1.
Loire Valley
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The Loire Valley, spanning 280 kilometres, is located in the middle stretch of the Loire River in central France, primarily within the administrative region named Centre-Val de Loire. The area of the Loire Valley comprises about 800 square kilometres and it is referred to as the Cradle of the French and the Garden of France due to the abundance of vineyards, fruit orchards, and artichoke, and asparagus fields, which line the banks of the river. Notable for its towns, architecture, and wines, the valley has been inhabited since the Middle Palaeolithic period. In 2000, UNESCO added the part of the Loire River valley to its list of World Heritage Sites. The valley includes historic towns such as Amboise, Angers, Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Saumur, the climate is favorable most of the year, the river often acting as a line of demarcation in Frances weather between the northern climate and the southern. The river has a significant effect on the mesoclimate of the region, the climate can be cool with springtime frost while wine harvest months may have rain. Summers are hot, however, influences from the Atlantic moderate the temperature with breezes, Loire wines tend to exhibit a characteristic fruitiness with fresh, crisp flavors. On December 2,2000, UNESCO added the part of the river valley. When the French kings began constructing their huge châteaux here, the nobility, not wanting or even daring to be far from the seat of power and their presence in the lush, fertile valley began attracting the very best landscape designers. In addition to its many châteaux, the cultural monuments illustrate to a degree the ideals of the Renaissance. Many of the châteaux were designed to be built on the top of hills, many of the châteaux had extremely detailed and expensive churches on the grounds, or within the actual château itself. Loire Valley world heritage site Loire Valley Chateau du Rivau Chinon Fortress Western France Tourist Board
2.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Hot air balloon
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A hot air balloon is a lighter than air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket, which carries passengers, the heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant since it has a lower density than the colder air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere, unlike gas balloons, the envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom, since the air near the bottom of the envelope is at the same pressure as the surrounding air. In modern sport balloons the envelope is made from nylon fabric. The hot air balloon is the first successful human-carrying flight technology, the first hot-air balloon flown in the Americas was launched from the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia on January 9,1793 by the French aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard. Hot air balloons that can be propelled through the air rather than simply drifting with the wind are known as thermal airships, early unmanned hot air balloons were used in China. Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, during the Three Kingdoms era and these lanterns are known as Kongming lanterns. Later that same day, Pilatre de Rozier became the human to ascend into the air, reaching an altitude of 26 m. The first free flight with passengers was made a few weeks later. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, the first military use of a hot air balloon happened in 1794 during the battle of Fleurus, when the French used the balloon lEntreprenant for observation. Modern hot air balloons, with a heat source, were developed by Ed Yost, beginning during the 1950s, his work resulted in his first successful flight. The first modern hot air balloon to be made in the United Kingdom was the Bristol Belle, presently, hot air balloons are used primarily for recreation. Hot air balloons are able to fly to extremely high altitudes, on November 26,2005 Vijaypat Singhania set the world altitude record for highest hot air balloon flight, reaching 21,027 m. He took off from downtown Mumbai, India, and landed 240 km south in Panchale, the previous record of 19,811 m had been set by Per Lindstrand on June 6,1988, in Plano, Texas. With a volume of 74 thousand cubic meters, the envelope was the largest ever built for a hot air craft. Designed to fly in the jet streams, the Pacific Flyer recorded the fastest ground speed for a manned balloon at 245 mph. The longest duration record was set by Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, Auguste Piccards grandson and it was the first nonstop trip around the world by balloon. The balloon left Château-dOex, Switzerland, on March 1,1999, the two men exceeded distance, endurance, and time records, traveling 19 days,21 hours, and 55 minutes
4.
Metre
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The metre or meter, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units. The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds, the metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1799, it was redefined in terms of a metre bar. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. In 1983, the current definition was adopted, the imperial inch is defined as 0.0254 metres. One metre is about 3 3⁄8 inches longer than a yard, Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Measuring devices are spelled -meter in all variants of English, the suffix -meter has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. This range of uses is found in Latin, French, English. Thus calls for measurement and moderation. In 1668 the English cleric and philosopher John Wilkins proposed in an essay a decimal-based unit of length, as a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wrens suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm, no official action was taken regarding this suggestion. In the 18th century, there were two approaches to the definition of the unit of length. One favoured Wilkins approach, to define the metre in terms of the length of a pendulum which produced a half-period of one second. The other approach was to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant along the Earths meridian, that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This means that the quadrant would have defined as exactly 10000000 metres at that time. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more measurements of this meridian were needed. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator
5.
Flame
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A flame is the visible, gaseous part of a fire. It is caused by a highly exothermic reaction taking place in a thin zone, very hot flames are hot enough to have ionized gaseous components of sufficient density to be considered plasma. Color and temperature of a flame are dependent on the type of fuel involved in the combustion, as, for example, the applied heat causes the fuel molecules in the candle wax to vaporize. In this state they can readily react with oxygen in the air. As the combustion temperature of a flame increases, so does the average energy of the radiation given off by the flame. Other oxidizers besides oxygen can be used to produce a flame, hydrogen burning in chlorine produces a flame and in the process emits gaseous hydrogen chloride as the combustion product. Another of many possible combinations is hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide which is hypergolic. Fluoropolymers can be used to supply fluorine as an oxidizer of metallic fuels, the chemical kinetics occurring in the flame are very complex and typically involve a large number of chemical reactions and intermediate species, most of them radicals. For instance, a well-known chemical kinetics scheme, GRI-Mech, uses 53 species and 325 elementary reactions to describe combustion of biogas, there are different methods of distributing the required components of combustion to a flame. In a diffusion flame, oxygen and fuel diffuse into each other, in a premixed flame, the oxygen and fuel are premixed beforehand, which results in a different type of flame. Candle flames operate through evaporation of the fuel which rises in a flow of hot gas which then mixes with surrounding oxygen. In a laboratory under normal gravity conditions and with an oxygen valve. This is due to incandescence of very fine particles that are produced in the flame. The colder part of a flame will be red, transitioning to orange, yellow. For a given region, the closer to white on this scale. The transitions are often apparent in fires, in which the color emitted closest to the fuel is white, with a section above it. Specific colors can be imparted to the flame by introduction of species with bright emission spectrum lines. In analytical chemistry, this effect is used in tests to determine presence of some metal ions
6.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government
7.
Bamboo
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The bamboos /bæmˈbuː/ are evergreen perennial flowering plants in the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent, the absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos include some of the plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow 91 cm within a 24-hour period, giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. Bamboos are of economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source. Bamboo has a higher compressive strength than wood, brick, or concrete. The word bamboo comes from the Kannada term bambu, which was introduced to English through Indonesian, the subfamily in its current sense belongs to the BOP clade of grasses, where it is sister to the Pooideae. The woody bamboos do not form a group, instead. Altogether, more than 1,400 species are placed in 115 genera, most bamboo are native to warm and moist tropical and warm temperate climates. However, many species are found in climates, from hot tropical regions to cool mountainous regions. In the Asia-Pacific region they occur across East Asia, from 50°N latitude in Sakhalin south to Northern Australia, and west to India, China, Japan, Korea, India, and Australia, all have several endemic populations. They also occur in numbers in sub-Saharan Africa, confined to tropical areas, from southern Senegal in the north to southern Mozambique. Bamboo is also native through Central America and Mexico, northward into the Southeastern United States, canada and continental Europe is not known to have any native species of bamboo. Recently, some attempts have been made to grow bamboo on a basis in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa. In the United States, several companies are growing, harvesting, bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with reported growth rates up to 91 cm in 24 hours. Primarily growing in regions of warmer climates during the late Cretaceous period, some of the largest timber bamboo can grow over 30 m tall, and be as large as 25–30 cm in diameter. However, the range for mature bamboo is species-dependent, with the smallest bamboos reaching only several inches high at maturity. A typical height range that would cover many of the common bamboos grown in the United States is 4. 6–12 m, depending on species
8.
Candle
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A candle is an ignitable wick embedded in wax or another flammable solid substance such as tallow that provides light, and in some cases, a fragrance. It can also be used to heat, or used as a method of keeping time. A candle manufacturer is known as a chandler. Various devices have been invented to hold candles, from simple tabletop candle holders to elaborate chandeliers, for a candle to burn, a heat source is used to light the candles wick, which melts and vaporizes a small amount of fuel. Once vaporized, the fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite, as the mass of solid fuel is melted and consumed, the candle becomes shorter. Portions of the wick that are not emitting vaporized fuel are consumed in the flame, the incineration of the wick limits the exposed length of the wick, thus maintaining a constant burning temperature and rate of fuel consumption. Some wicks require regular trimming with scissors, usually to about one-quarter inch, to slower, steady burning. In early times, the wick needed to be trimmed quite frequently, special candle-scissors, referred to as snuffers were produced for this purpose in the 20th century and were often combined with an extinguisher. In modern candles, the wick is constructed so that it curves over as it burns and this ensures that the end of the wick gets oxygen and is then consumed by fire—a self-trimming wick. The word candle comes from Middle English candel, from Old English and from Anglo-Norman candele, the earliest surviving candles originated in Han China around 200 BC, and were made from whale fat. European candles of antiquity were made from various forms of fat, tallow. In Ancient Rome, candles were made of tallow due to the prohibitive cost of beeswax and it is possible that they also existed in Ancient Greece, but imprecise terminology makes it difficult to determine. In the Middle Ages in Europe, tallow candles were the most common candle, by the 13th century, candle making had become a guild craft in England and France. The candle makers went from house to house making candles from the kitchen fats saved for that purpose, or made, Beeswax, compared to animal-based tallow, burned cleanly, without smoky flame. Rather than the foul and terrible odor of tallow, it emits a fresh smell, Beeswax candles were expensive, and relatively few people could afford to burn them in their homes in medieval Europe. However, they were used for church ceremonies. In the 18th century, spermaceti, oil produced by the whale, was used to produce a superior candle. Late in the 18th century, colza oil and rapeseed oil came into use as much cheaper substitutes, the manufacture of candles became an industrialized mass market in the mid 19th century
9.
Combustibility and flammability
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Combustibility is a measure of how easily a substance will set on fire, through fire or combustion. This is an important property to consider when a substance is used for construction or is being stored and it is also important in processes that produce combustible substances as a by-product. Special precautions are required for substances that are easily combustible. These measures may include installation of fire sprinklers or storage remote from possible sources of ignition, substances with low combustibility may be selected for construction where the fire risk needs to be reduced, such as apartment buildings, houses, or offices. If combustible resources are used there is chance of fire accidents. Fire resistant substances are preferred for building materials and furnishings, for an Authority Having Jurisdiction, combustibility is defined by the local code. BS 476-4,1970 defines a test for combusibility in which 3 specimens of a material are heated in a furnace, otherwise, the material shall be deemed combustible. Various countries have tests for determining noncombustibility of materials, most involve the heating of a specified quantity of the test specimen for a set duration. Usually, the material cannot support combustion and must not undergo a loss of mass. In Canada, for instance, firewalls must be made of concrete, in building construction, buildings are typically divided into combustible and noncombustible ones. Combustible structures have more stringent limits on building height and area. A number of industrial processes produce combustible dust as a by-product, the most common being wood dust. In addition to wood, combustible dusts include metals, especially magnesium, titanium and aluminum, there are at least a 140 known substances that produce combustible dust. While the particles in a combustible dusts may be of any size, as of 2012, the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet to adopt a comprehensive set of rules on combustible dust. When suspended in air, the particles of combustible dust present a potential for explosions. Accumulated dust, even when not suspended in air, remains a fire hazard, collectors designed to reduce airborne dust account for more than 40 percent of all dust explosions. Other important processes are grinding and pulverizing, transporting powders, filing silos and containers, investigation of 200 dust explosions and fires, between 1980 to 2005, indicated approximately 100 fatalities and 600 injuries. In January 2003, a powder explosion and fire at the West Pharmaceutical Services plant in Kinston, North Carolina resulted in the deaths of six workers
10.
Thailand
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Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total area of approximately 513,000 km2, Thailand is the worlds 51st-largest country and it is the 20th-most-populous country in the world, with around 66 million people. The capital and largest city is Bangkok, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has switched between parliamentary democracy and military junta for decades, the latest coup being in May 2014 by the National Council for Peace and Order. Its capital and most populous city is Bangkok and its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. The Thai economy is the worlds 20th largest by GDP at PPP and it became a newly industrialised country and a major exporter in the 1990s. Manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are leading sectors of the economy and it is considered a middle power in the region and around the world. The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens, by outsiders prior to 1949, it was usually known by the exonym Siam. The word Siam has been identified with the Sanskrit Śyāma, the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word. The word Śyâma is possibly not its origin, but a learned, another theory is the name derives from Chinese, Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century. The Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam, the signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut King of the Siamese, giving the name Siam official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam from 1945 to 11 May 1949, after which it reverted to Thailand. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means free man in the Thai language, ratcha Anachak Thai means kingdom of Thailand or kingdom of Thai. Etymologically, its components are, ratcha, -ana- -chak, the Thai National Anthem, written by Luang Saranupraphan during the extremely patriotic 1930s, refers to the Thai nation as, prathet Thai. The first line of the anthem is, prathet thai ruam lueat nuea chat chuea thai, Thailand is the unity of Thai flesh. There is evidence of habitation in Thailand that has been dated at 40,000 years before the present. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, Thailand in its earliest days was under the rule of the Khmer Empire, which had strong Hindu roots, and the influence among Thais remains even today. Voretzsch believes that Buddhism must have been flowing into Siam from India in the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, later Thailand was influenced by the south Indian Pallava dynasty and north Indian Gupta Empire. The Menam Basin was originally populated by the Mons, and the location of Dvaravati in the 7th century, the History of the Yuan mentions an embassy from the kingdom of Sukhothai in 1282
11.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
12.
Latin America
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Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Americas where Romance languages are predominant. It is therefore broader than the terms Ibero-America or Hispanic America—though it usually excludes French Canada and it has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km2, almost 13% of the Earths land surface area. As of 2015, its population was estimated at more than 626 million and in 2014, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of 5,573,397 million USD and a GDP PPP of 7,531,585 million USD. The term Latin America was first used in 1861 in La revue des races Latines, a further investigation of the concept of Latin America is by Michel Gobat in the American Historical Review. The term was first used in Paris in an 1856 conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao and this term was also used in 1861 by French scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism movement. Latin America is, therefore, defined as all parts of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish. By this definition, Latin America is coterminous with Ibero-America and this definition emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects. As such, some sources avoid this oversimplification by using the phrase Latin America, the distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance-language and English-speaking cultures are distinguished. Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, demographics and it may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Hispanic America, Portuguese America and French America. *, Not a sovereign state The concept of Latin America has been criticized by a number of intellectuals, the earliest known settlement was identified at Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in Southern Chile. Its occupation dates to some 14,000 years ago and there is disputed evidence of even earlier occupation. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the continents, by the first millennium CE, South Americas vast rainforests, mountains, plains and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people. Some groups formed more permanent settlements such as the Chibcha and the Tairona groups and these groups are in the circum Caribbean region. The Chibchas of Colombia, the Quechuas and Aymaras of Bolivia, the region was home to many indigenous peoples and advanced civilizations, including the Aztecs, Toltecs, Maya, and Inca. The Aztec empire was ultimately the most powerful civilization known throughout the Americas, with the arrival of the Europeans following Christopher Columbus voyages, the indigenous elites, such as the Incas and Aztecs, lost power to the heavy European invasion. Hernándo Cortés seized the Aztec elites power with the help of local groups who had favored the Aztec elite, epidemics of diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, wiped out a large portion of the indigenous population. Historians cannot determine the number of natives who died due to European diseases, due to the lack of written records, specific numbers are hard to verify. Many of the survivors were forced to work in European plantations, intermixing between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists was very common, and, by the end of the colonial period, people of mixed ancestry formed majorities in several colonies
