In central and northern Alberta the arrival of spring is marked by the early flowering of the prairie crocus (Pulsatilla nuttalliana) anemone; this member of the buttercup family has been recorded flowering as early as March, though April is the usual month for the general population. Other prairie flora known to flower early are the golden bean (Thermopsis rhombifolia) and wild rose (Rosa acicularis). Members of the sunflower (Helianthus) family blossom on the prairie in the summer months between July and September. The southern and east central parts of Alberta are covered by short prairie grass, which dries up as summer lengthens, to be replaced by hardy perennials such as the prairie coneflower (Ratibida), fleabane, and sage (Artemisia). Both yellow and white sweet clover (Melilotus) can be found throughout the southern and central areas of the province.
The trees in the parkland region of the province grow in clumps and belts on the hillsides. These are largely deciduous, typically aspen, poplar, and willow. Many species of willow and other shrubs grow in virtually any terrain. North of the North Saskatchewan River, evergreen forests prevail for thousands of square kilometres. Aspen poplar, balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) (or in some parts cottonwood (Populus deltoides), and paper birch (Betula papyrifera) are the primary large deciduous species. Conifers include jack pine (Pinus banksiana), Rocky Mountain pine, lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), both white and black spruce, and the deciduous conifer tamarack (Larix laricina).


Alberta has one of the greatest diversities and abundances of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils worldwide. Taxa are represented by complete fossil skeletons, isolated material, microvertebrate remains, and even mass graves. At least 38 dinosaur type specimens were collected in the province. The Foremost Formation, Oldman Formation and Dinosaur Park Formations collectively comprise the Judith River Group and are the most thoroughly studied dinosaur-bearing strata in Alberta.
Dinosaur-bearing strata are distributed widely throughout Alberta. The Dinosaur Provincial Park area contains outcrops of the Dinosaur Park Formation and Oldman Formation. In Alberta's central and southern regions are intermittent Scollard Formation outcrops. In the Drumheller Valley and Edmonton regions there are exposed Horseshoe Canyon facies. Other formations have been recorded as well, like the Milk River and Foremost Formations. The latter two have a lower diversity of documented dinosaurs, primarily due to their lower total fossil quantity and neglect from collectors who are hindered by the isolation and scarcity of exposed outcrops. Their dinosaur fossils are primarily teeth recovered from microvertebrate fossil sites. Additional geologic formations that have produced only a few fossils are the Belly River Group and St. Mary River Formations of the southwest and the northwestern Wapiti Formation, which contains two Pachyrhinosaurus bone beds. The Bearpaw Formation represents strata deposited during a marine transgression. Dinosaurs are known from this formation, but represent specimens washed out to sea or reworked from older sediments.


Paleo-Indians arrived in Alberta at least 10,000 years ago, toward the end of the last ice age. They are thought to have migrated from Siberia to Alaska on a land bridge across the Bering Strait and then possibly moved down the east side of the Rocky Mountains through Alberta to settle the Americas. Others may have migrated down the coast of British Columbia and then moved inland. Over time they differentiated into various First Nations peoples, including the Plains Indians of southern Alberta such as those of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Plains Cree, who generally lived by hunting buffalo, and the more northerly tribes such as the Woodland Cree and Chipewyan who hunted, trapped, and fished for a living.
After the British arrival in Canada, approximately half of the province of Alberta, south of the Athabasca River drainage, became part of Rupert's Land which consisted of all land drained by rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. This area was granted by Charles II of England to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1670, and rival fur trading companies were not allowed to trade in it.
The Athabasca River and the rivers north of it were not in HBC territory because they drained into the Arctic Ocean instead of Hudson Bay, and they were prime habitats for fur-bearing animals. The first European explorer of the Athabasca region was Peter Pond, who learned of the Methye Portage, which allowed travel from southern rivers into the rivers north of Rupert's Land. Other North American fur traders formed the North West Company (NWC) of Montreal to compete with the HBC in 1779. The NWC occupied the northern part of Alberta territory. Peter Pond built Fort Athabasca on Lac la Biche in 1778. Roderick Mackenzie built Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca ten years later in 1788. His cousin, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, followed the North Saskatchewan River to its northernmost point near Edmonton, then setting northward on foot, trekked to the Athabasca River, which he followed to Lake Athabasca. It was there he discovered the mighty outflow river which bears his name—the Mackenzie River—which he followed to its outlet in the Arctic Ocean. Returning to Lake Athabasca, he followed the Peace River upstream, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean, and so he became the first European to cross the North American continent north of Mexico.
The extreme southernmost portion of Alberta was part of the French (and Spanish) territory of Louisiana and was sold to the United States in 1803. In the Treaty of 1818, the portion of Louisiana north of the Forty-Ninth Parallel was ceded to Great Britain.
Fur trade expanded in the north, but bloody battles occurred between the rival HBC and NWC, and in 1821 the British government forced them to merge to stop the hostilities. The amalgamated Hudson's Bay Company dominated trade in Alberta until 1870 when the newly formed Canadian Government purchased Rupert's Land. Northern Alberta was included in the North-Western Territory until 1870, when it and Rupert's land became Canada's North-West Territories.
First Nations negotiated the Numbered Treaties with the Crown in which the Crown gained title to the land that would later become Alberta, and the Crown committed to the ongoing support of the First Nations and guaranteed their hunting and fishing rights. The most significant treaties for Alberta are Treaty 6 (1876), Treaty 7 (1877) and Treaty 8 (1899).
The District of Alberta was created as part of the North-West Territories in 1882. As settlement increased, local representatives to the North-West Legislative Assembly were added. After a long campaign for autonomy, in 1905, the District of Alberta was enlarged and given provincial status, with the election of Alexander Cameron Rutherford as the first premier. Less than a decade later, the First World War presented special challenges to the new province as an extraordinary number of volunteers left relatively few workers to maintain services and production. Over 50% of Alberta's doctors volunteered for service overseas.
On June 21, 2013, during the 2013 Alberta floods Alberta experienced heavy rainfall that triggered catastrophic flooding throughout much of the southern half of the province along the Bow, Elbow, Highwood and Oldman rivers and tributaries. A dozen municipalities in Southern Alberta declared local states of emergency on June 21 as water levels rose and numerous communities were placed under evacuation orders.
In 2016, the Fort McMurray wildfire resulted in the largest fire evacuation of residents in Alberta's history, as more than 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate.
Since 2020, Alberta has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.


Alberta extends for over 1,200 km (750 mi) from north to south; its climate, therefore, varies considerably. Average high temperatures in January range from 0 °C (32 °F) in the southwest to −24 °C (−11 °F) in the far north. The presence of the Rocky Mountains also influences the climate to the southwest, which disrupts the flow of the prevailing westerly winds and causes them to drop most of their moisture on the western slopes of the mountain ranges before reaching the province, casting a rain shadow over much of Alberta. The northerly location and isolation from the weather systems of the Pacific Ocean cause Alberta to have a dry climate with little moderation from the ocean. Annual precipitation ranges from 300 mm (12 in) in the southeast to 450 mm (18 in) in the north, except in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where total precipitation including snowfall can reach 600 mm (24 in) annually.
Northern Alberta is mostly covered by boreal forest and has a subarctic climate. The agricultural area of southern Alberta has a semi-arid steppe climate because the annual precipitation is less than the water that evaporates or is used by plants. The southeastern corner of Alberta, part of the Palliser Triangle, experiences greater summer heat and lower rainfall than the rest of the province, and as a result, suffers frequent crop yield problems and occasional severe droughts. Western Alberta is protected by the mountains and enjoys the mild temperatures brought by winter chinook winds. Central and parts of northwestern Alberta in the Peace River region are largely aspen parkland, a biome transitional between prairie to the south and boreal forest to the north.
Alberta has a humid continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. The province is open to cold Arctic weather systems from the north, which often produce cold winter conditions. As the fronts between the air masses shift north and south across Alberta, the temperature can change rapidly. Arctic air masses in the winter produce extreme minimum temperatures varying from −54 °C (−65 °F) in northern Alberta to −46 °C (−51 °F) in southern Alberta, although temperatures at these extremes are rare.
In the summer, continental air masses have produced record maximum temperatures from 32 °C (90 °F) in the mountains to over 40 °C (104 °F) in southeastern Alberta. Alberta is a sunny province. Annual bright sunshine totals range between 1,900 up to just under 2,600 hours per year. Northern Alberta gets about 18 hours of daylight in the summer. The average daytime temperatures range from around 21 °C (70 °F) in the Rocky Mountain valleys and far north, up to around 28 °C (82 °F) in the dry prairie of the southeast. The northern and western parts of the province experience higher rainfall and lower evaporation rates caused by cooler summer temperatures. The south and east-central portions are prone to drought-like conditions sometimes persisting for several years, although even these areas can receive heavy precipitation, sometimes resulting in flooding.
In the winter, the Alberta clipper, a type of intense, fast-moving winter storm that generally forms over or near the province and, pushed with great speed by the continental polar jetstream, descends over the rest of southern Canada and the northern tier of the United States. In southwestern Alberta, the cold winters are frequently interrupted by warm, dry chinook winds blowing from the mountains, which can propel temperatures upward from frigid conditions to well above the freezing point in a very short period. During one chinook recorded at Pincher Creek, temperatures soared from −19 to 22 °C (−2 to 72 °F) in just one hour. The region around Lethbridge has the most chinooks, averaging 30 to 35 chinook days per year. Calgary has a 56% chance of a white Christmas, while Edmonton has an 86% chance.
After Saskatchewan, Alberta experiences the most tornadoes in Canada with an average of 15 verified per year. Thunderstorms, some of them severe, are frequent in the summer, especially in central and southern Alberta. The region surrounding the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor is notable for having the highest frequency of hail in Canada, which is caused by orographic lifting from the nearby Rocky Mountains, enhancing the updraft/downdraft cycle necessary for the formation of hail.


In September 1938, Adolf Hitler demanded control of the Sudetenland. On 29 September 1938, Britain and France ceded control in the Appeasement at the Munich Conference; France ignored the military alliance it had with Czechoslovakia. During October 1938, Nazi Germany occupied the Sudetenland border region, effectively crippling Czechoslovak defences.
The First Vienna Award assigned a strip of southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary. Poland occupied Zaolzie, an area whose population was majority Polish, in October 1938.
On 14 March 1939, the remainder ("rump") of Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the proclamation of the Slovak State, the next day the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied and annexed by Hungary, while the following day the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed.
The eventual goal of the German state under Nazi leadership was to eradicate Czech nationality through assimilation, deportation, and extermination of the Czech intelligentsia; the intellectual elites and middle class made up a considerable number of the 200,000 people who passed through concentration camps and the 250,000 who died during German occupation. Under Generalplan Ost, it was assumed that around 50% of Czechs would be fit for Germanization. The Czech intellectual elites were to be removed not only from Czech territories but from Europe completely. The authors of Generalplan Ost believed it would be best if they emigrated overseas, as even in Siberia they were considered a threat to German rule. Just like Jews, Poles, Serbs, and several other nations, Czechs were considered to be untermenschen by the Nazi state. In 1940, in a secret Nazi plan for the Germanization of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia it was declared that those considered to be of racially Mongoloid origin and the Czech intelligentsia were not to be Germanized.
The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, and the fortress town of Terezín was made into a ghetto way station for Jewish families. On 4 June 1942 Heydrich died after being wounded by an assassin in Operation Anthropoid. Heydrich's successor, Colonel General Kurt Daluege, ordered mass arrests and executions and the destruction of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. In 1943 the German war effort was accelerated. Under the authority of Karl Hermann Frank, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia, some 350,000 Czech laborers were dispatched to the Reich. Within the protectorate, all non-war-related industry was prohibited. Most of the Czech population obeyed quiescently up until the final months preceding the end of the war, while thousands were involved in the resistance movement.
For the Czechs of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, German occupation was a period of brutal oppression. Czech losses resulting from political persecution and deaths in concentration camps totaled between 36,000 and 55,000. The Jewish populations of Bohemia and Moravia (118,000 according to the 1930 census) were virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; more than 70,000 were killed; 8,000 survived at Terezín. Several thousand Jews managed to live in freedom or in hiding throughout the occupation.
Despite the estimated 136,000 deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime, the population in the Reichsprotektorate saw a net increase during the war years of approximately 250,000 in line with an increased birth rate.
On 6 May 1945, the third US Army of General Patton entered Pilsen from the south west. On 9 May 1945, Soviet Red Army troops entered Prague.


During the period between the two world wars Czechoslovakia was a democratic state. The population was generally literate, and contained fewer alienated groups. The influence of these conditions was augmented by the political values of Czechoslovakia's leaders and the policies they adopted. Under Tomas Masaryk, Czech and Slovak politicians promoted progressive social and economic conditions that served to defuse discontent.
Foreign minister Beneš became the prime architect of the Czechoslovak-Romanian-Yugoslav alliance (the "Little Entente", 1921–38) directed against Hungarian attempts to reclaim lost areas. Beneš worked closely with France. Far more dangerous was the German element, which after 1933 became allied with the Nazis in Germany. The increasing feeling of inferiority among the Slovaks, who were hostile to the more numerous Czechs, weakened the country in the late 1930s. Many Slovaks supported an extreme nationalist movement and welcomed the puppet Slovak state set up under Hitler's control in 1939.
After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in central and eastern Europe.


The Andes Mountains host large ore and salt deposits and some of their eastern fold and thrust belt acts as traps for commercially exploitable amounts of hydrocarbons. In the forelands of the Atacama Desert some of the largest porphyry copper mineralizations occur making Chile and Peru the first- and second-largest exporters of copper in the world. Porphyry copper in the western slopes of the Andes has been generated by hydrothermal fluids (mostly water) during the cooling of plutons or volcanic systems. The porphyry mineralization further benefited from the dry climate that let them largely out of the disturbing actions of meteoric water. The dry climate in the central western Andes has also led to the creation of extensive saltpeter deposits which were extensively mined until the invention of synthetic nitrates. Yet another result of the dry climate are the salars of Atacama and Uyuni, the first one being the largest source of lithium today and the second the world's largest reserve of the element. Early Mesozoic and Neogene plutonism in Bolivia's Cordillera Central created the Bolivian tin belt as well as the famous, now depleted, deposits of Cerro Rico de Potosí.


The etymology of the word Andes has been debated. The majority consensus is that it derives from the Quechua word anti 'east' as in Antisuyu (Quechua for 'east region'), one of the four regions of the Inca Empire.
The term cordillera comes from the Spanish word cordel 'rope' and is used as a descriptive name for several contiguous sections of the Andes, as well as the entire Andean range, and the combined mountain chain along the western part of the North and South American continents.


The Andes range has many active volcanoes distributed in four volcanic zones separated by areas of inactivity. The Andean volcanism is a result of subduction of the Nazca Plate and Antarctic Plate underneath the South American Plate. The belt is subdivided into four main volcanic zones that are separated from each other by volcanic gaps. The volcanoes of the belt are diverse in terms of activity style, products and morphology. While some differences can be explained by which volcanic zone a volcano belongs to, there are significant differences inside volcanic zones and even between neighbouring volcanoes. Despite being a type location for calc-alkalic and subduction volcanism, the Andean Volcanic Belt has a large range of volcano-tectonic settings, such as rift systems and extensional zones, transpressional faults, subduction of mid-ocean ridges and seamount chains apart from a large range of crustal thicknesses and magma ascent paths, and different amount of crustal assimilations.


The Andes are a Mesozoic–Tertiary orogenic belt of mountains along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a zone of volcanic activity that encompasses the Pacific rim of the Americas as well as the Asia-Pacific region. The Andes are the result of tectonic plate processes, caused by the subduction of oceanic crust beneath the South American Plate. It is the result of a convergent plate boundary between the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate. The main cause of the rise of the Andes is the compression of the western rim of the South American Plate due to the subduction of the Nazca Plate and the Antarctic Plate. To the east, the Andes range is bounded by several sedimentary basins, such as Orinoco, Amazon Basin, Madre de Dios and Gran Chaco, that separate the Andes from the ancient cratons in eastern South America. In the south, the Andes share a long boundary with the former Patagonia Terrane. To the west, the Andes end at the Pacific Ocean, although the Peru-Chile trench can be considered their ultimate western limit. From a geographical approach, the Andes are considered to have their western boundaries marked by the appearance of coastal lowlands and a less rugged topography. The Andes Mountains also contain large quantities of iron ore located in many mountains within the range.
The Andean orogen has a series of bends or oroclines. The Bolivian Orocline is a seaward concave bending in the coast of South America and the Andes Mountains at about 18° S. At this point, the orientation of the Andes turns from Northwest in Peru to South in Chile and Argentina. The Andean segment north and south of the Orocline have been rotated 15° to 20° counter clockwise and clockwise respectively. The Bolivian Orocline area overlaps with the area of maximum width of the Altiplano Plateau and according to Isacks (1988) the Orocline is related to crustal shortening. The specific point at 18° S where the coastline bends is known as the "Arica Elbow". Further south lies the Maipo Orocline a more subtle Orocline between 30° S and 38°S with a seaward-concave break in trend at 33° S. Near the southern tip of the Andes lies the Patagonian Orocline.


The Andes can be divided into three sections:
The Southern Andes
in Argentina and Chile, south of Llullaillaco.
The Central Andes
in Peru and Bolivia.
The Northern Andes
in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. In the northern part of the Andes, the separate Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range is often treated as part of the Northern Andes.
The Leeward Antilles islands Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, which lie in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela, were formerly thought to represent the submerged peaks of the extreme northern edge of the Andes range, but ongoing geological studies indicate that such a simplification does not do justice to the complex tectonic boundary between the South American and Caribbean plates.


The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (Spanish: Cordillera de los Andes; Quechua: Anti) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 km (5,530 mi) long, 200 to 700 km (124 to 435 mi) wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S latitude), and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, separated by intermediate depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaus—some of which host major cities such as Quito, Bogotá, Cali, Arequipa, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Sucre, Mérida, El Alto and La Paz. The Altiplano plateau is the world's second-highest after the Tibetan plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate: the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet Andes.
The Andes Mountains are the highest mountain range outside Asia. The highest mountain outside Asia, Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).
The Andes are also part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of North America, Central America, South America and Antarctica.


The western rim of the South American Plate has been the place of several pre-Andean orogenies since at least the late Proterozoic and early Paleozoic, when several terranes and microcontinents collided and amalgamated with the ancient cratons of eastern South America, by then the South American part of Gondwana.
The formation of the modern Andes began with the events of the Triassic when Pangaea began the break up that resulted in developing several rifts. The development continued through the Jurassic Period. It was during the Cretaceous Period that the Andes began to take their present form, by the uplifting, faulting and folding of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the ancient cratons to the east. The rise of the Andes has not been constant, as different regions have had different degrees of tectonic stress, uplift, and erosion.
Tectonic forces above the subduction zone along the entire west coast of South America where the Nazca Plate and a part of the Antarctic Plate are sliding beneath the South American Plate continue to produce an ongoing orogenic event resulting in minor to major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to this day. In the extreme south, a major transform fault separates Tierra del Fuego from the small Scotia Plate. Across the 1,000 km (620 mi) wide Drake Passage lie the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula south of the Scotia Plate which appear to be a continuation of the Andes chain.
The regions immediately east of the Andes experience a series of changes resulting from the Andean orogeny. Parts of the Sunsás Orogen in Amazonian craton disappeared from the surface of earth being overridden by the Andes.
The Sierras de Córdoba, where the effects of the ancient Pampean orogeny can be observed, owe their modern uplift and relief to the Andean orogeny in the Tertiary. Further south in southern Patagonia the onset of the Andean orogeny caused the Magallanes Basin to evolve from being an extensional back-arc basin in the Mesozoic to being a compressional foreland basin in the Cenozoic.


The Erebidae are a family of moths in the superfamily Noctuoidea. The family is among the largest families of moths by species count and contains a wide variety of well-known macromoth groups.  The family includes the underwings (Catocala); litter moths (Herminiinae); tiger, lichen, and wasp moths (Arctiinae); tussock moths (Lymantriinae), including the arctic woolly bear moth (Gynaephora groenlandica); piercing moths (Calpinae and others); micronoctuoid moths (Micronoctuini); snout moths (Hypeninae); and zales, though many of these common names can also refer to moths outside the Erebidae (for example, crambid snout moths). Some of the erebid moths are called owlets.
The sizes of the adults range from among the largest of all moths (>5 in (127 mm) wingspan in the black witch) to the smallest of the macromoths (0.25 in (6 mm) wingspan in some of the Micronoctuini).  The coloration of the adults spans the full range of dull, drab, and camouflaged (e.g., Zale lunifera and litter moths) to vivid, contrasting, and colorful (e.g., Aganainae and tiger moths). The moths are found on all continents except Antarctica.


Among the Noctuoidea, the Erebidae can be broadly defined by the wing characteristics of the adults with support from phylogenetic studies.  The cubital forewing vein, which runs outward from the base of a wing to the outer margin, splits into two (bifid), three (trifid), or four (quadrifid) veins from the medial area to the outer margin. These split veins are named M2, M3, CuA1, and CuA2 in order toward the inner margin. A trifid forewing has either a reduced or vestigial M2 vein or the M2 vein does not connect to the cubital veins, while M2 is as thick as M3 and connects or nearly connects to M3 in a quadrifid forewing.  The same splitting of the hindwing cubital vein has analogous terms bifine, trifine, and quadrifine.  The Erebidae typically have quadrifid forewings and quadrifine hindwings, though the Micronoctuini are exceptional with their bifine hindwings.  Among the related families, most Erebidae are quadrifid moths like the Euteliidae, Nolidae, and Noctuidae and unlike the trifid Oenosandridae and Notodontidae.  And among the quadrifid moths, the Erebidae have quadrifine hindwings like the typical Nolidae and Euteliidae and unlike the typical Noctuidae.
Phylogenetic studies in the present century have helped to clarify the relationships between the structurally diverse lineages within the Noctuoidea and within the Erebidae. Morphological studies had led to a classification in which the monophyletic Arctiinae, Lymantriinae, and Micronoctuini were treated as families, and the other erebid lineages were largely grouped within the Noctuidae.  Recent studies combining genetic characteristics with the morphological ones revealed that the former Noctuidae were paraphyletic, and some of the lineages within the Noctuidae were more closely related to the Arctiinae, Lymantriinae, and Micronoctuini families than to the other lineages within the Noctuidae.
The determination of these phylogenetic relationships has led to the present classification scheme in which several clades were rearranged while kept mostly intact and others were split apart.  The Erebidae are one monophyletic family among six in the Noctuoidea. A more strictly defined family Noctuidae is also monophyletic, but the family lacks the quadrifine moths now placed as part of the Erebidae.  Some subfamilies of the Noctuidae, such as the Herminiinae, were moved as a whole to Erebidae. Other subfamilies, including the Acontiinae and Calpinae, were each split apart.  The Arctiinae became an erebid subfamily placed next to the closely related Herminiinae.  The Lymantriinae became another erebid subfamily placed near the Pangraptinae. The rank of the Micronoctuini was changed from family to tribe to include the clade as a lineage within the Hypenodinae.  The Erebidae are currently divided into 18 subfamilies, some of which are strongly supported by phylogenetic analysis and may persist through further study, while others are weakly supported and may be redefined again.


Several discoveries in the science of breeding berries were made in the 18th century by Antoine Nicolas Duchesne in his work on strawberries. In the traditional technique of plant breeding, berries with specific desirable characteristics were chosen and allowed to sexually reproduce with other berries, and offspring with improved traits could then be selected and used for further crossing. Plants may be hybridized with different species within the same genus; hybridization between different genus may also be possible, but more difficult. Breeding may seek to increase the size and yield of the fruit, improve the flavor and quality of its nutrient content, such as antioxidants, expand the harvest season, and produce cultivars with resistance to diseases, tolerance of hot or cold conditions, and other desirable traits. Advancements in molecular biology and genetic engineering allow for a more efficient and better targeted approach in the selection for a desirable genotype, via marker-assisted selection, for example. Genetic modification techniques can also be used for breeding berries.


The Old English word berie ("berry, grape,") comes from Proto-Germanic *basjom (source also of Old Norse ber, Middle Dutch bere, German Beere "berry;" Old Saxon winberi, Gothic weinabasi "grape"), which is of unknown origin. This and apple are the only native fruit names.


Like most other food crops, berries are commercially grown, with both conventional pest management and integrated pest management (IPM) practices. Organically certified berries are becoming more widely available.:5
Many soft fruit berries require a period of temperatures between 0 °C (32 F) and 10 °C (50 F) for breaking dormancy. In general, strawberries require 200–300 hours, blueberries 650–850 hours, blackberries 700 hours, raspberries 800–1700 hours, currants and gooseberries 800–1500 hours, and cranberries 2000 hours. However, too low a temperature will kill the crops: blueberries do not tolerate temperatures below −29 °C (20.2 F), raspberries, depending on variety, may tolerate as low as −31 °C (-23.8 F), and blackberries are injured below −20 °C (-4 F). Spring frosts are, however, much more damaging to berry crops than low winter temperatures. Sites with moderate slopes (3–5%), facing north or east, in the northern hemisphere, near large bodies of water, which regulate spring temperature, are considered ideal in preventing spring frost injury to the new leaves and flowers. All berry crops have shallow root systems. Many land-grant university extension offices suggest that strawberries should not be planted more than five years on the same site, due to the danger of black root rot (though many other illnesses go by the same name), which is controlled in major commercial production by annual methyl bromide fumigation. Besides the number of years in production, soil compaction, the frequency of fumigation, and herbicide usages increase the appearance of black root rot in strawberries. Raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and many other berries are susceptible to verticillium wilt. Blueberries and cranberries grow poorly if the clay or silt content of the soil is more than 20%, while most other berries tolerate a wide range of soil types. For most berry crops, the ideal soil is well drained sandy loam, with a pH of 6.2–6.8 and a moderate to high organic content; however, blueberries have an ideal pH of 4.2–4.8 and can be grown on muck soils, while blueberries and cranberries prefer poorer soils with lower cation exchange, lower calcium, and lower levels of phosphorus.
Growing most berries organically requires the use of proper crop rotation, the right mix of cover crops, and the cultivation of the correct beneficial microorganisms in the soil. As blueberries and cranberries thrive in soils that are not hospitable to most other plants, and conventional fertilizers are toxic to them, the primary concern when growing them organically is bird management.
Postharvest small fruit berries are generally stored at 90–95% relative humidity and 0 °C. Cranberries, however, are frost sensitive, and should be stored at 3 C (37.4 F). Blueberries are the only berries that respond to ethylene, but flavor does not improve after harvest, so they require the same treatment as other berries. Removal of ethylene may reduce disease and spoilage in all berries. Precooling within one to two hours post-harvest to storage temperature, generally 0 °C, via forced air cooling increases the storage life of berries by about a third. Under optimum storage conditions, raspberries and blackberries last for two to five days, strawberries 7–10 days, blueberries two to four weeks, and cranberries two to four months. Berries can be shipped under high carbon dioxide or modified atmosphere of 10–15% carbon dioxide for high carbon dioxide or 15–20% carbon dioxide and 5–10% oxygen for a modified atmosphere container to increase shelf life and prevent grey mold rot.


Araliaceae is one of six angiosperm families recognized by APG IV belonging to the Apiales, an order within the Asterids. Araliaceae is accepted to be a monophyletic branch within the Apiales.
Within Araliaceae, there are four accepted groups:
1.    The Greater Raukaua group, sister to the rest of the main Araliaceae clades.
2.    The Aralia-Panax group, consisting of the mostly monophyletic genera Aralia and Panax.
3.    The Polyscias-Pseudopanax group, sister to both genus Cussonia and the Asian Palmate group.
4.    The Asian Palmate group, largest of the groups representing Araliaceae.
There are also multiple taxa that float around these groups, but are not within them.
The generic level classification of the Araliaceae has been unstable and remains under study. For instance, numerous genera have been synonymized under Schefflera, within which about half the species within Araliaceae are placed. Recent molecular phylogenies have shown that this large pantropical genus is polyphyletic and some believe it should be divided again into several genera, though these would probably not correspond with the previously recognized genera.
Recent molecular systematics techniques have made major improvements into understanding of the evolution of Araliaceae, leading to the knowledge existing today. Due to widely varying morphological characters, the systematics of Araliaceae had been largely debated over the past century, especially in the absence of molecular evidence. For instance, Araliaceae were previously merged into the closely related Apiaceae (synonym: Umbelliferae) in some taxonomic treatments that have since been rejected. The family is closely related to the Apiaceae and Pittosporaceae, but some of the exact boundaries between Araliaceae and the other families of Apiales are still uncertain and are currently being examined.
One example group that proved problematic for Araliaceae systematics is subfamily Hydrocotyloideae. Molecular phylogenies suggest at least some of the genera traditionally spanning across Araliaceae and Apiaceae as Hydrocotyloideae appear to be more closely related to Araliaceae. It has been recommended that subfamily Hydrocotyloideae be narrowed to just include genera Hydrocotyle, Trachymene, and Harmsiopanax to form a monophyletic group in Araliaceae.


The morphology of Araliaceae varies widely. Many studies have found that there is no unifying characteristic capable of classifying the family. In general, Araliaceae species have large, usually alternate leaves, often with aromatic ethereal oils, five-petaled flowers, two to five carpels, simple umbels, and berries without carpophores or oil cavities. Some taxa carry prickles, and the family is often woody but also occasionally herbaceous. While Araliaceae is predominantly a tropical family, some taxa are also endemic to temperate climates. They are found in the Americas, Eurasia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Pacific islands.
Some examples of Araliaceae include the angelica tree (Aralia spinosa), the devil's club (Oplopanax horridus), ivy (Hedera spp., including H. helix), and herbs such as ginseng (Panax spp.). Leaves are sometimes lauroid (resembling Laurus) and are simple to compound; when compound, they are ternate, pinnate, or palmate.
Araliaceae are found in the pluvial montane forest, very humid montane forest, and humid lowland river forest regions. They are also present in laurel forest, cloud forest, and warm, humid habitats.


The Araliaceae are a family of flowering plants composed of about 43 genera and around 1500 species consisting of primarily woody plants and some herbaceous plants. The morphology of Araliaceae varies widely, but it is predominantly distinguishable based on its woody habit, tropical distribution, and the presence of simple umbels.
There are numerous plants of economic importance. Some genera, such as Hedera (the ivies), Fatsia (Japanese aralias) and Schefflera (the umbrella trees), are used as ornamental foliage plants. The family also includes Panax ginseng, the root of which is ginseng, used in traditional Chinese medicine.


The first Europeans in the area were Spanish explorers in 1516. The Spanish explorer Juan de Salazar de Espinosa founded the settlement of Asunción on 15 August 1537. The city eventually became the center of a Spanish colonial province of Paraguay.
An attempt to create an autonomous Christian Indian nation was undertaken by Jesuit missions and settlements in this part of South America in the eighteenth century. They developed Jesuit reductions to bring Guarani populations together at Spanish missions and protect them from virtual slavery by Spanish settlers and Portuguese slave raiders, the Bandeirantes, in addition to seeking their conversion to Christianity. Catholicism in Paraguay was influenced by the indigenous peoples; the syncretic religion has absorbed native elements. The reducciones flourished in eastern Paraguay for about 150 years, until the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish Crown in 1767. The ruins of two 18th-century Jesuit Missions of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue have been designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
In western Paraguay, Spanish settlement and Christianity were strongly resisted by the nomadic Guaycuru and other nomads from the 16th century onward. Most of these peoples were absorbed into the mestizo population in the 18th and 19th centuries.


On 12 October 1864, despite Paraguayan ultimatums, Brazil (allied with the Argentine Government under General Bartolomé Mitre and the rebellious Uruguayan colorados led by Gen. Venancio Flores) invaded the Republic of Uruguay in order to overthrow the government of that time (which was under the rule of the Blanco Party, an ally of López), thus starting the Paraguayan War.
The Paraguayans, led by the Marshal of the Republic Francisco Solano López, retaliated by attacking Mato Grosso on 15 December 1864 and later declared war against Argentina on 23 March 1865. The Blanco Government was toppled and replaced by a Colorado Government under General Venancio Flores on 22 February 1865. Afterward, the Argentine Republic, the Empire of Brazil and the Republic of Uruguay signed the Secret Treaty of the Triple Alliance against the Paraguayan Government on 1 May 1865.
The Paraguayans put up a ferocious resistance but ultimately lost in 1870 in the Battle of Cerro Corá, where Marshal Solano López refused to surrender and died in action. The real causes of this war, which remains the bloodiest international conflict in the history of The Americas, are still highly debatable.
Paraguay lost 25–33% of its territory to Argentina and Brazil, paid an enormous war debt, and sold large amounts of national properties to stabilize its internal budget. The worst consequence of the war was the catastrophic loss of population. At least 50% of the Paraguayans died during the conflict, numbers which took many decades for the country to return to. About the disaster suffered by the Paraguayans at the outcome of the war, William D. Rubinstein wrote:
"The normal estimate is that of a Paraguayan population of somewhere between 450,000 and 900,000, only 220,000 survived the war, of whom only 28,000 were adult males."
During the pillaging of Asunción in 1869, the Imperial Brazilian Army packed up and transported the Paraguayan National Archives to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's records from the war have remained classified. This has made Paraguayan history in the colonial and early national periods difficult to research and study.


The indigenous Guaraní had been living in eastern Paraguay for at least a millennium before the arrival of the Spanish. Western Paraguay, the Gran Chaco, was inhabited by nomads of whom the Guaycuru peoples were the most prominent. The Paraguay River was roughly the dividing line between the agricultural Guarani people to the east and the nomadic and semi-nomadic people to the west in the Gran Chaco. The Guarcuru nomads were known for their warrior traditions and were not fully pacified until the late 19th century. These indigenous tribes belonged to five distinct language families, which were the bases of their major divisions. Differing language speaking groups were generally competitive over resources and territories. They were further divided into tribes by speaking languages in branches of these families. Today 17 separate ethnolinguistic groups remain.


Paraguay (/ˈpærəɡwaɪ/; [paɾaˈɣwaj] (listen)), officially the Republic of Paraguay (Spanish: República del Paraguay; Guarani: Tavakuairetã Paraguái), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of 7 million, nearly 3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro. Although one of only two landlocked countries in South America (Bolivia is the other), Paraguay has ports on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers that give exit to the Atlantic Ocean, through the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway.
Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1524, and in 1537, they established the city of Asunción, the first capital of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata. During the 17th century, Paraguay was the center of Jesuit missions, where the native Guaraní people were converted to Christianity and introduced to European culture. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories in 1767, Paraguay increasingly became a peripheral colony, with few urban centers and settlers. Following independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Paraguay was ruled by a series of authoritarian governments characterized by nationalist, isolationist and protectionist policies. This period ended with the disastrous Paraguayan War (1864–70), during which the country lost half its prewar population and around 25–33% of its territory to the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. In the 20th century, Paraguay faced another major international conflict—the Chaco War (1932–35) against Bolivia—in which it prevailed. Afterwards, the country came under a succession of military dictators, culminating in the 35-year regime of Alfredo Stroessner, which lasted until his overthrow in 1989 by an internal military coup. This marked the beginning of Paraguay's democratic era, which continues to this day.
Paraguay is a developing country. It is a founding member of Mercosur, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Lima Group. Additionally, the city of Luque, in metropolitan Asuncion, is the seat of the South American Football Confederation.
The majority of Paraguay's seven million people are mestizo, and Guarani culture remains widely influential; more than 90% of the population speak various dialects of the Guarani language alongside Spanish. Despite a history of poverty and political repression, in a 2017 Positive Experience Index based on global polling data, Paraguay ranked as the "world's happiest place".


In 1904 the Liberal revolution against the rule of Colorados broke out. The Liberal rule started a period of great political instability. Between 1904 and 1954 Paraguay had thirty-one presidents, most of whom were removed from office by force. Conflicts between the factions of the ruling Liberal party led to the Paraguayan Civil War of 1922.
The unresolved border conflict with Bolivia over the Chaco region finally erupted in the early 1930s in the Chaco War. After great losses Paraguay defeated Bolivia and established its sovereignty over most of the disputed Chaco region. After the war, military officers used popular dissatisfaction with the Liberal politicians to seize the power for themselves. On 17 February 1936, the February Revolution brought colonel Rafael Franco to power. Between 1940 and 1948, the country was ruled by general Higinio Morínigo. Dissatisfaction with his rule resulted in the Paraguayan civil war of 1947. In its aftermath Alfredo Stroessner, began involvement in a string of plots, which resulted in his military coup d'état of 4 May 1954. In the aftermath of World War II, Paraguay became a hideout for Nazi fugitives accused of war crimes.


The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c. 4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it the 14th most species-rich family of flowering plants. The many well known and economically important members of the Ericaceae include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, rhododendron (including azaleas), and various common heaths and heathers (Erica, Cassiope, Daboecia, and Calluna for example).


Michel Adanson used the term Vaccinia to describe a similar family, but Antoine Laurent de Jussieu first used the term Ericaceae. The name comes from the type genus Erica, which appears to be derived from the Greek word ereíkē (ἐρείκη). The exact meaning is difficult to interpret, but some sources show it as meaning 'heather'. The name may have been used informally to refer to the plants before Linnaean times, and simply been formalised when Linnaeus described Erica in 1753, and then again when Jussieu described the Ericaceae in 1789.
Historically, the Ericaceae included both subfamilies and tribes. In 1971, Stevens, who outlined the history from 1876 and in some instances 1839, recognised six subfamilies (Rhododendroideae, Ericoideae, Vaccinioideae, Pyroloideae, Monotropoideae, and Wittsteinioideae), and further subdivided four of the subfamilies into tribes, the Rhododendroideae having seven tribes (Bejarieae, Rhodoreae, Cladothamneae, Epigaeae, Phyllodoceae, and Diplarcheae). Within tribe Rhodoreae, five genera were described, Rhododendron L. (including Azalea L. pro parte), Therorhodion Small, Ledum L., Tsusiophyllum Max., Menziesia J. E. Smith, that were eventually transferred into Rhododendron, along with Diplarche from the monogeneric tribe Diplarcheae.
In 2002, systematic research resulted in the inclusion of the formerly recognised families Empetraceae, Epacridaceae, Monotropaceae, Prionotaceae, and Pyrolaceae into the Ericaceae based on a combination of molecular, morphological, anatomical, and embryological data, analysed within a phylogenetic framework. The move significantly increased the morphological and geographical range found within the group. One possible classification of the resulting family includes 9 subfamilies, 126 genera, and about 4000 species:
Enkianthoideae Kron, Judd & Anderberg (one genus, 16 species)
Pyroloideae Kosteltsky (4 genera, 40 species)
Monotropoideae Arnott (10 genera, 15 species)
Arbutoideae Niedenzu (up to six genera, about 80 species)
Cassiopoideae Kron & Judd (one genus, 12 species)
Ericoideae Link (19 genera, 1790 species)
Harrimanelloideae Kron & Judd (one species)
Styphelioideae Sweet (35 genera, 545 species)
Vaccinioideae Arnott (50 genera, 1580 species)


The Ericaceae have a nearly worldwide distribution. They are absent from continental Antarctica, parts of the high Arctic, central Greenland, northern and central Australia, and much of the lowland tropics and neotropics.
The family is largely composed of plants that can tolerate acidic, infertile conditions. Like other stress-tolerant plants, many Ericaceae have mycorrhizal fungi to assist with extracting nutrients from infertile soils, as well as evergreen foliage to conserve absorbed nutrients. This trait is not found in the Clethraceae and Cyrillaceae, the two families most closely related to the Ericaceae. Most Ericaceae (excluding the Monotropoideae, and some Styphelioideae) form a distinctive accumulation of mycorrhizae, in which fungi grow in and around the roots and provide the plant with nutrients. The Pyroloideae are mixotrophic and gain sugars from the mycorrhizae, as well as nutrients.
In many parts of the world, a "heath" or "heathland" is an environment characterised by an open dwarf-shrub community found on low-quality acidic soils, generally dominated by plants in the Ericaceae. A common example is Erica tetralix. This plant family is also typical of peat bogs and blanket bogs; examples include Rhododendron groenlandicum and Kalmia polifolia. In eastern North America, members of this family often grow in association with an oak canopy, in a habitat known as an oak-heath forest.
In heathland, plants in the family Ericaceae serve as hostplants to the butterfly Plebejus argus.
Some evidence suggests eutrophic rainwater can convert ericoid heaths with species such as Erica tetralix to grasslands. Nitrogen is particularly suspect in this regard, and may be causing measurable changes to the distribution and abundance of some ericaceous species.


The Ericaceae contain a morphologically diverse range of taxa, including herbs, dwarf shrubs, shrubs, and trees. Their leaves are usually evergreen, alternate or whorled, simple and without stipules. Their flowers are hermaphrodite and show considerable variability. The petals are often fused (sympetalous) with shapes ranging from narrowly tubular to funnelform or widely urn-shaped. The corollas are usually radially symmetrical (actinomorphic) and urn-shaped, but many flowers of the genus Rhododendron are somewhat bilaterally symmetrical (zygomorphic). Anthers open by pores.


Menzies was born at Easter Stix (or Styx) in the parish of Weem, in Perthshire, Scotland. While working with his elder brother William at the Royal Botanic Gardens, he drew the attention of Dr John Hope, professor of botany at Edinburgh University, who encouraged him to study medicine there. Having qualified as a surgeon, Menzies served as assistant to a doctor in Caernarvon, Wales, then joined the Royal Navy as assistant surgeon on HMS Nonsuch. Present at Battle of the Saintes (12 April 1782), in peacetime Menzies served on Halifax Station in Nova Scotia.
In 1786 Menzies was appointed surgeon on board the Prince of Wales (Captain James Colnett), on a fur-trading voyage round Cape Horn to the northern Pacific. This ship, in company of Princess Royal (Captain Duncan), visited North America, China, and Hawaii (the Sandwich Isles) several times; Menzies collected a number of new plants on this voyage, and also ensured that none of the crew died of illness. Menzies returned to Great Britain in 1789. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1790.
In 1790, Menzies was appointed as naturalist to accompany Captain George Vancouver on his voyage around the world on HMS Discovery. When the surgeon fell ill, Menzies took over his duties.
In 1794, while Discovery spent one of three winters in Hawaii, Menzies, with Lieutenant Joseph Baker and two other men, made the first recorded ascent to Mokuaweoweo, the summit of Mauna Loa. Menzies used a portable barometer to measure the height of the mountain as 13,564 feet (4,134 m) compared to its currently known height of 13,679 feet (4,169 m).
It would be forty years before another European, fellow Scotsman David Douglas, would reach the summit on 29 January 1834.
In 1795, Menzies was served the seeds of the Chile Pine, Araucaria araucana, as a dessert while dining with the Viceroy of Chile. He was able to pop some seeds into his pocket and grow them on board ship on the way back to Europe, and returned to England with five healthy plants, the first seen in Britain. Known as the Monkey Puzzle tree, the Chile Pine became a favourite in most formal gardens of the nineteenth century.
After the voyage, Menzies served with the Navy in the West Indies. He received the degree of M.D. at the University of Aberdeen in 1799. After retiring from the Navy he became a doctor and surgeon at Notting Hill, London. He became the father of the Linnean Society upon the death of Aylmer Bourke Lambert.
Menzies's wife died in 1836. They had no children. Menzies himself died in London on 15 February 1842 and is buried in Kensal Green cemetery.


Archibald Menzies (/ˈmɪŋɪs/ MING-iss; 15 March 1754 – 15 February 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, botanist and naturalist. He spent many years at sea, serving with the Royal Navy, private merchants, and the Vancouver Expedition. He was the first recorded European to reach the summit of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa and introduced the Monkey Puzzle tree to England.


Present-day Slovenia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. There is evidence of human habitation from around 250,000 years ago. A pierced cave bear bone, dating from 43100 ± 700 BP, found in 1995 in Divje Babe cave near Cerkno, is considered a kind of flute, and possibly the oldest musical instrument discovered in the world. In the 1920s and 1930s, artifacts belonging to the Cro-Magnon, such as pierced bones, bone points, and a needle were found by archaeologist Srečko Brodar in Potok Cave.
In 2002, remains of pile dwellings over 4,500 years old were discovered in the Ljubljana Marsh, now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the Ljubljana Marshes Wooden Wheel, the oldest wooden wheel in the world. It shows that wooden wheels appeared almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Europe. In the transition period between the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, the Urnfield culture flourished. Archaeological remains dating from the Hallstatt period have been found, particularly in southeastern Slovenia, among them a number of situlas in Novo Mesto, the "Town of Situlas".


Slovenia's name means 'land of the Slovenes' in Slovene and other South Slavic languages. It is thus a cognate of the words Slavonia, Slovakia, and Slavia. The etymology of Slav itself remains uncertain.
The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ is usually derived from the word slovo 'word', originally denoting 'people who speak (the same language)'; i.e., people who understand each other. This is in contrast to the Slavic word denoting German people, namely *němьcь, meaning 'silent, mute people' (from Slavic *němъ 'mute, mumbling'). The word slovo 'word' and the related slava 'glory, fame' and slukh 'hearing' originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew- 'be spoken of, glory', cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος (kléos 'fame'), as in the name Pericles, Latin clueo 'be called', and English loud.
The modern Slovene state originates from the Slovene National Liberation Committee (SNOS) held on 19 February 1944. They officially named the state as Federal Slovenia (Federalna Slovenija), a unit within the Yugoslav federation. On 20 February 1946, Federal Slovenia was renamed the People's Republic of Slovenia (Ljudska republika Slovenija). It retained this name until 9 April 1963, when its name was changed again, this time to the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: Socialistična republika Slovenija). On 8 March 1990, SR Slovenia removed the prefix "Socialist" from its name, becoming the Republic of Slovenia; it remained a part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 25 June 1991.


The Carantanians, one of the ancestral groups of the modern Slovenes, particularly the Carinthian Slovenes, were the first Slavic people to accept Christianity. They were mostly Christianized by Irish missionaries, among them Modestus, known as the "Apostle of Carantanians". This process, together with the Christianization of the Bavarians, was later described in the memorandum known as the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, which is thought to have overemphasized the role of the Church of Salzburg in the Christianization process over similar efforts of the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
In the mid-8th century, Carantania became a vassal duchy under the rule of the Bavarians, who began spreading Christianity. Three decades later, the Carantanians were incorporated, together with the Bavarians, into the Carolingian Empire. During the same period Carniola, too, came under the Franks, and was Christianised from Aquileia. Following the anti-Frankish rebellion of Liudewit at the beginning of the 9th century, the Franks removed the Carantanian princes, replacing them with their own border dukes. Consequently, the Frankish feudal system reached the Slovene territory.
After the victory of Emperor Otto I over the Magyars in 955, Slovene territory was divided into a number of border regions of the Holy Roman Empire. Carantania, being the most important, was elevated into the Duchy of Carinthia in 976.
By the 11th century, the Germanization of what is now Lower Austria, effectively isolated the Slovene-inhabited territory from the other western Slavs, speeding up the development of the Slavs of Carantania and of Carniola into an independent Carantanian/Carniolans/Slovene ethnic group. By the high Middle Ages, the historic provinces of Carniola, Styria, Carinthia, Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria developed from the border regions and were incorporated into the medieval Holy Roman Empire. The consolidation and formation of these historical lands took place in a long period between the 11th and 14th centuries, and were led by a number of important feudal families, such as the Dukes of Spanheim, the Counts of Gorizia, the Counts of Celje, and, finally, the House of Habsburg. In a parallel process, an intensive Germanization significantly diminished the extent of Slovene-speaking areas. By the 15th century, the Slovene ethnic territory was reduced to its present size.
In 1335, Henry of Gorizia, Duke of Carinthia, Landgrave of Carniola and Count of Tyrol died without a male heir, his daughter Margaret was able to keep the County of Tyrol, while the Wittelsbach emperor Louis IV passed Carinthia and Carniolan march to the Habsburg duke Albert II of Austria, whose mother, Elisabeth of Carinthia is a sister of the late duke Henry of Gorizia. Therefore, most of the territory of present-day Slovenia became a hereditary land of the Habsburg monarchy. As with the other component parts of the Habsburg monarchy, Carinthia and Carniola remained a semi-autonomous state with its own constitutional structure for a long time. The counts of Celje, a feudal family from this area who in 1436 acquired the title of state princes, were Habsburgs' powerful competitors for some time. This large dynasty, important at a European political level, had its seat in Slovene territory but died out in 1456. Its numerous large estates subsequently became the property of the Habsburgs, who retained control of the area right up until the beginning of the 20th century. Patria del Friuli ruled present western Slovenia until Venetian takeover in 1420.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the Slovene Lands suffered a serious economic and demographic setback because of the Turkish raids. In 1515, a peasant revolt spread across nearly the whole Slovene territory. In 1572 and 1573 the Croatian-Slovenian peasant revolt wrought havoc throughout the wider region. Such uprisings, which often met with bloody defeats, continued throughout the 17th century.


The area that is present-day Slovenia was in Roman times shared between Venetia et Histria (region X of Roman Italia in the classification of Augustus) and the provinces Pannonia and Noricum. The Romans established posts at Emona (Ljubljana), Poetovio (Ptuj), and Celeia (Celje); and constructed trade and military roads that ran across Slovene territory from Italy to Pannonia. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the area was subject to invasions by the Huns and Germanic tribes during their incursions into Italy. A part of the inner state was protected with a defensive line of towers and walls called Claustra Alpium Iuliarum. A crucial battle between Theodosius I and Eugenius took place in the Vipava Valley in 394.


The two subfamilies in Lestidae are Lestinae and Sympecmatinae. Damselflies in the Lestinae rest with their wings partly open, while those in the Sympecmatinae, the reedlings, ringtails, and winter damselflies, rest with their wings folded. The exact taxonomy of the family is disputed, with some authorities including twelve genera and some eight.
Genera include:


The Lestidae are a rather small family of cosmopolitan, large-sized, slender damselflies,
known commonly as the spreadwings or spread-winged damselflies.


While most damselflies rest with their wings folded together, most members of the family Lestidae hold them at an angle away from their bodies.  The pterostigma (a single dark spot in the meshwork of the leading edge near the tip of each wing) is noticeably elongated. The quadrilateral (a part of the wing venation, close to the body) has an acute angle at the end. The body has a greenish, metallic shine. The superior anal appendages, commonly called claspers (body parts of male insect for clasping the female during copulation) of male spreadwings are long and strongly curved.
Breeding takes place in slow-moving or still water in stream backwaters, swamps, marshes and temporary pools. The nymphs have a long abdomen and a distinctive prementum (part of the lower lip). There is one generation per year in North American species.


In Texas vs. White (1869), the Supreme Court ruled the ordinances of secession (including that of South Carolina) were invalid, and thus those states had never left the Union. However, South Carolina did not regain representation in Congress until that date.
Until the 1868 presidential election, South Carolina's legislature, not the voters, chose the state's electors for the presidential election. South Carolina was the last state to choose its electors in this manner. On October 19, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties under the authority of the Ku Klux Klan Act. Led by Grant's Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, hundreds of Klansmen were arrested while 2,000 Klansmen fled the state. This was done to suppress Klan violence against African-American and white voters in the South. In the mid-to-late 1870s, white Democrats used paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts to intimidate and terrorize black voters. They regained political control of the state under conservative white "Redeemers" and pro-business Bourbon Democrats. In 1877, the federal government withdrew its troops as part of the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction.


On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries began shelling the Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the American Civil War began. In November of that year the Union attacked Port Royal Sound and soon occupied Beaufort County and the neighboring Sea Islands. For the rest of the war this area served as a Union base and staging point for other operations. Whites abandoned their plantations, leaving behind about ten thousand enslaved people. Several Northern charities partnered with the federal government to help these people run the cotton farms themselves under the Port Royal Experiment. Workers were paid by the pound harvested and thus became the first enslaved people freed by the Union forces to earn wages.
Although the state was not a major battleground, the war ruined the economy. Under conscription, all white men aged 18–35 (later 45) were drafted for Confederate service. More than 60,000 served, and the state lost nearly one-third of the white male population of fighting age.
At the end of the war in early 1865, the troops of General William Tecumseh Sherman marched across the state devastating plantations and most of Columbia. South Carolina would be readmitted to the Union on July 9, 1868.


Sixty years later, in 1629, King of England Charles I established the Province of Carolina, an area covering what is now South and North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. In 1663, Charles II granted the land to eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the Lord Proprietors, planned the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina and wrote the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which laid the basis for the future colony. His utopia was inspired by John Locke, an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".
The Carolina slave trade, which included both trading and direct raids by colonists, was the largest among the British colonies in North America. Between 1670 and 1715, between 24,000 and 51,000 captive Native Americans were exported from South Carolina — more than the number of Africans imported to the colonies of the future United States during the same period. Additional enslaved Native Americans were exported from South Carolina to other U.S. colonies. The historian Alan Gallay says, "the trade in Indian slaves was at the center of the English empire's development in the American South. The trade in Indian slaves was the most important factor affecting the South in the period 1670 to 1715".
In the 1670s, English planters from Barbados established themselves near what is now Charleston. Settlers from all over Europe built rice plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, east of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line. Plantation labor was done by African slaves who formed the majority of the population by 1720. Another cash crop was the indigo plant, a plant source of blue dye, developed by Eliza Lucas.
Meanwhile, Upstate South Carolina, west of the Fall Line, was settled by small farmers and traders, who displaced Native American tribes westward. Colonists overthrew the proprietors' rule, seeking more direct representation. In 1712, the former Province of Carolina split in to North and South Carolina. In 1719, South Carolina was officially made a royal colony.
South Carolina prospered from the fertility of the lowcountry and the harbors, such as at Charleston. It allowed religious toleration, encouraging settlement, and trade in deerskin, lumber, and beef thrived. Rice cultivation was developed on a large scale on the back of slave labor.
By the second half of the 1700s, South Carolina was one of the richest of the Thirteen Colonies.


America's first census in 1790 put the state's population at nearly 250,000. By the 1800 census, the population had increased 38 per cent to nearly 340,000 of which 146,000 were slaves. At that time South Carolina had the largest population of Jews in the sixteen states of the United States, mostly based in Savannah and Charleston, the latter being the country's fifth largest city.
In the Antebellum period (before the Civil War) the state's economy and population grew. Cotton became an important crop after the invention of the cotton gin. While nominally democratic, from 1790 until 1865, wealthy male landowners were in control of South Carolina. For example, a man was not eligible to sit in the State House of Representatives unless he possessed an estate of 500 acres of land and 10 Negroes, or at least 150 pounds sterling.
Columbia, the new state capital was founded in the center of the state, and the State Legislature first met there in 1790. The town grew after it was connected to Charleston by the Santee Canal in 1800, one of the first canals in the United States.
As dissatisfaction of the planters ruling class with the federal government grew, in the 1820s John C. Calhoun became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification of the U.S. Constitution, and free trade. In 1832, the Ordinance of Nullification declared federal tariff laws unconstitutional and not to be enforced in the state, leading to the Nullification Crisis. The federal Force Bill was enacted to use whatever military force necessary to enforce federal law in the state, bringing South Carolina back into line.
In the United States presidential election of 1860, voting was sharply divided, with the south voting for the Southern Democrats and the north for Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. Lincoln was anti-slavery, did not acknowledge the right to secession, and would not yield federal property in Southern states. Southern secessionists believed Lincoln's election meant long-term doom for their slavery-based agrarian economy and social system.
Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860. The state House of Representatives three days later passed the "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act", and within weeks South Carolina became the first state to secede.


South Carolina (/ˌkærəˈlaɪnə/ (listen)) is a state in the coastal Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River. South Carolina is the 40th most extensive and 23rd most populous U.S. state with a recorded population of 5,124,712 according to the 2020 census. In 2019, its GDP was  $213.45 billion. South Carolina is composed of 46 counties. The capital is Columbia with a population of 137,300 in 2020; while its largest city is Charleston with a 2020 population of 150,277. The Greenville–Spartanburg-Anderson metropolitan area is the most populous in the state, with a 2020 population estimate of 1,455,892.
South Carolina was named in honor of King Charles I of England, who first formed the English colony, with Carolus being Latin for "Charles". In 1712 the Province of South Carolina was formed. One of the original Thirteen Colonies, South Carolina became a royal colony in 1719. During the American Revolutionary War, South Carolina was the site of major activity among the American colonies, with more than 200 battles and skirmishes fought within the state. South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788. A slave state, it was the first state to vote in favor of secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. After the American Civil War, it was readmitted into the United States on July 9, 1868. During the early-to-mid 20th century, the state started to see economic progress as many textile mills and factories were built across the state. The civil rights movement of the mid-20th century helped in ending segregation and legal discrimination policies within the state. Economic diversification in South Carolina continued to pick up speed during and in the ensuing decades after World War II. In the early 21st century, South Carolina's economy is based on industries such as aerospace, agribusiness, automotive manufacturing, and tourism.
Within South Carolina from east to west are three main geographic regions, the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge Mountains in the northwestern corner of Upstate South Carolina. South Carolina has primarily a humid subtropical climate, with hot humid summers and mild winters. Areas in the Upstate have a subtropical highland climate. Along South Carolina's eastern coastal plain are many salt marshes and estuaries. South Carolina's southeastern Lowcountry contains portions of the Sea Islands, a chain of barrier islands along the Atlantic Ocean.


Catesby was born on 24 March 1683 and baptised at Castle Hedingham, Essex on 30 March 1683. His father, John Catesby (buried 12 November 1703), was a local politician and gentleman farmer. His mother was Elizabeth Jekyll (buried 5 September 1708). The family owned a farm and house, Holgate, in Sudbury, Suffolk as well as property in London. An acquaintance with the naturalist John Ray led to Catesby becoming interested in natural history. The death of his father left Catesby enough to live on, so in 1712, he accompanied his sister Elizabeth to Williamsburg, Virginia. She was the wife of Dr. William Cocke, who had been a member of the Council and Secretary of State for the Colony of Virginia. According to their father's will, Elizabeth had married Dr. Cocke against her father's wishes. Catesby visited the West Indies in 1714, and returned to Virginia, then home to England in 1719.
Catesby had collected seeds and botanical specimens in Virginia and Jamaica. He sent the pressed specimens to Dr Samuel Dale of Braintree in Essex, and gave seeds to a Hoxton nurseryman Thomas Fairchild as well as to Dale and to the Bishop of London, Dr Henry Compton. Plants from Virginia, raised from Catesby's seeds, made his name known to gardeners and scientists in England, and in 1722 he was recommended by William Sherard to undertake a plant-collecting expedition to Carolina on behalf of certain members of the Royal Society. From May 1722, Catesby was based in Charleston, South Carolina, and travelled to other parts of that colony, collecting plants and animals. He sent preserved specimens to Hans Sloane and to William Sherard, and seeds to various contacts including Sherard and Peter Collinson. Consequently, Catesby was responsible for introducing such plants as Catalpa bignonioides and the eponymous Catesbaea spinosa (lilythorn) to cultivation in Europe. Catesby returned to England in 1726.
Catesby spent the next twenty years preparing and publishing his Natural History. Publication was financed by subscriptions from his "Encouragers" as well as an interest-free loan from one of the fellows of the Royal Society, the Quaker Peter Collinson. Catesby learnt how to etch the copper plates himself. The first eight plates had no backgrounds, but from then on Catesby included plants with his animals. He completed the first part in May 1729 and presented it to Queen Caroline; first volume, comprising five parts, was finished in November 1732. Mark Catesby was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in February 1733 and was made a member of the Society of Gentlemen of Spalding in December 1743. The second volume containing another five parts was completed in December 1743, and in 1747 he produced a supplement from material sent to him by friends in America, particularly John Bartram, and also his younger brother, John, who was based with a British regiment in Gibraltar. Not all the plates in Natural history are by Catesby: several, including the splendid and famous image of Magnolia grandiflora were by Georg Ehret. Catesby's original preparatory drawings for Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands are in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, and selections have been exhibited in USA, Japan and various places in England including at the Queen's Gallery, London, in 1997–1998, and Gainsborough House in Sudbury in 2015.
On 5 March 1747, Catesby read a paper entitled "Of birds of passage" to the Royal Society in London, and he is now recognised as one of the first people to describe bird migration.
Mark Catesby married Elizabeth Rowland on 8 October 1747 in St George's Chapel, Hyde Park Corner, but they had been a couple for about 17 years, having at least six children between April 1731 and June 1740. They were parishioners of St Giles Cripplegate in London and later, when that parish was subdivided, of St Luke Old Street. He died just before Christmas 1749 on Saturday 23 December in his house behind St Luke Old Street, London, and was buried in its churchyard. His grave is now lost. Catesby's Hortus britanno-americanus ... was published posthumously in 1763, and a second edition, entitled Hortus Europae americanus ... was issued in 1767.
The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus included information from Catesby's Natural History in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae (1758).


He was later the founder of the Dresden botanical gardens and joint founder of Dresden Zoo. The museum's zoological collection was almost completely destroyed by the fire in the Zwinger palace during the constitutional crisis of 1849, but Reichenbach was able to replace it within only a few years. This collection is the basis of that seen in the museum today. Reichenbach was a prolific author and able botanical artist. His works included Iconographia Botanica seu Plantae criticae (1823–32, 10 vols.) and Handbuch der speciellen Ornithologie (1851–54).


He was honoured by having several plants and animals named after him including Iris reichenbachii Heuff., Viola reichenbachiana Jord. ex Bor. (syn. V. sylvatica (Hartm.) Fr. ex Hartm. and V. sylvestris Lam. p.p.) (the slender wood violet).  Dr. Reichenbach oversaw a world-famous botanical garden in Dresden with a great collection of cacti, and Echinocactus reichenbachii a beautiful cactus of the south-central U.S. and northern Mexico was named in his honor. Reichenbach's sunbird (Anabathmis reichenbachii) is also named after him. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Rchb. when citing a botanical name. Finally, he was also the father of Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, equally a botanist and an eminent orchid specialist.


Genus evolution is relatively recent, but in Hogan's tracing of the genus evolutionary history: "convergent evolution patterns appear to complicate cladistic constructions for certain portions of the genus cladogram. In any case, fossil ancestors of the genus Arctostaphylos have been suggested to have occurred in the Middle Miocene, with modern species beginning to take shape in the Late Tertiary."


Some manzanita species are among the rarest plants in the world.
Arctostaphylos hookeri ravenii (Presidio manzanita), an endemic species, is the most endangered and restricted plant in the mainland United States. In 1987 only one specimen remained, at a secret location in the Presidio of San Francisco National Historic Landmark District in San Francisco, California. This plant has since been successfully cloned.
Arctostaphylos franciscana (Franciscan manzanita), a species native to San Francisco, had not been seen growing wild since 1947 until it was spotted growing in the Presidio of San Francisco in October 2009. Caltrans transplanted this specimen on 23 January 2010 to make way for the Doyle Drive Replacement Project. Transplanting costs were funded in part by Federal Highways Administration, Caltrans, The Presidio of San Francisco, and private donors. "Arctostaphylos hookeri, subspecies franciscana", a scrubby, thin-twigged bush, riddled with the webs of miniature spiders, resides in a corner of the California section of The Strybing Arboretum.
An as yet unclassified and unidentified manzanita, found growing on San Francisco's Parker Avenue, presents a test case for San Francisco's landmark tree ordinance.
Arctostaphylos gabrielensis is a "critically imperiled" species of manzanita endemic to one small area in the San Gabriel Mountains, in Los Angeles County, California.


Manzanitas are extremely useful as ornamental plants in gardens in the western United States and similar climate zones. They are evergreen, highly drought-tolerant, have picturesque bark and attractive flowers and berries, and occur in many sizes and growth patterns.
Arctostaphylos columbiana, for example, is hardy enough to be used for highway landscaping in western Oregon and Washington. A. 'Emerald Carpet', A. uva-ursi (the bearberry), and other low-growing manzanitas are extremely valuable evergreen groundcovers for dry slopes. Larger varieties, such as Arctostaphylos. 'Dr. Hurd,' can be grown as individual specimens, and pruned to emphasize the striking pattern and colors of the branches. They prefer light, well-drained soil, although the low-growing ground covers will tolerate heavier soils.


During World War II, manzanita root burls were used as an expedient native material to make smoking pipes due to its relation and similar fire-resistant properties to then-unavailable imported briar. Labeled as "mission briar", it was harvested for the remainder of the war, stopping soon after when supplies of imported briar once again became available.


de Brosses, Charles (1756). Histoire des navigations aux terres Australes. Contenant ce que l'on sçait des moeurs & des productions des contrées découvertes jusqu'à ce jour; & où il est traité de l'utilité d'y faire de plus amples découvertes, & des moyens d'y former un établissement [History of voyages to the Southern Lands. Containing what is known concerning the customs and products...] (in French). Paris: Durand. Retrieved 2013-12-08.
Douglas, Bronwen (2014). Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511-1850. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 6.
Lee, Joseph (1889). "Anti-Chinese Legislation in Australasia". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 3 (2). p. 220. JSTOR 1879468.
Li, Hansong (2021). "The "Indo-Pacific": Intellectual Origins and International Visions in Global Contexts" (PDF). Modern Intellectual History: 20–23. doi:10.1017/S1479244321000214. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
Deverson, Tony; Kennedy, Graeme, eds. (2005). "Australasia". New Zealand Oxford Dictionary. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195584516.001.0001. ISBN 9780195584516.


Charles de Brosses coined the term (as French Australasie) in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756). He derived it from the Latin for "south of Asia" and differentiated the area from Polynesia (to the east) and the southeast Pacific (Magellanica).
In the late 19th century, the term Australasia was used in reference to the "Australasian colonies". In this sense it related specifically to the British colonies south of Asia: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria (i.e., the Australian colonies) and New Zealand. Australasia found continued geopolitical attention in the early 20th century. Historian Hansong Li finds that against the backdrop of British colonialism, German geopoliticians considered "Australasia" as a counterweight to the former German South Sea Edge (Südseerand), both of which form the "Indo-Pacific" region.
The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary gives two meanings of "Australasia". One, especially in Australian use, is "Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the neighbouring islands of the Pacific". The other, especially in New Zealand use, is just Australia and New Zealand.
Two Merriam-Webster dictionaries online (Collegiate and Unabridged) define Australasia as "Australia, New Zealand, and Melanesia". The American Heritage Dictionary online recognizes two senses in use: one more precise, being similar to the aforementioned senses, and the other broader, loosely covering all of Oceania.


April 1 – Jacques Le Goff, French historian (b. 1924)
April 4 – Kumba Ialá, President of Guinea-Bissau (2000–2003) (b. 1953)
April 6 – Mickey Rooney, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1920)
April 8
The Ultimate Warrior, American professional wrestler (b. 1959)
Karlheinz Deschner, German activist and writer (b. 1924)
April 9 – A. N. R. Robinson, 3rd President of Trinidad and Tobago (b. 1926)
April 10 – Sue Townsend, British novelist and playwright (b. 1946)
April 13 – Ernesto Laclau, Argentine political theorist (b. 1935)
April 16 – Gyude Bryant, Liberian politician (b. 1949)
April 17
Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian Nobel writer (b. 1927)
Raul Bragança Neto, 8th Prime Minister of São Tomé and Príncipe (b. 1946)
April 18 – Ramon Malla Call, 63rd Co-Prince of Andorra (b. 1922)
April 20 – Rubin Carter, American boxer (b. 1937)
April 24
Hans Hollein, Austrian architect (b. 1934)
Tadeusz Różewicz, Polish poet and playwright (b. 1921)
April 25 – Tito Vilanova, Spanish footballer and coach (b. 1968)
April 27 – Vujadin Boškov, Serbian footballer and coach (b. 1931)
April 29 – Bob Hoskins, British actor (b. 1942)
April 30 – Ian Ross, Australian newsreader (b. 1940)


2014 (MMXIV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2014th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 14th  year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the  5th   year of the 2010s decade.

2014 was designated as:
International Year of Crystallography
International Year of Family Farming
International Year of Small Island Developing States
International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People


May 2 – Efrem Zimbalist Jr., American actor (b. 1918)
May 3 – Gary Becker, American Nobel economist (b. 1930)
May 4
Jean-Paul Ngoupandé, Prime Minister of the Central African Republic (b. 1948)
Tatiana Samoilova, Russian actress (b. 1934)
May 6
Jimmy Ellis, American boxer (b. 1940)
Farley Mowat, Canadian author (b. 1921)
May 12
Marco Cé, Italian cardinal (b. 1925)
H. R. Giger, Swiss artist (b. 1940)
May 15 – Jean-Luc Dehaene, 63rd Prime Minister of Belgium (b. 1940)
May 17 – Gerald Edelman, American Nobel biologist (b. 1929)
May 18
Dobrica Ćosić, Serbian writer and politician, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (b. 1921)
Wubbo Ockels, Dutch astronaut and physicist (b. 1946)
Gordon Willis, American cinematographer (b. 1931)
May 19 – Jack Brabham, Australian race car driver (b. 1926)
May 21 – Jaime Lusinchi, President of Venezuela (b. 1924)
May 25
Tommy Blom, Swedish singer-songwriter (b. 1947)
Wojciech Jaruzelski, Communist leader of Poland (b. 1923)
Toaripi Lauti, 1st Prime Minister of Tuvalu (b. 1928)
Washington César Santos, Brazilian footballer (b. 1960)
May 28
Maya Angelou, American poet and author (b. 1928)
Malcolm Glazer, American businessman (b. 1928)
May 29 – Karlheinz Böhm, Austrian actor (b. 1928)
May 31
Marinho Chagas, Brazilian footballer (b. 1952)
Martha Hyer, American actress (b. 1924)


March 1 – Alain Resnais, French film director (b. 1922)
March 3
Robert Ashley, American composer (b. 1930)
William R. Pogue, American astronaut (b. 1930)
March 9 – Mohammed Fahim, Vice President of Afghanistan (b. c. 1957)
March 12 – Věra Chytilová, Czech film director (b. 1929)
March 13 – Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, 3rd President of Sierra Leone (b. 1932)
March 14 – Tony Benn, British politician and diarist (b. 1925)
March 15
David Brenner, American comedian (b. 1936)
Clarissa Dickson Wright, English chef and television personality (b. 1947)
March 17 – L'Wren Scott, American stylist and fashion designer (b. 1964)
March 18 – Lucius Shepard, American writer (b. 1942)
March 19 – Fred Phelps, American pastor (b. 1929)
March 20 – Hilderaldo Bellini, Brazilian footballer (b. 1930)
March 21
Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, 122nd Syriac Orthodox Patriarch (b. 1933)
James Rebhorn, American actor (b. 1948)
March 23 – Adolfo Suárez, 138th Prime Minister of Spain (b. 1932)
March 25 – Nanda, Indian actress (b. 1939)
March 27 – James R. Schlesinger, American economist and politician (b. 1929)
March 31 – Frankie Knuckles, American disk jockey and record producer (b. 1955)


From 5000 to 2000 BC, the Bandkeramik predominated in what now constitutes Belarus, and the Cimmerians as well as other pastoralists roamed through the area by 1,000 BC. The Zarubintsy culture later became widespread at the beginning of the 1st millennium. In addition, remains from the Dnieper–Donets culture were found in Belarus and parts of Ukraine. The region was first permanently settled by Baltic tribes in the 3rd century. Around the 5th century, the area was taken over by the Slavs. The takeover was partially due to the lack of military coordination of the Balts, but their gradual assimilation into Slavic culture was peaceful in nature. Invaders from Asia, among whom were the Huns and Avars, swept through c. 400–600 AD, but were unable to dislodge the Slavic presence.


The province includes regions of the Mi'kmaq nation of Mi'kma'ki (mi'gama'gi), the territory of which extends across the Maritimes, parts of Maine, Newfoundland and the Gaspé Peninsula. The Mi'kmaq people are part of the large Algonquian-language family and inhabited Nova Scotia at the time the first European colonists arrived.


During the War of 1812, Nova Scotia's contribution to the British war effort involved communities either purchasing or building various privateer ships to attack U.S. vessels.  Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the war for Nova Scotia occurred when HMS Shannon escorted the captured American frigate USS Chesapeake into Halifax Harbour (1813). Many of the U.S. prisoners were kept at Deadman's Island, Halifax.
During this century, Nova Scotia became the first colony in British North America and in the British Empire to achieve responsible government in January–February 1848 and become self-governing through the efforts of Joseph Howe. Nova Scotia had established representative government in 1758, an achievement later commemorated by the erection of the Dingle Tower in 1908.
Nova Scotians fought in the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The Welsford-Parker Monument in Halifax is the second-oldest war monument in Canada (1860) and the only Crimean War monument in North America. It commemorates the 1854–55 Siege of Sevastopol.
Thousands of Nova Scotians fought in the American Civil War (1861–1865), primarily on behalf of the North. The British Empire (including Nova Scotia) declared itself neutral in the conflict. As a result, Britain (and Nova Scotia) continued to trade with both the South and the North. Nova Scotia's economy boomed during the Civil War.


"Nova Scotia" means "New Scotland" in Latin and is the recognized English-language name for the province. In both French and Scottish Gaelic, the province is directly translated as "New Scotland" (French: Nouvelle-Écosse. Gaelic: Alba Nuadh). In general, Romance and Slavic languages use a direct translation of "New Scotland", while most other languages use direct transliterations of the Latin / English name.
The province was first named in the 1621 Royal Charter granting to Sir William Alexander in 1632 the right to settle lands including modern Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula.


Nova Scotia lies in the mid-temperate zone and, although the province is almost surrounded by water, the climate is closer to continental climate rather than maritime. The winter and summer temperature extremes of the continental climate are moderated by the ocean. However, winters are cold enough to be classified as continental—still being nearer the freezing point than inland areas to the west. The Nova Scotian climate is in many ways similar to the central Baltic Sea coast in Northern Europe, only wetter and snowier. This is true although Nova Scotia is some fifteen parallels further south. Areas not on the Atlantic coast experience warmer summers more typical of inland areas, and winter lows are a little colder. On 12 August 2020, the community of Grand Étang, famous for its Les Suêtes winds recorded a balmy overnight low of 23.3 °C (73.9 °F)
Described on the provincial vehicle licence plate as Canada's Ocean Playground, Nova Scotia is surrounded by four major bodies of water: the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the north, the Bay of Fundy to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southwest, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.


Nova Scotia (/ˌnoʊvə ˈskoʊʃə/ NOH-və SKOH-shə; French: Nouvelle-Écosse; Scottish Gaelic: Alba Nuadh) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native English-speakers and the province's population is 969,383 according to the 2021 Census. It is the most populous of Canada's Atlantic provinces. It is the country's second-most densely populated province and second-smallest province by area, both after Prince Edward Island. Its area of 55,284 square kilometres (21,345 sq mi) includes Cape Breton Island and 3,800 other coastal islands. The peninsula that makes up Nova Scotia's mainland is connected to the rest of North America by the Isthmus of Chignecto, on which the province's land border with New Brunswick is located. The province borders the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the south and east, and is separated from Prince Edward Island and the island of Newfoundland by the Northumberland and Cabot straits, respectively.
The land that comprises what is now Nova Scotia was inhabited by the Miꞌkmaq people at the time of European exploration. In 1605, Acadia, France's first New France colony, was founded with the creation of Acadia's capital, Port-Royal. Britain fought France for the territory on numerous occasions for over a century afterwards. The Fortress of Louisbourg was a key focus point in the battle for control. Following the Great Upheaval (1755–1763) where the British deported the Acadians en masse, the Conquest of New France (1758–1760) by the British, and the Treaty of Paris (1763), France had to surrender Acadia to the British Empire. During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), thousands of Loyalists settled in Nova Scotia. In 1848, Nova Scotia became the first British colony to achieve responsible government, and it federated in July 1867 with New Brunswick and the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) to form what is now the country of Canada.
Nova Scotia's capital and largest municipality is Halifax, which is home to over 45 percent of the province's population as of the 2021. Halifax is the thirteenth-largest census metropolitan area in Canada, the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada, and Canada's second-largest coastal municipality after Vancouver.


The first Europeans to settle in what is now Nova Scotia were the French, who arrived in 1604, and Catholic Mi'kmaq and Acadians formed the majority of the population of the colony for the next 150 years. In 1605, French colonists established the first permanent European settlement in the future Canada (and the first north of Florida) at Port Royal, founding what would become known as Acadia.
Warfare was a notable feature in Nova Scotia during the 17th and 18th centuries.  During the first 80 years the French and Acadians lived in Nova Scotia, nine significant military clashes took place as the English and Scottish (later British), Dutch and French fought for possession of the area. These encounters happened at Port Royal, Saint John, Cap de Sable (present-day Port La Tour, Nova Scotia), Jemseg (1674 and 1758) and Baleine (1629). The Acadian Civil War took place from 1640 to 1645.
Beginning with King William's War in 1688, a series of six wars took place between the English/British and the French, with Nova Scotia being a consistent theatre of conflict between the two powers.