the Battle of Tarcal in September 1527 and again in the Battle of Szina in March 1528. Zápolya fled the country and applied to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent for support, a further Ottoman invasion was repelled in 1533. In 1538, in the Treaty of Nagyvárad, Ferdinand induced the childless Zápolya to name him as his successor, but in 1540, just before his death, Zápolya had a son, John II Sigismund, who was promptly elected King by the Diet. Ferdinand invaded Hungary, but the regent, Frater George Martinuzzi, Bishop of Várad, Suleiman marched into Hungary and not only drove Ferdinand out of central Hungary, he forced Ferdinand to agree to pay tribute for his lands in western Hungary
36.
Captaincies of the Kingdom of Hungary
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The Captaincies of the Kingdom of Hungary were administrative divisions, military districts in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Ottoman Empire meant a constant threat to the kingdom therefore the Habsburg Hungarian kings needed to establish a military administration. The captaincy was administered by the Royal Captain-general of the Captaincy, in 1542, the Hungarian kingdom, primarily for military and administrative purposes, was divided into two captaincies, Captaincy of Cisdanubia and Captaincy of Transdanubia. Captaincy of Győr was founded in 1556, in 1563 Captaincy of Lower Hungary was established at the regions of present-day western and central Slovakia. By 1566, Kanizsa at southwestern Transdanubia also evolved into a new captaincy, irrespective of the military districts, there were coexistent superior captaincies, with their own captain-generals, however their role was different. Captaincy of Cisdanubia Captaincy of Transdanubia Captaincy of Upper Hungary Captaincy of Croatia-Slavonia The Captaincy of Győr was located mainly at the parts of Kingdom of Hungary. The captaincy was established in 1556, because of newly arisen military and administrative concerns and its seat was in town of Győr. In 1594, the Ottomans captured Győr, however the united armies reconquered it in 1598, the Captaincy of Kanizsa or Captaincy of Balaton-Drávaköz was established in 1566. Its territory was situated mainly between the Lake Balaton and River Drava, initially, the main military center of the southern territories was in Szigetvár, however, in 1566 the town fell to the Turks. The seat got to the newly formed captaincy of Kanizsa, in 1607 Körmend became the new center of the reorganized captaincy. The Captaincy of Lower Hungary was established in 1563 as Article of 16 of 1563 stipulated and its territory was located mainly at the region of present-day western and central Slovakia. Its headquarter was in Nitra, and later, in accordance with the situation, in Šurany, Levice, Nové Zámky. The Captaincy of Upper Hungary was located mainly at the parts of Kingdom of Hungary. In 1554 town of Kassa became its seat and its Captain-general was usually called just Captain of Kassa. Also known as the Karlstadt Captaincy and it was located on the border of Croatia and Bosnia. It existed from 1553 to 1744 when it was merged with the Captaincy of Slavonia, the capital city was Karlovac and the official languages were Latin and Chakavian. Captaincy of Croatia, also known as the Warasdin Captaincy, Habsburg Croatia, Kingdom of Slovenje, Slovenski Orsag, Kaikavian Kingdom of Slavonia, regnum Sclavoniae and Vend. It was created in 1527 and lasted until 1744 when it was merged with the Captaincy of Croatia and its main purpose was to help the Habsburgs hold the line against the Ottoman invasion
37.
Maria Theresa
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Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, by marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress. She started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and spent his entire reign securing it. Upon the death of her father, Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, Prussia proceeded to invade the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia, sparking a nine-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession, and subsequently conquered it. Maria Theresa would later try to reconquer Silesia during the Seven Years War. Of the sixteen, ten survived to adulthood and she had eleven daughters and five sons. She criticised and disapproved of many of Josephs actions, Maria Theresa understood the importance of her public persona and was able to simultaneously evoke both esteem and affection from her subjects. However, she refused to allow religious toleration and contemporary travelers thought her regime was bigoted and superstitious. As a young monarch who fought two wars, she believed that her cause should be the cause of her subjects. The dowager empresses, her aunt Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg and grandmother Eleonor Magdalene of the Palatinate-Neuburg, were her godmothers and her father was the only surviving male member of the House of Habsburg and hoped for a son who would prevent the extinction of his dynasty and succeed him. Thus, the birth of Maria Theresa was a disappointment to him. Charles sought the other European powers approval for disinheriting his nieces and they exacted harsh terms, in the Treaty of Vienna, Great Britain demanded that Austria abolish the Ostend Company in return for its recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction. France, Spain, Saxony-Poland, Bavaria and Prussia later reneged, little more than a year after her birth, Maria Theresa was joined by a sister, Maria Anna, and another one, named Maria Amalia, was born in 1724. The portraits of the family show that Maria Theresa resembled Elisabeth Christine. The Prussian ambassador noted that she had blue eyes, fair hair with a slight tinge of red, a wide mouth. Unlike many other members of the House of Habsburg, neither Maria Theresas parents nor her grandparents were closely related to each other, Maria Theresa was a serious and reserved child who enjoyed singing and archery. She was barred from riding by her father, but she would later learn the basics for the sake of her Hungarian coronation ceremony. The imperial family staged opera productions, often conducted by Charles VI and her education was overseen by Jesuits
Blansko, Czech Republic
Komárom, Hungary
Lieto, Finland
Sebeş, Romania
Weissenfels, Germany
Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation
