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• 
  

• 
  Albania
  Albania (ⁱ/ælˈbeɪniə/ al-BAY-nee-ə, Albanian: Shqipëri/Shqipëria; Gheg Albanian: Shqipnia), officially known as the Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika e Shqipërisë pronounced Albanian pronunciation: [ɾɛpuˈblika ɛ ʃcipəˈɾiːs]), is a country in Southern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. It is less than 72 km (45 mi) from Italy, across the Strait of Otranto which links the Adriatic Sea to the Ionian Sea.
  Albania is a member of the UN, NATO, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Council of Europe, World Trade Organisation, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and one of the founding members of the Union for the Mediterranean. Albania has been a potential candidate for accession to the European Union since January 2003, and it formally applied for EU membership on 28 April 2009.
  
  wn.com/Albania
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  Argentina
  Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
  Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
  A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
  
  wn.com/Argentina
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  Australia
  Australia ( /əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
  For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.
  
  wn.com/Australia
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  Austria
  Austria (ⁱ/ˈɒstriə/ or /ˈɔːstriə/; German: Österreich [ˈøːstɐˌʁaɪç] ( listen)), officially the Republic of Austria (German:  Republik Österreich (help·info)), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.47 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,855 square kilometres (32,377 sq mi) and has a temperate and alpine climate. Austria's terrain is highly mountainous due to the presence of the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Austro-Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and German in its standard form is the country's official language. Other local official languages are Burgenland Croatian, Hungarian and Slovene.
  The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria became one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon I as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. In 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary.
  
  wn.com/Austria
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  Austrian Empire
  The Austrian Empire (German: Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling Kaisertum Österreich) was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 to 1918) was itself dissolved by the victors at the end of World War I and broken into separate new states.
  The term "Austrian Empire" is also used for the Habsburg possessions before 1804, which had no official collective name, although Austria is more frequent; the term of Austria-Hungary has also been used.^{[citation needed]}
  The Austrian Empire was founded by the Habsburg monarch Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (who became Emperor Francis I of Austria), as a state comprising his personal lands within and outside of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
  
  wn.com/Austrian_Empire
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  Bessarabia
  Bessarabia (Romanian: Basarabia; Russian: Бессарабия Bessarabiya, Ukrainian: Бессарабія Bessarabiya) is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west.
  In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812, and ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern portion of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, was ceded to Imperial Russia and designated "Bessarabia". While this eastern part became the Governorate of Bessarabia, the western part of Moldavia united, in 1859, with Wallachia in what would become the Kingdom of Romania. For a short period between 1856 and 1878, two of the nine traditional counties of Bessarabia were also part of Moldavia and then Romania.
  Three months after declaring its independence from Russia, in 1918, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic (shortly before the end of World War I); it united with the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Subsequently, Romania joined the Axis Powers and recaptured it in 1941 and lost again in 1944. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border set along the Prut River was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. The core part of Bessarabia was joined with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (Transnistria) to form the Moldavian SSR. At the same time, smaller parts of Bessarabia, in the south (two traditional counties; Budjak) and north (half of one county), were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR.
  
  wn.com/Bessarabia
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  Braṣov
  Brașov (Romanian pronunciation: [braˈʃov] ( listen); German: Kronstadt; Hungarian: Brassó, Hungarian pronunciation: [’brɒʃʃoː]; Medieval Latin: Brassovia or Corona; 1950–1960: Orașul Stalin) is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.
  According to the last Romanian census, from 2011, there were 227,961 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania, and the metropolitan area is home to 335,668 residents.
  Brașov is located in the central part of the country, about 166 km north of Bucharest. It is surrounded by the Southern Carpathians and is part of the Transylvania region.
  The city is notable for being the birthplace of the national anthem of Romania and for hosting the Golden Stag International Music Festival.
  The city was first attested in 1235 AD under the name Corona, a Latin word meaning "crown", a name given by the German colonists. The current Romanian and Hungarian names are derived from the Turkic word barasu, meaning "white water" with a Slavic suffix -ov.
  
  wn.com/Braṣov
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  Bucharest
  Bucharest (Romanian: București pronounced [bukuˈreʃtʲ] ( listen)) is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.4325°N 26.10389°E / 44.4325; 26.10389Coordinates: 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E / 44.4325°N 26.10389°E / 44.4325; 26.10389, and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River.
  Bucharest was first mentioned in documents as early as 1459. Since then it has gone through a variety of changes, becoming the state capital of Romania in 1862 and steadily consolidating its position as the centre of the Romanian mass media, culture and arts. Its eclectic architecture is a mix of historical (neo-classical), interbellum (Bauhaus and Art Deco), Communist-era and modern. In the period between the two World Wars, the city's elegant architecture and the sophistication of its elite earned Bucharest the nickname of "Little Paris" (Micul Paris). Although many buildings and districts in the historic centre were damaged or destroyed by war, earthquakes, and Nicolae Ceaușescu's program of systematization, many survived. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an economic and cultural boom..
  
  wn.com/Bucharest
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  Bulgaria
  Coordinates: 42°45′N 25°30′E / 42.75°N 25.5°E / 42.75; 25.5
  Bulgaria ⁱ/bʌlˈɡɛəriə/ (Bulgarian: България, IPA: [bɤ̞ɫˈɡarijɐ]), is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and the Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south and the Black Sea to the east. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), Bulgaria is Europe's 14th-largest country. Its location has made it a historical crossroad for various civilisations and as such it is the home of some of the earliest metalworking, religious and other cultural artifacts in the world.
  Prehistoric cultures began developing on Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period. Its ancient history was marked by the presence of the Thracians, and later by the Greeks and Romans. The emergence of a unified Bulgarian ethnicity and state dates back to the First Bulgarian Empire, which dominated most of the Balkans and functioned as a cultural hub for Slavic peoples during the Middle Ages. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for nearly five hundred years. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 resulted in the Third Bulgarian State, recognised in 1908. The following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both World Wars. In 1946 it became a Communist republic with a single-party system until 1989, when the Communist Party allowed multi-party elections. After 1990 Bulgaria transitioned to democracy and a market-based economy.
  
  wn.com/Bulgaria
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  Canada
  Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
  The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
  
  wn.com/Canada
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  Carpathian
  Coordinates: 47°00′N 25°30′E / 47°N 25.5°E / 47; 25.5
  The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains, 1,700 km (1,056 mi)). They provide the habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one third of all European plant species. The Carpathians and their piedmont also concentrate many thermal and mineral waters, with Romania home to over one-third of the European total. Romania is likewise home to the largest surface of virgin forests in Europe (except Russia), totaling 250,000 hectares (65%), most of them in the Carpathians, with the Southern Carpathians constituting Europe’s largest unfragmented forested area.
  The Carpathians consist of a chain of mountain ranges that stretch in an arc from the Czech Republic (3%) in the northwest through Slovakia (17%), Poland (10%), Hungary (4%) and Ukraine (11%) to Romania (53%) in the east and on to the Iron Gates on the River Danube between Romania and Serbia (2%) in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians is the Tatras, on the border of Poland and Slovakia, where the highest peaks exceed 2,600 m (8,530 ft). The second-highest range is the Eastern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks exceed 2,500 m (8,202 ft).
  
  wn.com/Carpathian
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  Carpathian Mountains
  Coordinates: 47°00′N 25°30′E / 47°N 25.5°E / 47; 25.5
  The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains, 1,700 km (1,056 mi)). They provide the habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one third of all European plant species. The Carpathians and their piedmont also concentrate many thermal and mineral waters, with Romania home to over one-third of the European total. Romania is likewise home to the largest surface of virgin forests in Europe (except Russia), totaling 250,000 hectares (65%), most of them in the Carpathians, with the Southern Carpathians constituting Europe’s largest unfragmented forested area.
  The Carpathians consist of a chain of mountain ranges that stretch in an arc from the Czech Republic (3%) in the northwest through Slovakia (17%), Poland (10%), Hungary (4%) and Ukraine (11%) to Romania (53%) in the east and on to the Iron Gates on the River Danube between Romania and Serbia (2%) in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians is the Tatras, on the border of Poland and Slovakia, where the highest peaks exceed 2,600 m (8,530 ft). The second-highest range is the Eastern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks exceed 2,500 m (8,202 ft).
  
  wn.com/Carpathian_Mountains
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  Croatia
  Croatia (ⁱ/kroʊˈeɪʃə/ kroh-AY-shə; Croatian: Hrvatska pronounced [xř̩ʋaːtskaː]), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska  listen (help·info)), is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers 56,594 square kilometres (21,851 square miles) and has diverse, mostly continental and Mediterranean climates. Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast contains more than a thousand islands. The country's population is 4.29 million, most of whom are Croats, with the most common religious denomination being Roman Catholicism.
  In the early 7th century the Croats arrived in area of present-day Croatia. They organised the state into two dukedoms by the 9th century. Tomislav became the first king by 925 AD, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom. The Kingdom of Croatia retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of Kings Peter Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir. Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg to the Croatian throne. In 1918, after World War I, Croatia was included in the short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs that declared independence from Austria–Hungary and co-founded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. A Croatian state briefly existed during World War II as a fascist puppet state. After the war, Croatia became a founding member and a federal constituent of the Second Yugoslavia, a socialist state. In June 1991, Croatia declared independence, which came into effect on 8 October of the same year. The Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully during the four years following the declaration.
  
  wn.com/Croatia
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  Cyprus
  Cyprus ⁱ/ˈsaɪprəs/ (Greek: Κύπρος, Kýpros, IPA: [ˈcipɾos]; Turkish: Kıbrıs, IPA: [ˈkɯbɾɯs]), officially the Republic of Cyprus (Greek: Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία, Kypriakī́ Dīmokratía, IPA: [cipɾiaˈci ðimokɾaˈtia]; Turkish: Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti, IPA: [ˈkɯbɾɯs dʒumhuɾijeˈti]), is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria, Lebanon, northwest of Israel and north of Egypt. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and the Republic of Cyprus is a member state of the European Union.
  The earliest known human activity on the island dates back to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains from this period include the well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia, which has been declared a World Heritage Site with an "enhanced protection" status in the event of armed conflict by UNESCO, along with the archaeological sites of Paphos and the Painted Churches of the Troodos Region. Cyprus is home to some of the oldest water wells in the world.
  
  wn.com/Cyprus
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  Czech Republic
  The Czech Republic (ⁱ/ˈtʃɛk/ CHEK;Czech: Česká republika, pronounced [ˈtʃɛskaː ˈrɛpuˌblɪka] ( listen), short form Česko Czech pronunciation: [ˈtʃɛskɔ]) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the north, Germany to the west, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east. Its capital and largest city, with 1.3 million inhabitants, is Prague.
  It is a pluralist multi-party parliamentary representative democracy, a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group.
  The Czech state, formerly known as Bohemia, was formed in the late 9th century as a small duchy around Prague, at that time under dominance of the powerful Great Moravian Empire (which reached its greatest territorial extent during the reign of Svatopluk I from the House of Mojmír). After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power was transferred from Moravia to Bohemia, under the Přemyslids. During the rule of Přemyslid dukes/kings and their successors, the Luxembourgs, the country reached its greatest territorial extent (13th–14th century). Life in the country was significantly affected by the Hussite wars, during which it faced economic embargo and crusades from all over Europe. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg monarchy as one of its three principal parts alongside the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. The Bohemian Revolt (1618–20) led to the further centralization of the monarchy including forced recatholization and Germanization. During radical reforms in the 18th century the Bohemian Crown was even de facto abolished (1749). In the 19th century the Czech lands became the industrial powerhouse of the monarchy and the core of the Republic of Czechoslovakia which was formed in 1918, following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I.
  
  wn.com/Czech_Republic
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  Denmark
  The Kingdom of Denmark (Danish: Kongeriget Danmark, pronounced [ˈkɔŋəʁiːəð ˈdanmɑɡ̊] ( listen)) is a constitutional monarchy and sovereign state consisting the country of Denmark in northern Europe and two autonomous constituent countries, the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and Greenland in North America. The kingdom is a unitary state with some power being devolved from Denmark proper to Greenland and the Faroe Islands; this polity is referred to as the Danish Realm. Denmark proper is the hegemonial area, where judicial, executive, and legislative power resides. The Faroe Islands are defined to be a community of people within the kingdom, and the Greenlandic people are defined as a separate people with the right to self-determination.
  Denmark is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, located southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland and many islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, as well as hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago.
  
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  Dniester
  The Dniester ( /ˈniːstər/ NEES-tər;Romanian: Nistru, Ukrainian: Дністе́р translit. Dnister; Russian: Днестр) is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs through Ukraine and Moldova and separates most of Moldova's territory from the breakaway territory of Transnistria.
  The name Dniester derives from Iranic Sarmatian Dānu nazdya "the close river." The Dnieper River also derives from the same Sarmatian Iranic meaning, "the river on the far side.") The older name, Tyras, is from Scythian tūra, meaning "rapid." The names of the Don and Danube are also from the same Proto Indo-European word *dānu - river.
  
  In Russian, it is known as Днестр, translit. Dnestr, in Yiddish: Nester נעסטער; in Turkish, Turla and during antiquity, it was called Tyras in Latin and Danastris in Greek. Classical authors have also referred to it as Danaster.
  The Dniester rises in Ukraine, near the city of Drohobych, close to the border with Poland, and flows toward the Black Sea. Its course marks part of the border of Ukraine and Moldova, after which it flows through Moldova for 398 kilometres (247 mi), separating the bulk of Moldova's territory from Transnistria. It later forms an additional part of the Moldova-Ukraine border, then flows through Ukraine to the Black Sea, where its estuary forms the Dniester Liman.
  
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  European Commission
  The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.
  The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "commissioners" ). There is one member per member state, though members are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 27 is the Commission President (currently José Manuel Durão Barroso) proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament. The Council then appoints the other 26 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and then the 27 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The first Barroso Commission took office in late 2004 and its successor, under the same President, took office in 2010.
  The term "Commission" is used either in the narrow sense of the 27-member College of Commissioners (or College) or to also include the administrative body of about 23,000 European civil servants who are split into departments called Directorates-General and Services. The internal working languages of the Commission are English, French and German. The Members of the Commission and their "cabinets" (immediate teams) are based in the Berlaymont building of Brussels.
  
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  France
  France (English ⁱ/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq mi).
  Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
  
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  Geography of Romania
  With an area of 238,400 square kilometers, Romania is the twelfth largest country in Europe. Situated in the northeastern portion of the Balkan Peninsula, the country is halfway between the equator and the North Pole and equidistant from the westernmost part of Europe—the Atlantic Coast—and the most easterly—the Ural Mountains. Romania has 3,195 kilometers of border. Republic of Moldova lies to the east, Bulgaria lies to the south, Serbia to the southwest, and Hungary to the west. In the southeast, 245 kilometers of Black Sea coastline provide an important outlet to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
  Traditionally Romania is divided into several historic regions that no longer perform any administrative function:
  
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  Germany
  Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
  A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
  
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  Greece
  Greece ⁱ/ˈɡriːs/ (Greek: Ελλάδα, Ellada, IPA: [eˈlaða] ( listen) historically in Katharevousa and Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellas, IPA: [eˈlas] and [helːás] respectively), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia, IPA: [eliniˈci ðimokraˈtia]), is a country in Southern Europe, politically considered part of Western Europe.Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus). The population of the country is around 11 million.
  Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).
  
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  Hungary
  Hungary ⁱ/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
  Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
  
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  Istria
  Istria (Croatian, Slovene: Istra, Čakavian: Istrija, Jistra, Croatian pronunciation: [îstra]; Italian: Istria; Istriot: Eîstria; German: Istrien; Hungarian: Isztria), formerly Histria (Latin), is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.
  The geographical features of Istria include the Učka mountain ridge, which is the highest portion of the Ćićarija mountain range; the rivers Dragonja, Mirna, Pazinčica, and Raša; and the Lim bay and valley. Istria lies in three countries: Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. By far the largest portion (89%) lies in Croatia. "Croatian Istria" is divided into two counties, the larger being Istria County in western Croatia. Important towns in Istria County include Pula, Poreč, Rovinj, Pazin, Labin, Umag, Motovun, Buzet, and Buje. Smaller towns in Istria County include Višnjan, Roč, and Hum.
  The northwestern part of Istria lies in Slovenia: it is known as Slovenian Istria, and includes the coastal municipalities of Piran, Izola and Koper, and the Karstic municipality of Hrpelje-Kozina. Northwards of Slovenian Istria, there is a tiny portion of the peninsula that lies in Italy. This smallest portion of Istria consists of the comunes of Muggia and San Dorligo della Valle.
  
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  Italy
  Italy ⁱ/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km² (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
  Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
  
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  Japan
  Japan ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
  Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
  Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
  
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  Kazakhstan
  Kazakhstan (ⁱ/ˌkɑːzəkˈstɑːn/ or /ˌkæzəkˈstæn/) (Kazakh: Қазақстан, Qazaqstan, pronounced [qɑzɑqstɑ́n]; Russian: Казахстан [kəzɐxˈstan]), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Europe. The ninth largest country in the world by land area, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq mi) is larger than Western Europe. It is neighbored clockwise from the north by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and also borders on a significant part of the Caspian Sea. Although Kazakhstan does not share a border with Mongolia, its most easterly point is only 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Mongolia's western tip. The terrain of Kazakhstan ranges from flatlands, steppes, taigas, rock-canyons, hills, deltas, and snow-capped mountains to deserts. With 16.6 million people (2011 estimate) Kazakhstan has the 62nd largest population in the world, though its population density is less than 6 people per square kilometre (15 per sq. mi.). The capital was moved in 1998 from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, to Astana.
  
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  Kingdom of Hungary
  The Kingdom of Hungary was a country in Central Europe covering what is today Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania (now part of Romania), Carpatho Ruthenia (now part of Ukraine), Vojvodina (now part of Serbia), Burgenland (now part of Austria), and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders. From 1102 it also included Croatia (except Istria), being in personal union with it, united under the Hungarian king. The kingdom existed for almost one thousand years (1000–1918 and 1920–1946) and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world.
  The Latin Regnum Hungariae/Vngarie (Regnum meaning kingdom); Regnum Marianum (Kingdom of St. Mary); or simply Hungaria was the form used in official Latin documents from the beginning of the kingdom to the 1840s. The German name (Königreich Ungarn) was used from 1849 to the 1860s, and the Hungarian name (Magyar Királyság) was used in the 1840s, and again from the 1860s to 1918. The names in other languages of the kingdom were: Polish: Królestwo Węgier, Romanian: Regatul Ungariei, Croatian: Kraljevina Ugarska, Slovene: Kraljevina Ogrska, Czech: Uherské království, Slovak: Uhorské kráľovstvo, Italian (for the city of Fiume), Regno d'Ungheria.
  
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  Lithuania
  Lithuania (ⁱ/ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ or /ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 3.2 million as of 2011, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The Lithuanians are a Baltic people, and the official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages (together with Latvian) in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
  For centuries, the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the first Lithuanian state, on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
  
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  Moldova
  Moldova ⁱ/mɒlˈdoʊvə/, officially the Republic of Moldova (Moldovan/Romanian: Republica Moldova pronounced [reˈpublika molˈdova]) is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991 as part of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 29 July 1994, the new constitution of Moldova was adopted. A strip of Moldova's internationally recognized territory on the east bank of the river Dniester has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990.
  The nation is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. Moldova is a member state of the United Nations, Council of Europe, WTO, OSCE, GUAM, CIS, BSEC and other international organizations. Moldova currently aspires to join the European Union, and has implemented the first three-year Action Plan within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).
  
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  NATO
  Coordinates: 50°52′34.16″N 4°25′19.24″E / 50.8761556°N 4.4220111°E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111
  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.
  For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.
  
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  Netherlands
  The Netherlands (ⁱ/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] ( listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
  
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  New Zealand
  New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa) is an island country located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses ‒ that of the North and South Islands ‒ as well as numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans.
  During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of both animal and plant life. Most notable are the large number of unique bird species, many of which became extinct after the arrival of humans and introduced mammals. With a mild maritime climate, the land was mostly covered in forest. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions caused by the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates clashing beneath the earth's surface.
  
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  Norway
  Norway ⁱ/ˈnɔrweɪ/ (Norwegian:  Norge (Bokmål) or  Noreg (Nynorsk)), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the subantarctic Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres (148,747 sq mi) and a population of about 5 million. It is the second least densely populated country in Europe. The majority of the country shares a border to the east with Sweden; its northernmost region is bordered by Finland to the south and Russia to the east; in its south Norway borders the Skagerrak Strait across from Denmark. The capital city of Norway is Oslo. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is home to its famous fjords.
  
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  Poland
  Poland ⁱ/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.
  
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  Portugal
  Portugal ⁱ/ˈpɔrtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, IPA: [puɾtuˈɣaɫ]), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa) is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula . Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are part of Portugal. The country is named after its second largest city, Porto, whose Latin name was Portus Cale.
  The land within the borders of the current Portuguese Republic has been continuously settled since prehistoric times: occupied by Celts like the Gallaeci and the Lusitanians, integrated into the Roman Republic and later settled by Germanic peoples such as the Suebi, Swabians, Vandals and the Visigoths. In the 8th century most of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Moorish invaders professing Islam, which were later expelled by the Knights Templar under the Order of Christ. During the Christian Reconquista, Portugal established itself as an independent kingdom from León in 1139, claiming to be the oldest European nation state.
  
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  Republic of Ireland
  Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ or /ˈɑrlənd/; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. Its capital is Dublin. The population of the state was 4.59 million in 2011. It is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected president serving as head of state. In the 1937 constitution, the name of the state is given as simply "Ireland". The Constitution of Ireland (Article 4) and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 provides that the "Republic of Ireland" (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the state".
  Ireland is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. A developed country with the seventh highest Human Development Index, Ireland is also highly ranked for press freedom, economic freedom and democracy and political freedom.
  The modern Irish state was established in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Empire, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty which brought an end to the Irish War of Independence. The partition of Ireland had already been provided for in previous British legislation in 1921 in response to opposition to Irish Home Rule or independence by Unionists, who formed a majority in the north-eastern part of the country. Six of the nine counties in the northern province of Ulster were established under that legislation as Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, with which the Irish state shares its only land border. The state is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south east, and the Irish Sea to the east.
  
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  Romania
  Romania (ⁱ/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
  At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
  The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
  
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  Russia
  Russia ⁱ/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
  
  wn.com/Russia
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  Serbia
  Serbia ⁱ/ˈsɜrbiə/, officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија / Republika Srbija, pronounced [rɛpǔblika sř̩bija]), is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans. Serbia borders Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; the Republic of Macedonia to the south; and Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the west; additionally, it borders Albania through Kosovo, whose status as part of Serbia is disputed. Serbia covers an area of 88,361 km² and has a population of just over 7.1 million, while the capital and largest city is Belgrade.
  The arrival of the Serbs to the Balkans in the 7th century, established several states, eventually forming the Serbian Empire in the 14th century. By the 16th century, Serbia was conquered and occupied by the Ottoman Empire, at times interrupted by the Habsburgs. In the early 19th century the Serbian revolution re-established the country as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory and pioneered the abolition of feudalism in the Balkans. The former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina united with Serbia in 1918. Following World War I, Serbia formed Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples which existed in several forms up until 2006, when the National Assembly of Serbia declared independence and the legal succession to the former State Union. In February 2008 the parliament of UNMIK-governed Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, declared independence, with mixed responses from international governments.
  
  wn.com/Serbia
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  South Africa
  Coordinates: 30°S 25°E / 30°S 25°E / -30; 25
  South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It is divided into nine provinces and has 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline. To the north of the country lie the neighbouring territories of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an enclave surrounded by South African territory.
  South Africa is multi-ethnic and has diverse cultures and languages. Eleven official languages are recognised in the constitution. Two of these languages are of European origin: South African English and Afrikaans, a language which originated mainly from Dutch that is spoken by the majority of white and Coloured South Africans. Though English is commonly used in public and commercial life, it is only the fifth most-spoken home language. All ethnic and language groups have political representation in the country's constitutional democracy comprising a parliamentary republic; unlike most parliamentary republics, the positions of head of state and head of government are merged in a parliament-dependent President.
  
  wn.com/South_Africa
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  Spain
  Spain (ⁱ/ˈspeɪn/ SPAYN; Spanish: España, pronounced: [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state and a member of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; to the north and north east by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal.
  Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. Furthermore, the town of Llívia is a Spanish exclave situated inside French territory. With an area of 504,030 square kilometres (194,610 sq mi), it is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France, and the fourth largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and France.
  
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  Sweden
  Sweden (ⁱ/ˈswiːdən/ SWEE-dən; Swedish: Sverige [ˈsværjɛ] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish:  Konungariket Sverige (help·info)), is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland, and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Øresund.
  At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the third largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of about 9.4 million. Sweden has a low population density of 21 inhabitants per square kilometre (54 /sq mi) with the population mostly concentrated to the southern half of the country. About 85% of the population live in urban areas. Sweden's capital city is Stockholm, which is also the largest city.
  Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, the country expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire. The empire grew to be one of the great powers of Europe in the 17th and early 18th century. Most of the conquered territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries. The eastern half of Sweden, present-day Finland, was lost to Russia in 1809. The last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Sweden by military means forced Norway into a personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, practicing "non-participation in military alliances during peacetime and neutrality during wartime". However, Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1 January 1995 and is a member of the OECD.
  
  wn.com/Sweden
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  Switzerland
  Switzerland (German: die Schweiz[ˈʃvaɪts]; French: Suisse [sɥis(ə)]; Italian: Svizzera [ˈzvit͡sːɛra]; Romansh: Svizra [ˈʒviːtsrɐ] or [ˈʒviːtsʁːɐ]), in its full name the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western Europe, where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
  Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found. Among them are the two global cities and economic centres of Zurich and Geneva.
  The Swiss Confederation has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. It pursues, however, an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. Switzerland is also the birthplace of the Red Cross and home to a large number of international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association and is part of the Schengen Area – although it is notably not a member of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area.
  
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  Transnistria
  Transnistria (also called "Trans-Dniestr" or "Transdniestria") is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine. Since its declaration of independence in 1990, and especially after the War of Transnistria in 1992, it is governed as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR, also known as "Pridnestrovie"), a state with limited recognition which claims the territory to the east of the river Dniester, the city of Bender and its surrounding localities located on the west bank. The Republic of Moldova does not recognize the secession and considers the territories controlled by the PMR to be part of Moldova's autonomous region of Stînga Nistrului ("Left Bank of the Dniester").
  
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  Turkey
  Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
  Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
  
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  UK
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/UK
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  Ukraine
  Ukraine (ⁱ/juːˈkreɪn/ yew-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]; Russian: Украина; Crimean Tatar: Ukraina) is a country in Central and Eastern Europe. Ukraine borders the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast, respectively. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after the Russian Federation.
  According to a popular and well established theory, the medieval state of Kievan Rus was established by the Varangians in the 9th century as the first historically recorded East Slavic state which emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages until it disintegrated in the 12th century. By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Ukraine was divided between a number of regional powers and, by the 19th century, the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire with the rest under Austro-Hungarian control. A chaotic period of incessant warfare ensued, with several internationally recognized attempts at independence from 1917 to 1921, following World War I and the Russian Civil War. Ukraine emerged from its own civil war, and on December 30, 1922 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian SSR's territory was enlarged westward during the civil war shortly before, and after World War II, and further south in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations.
  
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  Ukrainian SSR
  The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian: Українська Радянська Соціалістична Республіка, Українська РСР; Russian: Украинская Советская Социалистическая Республика, Украинская ССР; See Name section) or Soviet Ukraine was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state (Article 68, Constitution of Ukraine 1978) and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 (the Ukrainian SSR was formally established in 1919) to the breakup in 1991.
  Although the Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations formed after the end of World War II, it practically had no say in its foreign affairs, which was tightly controlled by Moscow authorities. Upon the Soviet Union's dissolution and perestroika, the Ukrainian SSR was transformed into the modern nation-state of Ukraine, although Ukraine's new constitution was only ratified on June 28, 1996.
  Throughout its 72-year history, the republic's borders changed many times, with a significant portion of what is now Western Ukraine being annexed by Soviet forces in 1939 and the addition of formerly Russian Crimea in 1954. From the start, the eastern city of Kharkiv served as the republic's capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was subsequently moved to the city of Kiev, which remained the capital of newly-independent Ukraine.
  
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  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
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  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
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  Wallachia
  Wallachia or Walachia (Romanian: Țara Românească pronounced [ˈt͡sara romɨˈne̯askə] or Valahia pronounced [vaˈlahi.a]; archaic: Țeara Rumânească, Cyrillic: Цѣра Румѫнѣскъ / Цѣра Рȣмѫнѣскъ) is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians. Wallachia is sometimes referred to as Muntenia (Greater Wallachia), through identification with the larger of its two traditional sections; the smaller being Oltenia (Lesser Wallachia).
  Wallachia was founded as a principality in the early 14th century by Basarab I, after a rebellion against Charles I of Hungary, although the first mention of the territory of Wallachia west of the river Olt dates to a charter given to the voievod Seneslau in 1246 by Béla IV of Hungary. In 1415, Wallachia accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire; this lasted until the 19th century, albeit with brief periods of Russian occupation between 1768 and 1854. In 1859, Wallachia united with Moldavia (as United Principalities), to form the basis of the modern state of Romania, with Transylvania joining 59 years later (1918) to form the new Kingdom of Romania which was first established 1881.
  
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  Abkhaz people
  The Abkhaz or Abkhazians (Abkhaz: Аҧсуа, Apswa) are a Caucasian ethnic group, mainly living in Abkhazia, a disputed region on the Black Sea coast. A large Abkhaz diaspora population resides in Turkey, the origins of which lie in the emigration from the Caucasus in the late 19th century known as muhajirism. Many Abkhaz also live in other parts of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Russia and Ukraine.
  The Abkhaz language belongs to the Northwest Caucasian languages group. Classical sources speak of several tribes dwelling in the region, but their exact identity and location remains controversial. The Abasgoi and Apsilai of the Graeco-Roman authors are considered as the predecessors of modern-day Abkhaz.
  The integration of various smaller ethnic subgroups into the modern-day Abkhaz people was basically completed by the late 10th century, but some of these groups were deprived of their homeland when the Russian conquest of northwestern Caucasus forced them to become muhajirun and emigrate to the Ottoman possessions.
  
  wn.com/Abkhaz_people
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  Albanians
  Albanians (Albanian: Shqiptarët) are an ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. In the context of an ethnicity, they are commonly referred to as ethnic Albanians to distinguish the group from the use of the term Albanians as referring to citizens of Albania. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo. The Albanian diaspora also exists in a number of other countries.
  While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does hark back to Classical Antiquity, the name was lost within the Albanian language, the Albanian endonym being shqiptar, from the term for the Albanian language, shqip, a derivation of the verb shqiptoj "to utilize a correct Albanian pronunciation ". This theory pertains to Hahn and it holds that perhaps the word is ultimately a loan from Latin excipio. Thus, the Albanian endonym, like Slav and others, is in origin a term for "those who speak [intelligibly, the same language]". However another plausible theory has been advanced by Maximilian Lambertz to explain the endonym as derived from the Albanian noun shqype or shqiponjë (eagle), which, according to Albanian folk etymology, denoted a bird totem dating from the times of Skanderbeg, as displayed on the Albanian flag.
  
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  Albanians of Romania
  The Albanians (Shqiptarë in Albanian, Albanezi in Romanian) are an ethnic minority in Romania. As an officially recognized ethnic minority, Albanians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies to the League of Albanians of Romania (Liga Albanezilor din România).
  In the 2002 census 520 Romanian citizens indicated their ethnicity was Albanian, and 484 stated that their native language was Albanian. The actual number of the Albanian population in Romania is unofficially estimated at around 10,000 persons. Most members of the community live in Bucharest, while the rest mainly live in larger urban centers such as Timişoara, Iaşi, Constanţa and Cluj-Napoca.
  Most families are Orthodox and trace their origins to the area around Korçë. Many other Romanian Albanians adhere to Islam — according to a 1999 article by Romanian scholar George Grigore, various studies show that about 3,000 members of the Romanian Muslim community may in fact be Albanian. That section of the Albanian community is traditionally integrated into the Turk or Tatar groups, which makes its numbers hard to assess.
  
  wn.com/Albanians_of_Romania
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  Alexander John Cuza
  Alexandru Ioan Cuza (pronounced [alekˈsandru iˈo̯an ˈkuza] ( listen), or Alexandru Ioan I, also anglicised as Alexander John Cuza; 20 March 1820 – 15 May 1873) was Prince of Moldavia, Prince of Wallachia, and later Domnitor (ruler) of the Romanian Principalities. He was a prominent figure of the Revolution of 1848 in Moldavia. He initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures.
  Born in Bârlad, Cuza belonged to the traditional boyar class in Moldavia, being the son of Ispravnic Ioan Cuza (who was also a landowner in Fălciu County) and his wife Sultana (or Soltana), a member of the Cozadini family of Phanariote origins. Alexander received an urbane European education, becoming an officer in the Moldavian Army (rising to the rank of colonel). He married Elena Rosetti in 1844.
  In 1848, known as the year of European revolutions, Moldavia and Wallachia fell into revolt. The Moldavian unrest was quickly suppressed, but in Wallachia the revolutionaries took power and governed during the summer (see 1848 Wallachian revolution). Young Cuza played a prominent enough part to establish his liberal credentials during the Moldavian episode and to be shipped to Vienna as a prisoner, where he soon made his escape with British support.
  
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  Altay people
  The Altay or Altai are a conglomerative ethnic group of Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic peoples living in the Siberian Altai Republic and Altai Krai and surrounding areas of Tuva and Mongolia and Manchuria. For alternative ethnonyms see also Teleut, Tele, Telengit, Mountain Kalmuck, White Kalmuck, Black Tatar, Oirat/Oirot.
  The Uriankhai people were annexed by the Oirat Zunghars in the 16th century. After the fall of the Zunghar Khanate in the 18th century, the Uriankhai were subjugated by the Qing Dynasty; and their one part, Altayans, was called by the Qing court as Altan Nuur Uriyangkhai. They have had skills in metalworking dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. The Altay came into contact with Russians in the 18th century. In the tsarist period, the Altay were known as oirot or oyrot (this name means oirat and would later be carried on for the Oyrot Autonomous Oblast). The Altay report that many of them became addicted to the Russians' vodka, which they called "fire water".
  The Altay were originally nomadic, with a lifestyle based on hunting / trapping and pastoralism (mainly cattle, sheep, goats), but many of them settled as a result of Russian influence. In regard to religion, some of the Altay remain Tengriists or Shamanists, while others (in a trend beginning in the mid-19th century) have converted to the Orthodox. (The Altai mission took shape under Saint Makarii Glukharev, Apostle to the Altai.) In 1904, a religious movement called Ak Jang or Burkhanism arose, perhaps in response to Russian colonization.
  
  wn.com/Altay_people
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  Angela Gheorghiu
  Angela Gheorghiu (Romanian pronunciation: [anˈd͡ʒela ɡe̯orˈɡi.u] ( listen); born Angela Burlacu September 7, 1965) is a Romanian soprano. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has performed in the leading roles of several operas at New York's Metropolitan Opera, London's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States. She has a substantial discography primarily with EMI Classics and Decca.
  Gheorghiu was born in 1965 in Adjud, Romania. Along with her sister Elena Dan, she sang opera music from an early age. At age 14, Gheorghiu began to study singing at the National University of Music Bucharest, primarily under Mia Barbu. Her graduation in 1990 coincided with the overthrow and execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu the previous year, enabling her to seek an international career immediately. Her professional opera debut took place at the Cluj-Napoca Romanian National Opera as Mimì in La bohème in 1990, the same year she won the Belvedere International Competition.
  
  wn.com/Angela_Gheorghiu
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  Armenians
  Armenian people or Armenians (Armenian: հայեր, Armenian pronunciation: [hɑˈjɛɾ]) are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.
  The largest concentration is in Armenia, having a nearly homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian. Because of wide-ranging and long-lasting diaspora, an estimated total of 3 million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry live outside of Armenia. As a result of the Armenian Genocide, a large number of survivors fled to many countries throughout the world, most notably the Russian Empire, the Near East, the United States, France, Iran, Georgia and other parts of Europe (see Armenian diaspora).
  Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus's death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew In the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the world's oldest national church.
  
  wn.com/Armenians
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  Armenians of Romania
  Armenians have been present in what is now Romania and Moldova for over a millennium, and have been an important presence as traders since the 14th century. Numbering only in the thousands in modern times, they were culturally suppressed in the Communist era, but have undergone a cultural revival since the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
  The earliest traces of Armenians in what was later Moldavia are dated by 967 (recorded presence in Cetatea Albă). Early Armenian Diasporas stemmed in the fall of the Bagratuni rule and other disasters, including the Mongol invasion. In 1572-1574, Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit was Hospodar (Prince) of Moldavia, grandson of Stephen the Great, son of Bogdan III and his Armenian concubine Serpega.
  Armenian expatriates were awarded tax exemptions at different times in the Danubian Principalities' history. Encouraged to settle as early as the 14th century, they became a familiar presence in towns, usually as the main entrepreneurs of the community - for this, in early modern Botoşani and several other places, Armenians as a guild were awarded political representation and degrees of self rule. A considerable number of noble families in the Principalities were of Armenian descent.
  
  wn.com/Armenians_of_Romania
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  Assyrian people
  The Assyrian people, most commonly known as Assyrians and other later names, such as: Chaldeans, Syrians, Syriacs (see names of Syriac Christians), are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. They are Eastern Aramaic speaking Semites who trace their ancestry back to the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation that emerged in Mesopotamia circa 4000- 3500 BC, and in particular to the northern region of the Akkadian lands, which would become known as Assyria by the 24th Century BC. The Assyrian nation existed as an independent state, and often a powerful empire, from the 24th century BC until the end of the 7th century BC.
  Today that ancient territory is part of several nations; Assyria remained a Geo-political entity after its fall, and was ruled as an occupied province under the rule of various empires from the late 7th century BC until the mid 7th century AD when it was dissolved, and the Assyrian people have gradually become a minority in their homelands since that time. They are indigenous to, and have traditionally lived all over what is now Iraq, north east Syria, north west Iran, and Southeastern Turkey. They are predominantly Christian.
  
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  Aurel Vlaicu
  Aurel Vlaicu (Romanian pronunciation: [a.uˈrel ˈvlajku] ( listen); November 19, 1882 – September 13, 1913) was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot.
  Aurel Vlaicu was born in Binţinţi (now renamed Aurel Vlaicu), Geoagiu, Transylvania. He attended Calvinist High School in Orăştie (renamed "Liceul Aurel Vlaicu" in his honour in 1919) and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902. He furthered his studies at Technical University of Budapest and Technische Hochschule München in Germany, earning his engineer's diploma in 1907.
  After working at Opel car factory in Rüsselsheim, he returned to Binţinţi and built a glider he flew in the summer of 1909. Later that year, he moved to Bucharest, in the Kingdom of Romania, where he began the construction of Vlaicu Nr. I airplane; it flew for the first time on June 17, 1910 over Cotroceni field.
  With his Vlaicu Nr. II model, built in 1911, Aurel Vlaicu won several prizes summing 7,500 Austro-Hungarian krone (for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying around a pole) in 1912 at Aspern Air Show near Vienna, where he competed against 42 other aviators of the day, including Roland Garros.The press of that time considered Aurel Vlaicu the second pilot of the contest after the famous French aviator Roland Gaross.
  
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  Austria
  Austria (ⁱ/ˈɒstriə/ or /ˈɔːstriə/; German: Österreich [ˈøːstɐˌʁaɪç] ( listen)), officially the Republic of Austria (German:  Republik Österreich (help·info)), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.47 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,855 square kilometres (32,377 sq mi) and has a temperate and alpine climate. Austria's terrain is highly mountainous due to the presence of the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Austro-Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and German in its standard form is the country's official language. Other local official languages are Burgenland Croatian, Hungarian and Slovene.
  The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria became one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon I as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. In 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary.
  
  wn.com/Austria
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  Avram Iancu
  Avram Iancu (Romanian pronunciation: [aˈvram ˈjaŋku]; 1824 – September 10, 1872) was a Transylvanian Romanian lawyer who played an important role in the local chapter of the Austrian Empire Revolutions of 1848–1849. He was especially active in the Ţara Moţilor region and the Apuseni Mountains. The rallying of peasants around him, as well as the allegiance he paid to the Habsburgs got him the moniker Crăişorul Munţilor ("The Little Prince of the Mountains").
  Avram Iancu was born in Vidra de Sus (currently Avram Iancu, Alba County), Transylvania, then part of the Austrian Empire into a family of peasants that had been emancipated from serfdom. He attended school, studying humanities in the Piarist College of Cluj, and then graduating from law school. He became a law clerk in Târgu Mureş where he learned about the events of March 1848 of Vienna and Pest. His attitude at the time showed the nature of the conflict that was to engulf Transylvania: while Iancu welcomed the transition, he was indignant at the fact that Hungarian revolutionaries (many of whom were landowners) refused to debate the abolition of serfdom (which, at the time, covered the larger part of the Romanian population in Transylvania).
  
  wn.com/Avram_Iancu
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  Banat Bulgarians
  The Banat Bulgarians (Banat Bulgarian: palćene or banátsći balgare; common Bulgarian: банатски българи, banatski balgari) are a distinct Bulgarian minority group which settled in the 18th century in the region of the Banat, which was then ruled by the Habsburgs and after World War I was divided between Romania, Serbia, and Hungary. Unlike most other Bulgarians, they are Roman Catholic by confession and stem from groups of Paulicians and Roman Catholics from modern northern and northwestern Bulgaria.
  Banat Bulgarians speak a distinctive codified form of the Eastern Bulgarian vernacular with much lexical influence from the other languages of the Banat. Although strongly acculturated to the Central European region, they have preserved their Bulgarian identity. Since the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, many have returned to Bulgaria and founded separate villages there.
  The official Romanian census states that 6,468 people of Bulgarian origin inhabit the Romanian part of the Banat. The Serbian census of 2002 recognized 1,658 Bulgarians in Vojvodina, the autonomous province that covers the Serbian part of the Banat. Bulgarian researchers estimate that 12,000 Banat Bulgarians live in Romania and 3,000 in Serbia.
  
  wn.com/Banat_Bulgarians
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  Belarusians
  Belarusians (Belarusian: беларусы, biełarusy, Russian: белорусы, byelorusy) are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. There are over 8 million people who associate themselves with the Belarusian nationality today.
  Belarusians also form minorities in neighboring Poland (especially in the Podlaskie Voivodeship), Russia and Lithuania. At the beginning of 20th century Belarusians constituted a majority in the regions around Smolensk.^{[citation needed]}
  Noticeable numbers have emigrated to the United States, Brazil and Canada in the early 20th century. During Soviet times, many Belarusians were deported or migrated to various regions of the USSR, including Siberia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
  Since the breakup of the USSR several hundred thousand have emigrated to the European Union, United States, Canada and Russia.
  The most spoken language in Belarus is Russian, principally spoken by 72% of the population, while the other official language, Belarusian, is only used by 11.9% in every day life. Statistical data shows that Belarusian is fluently communicated, read and written by 29.4%, while 52.5% of the population can communicate and read in Belarusian. Belarusian is a language of the Eastern Slavic group.
  
  wn.com/Belarusians
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  Bram Stoker
  Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.
  Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876), from Dublin, and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who came from Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Stoker was the third of seven children. Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there.
  Stoker was bed-ridden until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.
  
  wn.com/Bram_Stoker
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  Bulgars
  The Bulgars (also Bolgars, Bulghars, Huno-Bulgars) were a semi-nomadic people who flourished in the Pontic Steppe and the Volga basin in the 7th century. Ethnically, the Bulgars comprised Turkic and probably Scytho-Sarmatian elements. They had enveloped also other ethnic groups by their migration westwards across the Eurasian steppe.
  The Bulgars emerged after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire in the 5th century. Initially, they conquered the Pontic-Caspian steppe and around the lower Volga basin, by the 7th century dispersing further towards Bessarabia. Originating as nomadic equestrians of Central Asia, they became sedentary during the 7th century, establishing the polities (khanates) of Old Great Bulgaria in the Pontic steppe and Volga Bulgaria on the middle Volga.
  Old Great Bulgaria was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in the 8th century, but in the 680s, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire, which was however Slavicized by the 10th century. Volga Bulgaria preserved their national identity well into the 13th century by repelling the first Mongol attacks in 1223. But they were eventually subdued, and their capital Bolghar city became one of major cities of the Mongol Golden Horde. Later, Volga Bulgars mixed with Tatars of Kazan.
  
  wn.com/Bulgars
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  Carol I of Romania
  Carol I (20 April 1839 – 27 September (O.S.) / 10 October (N.S.) 1914), born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of the Romanian United Principalities on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War, he was proclaimed King of Romania on 26 March [O.S. 14 March] 1881. He was the first ruler of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen dynasty, which ruled the country until the proclamation of a republic in 1947.
  During his reign, he personally led Romanian troops during the Russo-Turkish War and assumed command of the Russo/Romanian army during the siege of Plevna. The country achieved full independence from the Ottoman Empire (Treaty of Berlin, 1878) and acquired the Cadrilater from Bulgaria in 1913. Domestic political life, still dominated by the country's wealthy landowning families organised around the rival Liberal and Conservative parties, was punctuated by two widespread peasant uprisings, in Wallachia (the southern half of the country) in April 1888 and in Moldavia (the northern half) in March 1907.
  
  wn.com/Carol_I_of_Romania
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  Carpi (Dacian tribe)
  The Carpi or Carpiani were an ancient people that resided, between not later than c. AD 140 and until at least AD 318, in the eastern region of modern Moldavia.
  The ethnic affiliation of the Carpi remains disputed, as there is no direct evidence in the surviving ancient literary sources. A strong body of modern scholarly opinion considers that the Carpi were a tribe of the Dacian nation. Other scholars have linked the Carpi to a variety of ethnic groups, including Sarmatians, Thracians, Germans, and Celts.
  About a century after their earliest mention by Ptolemy, during which time their relations with Rome appear to have been peaceful, the Carpi emerged in c. 238 as among Rome's most persistent enemies. In the period AD 250-270, the Carpi were an important component of a loose coalition of transdanubian barbarian tribes that included also Germanic and Sarmatian elements. These were responsible for a series of large and devastating invasions of the Balkan regions of the empire which nearly caused its disintegration.
  
  wn.com/Carpi_(Dacian_tribe)
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  Celts
  The Celts (usually pronounced  /ˈkɛlts/ but sometimes /ˈsɛlts/, see pronunciation of Celtic) or Kelts were an ethno-linguistic group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had a similar culture.
  The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered as Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe from the last quarter of the second millennium BC. Their fully Celtic descendants in central Europe were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (c. 800-450 BC) named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. By the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture had expanded over a wide range of regions, whether by diffusion or migration: to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls) and following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).
  
  wn.com/Celts
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  Chukchi people
  The Chukchi, or Chukchee (Russian: чукчи (plural), чукча (singular)) are an indigenous people inhabiting the Chukchi Peninsula and the shores of the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea region of the Arctic Ocean within the Russian Federation. They speak the Chukchi language. The Chukchi originated from the people living around the Okhotsk Sea.
  The majority of Chukchi reside within Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, but some also reside in the neighboring Sakha Republic to the west, Magadan Oblast to the southwest, and Koryak Autonomous Okrug to the south. Some Chukchi also reside in other parts of Russia, as well as in Europe and North America. The total number of Chukchi in the world slightly exceeds 15,000.
  The Chukchi are traditionally divided into the Maritime Chukchi, who had settled homes on the coast and lived primarily from sea mammal hunting, and the Reindeer Chukchi, who nomadised in the inland tundra region with their herds of reindeer. The Russian name "Chukchi" is derived from the Chukchi word Chauchu ("rich in reindeer"), which was used by the 'Reindeer Chukchi' to distinguish themselves from the 'Maritime Chukchi,' called Anqallyt ("the sea people"). The indigenous name for a member of the Chukchi ethnic group as a whole is Luoravetlan (literally 'true person').
  
  wn.com/Chukchi_people
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  Chuvash people
  The Chuvash people (Chuvash: Чăвашсем; Russian: Чуваши) are a Turkic ethnic group, native to an area stretching from the Volga Region to Siberia. Most of them live in Republic of Chuvashia and surrounding areas, although Chuvash communities may be found throughout all Russia.
  There is no universally accepted etymology of the word Chuvash. However, there are two main theories that try to explain it.
  According to one theory, "Chuvash" is a Shaz-Turkic adaptation of Lir-Turkic Suvar, an ethnonym of people that are widely considered to be the ancestors of modern Chuvashes. Compare Lir-Turkic Chuvash: huran to Shaz-Turkic Tatar: qazan (cauldron).
  Another theory suggests that the word "Chuvash" may be derived from Common Turkic jăvaš ("friendly", "peaceful") as opposed to şarmăs ("warlike").
  There are rival schools of thought on the origin of Chuvash people. One is that they originated from a mixing between the Turkic Suar and Sabir tribes of Volga Bulgaria with local Mari tribes and also the Finno-Ugrian population of the Volga Basin. Another is that the Chuvash are a remainder of the pre-Volga Bulgar population of the Volga region, merged with Scythians, Volga Bulgars and Mari.
  
  wn.com/Chuvash_people
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  Constantin Brâncuşi
  Constantin Brâncuși (Romanian pronunciation: [konstanˈtin brɨnˈkuʃʲ]; surname sometimes spelled Brâncuș; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His abstract style emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Famous Brâncuși works include the Sleeping Muse (1908), The Kiss (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space (1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), popularly known as The Endless Column (1938). Considered the pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.
  Brâncuși grew up in the village of Hobiţa Romania, Gorj, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his later works.
  
  wn.com/Constantin_Brâncuşi
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  Count Dracula
  Count Dracula is the title character and the primary antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. He is described as an archetypal vampire and some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler. The character appears frequently in all manner of popular culture, from films to animated media to breakfast cereals.
  In Bram Stoker's novel, Count Dracula's characteristics, powers, abilities and weaknesses are narrated in a piecemeal way by multiple narrators, from different perspectives. The most informative of these narrators are Jonathan Harker, John Seward, and Mina Harker.
  Count Dracula (a lord of the night)is a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer, and Transylvanian nobleman, who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass. Unlike the vampires of Eastern European folklore, which are portrayed as repulsive, corpse-like creatures, Dracula exudes a veneer of aristocratic charm. In his conversations with Jonathan Harker, he reveals himself as deeply proud of his boyar heritage and nostalgic for the past times, which he admits have become only a memory of heroism, honor and valor in modern times.
  
  wn.com/Count_Dracula
• Cristi Puiu
  Cristi Puiu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈkristi ˈpuju]; born 3 April 1967) is a Romanian film director and screenwriter.
  Puiu's first interest in art was painting and in 1992, he was admitted as a student at the Painting Department of Ecole Superieure d'Arts Visuels in Geneva. After the first year he switched to film studies at the same school and graduated in 1996. After returning to Romania, Cristi Puiu started directing and writing his first films, generally enjoying critical success.
  Cristi Puiu's debut as a director was in 2001 with the low budget road movie Stuff and Dough (Marfa şi Banii) starring Alexandru Papadopol and Dragoş Bucur. The film received several awards in international film festivals and competed in the Quinzaines des Realisateurs section of the Cannes Film Festival. Some critics say that this is the movie that started the Romanian New Wave in cinema. He continued with a short film, Cigarettes and Coffee (Un cartuş de Kent şi un pachet de cafea) (2004), which was awarded the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival.
  
  wn.com/Cristi_Puiu
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  Cristian Mungiu
  Cristian Mungiu (Romanian pronunciation: [kristiˈan munˈd͡ʒi.u]; b. 1968, Iaşi) is a Romanian filmmaker, winner of the Palme d'Or in 2007.
  After studying English literature at the University of Iaşi, he worked for a few years as a teacher and as a journalist. After that, he enrolled at the University of Film in Bucharest to study film directing. After graduating in 1998, Mungiu made several short films. In 2002, he debuted with his first feature film, Occident. Occident enjoyed critical success, winning prizes in several film festivals and being featured in Director’s Fortnight at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
  In 2007 Mungiu wrote and directed his second feature, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The film was received enthusiastically, attracting critical praise and being selected in the official competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it eventually won the coveted Palme d'Or for feature film, marking the first time that prize was awarded to a Romanian filmmaker.
  Mungiu has said that early Miloš Forman and Robert Altman are important filmmakers who influenced him. He also respects the realism of Bicycle Thieves, among other famous realistic films. Mungiu is the brother of political analyst Alina Mungiu-Pippidi.
  
  wn.com/Cristian_Mungiu
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  Croats of Romania
  The Croats (Croatian: Hrvati, Romanian: croaţi) are an ethnic minority in Romania, numbering 6,786 people according to the 2002 census. Croats mainly live in the southwest of the country, particularly in Caraş-Severin County. Declared Croatians form a majority in two Romanian localities: the communes of Caraşova and Lupac. In these communes, Croatian is an officially recognised language, with signage, education and access to justice and public administration being provided in Croatian alongside Romanian.
  Most Croats in Romania are Krashovani, even though only around 200 people declared themselves Krashovani in the census, the rest declaring Croatian ethnicity. Due to some political, economic, social and cultural factors, most of them started identifying themselves with Croats, and some still continued to call themselves Krašovani. Today, many Krashovani chose the Croatian ethnicity, partly due to the attention given to them by the Croatian state (which also awards them the Croatian citizenship).
  
  wn.com/Croats_of_Romania
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  Czechs of Romania
  The Czechs (Czech: Češi, Pémové, Romanian: Cehi, Pemi, Hungarian: Bánáti csehek) are an ethnic minority in Romania, numbering 3,938 people according to the 2002 census. The majority of Romanian Czechs live in the south-west of the country, with around 60% of them living in Caraş-Severin County, where they make up 0.7% of the population.
  As an officially recognised ethnic minority, Czechs, together with Slovaks, have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies.
  There are six villages with a Czech majority. Five are in Caraş-Severin County: Bigăr, Berzasca Commune; Gârnic, Gârnic Commune; Ravensca, Şopotu Nou Commune; Sfânta Elena, Coronini Commune; and Şumiţa, Lăpuşnicel Commune. One is in Mehedinţi County: Eibenthal, Dubova Commune.
  
  wn.com/Czechs_of_Romania
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  Dacians
  The Dacians (^{[pronunciation?]}; Latin: Daci, Ancient Greek: Δάκοι Dakoi, Δάοι Daoi, Δάκες "Dakes"; Medieval Greek Δάκαι Dákai^{[citation needed]}) were an Indo-European people, very close or part of the Thracians.^{[citation needed]} Dacians were the ancient inhabitants of Dacia (located in the area in and around the Carpathian Mountains and east of there to the Black Sea). This area includes the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Sarmatia (mostly in eastern Ukraine), Moesia (Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria), Slovakia and Poland. They spoke the Dacian language, believed to have been closely related to Thracian, but were culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC.
  
  wn.com/Dacians
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  Dolgans
  Dolgans (Russian: долганы; self-designation: долган, тыа-кихи, саха) are a Turkic-speaking people, who mostly inhabit Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. The 2002 Census counted 7,261 Dolgans. This number includes 5,517 in former Taymyr Autonomous Okrug. There are 26 Dolgans in Ukraine, four of whom speak Dolgan (2001 Ukrainian Census).
  Dolgans speak Dolgan language. Some believe that it is a dialect of Yakut language. Dolgan identity emerged in the 19th – early 20th century, when some of the Evenks, Yakuts, Enets, and the so-called Tundra peasants migrated to the region away from the Lena River and Olenyok River. Originally, the Dolgans were nomadic reindeer breeders and hunters. They were eventually forced to settle and form kolkhozes during the Soviet times, engaging in reindeer breeding, hunting, fishing, dairy farming as well as market gardening.
  Most Dolgans are Orthodox Christians, belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church; old shamanistic beliefs, however, survive among them.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Dolgans
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  Emil Cioran
  Emile Cioran (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈmil t͡ʃjoˈran]; 8 April 1911 – 21 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist.
  Emile M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran (born Comaniciu), was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.
  After studying humanities at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Cioran, aged 17, started to study philosophy at the University of Bucharest. Upon his entrance into the University, he met Eugène Ionesco and Mircea Eliade, the three of them becoming lifelong friends. Future Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica and future Romanian thinker Petre Ţuţea, became his closest colleagues for they all had Tudor Vianu and Nae Ionescu as their professors. Cioran, Eliade, and Ţuţea became supporters of the ideas that their philosophy professor, Nae Ionescu, had become a fervent advocate of a tendency deemed Trăirism, which fused Existentialism with ideas common in various forms of Fascism.
  
  wn.com/Emil_Cioran
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  Emil Constantinescu
  Emil Constantinescu (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈmil konstantiˈnesku]; born November 19, 1939) was President of Romania from 1996 to 2000.
  He graduated from the law school of the University of Bucharest, and subsequently started a career as a geologist. Beginning in 1966, Constantinescu taught in the Geology Faculty of the University of Bucharest, where he also became Propaganda Secretary of the local organisation of the Romanian Communist Party.
  After the Romanian revolution in 1989, Constantinescu became a founding member and vice president of the Civic Alliance. He was the acting chairman of the Romanian Anti-Totalitarian Forum, the first associative structure of the opposition in Romania, which was transformed into a political and electoral alliance - the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR).
  In 1992 he was elected president of the University of Bucharest, and became CDR's candidate for president. He lost the election to the incumbent, Ion Iliescu, after a second round.
  He remains, however, heavily involved in politics through working for many NGOs, both in Romania and internationally. Emil Constantinescu is the current president of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Academy for Cultural Diplomacy, of the Association of Citizenship Education, of the Romanian Foundation for Democracy and also the founding president of the Institute for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Prevention (INCOR). He is also a member of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy advisory board.
  
  wn.com/Emil_Constantinescu
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  Eugène Ionesco
  Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian pronunciation: [e.uˈd͡ʒen i.oˈnesku]; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.
  Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, to a Romanian father of the Orthodox religion and a mother of French and Greek-Romanian heritage, whose religion was Protestant (the religion into which her father was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox mother had converted). Eugène himself was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox religion. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself.
  
  wn.com/Eugène_Ionesco
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  Gagauz people
  The Gagauz people are a Turkic group living mostly in southern Moldova (Gagauzia), southwestern Ukraine (Budjak), south-eastern Romania (Dobrogea), northeastern Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, America and Canada. Unlike most other Turkic speaking people, the Gagauz are predominantly Orthodox Christians. There is a related ethnic group also called Gagavuz (or Gajal) living in the European part of northwestern Turkey.
  Today Gagauz people outside Moldova live mainly in the Ukrainian regions of Odesa and Zaporizhia, as well as in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Romania, Brazil, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Turkey and the Russian region of Kabardino-Balkaria.
  There are also nearly 20,000 descendants of Gagauzes living in the Balkan country of Bulgaria, as well as upwards of 2,000 living in the United States of America, Brazil and Canada. Most of Gagauz immigrants in the USA are Evangelical Christians, who left their homeland in Moldova as refugees. They were persecuted by the communist government of the Soviet Union. Gagauz immigrants live in Sacramento, California; Salem, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; Tacoma, Washington; Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and in Massachusetts. The official figures in the latter group of countries cited in this article are much lower due to the loss of Gagauz identity during the last century.
  
  wn.com/Gagauz_people
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  George Enescu
  George Enescu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈd͡ʒe̯ord͡ʒe eˈnesku]; known in France as Georges Enesco; 19 August 1881, Liveni – 4 May 1955, Paris) was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.
  Enescu was born in the village of Liveni (later renamed "George Enescu" in his honor), Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical composition at the age of five. Shortly thereafter, his father presented him to the professor and composer Eduard Caudella. At the age of seven, he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied with Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr., Robert Fuchs, and Sigismund Bachrich. He graduated before his 13th birthday, earning the silver medal. In his Viennese concerts young Enescu played works by Brahms, Sarasate and Mendelssohn. In 1895 he went to Paris to continue his studies. He studied violin with Martin Pierre Marsick, harmony with André Gedalge, and composition with Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré.
  
  wn.com/George_Enescu
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  Georgians
  The Georgians (Georgian: ქართველები, kartvelebi) are Caucasian ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America.
  The majority of Georgians are Eastern Orthodox Christian and largely adhere to the national autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church, which originated in the 4th century. There are also Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities in Tbilisi and Adjara.
  The Georgian people went through a complex process of nation-formation and currently comprise a diverse set of geographic subgroups, each with its characteristic traditions, manners, dialect and, in the case of Mingrelians and Svans, language. The Georgian language, with its own alphabet and long written tradition going back to the 5th century, is the language of literacy and education of all Georgians living in Georgia as well as the official language of the country. Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan, together with Laz spoken by the related Laz people form the Kartvelian language family.
  
  wn.com/Georgians
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  Germanic languages
  The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic (also known as Common Germanic), which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic peoples moving south from northern Europe in the 2nd century BC, to settle in north-central Europe.
  The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German, with approximately 300–400 million and over 100 million native speakers respectively. They belong to the West Germanic family. The West Germanic group also includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers;. The North Germanic languages include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.
  
  wn.com/Germanic_languages
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  Germans of Romania
  The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 782,246 strong in interwar Romania in 1939, a number that had fallen to 36,884 by 2011 in modern Romania. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:
  See ethnic Germans for the complete list.
  See Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania for their official representation.
  After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under the authority of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called Selbstschutz.
  Those German colonists and Selbstschutz forces engaged in ethnic cleansing, massacring Jewish and Roma population near their settlements. In the German colony Shonfeld gypsies were burned on farms, and during the winter 1941/1942 German Selbstschutz units participated in shooting (together with Ukrainian militia and Romanian gendarmes) 18,000 Jews. In the camp of Bogdanovka tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades. Heinrich Himmler was most impressed by the Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz and ordered to these methods be copied in Ukraine.
  
  wn.com/Germans_of_Romania
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  Gheorghe Hagi
  Gheorghe Hagi (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈɡe̯orɡe ˈhad͡ʒi] ( listen); born 5 February 1965 in Săcele) is a former Romanian footballer. He was one of the best attacking midfielders in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s and is considered the greatest Romanian footballer of all time.Galatasaray fans called him 'Commandante' (The Commander) and the Romanians called him 'Regele' (The King).
  Nicknamed "The Maradona of the Carpathians", he is considered a hero in his homeland. He has won his country's "Player of the Year" award six times, and is regarded as one of the best football players of the 20th century.
  He played for the Romanian national team in three World Cups in 1990, 1994 and 1998, as well as in three European Football Championships in 1984, 1996 and 2000. He won a total of 125 caps for Romania, being ranked second after Dorinel Munteanu, and scored 35 goals, being ranked first.
  In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Romania by the Romanian Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years. Hagi is one of the few footballers to have played for both the Spanish rival clubs Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
  
  wn.com/Gheorghe_Hagi
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  Goths
  The Goths (Gothic: *Gut-þiuda, *Gutans; Old Norse: Gutar/Gotar; German: Goten; Latin: Gothi; Greek: Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe.
  The most important source is Jordanes' 6th-century, semi-fictional Getica which describes a migration from southern Scandza (Scandinavia), to Gothiscandza, believed to be the lower Vistula region in modern Pomerania, and from there to the coast of the Black Sea. The Pomeranian Wielbark culture and the Chernyakhov culture northeast of the lower Danube are archaeological traces of this migration. In the 3rd century, either through crossing the lower Danube, or travelling by sea, the Goths ravaged the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia as far as Cyprus, sacking Athens, Byzantium, Sparta. By the fourth century, the Goths conquered Dacia, and were divided into at least two distinct groups separated by the Dniester River, the Thervingi, led by the Balti dynasty, and the Greuthungi, led by the Amali dynasty. Centered around their capital at the Dnieper, the Goths ruled a vast area which at its peak under the Kings Ermanaric and Athanaric stretched from the Danube to the Volga river, and from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
  
  wn.com/Goths
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  Greek Cypriots
  Greek Cypriots (Greek: Ελληνοκύπριοι, Ellinokýprioi; Turkish: Kıbrıslı Rumlar) are the ethnic Greek population of Cyprus, forming the island's largest ethnolinguistic community at 77% of the population. Greek Cypriots are mostly members of the Church of Cyprus, an autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church within the wider communion of Orthodox Christianity. In regards to the 1960 Constitution of Cyprus, the term also includes Arabic-speaking Maronites, Armenians and Latin Rite Catholics ("Latins"), who were given the option of being included in one or other of the two constituent communities (Greek or Turkish) and voted to join the Greek Cypriot community.
  The Greek Cypriots trace their origins to the descendants of the Mycenaean Greeks who settled on the island during the second half of the second millennium BC. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia, and the largest island in the eastern Mediterranean. Mount Olympus (also known as Chionistra), the highest point of the Troodos Mountains (1952 m), is the highest point on the island. The island gradually became part of the Hellenic world as the settlers prospered over the next centuries. Alexander the Great liberated the island from the Persians in 333 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in 285 AD, Cypriots enjoyed home rule for almost nine centuries under the jurisdiction of the Byzantine Empire, something not seen again until 1960. Perhaps the most important event of the early Byzantine period was the local church's independence from the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East in 431. The bishop of the ancient capital Salamis (renamed Constantia by Emperor Constantius II) was constituted metropolitan by Emperor Zeno, with the title archbishop.
  
  wn.com/Greek_Cypriots
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  Greeks
  The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes (Greek: Ἕλληνες, [ˈelines]), are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and other regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world.
  Greek colonies and communities have been historically established in most corners of the Mediterranean, but Greeks have always been centered around the Aegean Sea, where the Greek language has been spoken since antiquity. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were uniformly distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, Pontus, Egypt, Cyprus and Constantinople; many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of the ancient Greek colonization.
  In the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey transferred and confined Christians from Turkey, except Constantinople (effectively ethnic Greeks) into the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. Other ethnic Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and in diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church.
  
  wn.com/Greeks
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  Greeks in Romania
  There has been a Greek presence in Romania for at least 27 centuries. At times, as during the Phanariote era, this presence has amounted to hegemony; at other times (including the present), the Greeks have simply been one among the many ethnic minorities in Romania.
  The Greek presence in what is now Romania dates back as far as the apoikiai (colonies) and emporia (trade stations) founded in and around Dobruja (see Colonies in antiquity and Pontic Greeks), beginning in the 7th century BC. Starting with the Milesian colony at Istros, the process reached its height after Tomis was founded in the 5th century BC. Although forever subject to the Dacian interference and easily disrupted by changes in the politics of neighbour tribal chieftains, the colonies prospered until being briefly submitted in various forms by King Burebista (late 1st century BC). Immediately after, and for the following centuries, they were stripped of their privileges by their new Roman masters, and followed the Empire into its crises.
  
  wn.com/Greeks_in_Romania
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  Henri Coandă
  Henri Marie Coandă (Romanian pronunciation: [ɑ̃ˈri maˈri ˈko̯andə]; 7 June 1886 – 25 November 1972) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer and builder of an experimental aircraft, the Coandă-1910 described by Coandă in the mid-1950s as the world's first jet, a controversial claim disputed by some and supported by others. He invented a great number of devices, designed a "flying saucer" and discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics.
  Born in Bucharest, Coandă was the second child of a large family. His father was General Constantin Coandă, a mathematics professor at the National School of Bridges and Roads. His mother, Aida Danet, was the daughter of French physician Gustave Danet, and was born in Brittany. He was later to recall that even as a child he was fascinated by the miracle of wind.
  Coandă attended Elementary school at the Petrache Poenaru Communal School in Bucharest, then (1896) Began his secondary school career at the Liceu Sf. Sava (Saint Sava National College). After three years (1899), his father, who desired a military career for him, had him transferred to the Military High School in Iaşi where he required four additional years to complete high-school. He graduated in 1903 with the rank of sergeant major, and he continued his studies at the School of Artillery, Military, and Naval Engineering in Bucharest. Sent with an artillery regiment to Germany (1904), he enrolled in the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin.
  
  wn.com/Henri_Coandă
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  Hungarians
  Hungarians, also known as Magyars (Hungarian: magyarok), are a nation and ethnic group who speak Hungarian and are primarily associated with Hungary. There are around 14-15 million Hungarians, of whom 10 million live in today's Hungary (as of 2011). About 2.2 million Hungarians live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the 1918-1920 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Treaty of Trianon, and are now parts of Hungary's seven neighbour countries, especially Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Significant groups of people with Hungarian ancestry live in various other parts of the world, most of them in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada and Australia. Unlike the Hungarians living on the former territory of pre-1918-20 Kingdom of Hungary, only some of the ethnic Hungarians in other areas preserve the Hungarian language and traditions. The Hungarians can be classified into several subgroups according to local linguistic and cultural characteristics; subgroups with distinct identities include the Székely, the Csángó, the Palóc, and the Jassic people.
  
  wn.com/Hungarians
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  Ilie Năstase
  Ilie Năstase (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈli.e nəsˈtase], born July 19, 1946, in Bucharest, Romania) is a Romanian former professional tennis player, one of the world's top players of the 1970s. Năstase was the World No. 1 tennis player between 1973 (August 23) and 1974 (June 2). He is one of the five players in history to win more than 100 ATP professional titles (57 singles and 45 in doubles). He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991. Năstase won seven Grand Slam titles: two in singles, three in men's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. He also won four Masters Grand Prix year end championship titles and seven Championship Series titles (1970–73) the precursors to the current Masters 1000. In 2005, Tennis magazine ranked him as the 28th-best player of the preceding forty years. He is the second male player to win a Grand Slam without dropping a set and the first one to achieve this feat at French Open (1973).
  At the beginning of his career in 1966 Năstase travelled around the world competing with his good friend Ion Ţiriac. Together, they represented Romania in the Davis Cup competition, being three times runners up: in 1969, 1971 and 1972.
  
  wn.com/Ilie_Năstase
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  Ion Iliescu
  Ion Iliescu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon iliˈesku]; born March 3, 1930) served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), whose honorary president he remains.
  He joined the Communist Party in 1953 and became a member of its Central Committee in 1965, however beginning with 1971 he was gradually marginalized by Nicolae Ceauşescu. He had a leading role in the Revolution of 1989, being elected as Romania's first post-communist president in 1990. After a new Constitution was approved by popular referendum, he served a further two terms as president, 1992 to 1996, and 2000 to 2004, separated by the presidency of Emil Constantinescu.
  Iliescu is widely recognized as a predominant figure in the first fifteen years of post-1989 Romanian Revolution politics. During his terms Romanian politics stabilized, and Romania joined NATO.
  Iliescu's father, Alexandru Iliescu, was a railroad worker with Communist views during the period in which the Romanian Communist Party was banned by the authorities. In 1931, he went to the Soviet Union to take part in the Communist Party Congress of Gorikovo, near Moscow. He remained in the USSR for the next four years and was arrested upon his return. He was imprisoned from June 1940 to August 1944 and died in August 1945. During his time in the Soviet Union, Alexandru Iliescu divorced and married Mariţa, a chambermaid.
  
  wn.com/Ion_Iliescu
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  Ion Ţiriac
  Ion Țiriac (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈjon t͡siˈrjak]; born 9 May 1939 in Braşov) is a Romanian businessman and former ice hockey and professional tennis player. He is also the current owner of the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open.
  Born in Transylvania, his look and the droopy mustache earned him the nickname 'Count Dracula'. Țiriac first appeared on the international sports scene as an ice hockey player on the Romanian national team at the 1964 Winter Olympics. Shortly after that he switched to tennis as his main sport. With fellow Romanian Ilie Năstase he won the men's doubles in the 1970 French Open and reached the Davis Cup finals several times in the 1970s.
  After his retirement, he served as coach and manager for players such as; Ilie Năstase, Guillermo Vilas, Mary Joe Fernández, Goran Ivanišević and Marat Safin.
  He managed Boris Becker from 1984 to 1993. In 1998 he became president of the Romanian National Olympic Committee.
  Țiriac ran major men's events in Germany, including the season-ending championships in Hanover. Although tennis is now a much smaller part of his portfolio and occupies only 5 percent of his time, he has taken particular pleasure and pride in making Madrid Tennis Open a combined men's and women's event with €7.2 million in total prize money.
  
  wn.com/Ion_Ţiriac
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  Istria
  Istria (Croatian, Slovene: Istra, Čakavian: Istrija, Jistra, Croatian pronunciation: [îstra]; Italian: Istria; Istriot: Eîstria; German: Istrien; Hungarian: Isztria), formerly Histria (Latin), is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.
  The geographical features of Istria include the Učka mountain ridge, which is the highest portion of the Ćićarija mountain range; the rivers Dragonja, Mirna, Pazinčica, and Raša; and the Lim bay and valley. Istria lies in three countries: Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. By far the largest portion (89%) lies in Croatia. "Croatian Istria" is divided into two counties, the larger being Istria County in western Croatia. Important towns in Istria County include Pula, Poreč, Rovinj, Pazin, Labin, Umag, Motovun, Buzet, and Buje. Smaller towns in Istria County include Višnjan, Roč, and Hum.
  The northwestern part of Istria lies in Slovenia: it is known as Slovenian Istria, and includes the coastal municipalities of Piran, Izola and Koper, and the Karstic municipality of Hrpelje-Kozina. Northwards of Slovenian Istria, there is a tiny portion of the peninsula that lies in Italy. This smallest portion of Istria consists of the comunes of Muggia and San Dorligo della Valle.
  
  wn.com/Istria
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  Italians of Romania
  The Italian Romanians are people of Italian descent who reside, or have moved to Romania.
  They are an ethnic minority in Romania, numbering 3,288 people according to the 2002 census. Italians are fairly dispersed throughout the country, even though there is a higher number of them in the western parts of the country (particularly Timiş County), and in the Municipality of Bucharest.
  As an officially-recognised ethnic minority, Italians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies.
  In recent years, the number of Italians living in Romania has increased substantially. As of November 2007, there are some 12,000 Italians in and around Timişoara. About 3,000 square kilometres of land (2% of the agricultural land of Romania) have been bought by Italians.
  The territory of today's Romania has been part of the Italians' (especially Genoese and Venetians) trade routes on the Danube since at least the 13th century. They founded several ports on the Danube, including Vicina (near Isaccea), Sfântu Gheorghe, San Giorgio (Giurgiu) and Calafat.
  
  wn.com/Italians_of_Romania
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  Ivan Patzaichin
  Ivan Patzaichin (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈvan paˈt͡sajkin]; born 26 November 1949) is a Romanian sprint canoer who competed from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. Competing in five Summer Olympics, he won seven medals, more than any other competitor in the history of the Canadian canoeing events. This included four gold (C-1 1000 m: 1972, C-2 1000 m: 1968, 1980, 1984) and three silvers (C-2 500 m: 1980, 1984; C-2 1000 m: 1972).
  He also won 22 world championship medals with nine golds (C-1 1000 m: 1973, 1977; C-1 10000 m: 1978, C-2 500 m: 1979, C-2 1000 m: 1970, 1981, 1983; C-2 10000 m: 1982), four silvers (C-1 1000 m: 1975, C-2 1000 m: 1971, C-2 10000 m: 1981, 1983), and nine bronzes (C-1 500 m: 1971, 1973, 1974; C-1 1000 m: 1974, 1978, 1979; C-1 10000 m: 1974, 1977, 1979).
  Born in Mila 23, Tulcea County, to a Russian Lipovan family, he was a member of the Dinamo Bucharest canoe club. When he retired, Patzaichin became a coach and is now head of the Romanian national team, known as Amiralul ("The Admiral"). His pupils, including Olympic champion Florin Popescu, have won over one hundred sprint canoe titles.
  
  wn.com/Ivan_Patzaichin
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  Jassic people
  The Jassic people or Jász are an ethnic group of Hungarians who mostly live in the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county of the Republic of Hungary. They are of Ossetic (Sarmatian, Iranian) origin and originally spoke the Jassic dialect of the Ossetic language. Today, they speak Hungarian and consider themselves to be Hungarians, but a sense of the "Jassic ethnic identity" is also preserved among them.
  The Jassic people live in the region known as "Jászság" (roughly translatable as Jász-land), which comprise the north-western part of the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county. Their cultural and political center is the town of Jászberény.
  It is a common mistake to call Jászság by the name "Jazygia", which derives from the name of another Iranian people – the Iazyges, who lived in the same territory between the Danube and Tisza rivers in ancient times.
  The Jassic (Jász) people were a nomadic Sarmatian (Iranian) tribe which settled in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary during the 13th century. Their name is almost certainly related to that of the Iazyges, one of the Sarmatian Alanic tribes which, along with the Roxolani, reached the borders of Dacia during the late 1st century BC (the city of Iași is named for them). Residual elements of these tribes, ancestors of the Jassic people, remained behind in the central North Caucasus, mingling with Caucasian peoples to form the present-day Ossetes.
  
  wn.com/Jassic_people
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  Kalmyk people
  Kalmyk people (or Kalmyks) (Kalmyk: Хальмгуд, Halm'gud) is the name given to the Oirats, western Mongols in Russia, whose descendants migrated from Dzhungaria in 1607. Today they form a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Kalmykia is Europe's only Buddhist government. Through emigration, small Kalmyk communities have been established in the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.
  The Kalmyks are a branch of the Oirats whose ancient grazing lands are now located in Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and the People's Republic of China. After the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368, the Oirats emerged as a formidable foe against the Eastern Mongols, the Ming Chinese and their successor, the Manchu who founded the Qing Dynasty, in a nearly 400 year military struggle for domination and control over both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia. The struggle ended in 1757 with the defeat of the Oirats in Dzungaria, the last of the Mongol groups to resist vassalage to China (Grousset, 1970: 502-541).
  
  wn.com/Kalmyk_people
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  Karamanlides
  The Karamanlides (Greek: Καραμανλήδες; Turkish: Karamanlılar), or simply Karamanlis (Also referred to as Cappadocian Greeks or Greeks of Cappadocia), are a Greek Orthodox, Turkish-speaking people native to the Karaman and Cappadocia regions of Anatolia. Today, a majority of the population live within Greece, though there is a notable diaspora in Western Europe and North America.
  Karamanlides is an umbrella term used to describe all Greek Orthodox Christians in Central Anatolia who had adopted Turkish as their primary language. It is derived from the 13th century Beylik of Karaman. They were the first Turkish kingdom to adopt Turkish as its official language and originally the term would only describe the inhabitants of the town of Karaman or from the region of Karaman. Since there is no significant presence of established Christians in the area, the title is now most often used as a label for the local Muslim inhabitants.
  Historically, the Karamanlides adopted and spoke a dialect of the Turkish language. Its vocabulary drew overwhelmingly from Turkic words with only minimal Greek loan words. The language should not be confused with Cappadocian Greek, which was spoken in the same region during the same timeframe, but is derived from the Greek language. It should be noted while their spoken language was Turkish, they employed the Greek alphabet to write it.
  
  wn.com/Karamanlides
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  Karelians
  The Karelians (also Karels, Russian Karelians and East Karelians) are a Baltic-Finnic ethnic group living mostly in the Republic of Karelia and in other north-western parts of the Russian Federation. The historic homeland of Karelians includes also parts of present-day Eastern Finland (North Karelia) and the formerly Finnish territory of Ladoga Karelia. In a process starting during the 17th century and culminating after the Second World War, the ethnic Karelians in Finland have been linguistically and ethnically assimilated with the closely related Finnish people and are included in the wider group of Finnish Karelians, who are considered to form a sub-group of the ethnic Finns.
  The separation between the Finnish Karelians and the Russian or East Karelians has been created and maintained by different religions, dialects and historical experiences. The Karelians in Russia have lived for centuries under the Slavic cultural influence, adopted the Russian Orthodox religion and have been to some extent assimilated by Russians.
  
  wn.com/Karelians
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  Khakas people
  The Khakas, or Khakass (Khakas: Тадарлар), are a Turkic-speaking people, who live in Russia, in the republic of Khakassia in southern Siberia. They speak the Khakas language.
  The origin of the Khakas people is disputed. Some scholars see them as descendants of the Yenisei Kirghiz, while others believe that, at the behest of the medieval Mongol Khans, the Yenisei Kirghiz migrated to Central Asia.
  In the 17th century, the Khakas formed Khakassia in the middle of the lands of Yenisei Kirghiz, who at the time were vassals of a Mongolian ruler. The Russians arrived shortly after the Kirghiz left, and an inflow of Russian agragian settlers began. In the 1820s, gold mines started to be developed around Minusinsk, which became a regional industrial center.
  During the 19th century, many Khakas accepted the Russian ways of life, and most were converted en masse to Russian Orthodox Christianity under threat of death by Russian soldiers. Shamanism with Buddhist influences, however, is still common, and many Christians practice Shamanism with Christianity. In Imperial Russia, the Khakas used to be known under other names, used mostly in historic contexts: Minusinsk Tatars (Russian: минуси́нские тата́ры), Abakan Tatars (абака́нские тата́ры), and Yenisei Turks.
  
  wn.com/Khakas_people
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  Komi peoples
  The Komi people is an ethnic group whose homeland is in the north-east of European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers. They mostly live in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation. They belong to the Permian branch of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The Komis are divided into eight sub-groups. Their northernmost sub-group is also known as the Komi-Izhemtsy (from the name of the river Izhma) or Iz'vataz. This group numbers 15,607. This group is distinct for its more traditional, strongly subsistence based economy which includes reindeer husbandry. Komi-Permyaks (125,235 people ) live in Perm Krai (Komi-Yazvas group) and Kirov Oblast (Upper-Kama Komi group) of Russia.^{[citation needed]}
  The name "Komi" may come from the Udmurt word "kam" (meaning "large river", particularly the River Kama) or the Udmurt "kum" (meaning "kinfolk"). The scholar Paula Kokkonen favours the derivation "people of the Kama".
  
  wn.com/Komi_peoples
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  Koryaks
  Koryaks (or Koriak) are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the southernmost limit of their range being Tigilsk. They are akin to the Chukchis, whom they closely resemble in physique and manner of life. Also, they are distantly related to the Kamchadal (Itelmens) on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
  The Koryaks' neighbors are the Evens to the west of Koryak lands, the Alutor to the south on the isthmus of Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kerek to the east, and the Chukchi to the northeast.
  The Koryak are typically split into two groups: the coastal people Nemelan (or Nymylan) meaning 'village dwellers' due to their sedentary fishing habits; and the inland Koryaks, reindeer herders called Chaucu (or Chauchuven) meaning 'rich in reindeer' who are more nomadic.
  The Koryak language and its relative, Alutor, are linguistically very close to Chukchi. They are members of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family.
  
  wn.com/Koryaks
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  Lazăr Edeleanu
  Lazăr Edeleanu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈlazər edeˈle̯anu]; 1861, Bucharest - 1941) was a Romanian chemist of Jewish origin.
  He was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine at the University of Berlin and the inventor of the modern method of refining crude oil.
  Edeleanu, son of Jewish turner Shaye Edeleanu, was raised in Bucharest and in the town of Focşani. As he showed an early aptitude for science, was sent at the age of 12 to study in Bucharest at the prestigious St. Sava College. Lived in poor housing conditions, in a basement room and earned his living through giving private lessons. So could he receive his baccalaureate in 1882. After ending high school, he worked hard as worker in order to go on and study - chemistry - at the Berlin University with A.W. Hofmann, C.F. Rammelsberg and H.L. Helmholtz.
  In 1887, he received the title of Doctor in Chemistry with the thesis "On the derivatives of fatty phenylmethacrylic and phenylisobutyric acids" (original title in German: "Ueber einige Derivate der Phenylmethacrylsäure und der Phenylisobuttersäure"), in which he described phenylisopropylamine, a nervous system stimulant also known as amphetamine or benzedrine.
  
  wn.com/Lazăr_Edeleanu
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  Lebanese people
  The Lebanese people (Arabic: الشعب اللبناني‎ el shaab el libnene, Lebanese Arabic pronunciation: [eʃˈʃaʕb ellɪbˈneːne]) are a nation and ethnic group of Levantine people originating in what is today the country of Lebanon, including those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state.
  The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a rich blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years.
  Lebanon does not collect official census data on ethnic background and therefore is difficult to have an exact demographic analysis of Lebanese society, with the last census conducted by the French Mandate government in 1932. The largest concentration or people of Lebanese ancestry is in Brazil having an estimated population of 6 to 7 million. As with their predecessors, the Lebanese have always travelled the world, many of them settling permanently, most notably in the last two centuries.
  
  wn.com/Lebanese_people
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  List of Romanians
  This is a list of some of the most prominent Romanians. It contains historical and important contemporary figures (athletes, actors, directors etc.).
  Most of the people listed here are of Romanian ethnicity, whose native tongue is Romanian. There are also a few mentioned who were born in Romania and can speak Romanian, though not of Romanian ethnicity.
  Former members before November 1947, when the Romanian Communists dissolved the party:
  Former members after 1989:
  Current members:
  Alexandru Paleologu, diplomat,writer
  See also Music of Romania, especially for contemporary pop musicians.
  
  wn.com/List_of_Romanians
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  Mari people
  The Mari (Russian: черемисы (old name), марийцы (modern name)), are a Volga-Finnic people who have traditionally lived along the Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. The majority of Maris today live in the Mari El Republic, with significant populations in the Tatarstan and Bashkortostan republics. In the past, the Mari have also been known as the Cheremis in Russian and the Çirmeş in Tatar.
  The Mari people consists of three different groups: the Meadow Mari, who live along the left bank of the Volga, the Mountain Mari, who live along the right bank of the Volga, and Eastern Mari, who live in the Bashkortostan republic. In the 2002 Russian census, 604,298 people identified themselves as "Mari," with 18,515 of those specifying that they were Mountain Mari and 56,119 as Eastern Mari. Almost 60% of Mari lived in rural areas.
  The Mari have their own language, also called Mari, which is a member of the Uralic language family. It is written with a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet. Linguists today distinguish four different dialects, which are not all mutually intelligible: Hill Mari (мары йӹлмӹ), concentrated mainly along the right Volga bank; Meadow Mari (марий йылме), spoken in the lowland regions of the Kokshaga and Volga rivers, which includes the city of Yoshkar-Ola; Eastern Mari, spoken east of the Vyatka River; and North-Western Mari.
  
  wn.com/Mari_people
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  Marthe Bibesco
  Marthe, Princess Bibesco (Marthe Lucie; née Lahovary; 28 January 1886 – 28 November 1973) was a Romanian-French writer of the Belle Époque. Bibesco's papers are at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
  Born Marta Lucia Lahovary (also spelled Lahovari) in Bucharest as the third child of Ioan Lahovary and Princess Emma Mavrocordat, Marthe spent her childhood at the Lahovary family estates in Baloteşti and the fashionable French sea-resort of Biarritz. On her first introduction into society, in 1900, she met Crown Prince Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Romanian throne, but after a secret engagement of one year, Marthe married at seventeen Prince George III Valentin Bibescu (Bibesco), scion of one of the country's prestigious aristocratic families. I stepped onto the European stage through the grand door, she wrote on her wedding day. Her father, who had been educated in France, held the post of minister of the Kingdom of Romania in Paris and, later, that of minister of foreign affairs of Romania.
  
  wn.com/Marthe_Bibesco
• 
  Michael of Romania
  Michael (Romanian: Mihai I Regele Românilor, "Michael I King of the Romanians", name pronounced [miˈhaj]; born 25 October 1921) is the last King of Romania. He reigned from 20 July 1927 to 8 June 1930, and again from 6 September 1940 until 30 December 1947 when he was forced, by the Communist Party of Romania (backed up by orders of Joseph Stalin), to abdicate to the Soviet armies of occupation. In addition to being the current pretender to the dis-established throne of Romania, he was also a Prince of Hohenzollern until 10 May 2011, when he renounced this title.
  A great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria by both of his parents, and a third cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, he is one of the last surviving heads of state from World War II, the others being the former King Simeon II of Bulgaria and the former King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
  Michael was born in the Foişor Castle or Peleş Castle, Sinaia, Romania, the son of Carol II of Romania (then Crown Prince of Romania) and Princess Elena of Greece. He was born as the grandson of the then-reigning King Ferdinand of Romania. When Carol II eloped with his mistress Elena "Magda" Lupescu and renounced 'temporarily' his rights to the throne in December 1925, Michael was declared the heir apparent. He succeeded to the throne upon Ferdinand's death in July 1927.
  
  wn.com/Michael_of_Romania
• 
  Michael the Brave
  Michael the Brave (Romanian: Mihai Viteazu(l) pronounced [miˈhaj viˈte̯azu(l)] or Mihai Bravu pronounced [miˈhaj ˈbravu], Hungarian: Vitéz Mihály; 1558 – August 9, 1601) was the Prince of Wallachia (1593–1601), of Transylvania (1599–1600), and of Moldavia (1600). He ruled all three principalities in a personal union for a short period of time.
  During his reign, which coincided with the Long War, these three principalities forming the territory of present-day Romania and the Republic of Moldova were ruled for the first time by a single Romanian leader, although the personal union lasted for less than six months. He is regarded as one of Romania's greatest national heroes.
  His rule over Wallachia began in the autumn of 1593. Two years a war with the Ottomans began, a conflict in which the Prince fought the Battle of Călugăreni, considered one of the most important battles of his reign. Although the Wallachians emerged victorious from the battle, Michael was forced to retreat with his troops and wait for aid from his allies, Prince Sigismund Báthory of Transylvania and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The war continued until a peace finally emerged in January 1597, but this only lasted for a year and a half. Peace was again reached in late 1599, when Michael was unable to continue the war due to lack of support from his allies.
  
  wn.com/Michael_the_Brave
• 
  Mihai Eminescu
  Mihai Eminescu (Romanian pronunciation: [miˈhaj emiˈnesku]; born Mihail Eminovici; January 15, 1850 – June 15, 1889) was a poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul ("The Time"), the official newspaper of the Conservative Party (1880–1918). His poetry was first published when he was 16 and he went to Vienna to study when he was 19. The poet's Manuscripts, containing 46 volumes and approximately 14,000 pages, were offered by Titu Maiorescu as a gift to the Romanian Academy during the meeting that was held on January 25, 1902. Notable works include Luceafărul ("Evening Star"), Odă în metru antic (Ode in Ancient Meter), and the five Letters (Epistles/Satires). In his poems he frequently used metaphysical, mythological and historical subjects. In general his work was influenced by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
  
  wn.com/Mihai_Eminescu
• 
  Mihail Kogălniceanu
  Mihail Kogălniceanu (Romanian pronunciation: [mihaˈil koɡəlniˈt͡ʃe̯anu]; also known as Mihail Cogâlniceanu, Michel de Kogalnitchan; September 6, 1817 – July 1, 1891) was a Moldavian-born Romanian liberal statesman, lawyer, historian and publicist; he became Prime Minister of Romania on October 11, 1863, after the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities under Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, and later served as Foreign Minister under Carol I. He was several times Interior Minister under Cuza and Carol. A polymath, Kogălniceanu was one of the most influential Romanian intellectuals of his generation. Siding with the moderate liberal current for most of his lifetime, he began his political career as a collaborator of Prince Mihail Sturdza, while serving as head of the Iaşi Theater and issuing several publications together with the poet Vasile Alecsandri and the activist Ion Ghica. After editing the highly influential magazine Dacia Literară and serving as a professor at Academia Mihăileană, Kogălniceanu came into conflict with the authorities over his Romantic nationalist inaugural speech of 1843. He was the ideologue of the abortive 1848 Moldavian revolution, authoring its main document, Dorinţele partidei naţionale din Moldova.
  
  wn.com/Mihail_Kogălniceanu
• 
  Mingrelians
  The Mingrelians (Mingrelian: მარგალი, margali; Georgian: მეგრელები: megrelebi) are a subethnic group of Georgians^{[not in citation given][citation needed][citation needed][citation needed]} that mostly live in Samegrelo (Mingrelia) region of Georgia. They also live in considerable numbers in Abkhazia and Tbilisi. In the pre-1930 Soviet census, the Mingrelians were afforded their own ethnic group (natsional'nost) category.
  The Mingrelians speak the Mingrelian, and are mostly bilingual also in Georgian. Both these languages belong to the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language family.
  The Mingrelians are descendants of several Colchian tribes (Such as: Manraloi, Heniochi, Machelones, Macrones, Mossynoeci, Drilae, Zydretae) and constitute one of the building blocks of the unified Georgian nation that emerged after the kingdoms of the west (Colchis) and east (Iberia) were united under Christianity in the middle of the first millennium AD.^{[citation needed]} Early in the Middle Ages, Mingrelian aristocracy and clergy, later followed by laymen, adopted the national Georgian tongue as a language of literacy and culture.^{[citation needed]} After the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Georgia in the 15th century, Mingrelia was an autonomous principality until being annexed by the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
  
  wn.com/Mingrelians
• 
  Mircea Eliade
  Mircea Eliade (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈmirt͡ʃe̯a eliˈade]; March 13 [O.S. February 28] 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential. One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them.
  His literary works belong to the fantasy and autobiographical genres. The best known are the novels Maitreyi ("La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), Noaptea de Sânziene ("The Forbidden Forest"), Isabel şi apele diavolului ("Isabel and the Devil's Waters") and the Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent, the novellas Domnişoara Christina ("Miss Christina") and Tinereţe fără tinereţe ("Youth Without Youth"), and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger ("The Secret of Dr. Honigberger") and La Ţigănci ("With the Gypsy Girls").
  
  wn.com/Mircea_Eliade
• 
  Moravian Wallachia
  Moravian Wallachia (Czech: Valašsko) is a mountainous region located in the easternmost part of Moravia, Czech Republic, near the Slovakian border. The name Wallachia was formerly applied to all the highlands of Moravia and neighboring Silesia, although in the nineteenth century a smaller area came to be defined as ethno-cultural Moravian Wallachia. The traditional dialect (rarely heard these days) represents a mixture of elements from Czech and Slovak, and has a distinct lexicon of Romanian and Balkan origin relating to the pastoral economy of the highlands.
  The name comes from the exonym of the Romanian shepherd migrants (see Vlachs), who advanced along the Carpathian range between the 14th and 17th centuries. On their way they gradually lost their original language with the exception of some Romanian words they use in their Czech and Slovak dialect, but they preserved much of their culture (especially folklore, songs and costumes) and economic base, namely sheep breeding.
  
  wn.com/Moravian_Wallachia
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  Morlachs
  Morlachs was an ethnonym used for a population of shepherds that lived in the Dinaric Alps (western Balkans in modern use), seasonally migrating in search for better pastures for their sheep flocks (between mountains, in the summertime, and the sea shores, in the wintertime).
  The nature and origin of this population is unclear. They were referred to as the Mavrovlachi meaning "Black Vlachs"; in Greek: Μαυροβλάχοι, in Italian: Morlacchi; in Serbian and Croatian Morlaci [mor-latsi] or Морлаци. In Latin sources there are references to them as Nigri Latini.
  Because of the etymology, they are believed to have been Vlachs.^{[citation needed]} Another version of their name comes from the Slavic terms of morski Vlasi meaning "Sea Vlachs". They were a blend of previously Romanized indigenous peoples and new settled Roman army veterans and Roman colonists.
  The adjective "black" may be used here with the meaning of "northern", this metaphor probably deriving from the Turkish practice of indicating cardinal directions by colors.
  
  wn.com/Morlachs
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  N. Wiener
  Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894, Columbia, Missouri – March 18, 1964, Stockholm, Sweden) was an American mathematician. He was Professor of Mathematics at MIT.
  A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
  Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with many implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society.
  Wiener was the first child of Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn, Jews of Polish and German descent, respectively. Norbert Wiener became a famous child prodigy. Leo had educated Norbert at home until 1903, employing teaching methods of his own invention, except for a brief interlude when Norbert was 7 years of age. Earning his living teaching German and Slavic languages, Leo read widely and accumulated a personal library from which the young Norbert benefited greatly. Leo also had ample ability in mathematics, and tutored his son in the subject until he left home.
  
  wn.com/N._Wiener
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  Nadia Comăneci
  Nadia Elena Comăneci (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnet͡ʃʲ]; born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the first female gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She is also the winner of two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics. She is one of the best-known gymnasts in the world. In 2000 Comăneci was named as one of the athletes of the century by the Laureus World Sports Academy.
  Comăneci was born in Onești, Romania, as the daughter of Gheorghe and Ștefania-Alexandrina. Her pregnant mother was watching a Russian film in which the heroine's name was Nadya, the diminutive version of the Russian name Nadezhda (which means "Hope"). She decided that her daughter would be named Nadia, too. Comăneci also has a brother four years older than her named Adrian.
  Nadia began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called "Flacăra", with coaches Duncan and Munteanu. At age 6 she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school after Karolyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard. Karolyi was looking for gymnasts he could train at a young age and saw the two girls during recess. When recess ended the girls ran inside. Karolyi went around the classrooms trying to find the girls, with no luck. So, he asked, "Who likes gymnastics?" and the girls popped up saying, "We, we!" Karolyi said one of the girls became a very promising ballerina. The other was Nadia. Nadia was training with Károlyi by the time she was 7 years old, in 1968. She was one of the first students at the gymnastics school established in Onești by Béla and his wife, Marta. Unlike many of the other students at the Károlyi school, Comăneci was able to commute from home for many years because she lived in the area.
  
  wn.com/Nadia_Comăneci
• Nation
  A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.
  According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people;" "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.
  
  wn.com/Nation
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  Nicolae Ceauşescu
  Nicolae Ceauşescu (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e t͡ʃe̯a.uˈʃesku]; 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.
  His rule was marked in the first decade by an open policy towards Western Europe and the United States, which deviated from that of the other Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War. He continued a trend first established by his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who had tactfully coaxed the Soviet Union into withdrawing its troops from Romania in 1958.
  Ceauşescu's second decade was characterized by an increasingly brutal and repressive regime—by some accounts, the most Stalinist regime in the Soviet bloc. It was also marked by an ubiquitous personality cult, nationalism and a deterioration in foreign relations with the Western powers as well as the Soviet Union. Ceauşescu's government was overthrown in the December 1989 revolution, and he and his wife were executed following a televised and hastily organised two-hour court session.
  
  wn.com/Nicolae_Ceauşescu
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  Nicolae Iorga
  Nicolae Iorga (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e ˈjorɡa]; sometimes Neculai Iorga, Nicolas Jorga, Nicolai Jorga or Nicola Jorga, born Nicu N. Iorga; January 17, 1871 – November 27, 1940) was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder (in 1910) of the Democratic Nationalist Party (PND), he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly (1931–32) as Prime Minister. A child prodigy, polymath and polyglot, Iorga produced an unusually large body of scholarly works, consecrating his international reputation as a medievalist, Byzantinist, Latinist, Slavist, art historian and philosopher of history. Holding teaching positions at the University of Bucharest, the University of Paris and several other academic institutions, Iorga was founder of the International Congress of Byzantine Studies and the Institute of South-East European Studies (ISSEE). His activity also included the transformation of Vălenii de Munte town into a cultural and academic center.
  
  wn.com/Nicolae_Iorga
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  Nicolae Paulescu
  Nicolae Paulescu (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e pa.uˈlesku]; October 30, 1869 – July 17, 1931) was a Romanian physiologist, professor of medicine, the discoverer of pancreatine. The "pancreine" was a crude extract of bovine pancreas in salted water, after which some impurites were removed with hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide.
  Born in Bucharest, he was the first of four children of father Costache Paulescu and mother Maria Paulescu. He displayed remarkable abilities as early as his first school years. He learned French, Latin and Ancient Greek at an early age, so that a few years later he became fluent in all these languages and was able to read classical works of Latin and Greek literature in the original. He also had a particular gift for drawing and music and special inclinations towards natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry. He graduated from the Mihai Viteazu High School in Bucharest, in 1888.
  In the autumn of 1888, Paulescu left for Paris, where he enrolled in medical school. In 1897 he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree, and was immediately appointed as assistant surgeon at the Notre-Dame du Perpétuel-Secours Hospital. In 1900, Paulescu returned to Romania, where he remained until his death (1931) as Head of the Physiology Department of the University of Bucharest Medical School, as well as a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the St. Vincent de Paul Hospital in Bucharest.
  
  wn.com/Nicolae_Paulescu
• 
  Oromo people
  The Oromo (Oromo: Oromoo, "The Powerful"; Ge'ez: ኦሮሞ, ’Oromo) are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnicity in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census. Their native language is Oromo (also called Afaan Oromoo and Oromiffa), which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
  Oromos are the largest Cushitic-speaking group of people living in Northeast and East Africa. Available information suggests that they have existed as a community in the Horn of Africa for several millenia (Prouty et al., 1981). Bates (1979) contends that the Oromo "were a very ancient race, the indigenous stock, perhaps, on which most other peoples in this part of eastern Africa have been grafted".
  While further research is needed to precisely comprehend their origins, the Oromo are believed to have originally adhered to a pastoralist/nomadic and/or semi-agriculturalist lifestyle. Many historians agree that some Oromo clans (Bale) have lived in the southern tip of present-day Ethiopia for over a millennium. They suggest that a great Oromo migration brought most Oromos to present-day central and western Ethiopia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historical maps of the ancient Aksum/Abyssinia empire and Adal/Somali empires indicate that Oromo people are newcomers to most of modern-day central Ethiopia.
  
  wn.com/Oromo_people
• 
  Ossetians
  The Ossetians (Ossetic: ирæттæ, irættæ) are an Iranic ethnic group of the Caucasus Mountains, indigenous to the region known as Ossetia. They speak Ossetic, an Iranian language of the Eastern branch of the Indo-European languages family, with most also fluent in Russian as a second language. The Ossetians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian, with a Muslim minority.
  The Ossetians mostly populate Ossetia, which is politically divided between North Ossetia–Alania in Russia, and South Ossetia, which since the 2008 South Ossetia war has been de-facto independent from Georgia.
  The Russian geographic name "Ossetia" and the corresponding ethnic designation "Ossetians" comes from a Georgian root.
  The Russians originally called the Ossetians Yas (ясы, connected with Iazyges).
  In Late Antiquity, records became much more diffuse and the Iazyges generally ceased to be mentioned as a tribe. In the Middle Ages an East Iranian people appeared in Eastern-Europe, the Jazones. The Jazones, or Jász, an Ossetic people who migrated to Hungary, are first mentioned in Hungarian records in the year 1318, and their name, spelled in Greek means "Jasons" (Ιάσωνες). The Jász in Hungary maintained their language until the 18th century. While they have become linguistically Hungarian, descendants in the Jász area of Hungary still maintain some original culture and have folk consciousness of their origins.
  
  wn.com/Ossetians
• 
  Ottoman Empire
  The Ottoman Empire or Turkish Empire or Sublime Ottoman State or sometimes also referred to as Turkey (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِيّهٔ عُثمَانِیّه Devlet-i ʿAliyye-yi ʿOsmâniyye (also عثمانلى دولتى Osmanlı Devleti),Modern Turkish: Osmanlı Devleti or Osmanlı İmparatorluğu) was a Turkish empire which lasted from 27 July 1299 to 1 November 1922, when the Sultanate was abolished.
  The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest lasting empires in history; such that the Ottoman State, its politics, conflicts, and cultural heritage in a vast geography provide one of the longest continuous narratives. During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire was one of the most powerful states in the world – a multinational, multilingual empire that stretched from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire to the outskirts of Vienna, Royal Hungary (modern Slovakia) and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the north to Yemen and Eritrea in the south; from Algeria in the west to Azerbaijan in the east; controlling much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. At the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states, some of which were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries.
  
  wn.com/Ottoman_Empire
• 
  Romani people
  The Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent. Romani are widely known in the English-speaking world by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies).
  They are known collectively in the Romani language as Romane or Rromane (depending on the dialect concerned) and also as Romany, Romanies, Romanis, Roma or Roms.
  Romani are widely dispersed, with their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France.
  The Americas are also home to large numbers of Romani. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States; 800,000 in Brazil, to which Kale were deported by the government of Portugal during the colonial era; and in more recent migrations, Romani have also moved to other parts of the New World.
  The Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large (several times as large according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two.
  
  wn.com/Romani_people
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  Romanian American
  A Romanian American (Romanian: Român American) is a citizen of the United States who has significant Romanian heritage. For the 2000 US Census, 367,310 Americans indicated Romanian as their first ancestry, while 518,653 persons declared to have Romanian ancestry. Other sources provide higher estimates for the numbers of Romanian Americans in the contemporary US; for example, the Romanian-American Network Inc. supplies a rough estimate of 1.2 million. There is also a significant number of persons of Romanian Jewish ancestry, estimated at about 250,000.
  The migration of Romanians to the US started in the second half of the 19th century. They came mostly from the territories that were under Austro-Hungarian rule: Transylvania, Banat, Bucovina, Crişana and Maramureş. Some of them came with the intention to work for some years and to return after raising money, while others decided to remain. Those Romanians migrated mostly in the industrial centers around the Great Lakes (Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit etc.). They were also some immigrants from "Lesser Romania". For example, in 1905, 7,818 Romanians migrated to the US, including 7,261 from Austria-Hungary, 423 from "Lesser Romania", and the rest came from other European countries. The migrants from the Romanian Old Kingdom were mostly Jews and they settled mostly in New York. One of their prominent organizations was the United Rumanian Jews of America. 75,000 Romanian Jews emigrated in the period 1881-1914, mostly to the United States.
  
  wn.com/Romanian_American
• 
  Romanian Canadian
  According to the Canadian Census data of 2006, there are almost 200,000 Romanian-Canadians. Some sources estimates that this number might be as high as cca. 400,000 Canadians of Romanian descent.
  Romanians came to Canada in several periods. The first period was at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Romanians had discovered Canada towards the end of the 19th century, after Clifford Sifton – Minister of Home Affairs representing a Liberal government that had promised to populate the West – had visited Bukovina. From 1886 to 1900, a group of Romanians established themselves to the Saskatchewan, at Clifford Sifton’s advice. The first two Romanian families that migrated to Canada from the Bukovina village of Boian stopped in Alberta in 1898. Other 30 Bucovina families took their example and followed them and they gave the settlement the name of their home village.
  At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many Romanians from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire (Transylvania, Bukovina, Banat, Crişana and Maramureş) migrated to the Prairie provinces of Canada to work as farmers. The Dominion Lands Act encouraged homesteaders to come to the area. The migrants from the Romanian Old Kingdom were mostly Romanian Jews. Many Romanians came to Canada and the United States between 1895 and 1920.
  
  wn.com/Romanian_Canadian
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  Romanian French
  Romanian French is the term for a French citizen of Romanian heritage and origins, born in Romania and living as an emigrant in France or being born in France from a Romanian immigrant family, that came to France at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, there are circa 18,000 Romanian-born citizens living in France, and an unknown number of French citizens of Romanian origin or ancestry.
  Romanians had registered a presence on France's soil since the first part of the 19th century. The first Romanians that arrived at that time were mainly rich students who came to study, principally in science and physics domains. Most of them returned to Romania after finishing their studies, although a significant number remained in France. During World War I, some Romanian soldiers were sent to France when the Kingdom of Romania joined the Allies in 1916, to help French troops in the fight against Germany.
  An important figure of the Romanian-French population arrived in France in the 1950s, after the end of the war, in a period when both Romania and France were experiencing a very difficult period in their history, and were still recovering from the disasters caused by the conflict. Most of the Romanian population settled in Paris, Lille and other big cities in the north of France.
  
  wn.com/Romanian_French
• 
  Romanian philosophy
  Romanian philosophy is a name covering either a) the philosophy done in Romania or by Romanians, or b) an ethnic philosophy, which expresses at a high level the fundamental features of the Romanian spirituality, or which elevates to a philosophical level the Weltanschauung of the Romanian people, as deposited in language and folklore, traditions, architecture and other linguistic and cultural artifacts.
  The discussion concerning the existence of a Romanian philosophy has known three stages.
  Between the two World Wars, after the emergence of Greater Romania, Romanian national identity went through a crisis. Since it was not centered anymore on immediate political goals (national rights, independence, national unity etc.), the idea now had a more pronounced cultural character. Therefore, discussions of "national specificity" in historiography, literature and philosophy became very common. The first history of Romanian philosophy was published in 1922 by Marin Ştefănescu, proving that philosophical thinking in Romania had reached the level of self-reflexivity; in other words, it had become conscious of itself. The general conclusion of interbellum discussions, which involved almost every notable philosopher, was that there is a Romanian philosophy proper, with a distinct profile among other national philosophies. Constantin Noica, who became one of the most prominent Romanian philosophers, thought early on that Romanian philosophy is characterized by paganism, cosmicism (i.e. no acute separation of the world of the man from, transcendence) and determinism (or rather, "fatalism").
  
  wn.com/Romanian_philosophy
• 
  Romanian-American
  A Romanian American (Romanian: Român American) is a citizen of the United States who has significant Romanian heritage. For the 2000 US Census, 367,310 Americans indicated Romanian as their first ancestry, while 518,653 persons declared to have Romanian ancestry. Other sources provide higher estimates for the numbers of Romanian Americans in the contemporary US; for example, the Romanian-American Network Inc. supplies a rough estimate of 1.2 million. There is also a significant number of persons of Romanian Jewish ancestry, estimated at about 250,000.
  The migration of Romanians to the US started in the second half of the 19th century. They came mostly from the territories that were under Austro-Hungarian rule: Transylvania, Banat, Bucovina, Crişana and Maramureş. Some of them came with the intention to work for some years and to return after raising money, while others decided to remain. Those Romanians migrated mostly in the industrial centers around the Great Lakes (Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit etc.). They were also some immigrants from "Lesser Romania". For example, in 1905, 7,818 Romanians migrated to the US, including 7,261 from Austria-Hungary, 423 from "Lesser Romania", and the rest came from other European countries. The migrants from the Romanian Old Kingdom were mostly Jews and they settled mostly in New York. One of their prominent organizations was the United Rumanian Jews of America. 75,000 Romanian Jews emigrated in the period 1881-1914, mostly to the United States.
  
  wn.com/Romanian-American
• 
  Romanian-Australians
  Romanian-Australians may include those who have immigrated to Australia from Romania, and those born in Australia from Romanian ancestry. According to ABS (2006 census) figures, there are 18,320 people with Romanian ancestry in Australia..
  Romanians were for the first time registered in Australia more than 80 years ago. They were people that came there for working, missionaries, or seeking a more prosperous economic status. But the first wave of Romanian emigrants to Australia came after World War II, when Romania was experiencing severe economic and political problems. The Romanians who were then emigrating to Australia principally settled in areas around Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The number of Romanians who came to Australia at the time is estimated to be around 2,000 people.^{[citation needed]}
  The second wave of Romanian emigration to the Australian continent began after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, when the Communist regime fell and citizens received the right to leave Romania. They came in large numbers for the same reasons as the first-wave immigrants.
  
  wn.com/Romanian-Australians
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  Romanianization
  Romanianization or Rumanization is the term used to describe a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th century. The term particularly refers to Romanian government policy in several periods toward the Hungarian minority in Romania as well as the Ukrainian minority in Bukovina or Bessarabia.
  At the end of World War I, Transylvania, at the time a territory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was occupied by the Romanian army. Shortly before, the Romanian National Council (representing the majoritary Romanian population) and representatives of the German population had taken the decision of unifying the province with Romania. The decision was contested by the Hungarian minority. The Treaty of Trianon established the Romanian border with the new Hungarian state. However, Transylvania had a large Hungarian minority, of 25.5% according to the 1920 census. A portion of them fled to Hungary after the union; however, most of them remained in Romania and in the 1930s their number increased to 26.7% of the whole Transylvanian population. While Romania included large national minorities, the 1923 Constitution declared the country to be a nation-state, following the French model which was popular in many European nations at that time.
  
  wn.com/Romanianization
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  Romanians
  The Romanians (dated: Rumanians or Roumanians; in Romanian: români pronounced [roˈmɨnʲ] or — historically, but now a seldom-used regionalism — rumâni; dated exonym: Vlachs) are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania.
  The Romanian people are a nation in the meaning of ethnos (Romanian: etnie), defined by the sense of sharing a common Romanian culture, descent, and having Romanian as mother tongue, as well as by citizenship or by being subjects to the same country. The Romanian citizenship law legislated in March 1991 establishes the rights of second and third generation descendants of Romanian citizens to obtain a Romanian citizenship, if they speak fluent Romanian and are able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in Romanian history and culture. 89.4 percent of Romania's people declared themselves as Romanians at the 2002 Romanian Census.
  In one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are also an ethnic minority in several nearby countries.
  
  wn.com/Romanians
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  Romanians in Hungary
  At present, Romanians in Hungary constitute a small minority. According to the 2001 Hungarian Census (based on self-determination), the population of Romanians was 8,482 or 0.1%. The community is concentrated in towns and villages close to the Romanian border, such as Battonya, Elek, Kétegyháza and Méhkerék and in the city of Gyula, and is also present in the capital, Budapest.
  Historically, a significant part of the modern Romanian lands belonged to Hungarian states.
  Regardless of the subject of Romanian presence/non-presence in Transylvania prior to the Hungarian conquest (See Origin of the Romanians), the first written sources about Romanian settlements derive from the 13th century, record was written about Olahteluk village in Bihar county from 1283. The 'land of Romanians', Terram Blacorum (1222,1280) showed up in Fogaras and this area was mentioned under different name (Olachi) in 1285. The first appearance of a supposed Romanian name 'Ola' in Hungary derives from a charter (1258). They were significant population in Transylvania, Banat, Maramaros and Partium. Romanian people have been in majority in Transylvania for a long time.
  
  wn.com/Romanians_in_Hungary
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  Romanians in Italy
  Romanians in Italy became a notable presence mostly after 1999, due to a large wave of emigration known in Romania as Fenomenul către UE. 80% of the emigrants went to Spain or Italy. They were followed by a further wave beginning in 2002, when Romanian citizens obtained the right to leave their country and go to any Schengen Zone country without having a visa. As of 1 January 2011 (2011 -01-01)^[update], there were 968,576 Romanian citizens living in Italy, representing 21.2% of all foreign citizens in that country. Unofficial estimates put the actual number of Romanians in Italy at well over one million people.
  On 4 November 2007, Italy started expelling Romanians with criminal records, after a wave of violent crime blamed on swelling numbers of immigrants from Romania, by Romani people (gypsies) in particular.
  Based on Demo Istat statistics
  
  wn.com/Romanians_in_Italy
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  Romanians of Serbia
  Romanians (Romanian: "Românii din Serbia" or "Rumânii din Sârbie", Serbian: Rumuni or Румуни) are a recognised national minority in Serbia. The total number of declared Romanians in the 2002 Serbian census was 34,576, while 40,054 people declared themselves Vlachs; there are differing views among some of the Vlachs over they should be regarded as Romanians or as members of a distinctive nationality. In a Romanian-Yugoslav agreement of November 4, 2002, the Yugoslav authorities agreed to recognize the Romanian identity of the Vlach population in Central Serbia, but the agreement was not implemented. In April 2005, many deputies from the Council of Europe protested against the position of this population in Serbian society. In August 2007, they were officially recognized as a national minority, and their language was recognized as Romanian. Declared Romanians are mostly concentrated in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, while declared Vlachs are mostly concentrated in north-eastern parts of Central Serbia.
  
  wn.com/Romanians_of_Serbia
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  Romanis
  The Romani are an ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who trace their origins to the Indian Subcontinent. Romani are widely known in the English-speaking world by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies).
  They are known collectively in the Romani language as Romane or Rromane (depending on the dialect concerned) and also as Romany, Romanies, Romanis, Roma or Roms.
  Romani are widely dispersed, with their largest concentrated populations in Europe, especially the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe and Anatolia, followed by the Kale of Iberia and Southern France.
  The Americas are also home to large numbers of Romani. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States; 800,000 in Brazil, to which Kale were deported by the government of Portugal during the colonial era; and in more recent migrations, Romani have also moved to other parts of the New World.
  The Romani language is divided into several dialects, which add up to an estimated number of speakers larger than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as large (several times as large according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the language current in their country of residence, or of mixed languages combining the two.
  
  wn.com/Romanis
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  Rusyns
  Carpatho-Rusyns or Ruthenes (Rusyn: Русины, Rusyns, also sometimes referred to as Carpatho-Russians or Rusnaks) are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century. The use of the term Rusyn was prohibited by some governments, as seen after 1945 in Soviet Transcarpathia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
  Today, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Croatia officially recognize contemporary Rusyns (or Ruthenes) as an ethnic minority. In 2007, Carpatho-Rusyns were recognized as a separate ethnicity in Ukraine by the Zakarpattia Regional Council. Rusyns within Ukraine have Ukrainian citizenship, and most have adopted a Ukrainian ethnic identity. Most contemporary self-identified ethnic Rusyns live outside of Ukraine.
  Of the estimated 1.2 million people of Rusyn origin, only 55,000 have officially identified themselves politically or ethnically as such, according to contemporary censuses.^[who?] The ethnic classification of Rusyns as a separate East Slavic ethnicity distinct from Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians is, however, controversial. The majority of Ukrainian scholars, as well as some Rusyns when considering their self-identification, consider Rusyns to be an ethnic subgroup of the Ukrainian people. This is disputed by some Lemko scholars.
  
  wn.com/Rusyns
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  Serbs
  The Serbs (Serbian: Срби, Srbi, pronounced [sr̩̂bi]) are a nation and South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs live mainly in Serbia and the disputed territory of Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form significant minorities in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in Romania, Hungary, Albania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There is also a large Serbian diaspora in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. More than a million people of Serbian origin live in German-speaking countries, including Luxembourg (1%), Austria (1.8%), Switzerland (1%), and Germany (~1%). Outside Europe, there are significant Serbian communities in the United States (198,000 Serbian plus additional 326,000 "Yugoslav" nationals),Canada (72,690 in 2006) and Australia (95,000 in 2006).
  The Serbs are a Slavic people, specifically of the South Slavic subgroup, which has its origins in the 6th and 7th century communities developed in Southeastern Europe (see Great Migration). Slav raids on Eastern Roman territory are mentioned in 518, and by the 580s they had conquered large areas referred to as Sclavinia (transl. Slavdom, from Sklavenoi – Σκλαυηνοι, the early South Slavic tribe which is eponymous to the current ethnic and linguistic Indo-European people). In 649, Constantine III relocates conquered Slavs "from the Vardar" to Gordoservon (Serb habitat). Among communities part in the Serb ethnogenesis are the Romanized Paleo-Balkan tribes of Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians, Celts, Greek colonies and Romans.
  
  wn.com/Serbs
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  Serbs of Romania
  The Romanian Serbs (Sârbii) are an ethnic minority in Romania. According to the 2002 census, there were 22,518 Serbs in Romania or 0.1% of the population (the 1992 census recorded 29,408 Serbs, or 0.1% of the population). Serbs mostly live in western Romania, in the Romanian part of the Banat region, where they constitute absolute majority in two communes and relative majority in one other.
  In the Caraş-Severin County, the Serbs constitute absolute majority in the commune of Pojejena (52.09%) [3] and a plurality in the commune of Socol (49.54%) [4]. Serbs also constitute absolute majority in the municipality of Sviniţa (87.27%) [5], in the Mehedinţi County. The region where these three municipalities are located is known as Clisura Dunării in Romanian or Banatska Klisura (Банатска Клисура) in Serbian.
  Timis:
  Serb population in Romania was larger in the past. Although most of the Serbs lived in Banat, there was also a Serb population living in what is now Arad County of Romania (an area known as Pomorišje in Serbian), and in the former Principality of Transylvania, where they served as soldiers of Transylvanian rulers.
  
  wn.com/Serbs_of_Romania
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  Slovaks of Romania
  The Slovaks (Slováci in Slovak, slovaci in Romanian) are an ethnic minority in Romania, numbering 17,199 people according to the 2002 census and hence making up 0.1% of the total population. Slovaks mainly live in western Romania, with the largest populations found in Bihor and Arad counties, where they make up 1.22% and 1.25% of the population, respectively. The largest concentration of ethnic Slovaks can be found in the town of Nădlac, Arad County, where they make up almost half of the population.
  As an officially recognized ethnic minority, Slovaks, together with Czechs, have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Slovaks_of_Romania
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  Tatars
  Tatars (Tatar: Tatarlar / Татарлар, sometimes spelled Tartars) are a Turkic people, numbering around 7 million. The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of 5.5 million, 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan, 1 million in the republic of Bashkortostan and other 2.5 million in different regions of Russia. Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.
  The Tatars originated with the Tatar confederation in the north-eastern Gobi desert in the 5th century. After subjugation in the 9th century by the Khitans, they migrated southward. In the 13th century Mongol Empire, they were subjugated under Genghis Khan and reassigned once again particularly by his son Jochi. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan, they moved westwards, forming part of the Golden Horde which dominated the Eurasian steppe during the 14th and 15th centuries. In Europe, they were assimilated by the local populations or their name spread to the conquered peoples: Kipchaks, Kimaks and others; and elsewhere with Uralic-speaking peoples, as well as with remnants of the ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea and Caucasians in the Caucasus.
  
  wn.com/Tatars
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  Thraco-Roman
  The terms Thraco-Roman (or the more specific Daco-Roman) refer to the culture and language of the Thracian (including Dacian) peoples who were incorporated into the Roman Empire and ultimately fell under the Roman and Latin sphere of influence.
  The term was coined in 1901 by Ovid Densusianu, who used it to describe the "oldest epoch of the creation of the Romanian language", when the Vulgar Latin spoken in the Balkans between the 4th and 6th centuries, having its own peculiarities, had evolved into what is known as Proto-Romanian. By extension, historians started to use the term to mean the time period of the history of the Romanian people until the 6th century, which witnessed the cultural and linguistic Romanisation of many Daco-Thracian tribes. The territory where this process took place, consensually agreed to be near the Jireček Line is characterized as having two main peculiarities:
  
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  Titu Maiorescu
  Titu Liviu Maiorescu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈtitu majoˈresku]; 15 February 1840 – 18 June 1917) was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century.
  A member of the Conservative Party, he was Foreign Minister between 1910 and 1914 and Prime Minister of Romania from 1913 to 1914. He represented Romania at the Peace Conference in Bucharest that ended the Second Balkan War. In politics as in culture he favoured Germany over France. He opposed Romania's entry in World War I against Germany, but he nevertheless refused to collaborate with the German army after it had occupied Bucharest.
  
  wn.com/Titu_Maiorescu
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  Traian Băsescu
  Traian Băsescu (born November 4th, 1951 in Basarabi, Romania) is the current president of Romania, serving since 2004. Mayor of Bucharest from 2000 to 2004, he was elected president in 2004, suspended from office in 2007 but reconfirmed a month later in a plebiscite. He was re-elected president for a second 5-year term in 2009, amidst allegations of electoral fraud that were ultimately dismissed by the Constitutional Court of Romania.
  Băsescu was born in Basarabi (renamed Murfatlar in 2007), near the port city of Constanţa, the largest Romanian port on the Black Sea. Băsescu's father, Dumitru (d. 2002), was an army officer; his mother's first name is Elena (d. 2010). He has a brother, Mircea (b. 1953). Traian Băsescu and his wife Maria have two daughters.
  Băsescu graduated from the Naval Institute of Constanţa in 1976 and became a merchant marine deck officer at Navrom, the Romanian state-owned shipping company. Between 1981 and 1987 he served as Captain on Romanian commercial ships. Throughout his career, questions have been raised about Basescu's links to the Securitate, the security services of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. But Basescu has said his links with the former Securitate were minimal, though some contact was obligatory at the time for somebody working abroad in a senior position. In 1984 he was promoted to Captain of the oil tanker Biruinţa, the largest ship of the then Romanian commercial fleet. In 1989, Băsescu moved to Belgium to head the Navrom Agency in Antwerp.
  
  wn.com/Traian_Băsescu
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  Traian Vuia
  Traian Vuia (Romanian pronunciation: [traˈjan ˈvuja]; August 17, 1872 - September 3, 1950) was a Romanian inventor and aviation pioneer who designed, built and tested the first powered monoplane. His first airborne test traveled about 12 metres (39 feet) on March 18, 1906, and his best distance was 24 m (79 ft). This was the first short flight or "powered hop" by a monoplane. Vuia never achieved sustained, controlled flight with his early aircraft, and his experiments did not result in advances in aviation.
  A French citizen since 1918, Vuia was associated with the French Resistance during World War II. He returned to Romania in 1950.
  After graduating from high-school in Lugoj, Banat in 1892, at that time part of Hungary within Austro-Hungarian empire, today in Romania, he enrolled in the School of Mechanics at the Polytechnic University of Budapest where he received his engineering diploma. He then joined the Faculty of Law in Budapest - Hungary, where he earned a Ph.D. in law in May 1901 with the thesis "Military and Industry, State and Contract regime".
  
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  Trajan
  Trajan ( /ˈtreɪdʒən/; Latin: Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus Augustus; 18 September 53 – 9 August 117), was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 AD. Born into a non-patrician family in the province of Hispania Baetica, Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of emperor Domitian. Serving as a legatus legionis in Hispania Tarraconensis, in 89 Trajan supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus.
  In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by Marcus Cocceius Nerva, an old and childless senator who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a brief and tumultuous year in power, a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard compelled him to adopt the more popular Trajan as his heir and successor. Nerva died on 27 January 98, and was succeeded by his adopted son without incident.
  As a civilian administrator, Trajan is best known for his extensive public building program which reshaped the city of Rome and left multiple enduring landmarks such as Trajan's Forum, Trajan's Market and Trajan's Column. Early in his reign, he annexed the Nabataean kingdom, creating the province of Arabia Petraea. His conquest of Dacia enriched the empire greatly — the new province possessed many valuable gold mines.
  
  wn.com/Trajan
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  Ukrainians
  Ukrainians (Ukrainian: Українці, Ukrayintsi, [ukrɑˈjinʲtsʲi]) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens. According to some dictionary definitions, a descriptive name for the "inhabitants of Ukraine" is Ukrainian or Ukrainian people.Russians and Belarusians are considered the closest relatives of Ukrainians, while Rusyns are either considered another closely related group, or an ethnic subgroup of Ukrainians.
  Ethnonym Ukrainians became widely accepted only in the 20th century, so modern Ukrainians identify their ancestry with differently named historical Slavic groups, who are often called Ukrainians too, in retrospect. The oldest recorded ethnonyms used for Ukrainian ancestors are Rusy, Rusyny, and Rusychi (from term Rus'). From the 9th to 12th centuries those names applied to the population of Kievan Rus', as the united state of Rusy is restrospectively called. Similar names were adopted by the proto-Russian and proto-Belarusian inhabitants of the northern principalities of Rus', reflecting the common origin of all those East Slavic peoples.
  
  wn.com/Ukrainians
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  Victor Babeş
  Victor Babeș (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈviktor ˈbabeʃ]; 4 July 1854 – 19 October 1926) was a Romanian physician, biologist, and one of the earliest bacteriologists. He made early and significant contributions to the study of rabies, leprosy, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases.
  The Romanian universities Babeș-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca and the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timişoara bear his name.
  Born in Vienna (at the time, the capital of the Austrian Empire) as the son of Vincenţiu Babeş, an ethnic Romanian from the Banat region, he studied in Budapest, then in Vienna, where he received his doctorate in Science. Attracted by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur, he left for Paris, and worked first in Pasteur's laboratory, and then with Victor André Cornil.
  In 1885 he discovered a parasitic sporozoan of the ticks, named Babesia (of the family Babesiidae), and which causes a rare and severe disease called babesiosis. In the same year, he published the first treatise of bacteriology in the world, Bacteria and their role in the histopathology of infectious diseases, which he co-authored with Cornil.
  
  wn.com/Victor_Babeş
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  Vlachs
  Vlach ( /ˈvlɑːk/ or /ˈvlæk/) is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Wallachians, Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs. Groups that have historically been called Vlachs include: modern-day Romanians or Daco-Romanians, Aromanians or Macedo-Romanians, Morlachs, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians. Since the creation of the Romanian state, the term in English has mostly been used for those living outside Romania.
  The Vlachs, which would develop into the modern Romanian ethnicity, do not become tangible before the High Middle Ages in Kedrenos (11th century), and their prehistory during the Migration period is a matter of scholarly speculation but according to the linguists and to many scholars, the existence of the present Eastern Romance languages prove the survival of the Thraco-Romans in the low-Danube basin during the Migration period and the Vlachs are all being well considered descendants of Romanised peoples of the area (incl. Thracians, Dacians and Illyrians).
  
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  Vlachs of Serbia
  The Vlachs of Serbia (endonym: Rumâni, Serbian: Власи or Vlasi) are an ethnic minority of Serbia, culturally and linguistically related to Romanians. Vlachs mostly live in eastern Serbia, mainly in Timočka Krajina region (roughly corresponding to Bor and Zaječar District districts), but also in Braničevo and Pomoravlje districts. Also a small Vlach population exists in Smederevo and Velika Plana (Podunavlje District), and in the municipalities of Aleksinac and Kruševac (Rasina District), as well as in the South Banat District in Voivodina.
  The name they identify with Rumâni din Sârbie in fact means Romanians from Serbia. Although they are ethnographically and linguistically related to the Romanians, within the Vlach community there are divergences on whether they belong or not to the Romanian nation and whether their minority should be amalgamated with the Romanian minority in Vojvodina.
  In a Romanian-Yugoslav agreement from the November 4, 2002, the Yugoslav authorities agreed to recognize the Romanian identity of the Vlach population in Central Serbia,^{[dubious – discuss]} but the agreement wasn't applied. In April 2005, 23 deputies from the Council of Europe, representatives from Hungary, Georgia, Lithuania, Romania, Moldova, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaïdjan, Denmark and Bulgaria protested against Serbia's treatment of this population.
  
  wn.com/Vlachs_of_Serbia
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  Vlad III Dracula
  Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431–1476), also known by his patronymic name Dracula (son of the Dragon, after his father Vlad II Dracul), and posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler (Romanian: Vlad Țepeș pronounced [ˈvlad ˈt͡sepeʃ]), was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. His father was a member of the Order of the Dragon (Dracul) which was founded to protect Christianity in Europe.
  Vlad III spent much of his rule campaigning against the Ottoman Empire and its expansion. As the cognomen 'The Impaler' suggests, his practice of impaling his enemies is central to his historical reputation. During his lifetime, his reputation for excessive cruelty spread abroad, to Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The total number of his victims is estimated in the tens of thousands. The name of the vampire Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula was inspired by Vlad's patronymic.
  During his life Vlad wrote his name in Latin documents as Wladislaus Dragwlya, vaivoda partium Transalpinarum (1475).
  
  wn.com/Vlad_III_Dracula
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  Walha
  Walhaz (ᚹᚨᛚᚺᚨᛉ) is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word, meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker". The term was used by the ancient Germanic peoples to describe inhabitants of the former Roman Empire, who were largely romanised and spoke Latin or Celtic languages. The adjectival form is attested in Old Norse valskr, meaning "French", Old High German walhisk, meaning "Romance", Modern German welsch, used in Switzerland for Romance-speakers, Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning "Romano-British", and Modern English Welsh. The form of these words imply that they are descended from a Proto-Germanic form *walhiska-.
  It is attested in the Roman Iron Age Tjurkö Bracteate inscription as walhakurne "Roman/Gallic grain", apparently a kenning for "gold" (referring to the "bracteate" itself).
  Walh is almost certainly derived from the name of the tribe which was known to the Romans as Volcae (in the writings of Julius Caesar) and to the Greeks as Ouólkai (Strabo and Ptolemy). This tribe occupied territory neighbouring that of the Germanic people and seem to have been referred to by the Old Germanic name *Walhaz (plural *Walhôz, adjectival form *walhiska-). It is assumed that this term specifically referred to the Celtic Volcae, because application of the first Germanic sound change to that word produces the form *Walh-. Subsequently, this term Walhôz was applied rather indiscriminately to the southern neighbours of the Germanic people, as evidenced in geographic names such as Walchgau and Walchensee in Bavaria. These southern neighbours, however, were then already completely romanised. Thus, Germanic speakers generalized this name first to all Celts, and later to all Romans. The Old High German Walh became Walch in Middle High German, and adjectival OHG walhisk became MHG welsch, e.g. in the Romance of Alexander by Rudolf von Ems-–resulting in Welsche in Early New High German and Modern German as the exonym for all Romanic speakers.
  
  wn.com/Walha
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  World War I
  World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
  
  wn.com/World_War_I
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  Yakuts
  Yakuts (Yakut language: Саха, Saxa) are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
  The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages. There are about 444,000 ethnic Yakuts (Russian census, 2002) mainly in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts. Their share of the population of Yakutia lowered during Soviet rule due to forced immigration, and other relocation policies, but has slightly increased since.
  The Yakuts are divided into two basic groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, reindeer breeders, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses and cattle.
  Yakuts originally lived around Olkhon and the region of Lake Baikal. But beginning in the 13th century they migrated to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers under the pressure of the rising Mongols, where they mixed with other northern indigenous peoples of Russia such as the Evens and Evenks.
  
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  Yehudi Menuhin
  Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.
  Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.
  Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused. Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old. Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.
  
  wn.com/Yehudi_Menuhin
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  Yugoslavs
  Yugoslavs (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslaveni, Jugosloveni; Cyrillic script: Југословени; Slovene: Jugoslovani; Macedonian: Југословени; Bulgarian: югославяните) is a designation that was originally designed to refer to a united South Slav people. It has been used in two connotations, the first in an ethnic or supra-ethnic connotation, and the second as a term for citizens of the former Yugoslavia. Cultural and political advocates of Yugoslav identity have historically ascribed the identity to be applicable to all people of South Slav heritage, including those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and the presently disputed region of Kosovo, Slovenia, and the Republic of Macedonia.
  Ethnic Yugoslavs referred to those who exclusively viewed themselves as Yugoslavs with no other ethnic self-identification. Yugoslavs has also historically been used referred to a Yugoslav supra-ethnic nation that has "tribal" ethnicities, such as Croats, Serbs, and others within it.
  In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the official designation for those who declared themselves Yugoslav was with quotation marks, "Yugoslavs" (introduced in census 1971). Quotation marks were meant to distinguish Yugoslav ethnicity from Yugoslav citizenship – which was written without quotation marks. Shortly before the dissolution of Yugoslavia many of those who had identified themselves as ethnic "Yugoslavs" reverted to or adopted traditional nationalities such as Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Muslims by nationality, Slovenes—and other small Yugoslav groups in Yugoslavia not officially represented by the state, including Bulgarians, Janjevci, Bunjevci, and Šokci. Some also decided to turn to sub-national regional identifications, especially in multi-ethnic historical regions like Istria, Vojvodina, or Bosnia. The Yugoslav designation however continues to be used by some.
  
  wn.com/Yugoslavs
• Ştefan Odobleja
  Ştefan Odobleja (Romanian pronunciation: [ʃteˈfan odoˈbleʒa]; 1902–1978) was a Romanian scientist, one of the precursors of cybernetics. His major work, Psychologie consonantiste, first published in 1938 and 1939, in Paris, had established many of the major themes of cybernetics regarding cybernetics and systems thinking ten years before the work of Norbert Wiener was published in 1948.
  Ştefan Odobleja was born into a family of peasants in 1902, in Ştefan Odobleja, Mehedinţi County, Romania. He attended the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest and became a physician, practising as a military doctor in many cities of Romania, including Bucharest, Dej, Drobeta Turnu-Severin, Lugoj and Târgovişte. Despite a poverty stricken and, in some ways, a difficult life, he managed to remain productive. His completed works run to over 50,000 pages.
  The most important of these writings is Psychologie consonantiste (French title - Psihologia consonantistă in Romanian). This book, published in Paris (vol. I in 1938 and vol. II in 1939), ran to nearly 900 pages and included 300 figures in the text. The author wrote at the time that "this book is... a table of contents, an index or a dictionary of psychology, [for] a ... great Treatise of Psychology that should contain 20-30 volumes". In this work, Ştefan Odobleja had laid the theoretical foundations of what became known later as cybernetics. However, partly due to the beginning of World War II, almost immediately after its publication the book was generally ignored. The first Romanian edition of this groundbreaking work did not appear until 1982 (the first edition was published in French).
  
  wn.com/Ştefan_Odobleja