Dacians
The Dacians were a Thracian people who were the ancient inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. This area includes the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia and Southern Poland; the Dacians spoke the Dacian language, a sub-group of Thracian, but were somewhat culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC. The Dacians were known as Geta in Ancient Greek writings, as Dacus or Getae in Roman documents, but as Dagae and Gaete as depicted on the late Roman map Tabula Peutingeriana, it was Herodotus. In Greek and Latin, in the writings of Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder, the people became known as'the Dacians'. Getae and Dacians were used with some confusion by the Greeks. Latin poets used the name Getae. Vergil called them Getae four times, Daci once, Lucian Getae three times and Daci twice, Horace named them Getae twice and Daci five times, while Juvenal one time Getae and two times Daci.
In AD 113, Hadrian used the poetic term Getae for the Dacians. Modern historians prefer to use the name Geto-Dacians. Strabo describes the Getae and Dacians as distinct but cognate tribes, but states that they spoke the same language; this distinction refers to the regions. Strabo and Pliny the Elder state that Getae and Dacians spoke the same language. By contrast, the name of Dacians, whatever the origin of the name, was used by the more western tribes who adjoined the Pannonians and therefore first became known to the Romans. According to Strabo's Geographica, the original name of the Dacians was Δάοι "Daoi"; the name Daoi was adopted by foreign observers to designate all the inhabitants of the countries north of Danube that had not yet been conquered by Greece or Rome. The ethnographic name Daci is found under various forms within ancient sources. Greeks used the forms Δάκοι "Dakoi" and Δάοι "Daoi"; the form Δάοι "Daoi" was used according to Stephan of Byzantium. Latins used the forms Davus, a derived form Dacisci.
There are similarities between the ethnonyms of the Dacians and those of Dahae, an Indo-European people located east of the Caspian Sea, until the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have suggested; the historian David Gordon White has, stated that the "Dacians... appear to be related to the Dahae". By the end of the first century AD, all the inhabitants of the lands which now form Romania were known to the Romans as Daci, with the exception of some Celtic and Germanic tribes who infiltrated from the west, Sarmatian and related people from the east; the name Daci, or "Dacians" is a collective ethnonym. Dio Cassius reported that the Dacians themselves used that name, the Romans so called them, while the Greeks called them Getae. Opinions on the origins of the name Daci are divided; some scholars consider it to originate in the Indo-European *dha-k-, with the stem *dhe- "to put, to place", while others think that the name Daci originates in *daca – "knife, dagger" or in a word similar to daos, meaning "wolf" in the related language of the Phrygians.
One hypothesis is that the name Getae originates in the Indo-European *guet-'to utter, to talk'. Another hypothesis is that "Getae" and "Daci" are Iranian names of two Iranian-speaking Scythian groups, assimilated into the larger Thracian-speaking population of the "Dacia", they might be related to Masagetae and Dahae people who used to live in central Asia in 6th century BC. In the 1st century AD, Strabo suggested that its stem formed a name borne by slaves: Greek Daos, Latin Davus. In the 18th century, Grimm proposed the Gothic dags or "day" that would give the meaning of "light, brilliant", yet dags belongs to the Sanskrit word-root dah-, a derivation from Dah to Δάσαι "Daci" is difficult. In the 19th century, Tomaschek proposed the form "Dak", meaning those who understand and can speak, by considering "Dak" as a derivation of the root da. Tomaschek proposed the form "Davus", meaning "members of the clan/countryman" cf. Bactrian daqyu, danhu "canton". Since the 19th century, many scholars have proposed an etymological link between the endonym of the Dacians and wolves.
A possible connection with the Phrygians was proposed by Dimitar Dechev. The Phrygian language word daos meant "wolf", Daos was a Phrygian deity. In times, Roman auxiliaries recruited from the Dacian area were known as Phrygi; such a connection was supported by material from Hesychius of Alexandria, as well as the 20th century historian Mircea Eliade. The German linguist Paul Kretschmer linked daos to wolves via the root dhau, meaning to press, to gather, or to strangle – i.e. it was believed that wolves would use a neck bite to kill their prey. Endonyms linked to wolves have been demonstrated or proposed for other Indo-European tribes, including the Luvians, Lucanians, Hyrcanians and, in particular, the Dahae, who were k
Danube
The Danube is Europe's second longest river, after the Volga. It is located in Eastern Europe; the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for 2,850 km, passing through or bordering Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine before draining into the Black Sea, its drainage basin extends into nine more countries. The Danube river basin is home to fish species such as pike, huchen, Wels catfish and tench, it is home to a large diversity of carp and sturgeon, as well as salmon and trout. A few species of euryhaline fish, such as European seabass and eel, inhabit the Danube Delta and the lower portion of the river. Since ancient times, the Danube has become a traditional trade route in Europe, nowadays 2,415 km of its total length being navigable; the river is an important source of energy and drinking water. Danube is an Old European river name derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu.
Other river names from the same root include the Dunaj, Dzvina/Daugava, Donets, Dniestr, Dysna and Tuoni. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means "fluid, drop", in Avestan, the same word means "river". In the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers"; the Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, most derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, Donau. Its Sámi name Deatnu means "Great River", it is possible that dānu in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": Dnieper and Dniestr, from Danapris and Danastius, are presumed to continue Scythian *dānu apara "far river" and *dānu nazdya- "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning "strong, swift", from a root also encountered in the ancient name of the Dniester and akin to Iranic turos “swift” and Sanskrit iṣiras "swift", from the PIE *isro-, *sreu “to flow”. In the Middle Ages, the Greek Tiras was borrowed into Italian as Tyrlo and into Turkic languages as Tyrla, the latter further borrowed into Romanian as a regionalism.
The Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, "the bringer of luck". In Latin, the Danube was variously known as Ister; the Latin name is masculine, except Slovenian. The German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe "wetland". Romanian differs from other surrounding languages in designating the river with a feminine term, Dunărea; this form was not inherited from Latin. To explain the loss of the Latin name, scholars who suppose that Romanian developed near the large river propose that the Romanian name descends from a hypotetical Thracian *Donaris that shares the same PIE root with the Iranic don-/dan-, with the suffix -aris encountered in the ancient name of the Ialomița River, in the unidentified Miliare river mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Gábor Vékony says that this hypothesis is not plausible, because the Greeks borrowed the Istros form from the native Thracians, he proposes. The modern languages spoken in the Danube basin all use names related to Dānuvius: German: Donau.
Dunav. Dunai. Classified as an international waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach and Breg; the Danube flows southeast for about 2,730 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine. Once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, the river passes through or touches the borders of 10 countries: Romania, Serbia, Germany, Slovakia, Croatia and Moldova, its drainage basin extends into nine more. In addition to the bordering countries, the drainage basin includes parts of nine more countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Italy, North Macedonia and Albania, its total drainage basin is 801,463 km2. The highest point of the drainage basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border, at 4,049 metres; the land drained by the Danube extends into many other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges and other shallow-draught boats.
From its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tribu
County seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is used in Canada, Romania and the United States. County towns have a similar function in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, in Jamaica. In most of the United States, counties are the political subdivisions of a state; the city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county. The county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records and correctional facility are located in the county seat though some functions may be located or conducted in other parts of the county if it is geographically large. A county seat is but not always, an incorporated municipality; the exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia. Ellicott City, the county seat of Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, Cape May Court House, New Jersey, though unincorporated, is a section of Middle Township, an incorporated municipality. In some of the colonial states, county seats include or included "Court House" as part of their name. In the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the term "shire town" is used in place of county seat. County seats in Taiwan are the administrative centers of the counties. There are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which are in the forms of county-administered city, urban township or rural township. Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont have two or more county seats located on opposite sides of the county. An example is Harrison County, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats; the practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days.
There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride for the towns involved. There are 36 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states: Coffee County, Alabama St. Clair County, Alabama Arkansas County, Arkansas Carroll County, Arkansas Clay County, Arkansas Craighead County, Arkansas Franklin County, Arkansas Logan County, Arkansas Mississippi County, Arkansas Prairie County, Arkansas Sebastian County, Arkansas Yell County, Arkansas Columbia County, Georgia Lee County, Iowa Campbell County, Kentucky Kenton County, Kentucky Essex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County, Massachusetts Plymouth County, Massachusetts Bolivar County, Mississippi Carroll County, Mississippi Chickasaw County, Mississippi Harrison County, Mississippi Hinds County, Mississippi Jasper County, Mississippi Jones County, Mississippi Panola County, Mississippi Tallahatchie County, Mississippi Yalobusha County, Mississippi Jackson County, Missouri Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Seneca County, New York Bennington County, Vermont In New England, the town, not the county, is the primary division of local government.
Counties in this region have served as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no county level of thus no county seats. In Vermont and Maine the county seats are designated shire towns. County government consists only of a Superior Court and Sheriff, both located in the respective shire town. Bennington County has two shire towns. In Massachusetts, most government functions which would otherwise be performed by county governments in other states are performed by town or city governments; as such, Massachusetts has dissolved many of its county governments, the state government now operates the registries of deeds and sheriff's offices in those counties. In Virginia, a county seat may be an independent city surrounded by, but not part of, the county of which it is the administrative center. Two counties in South Dakota have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county, their county-level services are provided by Fall River Tripp County, respectively.
In Louisiana, divided into parishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as parish seats. Alaska is divided into boroughs rather than counties; the Unorganized Borough, which covers 49 % of Alaska's area, has equivalent. The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254, the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with 3. County seat war Administrative center County town, administrative centres in Ireland and the UK Chef-lieu, administrative centres in Algeria, Luxembourg, France and Tunisia Municipality, equivalent to county in many c
Ladislaus IV of Hungary
Ladislaus the Cuman known as Ladislas the Cuman, was king of Hungary and Croatia from 1272 to 1290. His mother, was the daughter of a chieftain from the pagan Cumans who had settled in Hungary. At the age of seven, he married a daughter of King Charles I of Sicily. Ladislaus was only 10 when a rebellious lord, Joachim Gutkeled and imprisoned him. Ladislaus was still a prisoner when his father Stephen V died on 6 August 1272. During his minority, many groupings of barons — the Abas, Csáks, Kőszegis, Gutkeleds — fought against each other for supreme power. Ladislaus was declared to be of age at an assembly of the prelates, barons and Cumans in 1277, he allied himself with Rudolf I of Germany against Ottokar II of Bohemia. His forces had a preeminent role in Rudolf's victory over Ottokar in the Battle on the Marchfeld on 26 August 1278. However, Ladislaus could not restore royal power in Hungary. A papal legate, bishop of Fermo, came to Hungary to help Ladislaus consolidate his authority, but the prelate was shocked at the presence of thousands of pagan Cumans in Hungary.
Ladislaus promised that he would force them to adopt a Christian lifestyle, but they refused to obey the legate's demands. Ladislaus decided to support the Cumans; the Cumans imprisoned the legate, the legate's partisans captured Ladislaus. In early 1280, Ladislaus agreed to persuade the Cumans to submit to the legate, but many Cumans preferred to leave Hungary. Ladislaus vanquished a Cuman army that invaded Hungary in 1282. Hungary survived a Mongol invasion in 1285. Ladislaus had, by that time, become so unpopular that many of his subjects accused him of inciting the Mongols to invade Hungary. After he imprisoned his wife in 1286, he lived with his Cuman mistresses. During the last years of his life, he wandered throughout the country with his Cuman allies, but he was unable to control the most powerful lords and bishops any more. Pope Nicholas IV planned to declare a crusade against him, but three Cuman assassins murdered Ladislaus. Ladislaus was the elder son of Stephen V, son of Béla IV of Hungary, Stephen's wife Elizabeth the Cuman.
Elizabeth was the daughter of a chieftain of the Cumans. She was baptized before her marriage to Stephen. Ladislaus was born under the sign of Mars in 1262, according to Simon of Kéza, his chaplain in the 1270s. Conflicts between Ladislaus's father and grandfather developed into a civil war in 1264. Béla IV's troops, which were under the command of Ladislaus's aunt, captured the castle of Sárospatak, where Ladislaus and his mother were staying, imprisoned them. Ladislaus was kept in the Turóc Castle, but two months he was sent to the court of Boleslaw the Chaste, Duke of Cracow, Béla IV's son-in-law. After his grandfather and father made peace in March 1265, Ladislaus was set free and returned to his father. Ladislaus's father made an alliance with Charles I, king of Sicily, in September 1269. According to the treaty, Charles I's daughter, about four years old at that time, was engaged to the seven-year-old Ladislaus; the children's marriage took place in 1270. Béla IV died on 3 May 1270, Ladislaus's father was crowned king two weeks later.
Béla IV's closest advisors — Duchess Anna, Béla IV's former palatine, Henry Kőszegi — left Hungary and sought assistance from Anna's son-in-law, King Ottokar II of Bohemia. The newly appointed Ban of Slavonia, Joachim Gutkeled turned against Stephen V and kidnapped Ladislaus in the summer of 1272. Gutkeled held Ladislaus in captivity in the fortress of Koprivnica in Slavonia. Historian Pál Engel suggests that Joachim Gutkeled planned to force Stephen V to divide Hungary with Ladislaus. Stephen V could not take it. Stephen fell ill and died on 6 August. Joachim Gutkeled departed for Székesfehérvár as soon as he was informed of Stephen V's death, because he wanted to arrange the boy–king's coronation. Ladislaus's mother joined him, infuriating Stephen V's partisans who accused her of having conspired against her husband. Stephen V's master of the treasury, Egyed Monoszló, laid siege to her palace in Székesfehérvár, but Gutkeled's supporters routed him. Monoszló fled to Pressburg. Archbishop Philip of Esztergom crowned Ladislaus king in Székesfehérvár on about 3 September.
In theory, the 10-year-old Ladislaus ruled under his mother's regency, but in fact, baronial parties administered the kingdom. In November of that year, Henry Kőszegi returned from Bohemia and assassinated Ladislaus's cousin, Béla of Macsó. Duke Béla's extensive domains, which were located along the southern borders, were divided among Henry Kőszegi and his supporters. In retaliation for Hungarian incursions into Austria and Moravia and Moravian troops invaded the borderlands of Hungary in April 1273, they captured Szombathely, plundering the western counties. Joachim Gutkeled recaptured the two forts two months but Ottokar II of Bohemia invaded Hungary and seized many fortresses, including Győr and Sopron in the autumn. Peter Csák and his allies removed Joachim Gutkeled and Henry Kőszegi from power, but Gutkeled and Kőszegi seized Ladislaus and his mother in June 1274. Although Peter Csák liberated the king and his mother, Gutkeled and Kőszegi captured Ladislaus's younger brother and took him to Slavonia.
They demanded Slavonia in Duke Andrew's name, but Peter Csák defeated their united forces
Romanians
The Romanians are a Romance ethnic group and nation native to Romania, that share a common Romanian culture and speak the Romanian language, the most widespread spoken Eastern Romance language, descended from the Latin language. According to the 2011 Romanian census, just under 89% of Romania's citizens identified themselves as ethnic Romanians. In one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, the Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are an ethnic minority in several nearby countries situated in Central Eastern Europe in Hungary, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Today, estimates of the number of Romanian people worldwide vary from 26 to 30 million according to various sources, evidently depending on the definition of the term'Romanian', Romanians native to Romania and Republic of Moldova and their afferent diasporas, native speakers of Romanian, as well as other Eastern Romance-speaking groups considered by most scholars and the Romanian Academy as a constituent part of the broader Romanian people Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians, Vlachs in Serbia, in Croatia, in Bulgaria, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, part of today's territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, when Trajan's army defeated the army of Dacia's ruler Decebalus. The Roman administration withdrew two centuries under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi. Two theories account for the origin of the Romanian people. One, known as the Daco-Roman continuity theory, posits that they are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous peoples living in the Roman Province of Dacia, while the other posits that the Romanians are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous populations of the former Roman provinces of Illyria, Moesia and Macedon, the ancestors of Romanians migrated from these Roman provinces south of the Danube into the area which they inhabit today. According to the first theory, the Romanians are descended from indigenous populations that inhabited what is now Romania and its immediate environs: Thracians and Roman legionnaires and colonists. In the course of the two wars with the Roman legions, between AD 101–102 and AD 105–106 the emperor Trajan succeeded in defeating the Dacians and the greatest part of Dacia became a Roman province.
The colonisation with Roman or Romanized elements, the use of the Latin language and the assimilation of Roman civilisation as well as the intense development of urban centres led to the Romanization of part of the autochthonous population in Dacia. This process was concluded by the 10th century when the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romanians was completed. According to the south-of-the-Danube origin theory, the Romanians' ancestors, a combination of Romans and Romanized peoples of Illyria and Thrace, moved northward across the Danube river into modern-day Romania. Small population groups speaking several versions of Romanian still exist south of the Danube in Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, but it is not known whether they themselves migrated from more northern parts of the Balkans, including Dacia; the south-of-the Danube theory favours northern Albania and/or Moesia as the more specific places of Romanian ethnogenesis. Small genetic differences were found among Southeastern European populations and those of the Dniester–Carpathian region.
Despite this low level of differentiation between them, tree reconstruction and principal component analyses allowed a distinction between Balkan–Carpathian and Balkan Mediterranean population groups. The genetic affinities among Dniester–Carpathian and southeastern European populations do not reflect their linguistic relationships. According to the report, the results indicate that the ethnic and genetic differentiations occurred in these regions to a considerable extent independently of each other. During the Middle Ages Romanians were known as Vlachs, a blanket term of Germanic origin, from the word Walha, used by ancient Germanic peoples to refer to Romance-speaking and Celtic neighbours. Besides the separation of some groups during the Age of Migration, many Vlachs could be found all over the Balkans, in Transylvania, across Carpathian Mountains as far north as Poland and as far west as the regions of Moravia, some went as far east as Volhynia of western Ukraine, the present-day Croatia where the Morlachs disappeared, while the Catholic and Orthodox Vlachs took Croat and Serb national identity.
Because of the migrations that followed – such as those of Slavs, Bulgars and Tatars – the Romanians were organised in agricultural communes, developing large centralised states only in the 14th century, when the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Empire. During the late Middle Ages, prominent medieval Romanian monarchs such as Bogdan of Moldavia, Stephen the Great, Mircea the Elder, Michael the Brave, or Vlad the Impaler took part in the history of Central Europe by waging tumultuous wars and leading noteworthy crusades against the continuously expanding Ottoman Empire, at ti
Constantin Brâncuși
Constantin Brâncuși was a Romanian sculptor and photographer who made his career in France. Considered a pioneer of modernism, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture; as a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest to Munich to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907, his art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Brâncuși sought inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain and others. However, other influences emerge from Romanian folk art traceable through Byzantine and Dionysian traditions. Brâncuși grew up in the village of Hobiţa, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his works.
His parents Nicolae and Maria Brâncuși were poor peasants who earned a meager living through back-breaking labor. He showed talent for carving objects out of wood, ran away from home to escape the bullying of his father and older brothers. At the age of nine, Brâncuși left the village to work in the nearest large town. At 11 he went into the service of a grocer in Slatina; when he was 18, Brâncuși created a violin by hand with materials. Impressed by Brâncuși's talent for carving, an industrialist entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts, where he pursued his love for woodworking, graduating with honors in 1898, he enrolled in the Bucharest School of Fine Arts, where he received academic training in sculpture. He worked hard, distinguished himself as talented. One of his earliest surviving works, under the guidance of his anatomy teacher, Dimitrie Gerota, is a masterfully rendered écorché, exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903. Though just an anatomical study, it foreshadowed the sculptor's efforts to reveal essence rather than copy outward appearance.
In 1903, Brâncuși traveled to Munich, from there to Paris. In Paris, he was welcomed by the community of intellectuals brimming with new ideas, he worked for two years in the workshop of Antonin Mercié of the École des Beaux-Arts, was invited to enter the workshop of Auguste Rodin. Though he admired the eminent Rodin he left the Rodin studio after only two months, saying, "Nothing can grow under big trees."After leaving Rodin's workshop, Brâncuși began developing the revolutionary style for which he is known. His first commissioned work, The Prayer, was part of a gravestone memorial, it depicts a young woman crossing herself as she kneels, marks the first step toward abstracted, non-literal representation, shows his drive to depict "not the outer form but the idea, the essence of things." He began doing more carving, rather than the method popular with his contemporaries, that of modeling in clay or plaster which would be cast in metal, by 1908 he worked exclusively by carving. In the following few years he made many versions of Sleeping Muse and The Kiss, further simplifying forms to geometrical and sparse objects.
His works became popular in France and the United States. Collectors, notably John Quinn, bought his pieces, reviewers praised his works. In 1913 Brâncuși's work was displayed at both the Salon des Indépendants and the first exhibition in the U. S. of modern art, the Armory Show. In 1920, he developed a notorious reputation with the entry of Princess X in the Salon; the phallic appearance of this large, gleaming bronze piece scandalized the Salon and, despite Brâncuși's explanation that it was meant to represent the essence of womanhood, removed it from the exhibition. Princess X was revealed to be Princess Marie Bonaparte, direct descendant of the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte; the sculpture has been interpreted by some as symbolizing her obsession with the penis and her lifelong quest to achieve vaginal orgasm, with the help of Sigmund Freud. Around this time Brâncuși began crafting the bases for his sculptures with much care and originality because he considered them important to the works themselves.
One of his major groups of sculptures involved the Bird in Space — simple abstract shapes representing a bird in flight. The works are based on his earlier Măiastra series. In Romanian folklore the Măiastra is a beautiful golden bird who foretells the future and cures the blind. Over the following 20 years, Brâncuși made multiple versions of Bird in Space out of marble or bronze. Athena Tacha Spear's book, Brâncuși's Birds, first sorted out the 36 versions and their development, from the early Măiastra, to the Golden Bird of the late teens, to the Bird in Space, which emerged in the early 1920s and which Brâncuși developed throughout his life. One of these versions caused a major controversy in 1926, when photographer Edward Steichen purchased it and shipped it to the United States. Customs officers did not accept the Bird as a work of art and assessed customs duty on its import as an industrial item. After protracted court proceedings, this assessment was overturned, thus confirming the Bird's status as a duty-exempt work of art.
The ruling established the important principle that "art" does not have to i
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the southeast, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, it has a predominantly temperate-continental climate. With a total area of 238,397 square kilometres, Romania is the 12th largest country and the 7th most populous member state of the European Union, having 20 million inhabitants, its capital and largest city is Bucharest, other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași, Constanța, Brașov. The River Danube, Europe's second-longest river, rises in Germany's Black Forest and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romania's Danube Delta; the Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest, include Moldoveanu Peak, at an altitude of 2,544 m. Modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.
The new state named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Following World War I, when Romania fought on the side of the Allied powers, Bessarabia, Transylvania as well as parts of Banat, Crișana, Maramureș became part of the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. In June–August 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Second Vienna Award, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In November 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact and in June 1941 entered World War II on the Axis side, fighting against the Soviet Union until August 1944, when it joined the Allies and recovered Northern Transylvania. Following the war, under the occupation of the Red Army's forces, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards a market economy; the sovereign state of Romania is a developing country and ranks 52nd in the Human Development Index.
It has the world's 47th largest economy by nominal GDP and an annual economic growth rate of 7%, the highest in the EU at the time. Following rapid economic growth in the early 2000s, Romania has an economy predominantly based on services, is a producer and net exporter of machines and electric energy, featuring companies like Automobile Dacia and OMV Petrom, it has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, part of NATO since 2004, part of the European Union since 2007. An overwhelming majority of the population identifies themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are native speakers of Romanian, a Romance language. Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning "citizen of Rome"; the first known use of the appellation was attested to in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania and Wallachia. The oldest known surviving document written in Romanian, a 1521 letter known as the "Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung", is notable for including the first documented occurrence of the country's name: Wallachia is mentioned as Țeara Rumânească.
Two spelling forms: român and rumân were used interchangeably until sociolinguistic developments in the late 17th century led to semantic differentiation of the two forms: rumân came to mean "bondsman", while român retained the original ethnolinguistic meaning. After the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a revolutionary leader of the early 19th century, used the term Rumânia to refer to the principality of Wallachia."The use of the name Romania to refer to the common homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been in use since 11 December 1861. In English, the name of the country was spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975. Romania is the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. A handful of other languages have switched to "o" like English, but most languages continue to prefer forms with u, e.g. French Roumanie and Swedish Rumänien, Spanish Rumania, Polish Rumunia, Russian Румыния, Japanese ルーマニア.
1859–1862: United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia 1862–1866: Romanian United Principalities or Romania 1866–1881: Romania or Principality of Romania 1881–1947: Kingdom of Romania or Romania 1947–1965: Romanian People's Republic or Romania 1965–December, 1989: Socialist Republic of Romania or Romania December, 1989–present: Romania Human remains found in Peștera cu Oase, radiocarbon dated as being from circa 40,000 years ago, represent the oldest known Homo sapiens in Europe. Neolithic techniques and agriculture spread after the arrival of a mixed group of people from Thessaly in the 6th millenium BC. Excavations near a salt spring at Lunca yielded the earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe; the first permanent settlements appeared in the Neolithic. Some of them developed into "proto-cities"; the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture—the best known archaeological culture of Old Europe—flourished in Muntenia, southeastern Transylvania and northeastern Moldavia in the 3rd m
Romania
Gorj County
