After World War II, the UK found itself facing a Jewish guerrilla campaign over Jewish immigration restrictions, as well as continued conflict with the Arab community over limit levels. The Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle against British rule. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees sought a new life far from their destroyed communities in Europe. The Haganah attempted to bring these refugees to Palestine in a program called Aliyah Bet in which tens of thousands of Jewish refugees attempted to enter Palestine by ship. Most of the ships were intercepted by the Royal Navy and the refugees rounded up and placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus by the British.
On 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, which was housed in the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. A total of 91 people of various nationalities were killed and 46 were injured. The hotel was the site of the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and the Headquarters of the British Armed Forces in Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. The attack initially had the approval of the Haganah. It was conceived as a response to Operation Agatha (a series of widespread raids, including one on the Jewish Agency, conducted by the British authorities) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era. The Jewish insurgency continued throughout the rest of 1946 and 1947 despite concerted efforts by the British military and Palestine Police Force to suppress it. British efforts to mediate a negotiated solution with Jewish and Arab representatives also failed as the Jews were unwilling to accept any solution that did not involve a Jewish state and suggested a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, while the Arabs were adamant that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was unacceptable and that the only solution was a unified Palestine under Arab rule. In February 1947, the British referred the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations. On 15 May 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations resolved that the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine be created "to prepare for consideration at the next regular session of the Assembly a report on the question of Palestine." In the Report of the Committee dated 3 September 1947 to the General Assembly, the majority of the Committee in Chapter VI proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem [...] the last to be under an International Trusteeship System." Meanwhile, the Jewish insurgency continued and peaked in July 1947, with a series of widespread guerrilla raids culminating in the Sergeants affair. After three Irgun fighters had been sentenced to death for their role in the Acre Prison break, a May 1947 Irgun raid on Acre Prison in which 27 Irgun and Lehi militants were freed, the Irgun captured two British sergeants and held them hostage, threatening to kill them if the three men were executed. When the British carried out the executions, the Irgun responded by killing both hostages and hanged their bodies from eucalyptus trees, booby-trapping one of them with a mine which injured a British officer as he cut the body down. The hangings caused widespread outrage in Britain and were a major factor in the consensus forming in Britain that it was time to evacuate Palestine.
In September 1947, the British cabinet decided that the Mandate was no longer tenable, and to evacuate Palestine. According to Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones, four major factors led to the decision to evacuate Palestine: the inflexibility of Jewish and Arab negotiators who were unwilling to compromise on their core positions over the question of a Jewish state in Palestine, the economic pressure that stationing a large garrison in Palestine to deal with the Jewish insurgency and the possibility of a wider Jewish rebellion and the possibility of an Arab rebellion put on a British economy already strained by World War II, the "deadly blow to British patience and pride" caused by the hangings of the sergeants, and the mounting criticism the government faced in failing to find a new policy for Palestine in place of the White Paper of 1939.
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union. The plan attached to the resolution was essentially that proposed by the majority of the Committee in the report of 3 September. The Jewish Agency, which was the recognized representative of the Jewish community, accepted the plan, which assigned to Jews - a third of the population owning less than 7% of the land - 55-56% of Mandatory Palestine. The Arab League and Arab Higher Committee of Palestine rejected it, and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition. On the following day, 1 December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem. The situation spiraled into a civil war; just two weeks after the UN vote, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948, at which point the British would evacuate. As Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas, they were faced mainly by the Haganah, as well as the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah moved onto the offensive. During this period 250,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled, due to a number of factors.
On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel." The only reference in the text of the Declaration to the borders of the new state is the use of the term Eretz-Israel ("Land of Israel"). The following day, the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered into parts of what had been British Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War; contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan joined the war. The apparent purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state at inception, and some Arab leaders talked about "driving the Jews into the sea". According to Benny Morris, Jews were worried that the invading Arab armies held the intent to slaughter them. The Arab league stated the invasion was to restore law and order and to prevent further bloodshed.
After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. The UN estimated that more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by or fled from advancing Israeli forces during the conflict—what would become known in Arabic as the Nakba ("catastrophe"). Some 156,000 remained and became Arab citizens of Israel.


Historians believe the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language, however "its exact derivation [is] unknown". The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as 'where fertile land is abundant' (cubao), or 'great place' (coabana).
Fringe theory writers who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal.


In September 1933, the Sergeants' Revolt, led by Sergeant Fulgencio Batista, overthrew Céspedes. A five-member executive committee (the Pentarchy of 1933) was chosen to head a provisional government. Ramón Grau San Martín was then appointed as provisional president. Grau resigned in 1934, leaving the way clear for Batista, who dominated Cuban politics for the next 25 years, at first through a series of puppet-presidents. The period from 1933 to 1937 was a time of "virtually unremitting social and political warfare". On balance, during the period 1933–1940 Cuba suffered from fragile politic structures, reflected in the fact that it saw three different presidents in two years (1935–1936), and in the militaristic and repressive policies of Batista as Head of the Army.


The Caribbean ground sloths, one of the last survivors of the pleistocene megafauna, lived in Cuba possibly until 2660 BCE.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by two distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas: the Taíno (including the Ciboney people), and the Guanahatabey.
The ancestors of the Taíno migrated from the mainland of South America, with the earliest sites dated to 5,000 BP.
The Taíno arrived from Hispaniola sometime in the 3rd century A.D. When Columbus arrived, they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having an estimated population of 150,000. It is unknown when or how the Guanahatabey arrived in Cuba, having both a different language and culture than the Taíno; it is inferred that they were a relict population of pre-Taíno settlers of the Greater Antilles.
The Taíno were farmers, as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers.


The high quality of life that prevails across the state is reflected on statistical rates such as education, as the entity reports an almost perfect record for finished secondary education, and 13 in 100 inhabitants earn a professional degree. In the same line, illiteracy rates for the state are within the lowest in the nation at 2.8%, just behind the Distrito Federal which still leads the country in this regard.
Institutions of higher education include:
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM)
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL)
Centro de Estudios Universitarios (CEU)
Universidad Regiomontana (UR)
Universidad Metropolitana de Monterrey(UMM)
Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM)
Centro de Estudios Superiores de Diseño de Monterrey (CEDIM)


Highly industrialized, Nuevo León possesses a standard of living similar to that of countries such as Croatia, Slovakia or Poland. In 2007, the per capita GDP of the state was similar to that of the Asian Tiger of South Korea and even higher than that of some European Union states such as Slovakia and Hungary. At about $27,000, it was the highest GDP per capita (PPP) of any Mexican state (not counting the Federal District, which also has a very high per capita), and was therefore higher than the Mexican national average (2013 GDP per capita (PPP) national average was $15,700).
One of its municipalities, San Pedro Garza García, is among the richest in the country in terms of per capita income. It is also home of powerful conglomerates, such as Cemex (one of the largest construction materials firms in the world), Bimbo (bakery and pastry), Maseca (food and grains), Banorte (the only high-street bank in Mexico wholly owned by Mexicans), ALFA (Sigma, Alestra, Nemak, Alpek and Hylsa (recently bought by Ternium), i-service (HelpDesk), Vitro SA (glass), FEMSA (Coca-Cola in Latin America), and Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma (brewers of Sol, Tecate, XX, Bohemia, Indio and Nochebuena).
Nuevo León also boasts a rich agricultural core, called the "orange belt", which comprises the municipalities of Allende, Montemorelos, Hualahuises, General Terán and Linares. Small but productive investments have been transforming traditional harvests (mainly based on orange and cereals) into agroindustrial developments that are producing increasing revenues for the local economy.
In contrast with the relative wealth of industrial Nuevo León and the orange belt, the Southern part of the state (municipalities of Galeana, Aramberri, Zaragoza, Doctor Arroyo and Mier y Noriega) remains rural and less productive. Most of The South of the state is at the mercy of a very dry weather that represents a major hurdle for agriculture and livestock.
As of 2010, Nuevo León's economy represents 11.4% of Mexico's total gross domestic product or US$165 billion. Nuevo León's economy has a strong focus on export oriented manufacturing (i.e. maquiladora / INMEX). As of 2005, 431,551 people are employed in the manufacturing sector.   Foreign direct investment in Nuevo León was 1,213.1 million USD for 2005.
In recent years, the state government has been making efforts in attracting significant investments in aeronautics, biotechnology, mechatronics, information and communication technologies fields with the creation of the Research and Technology Innovation Park PIIT (Parque de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica [es]), a technology park oriented in the development, innovation and research of sciences. The project is one of the key strategies within the Monterrey, City of Knowledge program. The park is located in the municipality of Apodaca, part of Greater Monterrey at the 10 km of the highway to Monterrey's International Airport. It consists of a total surface area of 70 Ha (172 acres), half of it already committed to R&D centers. The other 35 Ha (86 acres) are available for research and development centers, and for businesses that meet the Park's objectives.


Nuevo León is divided into 51 municipalities (municipios). See municipalities of Nuevo León.


In Iran (Persia), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. Cotton cultivation was common in Merv, Ray and Pars. In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi's Shahname, there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited Safavid Persia, spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia.


The word "cotton" has Arabic origins, derived from the Arabic word قطن (qutn or qutun). This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic. Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes a province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang, where cotton was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lower prices.


Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.
The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.
The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back to 6000 BC in Peru.
Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.
Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.


There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity:
Gossypium hirsutum – upland cotton, native to Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and southern Florida (90% of world production)
Gossypium barbadense – known as extra-long staple cotton, native to tropical South America (8% of world production)
Gossypium arboreum – tree cotton, native to India and Pakistan (less than 2%)
Gossypium herbaceum – Levant cotton, native to southern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (less than 2%)
Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before the 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties.


The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great, as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica". This may be a reference to "tree cotton", Gossypium arboreum, which is a native of the Indian subcontinent.
According to the Columbia Encyclopedia:
Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. It clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries.


October 4 – Heraclian revolt: Heraclius arrives with a fleet from Africa at Constantinople. Assisted by an uprising in the capital, he overthrows and personally beheads Emperor Phocas. Heraclius gains the throne with help from his father Heraclius the Elder. His first major act is to change the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire from Latin to Greek (already the language of the vast majority of the population). Because of this, after AD 610, the Empire is customarily referred to as the Byzantine Empire (the term Byzantine is a modern term invented by historians in the 18th century; the people of the Empire itself always referred to themselves as "Ρωμαῖος" — tr. Rōmaios, Roman).


In 2004, the Lamiaceae were divided into seven subfamilies, plus 10 genera not placed in any of the subfamilies. The unplaced genera are: Tectona, Callicarpa, Hymenopyramis, Petraeovitex, Peronema, Garrettia, Cymaria, Acrymia, Holocheila, and Ombrocharis. The subfamilies are the Symphorematoideae, Viticoideae, Ajugoideae, Prostantheroideae, Nepetoideae, Scutellarioideae, and Lamioideae. The subfamily Viticoideae is probably not monophyletic. The Prostantheroideae and Nepetoideae are divided into tribes. These are shown in the phylogenetic tree below.


The Lamiaceae (/ˌleɪmiˈeɪsiaɪ, -iː/ LAY-mee-AY-see-eye, -ee)
or Labiatae are a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint or deadnettle or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, hyssop, thyme, lavender, and perilla, as well as other medicinal herbs such as catnip, salvia, bee balm, wild dagga, and oriental motherwort. Some species are shrubs, trees (such as teak), or, rarely, vines.  Many members of the family are widely cultivated, not only for their aromatic qualities, but also their ease of cultivation, since they are readily propagated by stem cuttings. Besides those grown for their edible leaves, some are grown for decorative foliage. Others are grown for seed, such as Salvia hispanica (chia), or for their edible tubers, such as Plectranthus edulis, Plectranthus esculentus, Plectranthus rotundifolius, and Stachys affinis (Chinese artichoke). Many are also grown ornamentally, notably coleus, Plectranthus, and many Salvia species and hybrids.
The family has a cosmopolitan distribution. The enlarged Lamiaceae contain about 236 genera and have been stated to contain 6,900 to 7,200 species, but the World Checklist lists 7,534. The largest genera are Salvia (900), Scutellaria (360), Stachys (300), Plectranthus (300), Hyptis (280), Teucrium (250), Vitex (250), Thymus (220), and Nepeta (200). Clerodendrum was once a genus of over 400 species, but by 2010, it had been narrowed to about 150.
The family has traditionally been considered closely related to the Verbenaceae;  in the 1990s, phylogenetic studies suggested that many genera classified in the Verbenaceae should be classified in the Lamiaceae  or to other families in the order Lamiales.
The alternative family name Labiatae refers to the flowers typically having petals fused into an upper lip and a lower lip (labia in Latin). The flowers are bilaterally symmetrical with five united petals and five united sepals. They are usually bisexual and verticillastrate (a flower cluster that looks like a whorl of flowers, but actually consists of two crowded clusters). Although this is still considered an acceptable alternative name, most botanists now use the name Lamiaceae in referring to this family. The leaves emerge oppositely, each pair at right angles to the previous one (decussate) or whorled. The stems are frequently square in cross section, but this is not found in all members of the family, and is sometimes found in other plant families.


The last revision of the entire family was published in 2004. It described and provided keys to 236 genera. These are marked with an asterisk (*) in the list below. A few genera have been established or resurrected since 2004. These are marked with a plus sign (+). Other genera have been synonymised. These are marked with a minus sign (-). The remaining genera in the list are mostly of historical interest only and are from a source that includes such genera without explanation. Few of these are recognized in modern treatments of the family.
Kew Gardens provides a list of genera that includes additional information. A list at the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website is frequently updated.
*Acanthomintha
*Achyrospermum
Acinos
Acrocephalus
*Acrotome
*Acrymia
Adelosa
*Aegiphila
*Aeollanthus
*Agastache
*Ajuga
*Ajugoides
*Alajja
*Alvesia
*Amasonia
*Amethystea
*Anisochilus
*Anisomeles
*Asterohyptis
*Ballota
*Basilicum
Becium
*Benguellia
*Blephilia
*Bostrychanthera
Bovonia
*Brachysola
*Brazoria
*Bystropogon
Calamintha
*Callicarpa
*Capitanopsis
Capitanya
*Caryopteris
*Catoferia
*Cedronella
Ceratanthus
*Chaiturus
*Chamaesphacos
*Chaunostoma
*Chelonopsis
*Chloanthes
*Cleonia
*Clerodendrum
*Clinopodium
*Colebrookea
*Collinsonia
*Colquhounia
*Comanthosphace
*Congea
*Conradina
Coridothymus
*Cornutia
*Craniotome
*Cryphia
*Cuminia
*Cunila
*Cyanostegia
*Cyclotrichium
*Cymaria
*Dauphinea
*Dicerandra
*Dicrastylis
Discretitheca
Dorystoechas
*Dracocephalum
*Drepanocaryum
*Elsholtzia
*Endostemon
Englerastrum
+Eplingiella
*Eremostachys
*Eriope
*Eriophyton
Eriopidion
*Eriothymus
Erythrochlamys
Euhesperida
*Eurysolen
*Faradaya
*Fuerstia
*Galeopsis
*Garrettia
Geniosporum
*Glechoma
*Glechon
*Glossocarya
*Gmelina
*Gomphostemma
*Gontscharovia
*Hanceola
*Haplostachys
*Haumaniastrum
*Hedeoma
*Hemiandra
*Hemigenia
*Hemiphora
*Hemizygia
*Hesperozygis
*Heterolamium
*Hoehnea
*Holmskioldia
*Holocheila
Holostylon
*Horminum
*Hosea
*Hoslundia
*Huxleya
*Hymenocrater
*Hymenopyramis
*Hypenia
*Hypogomphia
*Hyptidendron
*Hyptis
*Hyssopus
Isodictyophorus
*Isodon
*Isoleucas
+Kalaharia
*Karomia
Keiskea
Killickia
Kudrjaschevia
*Kurzamra
*Lachnostachys
*Lagochilus
*Lagopsis
*Lallemantia
*Lamiophlomis
*Lamium
*Lavandula
*Leocus
*Leonotis
*Leonurus
*Lepechinia
*Leucas
Leucophae
*Leucosceptrum
Limniboza
*Lophanthus
*Loxocalyx
*Lycopus
*Macbridea
*Madlabium
*Marmoritis
+Martianthus
*Marrubium
*Marsypianthes
*Matsumurella
*Meehania
*Melissa
*Melittis
*Mentha
*Meriandra
Mesona
*Metastachydium
*Microcorys
*Micromeria
*Microtoena
*Minthostachys
*Moluccella
*Monarda
*Monardella
*Monochilus
*Mosla
*Neoeplingia
Neohyptis
Neorapinia
*Nepeta
*Newcastelia
Nosema
*Notochaete
*Obtegomeria
*Ocimum
Octomeron
*Ombrocharis
*Oncinocalyx
*Origanum
*Orthosiphon
*Otostegia
+Ovieda
*Oxera
*Panzerina
*Paralamium
*Paraphlomis
*Paravitex
*Peltodon
*Pentapleura
*Perilla
*Perillula
*Peronema
-Perovskia
Perrierastrum
Petitia
*Petraeovitex
*Phlomidoschema
*Phlomis
*Phlomoides
*Phyllostegia
*Physopsis
*Physostegia
*Piloblephis
Pitardia
*Pityrodia
*Platostoma
*Plectranthus
*Pogogyne
*Pogostemon
*Poliomintha
*Prasium
*Premna
*Prostanthera
*Prunella
*Pseuderemostachys
*Pseudocarpidium
*Pseudocaryopteris
*Pseudomarrubium
Puntia
*Pycnanthemum
*Pycnostachys
Rabdosiella
*Renschia
*Rhabdocaulon
*Rhaphiodon
*Rhododon
-Rosmarinus
*Rostrinucula
*Rotheca
*Roylea
*Rubiteucris
+Rydingia
Sabaudia
*Saccocalyx
Salazaria
*Salvia
*Satureja
*Schizonepeta
*Schnabelia
*Scutellaria
*Sideritis
*Siphocranion
Solenostemon
*Spartothamnella
*Sphenodesme
*Stachydeoma
*Stachyopsis
*Stachys
*Stenogyne
*Sulaimania
*Suzukia
*Symphorema
Symphostemon
*Synandra
*Syncolostemon
*Tectona
*Teijsmanniodendron
+Tetraclea
*Tetradenia
*Teucridium
*Teucrium
*Thorncroftia
*Thuspeinanta
*Thymbra
*Thymus
*Tinnea
*Trichostema
*Tripora
*Tsoongia
*Vitex
*Viticipremna
+Volkameria
*Warnockia
*Wenchengia
*Westringia
Wiedemannia
*Wrixonia
Xenopoma
*Zataria
*Zhumeria
*Ziziphora


Most of the genera of Lamiaceae have never been sampled for DNA for molecular phylogenetic studies. Most of those that have been are included in the following phylogenetic tree. The phylogeny depicted below is based on seven different sources.


One of the first geographers who mentioned Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions. Historically, political geography and culture have been two significant parameters widely used in scholarly definitions of Central Asia. Humboldt's definition composed of every country between 5° North and 5° South of the latitude 44.5°N. Humboldt mentions some geographic features of this region, which include the Caspian Sea in the west, the Altai mountains in the north and the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountains in the South. He did not give an eastern border for the region. His legacy is still seen: Humboldt University of Berlin, named after him, offers a course in Central Asian Studies. The Russian geographer Nikolaĭ Khanykov questioned the latitudinal definition of Central Asia and preferred a physical one of all countries located in the region landlocked from water, including Afghanistan, Khorasan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uyghuristan (Xinjiang), and Uzbekistan.
Russian culture has two distinct terms: Средняя Азия (Srednyaya Aziya or "Middle Asia", the narrower definition, which includes only those traditionally non-Slavic, Central Asian lands that were incorporated within those borders of historical Russia) and Центральная Азия (Tsentralnaya Aziya or "Central Asia", the wider definition, which includes Central Asian lands that have never been part of historical Russia). The latter definition includes Afghanistan and 'East Turkestan'.
The most limited definition was the official one of the Soviet Union, which defined Middle Asia as consisting solely of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, omitting Kazakhstan. Soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the leaders of the four former Soviet Central Asian Republics met in Tashkent and declared that the definition of Central Asia should include Kazakhstan as well as the original four included by the Soviets. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia.
The UNESCO History of the Civilizations of Central Asia, published in 1992, defines the region as "Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, northern and central Pakistan, northern India, western China, Mongolia and the former Soviet Central Asian republics".
An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity, and in particular, areas populated by Eastern Turkic, Eastern Iranian, or Mongolian peoples. These areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan and the Kashmir Valley of India may also be included. The Tibetans and Ladakhis are also included. Most of the mentioned peoples are considered the "indigenous" peoples of the vast region.  Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan.


At the crossroads of Asia, shamanistic practices live alongside Buddhism. Thus, Yama, Lord of Death, was revered in Tibet as a spiritual guardian and judge. Mongolian Buddhism, in particular, was influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. The Qianlong Emperor of Qing China in the 18th century was Tibetan Buddhist and would sometimes travel from Beijing to other cities for personal religious worship.
Central Asia also has an indigenous form of improvisational oral poetry that is over 1000 years old. It is principally practiced in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by akyns, lyrical improvisationalists. They engage in lyrical battles, the aitysh or the alym sabak. The tradition arose out of early bardic oral historians. They are usually accompanied by a stringed instrument—in Kyrgyzstan, a three-stringed komuz, and in Kazakhstan, a similar two-stringed instrument, the dombra.
Photography in Central Asia began to develop after 1882, when a Russian Mennonite photographer named Wilhelm Penner moved to the Khanate of Khiva during the Mennonite migration to Central Asia led by Claas Epp, Jr. Upon his arrival to Khanate of Khiva, Penner shared his photography skills with a local student Khudaybergen Divanov, who later became the founder of Uzbek photography.
Some also learn to sing the Manas, Kyrgyzstan's epic poem (those who learn the Manas exclusively but do not improvise are called manaschis). During Soviet rule, akyn performance was co-opted by the authorities and subsequently declined in popularity. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it has enjoyed a resurgence, although akyns still do use their art to campaign for political candidates. A 2005 The Washington Post article proposed a similarity between the improvisational art of akyns and modern freestyle rap performed in the West.
As a consequence of Russian colonisation, European fine arts – painting, sculpture and graphics – have developed in Central Asia. The first years of the Soviet regime saw the appearance of modernism, which took inspiration from the Russian avant-garde movement. Until the 1980s, Central Asian arts had developed along with general tendencies of Soviet arts. In the 90s, arts of the region underwent some significant changes. Institutionally speaking, some fields of arts were regulated by the birth of the art market, some stayed as representatives of official views, while many were sponsored by international organisations. The years of 1990–2000 were times for the establishment of contemporary arts. In the region, many important international exhibitions are taking place, Central Asian art is represented in European and American museums, and the Central Asian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale has been organised since 2005.


Central Asia is a region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains (Tian Shan), vast deserts (Kyzyl Kum, Taklamakan), and especially treeless, grassy steppes. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a homogeneous geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe.
Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming. The Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan (Da Hinggan) Mountains, 116°–118° E.
Central Asia has the following geographic extremes:
The world's northernmost desert (sand dunes), at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, 50°18' N.
The Northern Hemisphere's southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17' N.
The world's shortest distance between non-frozen desert and permafrost: 770 km (480 mi).
The Eurasian pole of inaccessibility.
A majority of the people earn a living by herding livestock. Industrial activity centers in the region's cities.
Major rivers of the region include the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, Irtysh, the Hari River and the Murghab River. Major bodies of water include the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, both of which are part of the huge west-central Asian endorheic basin that also includes the Caspian Sea.
Both of these bodies of water have shrunk significantly in recent decades due to diversion of water from rivers that feed them for irrigation and industrial purposes. Water is an extremely valuable resource in arid Central Asia and can lead to rather significant international disputes.


Solander was born in Piteå, Norrbotten, Sweden, to Rev. Carl Solander a Lutheran principal, and Magdalena (née Bostadia). Solander enrolled at Uppsala University in July 1750 and initially studied languages, the humanities and law. The professor of botany was the celebrated Carl Linnaeus, who was soon impressed by young Solander's ability and accordingly persuaded his father to let him study natural history. Solander travelled to England in June 1760 to promote the new Linnean system of classification. In February 1763, he began cataloguing the natural history collections of the British Museum, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June the following year.
In 1768, Solander gained leave of absence from the British Museum and with his assistant Herman Spöring accompanied Joseph Banks on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean aboard the Endeavour. They were the botanists who inspired the name Botanist Bay (which later became Botany Bay) for the first landing place of Cook's expedition in Australia. Solander helped make and describe an important collection of Australian plants while the Endeavour was beached at the site of present-day Cooktown for nearly seven weeks, after being damaged on the Great Barrier Reef. These collections later formed the basis of Banks' Florilegium.
Solander also wrote a manuscript describing all the species collected from New Zealand during the six months the 1768 expedition spent there. It was called Primitiae Florae Novae Zelandiae ('beginnings of a New Zealand flora'), and was to be illustrated with the plates prepared by Banks. It was never published, but it was available for study by anyone interested, first at Banks' London home, then at the Natural History section of the British Museum.
Solander's return to Britain with Cook and Banks made him the first Swede to circumnavigate the globe.
On their return in 1771, Solander resumed his duties at the British Museum but also collaborated with Banks on the Florilegium. In 1772, he accompanied Banks on his voyage to Iceland, the Hebrides and the Orkney Islands. Between 1773 and 1782 he was Keeper of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. In 1773, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Solander died at Banks' home in Soho Square of a stroke, aged 49, on 13 May 1782.  An autopsy was performed the next day, and revealed a brain haemorrhage. He is buried in the Swedish Section at Brookwood Cemetery.


Solander's reputation has been profoundly influenced by his limited number of publications and his premature death.  Although he had detailed descriptions prepared for most of the botanical specimens he collected on the Endeavour voyage, in deference to Joseph Banks, Solander held off publication waiting for the completion of over 700 engravings. However, after Solander's death, Banks, now President of the Royal Society, failed to publish his projected Florilegium. Had he done so, he would have secured Solander's posthumous reputation. It has been claimed that Banks treated Solander, and Jonas Dryander, as his servants rather than as botanists of equal standing to others in the botanical establishment. However, Banks clearly had a strong emotional bond with Solander, met his expenses and even supported his relatives in Sweden.  In 1784, when he wrote to Johan Alströmer of Solander's death, Banks declared: 'This too early loss of a friend, whom I during my more mature years have loved and whom I will always miss, makes me wish to draw a veil over his death, as soon as I have ceased to speak of it. I can never think of it without feeling a mortal pain.'  Solander remained an employee of the British Museum for the last decade of his life but was also paid by Banks to assist him with his collections.  Banks' relationship with Robert Brown was more formal.
Solander invented the book-form box known as the Solander box which is still used in libraries and archives as the most suitable way of storing prints, drawings, herbarium materials and some manuscripts.
Solander Gardens in the east end of London is named after him, as are the Solander Islands off New Zealand's South Island and Cape Solander in the Kamay Botany Bay National Park, also in the suburb of Redfern near Sydney NSW the housing commission towers include a Daniel Solander building. Also Solander Island, off the NW coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. One of the many plants named in his honour is Fuscospora solandri (black beech). Solander was associated with Banks in Illustrations of the Botany of Captain Cook's Voyage Round the World, and his The Natural History of Many Curious and Uncommon Zoophytes, Collected by the late John Ellis, (1786) was published posthumously. The 'Daniel Solander Library' in Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden, established in 1852, is the oldest botanical research library in Australia.
The scientific name of the Providence Petrel, Pterodroma solandri, was given in his honour by ornithologist John Gould.
The shrub Banksia solandri is named after him.
In Solander's birth town Piteå, the Solander Science Park houses a number of cleantech companies and research organizations.


January 10 – Gordon Granger, American General (b. 1822)
January 15 – Eliza McCardle Johnson, First Lady of the United States (b. 1810)
February 10 – Reverdy Johnson, American politician (b. 1796)
February 18 – Charlotte Cushman, American actress (b. 1816)
February 24 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts, 2-time President of Liberia (b. 1809)
March 29 – Karl Ferdinand Ranke, German educator (b. 1806)
April 9 – Charles Goodyear, American politician (b. 1804)
May 7 – William Buell Sprague, American clergyman, author (b. 1795)
May 8 – Truganini, Tasmanian language=Aboriginal woman (b. c. 1812)
May 24 – Henry Kingsley, English novelist (b. 1830)
May 26 – František Palacký, Czech historian, politician (b. 1798)
June 1 – Hristo Botev, Bulgarian revolutionary (b. 1848)
June 4 – Abdülaziz, 32nd Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (b. 1830)
June 6 – Auguste Casimir-Perier, French diplomat (b. 1811)
June 7 – Josephine of Leuchtenberg, Queen of Sweden and Norway (b. 1807)
June 8 – George Sand, French writer (b. 1804)
June 20 – John Neal, American writer, critic, and women's rights activist (b. 1793)
June 21 – Antonio López de Santa Anna, 11-time President of Mexico (b. 1794)
June 25 – George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army general (in battle) (b. 1839)
June 27 – Harriet Martineau, British social theorist, writer (b. 1802)


1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1876th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 876th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 76th  year of the 19th century, and the  7th   year of the 1870s decade. As of the start of 1876, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


The understory is the underlying layer of vegetation in a forest or wooded area, especially the trees and shrubs growing between the forest canopy and the forest floor.
Plants in the understory comprise an assortment of seedlings and saplings of canopy trees together with specialist understory shrubs and herbs. Young canopy trees often persist in the understory for decades as suppressed juveniles until an opening in the forest overstory permits their growth into the canopy. In contrast understory shrubs complete their life cycles in the shade of the forest canopy. Some smaller tree species, such as dogwood and holly, rarely grow tall and generally are understory trees.
The canopy of a tropical forests are typically about 10m thick, and intercepts around 95% of the sunlight. The understory therefore receives less intense light than plants in the canopy and such light as does penetrate is impoverished in wavelengths of light that are most effective for photosynthesis. Understory plants therefore must be shade tolerant—they must be able to photosynthesize adequately using such light as does reach their leaves.  They often are able to use wavelengths that canopy plants cannot. In temperate deciduous forests towards the end of the leafless season, understory plants take advantage of the shelter of the still leafless canopy plants to "leaf out" before the canopy trees do. This is important because it provides the understory plants with a window in which to photosynthesize without the canopy shading them. This brief period (usually 1–2 weeks) is often a crucial period in which the plant can maintain a net positive carbon balance over the course of the year.
As a rule forest understories also experience higher humidity than exposed areas. The forest canopy reduces solar radiation, so the ground does not heat up or cool down as rapidly as open ground. Consequently, the understory dries out more slowly than more exposed areas do. The greater humidity encourages epiphytes such as ferns and mosses, and allows fungi and other decomposers to flourish. This drives nutrient cycling, and provides favorable microclimates for many animals and plants, such as the pygmy marmoset.


In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but above the forest floor. Only a small percentage of light penetrates the canopy so understory vegetation is generally shade-tolerant. The understory typically consists of trees stunted through lack of light, other small trees with low light requirements, saplings, shrubs, vines and undergrowth. Small trees such as holly and dogwood are understory specialists.
In temperate deciduous forests, many understory plants start into growth earlier in the year than the canopy trees, to make use of the greater availability of light at that particular time of year. A gap in the canopy caused by the death of a tree stimulates the potential emergent trees into competitive growth as they grow upwards to fill the gap. These trees tend to have straight trunks and few lower branches. At the same time, the bushes, undergrowth, and plant life on the forest floor become denser. The understory experiences greater humidity than the canopy, and the shaded ground does not vary in temperature as much as open ground. This causes a proliferation of ferns, mosses, and fungi and encourages nutrient recycling, which provides favorable habitats for many animals and plants.


Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado named the new province after Jesus Christ – San Salvador (lit. "Holy Savior"). The territory's name, including the province of San Miguel, was later extended to the Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesus Cristo, El Salvador Del Mundo (lit. 'Province of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World'), shortened to the Republic of El Salvador, or Salvador, during the post-Federal Republic period and subsequently settled on as El Salvador.


In 1821 in light of unrest in Guatemala, Spanish authorities capitulated and signed the Act of Independence of Central America, which released all of the Captaincy of Guatemala (comprising current territories of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas) from Spanish rule and declared its independence. In 1821, El Salvador joined Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in a union named the Federal Republic of Central America.
In early 1822, the authorities of the newly independent Central American provinces, meeting in Guatemala City, voted to join the newly constituted First Mexican Empire under Agustín de Iturbide. El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. A Mexican military detachment marched to San Salvador and suppressed dissent, but with the fall of Iturbide on 19 March 1823, the army decamped back to Mexico. Shortly thereafter, the authorities of the provinces revoked the vote to join Mexico, deciding instead to form a federal union of the five remaining provinces. (Chiapas permanently joined Mexico at this juncture.) When the Federal Republic of Central America dissolved in 1841, El Salvador maintained its own government until it joined Honduras and Nicaragua in 1896 to form the Greater Republic of Central America, which dissolved in 1898.
After the mid-19th century, the economy was based on coffee growing. As the world market for indigo withered away, the economy prospered or suffered as the world coffee price fluctuated. The enormous profits that coffee yielded as a monoculture export served as an impetus for the concentration of land into the hands of an oligarchy of just a few families. Throughout the last half of the 19th century, a succession of presidents from the ranks of the Salvadoran oligarchy, nominally both conservative and liberal, generally agreed on the promotion of coffee as the predominant cash crop, the development of infrastructure (railroads and port facilities) primarily in support of the coffee trade, the elimination of communal landholdings to facilitate further coffee production, the passage of anti-vagrancy laws to ensure that displaced campesinos and other rural residents provided sufficient labour for the coffee fincas (plantations), and the suppression of rural discontent. In 1912, the national guard was created as a rural police force.


Tomayate is a palaeontological site located on the banks of the river of the same name in the municipality of Apopa. The site has produced abundant Salvadoran megafauna fossils belonging to the Pleistocene. The palaeontological site was discovered accidentally in 2000, and in the following year, an excavation by the Museum of Natural History of El Salvador revealed several remnants of Cuvieronius and 18 other species of vertebrates including giant tortoises, Megatherium, Glyptodon, Toxodon, extinct horses, paleo-llamas. The site stands out from most Central American Pleistocene deposits, being more ancient and much richer, which provides valuable information of the Great American Interchange, in which the Central American isthmus land bridge was paramount. At the same time, it is considered the richest vertebrate site in Central America and one of the largest accumulations of proboscideans in the Americas.


During the colonial period, San Salvador and San Miguel were part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, also known as the Kingdom of Guatemala (Spanish: Reino de Guatemala), created in 1609 as an administrative division of New Spain. The Salvadoran territory was administered by the mayor of Sonsonate, with San Salvador being established as an intendencia in 1786.
In 1811, a combination of internal and external factors motivated Central American elites to attempt to gain independence from the Spanish Crown. The most important internal factors were the desire of local elites to control the country's affairs free of involvement from Spanish authorities, and the long-standing Creole aspiration for independence. The main external factors motivating the independence movement were the success of the French and American revolutions in the 18th century, and the weakening of the Spanish Crown's military power as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, with the resulting inability to control its colonies effectively.
In November 1811 Salvadoran priest José Matías Delgado rang the bells of Iglesia La Merced in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement. This insurrection was suppressed, and many of its leaders were arrested and served sentences in jail. Another insurrection was launched in 1814, which was also suppressed.


By 1521, the indigenous population of the Mesoamerican area had been drastically reduced by the smallpox epidemic that was spreading throughout the territory, although it had not yet reached pandemic levels in Cuzcatlán or the northern portion Managuara. The first known visit by Spaniards to what is now Salvadoran territory was made by the admiral Andrés Niño, who led an expedition to Central America. He disembarked in the Gulf of Fonseca on 31 May 1522, at Meanguera island, naming it Petronila, and then traversed to Jiquilisco Bay on the mouth of Lempa River. The first indigenous people to have contact with the Spanish were the Lenca of eastern El Salvador.


Sophisticated civilization in El Salvador dates to its settlement by the indigenous Lenca people; theirs was the first and the oldest indigenous civilization to settle in there. They were a union of Central American tribes that oversaw most of the isthmus from southern Guatemala to northern Panama, which they called Managuara. The Lenca of eastern El Salvador trace their origins to specific caves with ancient pictographs dating back to at least 600 AD and some sources say as far back as 7000 BC. There was also a presence of Olmecs, although their role is unclear. Their influence remains recorded in the form of stone monuments and artefacts preserved in western El Salvador, as well as the national museum. A Mayan population settled there in the Formative period, but their numbers were greatly diminished when the Ilopango supervolcano eruption caused a massive exodus.
Centuries later the area's occupants were displaced by the Pipil people, Nahua speaking groups who migrated from Anahuac beginning around 800 AD and occupied the central and western regions of El Salvador. The Nahua Pipil were the last indigenous people to arrive in El Salvador. They called their territory Kuskatan, a Nawat word meaning "The Place of Precious Jewels," back-formed into Classical Nahuatl Cōzcatlān, and Hispanicized as Cuzcatlán. It was the largest domain in Salvadoran territory up until European contact. The term Cuzcatleco is commonly used to identify someone of Salvadoran heritage, although the majority of the eastern population has indigenous heritage of Lenca origin, as do their place names such as Intipuca, Chirilagua, and Lolotique.
Most of the archaeological sites in western El Salvador such as Lago de Guija and Joya De Ceren indicate a pre-Columbian Mayan culture. Cihuatan shows signs of material trade with northern Nahua culture, eastern Mayan and Lenca culture, and southern Nicaraguan and Costa Rican indigenous culture. Tazumal's smaller B1-2 structure shows a talud-tablero style of architecture that is associated with Nahua culture and corresponds with their migration history from Anahuac. In eastern El Salvador, the Lenca site of Quelepa is highlighted as a major pre-Columbian cultural center and demonstrates links to the Mayan site of Copan in western Honduras as well as the previously mentioned sites in Chalchuapa, and Cara Sucia in western El Salvador. An investigation of the site of La Laguna in Usulutan has also produced Copador items which link it to the Lenca-Maya trade route.


The Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the Americas in his 1503 letter, giving it its popular cachet, although similar terms had nonetheless been used and applied before him.


At the start, the landscaping contractor issues a statement which is a rough design and layout of what could be done with the land in order to achieve the desired outcome. Different pencils are required to make graphics of the picture. Landscaping has become more technological than natural, as few projects begin without bulldozers, lawnmowers, or chainsaws. Different areas have different qualities of plants.  When growing new grass, it should ideally be done in the spring and the fall seasons to maximize growth and to minimize the spread of weeds. It is generally agreed that organic or chemical fertilizers are required for good plant growth. Some landscapers prefer to use mix gravel with rocks of varying sizes to add interest in large areas.


1812 (MDCCCXII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1812th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 812th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 12th  year of the 19th century, and the  3rd   year of the 1810s decade. As of the start of 1812, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


October 9 – War of 1812: American naval forces under Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliott capture two British warships, HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.
October 12 – The capital of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, is permanently moved from Lancaster to Harrisburg.
October 13 – War of 1812 – Battle of Queenston Heights: As part of the Niagara campaign in Ontario, Canada, United States forces under General Stephen Van Rensselaer are repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops, led by Sir Isaac Brock (who dies during the battle).
October 18–20 – Second Battle of Polotsk – Russians attack and defeat a Franco-Bavarian force in Belarus.
October 19 – Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow.
October 23 – Malet coup of 1812: General Claude François de Malet attempts unsuccessfully to overthrow the Napoleonic régime in Paris.
October 24 – Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Maloyaroslavets: An inconclusive encounter between the French vanguard and a Russian force leads Napoleon to decide to retreat along the same line as his advance, with disastrous results.
November 3 – Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Vyazma: The rearguard of Napoleon's retreating army is defeated.
November 5 – U.S. presidential election, 1812: James Madison defeats DeWitt Clinton.
November 10 – 1812 United Kingdom general election: The Tory Party is victorious, under Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.
November 15–18 – Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Krasnoi: Napoleon's retreating army is again defeated in a series of skirmishes.
December 8 – The M6.9–7.5 San Juan Capistrano earthquake affects Alta California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong) to IX (Violent), killing 40 parishioners at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
December 14 – The French invasion of Russia comes to an end as the remnants of the Grande Armée are expelled from Russia.
December 20 – The first volume of Grimms' Fairy Tales is published in Germany.
December 29 – War of 1812: USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Java, off the coast of Brazil.
December 30 – The Convention of Tauroggen is signed.


The tundra climate is a polar climate sub-type located in high latitudes and high mountains. It is classified as ET according to Köppen climate classification. It is a climate which at least one month has an average temperature high enough to melt snow (0 °C (32 °F)), but no month with an average temperature in excess of 10 °C (50 °F).
Despite the potential diversity of climates in the ET category involving precipitation, extreme temperatures, and relative wet and dry seasons, this category is rarely subdivided. Rainfall and snowfall are generally slight due to the low vapor pressure of water in the chilly atmosphere, but as a rule potential evapotranspiration is extremely low, allowing soggy terrain of swamps and bogs even in places that get precipitation typical of deserts of lower and middle latitudes. The amount of native tundra biomass depends more on the local temperature than the amount of precipitation.


The name Svalbard is composed of the well-attested Old Norse words svalr ('cold') and barð ('edge', 'ridge', 'turf', 'beard'), adapted to Norwegian phonology. The name therefore refers to the mostly grass covering and notable lack of trees or bushes. The meaning edge or ridge is not really relevant here. The term was corrupted in the Icelandic from a neuter term to a masculine term also confusing the meaning and the Norwegian name appears to be based on the later version and there was no reversion in Icelandic as did happen with many other names that had become obscured.
The name Spitsbergen originated with Dutch navigator and explorer Willem Barentsz, who described the "pointed mountains" or, in Dutch, spitse bergen that he saw on the west coast of the main island, Spitsbergen. Barentsz did not recognize that he had discovered an archipelago, and consequently the name Spitsbergen long remained in use both for the main island and for the archipelago as a whole.


The Dutchman Willem Barentsz made the first discovery of the archipelago in 1596, when he sighted the coast of the island of Spitsbergen while searching for the Northern Sea Route.
The first recorded landing on the islands of Svalbard dates to 1604, when an English ship landed at Bjørnøya, or Bear Island, and started hunting walrus. Annual expeditions soon followed, and Spitsbergen became a base for hunting the bowhead whale from 1611. Because of the lawless nature of the area, English, Danish, Dutch, and French companies and authorities tried to use force to keep out other countries' fleets.


Norwegian hunting—mostly for walrus—started in the 1790s. The first Norwegian citizens to reach Spitsbergen proper were a number of Coast Sámi people from the Hammerfest region, who were hired as part of a Russian crew for an expedition in 1795. After the Anglo-Russian War in 1809, Russian activity on Svalbard diminished, and ceased by the 1820s. Norwegian whaling was abandoned about the same time as the Russians left, but whaling continued around Spitsbergen until the 1830s, and around Bjørnøya until the 1860s.


Svalbard, known to both British and Germans as Spitsbergen, was little affected by the German invasion of Norway in April 1940. The settlements continued to operate as before, mining coal and monitoring the weather.
In July 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Royal Navy reconnoitered the islands with a view to using them as a base of operations to send supplies to north Russia, but the idea was rejected as impractical. Instead, with the agreement of the Soviets and the Norwegian government in exile, in August 1941 the Norwegian and Soviet settlements on Svalbard were evacuated, and facilities there destroyed, in Operation Gauntlet.
However the Norwegian government in exile decided it would be important politically to establish a garrison in the islands, which was done in May 1942 during Operation Fritham.
Meanwhile, the Germans responded to the destruction of the weather station by establishing a reporting station of their own, codenamed "Banso", in October 1941. This was chased away in November by a visit from four British warships, but later returned. A second station, "Knospel", was established at Ny-Ålesund in 1941, remaining until 1942. In May 1942, after the arrival of the Fritham force, the German unit at Banso was evacuated.
In September 1943 in Operation Zitronella a German task force, which included the battleship Tirpitz, was sent to attack the garrison and destroy the settlements at Longyearbyen and Barentsburg. This was achieved, but had little long-term effect: after their departure the Norwegians returned and re-established their presence.
In September 1944, the Germans set up their last weather station, Operation Haudegen in NordOstLand; it functioned until after the German surrender. On 4 September 1945, the soldiers were picked up by a Norwegian seal hunting vessel and surrendered to its captain. This group of men were the last German troops to surrender after the Second World War.
After the war, the Soviet Union proposed common Norwegian and Soviet administration and military defence of Svalbard. This was rejected in 1947 by Norway, which two years later joined NATO. The Soviet Union retained high civilian activity on Svalbard, in part to ensure that the archipelago was not used by NATO.


The early decades of the 20th century saw Indiana develop into a leading manufacturing state with heavy industry concentrating in the north. In 1906 the United States Steel Corporation created a new industrial city on Lake Michigan, Gary, named after Elbert Henry Gary, its founding chairman. With industrialization, workers developed labor unions (their strike activities induced governor James P. Goodrich to declare martial law in Gary in 1919) and a socialist party. Railroader Eugene Debs of Terre Haute, the Socialist candidate received 901,551 votes (6.0% of the national vote) in the 1912 presidential election. Suffrage movements also arose to enfranchise women.
In its earlier years, Indiana was a leader in the automobile boom. Beginning its production in Kokomo in 1896, Haynes-Apperson was the nation's first commercially successful auto company. The importance of vehicle and parts manufacture to the state was symbolized by the construction in 1909 of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In the 1920s, state politics was heavily influenced by the rise of the Indiana Klan. First organized in 1915 as a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, it appealed to white Protestants alarmed by social and economic trends, including changes induced by immigration from southern and central Europe. In the name of defending "hundred-per-cent Amerianism", the Klan sought exclude from public life "Bolsheviks, Catholics, Jews, Negroes, bootleggers, pacifists, evolutionists, foreigners, and all persons it considered immoral".
By 1925 the Klan had 250,000 members, an estimated 30% of native-born white men. By 1925 over half the elected members of the Indiana General Assembly, the governor of Indiana, and many other high-ranking officials in local and state government were members of the Klan. Politicians had also learned they needed Klan endorsement to win office. That year, "Grand Dragon" D.C. Stephenson, who had begun to brag "I am the law in Indiana", was charged and convicted for the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer, a young schoolteacher. Denied pardon, in 1927 Stephenson gave the Indianapolis Times lists of people the Klan had paid. Partly as a result of compounded scandal, membership collapsed.
Throughout the 1930s, Democrats were in power and "the Klan was political poison". During those years, Indiana, like the rest of the nation, was affected by the Great Depression. The economic downturn had a wide-ranging negative impact on Indiana, such as the decline of urbanization. The Dust Bowl to the west led many migrants to flee to the more industrialized Midwest. Governor Paul V. McNutt's administration struggled to build a state-funded welfare system to help overwhelmed private charities. During his administration, spending and taxes were both cut drastically in response to the Depression, and the state government was completely reorganized. McNutt ended Prohibition in the state and enacted the state's first income tax. On several occasions, he declared martial law to put an end to worker strikes.
World War II helped lift Indiana's economy, as the war required steel, food and other goods the state produced. Roughly 10% of Indiana's population joined the armed forces, while hundreds of industries earned war production contracts and began making war material. Indiana manufactured 4.5% of total U.S. military armaments during World War II, ranking eighth among the 48 states. The expansion of industry to meet war demands helped end the Great Depression.


During the American Civil War, Indiana became politically influential and played an important role in the affairs of the nation. Indiana was the first western state to mobilize for the United States in the war, and soldiers from Indiana participated in all the war's major engagements. The state provided 126 infantry regiments, 26 batteries of artillery and 13 regiments of cavalry to the Union.
In 1861, Indiana was assigned a quota of 7,500 men to join the Union Army. So many volunteered in the first call that thousands had to be turned away. Before the war ended, Indiana had contributed 208,367 men. Casualties were over 35% among these men: 24,416 lost their lives and over 50,000 more were wounded. The only Civil War conflicts fought in Indiana were the Newburgh Raid, a bloodless capture of the city; and the Battle of Corydon, which occurred during Morgan's Raid leaving 15 dead, 40 wounded, and 355 captured.
After the war, Indiana remained a largely agricultural state. Post-war industries included mining, including limestone extraction; meatpacking; food processing, such as milling grain, distilling it into alcohol; and the building of wagons, buggies, farm machinery, and hardware. However, the discovery of natural gas in the 1880s in northern Indiana led to an economic boom: the abundant and cheap fuel attracted heavy industry; the availability of jobs, in turn, attracted new settlers from other parts of the country as well as from Europe. This led to the rapid expansion of cities such as South Bend, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne.


The first inhabitants in what is now Indiana were the Paleo-Indians, who arrived about 8000 BC after the melting of the glaciers at the end of the Ice Age. Divided into small groups, the Paleo-Indians were nomads who hunted large game such as mastodons. They created stone tools made out of chert by chipping, knapping and flaking.
The Archaic period, which began between 5000 and 4000 BC, covered the next phase of indigenous culture. The people developed new tools as well as techniques to cook food, an important step in civilization. These new tools included different types of spear points and knives, with various forms of notches. They made ground-stone tools such as stone axes, woodworking tools and grinding stones. During the latter part of the period, they built earthwork mounds and middens, which showed settlements were becoming more permanent. The Archaic period ended at about 1500 BC, although some Archaic people lived until 700 BC.
The Woodland period began around 1500 BC when new cultural attributes appeared. The people created ceramics and pottery and extended their cultivation of plants. An early Woodland period group named the Adena people had elegant burial rituals, featuring log tombs beneath earth mounds. In the middle of the Woodland period, the Hopewell people began to develop long-range trade of goods. Nearing the end of the stage, the people developed highly productive cultivation and adaptation of agriculture, growing such crops as corn and squash. The Woodland period ended around 1000 AD.
The Mississippian culture emerged, lasting from 1000 AD until the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of Europeans. During this stage, the people created large urban settlements designed according to their cosmology, with large mounds and plazas defining ceremonial and public spaces. The concentrated settlements depended on the agricultural surpluses. One such complex was the Angel Mounds. They had large public areas such as plazas and platform mounds, where leaders lived or conducted rituals. Mississippian civilization collapsed in Indiana during the mid-15th century for reasons that remain unclear.
The historic Native American tribes in the area at the time of European encounter spoke different languages of the Algonquian family. They included the Shawnee, Miami, and Illini. Refugee tribes from eastern regions, including the Delaware who settled in the White and Whitewater River Valleys, later joined them.


Indiana (/ˌɪndiˈænə/ (listen)) is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th state on December 11, 1816. It is bordered by Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west.
Various indigenous peoples inhabited what would become Indiana for thousands of years, some of whom the U.S. government expelled between 1800 and 1836. Indiana received its name because the state was largely possessed by native tribes even after it was granted statehood. Since then, settlement patterns in Indiana have reflected regional cultural segmentation present in the Eastern United States; the state's northernmost tier was settled primarily by people from New England and New York, Central Indiana by migrants from the Mid-Atlantic states and adjacent Ohio, and Southern Indiana by settlers from the Upland South, particularly Kentucky and Tennessee.
Indiana has a diverse economy with a gross state product of $352.62 billion in 2021. It has several metropolitan areas with populations greater than 100,000 and a number of smaller cities and towns. Indiana is home to professional sports teams, including the NFL's Indianapolis Colts and the NBA's Indiana Pacers. The state also hosts several notable competitive events, such as the Indianapolis 500, held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.


Indiana's name means "Land of the Indians", or simply "Indian Land". It also stems from Indiana's territorial history. On May 7, 1800, the United States Congress passed legislation to divide the Northwest Territory into two areas and named the western section the Indiana Territory. In 1816, when Congress passed an Enabling Act to begin the process of establishing statehood for Indiana, a part of this territorial land became the geographic area for the new state.
Formal use of the word Indiana dates from 1768, when a Philadelphia-based trading company gave its land claim in present-day West Virginia the name "Indiana" in honor of its previous owners, the Iroquois. Later, ownership of the claim was transferred to the Indiana Land Company, the first recorded use of the word Indiana. But the Virginia colony argued that it was the rightful owner of the land because it fell within its geographic boundaries. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the land company's right to the claim in 1798.
A native or resident of Indiana is known as a Hoosier. The etymology of this word is disputed, but the leading theory, advanced by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Indiana Historical Society, has its origin in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee (the Upland South) as a term for a backwoodsman, a rough countryman, or a country bumpkin.


The name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a local ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama City, in the early 16th century. Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in 1522, believed this was the southernmost part of the New World. When Francisco Pizarro invaded the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú.
An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador. He said the name Birú was that of a common Amerindian who was happened upon by the crew of a ship on an exploratory mission for governor Pedro Arias de Ávila and went on to relate more instances of misunderstandings due to the lack of a common language.
The Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. In 1561, the rebel Lope de Aguirre declared himself the "Prince" of an independent Peru, which was cut short by his arrest and execution. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, which became the Peruvian Republic after its independence until 1979, adopting its current name of Republic of Peru.


Internal struggles after the war were followed by a period of stability under the Civilista Party, which lasted until the onset of the authoritarian regime of Augusto B. Leguía. The Great Depression caused the downfall of Leguía, renewed political turmoil, and the emergence of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). The rivalry between this organization and a coalition of the elite and the military defined Peruvian politics for the following three decades. A final peace treaty in 1929, signed between Peru and Chile called the Treaty of Lima, returned Tacna to Peru. Between 1932 and 1933, Peru was engulfed in a year-long war with Colombia over a territorial dispute involving the Amazonas Department and its capital Leticia.
Later, in 1941, Peru and Ecuador fought the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, after which the Rio Protocol sought to formalize the boundary between those two countries. In a military coup on 29 October 1948, General Manuel A. Odría became president. Odría's presidency was known as the Ochenio.  He came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right, but followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes. A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies. At the same time, however, civil rights were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his regime. Odría was succeeded by Manuel Prado Ugarteche. However, widespread allegations of fraud prompted the Peruvian military to depose Prado and install a military junta, led by Ricardo Pérez Godoy. Godoy ran a short transitional government and held new elections in 1963, which were won by Fernando Belaúnde Terry who assumed presidency until 1968. Belaúnde was recognized for his commitment to the democratic process. In 1968, the Armed Forces, led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, staged a coup against Belaúnde. Alvarado's regime undertook radical reforms aimed at fostering development, but failed to gain widespread support. In 1975, General Francisco Morales-Bermúdez forcefully replaced Velasco, paralyzed reforms, and oversaw the reestablishment of democracy.
Under the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado, Peru's debt increased greatly due to excessive borrowing and the 1970s energy crisis. Peru engaged in a two week long conflict with Ecuador during the Paquisha War in early 1981 as a result of territorial dispute between the two countries. The economic policy President Alan García distanced Peru from international markets further, resulting in lower foreign investment in the country. After the country experienced chronic inflation, the Peruvian currency, the sol, was replaced by the Inti in mid-1985, which itself was later replaced by the nuevo sol in July 1991, at which time the new sol had a cumulative value of one billion old soles. The per capita annual income of Peruvians fell to $720 (below the level of 1960) and Peru's GDP dropped 20% at which national reserves were a negative $900 million. The economic turbulence of the time acerbated social tensions in Peru and partly contributed to the rise of violent rebel rural insurgent movements, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and MRTA, which caused great havoc throughout the country.
The Peruvian armed forces grew frustrated with the inability of the García administration to handle the nation's crises and drafted Plan Verde – which involved the genocide of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians, the control or censorship of the media in Peru and the establishment of a neoliberal economy controlled by a military junta in Peru –  as an effort to overthrow his government. Alberto Fujimori assumed the presidency in 1990 and according to Rospigliosi, the head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) General Edwin “Cucharita” Díaz and Vladimiro Montesinos played a key role with making President Fujimori abide by the military's demands while "an understanding was established between Fujimori, Montesinos and some of the military officers" involved in Plan Verde prior to Fujimori's inauguration. Fujimori would go on to adopt many of the policies outlined in Plan Verde. Fujimori's policies, prescribed by Hernando de Soto, led to the immediate suffering of poor Peruvians who saw unregulated prices increase rapidly, with those living in poverty seeing prices increase so much that they could no longer afford food. De Soto advocated for the collapse of Peru's society, with the economist saying that a civil crisis was necessary to support the policies of Fujimori. These drastic measures caused inflation to drop from 7,650% in 1990 to 139% in 1991 and 57% in 1992.
Due to his controversial governance, Fujimori faced opposition to his reform efforts and utilized coup proposals from Plan Verde, dissolving Congress, suspending the judiciary, arresting several opposition leaders and assuming full powers in the auto-golpe ("self-coup") of 5 April 1992. He then revised the constitution; called new congressional elections; and implemented substantial economic reform, including privatization of numerous state-owned companies, creation of an investment-friendly climate, and sound management of the economy. Fujimori's administration was dogged by insurgent groups, most notably the Sendero Luminoso (also called the Shining Path), who carried out terrorist campaigns across the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Fujimori cracked down on the insurgents and was successful in largely quelling them by the late 1990s, but the fight was marred by atrocities committed by both the Peruvian security forces and the insurgents: the Barrios Altos massacre and La Cantuta massacre by Government paramilitary groups, and the bombings of Tarata and Frecuencia Latina by Sendero Luminoso. Those incidents subsequently came to symbolize the human rights violations committed in the last years of violence. His Programa Nacional de Población – an implementation of one of Plan Verde's proposals for the "total extermination" of impoverished Peruvians that would possibly be sympathetic to insurgent groups – also resulted with the forced sterilization of at least 300,000 poor and indigenous women.
In early 1995, once again Peru and Ecuador clashed in the Cenepa War, but in 1998 the governments of both nations signed a peace treaty that clearly demarcated the international boundary between them. In November 2000, Fujimori resigned from office and went into a self-imposed exile, initially avoiding prosecution for human rights violations and corruption charges by the new Peruvian authorities.


Peru (/pəˈruː/ (listen); Spanish: Perú [peˈɾu]; Quechua: Piruw [pɪɾʊw]; Aymara: Piruw [pɪɾʊw]), officially the Republic of Peru (Spanish: República del Perú ), is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of 34 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1.28 million km² (0.5 million mi²), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.
Peruvian territory was home to several cultures during the ancient and medieval periods, and has one of the longest histories of civilization of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 10th millennium BCE.  Notable pre-colonial cultures and civilizations include the Caral-Supe civilization (the earliest civilization in the Americas and considered one of the cradles of civilization,) the Nazca culture, the Wari and Tiwanaku empires, the Kingdom of Cusco, and the Inca Empire, the largest known state in the pre-Columbian Americas.
The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a viceroyalty that encompassed most of its South American territories, with its capital in Lima. Higher education started in the Americas with the official establishment of the National University of San Marcos in Lima in 1551. Peru formally proclaimed independence in 1821, and following the foreign military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and the decisive battle of Ayacucho, Peru completed its independence in 1824. In the ensuing years, the country first suffered from political instability until a period of relative economic and political stability begun due to the exploitation of guano. Later, the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) with Chile brought Peru to a state of crisis, from which the oligarchy seized power through the Civilista Party.  In the 20th century, the country endured coups, social unrest, and internal conflicts, as well as periods of stability and economic upswing. In the 1990s, the country implemented a neoliberal economic model which is still in use to this day.  As the 2000s commodities boom took place, Peru experienced a period of constant economic growth and a decrease in poverty.
The sovereign state of Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. Peru has a high level of human development with an upper middle income level ranking 82nd on the Human Development Index. It is one of the region's most prosperous economies with an average growth rate of 5.9% and it has one of the world's fastest industrial growth rates at an average of 9.6%. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, along with other growing sectors such as telecommunications and biotechnology. The country forms part of The Pacific Pumas, a political and economic grouping of countries along Latin America's Pacific coast that share common trends of positive growth, stable macroeconomic foundations, improved governance and an openness to global integration. Peru ranks high in social freedom; it is an active member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Alliance, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the World Trade Organization; and is considered as a middle power.
Peru has a population that includes Mestizos, Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechuan languages, Aymara, or other Indigenous languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music.


The earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 12,500 BCE in the Huaca Prieta settlement.  Andean societies were based on agriculture, using techniques such as irrigation and terracing; camelid husbandry and fishing were also important. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money. The oldest known complex society in Peru, the Caral/Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BCE. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal and Andean regions throughout Peru. The Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BCE along what is now Peru's Pacific Coast was an example of early pre-Inca culture.
The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BCE was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, with their religious center in Chavín de Huantar. After the decline of the Chavin culture around the beginning of the 1st century CE, a series of localized and specialized cultures rose and fell, both on the coast and in the highlands, during the next thousand years. On the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Moche.

The Moche, who reached their apogee in the first millennium CE, were renowned for their irrigation system which fertilized their arid terrain, their sophisticated ceramic pottery, their lofty buildings, and clever metalwork. The Chimu were the great city builders of pre-Inca civilization; as a loose confederation of walled cities scattered along the coast of northern Peru, the Chimu flourished from about 1140 to 1450. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo. In the highlands, both the Tiahuanaco culture, near Lake Titicaca in both Peru and Bolivia, and the Wari culture, near the present-day city of Ayacucho, developed large urban settlements and wide-ranging state systems between 500 and 1000 CE.
In the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas with their capital in Cusco. The Incas of Cusco originally represented one of the small and relatively minor ethnic groups, the Quechuas. Gradually, as early as the thirteenth century, they began to expand and incorporate their neighbors. Inca expansion was slow until about the middle of the fifteenth century, when the pace of conquest began to accelerate, particularly under the rule of the emperor Pachacuti. Under his rule and that of his son, Topa Inca Yupanqui, the Incas came to control most of the Andean region, with a population of 9 to 16 million inhabitants under their rule. Pachacuti also promulgated a comprehensive code of laws to govern his far-flung empire, while consolidating his absolute temporal and spiritual authority as the God of the Sun who ruled from a magnificently rebuilt Cusco. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, between the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Amazon rainforest in the east. The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local languages and dialects were spoken. The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu which can be translated as "The Four Regions" or "The Four United Provinces." Many local forms of worship persisted in the empire, most of them concerning local sacred Huacas, but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti, the sun god and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama. The Incas considered their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun."


Atahualpa (also Atahuallpa), the last Sapa Inca, became emperor when he defeated and executed his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac. In December 1532, a party of conquistadors (supported by the Chankas, Huancas, Cañaris and Chachapoyas as Indian auxiliaries) led by Francisco Pizarro defeated and captured the Inca Emperor Atahualpa in the Battle of Cajamarca. The Spanish conquest of Peru was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. After years of preliminary exploration and military conflicts, it was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting but ended in Spanish victory and colonization of the region known as the Viceroyalty of Peru with its capital at Lima, which was then known as "La Ciudad de los Reyes" (The City of Kings). The conquest of Peru led to spin-off campaigns throughout the viceroyalty as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin as in the case of Spanish efforts to quell Amerindian resistance. The last Inca resistance was suppressed when the Spaniards annihilated the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba in 1572.

The Indigenous population dramatically collapsed overwhelmingly due to epidemic diseases introduced by the Spanish as well as exploitation and socio-economic change. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo reorganized the country in the 1570s with gold and silver mining as its main economic activity and Amerindian forced labor as its primary workforce. With the discovery of the great silver and gold lodes at Potosí (present-day Bolivia) and Huancavelica, the viceroyalty flourished as an important provider of mineral resources. Peruvian bullion provided revenue for the Spanish Crown and fueled a complex trade network that extended as far as Europe and the Philippines. The commercial and population exchanges between Latin America and Asia undergone via the Manila Galleons transiting through Acapulco, had Callao at Peru as the furthest endpoint of the trade route in the Americas. In relation to this, Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, governor of Panama was also responsible for settling Zamboanga City in the Philippines, which now speak a Spanish Creole by employing Peruvian soldiers and colonists. Because of lack of available workforce, African slaves were added to the labor population. The expansion of a colonial administrative apparatus and bureaucracy paralleled the economic reorganization. With the conquest started the spread of Christianity in South America; most people were forcefully converted to Catholicism, with Spanish clerics believing like Puritan divines of English colonies later that the Native Peoples "had been corrupted by the Devil, who was working "through them to frustrate" their foundations. It only took a generation to convert the population. They built churches in every city and replaced some of the Inca temples with churches, such as the Coricancha in the city of Cusco. The church employed the Inquisition, making use of torture to ensure that newly converted Catholics did not stray to other religions or beliefs, and monastery schools, educating girls, especially of the Inca nobility and upper class, "until they were old enough either to profess [to become a nun] or to leave the monastery and assume the role ('estado') in the Christian society that their fathers planned to erect" in Peru. Peruvian Catholicism follows the syncretism found in many Latin American countries, in which religious native rituals have been integrated with Christian celebrations. In this endeavor, the church came to play an important role in the acculturation of the Natives, drawing them into the cultural orbit of the Spanish settlers.
By the 18th century, declining silver production and economic diversification greatly diminished royal income. In response, the Crown enacted the Bourbon Reforms, a series of edicts that increased taxes and partitioned the Viceroyalty. The new laws provoked Túpac Amaru II's rebellion and other revolts, all of which were suppressed. As a result of these and other changes, the Spaniards and their creole successors came to monopolize control over the land, seizing many of the best lands abandoned by the massive native depopulation. However, the Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian. The Treaty of Tordesillas was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while Spain controlled Portugal. The need to ease communication and trade with Spain led to the split of the viceroyalty and the creation of new viceroyalties of New Granada and Rio de la Plata at the expense of the territories that formed the Viceroyalty of Peru; this reduced the power, prominence and importance of Lima as the viceroyal capital and shifted the lucrative Andean trade to Buenos Aires and Bogotá, while the fall of the mining and textile production accelerated the progressive decay of the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Eventually, the viceroyalty would dissolve, as with much of the Spanish empire, when challenged by national independence movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These movements led to the formation of the majority of modern-day countries of South America in the territories that at one point or another had constituted the Viceroyalty of Peru. The conquest and colony brought a mix of cultures and ethnicities that did not exist before the Spanish conquered the Peruvian territory. Even though many of the Inca traditions were lost or diluted, new customs, traditions and knowledge were added, creating a rich mixed Peruvian culture. Two of the most important Indigenous rebellions against the Spanish were that of Juan Santos Atahualpa in 1742, and Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in 1780 around the highlands near Cuzco.


From the 1840s to the 1860s, Peru enjoyed a period of stability under the presidency of Ramón Castilla, through increased state revenues from guano exports. However, by the 1870s, these resources had been depleted, the country was heavily indebted, and political in-fighting was again on the rise. Peru embarked on a railroad-building program that helped but also bankrupted the country.
In 1879, Peru entered the War of the Pacific which lasted until 1884. Bolivia invoked its alliance with Peru against Chile. The Peruvian Government tried to mediate the dispute by sending a diplomatic team to negotiate with the Chilean government, but the committee concluded that war was inevitable. Chile declared war on 5 April 1879. Almost five years of war ended with the loss of the department of Tarapacá and the provinces of Tacna and Arica, in the Atacama region. Two outstanding military leaders throughout the war were Francisco Bolognesi and Miguel Grau. Originally Chile committed to a referendum for the cities of Arica and Tacna to be held years later, to self determine their national affiliation. However, Chile refused to apply the Treaty, and neither of the countries could determine the statutory framework. After the War of the Pacific, an extraordinary effort of rebuilding began. The government started to initiate a number of social and economic reforms to recover from the damage of the war. Political stability was achieved only in the early 1900s.


In the early 19th century, while most South American nations were swept by wars of independence, Peru remained a royalist stronghold. As the elite vacillated between emancipation and loyalty to the Spanish Monarchy, independence was achieved only after the occupation by military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar.
The economic crises, the loss of power of Spain in Europe, the war of independence in North America, and Native uprisings all contributed to a favorable climate to the development of emancipation ideas among the Criollo population in South America. However, the Criollo oligarchy in Peru enjoyed privileges and remained loyal to the Spanish Crown. The liberation movement started in Argentina where autonomous juntas were created as a result of the loss of authority of the Spanish government over its colonies.
After fighting for the independence of the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, José de San Martín created the Army of the Andes and crossed the Andes in 21 days. Once in Chile, he joined forces with Chilean army General Bernardo O'Higgins and liberated the country in the battles of Chacabuco and Maipú in 1818. On 7 September 1820, a fleet of eight warships arrived in the port of Paracas under the command of General José de San Martin and Thomas Cochrane, who was serving in the Chilean Navy. Immediately on 26 October, they took control of the town of Pisco. San Martin settled in Huacho on 12 November, where he established his headquarters while Cochrane sailed north and blockaded the port of Callao in Lima. At the same time in the north, Guayaquil was occupied by rebel forces under the command of Gregorio Escobedo. Because Peru was the stronghold of the Spanish government in South America, San Martin's strategy to liberate Peru was to use diplomacy. He sent representatives to Lima urging the Viceroy that Peru be granted independence, however, all negotiations proved unsuccessful.
The Viceroy of Peru, Joaquín de la Pazuela named José de la Serna commander-in-chief of the loyalist army to protect Lima from the threatened invasion by San Martin. On 29 January, de la Serna organized a coup against de la Pazuela, which was recognized by Spain and he was named Viceroy of Peru. This internal power struggle contributed to the success of the liberating army. To avoid a military confrontation, San Martin met the newly appointed viceroy, José de la Serna, and proposed to create a constitutional monarchy, a proposal that was turned down. De la Serna abandoned the city, and on 12 July 1821, San Martin occupied Lima and declared Peruvian independence on 28 July 1821. He created the first Peruvian flag. Upper Peru (Bolivia) remained as a Spanish stronghold until the army of Simón Bolívar liberated it three years later. José de San Martin was declared Protector of Peru. Peruvian national identity was forged during this period, as Bolivarian projects for a Latin American Confederation floundered and a union with Bolivia proved ephemeral.
Simon Bolivar launched his campaign from the north, liberating the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the Battles of Carabobo in 1821 and Pichincha a year later. In July 1822, Bolivar and San Martin gathered in the Guayaquil Conference. Bolivar was left in charge of fully liberating Peru while San Martin retired from politics after the first parliament was assembled. The newly founded Peruvian Congress named Bolivar dictator of Peru, giving him the power to organize the military.
With the help of Antonio José de Sucre, they defeated the larger Spanish army in the Battle of Junín on 6 August 1824 and the decisive Battle of Ayacucho on 9 December of the same year, consolidating the independence of Peru and Alto Peru. Alto Peru was later established as Bolivia. During the early years of the Republic, endemic struggles for power between military leaders caused political instability.


Since crambids are relatively common throughout human settlements, the moths tend to affect crops and gardens, whether harmfully, beneficially or harmlessly. Beneficial crambids include the water hyacinth moth (Niphograpta albiguttalis), used to control its host (Eichhornia crassipes), the water veneer (Acentria ephemerella), a biocontrol agent used against Eurasian watermilfoil, and the bamboo borer (Omphisa fuscidentalis), of which the caterpillars are used for human consumption (see entomophagy). The mint moth (Pyrausta aurata) is an example of a harmless crambid.
Crambid larvae are typically stem borers in plants of the grass family. As this family contains many important crops, some Crambidae species achieve pest status. The European corn borer Ostrinia nubilalis is perhaps the best known; introduced to the United States in the early 1900s, it is now widespread in all but the westernmost states. Other pest species include the pearl millet stem borer (Coniesta ignefusalis), the spotted stalk borer (Chilo partellus), the Asiatic rice borer (Chilo suppressalis), sod webworms (Crambus spp.), Duponchelia fovealis, the sugarcane borer (Diatraea saccharalis), bean pod borers (Maruca spp.), the rice white stemborer (Scirpophaga innotata), the southwestern corn borer (Diatraea grandiosella), and the grape leaffolder (Desmia maculalis).


The Crambidae are the grass moth family of lepidopterans. They are variable in appearance, the nominal subfamily Crambinae (grass moths) taking up closely folded postures on grass stems where they are inconspicuous, while other subfamilies include brightly coloured and patterned insects which rest in wing-spread attitudes.
In many classifications, the Crambidae have been treated as a subfamily of the Pyralidae or snout-moths. The principal difference is a structure in the tympanal organs called the praecinctorium, which joins two tympanic membranes in the Crambidae, and is absent from the Pyralidae. The latest review by Munroe and Solis, in Kristensen (1999), retains the Crambidae as a full family. The family currently comprises 15 subfamilies with altogether 10,347 species in over 1,000 genera.