July 2
William Henry Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1942)
Christopher Cradock, British admiral (d. 1914)
July 8 – Josephine White Bates, Canadian-born American author (d. 1934)
July 14
Florence Bascom, American geologist and educator (d. 1945)
Gustav Klimt, Austrian artist (d. 1918)
July 15 – Ernest Troubridge, British admiral (d. 1926)
July 16 – Ida B. Wells, American journalist, suffragist, and anti-lynching crusader (d. 1931)
July 24 – Percy FitzPatrick, South African author, politician and mining financier (d. 1931)
August 5 – Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man), English sufferer from deformities (d. 1890)
August 16 – Amos Alonzo Stagg, American football player, coach (d. 1965)
August 21 – Emilio Salgari, Italian writer (d. 1911)
August 22 – Claude Debussy, French composer (d. 1918)
August 24 – Zonia Baber, American geographer and geologist (d. 1956)
August 26 – Herbert Booth, English-born Salvationist, third son of William and Catherine Booth (d. 1926)
August 29
Andrew Fisher, 5th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1928)
Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian writer, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate (d. 1949)
September 7 – Edgar Speyer, American-born international financier and philanthropist (d. 1932)
September 11
Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy, British general, 12th Governor General of Canada (d. 1935)
Hawley Harvey Crippen, American-born medical practitioner, uxoricide (hanged 1910)
O. Henry, born William Sydney Porter, American short-story writer (d. 1910)
September 12 – Carl Eytel, German-American artist working in Palm Springs, California (d. 1925)
September 19 – Arvid Lindman, Swedish admiral, industrialist, and politician, 12th Prime Minister of Sweden (d. 1936)
September 22 – Anastasios Charalambis, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1949)
September 23 – Denis Auguste Duchêne, French general (d. 1950)
September 25 – Billy Hughes, 7th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1952)
September 27 – Louis Botha, Boer general, first Prime Minister of South Africa (d. 1919)


Nunavut /ˈnʊnəvʊt, ˈnuːnəvuːt/ (Inuktitut: ᓄᓇᕗᑦ [nunaˈvut]; French: [nunavut]) is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, which provided this territory to the Inuit for independent government. The boundaries had been drawn in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's political map in half a century since the province of Newfoundland was admitted in 1949.
Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada and most of the Arctic Archipelago. Its vast territory makes it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world, as well as North America's second-largest (after Greenland). The capital Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay), on Baffin Island in the east, was chosen by a capital plebiscite in 1995. Other major communities include the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay.
Nunavut also includes Ellesmere Island to the far north, as well as the eastern and southern portions of Victoria Island in the west, and all islands in Hudson, James and Ungava bays, including Akimiski Island far to the southeast of the rest of the territory. It is Canada's only geo-political region that is not connected to the rest of North America by highway.
Nunavut is the least populous of Canada's provinces and territories. One of the world's most remote, sparsely settled regions, Nunavut has a population of 39,589 (2021 figure, up from 35,944 in 2016), consisting mostly of Inuit. The population occupies a land area of just over 1,877,787 km² (725,018 sq mi), or slightly smaller than Mexico (excluding water surface area). Nunavut is also home to the world's northernmost permanently inhabited place, Alert. Eureka, a weather station on Ellesmere Island, has the lowest average annual temperature of any Canadian weather station.


The region, which is now mainland Nunavut, was first populated approximately 4500 years ago by the Pre-Dorset, a diverse Paleo-Eskimo culture that migrated eastward from the Bering Strait region.
The Pre-Dorset culture was succeeded by the Dorset culture about 2800 years ago. Anthropologists and historians believe that the Dorset culture developed from the Pre-Dorset somehow.
Helluland, which Norse explorers described visiting in their Sagas of Icelanders, has been associated to Nunavut's Baffin Island. Claims of contact between the Dorset and Norse are controversial.
The Thule people, ancestors of the modern Inuit, began migrating from Alaska in the 11th century into the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. By 1300, the geographic extent of Thule settlement included most of modern Nunavut.
The migration of the Thule people coincides with the decline of the Dorset, who died out between 800 and 1500.


April 2 – Frog Lake Massacre: Cree warriors led by Wandering Spirit kill 9 settlers at Frog Lake in the Northwest Territories.
April 3 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent, for his single-cylinder water-cooled engine design.
April 11 – Luton Town Football Club is created by the merger of (Luton) Wanderers F.C. and Luton Excelsior F.C. in England.
April 14 – Sino-French War: A French victory at Kép causes China to withdraw its forces from Tonkin, in the final engagement of the conflict.
April 30 – A bill is signed in the New York State legislature, forming the Niagara Falls State Park.
May 2
Good Housekeeping magazine goes on sale for the first time in the United States.
North-West Rebellion – Battle of Cut Knife: Cree and Assiniboine warriors win their largest victory over Canadian forces.
The Congo Free State is established, by King Leopold II of Belgium.
May 9–12 – North-West Rebellion – Battle of Batoche: Canadian government forces inflict a decisive defeat on Métis rebels, bringing an end to their part in the rebellion.
May 19 – After a three-month legislative battle in the Illinois General Assembly, John A. Logan is re-elected to the United States Senate.
May 20 – The first public train departs Swanage railway station, on the newly built Swanage Railway in England.
June 3 – Battle of Loon Lake: The Canadian North-West Mounted Police and allies force a party of Plains Cree warriors to surrender in the last skirmish of the North-West Rebellion, and the last battle fought on Canadian soil.
June 17 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.
June 23 – Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
June 24 – Randolph Churchill becomes Secretary of State for India.


March 6 – Ring Lardner, American writer (d. 1933)
March 7 – John Tovey, British admiral of the fleet (d. 1971)
March 11 – Sir Malcolm Campbell, English land, water racer (d. 1948)
March 14 – Raoul Lufbery, American World War I pilot (d. 1918)
March 23 – Mollie McNutt, Australian poet (d. 1922)
March 27 – Julio Lozano Díaz, President of Honduras (d. 1957)
March 31 – Pascin, Bulgarian painter (d. 1930)


1932
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1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1932nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 932nd  year of the 2nd millennium, the 32nd  year of the 20th century, and the  3rd   year of the 1930s decade.


April 6 – Oscar Wilde is arrested in London for "gross indecency", after losing a criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.
April 7 – Nansen's Fram expedition to the Arctic reaches 86°13.6'N, almost 3° beyond the previous Farthest North attained.
April 14 – A major earthquake severely damages Ljubljana, the capital of Carniola.
April 16 – The town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, is incorporated.
April 17 – The Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed between China and Japan. This marks the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, and the defeated Qing Empire is forced to renounce its claims on Korea, and to concede the southern portion of Fengtien province, Taiwan, and the Pescadores Islands to Japan. The huge indemnity exacted from China is used to establish the Yawata Iron and Steel Works in Japan.
April 22 – Gongche Shangshu movement: 603 candidates sign a 10,000-word petition against the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
April 27 – The historic Spiral Bridge is constructed to carry U.S. 61 over the Mississippi River, at Hastings, Minnesota. The picturesque bridge is one-of-a-kind, and serves the citizens of Hastings for 56 years, until it is demolished in 1951.
May 1 – Dundela Football, Sports & Association Club is formed in Belfast.
May 2 – Gongche Shangshu movement: Thousands of Beijing scholars and citizens protest against the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
May 9 – Thirteen workers are killed by soldiers of the Russian Empire during the Yaroslavl Great Manufacture strike.
May 18  – The first motor race in Italy is held. It runs on a course from Turin to Asti and back, a total of 93 km (58 mi). Five entrants start the event; only three complete it. It is won by Simone Federman in a four-seat Daimler Omnibus, at an average speed of 15.5 km/h (9.6 mph).
May 24 – Anti-Japanese officials, led by Tang Jingsong in Taiwan, declare independence from the Qing Dynasty, forming the short-lived Republic of Formosa.
May 25 – R. v. Wilde: Oscar Wilde is convicted in London of "unlawfully committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons" (under the Labouchere Amendment) and given a two years' sentence of hard labour, during which he will write De Profundis.
May 27 – In re Debs: The Supreme Court of the United States decides that the federal government has the right to regulate interstate commerce, legalizing the military suppression of the Pullman Strike.
June 5 – The Liberal Revolution begins in Ecuador, making the civil war more intense in this country.
June 11
Britain annexes Tongaland, between Zululand and Mozambique.
The Paris–Bordeaux–Paris race is held, sometimes called the first automobile race in history.
June 20
The Kiel Canal, connecting the North Sea to the Baltic across the base of the Jutland peninsula in Germany, is officially opened.
The Treaty of Amapala establishes the union of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador (which ends in 1898).
June 28 – The United States Court of Private Land Claims rules that James Reavis's claim to the Barony of Arizona is "wholly fictitious and fraudulent".


1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1895th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 895th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 95th  year of the 19th century, and the  6th   year of the 1890s decade. As of the start of 1895, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


1945
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1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1945th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 945th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 45th  year of the 20th century, and the  6th   year of the 1940s decade.

1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat.


A team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (led by Charles Coryell) discovers chemical element 61, the only one still missing between 1 and 96 on the periodic table, which they will name promethium. Found by analysis of fission products of irradiated uranium fuel, its discovery is not made public until 1947.
The first geothermal milk pasteurization is done in Klamath Falls, Oregon, United States.


According to Arab-Islamic-Jewish traditions, Ishmael was father of the Arabs, to be the ancestor of the Ishmaelites.
Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples.
Ishmael is recognized by Muslims as the ancestor of several prominent Arab tribes and being the forefather of Muhammad. A–Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism, Wheeler, Ishmael Muslims also believe that Muhammad was the descendant of Ishmael that would establish a great nation, as promised by God in the Old Testament.
Genesis 17:20
Zeep, Ira G. (2000). A Muslim primer: beginner's guide to Islam, Volume 2. University of Arkansas Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-55728-595-9.
Ishmael was considered the ancestor of the Northern Arabs and Muhammad was linked to him through the lineage of the patriarch Adnan. Ishmael may also have been the ancestor of the Southern Arabs through his descendant Qahtan.
Assyrians referred to the Arab Tribes as Ishmaelites, or "Shumu'ilu" as recorded in their inscriptions.
"Zayd ibn Amr" was another Pre-Islamic figure who refused idolatry and preached monotheism, claiming it was the original belief of their [Arabs] father Ishmael.
The tribes of Central West Arabia called themselves the "people of Abraham and the offspring of Ishmael."
Gibb, Hamilton A. R., and J. H. Kramers. 1965. Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 191–98
Maalouf, Tony. Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line. Kregel Academic. ISBN 978-0-8254-9363-8.
Urbain, Olivier (2008). Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-528-9.</ref>
The first written attestation of the ethnonym Arab occurs in an Assyrian inscription of 853 BCE, where Shalmaneser III lists a King Gindibu of mâtu arbâi (Arab land) as among the people he defeated at the Battle of Qarqar. Some of the names given in these texts are Aramaic, while others are the first attestations of Ancient North Arabian dialects. In fact several different ethnonyms are found in Assyrian texts that are conventionally translated "Arab": Arabi, Arubu, Aribi and Urbi. Many of the Qedarite queens were also described as queens of the aribi. The Hebrew Bible occasionally refers to Aravi peoples (or variants thereof), translated as "Arab" or "Arabian". The scope of the term at that early stage is unclear, but it seems to have referred to various desert-dwelling Semitic tribes in the Syrian Desert and Arabia. Arab tribes came into conflict with the Assyrians during the reign of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, and he records military victories against the powerful Qedar tribe among others.
Old Arabic diverges from Central Semitic by the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE.
Medieval Arab genealogists divided Arabs into three groups:
"Ancient Arabs", tribes that had vanished or been destroyed, such as ʿĀd and Thamud, often mentioned in the Qur'an as examples of God's power to vanquish those who fought his prophets.
"Pure Arabs" of South Arabia, descending from Qahtan. The Qahtanites (Qahtanis) are said to have migrated from the land of Yemen following the destruction of the Ma'rib Dam (sadd Ma'rib).
The "Arabized Arabs" (mustaʿribah) of Central Arabia (Najd) and North Arabia, descending from Ishmael the elder son of Abraham, through Adnan (hence, Adnanites). The Book of Genesis narrates that God promised Hagar to beget from Ishmael twelve princes and turn him to a great nation. The Book of Jubilees claims that the sons of Ishmael intermingled with the 6 sons of Keturah, from Abraham, and their descendants were called Arabs and Ishmaelites:
And Ishmael and his sons, and the sons of Keturah and their sons, went together and dwelt from Paran to the entering in of Babylon in all the land towards the East facing the desert. And these mingled with each other, and their name was called Arabs, and Ishmaelites.
— Book of Jubilees 20:13
Assyrian and Babylonian Royal Inscriptions and North Arabian inscriptions from 9th to 6th century BCE, mention the king of Qedar as king of the Arabs and King of the Ishmaelites.
Of the names of the sons of Ishmael the names "Nabat, Kedar, Abdeel, Dumah, Massa, and Teman" were mentioned in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions as tribes of the Ishmaelites. Jesur was mentioned in Greek inscriptions in the 1st century BCE.
Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima distinguishes between sedentary Arab Muslims who used to be nomadic, and Bedouin nomadic Arabs of the desert. He used the term "formerly nomadic" Arabs and refers to sedentary Muslims by the region or city they lived in, as in Yemenis. The Christians of Italy and the Crusaders preferred the term Saracens for all the Arabs, Muslims. The Christians of Iberia used the term Moor to describe all the Arabs and Muslims of that time.
Muslims of Medina referred to the nomadic tribes of the deserts as the A'raab, and considered themselves sedentary, but were aware of their close racial bonds. The term "A'raab" mirrors the term Assyrians used to describe the closely related nomads they defeated in Syria. The Qur'an does not use the word ʿarab, only the nisba adjective ʿarabiy. The Qur'an calls itself ʿarabiy, "Arabic", and Mubin, "clear". The two qualities are connected for example in Quran 43:2-3, "By the clear Book: We have made it an Arabic recitation in order that you may understand". The Qur'an became regarded as the prime example of the al-ʿarabiyya, the language of the Arabs. The term ʾiʿrāb has the same root and refers to a particularly clear and correct mode of speech. The plural noun ʾaʿrāb refers to the Bedouin tribes of the desert who resisted Muhammad, for example in at-Tawba 97,
al-ʾaʿrābu ʾašaddu kufrān wanifāqān "the Bedouin are the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy".
Based on this, in early Islamic terminology, ʿarabiy referred to the language, and ʾaʿrāb to the Arab Bedouins, carrying a negative connotation due to the Qur'anic verdict just cited. But after the Islamic conquest of the eighth century, the language of the nomadic Arabs became regarded as the most pure by the grammarians following Abi Ishaq, and the term kalam al-ʿArab, "language of the Arabs", denoted the uncontaminated language of the Bedouins.


The island of Trinidad has a rich biodiversity. The fauna is overwhelmingly of South American origin. There are about 100 species of mammals including the Guyanese red howler monkey, the collared peccary, the red brocket deer, the ocelot and about 70 species of bats. There are over 400 species of birds including the endemic Trinidad piping-guan. Reptiles are well represented, with about 92 recorded species including the largest species of snake in the world, the green anaconda, the spectacled caiman, and one of the largest lizards in the Americas, the green iguana. Trinidad is also the largest leatherback turtle nesting site in the western hemisphere; they nest on Trinidad's eastern and northern beaches. There are 37 recorded frog species, including the tiny El Tucuche golden tree frog, and the more widespread huge cane toad. About 43 species of freshwater fish are known from Trinidad, including the well known guppy. It is estimated that there are at least 80,000 arthropods, and at least 600 species of butterflies.
The William Beebe Tropical Research Station (founded by William Beebe) is located at "Simla", 8 km north of Arima.


The economy of Trinidad and Tobago is diversified, based to a large extent on oil and natural gas. It is one of the leading gas-based export centers in the world, being one of the top five exporters of liquefied natural gas and the largest onshore natural gas well was recently discovered in southern Trinidad. This has allowed Trinidad to capitalize on the biggest mineral reserves within its territories. It is an oil-rich country and stable economically.


Odanak (also known as Pierreville, MRC Nicolet-Yamaska), lived southwest of Trois-Rivières, Centre-du-Québec, and included settlements along the St. Francois River and Magog River.
Wôlinak (also Becancour, MRC Becancour), lived around Trois-Rivières, Centre-du-Québec, and included settlements along the Bécancour River.


January 1 – Charles Bickford, American actor (d. 1967)
January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, African-American writer, anthropologist, ethnographer (d. 1960)
January 8 – Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1957)
January 13 – Miguel Pro, Mexican Roman Catholic layman, martyr and blessed (d. 1927)
January 22
Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer, politician (d. 1937)
Bruno Loerzer, German aviator, air force general (d. 1960)
January 23 – Marjorie Maynard, British artist and farmer (died 1975)
January 24 – Walter Model, German field marshal (d. 1945)
January 27 – Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer (d. 1967)
January 30 – Walter Beech, American pioneering aviator, aircraft manufacturer (d. 1950)
February 1 – Shigeru Fukudome, Japanese admiral (d. 1971)
February 2 – Antonio Segni, Italian politician, 34th Prime Minister of Italy (1955–1957, 1959–1960), 4th President of the Italian Republic (d. 1972)
February 5 – Renato Petronio, Italian rower (d. 1976)
February 9 – Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)
February 11 – J. W. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1965)
February 13 – Grant Wood, American painter (d. 1942)
February 15 – Henry J. Knauf, American politician (d. 1950)
February 17 – Abraham Fraenkel, German-born Israeli mathematician, recipient of the Israel Prize (d. 1965)
February 21 – Seán Heuston, Irish rebel (d. 1916)
February 27 – David Sarnoff, Russian-born American broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)
March 3 – Fritz Rumey, German World War I fighter ace (d. 1918)
March 9 – José P. Laurel, 3rd President of the Philippines (d. 1959)
March 10 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)
March 16 - Patsy Gallacher, Irish footballer (d. 1953)
March 19 – Earl Warren, American politician and Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)
March 24 – Rudolf Berthold, German fighter pilot (d. 1920)
March 26 – Will Wright, American actor (d. 1962)
March 28 – May Mabel Adamson, Australian principal (d. 1966)
March 29 – Yvan Goll, French lyricist, dramatist (d. 1950)


Delaware (/ˈdɛləwɛər/ (listen) DEL-ə-wair) is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the nearby Delaware River, in turn named after Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor.
Delaware occupies the northeastern portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and some islands and territory within the Delaware River. It is the second-smallest and sixth-least populous state, but also the sixth-most densely populated. Delaware's largest city is Wilmington, while the state capital is Dover, the second-largest city in the state. The state is divided into three counties, having the lowest number of counties of any state;from north to south, they are New Castle County, Kent County, and Sussex County. While the southern two counties have historically been predominantly agricultural, New Castle is more urbanized, being part of the Delaware Valley Metropolitan Statistical Area centered on Philadelphia. Delaware's geography, culture, and history combine elements of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the country.
Before its coastline was explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Delaware was inhabited by several groups of Native Americans, including the Lenape in the north and Nanticoke in the south. It was initially colonized by Dutch traders at Zwaanendael, near the present town of Lewes, in 1631. Delaware was one of the Thirteen Colonies that took part in the American Revolution. On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, and has since been known as The First State. Since the turn of the 20th century, Delaware is also a de facto onshore corporate haven, in which by virtue of its corporate laws, the state is the domicile of over half of all NYSE-listed business and over three-fifths of the Fortune 500.


In 1671, General Abraham Wood, at the direction of Royal Governor William Berkeley of the Virginia Colony, sent a party from Fort Henry led by Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam to survey this territory. They were the first Europeans recorded as discovering Kanawha Falls. Some sources state that Governor Alexander Spotswood's 1716 Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition (for which the state's Golden Horseshoe Competition for 8th graders is named) had penetrated as far as Pendleton County, but modern historians interpret the original accounts of the excursion as suggesting that none of the expedition's horsemen ventured much farther west of the Blue Ridge Mountains than Harrisonburg, Virginia. John Van Metre, an Indian trader, penetrated into the northern portion in 1725. The same year, German settlers from Pennsylvania founded New Mecklenburg, the present Shepherdstown, on the Potomac River, and others followed.
King Charles II of England, in 1661, granted to a company of gentlemen the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, known as the Northern Neck. Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron ultimately took possession of this grant, and in 1746 a stone was erected at the source of the North Branch Potomac River to mark his grant's western limit. George Washington surveyed a considerable part of this land between 1748 and 1751. His diary recorded that there were already many squatters, largely of German origin, along the South Branch Potomac River.
Christopher Gist, a surveyor in the employ of the first Ohio Company, which was composed chiefly of Virginians, explored the country along the Ohio River north of the mouth of the Kanawha River between 1751 and 1752. The company sought to have a 14th colony established with the name "Vandalia". Many settlers crossed the mountains after 1750, though they were hindered by Native American resistance. Few Native Americans lived permanently within the state's present limits, but the region was a common hunting ground, crossed by many trails. During the French and Indian War (the North American front of the Seven Years' War in Europe), Indian allies of the French nearly destroyed the scattered British settlements.
Shortly before the American Revolutionary War, in 1774 Crown Governor of Virginia John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, led a force over the mountains. A body of militia under then-Colonel Andrew Lewis dealt the Shawnee Indians, under Hokoleskwa (or "Cornstalk"), a crushing blow during the Battle of Point Pleasant at the junction of the Kanawha and the Ohio rivers. At the Treaty of Camp Charlotte concluding Dunmore's War, Cornstalk agreed to recognize the Ohio River as the new boundary with the "Long Knives". But by 1776 the Shawnee returned to war, joining the Chickamauga, a band of Cherokee known for the area where they lived. Native American attacks on settlers continued until after the American Revolutionary War. During the war, the settlers in western Virginia were generally active Whigs; many served in the Continental Army. Claypool's Rebellion of 1780–1781, in which a group of men refused to pay taxes to the Continental Army, showed war-weariness in what became West Virginia.


Many ancient manmade earthen mounds from various prehistoric mound builder cultures survive in West Virginia, especially in the areas of present-day Moundsville, South Charleston, and Romney. Artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of village societies with a tribal trade system culture that crafted cold-worked copper pieces.
In the 1670s, during the Beaver Wars, the powerful Iroquois, five allied nations based in present-day New York and Pennsylvania, drove out other American Indian tribes from the region to reserve the upper Ohio Valley as a hunting ground. Siouan language tribes, such as the Moneton, had previously been recorded in the area.
A century later, the area now identified as West Virginia was contested territory among Anglo-Americans as well, with the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia claiming territorial rights under their colonial charters to this area before the American Revolutionary War. Some speculative land companies, such as the Vandalia Company, the Ohio Company and the Indiana Company, tried but failed to legitimize their claims to land in parts of West Virginia and present-day Kentucky. This rivalry resulted in some settlers petitioning the Continental Congress to create a new territory called Westsylvania. With the federal settlement of the Pennsylvania and Virginia border dispute, creating Kentucky County, Virginia, Kentuckians "were satisfied [...] and the inhabitants of a large part of West Virginia were grateful."
The Crown considered the area of West Virginia part of the British Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776. The United States considered this area the western part of the state of Virginia (commonly called Trans-Allegheny Virginia) from 1776 to 1863, before West Virginia's formation. Its residents were discontented for years with their position in Virginia, as the government was dominated by the planter elite of the Tidewater and Piedmont areas. The legislature had electoral malapportionment, based on the counting of slaves toward regional populations, and western white residents were underrepresented in the state legislature. More subsistence and yeoman farmers lived in the west, and they were generally less supportive of slavery, although many counties were divided on their support. Residents of that area became more sharply divided after the planter elite of eastern Virginia voted to secede from the Union during the Civil War.
Residents of the western and northern counties set up a separate government under Francis Pierpont in 1861, which they called the Restored Government. Most voted to separate from Virginia, and the new state was admitted to the Union in 1863. In 1864 a state constitutional convention drafted a constitution, which was ratified by the legislature without putting it to popular vote. West Virginia abolished slavery by a gradual process and temporarily disenfranchised men who had held Confederate office or fought for the Confederacy.
West Virginia's history has been profoundly affected by its mountainous terrain, numerous and vast river valleys, and rich natural resources. These were all factors driving its economy and the lifestyles of its residents, who tended to live in many small, relatively isolated communities in the mountain valleys.


Located on the Middle American isthmus joining North and South America between ca. 10° and 22° northern latitude, Mesoamerica possesses a complex combination of ecological systems, topographic zones, and environmental contexts. These different niches are classified into two broad categories: the lowlands (those areas between sea level and 1000 meters) and the altiplanos, or highlands (situated between 1,000 and 2,000 meters above sea level). In the low-lying regions, sub-tropical and tropical climates are most common, as is true for most of the coastline along the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The highlands show much more climatic diversity, ranging from dry tropical to cold mountainous climates; the dominant climate is temperate with warm temperatures and moderate rainfall. The rainfall varies from the dry Oaxaca and north Yucatán to the humid southern Pacific and Caribbean lowlands.


Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history,  including a number of different languages, both indigenous and local linguistic descendants of the Roman-imposed Latin language, of which Spanish is the largest and the only one that is official throughout the whole country.
Commonly spoken regional languages include, most notably, the sole surviving indigenous language of Iberia, Basque, as well as other Latin-descended Romance languages like Spanish itself, Catalan and Galician. Many populations outside Spain have ancestors who emigrated from Spain and share elements of a Hispanic culture. The most notable of these comprise Hispanic America in the Western Hemisphere.
The Roman Republic conquered Iberia during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Hispania, the name given to Iberia by the Romans as a province of their Empire, became highly acculturated through a process of linguistic and cultural Romanization, and as such, the majority of local languages in Spain today, with the exception of Basque, evolved out of Vulgar Latin which was introduced by Roman soldiers. The Romans laid the foundations for modern Spanish culture and identity, and Spain was the birthplace of important Roman emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian or Theodosius I.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established relatively independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi, Alans and Vandals. Eventually, the Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including the Byzantine province of Spania, into the Visigothic Kingdom, which more or less unified politically, ecclesiastically, and legally all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was then documented as Hispania.
In the early eighth century, the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, that arrived to the peninsula in the year 711. The Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula (al-Andalus) soon became autonomous from Baghdad. The handful of small Christian pockets in the north left out of Muslim rule, along the presence of the Carolingian Empire near the Pyrenean range, would eventually lead to the emergence of the Christian kingdoms of León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Navarre. Along seven centuries, an intermittent southwards expansion of the latter kingdoms (metahistorically dubbed as a reconquest: the Reconquista) took place, culminating with the Christian seizure of the last Muslim polity (the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada) in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. During the centuries after the Reconquista, the Christian kings of Spain persecuted and expelled ethnic and religious minorities such as Jews and Muslims through the Spanish Inquisition.
A process of political conglomeration among the Christian kingdoms also ensued, and the late 15th-century saw the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon under the Catholic Monarchs, sometimes considered as the point of emergence of Spain as a unified country. The Conquest of Navarre occurred in 1512. There was also a period called Iberian Union, the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Portugal and the Spanish Crown; during which, both countries were ruled by the Spanish Habsburg kings between 1580 and 1640.
In the early modern period, Spain had one of the largest empires in history, which was also one of the first global empires, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes over 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were also many advancements in the arts, with the rise of renowned painters such as Diego Velázquez. The most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was also published during the Golden Age.
The population of Spain has become more diverse due to immigration of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From 2000 to 2010, Spain had among the highest per capita immigration rates in the world and the second-highest absolute net migration in the world (after the United States). The diverse regional and cultural populations mainly include the Castilians, Catalans, Andalusians, Valencians, Balearics, Canarians, Basques and the Galicians among others.


The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago. Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years.
After the last ice age only large mammals such as mammoths, bison and woolly rhinoceros remained. Roughly 11,000 years ago, when the ice sheets began to recede, humans repopulated the area; genetic research suggests they came from the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. The sea level was lower than the present day and Britain was connected by land bridge to Ireland and Eurasia.
As the seas rose, it was separated from Ireland 10,000 years ago and from Eurasia two millennia later.
The Beaker culture arrived around 2,500 BC, introducing drinking and food vessels constructed from clay, as well as vessels used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores. It was during this time that major Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury were constructed. By heating together tin and copper, which were in abundance in the area, the Beaker culture people made bronze, and later iron from iron ores. The development of iron smelting allowed the construction of better ploughs, advancing agriculture (for instance, with Celtic fields), as well as the production of more effective weapons.
During the Iron Age, Celtic culture, deriving from the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, arrived from Central Europe. Brythonic was the spoken language during this time. Society was tribal; according to Ptolemy's Geographia there were around 20 tribes in the area. Earlier divisions are unknown because the Britons were not literate. Like other regions on the edge of the Empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans. Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic attempted to invade twice in 55 BC; although largely unsuccessful, he managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes.
The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD during the reign of Emperor Claudius, subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Britannia province. The best-known of the native tribes who attempted to resist were the Catuvellauni led by Caratacus. Later, an uprising led by Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, ended with Boudica's suicide following her defeat at the Battle of Watling Street. The author of one study of Roman Britain suggested that from 43 AD to 84 AD, the Roman invaders killed somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people from a population of perhaps 2,000,000. This era saw a Greco-Roman culture prevail with the introduction of Roman law, Roman architecture, aqueducts, sewers, many agricultural items and silk. In the 3rd century, Emperor Septimius Severus died at Eboracum (now York), where Constantine was subsequently proclaimed emperor a century later.
There is debate about when Christianity was first introduced; it was no later than the 4th century, probably much earlier. According to Bede, missionaries were sent from Rome by Eleutherius at the request of the chieftain Lucius of Britain in 180 AD, to settle differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials, which were disturbing the church. There are traditions linked to Glastonbury claiming an introduction through Joseph of Arimathea, while others claim through Lucius of Britain. By 410, during the Decline of the Roman Empire, Britain was left exposed by the end of Roman rule in Britain and the withdrawal of Roman army units, to defend the frontiers in continental Europe and partake in civil wars. Celtic Christian monastic and missionary movements flourished: Patrick (5th-century Ireland) and in the 6th century Brendan (Clonfert), Comgall (Bangor), David (Wales), Aiden (Lindisfarne) and Columba (Iona). This period of Christianity was influenced by ancient Celtic culture in its sensibilities, polity, practices and theology. Local "congregations" were centred in the monastic community and monastic leaders were more like chieftains, as peers, rather than in the more hierarchical system of the Roman-dominated church.


Europe's population is estimated at 56.7 million people (Spielvogel).
Saxony's mint at Annaberg begins producing guldengroschens.
Although other reports exist, it is thought that the last wolf in England was killed this year, making the species extinct in that country. The wolf is thought to have been killed in Allithwaite, in Cumbria. However, reports of wolf sightings and laws concerning wolf bounties existed in rural areas of the north until the 18th century.
A group of Māori migrated east from the New Zealand mainland to the Chatham Islands, developing a distinct pacificist culture known as the Moriori (approx date)


1964
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1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1964th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 964th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 64th  year of the 20th century, and the  5th   year of the 1960s decade.


1851 (MDCCCLI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1851st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 851st  year of the 2nd millennium, the 51st  year of the 19th century, and the  2nd   year of the 1850s decade. As of the start of 1851, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


January 11 – Hong Xiuquan officially begins the Taiping Rebellion.
January 15 – Christian Female College, modern-day Columbia College, receives its charter from the Missouri General Assembly.
January 23 – The flip of a coin, subsequently named Portland Penny, determines whether a new city in the Oregon Territory is named after Boston, Massachusetts, or Portland, Maine, with Portland winning.
January 28 – Northwestern University is founded in Illinois.
February 1 – Brandtaucher, the oldest surviving submersible craft, sinks during acceptance trials in the German port of Kiel, but the designer, Wilhelm Bauer, and the two crew escape successfully.
February 6 – Black Thursday in Australia: Bushfires sweep across the state of Victoria, burning about a quarter of its area.
February 12 – Edward Hargraves claims to have found gold in Australia.
February 15 – In Boston, Massachusetts, members of the anti-slavery Boston Vigilance Committee rescue fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins from a courtroom, following his arrest by U.S. marshals.
March 1 – Victor Hugo uses the phrase United States of Europe, in a speech to the French National Assembly.
March 11 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto is first performed at La Fenice in Venice.
March 27 – The first European men reportedly see Yosemite Valley.
March 30 – A population census is taken in the United Kingdom. The population reaches 21 million. 6.3 million live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales, and cities of 20,000 or more account for 35% of the total English population.


Recent human history of the Rocky Mountains is one of more rapid change. The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado—with a group of soldiers and missionaries marched into the Rocky Mountain region from the south in 1540. In 1610, the Spanish founded the city of Santa Fe, the oldest continuous seat of government in the United States, at the foot of the Rockies in present-day New Mexico. The introduction of the horse, metal tools, rifles, new diseases, and different cultures profoundly changed the Native American cultures. Native American populations were extirpated from most of their historical ranges by disease, warfare, habitat loss (eradication of the bison), and continued assaults on their culture.
In 1739, French fur traders Pierre and Paul Mallet, while journeying through the Great Plains, discovered a range of mountains at the headwaters of the Platte River, which local American Indian tribes called the "Rockies", becoming the first Europeans to report on this uncharted mountain range.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1764 – March 11, 1820) became the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains in 1793. He found the upper reaches of the Fraser River and reached the Pacific coast of what is now Canada on July 20 of that year, completing the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico. He arrived at Bella Coola, British Columbia, where he first reached saltwater at South Bentinck Arm, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) was the first scientific reconnaissance of the Rocky Mountains. Specimens were collected for contemporary botanists, zoologists, and geologists. The expedition was said to have paved the way to (and through) the Rocky Mountains for European-Americans from the East, although Lewis and Clark met at least 11 European-American mountain men during their travels.
Mountain men, primarily French, Spanish, and British, roamed the Rocky Mountains from 1720 to 1800 seeking mineral deposits and furs. The fur-trading North West Company established Rocky Mountain House as a trading post in what is now the Rocky Mountain Foothills of present-day Alberta in 1799, and their business rivals the Hudson's Bay Company established Acton House nearby. These posts served as bases for most European activity in the Canadian Rockies in the early 19th century. Among the most notable are the expeditions of David Thompson, who followed the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. On his 1811 expedition, he camped at the junction of the Columbia River and the Snake River and erected a pole and notice claiming the area for the United Kingdom and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a fort at the site.
By the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, which established the 49th parallel north as the international boundary west from Lake of the Woods to the "Stony Mountains"; the UK and the USA agreed to what has since been described as "joint occupancy" of lands further west to the Pacific Ocean. Resolution of the territorial and treaty issues, the Oregon dispute, was deferred until a later time.
In 1819, Spain ceded their rights north of the 42nd Parallel to the United States, though these rights did not include possession and also included obligations to Britain and Russia concerning their claims in the same region.


The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch 3,000 mi (4,800 km) in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Depending on differing definitions between Canada and the United States, its northern terminus is located either in northern British Columbia's Terminal Range south of the Liard River and east of the Trench, or in the northeastern foothills of the Brooks Range/British Mountains that face the Beaufort Sea coasts between the Canning River and the Firth River across the Alaska-Yukon border. Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are distinct from the tectonically younger Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada, which both lie farther to its west.
The Rocky Mountains formed 80 million to 55 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, in which a number of plates began sliding underneath the North American plate. The angle of subduction was shallow, resulting in a broad belt of mountains running down western North America. Since then, further tectonic activity and erosion by glaciers have sculpted the Rockies into dramatic peaks and valleys. At the end of the last ice age, humans began inhabiting the mountain range. After explorations of the range by Europeans, such as Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and Anglo-Americans, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition, natural resources such as minerals and fur drove the initial economic exploitation of the mountains, although the range itself never experienced a dense population.
Of the 100 highest major peaks of the Rocky Mountains, 78 (including the 30 highest) are located in Colorado, ten in Wyoming, six in New Mexico, three in Montana, and one each in Utah, British Columbia, and Idaho. Of the 50 most prominent summits of the Rocky Mountains, 12 are located in British Columbia, 12 in Montana, ten in Alberta, eight in Colorado, four in Wyoming, three in Utah, three in Idaho, and one in New Mexico. Public parks and forest lands protect much of the mountain range, and they are popular tourist destinations, especially for hiking, camping, mountaineering, fishing, hunting, mountain biking, snowmobiling, skiing, and snowboarding.


March 3 – Cyril Burt, British educational psychologist (d. 1971)
March 4
Julius Fromm, German businessman, inventor known for the Condom machine (d. 1945)
Sam Langford, Canadian boxer (d. 1956)
Maude Fealy, American actress (d. 1971)
March 7 – Michael Somogyi, Hungarian-American biochemist, professor (d. 1971)
March 19
Norman Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1950)
Joseph Stilwell, American general (d. 1946)
March 22 – Edwin Carewe, Native American director (d. 1940)
March 24 – Dorothy Campbell, Scottish golfer (d. 1945)
March 27 – Dimitrios Semsis, Greek violinist (d. 1950)
April 1
Laurette Taylor, American actress (d.1946)
Lon Chaney, American actor (d. 1930)
April 3
Henry Diesen, Norwegian admiral (d. 1953)
Nikolai Kuzmin, Soviet political and military leader (d. 1938)
April 5 – Walter Huston, Canadian-born American actor (d. 1950)
April 11 – Leonard Mudie, English actor (d. 1965)
April 12 – Dally Messenger, Australian rugby league player (d. 1959)
April 15 – Stanley Bruce, 8th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967)
April 18 – Aleksanteri Aava, Finnish poet (d. 1956)
April 25 – Semyon Budyonny, Cossack cavalryman, Marshal of the Soviet Union (d. 1973)
April 27 – Hubert Harrison, African-American writer, critic, and activist (d. 1927)
April 30 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech writer (d. 1923)


October 1
Sydney Boys High School is founded in Sydney, Australia, the first boys' public school.
In Amsterdam, the first International Colonial and Export Exhibition closes, having had over 1 million visitors.
October 4
The Boys' Brigade (the first uniformed youth organization in existence) is founded in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Orient Express train begins to run through from Paris Gare de l'Est to Giurgiu in Romania, with onward ferry and train connections to Istanbul (the train has been running since June 5 as far as Vienna).
October 15 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional, allowing individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race.
October 20 – Peru and Chile sign the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province is ceded to Chile, ending Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.
October 22 – The Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram in Vienna (Austria) is the first electric tram powered by overhead wire.
October 24 – Cardiff University, Wales, opens (under the name of University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire).
October 30 – Two Clan na Gael dynamite bombs explode in the London Underground, injuring several people. The next day, British Home Secretary Vernon Harcourt drafts 300 policemen to guard the underground, and introduces the Explosives Bill.
November 3 – The 14th Century AH begins in the Islamic calendar on the 1st of Muharram, 1301 AH.
November 3 – American Old West: Self-described Black Bart the Po-8 makes his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves a handkerchief with a laundry mark that eventually leads to his capture.
November 14 – Chile's National Library of Congress is founded.
November 18 – U.S. and Canadian railroads institute 5 standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
November 28 – Whitman College is chartered as a 4-year college in Walla Walla, Washington.
December 1 – Battleford Industrial School, the first government-operated Indian residential school opens in Canada.
December 5 – Bisbee Massacre: Five people are killed in the robbery of a general store by bandits in Bisbee, Arizona.
December 16 – Tonkin Campaign: French forces capture the Sơn Tây citadel.
December 21 –  The Royal Canadian Dragoons and The Royal Canadian Regiment, the first Permanent Force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army, are formed.


May 1 – Tom Moore, Irish-American actor (d. 1955)
May 5
Eleazar López Contreras, 32nd President of Venezuela (d. 1973)
Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, British field marshal (d. 1950)
May 9 – José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (d. 1955)
May 10 – Eugen Leviné, Communist leader of the Munich Soviet Republic (d. 1919)
May 14 – Charlie Seeling, New Zealand-born rugby player (d. 1956)
May 16
Celâl Bayar, Turkish politician, statesman, 3rd President of Turkey (d. 1986)
Solomone Ula Ata, Prime Minister of Tonga (d. 1950)
May 18
Walter Gropius, German architect (d. 1969)
Hasui Kawase, Japanese painter, printmaker (d. 1957)
Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Brazilian marshal, 16th President of Brazil (d. 1974)
May 19 – George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, British peer (d. 1968)
May 22 – Jane Grey, American actress (d. 1944)
May 23
Douglas Fairbanks, American actor (d. 1939)
Ferenc Talányi, Slovene writer, partisan, and painter (d. 1959)
May 24 – Elsa Maxwell, American gossip columnist, international party giver (d. 1963)
May 25 – Lesley J. McNair, American general (d. 1944)
May 27 – Jessie Arms Botke, American artist (d. 1971)
May 28 – Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Indian pro-independence activist, Hindu nationalist (d. 1966)
May 31 – Lauri Kristian Relander, President of Finland (d. 1942)
June 5 – John Maynard Keynes, English economist (d. 1946)
June 7 – Sylvanus G. Morley, American scholar, World War I spy (d. 1948)
June 11 – Aubrey Fitch, American admiral (d. 1978)
June 18 – Mary Alden, American stage, screen actress (d. 1946)
June 20 – Royal E. Ingersoll, American admiral (d. 1976)
June 21
Richard Remer, American athlete (d. 1973)
Lluís Companys, President of Catalonia (d. 1940)
June 24 – Victor Francis Hess, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1964)
June 28 – Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France (d. 1945)
June 29 – Lothrop Stoddard, American eugenicist, radical scientific racist (d. 1950)


April 5 – Oxygen is liquefied for the first time.
April 28 – The first rugby sevens tournament is played at Melrose RFC in Scotland.
May 23 – Robert Louis Stevenson's children's pirate adventure novel Treasure Island is first published in book format, in London.
May 24 – Brooklyn Bridge is opened to traffic in New York City, after 13 years of construction.
May 30 – A rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge is going to collapse causes a stampede, which crushes 12 people.
June 13 – Count Arvid Posse leaves office as Prime Minister of Sweden. He is succeeded by Carl Johan Thyselius, the first non-aristocrat (Swedish ; "ofrälse") to serve as Swedish head of government, and Prime Minister.
June 16 – Victoria Hall disaster: A rush for treats results in 183 children being asphyxiated, in a concert hall in Sunderland, England.
June 28 – In Milan, Italy, the first central European electricity power station is inaugurated.
June 30 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Black Arrow first appears as a serial in the British magazine Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature as by 'Captain George North'. Stevenson completes writing it at the end of the summer in France.


January 1
Alberto Gerchunoff, Argentine writer (d. 1949)
Ichirō Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1959)
January 3 – Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1967)
January 4 – Johanna Westerdijk, Dutch plant pathologist (d. 1961)
January 5 – Döme Sztójay, prime minister of Hungary (d. 1946)
January 6 – Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese poet, painter and novelist (d. 1931)
January 10
Francis X. Bushman, American screen actor (d. 1966)
Hubert Latham, pioneer French aviator of the pre-World War I era (d. 1912)
Florence Reed, American actress (d. 1967)
Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, Russian writer (d. 1945)
January 16 – Hugh Oswald Short, British aviation pioneer and aircraft builder, youngest of the Short Brothers (d. 1969)
January 19 – Waite Phillips, American businessman, philanthropist (d. 1964)
January 20
Enoch L. Johnson, American political boss, racketeer (d. 1968)
Bertram Ramsay, British admiral (d. 1945)
January 21 – Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet (d. 1929)
January 30 – Eddie Collins, American vaudeville-veteran comic (d. 1940)
February 8 – Joseph Schumpeter, Austrian economist (d. 1950)
February 9 – Fritz August Breuhaus de Groot, German architect, interior designer and designer (d. 1960)
February 15 – Sax Rohmer, English author (d. 1959)
February 16
Elizabeth Craig, British writer (d. 1980)
Koshirō Oikawa, Japanese admiral (d. 1958)
February 18 – Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer (d. 1957)
February 22
Abe Attell, American boxer (d. 1970)
Marguerite Clark, American silent film actress (d. 1940)
February 23 – Karl Jaspers, German philosopher (d. 1969)
February 28 – Gheorghe Argeșanu, Romanian general and politician, 40th Prime Minister of Romania (d. 1940)


As the Second Constitutional Era began in the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary took the opportunity to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip was used by leading Austrian politicians and generals to persuade the emperor to declare war on Serbia, thereby risking and prompting the outbreak of World War I, which eventually led to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Over one million Austro-Hungarian soldiers died in World War I.
On 21 October 1918, the elected German members of the Reichsrat (parliament of Imperial Austria) met in Vienna as the Provisional National Assembly for German Austria (Provisorische Nationalversammlung für Deutschösterreich). On 30 October the assembly founded the Republic of German Austria by appointing a government, called Staatsrat. This new government was invited by the Emperor to take part in the decision on the planned armistice with Italy, but refrained from this business.
This left the responsibility for the end of the war, on 3 November 1918, solely to the emperor and his government. On 11 November, the emperor, advised by ministers of the old and the new governments, declared he would not take part in state business any more; on 12 November, German Austria, by law, declared itself to be a democratic republic and part of the new German republic. The constitution, renaming the Staatsrat as Bundesregierung (federal government) and Nationalversammlung as Nationalrat (national council) was passed on 10 November 1920.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain of 1919 (for Hungary the Treaty of Trianon of 1920) confirmed and consolidated the new order of Central Europe which to a great extent had been established in November 1918, creating new states and altering others. The German-speaking parts of Austria which had been part of Austria-Hungary were reduced to a rump state named The Republic of German-Austria (German: Republik Deutschösterreich), though excluding the predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol. The desire for Anschluss (annexation of Austria to Germany) was a popular opinion shared by all social circles in both Austria and Germany. On 12 November, German-Austria was declared a republic, and named Social Democrat Karl Renner as provisional chancellor. On the same day it drafted a provisional constitution that stated that "German-Austria is a democratic republic" (Article 1) and "German-Austria is an integral part of the German reich" (Article 2). The Treaty of Saint Germain and the Treaty of Versailles explicitly forbid union between Austria and Germany. The treaties also forced German-Austria to rename itself as "Republic of Austria" which consequently led to the first Austrian Republic.
Over 3 million German-speaking Austrians found themselves living outside the new Austrian Republic as minorities in the newly formed or enlarged states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Italy. These included the provinces of South Tyrol (which became part of Italy) and German Bohemia (Czechoslovakia). The status of German Bohemia (Sudetenland) later played a role in sparking the Second World War.
The status of South Tyrol was a lingering problem between Austria and Italy until it was officially settled by the 1980s with a great degree of autonomy being granted to it by the Italian national government.
The border between Austria and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) was settled with the Carinthian Plebiscite in October 1920 and allocated the major part of the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Crownland of Carinthia to Austria. This set the border on the Karawanken mountain range, with many Slovenes remaining in Austria.


In 1199, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade to "defend the Christians of Livonia". Fighting reached Estonia in 1206, when Danish King Valdemar II unsuccessfully invaded Saaremaa. The German Livonian Brothers of the Sword, who had previously subjugated Livonians, Latgalians, and Selonians, started campaigning against the Estonians in 1208, and over next few years both sides made numerous raids and counter-raids. A major leader of the Estonian resistance was Lembitu, an elder of Sakala County, but in 1217 the Estonians suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, where Lembitu was killed. In 1219, Valdemar II landed at Lindanise, defeated the Estonians in the Battle of Lyndanisse, and started conquering Northern Estonia. The next year, Sweden invaded Western Estonia, but were repelled by the Oeselians. In 1223, a major revolt ejected the Germans and Danes from the whole of Estonia, except Reval, but the crusaders soon resumed their offensive, and in 1227, Saaremaa was the last maakond (county) to surrender.
After the crusade, the territory of present-day Southern Estonia and Latvia was named Terra Mariana, but later it became known simply as Livonia. Northern Estonia became the Danish Duchy of Estonia, while the rest was divided between the Sword Brothers and prince-bishoprics of Dorpat and Ösel–Wiek. In 1236, after suffering a major defeat, the Sword Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order becoming the Livonian Order. In the next decades there were several uprisings against the Teutonic rulers in Saaremaa. In 1343, a major rebellion started, known as the St. George's Night Uprising, encompassing the whole area of northern Estonia and Saaremaa. The Teutonic Order finished suppressing the rebellion in 1345, and the next year the Danish king sold his possessions in Estonia to the Order. The unsuccessful rebellion led to a consolidation of power for the upper-class German minority. For the subsequent centuries Low German remained the language of the ruling elite in both Estonian cities and the countryside.
During the crusade, Reval (Tallinn) was founded, as the capital of Danish Estonia, on the site of Lindanise. In 1248 Reval received full town rights and adopted the Lübeck law. The Hanseatic League controlled trade on the Baltic Sea, and overall the four largest towns in Estonia became members: Reval, Dorpat (Tartu), Pernau (Pärnu), and Fellin (Viljandi). Reval acted as a trade intermediary between Novgorod and western Hanseatic cities, while Dorpat filled the same role with Pskov. Many artisans' and merchants guilds were formed during the period. Protected by their stone walls and membership in the Hansa, prosperous cities like Reval and Dorpat repeatedly defied other rulers of medieval Livonia. After the decline of the Teutonic Order after its defeat in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, and the defeat of the Livonian Order in the Battle of Swienta on 1 September 1435, the Livonian Confederation Agreement was signed on 4 December 1435.


The Estonian national awakening began in the 1850s as the leading figures started promoting an Estonian national identity among the general populace. Its economic basis was formed by widespread farm buyouts by peasants, forming a class of Estonian landowners. In 1857 Johann Voldemar Jannsen started publishing the first Estonian language newspaper and began popularising the denomination of oneself as eestlane (Estonian). Schoolmaster Carl Robert Jakobson and clergyman Jakob Hurt became leading figures in a national movement, encouraging Estonian farmers to take pride in themselves and in their ethnic identity. The first nationwide movements formed, such as a campaign to establish the Estonian language Alexander School, the founding of the Society of Estonian Literati and the Estonian Students' Society, and the first national song festival, held in 1869 in Tartu. Linguistic reforms helped to develop the Estonian language. The national epic Kalevipoeg was published in 1862, and 1870 saw the first performances of Estonian theatre. In 1878 a major split happened in the national movement. The moderate wing led by Hurt focused on development of culture and Estonian education, while the radical wing led by Jacobson started demanding increased political and economical rights.
At the end of the 19th century, Russification began, as the central government initiated various administrative and cultural measures to tie Baltic governorates more closely to the empire. The Russian language replaced German and Estonian in most secondary schools and universities, and many social and cultural activities in local languages were suppressed. Still, some administrative changes aimed at reducing the power of Baltic German institutions did prove useful to Estonians. In the late 1890s, there was a new surge of nationalism with the rise of prominent figures like Jaan Tõnisson and Konstantin Päts. In the early 20th century, Estonians started taking over control of local governments in towns from Germans.
During the 1905 Revolution, the first legal Estonian political parties were founded. An Estonian national congress was convened and demanded the unification of Estonian areas into a single autonomous territory and an end to Russification. The unrest was accompanied by both peaceful political demonstrations and violent riots with looting in the commercial district of Tallinn and in a number of wealthy landowners' manors in the Estonian countryside. The Tsarist government responded with a brutal crackdown; some 500 people were executed and hundreds more jailed or deported to Siberia.


In 1917, after the February Revolution, the governorate of Estonia was expanded by the Russian Provisional Government to include Estonian-speaking areas of Livonia and was granted autonomy, enabling the formation of the Estonian Provincial Assembly. Bolsheviks  seized power in Estonia in November 1917, and disbanded the Provincial Assembly. However, the Provincial Assembly established the  Salvation Committee, and during the short interlude between Russian retreat and German arrival, the committee declared the independence of Estonia on 24 February 1918, and formed the Estonian Provisional Government.  German occupation immediately followed, but after their defeat in World War I the Germans were forced to hand over power to the Provisional Government on 19 November 1918.
On 28 November 1918 Soviet Russia invaded, starting the Estonian War of Independence. The Red Army came within 30 km of Tallinn, but in January 1919, the Estonian Army, led by Johan Laidoner, went on a counter-offensive, ejecting Bolshevik forces from Estonia within a few months. Renewed Soviet attacks failed, and in spring, the Estonian army, in co-operation with White Russian forces, advanced into Russia and Latvia. In June 1919, Estonia  defeated the German Landeswehr which had attempted to dominate Latvia, restoring power to the government of Kārlis Ulmanis there. After the collapse of the White Russian forces, the Red Army launched a major offensive against Narva in late 1919, but failed to achieve a breakthrough. On 2 February 1920, the Tartu Peace Treaty was signed by Estonia and Soviet Russia, with the latter pledging to permanently give up all sovereign claims to Estonia.
In April 1919, the Estonian Constituent Assembly was elected. The Constituent Assembly passed a sweeping  land reform expropriating large estates, and adopted a new highly  liberal  constitution establishing Estonia as a  parliamentary democracy. In 1924, the Soviet Union organised a communist coup attempt, which quickly failed. Estonia's cultural-autonomy law for ethnic minorities, adopted in 1925, is widely recognised as one of the most liberal in the world at that time. The Great Depression put heavy pressure on Estonia's political system, and in 1933, the right-wing Vaps movement spearheaded a constitutional reform establishing a strong presidency. On 12 March 1934 the acting head of state, Konstantin Päts, declared a state of emergency, under the pretext that the Vaps movement had been planning a coup. Päts, together with general Johan Laidoner and Kaarel Eenpalu, established an authoritarian régime during the "era of silence", when the parliament did not reconvene and the newly-established  Patriotic League became the only legal political movement for the time being. A new constitution was adopted in a referendum, and elections were held in 1938. Both pro-government and opposition candidates were allowed to participate, but only as independents, as all political parties remained suspended under continued state of emergency. The Päts régime was relatively benign compared to other authoritarian régimes in  interwar Europe, and the régime never used violence against political opponents.
Estonia joined the League of Nations in 1921. Attempts to establish a  larger alliance together with Finland, Poland, and Latvia failed, with only a mutual-defence pact being signed with Latvia in 1923, and later was followed up with the Baltic Entente of 1934. In the 1930s, Estonia also engaged in secret military co-operation with Finland. Non-aggression pacts were signed with the Soviet Union in 1932, and with Germany in 1939. In 1939, Estonia declared neutrality, but this proved futile in World War II.


Somerset contains HM Prison Shepton Mallet, which was England's oldest prison still in use prior to its closure in 2013, having opened in 1610. During the English Civil War, Somerset was largely Parliamentarian, with key engagements being the Sieges of Taunton and the Battle of Langport.
In 1685, the Monmouth Rebellion was played out in Somerset and neighbouring Dorset. The rebels landed at Lyme Regis and travelled north, hoping to capture Bristol and Bath, but they were defeated in the Battle of Sedgemoor at Westonzoyland, the last pitched battle fought in England. Arthur Wellesley took his title, Duke of Wellington from the town of Wellington; he is commemorated on a nearby hill by a large, spotlit obelisk, known as the Wellington Monument.
The Industrial Revolution in the Midlands and Northern England spelled the end for most of Somerset's cottage industries. Farming continued to flourish, and the Bath and West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce was founded in 1777 to improve farming methods. Despite this, two decades later agriculturist John Billingsley conducted a survey of the county's agriculture in 1795 and found that agricultural methods could still be improved.
Coal mining was an important industry in north Somerset during the 18th and 19th centuries, and by 1800 it was prominent in Radstock.
The Somerset Coalfield reached its peak production by the 1920s. All the pits have now been closed, the last in 1973. Most of the surface buildings have been removed, and apart from a winding wheel outside Radstock Museum, little evidence of their former existence remains. Further west, the Brendon Hills were mined for iron ore in the late 19th century; this was taken by the West Somerset Mineral Railway to Watchet Harbour for shipment to the furnaces at Ebbw Vale.


Many Somerset soldiers died during the First World War, with the Somerset Light Infantry suffering nearly 5,000 casualties. War memorials were put up in most of the county's towns and villages; only nine, described as the Thankful Villages, had none of their residents killed. During the Second World War the county was a base for troops preparing for the D-Day landings. Some of the hospitals which were built for the casualties of the war remain in use. The Taunton Stop Line was set up to repel a potential German invasion. The remains of its pill boxes can still be seen along the coast, and south through Ilminster and Chard.
A number of decoy towns were constructed in Somerset in World War II to protect Bristol and other towns. They were designed to mimic the nighttime geometry of "blacked out" streets, railway lines, and Bristol Temple Meads railway station, to encourage German bombers away from these targets. One, on the German radio navigation beam flight path to Bristol, was constructed on Beacon Batch. It was laid out by Shepperton Studios, based on aerial photographs of the city's railway marshalling yards. The decoys were fitted with dim red lights, simulating activities such as the stoking of steam locomotives. Burning bales of straw soaked in creosote were used to simulate the effects of incendiary bombs dropped by the first wave of Pathfinder night bombers; meanwhile, incendiary bombs dropped on the correct location were quickly smothered, wherever possible. Drums of oil were also ignited to simulate the effect of a blazing city or town, with the aim of fooling subsequent waves of bombers into dropping their bombs on the wrong location.
The Chew Magna decoy town was hit by half a dozen bombs on 2 December 1940, and over a thousand incendiaries on 3 January 1941. The following night the Uphill decoy town, protecting the airfield at Weston-super-Mare, was bombed; a herd of dairy cows was hit, killing some and severely injuring others.


The boundaries of Somerset are very similar to how they were in medieval times. They have been largely unaltered. The River Avon formed much of the border with Gloucestershire, except that the hundred of Bath Forum, which straddles the Avon, formed part of Somerset. Bristol began as a town on the Gloucestershire side of the Avon, however as it grew it extended across the river into Somerset. In 1373 Edward III proclaimed "that the town of Bristol with its suburbs and precincts shall henceforth be separate from the counties of Gloucester and Somerset ... and that it should be a county by itself".
The present-day northern border of Somerset (adjoining the counties of Bristol and Gloucestershire) runs along the southern bank of the Avon from the Bristol Channel, then follows around the southern edge of the Bristol built-up area, before continuing upstream along the Avon, and then diverges from the river to include Bath and its historic hinterland to the north of the Avon, before meeting Wiltshire at the Three Shire Stones on the Fosse Way at Batheaston.


Somerset (/ˈsʌmərsɪt, -sɛt/ (listen); archaically Somersetshire) is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset is currently formed of six council areas, of which two are unitary authorities, until the four second-tier district councils are merged on 1 April 2023, after which the county will comprise three unitary authorities. Its county town is Taunton.
Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. There is evidence of human occupation from Paleolithic times, and of subsequent settlement by the Celts, Romans and Anglo-Saxons. The county played a significant part in Alfred the Great's rise to power, and later the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion. The city of Bath is famous for its Georgian architecture and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


On the authority of the future emperor Vespasian, as part of the ongoing expansion of the Roman presence in Britain, the Second Legion Augusta invaded Somerset from the south-east in 47 CE. The county remained part of the Roman Empire until around 409 CE, when the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end.
A variety of Roman remains have been found, including Pagans Hill Roman temple in Chew Stoke, Low Ham Roman Villa and the Roman Baths that gave their name to the city of Bath.


In 1947, the newly formed United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) led by "The Big Six" called for "self-government within the shortest possible time" following the Gold Coast legislative election, 1946. Kwame Nkrumah, a Ghanaian nationalist who led Ghana from 1957 to 1966 as the country's first Prime Minister and President, formed the Convention People's Party (CPP) in 1949 with the motto "self-government now". The party initiated a "positive action" campaign involving non-violent protests, strikes and non-cooperation with the British authorities. Nkrumah was arrested and sentenced to one year imprisonment during this time. In the Gold Coast's February 1951 general election, he was elected to Parliament and released from prison to become leader of government business. He became Prime Minister of the Gold Coast in 1952. He improved the infrastructure of the country and his Africanisation policies created better career opportunities for Ghanaians.
On 6 March 1957 at midnight, the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland were unified as one single independent dominion within the British Commonwealth under the name Ghana. This was done under the Ghana Independence Act 1957. The current flag of Ghana, consisting of the colours red, gold, green, and a black star, dates back to this unification. It was designed by Theodosia Salome Okoh; the red represents the blood that was shed towards independence, the gold represents the industrial minerals wealth of Ghana, the green symbolises the rich grasslands of Ghana, and the black star is the symbol of the Ghanaian people and African emancipation.
On 1 July 1960, following the Ghanaian constitutional referendum and Ghanaian presidential election, Nkrumah declared Ghana as a republic and assumed the presidency. 6 March is the nation's Independence Day and 1 July is now celebrated as Republic Day.
At the time of independence Nkrumah declared, "My first objective is to abolish from Ghana poverty, ignorance, and disease. We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school, and by the quality of their education; by the availability of water and electricity in our towns and villages; and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that my government will ask to be judged.".
Nkrumah was the first African head of state to promote the concept of Pan-Africanism, which he had been introduced to during his studies at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in the United States, at the time when Marcus Garvey was becoming famous for his "Back to Africa Movement". Nkrumah merged the teachings of Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. and the naturalised Ghanaian scholar W. E. B. Du Bois into the formation of 1960s Ghana.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, as he became known, played an instrumental part in the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement, and in establishing the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to teach his ideologies of communism and socialism. His life achievements were recognised by Ghanaians during his centenary birthday celebration, and the day was instituted as a public holiday in Ghana (Founder's Day).


Ghana is located on the Gulf of Guinea, only a few degrees north of the Equator, therefore giving it a warm climate. Ghana spans an area of 238,535 km² (92,099 sq mi), and has an Atlantic coastline that stretches 560 kilometres (350 miles) on the Gulf of Guinea in Atlantic Ocean to its south. It lies between latitudes 4°45'N and 11°N, and longitudes 1°15'E and 3°15'W. The Prime Meridian passes through Ghana, specifically through the industrial port town of Tema. Ghana is geographically closer to the "centre" of the Earth geographical coordinates than any other country; even though the notional centre, (0°, 0°) is located in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 614 km (382 mi) off the south-east coast of Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea.
Grasslands mixed with south coastal shrublands and forests dominate Ghana, with forest extending northward from the south-west coast of Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean 320 kilometres (200 miles) and eastward for a maximum of about 270 kilometres (170 miles) with several locations for mining of industrial minerals and timber. Ghana is home to five terrestrial ecoregions: Eastern Guinean forests, Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, West Sudanian savanna, Central African mangroves, and Guinean mangroves. It had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.53/10, ranking it 112th globally out of 172 countries.
Ghana encompasses plains, waterfalls, low hills, rivers, Dodi Island and Bobowasi Island on the south Atlantic Ocean coast. The White Volta River and its tributary Black Volta, flow south through Ghana to Lake Volta, the world's third-largest reservoir by volume and largest by surface area, formed by the hydroelectric Akosombo Dam, completed in 1965. Flowing out of Lake Volta into the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of Guinea is the Volta River.

The northernmost part of Ghana is Pulmakong and the southernmost part of Ghana is Cape Three Points.


The etymology of the name Ghana means "Strong Warrior King" and was the title accorded to the kings of the medieval "Ghana" Empire in West Africa—not to be confused with today's Ghana, for the empire was further north, in modern-day Republic of Mali, Senegal and southern Mauritania, as well as in the region of Guinea. Ghana was known for its large gold usage, and hence was named the Land of Gold by the Arabs during the Trans-Saharan trades.


The territory is divided into 18 districts, each represented by a district council. These advise the government on local issues such as public facility provisioning, community programme maintenance, cultural promotion, and environmental policy. There are a total of 479 district council seats, 452 of which are directly elected. Rural committee chairmen, representing outlying villages and towns, fill the 27 non-elected seats.


In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor rejected proposals to legalise and tax opium and ordered imperial commissioner Lin Zexu to eradicate the opium trade. The commissioner destroyed opium stockpiles and halted all foreign trade, triggering a British military response and the First Opium War. The Qing surrendered early in the war and ceded Hong Kong Island in the Convention of Chuenpi. British forces began controlling Hong Kong shortly after the signing of the convention, from 26 January 1841. However, both countries were dissatisfied and did not ratify the agreement. After more than a year of further hostilities, Hong Kong Island was formally ceded to the United Kingdom in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.
Administrative infrastructure was quickly built by early 1842, but piracy, disease, and hostile Qing policies initially prevented the government from attracting commerce. Conditions on the island improved during the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s, when many Chinese refugees, including wealthy merchants, fled mainland turbulence and settled in the colony. Further tensions between the British and Qing over the opium trade escalated into the Second Opium War. The Qing were again defeated and forced to give up Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island in the Convention of Peking. By the end of this war, Hong Kong had evolved from a transient colonial outpost into a major entrepôt. Rapid economic improvement during the 1850s attracted foreign investment, as potential stakeholders became more confident in Hong Kong's future.
The colony was further expanded in 1898 when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories. The University of Hong Kong was established in 1911 as the territory's first institution of higher education. Kai Tak Airport began operation in 1924, and the colony avoided a prolonged economic downturn after the 1925–26 Canton–Hong Kong strike. At the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Governor Geoffry Northcote declared Hong Kong a neutral zone to safeguard its status as a free port. The colonial government prepared for a possible attack, evacuating all British women and children in 1940. The Imperial Japanese Army attacked Hong Kong on 8 December 1941, the same morning as its attack on Pearl Harbor. Hong Kong was occupied by Japan for almost four years before Britain resumed control on 30 August 1945.
Its population rebounded quickly after the war, as skilled Chinese migrants fled from the Chinese Civil War and more refugees crossed the border when the Chinese Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949. Hong Kong became the first of the Four Asian Tiger economies to industrialise during the 1950s. With a rapidly increasing population, the colonial government began reforms to improve infrastructure and public services. The public-housing estate programme, Independent Commission Against Corruption, and Mass Transit Railway were all established during the post-war decades to provide safer housing, integrity in the civil service, and more reliable transportation. Although the territory's competitiveness in manufacturing gradually declined because of rising labour and property costs, it transitioned to a service-based economy. By the early 1990s, Hong Kong had established itself as a global financial centre and shipping hub.


Earliest known human traces in what is now Hong Kong are dated by some to 35,000 and 39,000 years ago during the Paleolithic period. The claim is based on an archaeological investigation in Wong Tei Tung, Sai Kung in 2003. The archaeological works revealed knapped stone tools from deposits that were dated using optical luminescence dating.
During the Middle Neolithic period, about 6,000 years ago, the region had been widely occupied by humans. Neolithic to Bronze Age Hong Kong settlers were semi-coastal people. Early inhabitants are believed to be Austronesians in the Middle Neolithic period and later the Yueh people. As hinted by the archaeological works in Sha Ha, Sai Kung, rice cultivation had been introduced since Late Neolithic period. Bronze Age Hong Kong was featured with coarse pottery, hard pottery, quartz and stone jewelry, as well as small bronze implements.
The Qin dynasty incorporated the Hong Kong area into China for the first time in 214 BCE, after conquering the indigenous Baiyue. The region was consolidated under the Nanyue kingdom (a predecessor state of Vietnam) after the Qin collapse and recaptured by China after the Han conquest. During the Mongol conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song court was briefly located in modern-day Kowloon City (the Sung Wong Toi site) before its final defeat in the 1279 Battle of Yamen. By the end of the Yuan dynasty, seven large families had settled in the region and owned most of the land. Settlers from nearby provinces migrated to Kowloon throughout the Ming dynasty.
The earliest European visitor was Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares, who arrived in 1513. Portuguese merchants established a trading post called Tamão in Hong Kong waters and began regular trade with southern China. Although the traders were expelled after military clashes in the 1520s, Portuguese-Chinese trade relations were re-established by 1549. Portugal acquired a permanent lease for Macau in 1557.
After the Qing conquest, maritime trade was banned under the Haijin policies. From 1661 to 1683, the population of most of the area forming present day Hong Kong was cleared under the Great Clearance, turning the region into a wasteland. The Kangxi Emperor lifted the maritime trade prohibition, allowing foreigners to enter Chinese ports in 1684. Qing authorities established the Canton System in 1757 to regulate trade more strictly, restricting non-Russian ships to the port of Canton. Although European demand for Chinese commodities like tea, silk, and porcelain was high, Chinese interest in European manufactured goods was insignificant, so that Chinese goods could only be bought with precious metals. To reduce the trade imbalance, the British sold large amounts of Indian opium to China. Faced with a drug crisis, Qing officials pursued ever more aggressive actions to halt the opium trade.


A number of species are considered threatened by human activities and are in danger of extinction. The majority of these are forest species with limited distribution, particularly insular species. They are threatened by habitat loss caused by forest clearance or degradation and in some cases by introduced species. The Marquesan kingfisher of French Polynesia is listed as critically endangered due to a combination of habitat loss and degradation caused by introduced cattle, and possibly due to predation by introduced species.


The Moon is a differentiated body that was initially in hydrostatic equilibrium but has since departed from this condition. It has a geochemically distinct crust, mantle, and core. The Moon has a solid iron-rich inner core with a radius possibly as small as 240 kilometres (150 mi) and a fluid outer core primarily made of liquid iron with a radius of roughly 300 kilometres (190 mi). Around the core is a partially molten boundary layer with a radius of about 500 kilometres (310 mi). This structure is thought to have developed through the fractional crystallization of a global magma ocean shortly after the Moon's formation 4.5 billion years ago.
Crystallization of this magma ocean would have created a mafic mantle from the precipitation and sinking of the minerals olivine, clinopyroxene, and orthopyroxene; after about three-quarters of the magma ocean had crystallised, lower-density plagioclase minerals could form and float into a crust atop. The final liquids to crystallise would have been initially sandwiched between the crust and mantle, with a high abundance of incompatible and heat-producing elements. Consistent with this perspective, geochemical mapping made from orbit suggests a crust of mostly anorthosite. The Moon rock samples of the flood lavas that erupted onto the surface from partial melting in the mantle confirm the mafic mantle composition, which is more iron-rich than that of Earth. The crust is on average about 50 kilometres (31 mi) thick.
The Moon is the second-densest satellite in the Solar System, after Io. However, the inner core of the Moon is small, with a radius of about 350 kilometres (220 mi) or less, around 20% of the radius of the Moon. Its composition is not well understood, but is probably metallic iron alloyed with a small amount of sulfur and nickel; analyses of the Moon's time-variable rotation suggest that it is at least partly molten. The pressure at the lunar core is estimated to be 5 GPa (49,000 atm).


June 9 – The Final Act of the Congress of Vienna is signed: A new European political situation is set. The German Confederation and Congress Poland are created, and the neutrality of Switzerland is guaranteed. Also, Luxembourg declares independence from the French Empire.
June 15 – The Duchess of Richmond's ball is held in Brussels, "the most famous ball in history".
June 16
Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Ligny: Napoleon defeats a Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.
Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Quatre Bras: Marshal Ney engages Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, resulting in a tactical and strategic draw.
June 18 – Napoleonic Wars – Battle of Waterloo: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher decisively defeat Napoleon.
June 22 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon abdicates again; Napoleon II (1811–1832), age 4, rules for two weeks (22 June to 7 July).
June 26 – Napoleonic Wars: Wellington's advancing Allied Army takes Péronne, Somme on its way to Paris.


The 1970s (pronounced "nineteen-seventies"; commonly shortened to the "Seventies" or the "'70s") was a decade that began on January 1, 1970, and ended on December 31, 1979.
In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a "pivot of change" in world history, focusing especially on the economic upheavals that followed the end of the postwar economic boom. On a global scale, it was characterized by frequent coups, domestic conflicts and civil wars, and various political upheaval and armed conflicts which arose from or were related to decolonization, and the global struggle between the West, the Warsaw Pact, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Many regions had periods of high-intensity conflict, notably Southeast Asia, the Mideast, and Africa.
In the Western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and economic liberty of women, continued to grow. In the United Kingdom, the 1979 election resulted in the victory of its Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, the first female British Prime Minister. Industrialized countries experienced an economic recession due to an oil crisis caused by oil embargoes by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal economic theory, with the first neoliberal governments being created in Chile, where a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet took place in 1973.
The 1970s was also an era of great technological and scientific advances; since the appearance of the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004 in 1971, the decade was characterised by a profound transformation of computing units - by then rudimentary, spacious machines - into the realm of portability and home accessibility.
On the other hand, there were also great advances in fields such as physics, which saw the consolidation of Quantum Field Theory at the end of the decade, mainly thanks to the confirmation of the existence of quarks and the detection of the first gauge bosons in addition to the photon, the Z boson and the gluon, part of what was christened in 1975 as the Standard Model.
Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term " 'Me' decade" in his essay "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening", published by New York Magazine in August 1976 referring to the 1970s. The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism and away from communitarianism, in clear contrast with the 1960s.
In Asia, affairs regarding the People's Republic of China changed significantly following the recognition of the PRC by the United Nations, the death of Mao Zedong and the beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. Despite facing an oil crisis due to the OPEC embargo, the economy of Japan witnessed a large boom in this period, overtaking the economy of West Germany to become the second-largest in the world. The United States withdrew its military forces from their previous involvement in the Vietnam War, which had grown enormously unpopular. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which led to an ongoing war for ten years.
The 1970s saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when Egypt signed the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, was instrumental in the event and consequently became extremely unpopular in the Arab world and the wider Muslim world. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which overthrew the Authoritarian Pahlavi dynasty and established an even more authoritarian Islamic republic under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Africa saw further decolonization in the decade, with Angola and Mozambique gaining their independence in 1975 from the Portuguese Empire after the restoration of democracy in Portugal. The continent was, however, plagued by endemic military coups, with the long-reigning Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie being removed, civil wars and famine.
The economies of much of the developing world continued to make steady progress in the early 1970s because of the Green Revolution. However, their economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis, although it boomed afterwards.


May 1 – Johan Oscar Smith, Norwegian Christian leader, founder of Brunstad Christian Church (b. 1871)
May 3 – Frank Maxwell Andrews, American general (plane crash) (b. 1884)
May 4
Cesira Ferrani, Italian soprano (b. 1863)
Saverio Marotta, Italian naval officer (killed in action) (b. 1911)
May 5
Grzegorz Bolesław Frąckowiak, Polish Roman Catholic priest, martyr and blessed (executed) (b. 1911)
Gordon Hewart, 1st Viscount Hewart, British politician, judge (b. 1870)
May 7 – Fethi Okyar, Turkish diplomat, politician and 2nd Prime Minister of Turkey (b. 1880)
May 8 – Miroslav Šalom Freiberger, Yugoslav rabbi, writer and spiritual leader (killed at Auschwitz concentration camp) (b. 1903)
May 14
George, Crown Prince of Saxony, Catholic priest (b. 1893)
Henri La Fontaine, Belgian lawyer, author and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1854)
May 15 – Horst Hannig, German Luftwaffe fighter ace (b. 1921)
May 17
Johanna Elberskirchen, German feminist (b. 1864)
Montagu Love, British actor (b. 1877)
May 19 – Kristjan Raud, Soviet painter, drawer (b. 1865)
May 20 – John Stone Stone, American physicist, inventor (b. 1869)
May 22 – Helen Taft, First Lady of the United States (b. 1861)
May 24 – Johannes Orasmaa, Estonian army general (in labour camp) (b. 1890)
May 25 – Ali Rikabi, 1st Prime Minister of Syria, 2-time Prime Minister of Jordan (b. 1864)
May 26 – Edsel Ford, American businessman, president of Ford Motor Company (b. 1893)
May 27 – Gordon Coates, 21st Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1878)
May 29 – Yasuyo Yamasaki, Imperial Japanese Army officer (killed in action) (b. 1891)
May 31
Prince Georg of Bavaria, Catholic priest (b. 1880)
Helmut Kapp, German Gestapo official (killed by partisans)