The Polish people rose several times against the partitioners and occupying armies. An unsuccessful attempt at defending Poland's sovereignty took place in the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising, where a popular and distinguished general Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had several years earlier served under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War, led Polish insurgents. Despite the victory at the Battle of Racławice, his ultimate defeat ended Poland's independent existence for 123 years.
In 1806, an insurrection organised by Jan Henryk Dąbrowski liberated western Poland ahead of Napoleon's advance into Prussia during the War of the Fourth Coalition. In accordance with the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon proclaimed the Duchy of Warsaw, a client state ruled by his ally Frederick Augustus I of Saxony. The Poles actively aided French troops in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly those under Józef Poniatowski who became Marshal of France shortly before his death at Leipzig in 1813. In the aftermath of Napoleon's exile, the Duchy of Warsaw was abolished at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and its territory was divided into Russian Congress Poland, the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen, and Austrian Galicia with the Free City of Kraków.
In 1830, non-commissioned officers at Warsaw's Officer Cadet School rebelled in what was the November Uprising. After its collapse, Congress Poland lost its constitutional autonomy, army and legislative assembly. During the European Spring of Nations, Poles took up arms in the Greater Poland riot of 1848 to resist Germanisation, but its failure saw Posen's status reduced to a mere province; and subsequent integration into the German Empire in 1871. In Russia, the fall of the January Uprising (1863–1864) prompted severe political, social and cultural reprisals, followed by deportations and pogroms of the Polish-Jewish population. Towards the end of the 19th century, Congress Poland became heavily industrialised; its primary exports being coal, zinc, iron and textiles.


The native Polish name for Poland is Polska. The name is derived from the Polans, a West Slavic tribe who inhabited the Warta River basin of present-day Greater Poland region (6th–8th century CE). The tribe's name stems from the Proto-Slavic noun pole meaning field, which in-itself originates from the Proto-Indo-European word *pleh₂- indicating flatland. The etymology alludes to the topography of the region and the flat landscape of Greater Poland. The English name Poland was formed in the 1560s, from German Pole(n) and the suffix -land, denoting a people or nation. Prior to its adoption, the Latin form Polonia was widely used throughout medieval Europe.
The country's alternative archaic name is Lechia and its root syllable remains in official use in several languages, notably Hungarian, Lithuanian, and Persian. The exonym derives from Lech, a legendary ruler of the Lechites, or from the Lendians that dwelled on the south-easternmost edge of present-day Lesser Poland region. The origin of the tribe's name lies in the Old Polish word lęda (plain). Initially, both names Lechia and Polonia were used interchangeably when referring to Poland by chroniclers during the Middle Ages.


Spring – Francophone explorer, spiritualist and former operatic soprano Alexandra David-Néel, disguised as a male pilgrim, makes a 2-month stay in the forbidden city of Lhasa, Tibet.
Autumn – In the United States, the final raid of the Renegade period of the Apache Wars takes place, bringing the American Indian Wars to a close, after 315 years.
The International Union of Official Organizations for Tourist Propaganda is established.
Earl W. Bascom, rodeo cowboy and artist, designs and makes rodeo's first one-hand bareback rigging at Stirling, Alberta, Canada.
Alice Vanderbilt Morris, a wealthy heiress, founds the International Auxiliary Language Association in New York.


1937
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1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1937th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 937th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 37th  year of the 20th century, and the  8th   year of the 1930s decade.


Switzerland begins construction of its Border Line defences.
The Vibora Luviminda sugar plantation trade unions strike on Maui island, Hawaii.
Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti is the first to document a transorbital approach to the brain, which becomes the basis for the controversial medical procedure of transorbital lobotomy.
Soviet industry produces about four times as much as it had in 1928.
The Allen Organ Company, builder of church, home and theatre organs, is founded in Macungie, Pennsylvania.


Malaysia (/məˈleɪziə, -ʒə/ (listen) mə-LAY-zee-ə, -zhə; Malay: [məlejsiə]) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, largest city and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government. The nearby planned capital of Putrajaya is the administrative capital, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (Cabinet, federal ministries and agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 32 million, Malaysia is the world's 45th-most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia is in Tanjung Piai. In the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries, home to numerous endemic species.
Malaysia has its origins in the Malay kingdoms which, from the 18th century, became subject to the British Empire, along with the British Straits Settlements protectorate. Peninsular Malaysia was unified as the Malayan Union in 1946. Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. The independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on 16 September 1963 to become Malaysia. In August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate independent country.
The country is multiethnic and multicultural, which has a significant effect on its politics. About half the population is ethnically Malay, with minorities of Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples. The country's official language is Malaysian, a standard form of the Malay language. English remains an active second language. While recognising Islam as the country's established religion, the constitution grants freedom of religion to non-Muslims. The government is modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system and the legal system is based on common law. The head of state is an elected monarch, chosen from among the nine state sultans every five years. The head of government is the Prime Minister.
After independence, the Malaysian GDP grew at an average of 6.5% per annum for almost 50 years. The economy has traditionally been fuelled by its natural resources but is expanding in the sectors of science, tourism, commerce and medical tourism. Malaysia has a newly industrialised market economy, ranked third-largest in Southeast Asia and 33rd-largest in the world. It is a founding member of ASEAN, EAS, OIC and a member of APEC, the Commonwealth and the Non-Aligned Movement.


Malaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy; the only federal country in Southeast Asia. The system of government is closely modelled on the Westminster parliamentary system, a legacy of British rule. The head of state is the King, whose official title is the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. The King is elected to a five-year term by and from among the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states. The other four states, which have titular Governors, do not participate in the selection. By informal agreement the position is rotated among the nine, and has been held by Abdullah of Pahang since 31 January 2019. The King's role has been largely ceremonial since changes to the constitution in 1994, picking ministers and members of the upper house.
Legislative power is divided between federal and state legislatures. The bicameral federal parliament consists of the lower house, the House of Representatives and the upper house, the Senate. The 222-member House of Representatives is elected for a maximum term of five years from single-member constituencies. All 70 senators sit for three-year terms; 26 are elected by the 13 state assemblies, and the remaining 44 are appointed by the King upon the Prime Minister's recommendation. The parliament follows a multi-party system and the government is elected through a first-past-the-post system. Parliamentary elections are held at least once every five years, the most recent of which took place in May 2018. Before 2018, registered voters aged 21 and above could vote for the members of the House of Representatives and, in most of the states, for the state legislative chamber. Voting is not mandatory. In July 2019, a bill to lower the voting age to 18 years old was officially passed.
Executive power is vested in the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister. The prime minister must be a member of the House of Representatives, who in the opinion of His Majesty the King, commands the support of a majority of members. The Cabinet is chosen from members of both houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister is both the head of cabinet and the head of government. As a result of the 2018 general election Malaysia was governed by the Pakatan Harapan political alliance, although Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned amid a political crisis in 2020. In March 2020, the Perikatan Nasional coalition formed under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, before Muhyiddin lost majority support and was replaced by deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a veteran politician from UMNO, in August 2021.
Malaysia's legal system is based on English Common Law. Although the judiciary is theoretically independent, its independence has been called into question and the appointment of judges lacks accountability and transparency. The highest court in the judicial system is the Federal Court, followed by the Court of Appeal and two high courts, one for Peninsular Malaysia and one for East Malaysia. Malaysia also has a special court to hear cases brought by or against royalty.
Race is a significant force in politics. Affirmative actions such as the New Economic Policy and the National Development Policy which superseded it, were implemented to advance the standing of the bumiputera, consisting of Malays and the indigenous tribes who are considered the original inhabitants of Malaysia, over non-bumiputera such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. These policies provide preferential treatment to bumiputera in employment, education, scholarships, business, and access to cheaper housing and assisted savings. However, it has generated greater interethnic resentment. There is ongoing debate over whether the laws and society of Malaysia should reflect Islamism or secularism. Islamic criminal laws passed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party with the support of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) state assemblymen in the state legislative assembly of Kelantan have been blocked by the federal government on the basis that criminal laws are the responsibility of the federal government.
After the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) lost power at the 2018 Malaysian general election, Malaysia's ranking increased by 9 places in the 2019 Democracy Index to 43th compared to the previous year, and is classified as a 'flawed democracy'. Malaysia's ranking in the 2020 Press Freedom Index increased by 22 places to 101st compared to the previous year, making it one of two countries in Southeast Asia without a 'Difficult situation' or 'Very Serious situation' with regards to press freedom. However, it fell 18 places the following year due to the policies of the Perikatan Nasional government.
Malaysia is marked at 48 and 62nd place according to the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating above average levels of corruption. Freedom House noted Malaysia as "partly free" in its 2018 survey. A lawsuit filed by Department of Justice (DOJ), alleged that at least $3.5 billion involving former prime minister Najib Razak had been stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB state-owned fund, known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.


Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and the authorities has imposed punishments such as caning and imprisonment. Human trafficking and sex trafficking in Malaysia are significant problems. There has also been cases of vigilante executions and beatings against LGBT individuals in Malaysia. The illegality of homosexuality in Malaysia has also been the forefront of Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trials, which Anwar has responded to it being politically motivated, a response supported by the United Nations' (UN) Working Group on Arbitrary Detention along with Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch.
The death penalty is in use for serious crimes such as murder, terrorism, drug trafficking, and kidnapping, but in June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish the capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.


Malaysia is the 66th largest country by total land area, with a land area of 329,613 km² (127,264 sq mi).  It has land borders with Thailand in West Malaysia, and Indonesia and Brunei in East Malaysia. It is linked to Singapore by a narrow causeway and a bridge. The country also has maritime boundaries with Vietnam and the Philippines. The land borders are defined in large part by geological features such as the Perlis River, the Golok River and the Pagalayan Canal, whilst some of the maritime boundaries are the subject of ongoing contention. Brunei forms what is almost an enclave in Malaysia, with the state of Sarawak dividing it into two parts. Malaysia is the only country with territory on both the Asian mainland and the Malay archipelago. The Strait of Malacca, lying between Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, is one of the most important thoroughfares in global commerce, carrying 40 per cent of the world's trade.
The two parts of Malaysia, separated from each other by the South China Sea, share a largely similar landscape in that both Peninsular and East Malaysia feature coastal plains rising to hills and mountains. Peninsular Malaysia, containing 40 per cent of Malaysia's land area, extends 740 km (460 mi) from north to south, and its maximum width is 322 km (200 mi). It is divided between its east and west coasts by the Titiwangsa Mountains, rising to a peak elevation of 2,183 metres (7,162 ft) at Mount Korbu,
part of a series of mountain ranges running down the centre of the peninsula. These mountains are heavily forested, and mainly composed of granite and other igneous rocks. Much of it has been eroded, creating a karst landscape. The range is the origin of some of Peninsular Malaysia's river systems. The coastal plains surrounding the peninsula reach a maximum width of 50 kilometres (31 mi), and the peninsula's coastline is nearly 1,931 km (1,200 mi) long, although harbours are only available on the western side.
East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, has a coastline of 2,607 km (1,620 mi). It is divided between coastal regions, hills and valleys, and a mountainous interior. The Crocker Range extends northwards from Sarawak, dividing the state of Sabah. It is the location of the 4,095 m (13,435 ft) high Mount Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia. Mount Kinabalu is located in the Kinabalu National Park, which is protected as one of the four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Malaysia. The highest mountain ranges form the border between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves, the largest cave system in the world, in the Gunung Mulu National Park which is also a World Heritage Site. The largest river in Malaysia is the Rajang.
Around these two halves of Malaysia are numerous islands, the largest of which is Banggi. The local climate is equatorial and characterised by the annual southwest (April to October) and northeast (October to February) monsoons. The temperature is moderated by the presence of the surrounding oceans. Humidity is usually high, and the average annual rainfall is 250 cm (98 in). The climates of the Peninsula and the East differ, as the climate on the peninsula is directly affected by wind from the mainland, as opposed to the more maritime weather of the East. Local climates can be divided into three regions, highland, lowland, and coastal. Climate change is likely to affect sea levels and rainfall, increasing flood risks and leading to droughts.


Evidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia dates back 40,000 years. In the Malay Peninsula, the first inhabitants are thought to be Negritos. Traders and settlers from India and China arrived as early as the first century AD, establishing trading ports and coastal towns in the second and third centuries. Their presence resulted in strong Indian and Chinese influences on the local cultures, and the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit inscriptions appear as early as the fourth or fifth century. The Kingdom of Langkasuka arose around the second century in the northern area of the Malay Peninsula, lasting until about the 15th century. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, much of the southern Malay Peninsula was part of the maritime Srivijayan empire. By the 13th and the 14th century, the Majapahit empire had successfully wrested control over most of the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago from Srivijaya. In the early 15th century, Parameswara, a runaway king of the former Kingdom of Singapura linked to the old Srivijayan court, founded the Malacca Sultanate. The spread of Islam increased following Parameswara's conversion to that religion. Malacca was an important commercial centre during this time, attracting trade from around the region.
In 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, after which it was taken by the Dutch in 1641. In 1786, the British Empire established a presence in Malaya, when the Sultan of Kedah leased Penang Island to the British East India Company. The British obtained the town of Singapore in 1819, and in 1824 took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. By 1826, the British directly controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements. By the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers, to whom the rulers were bound to defer by treaty. The remaining five states in the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under British rule, also accepted British advisers around the turn of the 20th century. Development on the peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. Under British rule the immigration of Chinese and Indians to serve as labourers was encouraged. The area that is now Sabah came under British control as North Borneo when both the Sultan of Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu transferred their respective territorial rights of ownership, between 1877 and 1878. In 1842, Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei to James Brooke, whose successors ruled as the White Rajahs over an independent kingdom until 1946, when it became a crown colony.
In the Second World War, the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore for over three years. During this time, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. Popular support for independence increased after Malaya was reconquered by Allied forces. Post-war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the "Malayan Union" met with strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946, and consisting of all the British possessions in the Malay Peninsula with the exception of Singapore, was quickly dissolved and replaced on 1 February 1948 by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.
During this time, the mostly ethnically Chinese rebels under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. On 31 August 1957, Malaya became an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations. After this a plan was put in place to federate Malaya with the crown colonies of North Borneo (which joined as Sabah), Sarawak, and Singapore. The date of federation was planned to be 31 August 1963 so as to coincide with the anniversary of Malayan independence; however, federation was delayed until 16 September 1963 in order for a United Nations survey of support for federation in Sabah and Sarawak, called for by parties opposed to federation including Indonesia's Sukarno and the Sarawak United Peoples' Party, to be completed.
Federation brought heightened tensions including a conflict with Indonesia as well continuous conflicts against the Communists in Borneo and the Malayan Peninsula which escalates to the Sarawak Communist Insurgency and Second Malayan Emergency together with several other issues such as the cross border attacks into North Borneo by Moro pirates from the southern islands of the Philippines, Singapore being expelled from the Federation in 1965, and racial strife. This strife culminated in the 13 May race riots in 1969. After the riots, the controversial New Economic Policy was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, trying to increase the share of the economy held by the bumiputera. Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanisation beginning in the 1980s. The economy shifted from being agriculturally based to one based on manufacturing and industry. Numerous mega-projects were completed, such as the Petronas Towers, the North–South Expressway, the Multimedia Super Corridor, and the new federal administrative capital of Putrajaya. However, in the late 1990s the Asian financial crisis almost caused the collapse of the currency and the stock and property markets, although they later recovered. The 1MDB scandal was a major global corruption scandal that implicated then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2015. The scandal contributed to the first change in ruling political party since independence in the 2018 general election. In the 2020s, the country was gripped by political crisis that coincided with health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.


A founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the country participates in many international organisations such as the United Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Developing 8 Countries, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). It has chaired ASEAN, the OIC, and the NAM in the past. A former British colony, it is also a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Kuala Lumpur was the site of the first East Asia Summit in 2005.
Malaysia's foreign policy is officially based on the principle of neutrality and maintaining peaceful relations with all countries, regardless of their political system. The government attaches a high priority to the security and stability of Southeast Asia, and seeks to further develop relations with other countries in the region. Historically the government has tried to portray Malaysia as a progressive Islamic nation while strengthening relations with other Islamic states. A strong tenet of Malaysia's policy is national sovereignty and the right of a country to control its domestic affairs.  Malaysia signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Spratly Islands are disputed by many states in the area, and a large portion of the South China Sea is claimed by China. Unlike its neighbours of Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia historically avoided conflicts with China. However, after the encroachment of Chinese ships in Malaysian territorial waters, Malaysia has become active in condemning China. Brunei and Malaysia in 2009 announced an end to claims of each other's land, and committed to resolve issues related to their maritime borders. The Philippines has a dormant claim to the eastern part of Sabah. Singapore's land reclamation has caused tensions, and minor maritime and land border disputes exist with Indonesia.
The Malaysian Armed Forces have three branches: the Royal Malaysian Navy, the Malaysian Army, and the Royal Malaysian Air Force. There is no conscription, and the required age for voluntary military service is 18. The military uses 1.5% of the country's GDP, and employs 1.23% of Malaysia's manpower. Malaysian peacekeeping forces have contributed to many UN peacekeeping missions, such as in Congo, Iran–Iraq, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Kosovo, East Timor and Lebanon.
The Five Power Defence Arrangements is a regional security initiative which has been in place for almost 40 years. It involves joint military exercises held among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Joint exercises and war games have also been held with Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have agreed to host joint security force exercises to secure their maritime border and tackle issues such as illegal immigration, piracy, and smuggling. Previously there were fears that extremist militants activities in the Muslim areas of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand would spill over into Malaysia. Because of this, Malaysia began to increase its border security.


Malaysia is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. These are divided between two regions, with 11 states and two federal territories on Peninsular Malaysia and the other two states and one federal territory in East Malaysia. Each state is divided into districts, which are then divided into mukim. In Sabah and Sarawak districts are grouped into divisions.
Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the Federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Each state has a unicameral State Legislative Assembly whose members are elected from single-member constituencies. State governments are led by Chief Ministers, who are state assembly members from the majority party in the assembly. In each of the states with a hereditary ruler, the Chief Minister is normally required to be a Malay, appointed by the ruler upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister. Except for state elections in Sarawak, by convention state elections are held concurrently with the federal election.
Lower-level administration is carried out by local authorities, which include city councils, district councils, and municipal councils, although autonomous statutory bodies can be created by the federal and state governments to deal with certain tasks. The federal constitution puts local authorities outside of the federal territories under the exclusive jurisdictions of the state government, although in practice the federal government has intervened in the affairs of state local governments. There are 154 local authorities, consisting of 14 city councils, 38 municipal councils and 97 district councils.
The 13 states are based on historical Malay kingdoms, and 9 of the 11 Peninsular states, known as the Malay states, retain their royal families. The King is elected by and from the nine rulers to serve a five-year term. This King appoints governors serving a four-year term for the states without monarchies, after consultations with the chief minister of that state. Each state has its own written constitution. Sabah and Sarawak have considerably more autonomy than the other states, most notably having separate immigration policies and controls, and a unique residency status. Federal intervention in state affairs, lack of development, and disputes over oil royalties have occasionally led to statements about secession from leaders in several states such as Penang, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak, although these have not been followed up and no serious independence movements exist.
States
A list of thirteen states and each state capital (in brackets):
 Johor (Johor Bahru)
 Kedah  (Alor Setar)
 Kelantan (Kota Bharu)
 Malacca (Malacca City)
 Negeri Sembilan (Seremban)
 Pahang (Kuantan)
 Penang (George Town)
 Perak (Ipoh)
 Perlis (Kangar)
 Selangor (Shah Alam)
 Sabah (Kota Kinabalu)
 Sarawak (Kuching)
 Terengganu (Kuala Terengganu)
Federal Territories
 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur
 Federal Territory of Labuan
 Federal Territory of Putrajaya


1980
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1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1980th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 980th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 80th  year of the 20th century, and the  1st   year of the 1980s decade.


July 1 – C. P. Snow, British physicist and novelist (b. 1905)
July 3
Deng Hua, Chinese general (b. 1910)
Abdelhamid Sharaf, 51st Prime Minister of Jordan (b. 1939)
July 4 – Gregory Bateson, British anthropologist, anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, semiotician and cyberneticist (b. 1904)
July 6 – Gail Patrick, American actress (b. 1911)
July 7 – Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich of Russia (b. 1901)
July 8 – Rudolf Creutz, Austrian criminal (b. 1896)
July 9 – Vinicius de Moraes, Brazilian writer, poet and diplomat (b. 1913)
July 10 – Leonidas Zervas, Greek organic chemist (b. 1902)
July 13 – Seretse Khama, 1st President of Botswana (b. 1921)
July 17 – Boris Delaunay, Russian mathematician (b. 1890)
July 19 – Nihat Erim, Turkish politician and jurist, 30th Prime Minister of Turkey (b. 1912)
July 20 – Lado Gudiashvili, Soviet painter (b. 1896)
July 21 – Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Syrian politician, 2-time Prime Minister of Syria (b. 1912)
July 22 – Hans-Georg Bürger, German racing driver (b. 1952)
July 24 – Peter Sellers, British comedian and actor (b. 1925)
July 25 – Vladimir Vysotsky, Soviet singer-songwriter, poet and actor (b. 1938)
July 26 – Kenneth Tynan, English theatre critic (b. 1927)
July 27 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran (b. 1919)
July 28 – Maria Luisa Monteiro da Cunha, Brazilian librarian (b. 1908)
July 30 – Lucien Dalsace, French actor (b. 1893)
July 31 – Pascual Jordan, German physicist (b. 1902)


Different authorities and sources define North India differently.


North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia.
The term North India has varying definitions. The Ministry of Home Affairs in its Northern Zonal Council Administrative division included the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan and Union Territories of Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The Ministry of Culture in its North Culture Zone includes the state of Uttarakhand but excludes Delhi whereas the Geological Survey of India includes Uttar Pradesh and Delhi but excludes Rajasthan and Chandigarh. Other states sometimes included are Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.
North India has been the historical centre of the Mughal Empire, the Delhi Sultanate and the British Indian Empire. It has a diverse culture, and includes the Hindu pilgrimage centres of Char Dham, Haridwar, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Mathura, Allahabad, Vaishno Devi and Pushkar, the Buddhist pilgrimage centres of Sarnath and Kushinagar, the Sikh Golden Temple as well as world heritage sites such as the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Khajuraho temples, Hill Forts of Rajasthan, Jantar Mantar (Jaipur), Qutb Minar, Red Fort, Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal. North India's culture, Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, developed as a result of interaction between these Hindu and Muslim religious traditions. North India has the third-largest gross domestic product than any other region in India.
The languages that have official status in one or more of the states and union territories located in North India are Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Dogri, and English.


Several sources consider sizeable Muslim populations and deep-seated Islamic, Central Asian and Afghan influences to be defining characteristics of North Indian culture, both linguistically and culturally. Some of these influences are pre-Islamic, such as the Bactrian-originated Kushan Empire (modern day Afghanistan) that maintained twin capitals in Mathura (now in Uttar Pradesh) and Peshawar (in the present-day Pakistani Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province), as well as the Hun confederacies that periodically asserted their rule over large parts of North India.


Wagtails, pipits, and longclaws are slender, small to medium-sized passerines, ranging from 14 to 17 cm (5.5 to 6.7 in) in length, with short necks and long tails. They have long, pale legs with long toes and claws, particularly the hind toe, which can be up to 4 cm in length in some longclaws. No sexual dimorphism in size is seen. Overall, the robust longclaws are larger than the pipits and wagtails. Longclaws can weigh as much as 64 g, as in Fülleborn's longclaw, whereas the weight range for pipits and wagtails is 15–31 g, with the smallest species being perhaps the yellowish pipit. The plumage of most pipits is dull brown and reminiscent of the larks, although some species have brighter plumages, particularly the golden pipit of north-east Africa. The adult male longclaws have brightly coloured undersides. The wagtails often have striking plumage, including grey, black, white, and yellow.


The wagtails, longclaws, and pipits are a family, Motacillidae, of small passerine birds with medium to long tails. The around 70 species occur in five genera. The longclaws are entirely restricted to the Afrotropics, and the wagtails are predominantly found in Europe, Africa, and Asia, with two species migrating and breeding in Alaska. The pipits have the most cosmopolitan distribution, being found across mostly in the Old World, but occurring also in the Americas and oceanic islands such as New Zealand and the Falklands. Two African species, the yellow-breasted pipit and Sharpe's longclaw, are sometimes placed in a separate seventh genus, Hemimacronyx, which is closely related to the longclaws.
Most motacillids are ground-feeding insectivores of slightly open country. They occupy almost all available habitats, from the shore to high mountains. Wagtails prefer wetter habitats than the pipits. A few species use forests, including the forest wagtail, and other species use forested mountain streams, such as the grey wagtail or the mountain wagtail.
Motacillids take a wide range of invertebrate prey, especially insects are the most commonly taken, but also including spiders, worms, and small aquatic molluscs and arthropods. All species seem to be fairly catholic in their diets, and the most commonly taken prey for any particular species or population usually reflects local availability.
With the exception of the forest wagtail, they nest on the ground, laying up to six speckled eggs.


After independence in 1947, Jinnah, the President of the Muslim League, became the nation's first Governor-General as well as the first President-Speaker of the Parliament, but he died of tuberculosis on 11 September 1948. Meanwhile, Pakistan's founding fathers agreed to appoint Liaquat Ali Khan, the secretary-general of the party, the nation's first Prime Minister. From 1947 to 1956, Pakistan was a monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations, and had two monarchs before it became a republic.
The creation of Pakistan was never fully accepted by many British leaders, among them Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten clearly expressed his lack of support and faith in the Muslim League's idea of Pakistan. Jinnah refused Mountbatten's offer to serve as Governor-General of Pakistan. When Mountbatten was asked by Collins and Lapierre if he would have sabotaged Pakistan had he known that Jinnah was dying of tuberculosis, he replied 'most probably'.
Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a respected Deobandi alim (scholar) who occupied the position of Shaykh al-Islam in Pakistan in 1949, and Maulana Mawdudi of Jamaat-i-Islami played a pivotal role in the demand for an Islamic constitution. Mawdudi demanded that the Constituent Assembly make an explicit declaration affirming the "supreme sovereignty of God" and the supremacy of the shariah in Pakistan.
A significant result of the efforts of the Jamaat-i-Islami and the ulama was the passage of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949. The Objectives Resolution, which Liaquat Ali Khan called the second most important step in Pakistan's history, declared that "sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust". The Objectives Resolution has been incorporated as a preamble to the constitutions of 1956, 1962, and 1973.
Democracy was stalled by the martial law that had been enforced by President Iskander Mirza, who was replaced by the army chief, General Ayub Khan. After adopting a presidential system in 1962, the country experienced exceptional growth until a second war with India in 1965 that led to an economic downturn and wide-scale public disapproval in 1967. Consolidating control from Ayub Khan in 1969, President Yahya Khan had to deal with a devastating cyclone that caused 500,000 deaths in East Pakistan.
In 1970 Pakistan held its first democratic elections since independence, meant to mark a transition from military rule to democracy, but after the East Pakistani Awami League won against the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Yahya Khan and the military establishment refused to hand over power. Operation Searchlight, a military crackdown on the Bengali nationalist movement, led to a declaration of independence and the waging of a war of liberation by the Bengali Mukti Bahini forces in East Pakistan, which in West Pakistan was described as a civil war as opposed to a war of liberation.
Independent researchers estimate that between 300,000 and 500,000 civilians died during this period while the Bangladesh government puts the number of dead at three million, a figure that is now nearly universally regarded as excessively inflated. Some academics such as Rudolph Rummel and Rounaq Jahan say both sides committed genocide; others such as Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose believe there was no genocide. In response to India's support for the insurgency in East Pakistan, preemptive strikes on India by Pakistan's air force, navy, and marines sparked a conventional war in 1971 that resulted in an Indian victory and East Pakistan gaining independence as Bangladesh.
With Pakistan surrendering in the war, Yahya Khan was replaced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as president; the country worked towards promulgating its constitution and putting the country on the road to democracy. Democratic rule resumed from 1972 to 1977—an era of self-consciousness, intellectual leftism, nationalism, and nationwide reconstruction. In 1972 Pakistan embarked on an ambitious plan to develop its nuclear deterrence capability with the goal of preventing any foreign invasion; the country's first nuclear power plant was inaugurated in that same year. Accelerated in response to India's first nuclear test in 1974, this crash program was completed in 1979.
Democracy ended with a military coup in 1977 against the leftist PPP, which saw General Zia-ul-Haq become the president in 1978. From 1977 to 1988, President Zia's corporatisation and economic Islamisation initiatives led to Pakistan becoming one of the fastest-growing economies in South Asia. While building up the country's nuclear program, increasing Islamisation, and the rise of a homegrown conservative philosophy, Pakistan helped subsidise and distribute US resources to factions of the mujahideen against the USSR's intervention in communist Afghanistan. Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province became a base for the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters, with the province's influential Deobandi ulama playing a significant role in encouraging and organising the 'jihad'.
President Zia died in a plane crash in 1988, and Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was elected as the country's first female Prime Minister. The PPP was followed by conservative Pakistan Muslim League (N), and over the next decade the leaders of the two parties fought for power, alternating in office while the country's situation worsened; economic indicators fell sharply, in contrast to the 1980s. This period is marked by prolonged stagflation, instability, corruption, nationalism, geopolitical rivalry with India, and the clash of left wing-right wing ideologies. As PML (N) secured a supermajority in elections in 1997, Sharif authorised nuclear testings (See:Chagai-I and Chagai-II), as a retaliation to the second nuclear tests ordered by India, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in May 1998.
Military tension between the two countries in the Kargil district led to the Kargil War of 1999, and turmoil in civic-military relations allowed General Pervez Musharraf to take over through a bloodless coup d'état. Musharraf governed Pakistan as chief executive from 1999 to 2001 and as President from 2001 to 2008—a period of enlightenment, social liberalism, extensive economic reforms, and direct involvement in the US-led war on terrorism. When the National Assembly historically completed its first full five-year term on 15 November 2007, the new elections were called by the Election Commission.
After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007, the PPP secured the most votes in the elections of 2008, appointing party member Yousaf Raza Gillani as Prime Minister. Threatened with impeachment, President Musharraf resigned on 18 August 2008, and was succeeded by Asif Ali Zardari. Clashes with the judicature prompted Gillani's disqualification from the Parliament and as the Prime Minister in June 2012. By its own financial calculations, Pakistan's involvement in the war on terrorism has cost up to $118 billion, sixty thousand casualties and more than 1.8 million displaced civilians. The general election held in 2013 saw the PML (N) almost achieve a supermajority, following which Nawaz Sharif was elected as the Prime Minister, returning to the post for the third time in fourteen years, in a democratic transition. In 2018, Imran Khan (the chairman of PTI) won the 2018 Pakistan general election with 116 general seats and became the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan in election of National Assembly of Pakistan for Prime Minister by getting 176 votes against Shehbaz Sharif (the chairman of PML (N)) who got 96 votes. In April 2022, Shehbaz Sharif was elected as Pakistan's new prime minister, after Imran Khan lost a no-confidence vote in the parliament.


Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 242 million, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles). It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.
Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, and the Indus Valley civilisation of the Bronze Age, the most extensive of the civilisations of the Afro-Eurasia. The region that comprises the modern state of Pakistan was the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid; briefly that of Alexander the Great; the Seleucid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta; the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Hindu Shahis, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Durranis, the Sikh Empire, British East India Company rule, and most recently, the British Indian Empire from 1858 to 1947.
Spurred by the Pakistan Movement, which sought a homeland for the Muslims of British India, and election victories in 1946 by the All-India Muslim League, Pakistan gained independence in 1947 after the Partition of the British Indian Empire, which awarded separate statehood to its Muslim-majority regions and was accompanied by an unparalleled mass migration and loss of life. Initially a Dominion of the British Commonwealth, Pakistan officially drafted its constitution in 1956, and emerged as a declared Islamic republic. In 1971, the exclave of East Pakistan seceded as the new country of Bangladesh after a nine-month-long civil war. In the following four decades, Pakistan has been ruled by governments whose descriptions, although complex, commonly alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist. Pakistan elected a civilian government in 2008, and in 2010 adopted a parliamentary system with periodic elections.
Pakistan is a regional and middle power nation, and has the world's sixth-largest standing armed forces. It is a declared nuclear-weapons state, and is ranked amongst the emerging and growth-leading economies, with a large and rapidly-growing middle class. Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterised by periods of significant economic and military growth as well as those of political and economic instability. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The country continues to face challenges, including poverty, illiteracy, corruption and terrorism. Pakistan is a member of the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Commonwealth of Nations, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition, and is designated as a major non-NATO ally by the United States.


None of the territory of modern Pakistan was ruled by the British, or other European powers, until 1839, when Karachi, then a small fishing village with a mud fort guarding the harbour, was taken, and held as an enclave with a port and military base for the First Afghan War that soon followed. The rest of Sindh was taken in 1843, and in the following decades, first the East India Company, and then after the post-Sepoy Mutiny (1857–1858) direct rule of Queen Victoria of the British Empire, took over most of the country partly through wars, and also treaties. The main wars were that against the Baloch Talpur dynasty, ended by the Battle of Miani (1843) in Sindh, the Anglo-Sikh Wars (1845–1849) and the Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839–1919). By 1893, all modern Pakistan was part of the British Indian Empire, and remained so until independence in 1947.
Under the British, modern Pakistan was mostly divided into the Sind Division, Punjab Province, and the Baluchistan Agency. There were various princely states, of which the largest was Bahawalpur.
A rebellion in 1857 called the Sepoy mutiny of Bengal was the region's major armed struggle against the British. Divergence in the relationship between Hinduism and Islam created a major rift in British India that led to motivated religious violence in British India. The language controversy further escalated the tensions between Hindus and Muslims. The Hindu renaissance witnessed an awakening of intellectualism in traditional Hinduism and saw the emergence of more assertive influence in the social and political spheres in British India. A Muslim intellectual movement, founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to counter the Hindu renaissance, envisioned as well as advocated for the two-nation theory and led to the creation of the All-India Muslim League in 1906. In contrast to the Indian National Congress's anti-British efforts, the Muslim League was a pro-British movement whose political program inherited the British values that would shape Pakistan's future civil society. The largely non-violent independence struggle led by the Indian Congress engaged millions of protesters in mass campaigns of civil disobedience in the 1920s and 1930s against the British Empire.
The Muslim League slowly rose to mass popularity in the 1930s amid fears of under-representation and neglect by the British of the Indian Muslims in politics. In his presidential address of 29 December 1930, Allama Iqbal called for "the amalgamation of North-West Muslim-majority Indian states" consisting of Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan. The perceived neglect of Muslim interests by Congress led British provincial governments during the period of 1937–39 convinced Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan to espouse the two-nation theory and led the Muslim League to adopt the Lahore Resolution of 1940 presented by Sher-e-Bangla A.K. Fazlul Haque, popularly known as the Pakistan Resolution. In World War II, Jinnah and British-educated founding fathers in the Muslim League supported the United Kingdom's war efforts, countering opposition against it whilst working towards Sir Syed's vision.


The Arab conqueror Muhammad ibn Qasim conquered Sindh in 711 CE. The Pakistan government's official chronology claims this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid but the concept of Pakistan arrived in the 19th century. The Early Medieval period (642–1219 CE) witnessed the spread of Islam in the region. During this period, Sufi missionaries played a pivotal role in converting a majority of the regional Buddhist and Hindu population to Islam. Upon the defeat of the Turk and Hindu Shahi dynasties which governed the Kabul Valley, Gandhara (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkwa), and western Punjab in the 7th to 11th centuries CE, several successive Muslim empires ruled over the region, including the Ghaznavid Empire (975–1187 CE), the Ghorid Kingdom, and the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE). The Lodi dynasty, the last of the Delhi Sultanate, was replaced by the Mughal Empire (1526–1857 CE).
The Mughals introduced Persian literature and high culture, establishing the roots of Indo-Persian culture in the region. In the region of modern-day Pakistan, key cities during the Mughal period were Lahore and Thatta, both of which were chosen as the site of impressive Mughal buildings. In the early 16th century, the region remained under the Mughal Empire.
In the 18th century, the slow disintegration of the Mughal Empire was hastened by the emergence of the rival powers of the Maratha Confederacy and later the Sikh Empire, as well as invasions by Nader Shah from Iran in 1739 and the Durrani Empire of Afghanistan in 1759. The growing political power of the British in Bengal had not yet reached the territories of modern Pakistan.


The name Pakistan literally means "land of the pure" or "land of purity", in Urdu and Persian. It alludes to the word پاک (pāk), meaning "pure" in Persian and Pashto. The suffix ـستان (transliterated in English as -stan) is from Persian, and means "land" or "place of".
The name of the country was coined in 1933 by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in a pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym ("thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKISTAN") to refer to the names of the five northern regions of the British Raj: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.


Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan. The earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab. The Indus region, which covers most of present day Pakistan, was the site of several successive ancient cultures including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation (2,800–1,800 BCE) at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.
The Vedic period (1500–500 BCE) was characterised by an Indo-Aryan culture; during this period the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed, and this culture later became well established in the region. Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in the Punjab, which was founded around 1000 BCE. Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Persian Achaemenid Empire (around 519 BCE), Alexander the Great's empire in 326 BCE and the Maurya Empire, founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended by Ashoka the Great, until 185 BCE. The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria (180–165 BCE) included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander (165–150 BCE), prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of higher education in the world, which was established during the late Vedic period in 6th century BCE. The school consisted of several monasteries without large dormitories or lecture halls where the religious instruction was provided on an individualistic basis. The ancient university was documented by the invading forces of Alexander the Great and was also recorded by Chinese pilgrims in the 4th or 5th century CE.
At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty (489–632 CE) of Sindh ruled this region and the surrounding territories. The Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, which, under Dharmapala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan.


1805 (MDCCCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1805th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 805th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 5th  year of the 19th century, and the  6th   year of the 1800s decade. As of the start of 1805, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
  After thirteen years the First French Empire abolished the French Republican Calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar.


July 31 – Dheeran Chinnamalai, Tamil king (b. 1756)
August 3 – Christopher Anstey, English writer (b. 1724)
August 28
Alexander Carlyle, Scottish church leader (b. 1722)
Christopher Gadsden, American statesman (b. 1724)
September 27 – William Moultrie, American general (b. 1730)
September 28 – Christoph Franz von Buseck, Prince-Bishop of Bamberg (b. 1724)
October 5
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, British general (b. 1738)
Eleonore Prochaska, German heroine soldier (b. 1785)
October 21
John Cooke, English captain (b. 1762)
Horatio Nelson, British admiral (mortally wounded in battle) (b. 1758)
November 24 – Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès, French orator, politician (b. 1758)
December 16 – Saverio Cassar, Gozitan priest, rebel leader (b. 1746)
December 23
Pehr Osbeck, Swedish explorer, naturalist (b. 1723)
Geneviève Thiroux d'Arconville, French novelist, translator and chemist (b. 1720)


January 7 – Ebenezer Sproat, American Continental Army officer, pioneer to the Ohio Country (b. 1752)
January 9 – Noble Wimberly Jones, American Continental Congressman (b. 1723)
January 17 – Paschen von Cossel, German lawyer (b. 1714)
January 18 – John Moore (archbishop of Canterbury) (b. 1730)
January 23 – Claude Chappe, French telecommunication pioneer (b. 1763)
February 2 – Thomas Banks, English sculptor and artist (b. 1735)
February 11 – Queen Jeongsun, Korean regent (b. 1745)
February 20 – Justus Claproth, German jurist, inventor of the de-inking process of recycled paper (b. 1728)
February 25 – Thomas Pownall, English colonial statesman (b. 1722)
March 4 – Jean-Baptiste Greuze, French painter (b. 1725)
May 7 – William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1737)
May 9 – Friedrich Schiller, German playwright (b. 1759)
May 12 – Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim, 71st Grandmaster of the Order of Malta (b. 1744)
May 25
William Paley, English philosopher (b. 1743)
Anna Maria Rückerschöld, Swedish author (d. 1725)
May 28 – Luigi Boccherini, Tuscan-born composer (b. 1743)
June 3 – Princess Louise of Saxe-Meiningen, Landgravine of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld (b. 1752)
June 18 – Arthur Murphy, Irish writer (b. 1727)
June 19 – Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, French painter (b. 1724)


Gould was born in Lyme Regis, the first son of a gardener. Both father and son probably had little education. After working on Dowager Lady Poulett's glass house,  his father obtained a position on an estate in Stoke Hill near Guildford, Surrey, and then in 1818, Gould Snr became foreman in the Royal Gardens of Windsor. Gould then became an apprentice for 6 years under the care of J. T. Aiton, of the Royal Gardens of Windsor from 14  to 20 years old. The young Gould started training as a gardener, being employed under his father at Windsor from 1818 to 1824, and he was subsequently a gardener at Ripley Castle in Yorkshire. He became an expert in the art of taxidermy.  In 1824 he set himself up in business in London as a taxidermist, and his skill helped him to become the first curator and preserver at the museum of the Zoological Society of London in 1827.


The area corresponds in large part to Occitania (Occitanie) in southern Europe, the historical and cultural region in which Occitan (French: langue d'oc) – as distinct from the langues d'oïl of northern France – was the predominant language. Though part of Occitania, the regions of Auvergne and Limousin are not normally considered part of the South of France. The largest cities of southern France are Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice and Montpellier. The Pyrenees and French Alps are also located in the area, respectively in its southwestern and eastern parts. The island of Corsica, situated to the south of continental France and right above the island of Sardinia (Italy) may also be included.


Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French as le Midi, is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes: southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast.
The term Midi derives from mi ('middle') and di ('day') in Old French, comparable to the term Mezzogiorno to indicate Southern Italy or Miazăzi which is a synonym for South in Romanian. The time of midday was synonymous with the direction of south because in France, as in all of the Northern Hemisphere north of the Tropic of Cancer, the sun is in the south at noon. The synonymy existed in Middle French as well, where meridien can refer to both midday and south. The Midi is considered to start at Valence, hence the saying à Valence le Midi commence.


Notable touristic landmarks include the Roman-era Pont du Gard and Arena of Nîmes, the Verdon Gorge in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the Canal du Midi, linking Toulouse and the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the natural regions of Larzac, Luberon and Camargue. The French Riviera is located in Southern France's southeastern quadrant. Several towns in Southern France are renowned for their architecture and surroundings, such as Roussillon, Ménerbes, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Gordes, Rocamadour, Rennes-le-Château, Les Baux-de-Provence, Lourmarin, Gassin, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Seillans, Crillon-le-Brave and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.


The following films are set in Southern France:
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
French Connection II (1975)
Never Say Never Again (1983)
Under the Cherry Moon (1986)
Jean de Florette (1986)
Manon des Sources (1986)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
Happiness Is in the Field (1995)
Taxi (1998)
Chocolat (2000)
The Transporter (2002)
Swimming Pool (2003)
Le Grand Voyage (2004)
Priceless (2006)
The Grocer's Son (2007)
Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007)
Amer (2009)
Magic in the Moonlight (2014)


As Europe industrialised, Northwest Africa was increasingly prized for its potential for colonisation. France showed a strong interest in Morocco as early as 1830, not only to protect the border of its Algerian territory, but also because of the strategic position of Morocco with coasts on the Mediterranean and the open Atlantic. In 1860, a dispute over Spain's Ceuta enclave led Spain to declare war. Victorious Spain won a further enclave and an enlarged Ceuta in the settlement. In 1884, Spain created a protectorate in the coastal areas of Morocco.
In 1904, France and Spain carved out zones of influence in Morocco. Recognition by the United Kingdom of France's sphere of influence provoked a strong reaction from the German Empire; and a crisis loomed in 1905. The matter was resolved at the Algeciras Conference in 1906. The Agadir Crisis of 1911 increased tensions between European powers. The 1912 Treaty of Fez made Morocco a protectorate of France, and triggered the 1912 Fez riots. Spain continued to operate its coastal protectorate. By the same treaty, Spain assumed the role of protecting power over the northern coastal and southern Saharan zones.
Tens of thousands of colonists entered Morocco. Some bought up large amounts of rich agricultural land, while others organised the exploitation and modernisation of mines and harbours. Interest groups that formed among these elements continually pressured France to increase its control over Morocco – a control which was also made necessary by the continuous wars among Moroccan tribes, part of which had taken sides with the French since the beginning of the conquest. The French colonial administrator, Governor general Marshal Hubert Lyautey, sincerely admired Moroccan culture and succeeded in imposing a joint Moroccan-French administration, while creating a modern school system. Several divisions of Moroccan soldiers (Goumiers or regular troops and officers) served in the French army in both World War I and World War II, and in the Spanish Nationalist Army in the Spanish Civil War and after (Regulares). The institution of slavery was abolished in 1925.
Between 1921 and 1926, a Berber uprising in the Rif Mountains, led by Abd el-Krim, led to the establishment of the Republic of the Rif. The Spanish lost more than 13,000 soldiers at Annual in July–August 1921. The rebellion was eventually suppressed by French and Spanish troops.
In 1943, the Istiqlal Party (Independence Party) was founded to press for independence, with discreet US support. That party subsequently provided most of the leadership for the nationalist movement.
France's exile of Sultan Mohammed V in 1953 to Madagascar and his replacement by the unpopular Mohammed Ben Aarafa sparked active opposition to the French and Spanish protectorates. The most notable violence occurred in Oujda where Moroccans attacked French and other European residents in the streets. France allowed Mohammed V to return in 1955, and the negotiations that led to Moroccan independence began the following year. In March 1956 the French protectorate was ended and Morocco regained its independence from France as the "Kingdom of Morocco". A month later Spain forsook its protectorate in Northern Morocco to the new state but kept its two coastal enclaves (Ceuta and Melilla) on the Mediterranean coast which dated from earlier conquests,  but on which Morocco still claims sovereignty to this day. Sultan Mohammed became king in 1957.


The area of present-day Morocco has been inhabited since at least Paleolithic times, beginning sometime between 190,000 and 90,000 BC. A recent publication has suggested that there is evidence for even earlier human habitation of the area: Homo sapiens fossils that had been discovered in the late 2000s near the Atlantic coast in Jebel Irhoud were recently dated to roughly 315,000 years ago.  During the Upper Paleolithic, the Maghreb was more fertile than it is today, resembling a savanna, in contrast to its modern arid landscape. Twenty-two thousand years ago, the pre-existing Aterian culture was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian culture, which shared similarities with Iberian cultures. Skeletal similarities have been suggested between the human remains found at Iberomaurusian "Mechta-Afalou" burial sites and European Cro-Magnon remains. The Iberomaurusian culture was succeeded by the Beaker culture in Morocco.
Mitochondrial DNA studies have discovered a close ancestral link between Berbers and the Saami of Scandinavia. This evidence supports the theory that some of the peoples who had been living in the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe during the late-glacial period migrated to northern Europe, contributing to its repopulation after the last ice age.
In the early part of the  Classical Antiquity period, Northwest Africa and Morocco were slowly drawn into the wider emerging Mediterranean world by the Phoenicians, who established trading colonies and settlements there, the most substantial of which were Chellah, Lixus, and Mogador. Mogador was established as a Phoenician colony as early as the 6th century BC.
Morocco later became a realm of the Northwest African civilisation of ancient Carthage, and part of the Carthaginian empire. The earliest known independent Moroccan state was the Berber kingdom of Mauretania, under King Baga. This ancient kingdom (not to be confused with the modern state of Mauritania) flourished around 225 BC or earlier.
Mauretania became a client kingdom of the Roman Empire in 33 BC. Emperor Claudius annexed Mauretania directly in 44 AD, making it a Roman province ruled by an imperial governor (either a procurator Augusti, or a legatus Augusti pro praetore).
During the so-called "crisis of the 3rd century," parts of Mauretania were reconquered by Berber tribes. As a result, by the late 3rd century, direct Roman rule had become confined to a few coastal cities, such as Septum (Ceuta) in Mauretania Tingitana and Cherchell in Mauretania Caesariensis. When, in 429 AD, the area was devastated by the Vandals, the Roman Empire lost its remaining possessions in Mauretania, and local Mauro-Roman kings assumed control of them. In the 530s, the Eastern Roman Empire, under Byzantine control, re-established direct imperial rule of Septum and Tingi, fortified Tingis and erected a church.


Morocco's full Arabic name al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah (المملكة المغربية) may best be translated as 'Kingdom of the West', although 'the West' in Arabic is الغرب al-Gharb. Medieval Arab historians and geographers sometimes referred to Morocco as al-Maghrib al-Aqṣá (المغرب الأقصى, meaning 'the Farthest West') to distinguish it from neighbouring regions then called al-Maghrib al-Awsaṭ (المغرب الأوسط, meaning 'the Middle West') and al-Maghrib al-Adná (المغرب الأدنى, meaning 'the Nearest West').
The word Morocco is derived from the name of the city of Marrakesh, which was its capital under the Almoravid dynasty and the Almohad Caliphate. The origin of the name Marrakesh is disputed, but it most likely comes from the Berber words amur (n) w'akush (ⴰⵎⵓⵔ ⵏ ⵡⴰⴽⵓⵛ), meaning 'Land of God'. The modern Berber name for Marrakesh is Mṛṛakc (in the Berber Latin script). In Turkish, Morocco is known as Fas, a name derived from its ancient capital of Fes. However, in other parts of the Islamic world, for example in Egyptian and Middle Eastern Arabic literature before the mid-20th century, the name commonly used to refer to Morocco was Murrakush (مراكش).
That name is still used for the nation today in some languages, including Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi. The English name Morocco is an anglicisation of the Spanish name for the country, Marruecos. That Spanish name was also the basis for the old Tuscan word for the country, Morrocco, from which the modern Italian word for the country, Marocco, is derived.


In 1549, the region fell to successive Arab dynasties claiming descent from the Islamic prophet, Muhammad: first the Sharifian Saadi dynasty who ruled from 1549 to 1659, and then the Alaouite dynasty, who remain in power since the 17th century. Morocco was faced aggression from Spain and the Ottoman Empire allies pressing westward.
Under the Saadi dynasty, the country ended the Aviz dynasty of Portugal at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578. The reign of Ahmad al-Mansur brought new wealth and prestige to the Sultanate, and a large expedition to West Africa inflicted a crushing defeat on the Songhay Empire in 1591. However, managing the territories across the Sahara proved too difficult. After the death of al-Mansur, the country was divided among his sons.
After a period of political fragmentation and conflict during the decline of the Saadi dynasty, Morocco was finally reunited by the 'Alawi (or Alaouite) sultan al-Rashid in the late 1660s, who took Fez in 1666 and Marrakesh in 1668. The 'Alawis succeeded in stabilising their position, and while the kingdom was smaller than previous ones in the region, it remained quite wealthy. Against the opposition of local tribes Ismail Ibn Sharif (1672–1727) began to create a unified state. With his Jaysh d'Ahl al-Rif (the Riffian Army) he re-occupied Tangier from the English who had abandoned it in 1684 and drove the Spanish from Larache in 1689. Portuguese abandoned Mazagão, their last territory in Morocco, in 1769. However, the Siege of Melilla against the Spanish ended in defeat in 1775.
Morocco was the first nation to recognise the fledgling United States as an independent nation in 1777. In the beginning of the American Revolution, American merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean were subject to attack by the Barbary pirates. On 20 December 1777, Morocco's Sultan Mohammed III declared that American merchant ships would be under the protection of the sultanate and could thus enjoy safe passage. The Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship, signed in 1786, stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty.


A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the  magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian magpie seems more closely related to the Eurasian jay than to the East Asian blue and green magpies, whereas the blue jay is not closely related to either.


Jays are not a monophyletic group. Anatomical and molecular evidence indicates they can be divided into an American and an Old World lineage (the latter including the ground jays and the piapiac), while the grey jays of the genus Perisoreus form a group of their own.  The black magpies, formerly believed to be related to jays, are classified as treepies.


Studio of Artistic Design is founded in Moscow.
Tinker Hatfield designs the Nike Air Max.
Thomas Knoll and John Knoll develop the first version of Photoshop.


1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1987th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 987th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 87th  year of the 20th century, and the  8th   year of the 1980s decade.


2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2004th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 4th  year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the  5th   year of the 2000s decade.

2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO).
The December 26th Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.


Pope John Paul II begins a 10-day trip to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. He arrives in Norway on June 1 and leaves on June 3, visiting Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø.
Cold War: A farmer discovers the burned remains of German security hacker Karl Koch in a forest near Celle, Lower Saxony, West Germany. Despite the unusual circumstances, Koch, who had sold computer data from military and aerospace companies to the KGB, is determined to have committed suicide by self-immolation on May 23.
During the night of June 1–2, American serial killer Oba Chandler rapes 36-year-old Joan Rogers and her 17- and 14-year-old daughters Michelle and Christe and then murders them by throwing them, alive, into Tampa Bay, Florida, weighted with concrete blocks.
Born:
Hadiza Aliyu, Nigerian actress and filmmaker; in Libreville, Gabon
Nataliya Goncharova, Russian Olympic volleyball player; in Skole, Lviv Oblast, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
Sammy Alex Mutahi, Kenyan long-distance runner
Died:
Irena Dubiska, 89, Polish violinist
Aurelio Lampredi, 71, Italian automobile and aircraft engine designer
Martin Zoborosky (a.k.a. Martin Edwards), 72, Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman; played one game in the National Hockey League


The British government announces that it will sell the Short Brothers aerospace company, the largest employer in Northern Ireland, to the Canadian company Bombardier Inc.
Surinam Airways Flight 764, originating from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, crashes in Paramaribo, Suriname, due to pilot error, killing 176. Among the dead are 14 members of an exhibition football team known as the "Colourful XI" (Kleurijk Elftal) (one of whom dies in hospital three days later) and their coach; three players survive.
Died in the crash of Surinam Airways Flight 764:
Ruud Degenaar, 25, Heracles Almelo
Lloyd Doesburg, 29, AFC Ajax
Steve van Dorpel, 23, FC Volendam
Wendel Fräser, 22, RBC Roosendaal
Frits Goodings, 25, FC Wageningen
Jerry Haatrecht, 28, Neerlandia
Virgall Joemankhan, 20, Cercle Brugge K.S.V.
Andro Knel, 21, NAC Breda
Ruben Kogeldans, 22, Willem II Tilburg
Fred Patrick, 23, PEC Zwolle
Andy Scharmin, 21, FC Twente
Elfried Veldman, 23, De Graafschap
Florian Vijent, 27, SC Telstar
Nick Stienstra, 34, RCH (coach)
The United States Navy submarine USS Blenny, launched in 1944, is sunk as part of an artificial reef off Ocean City, Maryland. Former crewmembers of the Blenny are present for the sinking ceremony.
Born:
James Hamilton, New Zealand Olympic snowboarder; in Takapuna, New Zealand
Seiji Kobayashi, Japanese professional baseball catcher
Agyemang Opoku (born Nana Opoku Agyemang-Prempeh), Ghanaian footballer; in Obuasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana
Mitch Robinson, Australian rules footballer
Sofía Sisniega, Mexican actress; in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
Died:
Chico Landi (born Francisco Sacco Landi), 81, Brazilian Formula One driver
Nara Leão, 47, Brazilian bossa nova singer, brain tumor


Sōsuke Uno succeeds Noboru Takeshita as Prime Minister of Japan.
18-year-old Tina Bell disappears in Billingham, England. Her remains will be found in April 1990 on wasteland at ICI Billingham. As of 2019, Bell's murder will remain unsolved.
The Uniroyal Chemical Co. announces a voluntary halt to sales in the United States of the chemical Alar, used to improve the shelf life and color of apples. Studies had linked Alar with tumor development in lab animals.
Born:
Freddy Adu, American soccer player; in Tema, Ghana
Liviu Antal, Romanian footballer; in Șimleu Silvaniei, Romania
Davide Appollonio, Italian professional road bicycle racer; in Isernia, Molise, Italy
Dean Burmester, South African professional golfer; in Mutare, Zimbabwe
Austin Davis, National Football League quarterback and coach; in Meridian, Mississippi
Cooper Helfet, National Football League tight end; in Kentfield, California
Alex Love, American flyweight boxer; in Monroe, Washington
Willy Moon (born William George Sinclair), New Zealand musician, singer and songwriter; in Wellington, New Zealand
Kilakone Siphonexay, Laotian Olympic sprinter; in Vientiane, Laos
Steve Smith, Australian cricketer; in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Darius van Driel, Dutch professional golfer; in Leidschendam, Netherlands
Shane Yarran, Australian rules footballer; in Seville Grove, Western Australia (d. 2018, suicide)
Nanda Zulmi, Indonesian footballer (d. 2017)
Died:
Ted à Beckett, 81, Australian cricketer, Australian rules footballer and solicitor
Guido Agosti, 87, Italian pianist and piano teacher
Dick Mayer (born Alvin Richard Mayer), 64, American professional golfer
Takeo Watanabe, 56, Japanese musician and composer, cancer


October 1 – Emma Sheridan Fry, American actress and playwright (d. 1936)
October 5 – Louis Lumière, French inventor (d. 1948)
October 8 – Kikunae Ikeda, Japanese chemist (d. 1936)
October 9 – Reginald Dyer, British army officer, perpetrator of Jallianwala Bagh massacre (d. 1927)
October 15 – Lorenzo Lauri, Italian cardinal (d. 1941)
October 25 – Alexander Gretchaninov, Russian composer (d. 1956)
October 31 – Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1945)
November 5 – Jessie Ralph, American actress (d. 1944)
November 1 – Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine (d. 1918)
November 11 – Alfred Hermann Fried, Austrian writer, pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1921)
November 24 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (d. 1901)
November 26 – Edward Higgins, 3rd General of The Salvation Army (d. 1947)
December 6
Alberico Albricci, Italian general (d. 1936)
William S. Hart, American film actor, director and writer (d. 1946)
December 8 – Camille Claudel, French sculptor (d. 1943)
December 9 – Breaker Morant, Australian soldier (d. 1902)
December 12 – Paul Elmer More, American critic, essayist (d. 1937)
December 14 – Frank Campeau, American actor (d. 1943)
December 23 – Princess Zorka of Montenegro (d. 1890)
December 25 – Thomas Cahill, American soccer coach (d. 1951)
December 27 – Peyton C. March, American general (d. 1955)


1864 (MDCCCLXIV) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar, the 1864th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 864th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 64th  year of the 19th century, and the  5th   year of the 1860s decade. As of the start of 1864, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


Dozens of potato cultivars have been selectively bred specifically for their skin or, more commonly, flesh color, including gold, red, and blue varieties that contain varying amounts of phytochemicals, including carotenoids for gold/yellow or polyphenols for red or blue cultivars. Carotenoid compounds include provitamin A alpha-carotene and beta-carotene, which are converted to the essential nutrient, vitamin A, during digestion. Anthocyanins mainly responsible for red or blue pigmentation in potato cultivars do not have nutritional significance, but are used for visual variety and consumer appeal. In 2010, potatoes were bioengineered specifically for these pigmentation traits.


The potato is a starchy tuber of the plant Solanum tuberosum and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated by Native Americans independently in multiple locations, but later genetic studies traced a single origin, in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were domesticated there approximately 7,000–10,000 years ago, from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated.
Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish. Today they are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply. As of 2014, potatoes were the world's fourth-largest food crop after maize (corn), wheat, and rice. Following millennia of selective breeding, there are now over 5,000 different types of potatoes. Over 99% of potatoes presently cultivated worldwide descended from varieties that originated in the lowlands of south-central Chile. The importance of the potato as a food source and culinary ingredient varies by region and is still changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe, especially Northern and Eastern Europe, where per capita production is still the highest in the world, while the most rapid expansion in production over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia, with China and India leading the world in overall production as of 2018.
Like the tomato, the potato is a nightshade in the genus Solanum, and the vegetative and fruiting parts of the potato contain the toxin solanine which is dangerous for human consumption. Normal potato tubers that have been grown and stored properly produce glycoalkaloids in amounts small enough to be negligible to human health, but, if green sections of the plant (namely sprouts and skins) are exposed to light, the tuber can accumulate a high enough concentration of glycoalkaloids to affect human health.


In 1960, a student uprising (the "April 19 Revolution") led to the resignation of the autocratic then-President Syngman Rhee. This was followed by 13 months of political instability as South Korea was led by a weak and ineffectual government. This instability was broken by the 16 May 1961, coup led by General Park Chung-hee. As president, Park oversaw a period of rapid export-led economic growth enforced by political repression.
Park was heavily criticized as a ruthless military dictator, who in 1972 extended his rule by creating a new constitution, which gave the president sweeping (almost dictatorial) powers and permitted him to run for an unlimited number of six-year terms. The Korean economy developed significantly during Park's tenure.  The government developed the nationwide expressway system, the Seoul subway system, and laid the foundation for economic development during his 17-year tenure, which ended with his assassination in 1979.
The years after Park's assassination were marked again by political turmoil, as the previously suppressed opposition leaders all campaigned to run for president in the sudden political void. In 1979, General Chun Doo-hwan led the coup d'état of December Twelfth. Following the coup d'état, Chun Doo-hwan planned to rise to power through several measures. On 17 May, Chun Doo-hwan forced the Cabinet to expand martial law to the whole nation, which had previously not applied to the island of Jejudo. The expanded martial law closed universities, banned political activities, and further curtailed the press. Chun's assumption of the presidency through the events of 17 May triggered nationwide protests demanding democracy; these protests were particularly focused in the city of Gwangju, to which Chun sent special forces to violently suppress the Gwangju Democratization Movement.
Chun subsequently created the National Defense Emergency Policy Committee and took the presidency according to his political plan. Chun and his government held South Korea under a despotic rule until 1987, when a Seoul National University student, Park Jong-chul, was tortured to death. On 10 June, the Catholic Priests Association for Justice revealed the incident, igniting the June Democratic Struggle across the country. Eventually, Chun's party, the Democratic Justice Party, and its leader, Roh Tae-woo, announced the 6.29 Declaration, which included the direct election of the president. Roh went on to win the election by a narrow margin against the two main opposition leaders, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam. Seoul hosted the Olympic Games in 1988, widely regarded as successful and a significant boost for South Korea's global image and economy.
South Korea was formally invited to become a member of the United Nations in 1991. The transition of Korea from autocracy to modern democracy was marked in 1997 by the election of Kim Dae-jung, who was sworn in as the eighth president of South Korea, on 25 February 1998. His election was significant given that he had in earlier years been a political prisoner sentenced to death (later commuted to exile). He won against the backdrop of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, where he took IMF advice to restructure the economy and the nation soon recovered its economic growth, albeit at a slower pace.


The name Korea derives from the name Goryeo. The name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo, which was considered a great power of East Asia during its time, in the 5th century as a shortened form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, which was pronounced by the visiting Persian merchants as "Korea". The modern name of Korea, appears in the first Portuguese maps of 1568 by João vaz Dourado as Conrai  and later in the late 16th century and early 17th century as Korea (Corea) in the maps of Teixeira Albernaz of 1630.
The kingdom of Goryeo became first known to Westerners when Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca in 1511 and described the peoples who traded with this part of the world known by the Portuguese as the Gores. Despite the coexistence of the spellings Corea and Korea in 19th century publications, some Koreans believe that Imperial Japan, around the time of the Japanese occupation, intentionally standardized the spelling on Korea, making Japan appear first alphabetically.
After Goryeo was replaced by Joseon in 1392, Joseon became the official name for the entire territory, though it was not universally accepted. The new official name has its origin in the ancient kingdom of Gojoseon (2333 BCE). In 1897, the Joseon dynasty changed the official name of the country from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk (Korean Empire). The name Daehan (Great Han) derives from Samhan (Three Han), referring to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula. However, the name Joseon was still widely used by Koreans to refer to their country, though it was no longer the official name. Under Japanese rule, the two names Han and Joseon coexisted. There were several groups who fought for independence, the most notable being the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (대한민국 임시정부 / 大韓民國臨時政府).
Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the "Republic of Korea" (대한민국 / 大韓民國, IPA: ˈtɛ̝ːɦa̠nminɡuk̚, lit. 'Great Korean People's State'; listen) was adopted as the legal English name for the new country. However, it is not a direct translation of the Korean name. As a result, the Korean name "Daehan Minguk" is sometimes used by South Koreans as a metonym to refer to the Korean ethnicity (or "race") as a whole, rather than just the South Korean state. Conversely, the official name of North Korea in English, the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", is a direct translation of the Korean name.
Since the government only controlled the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, the informal term "South Korea" was coined, becoming increasingly common in the Western world. While South Koreans use Han (or Hanguk) to refer to both Koreas collectively, North Koreans and ethnic Koreans living in China and Japan use the term Joseon instead.


Despite the initial plan of a unified Korea in the 1943 Cairo Declaration, escalating Cold War antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually led to the establishment of separate governments, each with its own ideology, leading to the division of Korea into two political entities in 1948: North Korea and South Korea. In the South, Syngman Rhee, an opponent of communism, who had been backed and appointed by the United States as head of the provisional government, won the first presidential elections of the newly declared Republic of Korea in May. In the North, however, a former anti-Japanese guerrilla and communist activist, Kim Il-sung, was appointed premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in September.
In October, the Soviet Union declared Kim Il-sung's government as sovereign over both parts. The UN declared Rhee's government as "a lawful government having effective control and jurisdiction over that part of Korea where the UN Temporary Commission on Korea was able to observe and consult" and the Government "based on elections which was observed by the Temporary Commission" in addition to a statement that "this is the only such government in Korea." Both leaders began an authoritarian repression of their political opponents inside their region, seeking for a unification of Korea under their control. While South Korea's request for military support was denied by the United States, North Korea's military was heavily reinforced by the Soviet Union.


On 25 June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, sparking the Korean War, the Cold War's first major conflict, which continued until 1953. At the time, the Soviet Union had boycotted the United Nations (UN), thus forfeiting their veto rights. This allowed the UN to intervene in a civil war when it became apparent that the superior North Korean forces would unify the entire country. The Soviet Union and China backed North Korea, with the later participation of millions of Chinese troops. After an ebb and flow that saw both sides facing defeat with massive losses among Korean civilians in both the north and the south, the war eventually reached a stalemate. During the war, Rhee's party promoted the One-People Principle (based on the German ideology of the Herrenvolk) an effort to build an obedient citizenry through ethnic homogeneity and authoritarian appeals to nationalism.
The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along the demilitarized zone near the original demarcation line. No peace treaty was ever signed, resulting in the two countries remaining technically at war. Approximately 3 million people died in the Korean War, with a higher proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War, making it perhaps the deadliest conflict of the Cold War-era. In addition, virtually all of Korea's major cities were destroyed by the war.


South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. South Korea claims to be the sole legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. It has a population of 51.75 million, of which roughly half live in the Seoul Capital Area, the fifth largest metropolis in the world. Other major cities include Incheon, Busan, and Daegu.
The Korean Peninsula was inhabited as early as the Lower Paleolithic period. Its first kingdom was noted in Chinese records in the early 7th century BCE. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea into Silla and Balhae in the late 7th century, Korea was ruled by the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897). The succeeding Korean Empire (1897–1910) was annexed in 1910 into the Empire of Japan. Japanese rule ended following the former's surrender in World War II, after which Korea was divided into two zones; a northern zone occupied by the Soviet Union and a southern zone occupied by the United States. After negotiations on reunification failed, the latter became the Republic of Korea in August 1948 while the former became the socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea the following month.
In 1950, a North Korean invasion began the Korean War, which saw extensive American-led United Nations intervention in support of the South, while China intervened to support the North, with Soviet assistance. After the war's end in 1953, the country entered into a military alliance with the U.S., and its devastated economy began to soar, recording the fastest rise in average GDP per capita in the world between 1980 and 1990. Despite lacking natural resources, the nation rapidly developed to become one of the Four Asian Tigers based on international trade and economic globalization, integrating itself within the world economy with export-oriented industrialization; currently being one of the largest exporting nations in the world, along with having one of the largest foreign-exchange reserves in the world. The June Democratic Struggle led to the end of authoritarian rule in 1987 and the country is now considered among the most advanced democracies in Asia, with the highest level of press freedom on the continent.
South Korea is a highly developed country and is ranked as the seventh-highest country on the Human Development Index (HDI) in the Asia and Oceania region. South Korea has the third-highest life expectancy in the world. In recent years, the country has been facing an aging population and the lowest fertility rate in the world. Its economy ranks as the world's twelfth-largest by nominal GDP. Its citizens enjoy one of the world's fastest Internet connection speeds and the densest high-speed railway network. The country is the world's ninth-largest exporter and ninth-largest importer. Its armed forces is ranked as one of the world's strongest militaries and is the world's second-largest standing army by military and paramilitary personnel. Since the 21st century, South Korea has been renowned for its globally influential pop culture, particularly in music (K-pop), TV dramas (K-dramas) and cinema, a phenomenon referred to as the Korean Wave. It is a member of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee, the G20, the IPEF, and the Paris Club.


The earliest known inhabitants of New England were Native American who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenakis, Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, Pocumtucks, and Wampanoag. Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Western Abenakis inhabited what is modern New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in present-day Maine.
The Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in modern Maine. The Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in what is known today as Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island.  The Wampanoag occupied the regions of modern southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in what is now Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in the current Connecticut region. The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally, linguistically, and politically.
As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts.