After the war, inflation began to devalue the Krone, which was still Austria's currency. In autumn 1922, Austria was granted an international loan supervised by the League of Nations. The purpose of the loan was to avert bankruptcy, stabilise the currency, and improve Austria's general economic condition. The loan meant that Austria passed from an independent state to the control exercised by the League of Nations. In 1925, the Schilling was introduced, replacing the Krone at a rate of 10,000:1. Later, it was nicknamed the "Alpine dollar" due to its stability. From 1925 to 1929, the economy enjoyed a short high before nearly crashing after Black Tuesday.
The First Austrian Republic lasted until 1933, when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, using what he called "self-switch-off of Parliament", established an autocratic regime tending towards Italian fascism. The two big parties at this time, the Social Democrats and the Conservatives, had paramilitary armies; the Social Democrats' Schutzbund was now declared illegal, but was still operative as civil war broke out.
In February 1934, several members of the Schutzbund were executed, the Social Democratic party was outlawed, and many of its members were imprisoned or emigrated. On 1 May 1934, the Austrofascists imposed a new constitution ("Maiverfassung") which cemented Dollfuss's power, but on 25 July he was assassinated in a Nazi coup attempt.
His successor Kurt Schuschnigg acknowledged the fact that Austria was a "German state" and he also believed that Austrians were "better Germans" but he wished that Austria would remain independent. He announced a referendum on 9 March 1938, to be held on 13 March, concerning Austria's independence from Germany. On 12 March 1938, Austrian Nazis took over the government, while German troops occupied the country, which prevented Schuschnigg's referendum from taking place. On 13 March 1938, the Anschluss of Austria was officially declared. Two days later, Austrian-born Hitler announced what he called the "reunification" of his home country with the "rest of the German Reich" on Vienna's Heldenplatz. He established a plebiscite which confirmed the union with Germany in April 1938.
Parliamentary elections were held in Germany (including recently annexed Austria) on 10 April 1938. They were the final elections to the Reichstag during Nazi rule, and they took the form of a single-question referendum asking whether voters approved of a single Nazi-party list for the 813-member Reichstag, as well as the recent annexation of Austria (the Anschluss). Jews, Roma and Sinti were not allowed to vote. Turnout in the election was officially 99.5%, with 98.9% voting "yes". In the case of Austria, Adolf Hitler's native soil, 99.71% of an electorate of 4,484,475 officially went to the ballots, with a positive tally of 99.73%. Although most Austrians favored the Anschluss, in certain parts of Austria, the German soldiers were not always welcomed with flowers and joy, especially in Vienna, which had Austria's largest Jewish population. Nevertheless, despite the propaganda and the manipulation and rigging which surrounded the ballot box result, there was massive genuine support for Hitler for fulfilling the Anschluss, since many Germans from both Austria and Germany saw it as completing the long overdue unification of all Germans into one state.
On 12 March 1938, Austria was annexed by the Third Reich and it ceased to exist as an independent country. The Aryanisation of the wealth of Jewish Austrians started immediately in mid-March, with a so-called "wild" (i.e. extra-legal) phase, but it was soon structured legally and bureaucratically so the assets which Jewish citizens possessed could be stripped from them. At that time, Adolf Eichmann, who grew up in Austria, was transferred to Vienna and ordered to persecute the Jews. During the November pogrom in 1938 ("Reichskristallnacht"), Jews and Jewish institutions such as synagogues were subjected to violent attacks in Vienna, Klagenfurt, Linz, Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and several cities in Lower Austria. Otto von Habsburg, a vehement opponent of the Nazis, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, an honorary citizen of hundreds of places in Austria and partly envisaged by Schuschnigg as a monarchical option, was in Belgium at the time. He spoke out against the Anschluss and was then wanted by the Nazi regime and his property would have been expropriated and he would have been shot immediately if he were caught. In 1938, the Nazis renamed Austria the "Ostmark", a name which it had until 1942, when it was renamed the "Alpine and Danubian Gaue" (Alpen-und Donau-Reichsgaue).
Though Austrians made up only 8% of the population of the Third Reich, some of the most prominent Nazis were native Austrians, including Adolf Hitler, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Franz Stangl, Alois Brunner, Friedrich Rainer and Odilo Globocnik, as were over 13% of the members of the SS and 40% of the staff at the Nazi extermination camps. In the Reichsgau, besides the main camp KZ-Mauthausen, there were numerous sub-camps in all of the federal states where Jews and other prisoners were killed, tortured and exploited. At this time, because the territory was outside the operational radius of Allied aircraft, the armaments industry was greatly expanded through the forced labor of concentration camp prisoners, this was especially the case with regard to the manufacture of fighter planes, tanks and missiles.
Most of the resistance groups were soon crushed by the Gestapo. While the plans of the group around Karl Burian to blow up the Gestapo's headquarters in Vienna were uncovered, the important group around the later executed priest Heinrich Maier managed to contact the Allies. This so-called Maier-Messner group was able to send the Allies information about armaments factories where V-1, V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks and aircraft (Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, etc.) were manufactured, information which was important to the success of Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra, both of which were preliminary missions before the launch of Operation Overlord. This resistance group, which was in contact with the American secret service (OSS), soon provided information about mass executions and concentration camps such as Auschwitz. The group's aim was to cause Nazi Germany to lose the war as quickly as possible and re-establish an independent Austria.
Vienna fell on 13 April 1945, during the Soviet Vienna Offensive, just before the total collapse of the Third Reich. The invading Allied powers, in particular the Americans, planned for the supposed "Alpine Fortress Operation" of a national redoubt, that was largely to have taken place on Austrian soil in the mountains of the Eastern Alps. However, it never materialised because of the rapid collapse of the Reich.
Karl Renner and Adolf Schärf (Socialist Party of Austria [Social Democrats and Revolutionary Socialists]), Leopold Kunschak (Austria's People's Party [former Christian Social People's Party]), and Johann Koplenig (Communist Party of Austria) declared Austria's secession from the Third Reich by the Declaration of Independence on 27 April 1945 and set up a provisional government in Vienna under state Chancellor Renner the same day, with the approval of the victorious Red Army and backed by Joseph Stalin. (The date is officially named the birthday of the second republic.) At the end of April, most of western and southern Austria were still under Nazi rule. On 1 May 1945, the federal constitution of 1929, which had been terminated by dictator Dollfuss on 1 May 1934, was declared valid again. The total number of military deaths from 1939 to 1945 was 260,000. The total number of Jewish Holocaust victims was 65,000. About 140,000 Jewish Austrians had fled from the country in 1938–39. Thousands of Austrians had taken part in serious Nazi crimes (hundreds of thousands of people died in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp alone), a fact which was officially acknowledged by Chancellor Franz Vranitzky in 1992.


The German name for Austria, Österreich, derives from the Old High German Ostarrîchi, which meant "eastern realm" and which first appeared in the "Ostarrîchi document" of 996. This word is probably a translation of Medieval Latin Marchia orientalis into a local (Bavarian) dialect.
Austria was a prefecture of Bavaria created in 976. The word "Austria" is a Latinisation of the German name and was first recorded in the 12th century.
At the time, the Danube basin of Austria (Upper and Lower Austria) was the easternmost extent of Bavaria.


Austria later became engaged in a war with Revolutionary France, at the beginning highly unsuccessfully, with successive defeats at the hands of Napoleon, meaning the end of the old Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Two years earlier, the Empire of Austria was founded. From 1792 to 1801, the Austrians had suffered 754,700 casualties. In 1814, Austria was part of the Allied forces that invaded France and brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars.
It emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as one of the continent's four dominant powers and a recognised great power. The same year, the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) was founded under the presidency of Austria. Because of unsolved social, political, and national conflicts, the German lands were shaken by the 1848 revolutions aiming to create a unified Germany.
The various different possibilities for a united Germany were: a Greater Germany, or a Greater Austria or just the German Confederation without Austria at all. As Austria was not willing to relinquish its German-speaking territories to what would become the German Empire of 1848, the crown of the newly formed empire was offered to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In 1864, Austria and Prussia fought together against Denmark and secured the independence from Denmark of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As they could not agree on how the two duchies should be administered, though, they fought the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. Defeated by Prussia in the Battle of Königgrätz, Austria had to leave the German Confederation and no longer took part in German politics.
After the defeated Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the Ausgleich, provided for a dual sovereignty, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, under Franz Joseph I. The Austrian-Hungarian rule of this diverse empire included various groups, including Hungarians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Rusyns, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Ukrainians, as well as large Italian and Romanian communities.
As a result, ruling Austria-Hungary became increasingly difficult in an age of emerging nationalist movements, requiring considerable reliance on an expanded secret police. Yet, the government of Austria tried its best to be accommodating in some respects: for example, the Reichsgesetzblatt, publishing the laws and ordinances of Cisleithania, was issued in eight languages; and all national groups were entitled to schools in their own language and to the use of their mother tongue at state offices.
Many Austrians of all different social circles such as Georg Ritter von Schönerer promoted strong pan-Germanism in hope of reinforcing an ethnic German identity and the annexation of Austria to Germany. Some Austrians such as Karl Lueger also used pan-Germanism as a form of populism to further their own political goals. Although Bismarck's policies excluded Austria and the German Austrians from Germany, many Austrian pan-Germans idolised him and wore blue cornflowers, known to be the favourite flower of German Emperor William I, in their buttonholes, along with cockades in the German national colours (black, red, and yellow), although they were both temporarily banned in Austrian schools, as a way to show discontent towards the multi-ethnic empire.
Austria's exclusion from Germany caused many Austrians a problem with their national identity and prompted the Social Democratic Leader Otto Bauer to state that it was "the conflict between our Austrian and German character". The Austro-Hungarian Empire caused ethnic tension between the German Austrians and the other ethnic groups. Many Austrians, especially those involved with the pan-German movements, desired a reinforcement of an ethnic German identity and hoped that the empire would collapse, which would allow an annexation of Austria by Germany.
A lot of Austrian pan-German nationalists protested passionately against minister-president Kasimir Count Badeni's language decree of 1897, which made German and Czech co-official languages in Bohemia and required new government officials to be fluent in both languages. This meant in practice that the civil service would almost exclusively hire Czechs, because most middle-class Czechs spoke German but not the other way around. The support of ultramontane Catholic politicians and clergy for this reform triggered the launch of the "Away from Rome" (German: Los-von-Rom) movement, which was initiated by supporters of Schönerer and called on "German" Christians to leave the Roman Catholic Church.


The Central European land that is now Austria was settled in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes. The Celtic kingdom of Noricum was later claimed by the Roman Empire and made a province. Present-day Petronell-Carnuntum in eastern Austria was an important army camp turned capital city in what became known as the Upper Pannonia province. Carnuntum was home for 50,000 people for nearly 400 years.


The name Estonia has been connected to Aesti, first mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus around 98 AD. Some historians believe he was directly referring to Balts (i.e., not Finnic-speaking Estonians), while others have proposed that the name applied to the entire Eastern Baltic region. The Scandinavian sagas referring to Eistland were the earliest sources to use the name in its modern meaning. The toponym Estland/Eistland has been linked to Old Norse eist, austr meaning "the east".


February 3 – Umm Kulthum, Egyptian actress and singer (b. 1898)
February 4 – Louis Jordan, American musician (b. 1908)
February 8
Robert Robinson, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1886)
Jan Mukařovský, Czech literary, linguistic and aesthetic theorist. (b. 1891)
February 10 – Dave Alexander, American musician (b. 1947)
February 14
Sir Julian Huxley, British biologist (b. 1887)
Sir P. G. Wodehouse, English writer (b. 1881)
February 16 – Morgan Taylor, American Olympic athlete (b. 1903)
February 17 – Hugo Österman, Finnish general (b. 1892)
February 18 – Chivu Stoica, Romanian Communist politician, 48th Prime Minister of Romania and head of State (b. 1908)
February 19 – Luigi Dallapiccola, Italian composer (b. 1904)
February 22 – Lionel Tertis, English violist (b. 1876)
February 24 – Nikolai Bulganin, Premier of the Soviet Union (b. 1895)
February 25 – Elijah Muhammad, American Nation of Islam leader (b. 1897)


1975
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1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1975th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 975th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 75th  year of the 20th century, and the  6th   year of the 1970s decade.

It was also declared the International Women's Year by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe.


The flag of Sussex consists of six gold martlets, or heraldic swallows, on a blue background, blazoned as Azure, six martlets or. Recognised by the Flag Institute on 20 May 2011, its design is based on the heraldic shield of Sussex. The first known recording of this emblem being used to represent the county was in 1611 when cartographer John Speed deployed it to represent the Kingdom of the South Saxons. However, it seems that Speed was repeating an earlier association between the emblem and the county, rather than being the inventor of the association. It is now firmly regarded that the county emblem originated and derived from the coat of arms of the 14th-century Knight of the Shire, Sir John de Radynden. Sussex's six martlets are today held to symbolise the traditional six sub-divisions of the county known as rapes.
Sussex by the Sea is regarded as the unofficial anthem of Sussex; it was composed by William Ward-Higgs in 1907, perhaps originally from the lyrics of Rudyard Kipling's poem entitled Sussex. Adopted by the Royal Sussex Regiment and popularised in World War I, it is sung at celebrations across the county, including those at Lewes Bonfire, and at sports matches, including those of Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club and Sussex County Cricket Club.
The county day, called Sussex Day, is celebrated on 16 June, the same day as the feast day of St Richard of Chichester, Sussex's patron saint, whose shrine at Chichester Cathedral was an important place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.
Sussex's motto, We wunt be druv, is a Sussex dialect expression meaning "we will not be pushed around" and reflects the traditionally independent nature of Sussex men and women. The round-headed rampion, also known as the "Pride of Sussex", was adopted as Sussex's county flower in 2002.


The combined population of Sussex as of 2011 is about 1.6 million. In 2011, Sussex had a population density of 425 per km², higher than the average for England of 407 per km².
The earliest statement as to the population of Sussex is made by Bede, who describes the county as containing in 681 land of 7,000 families; allowing ten to a family (a reasonable estimate at that date), the total population would be 70,000. In 1693 the county is stated to have contained 21,537 houses. The 1801 census found that the population was 159,311. The decline of the Sussex ironworks probably accounts for the small increase of population during several centuries, although after the massacre of St Bartholomew upwards of 1,500 Huguenots landed at Rye, and in 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many more refugees were added to the county. The population of Sussex was 550,446 in 1891 and was 605,202 in 1901.


The physical geography of Sussex relies heavily on its lying on the southern part of the Wealden anticline, the major features of which are the high lands that cross the county in a west to east direction: the Weald itself and the South Downs. Natural England has identified the following seven national character areas in Sussex:
South Coast Plain
South Downs
Wealden Greensand
Low Weald
High Weald
Pevensey Levels
Romney Marshes
At 280 m (918 ft), Blackdown is the highest point in Sussex, or county top. With a height of 248 m (814 ft) Ditchling Beacon is the highest point in East Sussex. At 113 kilometres (70 miles) long, the River Medway is the longest river flowing through Sussex. The longest river entirely in Sussex is the River Arun, which is 60 kilometres (37 miles) long. Sussex's largest lakes are man-made reservoirs. The largest is Bewl Water on the Kent border, while the largest wholly within Sussex is Ardingly Reservoir.


The name "Sussex" is derived from the Middle English Suth-sæxe, which is in turn derived from the Old English Suth-Seaxe, meaning "(land or people) of the South Saxons" (cf. Essex, Middlesex and Wessex). The South Saxons were a Germanic tribe that settled in the region from the North German Plain during the 5th and 6th centuries.
The earliest known usage of the term South Saxons (Latin: Australes Saxones) is in a royal charter of 689 which names them and their king, Noðhelm, although the term may well have been in use for some time before that. The monastic chronicler who wrote up the entry classifying the invasion seems to have got his dates wrong; recent scholars have suggested he might have been a quarter of a century too late.
Three United States counties (in Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia), and a former county/land division of Western Australia, are named after Sussex.


The name Rubiaceae (nomen conservandum) was published in 1789 by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, but the name was already mentioned in 1782.
Several historically accepted families are since long included in Rubiaceae: Aparinaceae, Asperulaceae, Catesbaeaceae, Cephalanthaceae, Cinchonaceae, Coffeaceae, Coutariaceae, Galiaceae, Gardeniaceae, Guettardaceae, Hameliaceae, Hedyotidaceae, Houstoniaceae, Hydrophylacaceae, Lippayaceae, Lygodisodeaceae, Naucleaceae, Nonateliaceae, Operculariaceae, Pagamaeaceae, Psychotriaceae, Randiaceae, Sabiceaceae, Spermacoceaceae.
More recently, the morphologically quite different families Dialypetalanthaceae, Henriqueziaceae, and Theligonaceae were reduced to synonymy of Rubiaceae.


The dispersal units in Rubiaceae can be entire fruits, syncarps, mericarps, pyrenes or seeds. Fleshy fruit taxa are probably all (endo)zoochorous (e.g. tribes Pavetteae, Psychotrieae), while the dispersal of dry fruits is often unspecialized (e.g. tribes Knoxieae, Spermacoceae). When seeds function as diaspores, the dispersal is either anemochorous or hydrochorous. The three types of wind-dispersed diaspores in Rubiaceae are dust seeds (rare, e.g. Lerchea), plumed seeds (e.g. Hillia), and winged seeds (e.g. Coutarea). Long-distance dispersal by ocean currents is very rare (e.g. the seashore tree Guettarda speciosa). Other dispersal mechanisms are absent or at least very rare. Some Spermacoceae having seeds with elaiosomes are probably myrmecochorous (e.g. Spermacoce hepperiana). Epizoochorous taxa are limited to herbaceous Rubiaceae (e.g. Galium aparine fruits are densely covered with hooked bristly hairs).


Most Rubiaceae are zoophilous. Entomophilous species produce nectar from an epigynous disk at the base of the corolla tube to attract insects. Ornithophily is rare and is found in red-flowered species of Alberta, Bouvardia, and Burchellia. Anemophilous species are found in the tribes Anthospermeae and Theligoneae and are characterized by hermaphroditic or unisexual flowers that exhibit a set of specialized features, such as striking sexual dimorphism, increased receptive surface of the stigmas and pendulous anthers.
Although most Rubiaceae species are hermaphroditic, outbreeding is promoted through proterandry and spatial isolation of the reproductive organs. More complex reproductive strategies include secondary pollen presentation, heterodistyly, and unisexual flowers.
Secondary pollen presentation (also known as stylar pollen presentation or ixoroid pollen mechanism) is especially known from the Gardenieae and related tribes. The flowers are proterandrous and the pollen is shed early onto the outside of the stigmas or the upper part of the style, which serve as a 'receptaculum pollinis'. Increased surface area and irregularity of the pollen receptacle, caused by swellings, hairs, grooves or ridges often ensure a more efficient pollen deposition. After elongation of the style, animals transport the pollen to flowers in the female or receptive stage with exposed stigmatic surfaces. A pollen catapult mechanism is present in the genera Molopanthera and Posoqueria (tribe Posoquerieae) that projects a spherical pollen mass onto visiting sphingidae.
Heterodistyly is another mechanism to avoid inbreeding and is widely present in the family Rubiaceae. The tribes containing the largest number of heterostylous species are Spermacoceae and Psychotrieae. Heterostyly is absent in groups that have secondary pollen presentation (e.g. Vanguerieae).
Unisexual flowers also occur in Rubiaceae and most taxa that have this characteristic are dioecious. The two flower morphs are however difficult to observe as they are rather morphologically similar; male flowers have a pistillode with the ovaries empty and female flowers have empty, smaller anthers (staminodes). Flowers that are morphologically hermaphrodite, but functionally dioecious are for example found in Pyrostria.


The family Rubiaceae is named after Rubia, a name used by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia for madder (Rubia tinctorum). The roots of this plant have been used since ancient times to extract alizarin and purpurin, two red dyes used for coloring clothes. The name rubia is therefore derived from the Latin word ruber, meaning red. The well-known genus Rubus (blackberries and raspberries) is unrelated and belongs to Rosaceae, the rose family.


The Rubiaceae /ruːbiˈeɪʃiː/ are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the coffee, madder, or bedstraw family. It consists of terrestrial trees, shrubs, lianas, or herbs that are recognizable by simple, opposite leaves with interpetiolar stipules and sympetalous actinomorphic flowers. The family contains about 13,500 species in about 620 genera, which makes it the fourth-largest angiosperm family. Rubiaceae has a cosmopolitan distribution; however, the largest species diversity is concentrated in the tropics and subtropics. Economically important genera include  Coffea, the source of coffee, Cinchona, the source of the antimalarial alkaloid quinine, some dye plants (e.g., Rubia), and ornamental cultivars (e.g., Gardenia, Ixora, Pentas).


The region is broken up into 40 census divisions, including 22 counties, eight regional municipalities, nine single-tier municipalities and depending on its inclusion, one district. The line between the counties and regions of the south and the districts of the north can be considered a boundary between Southern and Northern Ontario.
This is disputed however, as the demarcation line that is referenced in provincial documents is the Nipissing Passageway, originally an Indian trail between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River. The trail follows the French River from Georgian Bay to Lake Nipissing. At North Bay, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of land separates Lake Nipissing from Trout Lake.  From Trout Lake, the trail follows the Mattawa River to the Ottawa River.
Brant (144,771)
Bruce (73,396)
Chatham–Kent (104,316)
Dufferin (66,257)
Durham (696,992)
Elgin (94,752)
Essex (422,860)
Frontenac (161,780)
Grey (100,905)
Haldimand-Norfolk (116,872)
Haliburton (20,571)
Halton (596,637)
Hamilton (569,353)
Hastings (145,746)
Huron (61,366)
Kawartha Lakes (79,247)
Lambton (128,154)
Lanark (75,760)
Leeds & Grenville (104,070)
Lennox & Addington (45,182)
Middlesex (500,563)
Muskoka¹ (66,674)
Niagara (477,941)
Northumberland (89,365)
Ottawa (1,017,449)
Oxford (121,781)
Parry Sound¹ (46,909)
Peel (1,451,022)
Perth (81,565)
Peterborough (147,681)
Prescott and Russell (95,639)
Prince Edward (25,704)
Renfrew (102,394)
Simcoe (533,169)
Stormont, Dundas and Glengary (114,637)
Toronto (2,794,356)
Waterloo (587,165)
Wellington (241,026)
York (1,173,334)
¹ Muskoka and Parry Sound are commonly regarded as a transitional region between Southern and Northern Ontario. Both divisions may be regarded as northern districts geographically, culturally and politically in some contexts.
The 2011 census revealed that the major urban divisions of York, Halton, Peel and Ottawa had the largest growth. While the heavy industrial divisions of Chatham, Lambton, and Essex, as well as the mainly recreational divisions of Huron and Prince Edward had a decrease in population.


The area has a large manufacturing sector. Since the mid-2000s, Ontario has produced more vehicles per year than the state of Michigan. In a cross-border definition, a swath of Southern Ontario could be considered a part of the Rust Belt.  Factory closings because of industry restructuring, globalization (corresponding movement of jobs overseas and to non-unionized labour markets in the United States) have for the past few decades taken their toll. This is most evident in the region's southern tier cities which have large automobile or associated industrial bases, such as Windsor, London, St. Thomas and St. Catharines. Still affected by these factors but to a lesser extent is Hamilton, the centre of steel production, and Sarnia, the centre of petrochemical production. The province's two largest cities, Toronto and Ottawa, have moved increasingly to a service and knowledge economy. Toronto, is home to the country's financial sector, including the major Canadian banks and Toronto Stock Exchange. Ottawa, the national capital, is home to the Government of Canada and most government departments and agencies, in addition to having a strong technology sector.
Some parts of Southern Ontario are heavily entwined with bordering cities in New York and Michigan in terms of industry and people. The focus areas are the Buffalo–Niagara, Sarnia and Detroit–Windsor. Many people work and live on opposite sides of the border. The NEXUS program for frequent travelers across the border is increasing in popularity among bordering communities. Other areas with heavy trade traffic with Southern Ontario include Montreal and the province of Quebec, parts of northern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania.


Southern Ontario is home to over 94%, or 12.1 million, of Ontario's total population of 12.9 million people (and about 35% of Canada's total population), compared to approximately 750,000 in Northern Ontario. This is due to many factors, including the more arable land in the south, its more moderate climate, well-used transportation (water, land and air) routes, proximity to populated areas of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, as well as a long history of early European settlers and colonialism.
For thousands of years, Ontario has been home to indigenous aboriginal communities, with numerous nations with differing languages at the time of European contact. Over 200,000 aboriginal Canadians live in Southern Ontario today.
Southern Ontario was colonized by the French and the British. After the area began to be developed for European settlement, especially after the American Revolutionary War, other European immigrants arrived as well, with increased immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the late 20th century, many immigrants have come from Asia and other parts of the world. The region is one of the top destinations for immigrants worldwide, particularly the Greater Toronto Area.


Southern Ontario is well known for its attractions and tourism. Some popular tourist attractions include the CN Tower, Parliament Hill, Niagara Falls, National Gallery of Canada, Canada's Wonderland, CNE, Caesars Windsor, Canadian War Museum, Toronto Zoo, Hockey Hall of Fame, Ripley's Aquarium of Canada, Royal Canadian Mint, Marineland, The Rideau Canal, the Canadian Museum of History and the Royal Ontario Museum.
Niagara Falls is the 6th most visited attraction by domestic and international tourists in the world, with over 14 million tourists each year. In 2006, Toronto was the 14th most visited city by international tourists in the world, with over 4.1 million visitors in the year. Ottawa is the most visited city in Canada by domestic tourists, hosting over 6.9 million Canadian visitors per year.
Southern Ontario is home to several professional sports teams, including the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL; the Toronto Blue Jays in Major League Baseball; the NBA's Toronto Raptors; soccer's Toronto FC in MLS and Atlético Ottawa in the Canadian Premier League; and three teams in the Canadian Football League—the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Ottawa Redblacks, and Toronto Argonauts. The region also hosts the Canadian Open in golf and Rogers Cup in tennis.
The area sponsors many internationally renowned festivals and events, including Toronto International Film Festival, Winterlude, Caribana, Bluesfest, Pride Week, Kitchener Oktoberfest, Havelock Jamboree, Toronto Indy, Sarnia Bayfest, Canada Day in Ottawa, International Freedom Festival in Windsor, Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival and Virgin Festival.
Several large legal gambling establishments have been built throughout the Province, with Caesars Windsor and Fallsview Casino being the two flagship casinos. In addition to casinos, Ontario has many legal horseracing facilities with slot machines.  Racetrack slots are located throughout the Province. All gaming in the Province is overseen by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.
Southern Ontario has many natural attractions. Wasaga Beach, Grand Bend, Sauble Beach, and Sandbanks are beaches along the Great Lakes. The Niagara Escarpment offers hiking, skiing, and hundreds of waterfalls, including Niagara Falls. The Ottawa River has white-water rafting which attracts rafters and kayakers from all over the world. Ontario Parks governs all provincial parks, and Parks Canada governs all national parks.


Territorial Southern Ontario was explored and colonized by the French in the 17th century, who forged relations with the Wyandot Huron people, based around the Georgian Bay/Lake Simcoe area. Other Iroquoian speaking people to the south were the Petun and Neutral Nation, and further northeast, Algonquins inhabited the upper Ottawa River/Madawaska Valley areas and the Mississaugas moved south from northern Lake Huron, settling lands in both the Kawartha region and just west of Toronto.
Following the Seven Years' War, the British wrested control of Southern Ontario, and greater colonization efforts were spurred on by the arrival of United Empire Loyalists brought on by the American Revolution.
Southern Ontario was where a large portion of the battles took place during the War of 1812, and was a major destination for escaping slaves using the underground railroad.
Following the enactment of Prohibition in the United States in 1919, Southern Ontario immediately became a hotbed of smuggling alcohol (spirit) across the border.


The San Joaquin Valley began to form about 66 million years ago during the early Paleocene era. Broad fluctuations in the sea level caused various areas of the valley to be flooded with ocean water for the next 60 million years. About 5 million years ago, the marine outlets began to close due to uplift of the coastal ranges and the deposition of sediment in the valley. Starting 2 million years ago, a series of glacial episodes periodically caused much of the valley to become a fresh water lake. Lake Corcoran was the last widespread lake to fill the valley about 700,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Holocene there were three major lakes remaining in the southern part of the Valley, Tulare Lake, Buena Vista Lake and Kern Lake. In the late 19th and in the 20th century, agricultural diversion of the Kern River eventually dried out these lakes. Today, only a fragment of Buena Vista Lake remains as two small lakes Lake Webb and Lake Evans in a portion of the former Buena Vista Lakebed.


The San Joaquin Valley has extremely hot, dry summers and pleasantly mild winters characterized by dense tule fog. Its rainy season normally runs from November through April. The valley has experienced a severe and intensifying megadrought since the early 2010s.
In August 2015, the Director of the California Department of Water Resources stated, "Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows—up to 100 feet lower than previous records."
Research from NASA shows that parts of the San Joaquin Valley sank as much as 8 inches (0.20 m) in a four-month period, and land near Corcoran sank 13 inches (0.33 m) in 8 months. The sinking has destroyed thousands of groundwater well casings and has the potential to damage aqueducts, roads, bridges, and flood-control structures. In the long term, the subsidence caused by extracting groundwater could irreversibly reduce the underground aquifer's water storage capacity, although immediate and short term needs are given higher priority and sense of urgency than long term sustainability.
The National Weather Service Forecast Office for the San Joaquin Valley is located in Hanford and includes a Doppler weather radar. Weather forecasts and climatological information for the San Joaquin Valley are available from its official website.


The San Joaquin Valley has been a major influence in American country, soul, nu metal, R&B, and hip hop music particularly through the  Bakersfield Sound, the Doowop Era, and  the Bakersfield Rap Scene, also referred to as Central California Hip Hop, Central Valley Hip Hop, or Central California Rap, which are all subgenres of Gangsta rap, Bass-Rap, West Coast G-funk, and West Coast Hip hop which are all different styles of West Coast Rap.  The Valley has been the home to many country, nu metal, and doo-wop musicians and singers, such as Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Billy Mize, Korn, Red Simpson, Dennis Payne, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, The Paradons, The Colts, and  the Sons of the San Joaquin. The San Joaquin Valley is also home to many Indie Hip Hop labels, R&B singers, Jazz & Funk  musicians, and Hip Hop artist such as: Fashawn, Killa Tay, The Def Dames, Cali Agents,  Planet Asia. The Valley also has a strong literary tradition, heavy in poetry, producing many famous poets such as Sherley Anne Williams, and Gary Soto, current U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and David St. John.  An MFA Creative Writing program started by former US Poet Laureate Philip Levine, resides at Fresno State, continuing to cultivate the region's literary talent. The Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer William Saroyan - who during his career won both Pulitzer and Academy awards and whose stories were often located in Central California - was born in Fresno.


The San Joaquin Valley extends from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in the north to the Tehachapi Mountains in the south, and from the various California coastal ranges (from the Diablo Range in the north to the Temblor Range in the south) in the west to the Sierra Nevada in the east. Unlike the Sacramento Valley, the river system for which the San Joaquin Valley is named does not extend very far along the valley. Most of the valley south of Fresno, instead, drains into Tulare Lake, which no longer exists continuously due to diversion of its sources. The valley's primary river is the San Joaquin, which drains north through about half of the valley into the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The Kings and Kern Rivers are in the southern endorheic basin of the valley, all of which have been largely diverted for agricultural uses and are mostly dry in their lower reaches.


The San Joaquin Valley produces the majority of the 12.8% of the United States' agricultural production (as measured by dollar value) that comes from California. Grapes—table, raisin, wines, cotton, nuts (especially almonds and pistachios), citrus, and vegetables. Walnuts, oranges, peaches, garlic, tangerines, tomatoes, kiwis, hay, alfalfa and numerous other crops have been harvested with great success. Certain places are identified quite strongly with a given crop: Stockton produces the majority of the domestic asparagus consumed in the United States, and Fresno County is the largest producer of raisins.
Cattle and sheep ranching are also vitally important to the valley's economy. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Miller & Lux corporation built an agricultural monopoly centered around cattle. The corporation can be characterized as a precursor to corporate farming transforming the yeoman farmer into wage workers. The success of the business can be attributed to founder Henry Miller's direct management style which is reflected in his detailed correspondences to his subordinates. During recent years, dairy farming has greatly expanded in importance. As areas such as Chino and Corona have become absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, many dairy farmers have cashed out and moved their herds to Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties.
Between 1990 and 2004, 28,092 hectares (70,231 acres) of agricultural land was lost to urban development in the San Joaquin Valley. Although there have been some token efforts at confronting the problems of (sub)urban sprawl, the politically conservative climate of the Valley generally prefers traditional suburban sprawl type of growth such as low density housing and strip malls anchored by so-called big box stores and opposes measures such as "Smart Growth", "Transit Oriented Development", "High Density Housing", and increased public transit such as light and commuter rail. By August 2014, a three-year drought was prompting changes to the agriculture industry in the valley. Farmers began using complex irrigation systems and using treated waste water to feed crops, while many were switching from farming cotton to other commodities, chief among them, almonds.


The total population of the eight counties comprising the San Joaquin Valley at the time of the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates by United States Census Bureau reported  a population of 4,080,509. The racial composition of San Joaquin Valley was 1,428,978 (35.0%) Non-Hispanic White, 2,048,280 (50.2%) Hispanic or Latino, 310,557 (7.6%) Asian, 193,694 (4.7%) Black or African American, 40,911 (1.0%) American Indian and Alaska Native, and 13,000 (0.32%) Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander.
The educational attainment of high school graduate or higher is 72.7%.


January 2 – Galyani Vadhana, Princess of Naradhiwas and Princess of Thailand (b. 1923)
January 3
Aleksandr Abdulov, Soviet/Russian actor (b. 1953)
Choi Yo-sam, Korean boxer (b. 1972)
January 7 – Philip Agee, American spy and writer (b. 1935)
January 10
Christopher Bowman, American figure skater (b. 1967)
Maila Nurmi, Finnish-American actress and television personality (b. 1922)
January 11 – Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist (b. 1919)
January 14 – Judah Folkman, American medical scientist (b. 1933)
January 15 – Brad Renfro, American actor (b. 1982)
January 16 – Nikola Kljusev, first Prime Minister of Macedonia (b. 1927)
January 17
Bobby Fischer, American chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion (b. 1943)
Allan Melvin, American actor (b. 1923)
January 18 – Lois Nettleton, American actress (b. 1927)
January 19 – Suzanne Pleshette, American actress (b. 1937)
January 21 – Marie Smith Jones, Native American speaker (b. 1918)
January 22
Cao Văn Viên, South Vietnamese general and Chair of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff (b. 1921)
Heath Ledger, Australian actor (b. 1979)
Claude Piron, Swiss linguist and psychologist (b. 1931)
January 25 – Aziz Sedky, 36th prime minister of Egypt (b. 1920)
January 26 – George Habash, Palestinian politician (b. 1926)
January 27
Gordon B. Hinckley, American Mormon leader (b. 1910)
Suharto, 2nd President of Indonesia (b. 1921)
January 28 – Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens (b. 1939)
January 29 – Margaret Truman, American singer and writer (b. 1924)
January 30 – Marcial Maciel, Mexican Catholic priest (b. 1920)
January 31 – František Čapek, Czechoslovakian canoeist (b. 1914)


April 16 – Princess Eléonore of Belgium
June 3 – Harshaali Malhotra, Indian actress and model
June 10 – Sara James, Polish singer and songwriter
July 15 – Iain Armitage, American child actor


April 3 – Hrvoje Ćustić, Croatian footballer (b. 1983)
April 5 – Charlton Heston, American actor (b. 1923)
April 8 – Stanley Kamel, American actor (b. 1943)
April 10 – Ernesto Corripio y Ahumada, Mexican cardinal (b. 1919)
April 12 – Patrick Hillery, 6th President of Ireland (b. 1923)
April 13 – John Archibald Wheeler, American theoretical physicist (b. 1911)
April 14 – Ollie Johnston, American animator (b. 1912)
April 15 – Benoît Lamy, Belgian motion picture writer and director (b. 1945)
April 16 – Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist (b. 1917)
April 17 – Aimé Césaire, French Martinican poet and politician (b. 1913)
April 26 – Árpád Orbán, Hungarian footballer (b. 1938)
April 29 – Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist and writer (b. 1906)


2008 (MMVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2008th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 8th  year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the  9th   year of the 2000s decade.

2008 was designated as:
International Year of Languages
International Year of Planet Earth
International Year of Sanitation
International Year of the Potato
The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued through the entirety of 2008.


Africa separated from Antarctica in the Jurassic around 160 Ma, followed by the Indian subcontinent in the early Cretaceous (about 125 Ma). During the early Paleogene, Antarctica remained connected to South America via the Isthmus of Scotia as well as to southeastern Australia. Fauna from the La Meseta Formation in the Antarctic Peninsula, dating to the Eocene, is very similar to equivalent South American faunas; with marsupials, xenarthrans, litoptern, and astrapotherian ungulates, as well as gondwanatheres and meridiolestidans. Marsupials are thought to have dispersed into Australia via Antarctica by the early Eocene.
Around 53 Ma, Australia-New Guinea separated from Antarctica. The Drake Passage opened between Antarctica and South America around 30 Ma, resulting in the creation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that completely isolated the continent. Models of Antarctic geography suggest that the current, as well as a feedback loop caused by lowering CO₂ levels, caused the creation of small yet permanent polar ice caps. As CO₂ levels declined further, the ice began to spread rapidly, replacing the forests that until then had covered Antarctica. Since about 15 Ma, the continent has been mostly covered with ice.


Positioned asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle (one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the world), Antarctica is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. Rivers exist in Antarctica, the longest being the Onyx. Antarctica covers more than 14.2 million km² (5,500,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest continent, slightly less than 1.5 times the area of the United States. Its coastline is almost 18,000 km (11,200 mi) long: As of 1983, of the four coastal types, 44% of the coast is floating ice in the form of an ice shelf, 38% consists of ice walls that rest on rock, 13% is ice streams or the edge of glaciers, and the remaining 5% is exposed rock.
The lakes that lie at the base of the continental ice sheet occur mainly in the McMurdo Dry Valleys or various oases. Lake Vostok, discovered beneath Russia's Vostok Station, is the largest sub-glacial lake globally, and one of the largest lakes in the world. It was once believed that the lake had been sealed off for millions of years, but scientists now estimate its water is replaced by the slow melting and freezing of ice caps every 13,000 years. During the summer, the ice at the edges of the lakes can melt, and liquid moats temporarily form. Antarctica has both saline and freshwater lakes.
Antarctica is divided into West Antarctica and East Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains, which stretch from Victoria Land to the Ross Sea. The vast majority of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, which averages 1.9 km (1.2 mi) in thickness. The ice sheet extends to all but a few oases, which, with the exception of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, are located in coastal areas. Several Antarctic ice streams flow to one of the many Antarctic ice shelves, a process described by ice-sheet dynamics.
East Antarctica comprises Coats Land, Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Mac. Robertson Land, Wilkes Land, and Victoria Land. All but a small portion of the region lies within the Eastern Hemisphere. East Antarctica is largely covered by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. There are numerous islands surrounding Antarctica, most of which are volcanic and very young by geological standards. The most prominent exceptions to this are the islands of the Kerguelen Plateau, the earliest of which formed around 40 Ma.
Vinson Massif, in the Ellsworth Mountains, is the highest peak in Antarctica at 4,892 m (16,050 ft). Mount Erebus on Ross Island is the world's southernmost active volcano and erupts around 10 times each day. Ash from eruptions has been found 300 kilometres (190 mi) from the volcanic crater. There is evidence of a large number of volcanoes under the ice, which could pose a risk to the ice sheet if activity levels were to rise. The ice dome known as Dome Argus in East Antarctica is the highest Antarctic ice feature, at 4,091 metres (13,422 ft). It is one of the world's coldest and driest places—temperatures there may reach as low as −90 °C (−130 °F), and the annual precipitation is 1–3 cm (0.39–1.18 in).


The name given to the continent originates from the word antarctic, which comes from Middle French antartique or antarctique ('opposite to the Arctic') and, in turn, the Latin antarcticus ('opposite to the north'). Antarcticus is derived from the Greek ἀντι- ('anti-') and ἀρκτικός ('of the Bear', 'northern'). The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote in Meteorology about an "Antarctic region" in c. 350 BCE. The Greek geographer Marinus of Tyre reportedly used the name in his world map from the second century CE, now lost. The Roman authors Hyginus and Apuleius used for the South Pole the romanised Greek name polus antarcticus, from which derived the Old French pole antartike (modern pôle antarctique) attested in 1270, and from there the Middle English pol antartik, found first in a treatise written by the English author Geoffrey Chaucer.
Until the discovery, belief by Europeans in the existence of a Terra Australis—a vast continent in the far south of the globe to balance the northern lands of Europe, Asia and North Africa—had existed as an intellectual concept since classical antiquity. The belief of such a land lasted until the discovery of Australia.
During the early 19th century, explorer Matthew Flinders doubted the existence of a detached continent south of Australia (then called New Holland), and thus advocated for the "Terra Australis" name to be used for Australia instead. In 1824 the colonial authorities in Sydney officially renamed the continent of New Holland to Australia, leaving the term "Terra Australis" unavailable as a reference to Antarctica. Over the following decades, geographers used phrases such as "the Antarctic Continent". They searched for a more poetic replacement, suggesting names such as Ultima and Antipodea. Antarctica was adopted in the 1890s, with the first use of the name being attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew.


During the Cambrian period, Gondwana had a mild climate. West Antarctica was partially in the Northern Hemisphere, and during the time, large amounts of sandstones, limestones, and shales were deposited. East Antarctica was at the equator, where seafloor invertebrates and trilobites flourished in the tropical seas. By the start of the Devonian period (416 Ma), Gondwana was in more southern latitudes and the climate was cooler, though fossils of land plants are known from then. Sand and silts were laid down in what is now the Ellsworth, Horlick and Pensacola Mountains.
Antarctica became glaciated during the Late Paleozoic icehouse beginning at the end of the Devonian period (360 Ma), though glaciation would substantially increase during the late Carboniferous. It drifted closer to the South Pole and the climate cooled, though flora remained. After deglaciation during the latter half of the Early Permian, the land became dominated by glossopterids (an extinct group of seed plants with no close living relatives), most prominently Glossopteris, a tree interpreted as growing in waterlogged soils, which formed extensive coal deposits. Other plants found in Antarctica during the Permian include Cordaitales, sphenopsids, ferns, and lycophytes. At the end of the Permian the climate became drier and hotter over much of Gondwana and the glossopterid forest ecosystems collapsed, as part of the End-Permian mass extinction. There is no evidence of any tetrapods having lived in Antarctica during the Paleozoic.


The continued warming dried out much of Gondwana. During the Triassic, Antarctica was dominated by seed ferns (pteridosperms) belonging to the genus Dicroidium, which grew as trees. Other associated Triassic flora included ginkgophytes, cycadophytes, conifers, and sphenopsids. Tetrapods first appeared in Antarctica during the early Triassic, with the earliest known fossils found in the Fremouw Formation of the Transantarctic Mountains. Synapsids (also known as "mammal-like reptiles") included species such as Lystrosaurus, and were common during the Early Triassic.
The Antarctic Peninsula began to form during the Jurassic period (206–146 Ma). Ginkgo trees, conifers, Bennettitales, horsetails, ferns and cycads were plentiful during the time. In West Antarctica, coniferous forests dominated throughout the Cretaceous period (146–66 Ma), though southern beech trees (Nothofagus) became prominent towards the end of the Cretaceous. Ammonites were common in the seas around Antarctica, and dinosaurs were also present, though only a few Antarctic dinosaur genera (Cryolophosaurus and Glacialisaurus, from the Early Jurassic Hanson Formation of the Transantarctic Mountains, and Antarctopelta, Trinisaura, Morrosaurus and Imperobator from Late Cretaceous of the Antarctic Peninsula) have been described.


The term East Coast (Malay: Pantai Timur; Jawi: ڤنتاي تيمور)  is particularly used in Malaysia to describe the following states in Peninsular Malaysia facing the South China Sea, a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean:
Kelantan
Pahang
Terengganu
The term West Coast (Malay: Pantai Barat; Jawi: ڤنتاي بارت) refers informally to a collection of states in Peninsular Malaysia situated towards the western coast generally facing the Strait of Malacca which is a component of the Indian Ocean, as opposed to the East Coast. Unlike the East Coast, the West Coast is partitioned further into three regions (as seen in #States and territories), including:
The Northern Region: Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Perak.
The Central Region: Selangor and the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.
The Southern Region: Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Johor.
Even though Johor has a coastline facing the South China Sea on the Pacific Ocean, it is not generally regarded as an East Coast state, since the main coastline of the state is located on the Straits of Johor of the Indian Ocean.


As of 2012, Peninsular Malaysia oil production stood at 520,000 barrel of oil equivalent per day.


Peninsular Malaysia (Malay: Semenanjung Malaysia; Jawi: سمننجڠ مليسيا), also known as West Malaysia, Malaysian Peninsula, or Malaya (Malay: Tanah Melayu; Jawi: تانه ملايو), is the part of Malaysia which occupies the southern half of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia and the nearby islands. Its area totals 132,490 km² (51,150 sq mi), which is nearly 40% of the total area of the country; the other 60% is East Malaysia. For comparison, it is slightly larger than England (130,395 Km²). It shares a land border with Thailand to the north.
Across the Strait of Malacca to the west lies the island of Sumatra and across the South China Sea to the east lie the Natuna Islands of Indonesia. At the southern tip across the Strait of Johor lies the island country of Singapore. Peninsular Malaysia accounts for the majority (roughly 81.3%) of Malaysia's population and economy; as of 2017, its population is roughly 26 million (82% of total population).


The majority of people on Peninsular Malaysia are ethnic Malays, predominantly Muslim. Large Chinese and Indian populations exist. The Orang Asli are the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia; they number around 140,000 and mostly live in inland parts of the region.


Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.


1944
January
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May
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July
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September
October
November
December
1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1944th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 944th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 44th  year of the 20th century, and the  5th   year of the 1940s decade.


Nematodes are very small, slender worms: typically about 5 to 100 µm thick, and 0.1 to 2.5 mm long. The smallest nematodes are microscopic, while free-living species can reach as much as 5 cm (2 in), and some parasitic species are larger still, reaching over 1 m (3 ft) in length. The body is often ornamented with ridges, rings, bristles, or other distinctive structures.
The head of a nematode is relatively distinct. Whereas the rest of the body is bilaterally symmetrical, the head is radially symmetrical, with sensory bristles and, in many cases, solid 'head-shields' radiating outwards around the mouth. The mouth has either three or six lips, which often bear a series of teeth on their inner edges. An adhesive 'caudal gland' is often found at the tip of the tail.
The epidermis is either a syncytium or a single layer of cells, and is covered by a thick collagenous cuticle. The cuticle is often of a complex structure and may have two or three distinct layers. Underneath the epidermis lies a layer of longitudinal muscle cells. The relatively rigid cuticle works with the muscles to create a hydroskeleton, as nematodes lack circumferential muscles. Projections run from the inner surface of muscle cells towards the nerve cords; this is a unique arrangement in the animal kingdom, in which nerve cells normally extend fibers into the muscles rather than vice versa.


January 9 – Yang Shoujing, Chinese historical geographer and calligrapher (b. 1839)
January 10 – Marshall Pinckney Wilder, American actor, humorist, comedian and monologist (b. 1859)
January 13 – Mary Slessor, Scottish Christian missionary (b. 1848)
January 14 – Richard Meux Benson, English founder of an Anglican religious order (b. 1824)
January 18 – Anatoly Stessel, Russian baron and general (b. 1848)
January 19 – Anna Leonowens (Anna of The King and I) (b. 1831)
January 22 – James M. Spangler, American inventor (b. 1848)


1915
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1915th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 915th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 15th  year of the 20th century, and the  6th   year of the 1910s decade. As of the start of 1915, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


Alfred Wegener publishes his theory of Pangaea.
The first stop sign appears in Detroit.
The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis is founded in the United States.
Carrier Engineering, predecessor of Carrier Global, a global air conditioning brand, is founded in New Jersey, United States.


With the defeat of Germany in World War I, Kamerun became a League of Nations mandate territory and was split into French Cameroon (French: Cameroun) and British Cameroon in 1919. France integrated the economy of Cameroon with that of France and improved the infrastructure with capital investments and skilled workers, modifying the colonial system of forced labour.
The British administered their territory from neighbouring Nigeria. Natives complained that this made them a neglected "colony of a colony". Nigerian migrant workers flocked to Southern Cameroons, ending forced labour altogether but angering the local natives, who felt swamped. The League of Nations mandates were converted into United Nations Trusteeships in 1946, and the question of independence became a pressing issue in French Cameroon.
France outlawed the pro-independence political party, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (Union des Populations du Cameroun; UPC), on 13 July 1955. This prompted a long guerrilla war waged by the UPC and the assassination of several of the party's leaders, including Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié and Ernest Ouandie. In the British Cameroons, the question was whether to reunify with French Cameroon or join Nigeria; the British ruled out the option of independence.


Originally, Cameroon was the exonym given by the Portuguese to the Wouri River, which they called Rio dos Camarões meaning "river of shrimps" or "shrimp river", referring to the then abundant Cameroon ghost shrimp. Today the country's name in Portuguese remains Camarões.


Winning the 2000 Ghanaian elections, John Agyekum Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was sworn into office as president of Ghana on 7 January 2001, and attained the presidency again in the 2004 Ghanaian elections, thus also serving two terms (the term limit) as president of Ghana and thus marking the first time under the fourth republic that power was transferred from one legitimately elected head of state and head of government to another.
Nana Akufo-Addo, the ruling party candidate, was defeated in a very close election by John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) following the 2008 Ghanaian general election. Mills died of natural causes and was succeeded by vice-president John Dramani Mahama on 24 July 2012.
Following the 2012 Ghanaian general election, John Dramani Mahama became President-elect and was inaugurated on 7 January 2013. Ghana was a stable democracy.
As a result of the 2016 Ghanaian general election, Nana Akufo-Addo became President-elect and was inaugurated as the fifth President of the Fourth Republic of Ghana and eighth President of Ghana on 7 January 2017. In December 2020, President Nana Akufo-Addo was re-elected after a tightly contested election.
On 11 June 2021, Ghana inaugurated Green Ghana Day in an aim of planting 5 million trees in a concentrating effort to preserve the country's cover of rainforest to combat deforestation.


Hong Kong (/ˈhɒŋkɒŋ/; Chinese: 香港, Cantonese: [hœ́ːŋ.kɔ̌ːŋ] (listen)), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta in South China. With 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is also a major global financial centre and one of the most developed cities in the world.
Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island from Xin'an County at the end of the First Opium War in 1841 then again in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. British Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945 during World War II; British administration resumed after the surrender of Japan. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As one of China's two special administrative regions (the other being Macau), Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".
Originally a sparsely populated area of farming and fishing villages, the territory has become one of the world's most significant financial centres and commercial ports. It is the world's tenth-largest exporter and ninth-largest importer. Hong Kong has a major capitalist service economy characterised by low taxation and free trade, and its currency, the Hong Kong dollar, is the eighth most traded currency in the world. Hong Kong is home to the third-highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, the second-highest number of billionaires of any city in Asia, and the largest concentration of ultra high-net-worth individuals of any city in the world. Although the city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, severe income inequality exists among the population.
Hong Kong is a highly developed territory and ranks fourth on the UN Human Development Index. The city has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world, and its residents have some of the highest life expectancies in the world. The dense space has led to a highly developed transportation network with public transport rates exceeding 90%. Hong Kong is ranked 3rd in the Global Financial Centres Index.


Hooker's first expedition, led by James Clark Ross, consisted of two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror; it was the last major voyage of exploration made entirely under sail. Hooker was the youngest of the 128-man crew. He sailed on the Erebus and was assistant to Robert McCormick, who in addition to being the ship's Surgeon was instructed to collect zoological and geological specimens. The ships sailed on 30 September 1839. Before journeying to Antarctica they visited Madeira, Tenerife, Santiago and Quail Island in the Cape Verde archipelago, St Paul Rocks, Trinidade east of Brazil, St Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope. Hooker made plant collections at each location and while travelling drew these and specimens of algae and sea life pulled aboard using tow nets.
From the Cape they entered the Southern Ocean. Their first stop was the Crozet Islands where they set down on Possession Island to deliver coffee to sealers. They departed for the Kerguelen Islands where they would spend several days. Hooker identified 18 flowering plants, 35 mosses and liverworts, 25 lichens and 51 algae, including some that were not described by surgeon William Anderson when James Cook had visited the islands in 1772. The expedition spent some time in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, and then moved on to the Auckland Islands and Campbell Island, and onward to Antarctica to locate the South Magnetic Pole. After spending 5 months in the Antarctic they returned to resupply in Hobart, then went on to Sydney, and the Bay of Islands in New Zealand from 18 August to 23 November 1841. They left New Zealand to return to Antarctica. After spending 138 days at sea, and a collision between the Erebus and Terror, they sailed to the Falkland Islands, to Tierra del Fuego, back to the Falklands and onward to their third sortie into the Antarctic. When Hooker arrived on the Falkland Islands with the expedition of Ross, he developed a close friendship with Richard Clement Moody, the Governor of the Falkland Islands. Moody granted Hooker full use of his personal library, which Hooker described as 'excellent', and Hooker described Moody as 'a very active and intelligent young man, most anxious to improve the colony and gain every information [sic] respecting its products'.
Subsequently, the Ross expedition made a landing at Cockburn Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, and after leaving the Antarctic, stopped at the Cape, St Helena and Ascension Island. The ships arrived back in England on 4 September 1843; the voyage had been a success for Ross as it was the first to confirm the existence of the southern continent and chart much of its coastline.


Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB PRS (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.


In 1851 he married Frances Harriet Henslow (1825–1874), daughter of Darwin's mentor, John Stevens Henslow. They had four sons and three daughters:
William Henslow Hooker (1853–1942)
Harriet Anne Hooker (1854–1945) married William Turner Thiselton-Dyer
Charles Paget Hooker (1855–1933)
Maria Elizabeth Hooker (1857–1863) died aged 6.
Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker (1860–1932)
Reginald Hawthorn Hooker (1867–1944) statistician
Grace Ellen Hooker (1868–1955)
Frances Harriet Henslow's contribution to his work included translating French botanical texts which Hooker edited.
After his first wife's death in 1874, in 1876 he married Lady Hyacinth Jardine (1842–1921), daughter of William Samuel Symonds and the widow of Sir William Jardine. They had two sons:
Joseph Symonds Hooker (1877–1940)
Richard Symonds Hooker (1885–1950).
Lady Hooker was elected a Fellow of the RSPB in 1905.


"Green Leaves", also known as the Koontz House or the Beltzhoover House, is a Greek Revival mansion in Natchez, Mississippi, completed in 1838 by Edward P. Fourniquet, a French lawyer who built other structures in the area. It was purchased by George Washington Koontz, a local banker in 1849 and has been owned by his descendants ever since. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1979.


The Laridae have spread around the world, and their adaptability has likely been a factor. Most have become much more aerial than their ancestor, which was likely some form of shorebird.


The family Laridae was introduced (as Laridia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. Historically, Laridae were restricted to the gulls, while the terns were placed in a separate family, Sternidae, and the skimmers in a third family, Rynchopidae. The noddies were traditionally included in Sternidae. In 1990 Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist included auks and skuas in a broader family Laridae.
A molecular phylogenetic study by Baker and colleagues published in 2007 found that the noddies in the genus Anous formed a sister group to a clade containing the gulls, skimmers and the other terns. To create a monophyletic family group, Laridae was expanded to include the genera that had previously been in Sternidae and Rynchopidae.
Baker and colleagues found that the Laridae lineage diverged from a lineage that gave rise to both the skuas (Stercorariidae) and auks (Alcidae) before the end of the Cretaceous in the age of dinosaurs. They also found that the Laridae themselves began expanding in the early Paleocene, around 60 million years ago. The German palaeontologist Gerald Mayr has questioned the validity of these early dates and suggested that inappropriate fossils were used in calibrating the molecular data. The earliest charadriiform fossils date only from the late Eocene, around 35 million years ago.
Anders Ödeen and colleagues investigated the development of ultraviolet vision in shorebirds, by looking for the SWS1 opsin gene in various species; as gulls were the only shorebirds known to have developed the trait. They discovered that the gene was present in the gull, skimmer and noddy lineages but not the tern lineage. They also recovered the noddies as an early lineage, though the evidence was not strong.
For the complete list of species, see the article List of Laridae species.


Laridae is a family of seabirds in the order Charadriiformes that includes the gulls, terns, skimmers and Kittiwakes. It includes around 100 species arranged into 22 genera. They are an adaptable group of mostly aerial birds found worldwide.


The genera are listed in taxonomic order.
There is discussion in the IOC about renaming this species "white noddy" to reflect its relationships


1873 (MDCCCLXXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1873rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 873rd  year of the 2nd millennium, the 73rd  year of the 19th century, and the  4th   year of the 1870s decade. As of the start of 1873, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


Kingfishers feed on a wide variety of prey. They are most famous for hunting and eating fish, and some species do specialise in catching fish, but other species take crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, annelid worms, molluscs, insects, spiders, centipedes, reptiles (including snakes), and even birds and mammals. Individual species may specialise in a few items or take a wide variety of prey, and for species with large global distributions, different populations may have different diets. Woodland and forest kingfishers take mainly insects, particularly grasshoppers, whereas the water kingfishers are more specialised in taking fish. The red-backed kingfisher has been observed hammering into the mud nests of fairy martins to feed on their nestlings. Kingfishers usually hunt from an exposed perch; when a prey item is observed, the kingfisher swoops down to snatch it, then returns to the perch. Kingfishers of all three families beat larger prey on a perch to kill the prey and to dislodge or break protective spines and bones. Having beaten the prey, it is manipulated and then swallowed. Sometimes, a pellet of bones, scales and other indigestible debris is coughed up. The shovel-billed kookaburra uses its massive, wide bill as a shovel to dig for worms in soft mud.


The kingfisher family Alcedinidae is in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies, rollers and ground-rollers. The name of the family was introduced (as Alcedia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is divided into three subfamilies, the tree kingfishers (Halcyoninae), the river kingfishers (Alcedininae) and the water kingfishers (Cerylinae). The name Daceloninae is sometimes used for the tree kingfisher subfamily but it was introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1841 while Halcyoninae introduced by Nicholas Aylward Vigors in 1825 is earlier and has priority. A few taxonomists elevate the three subfamilies to family status. In spite of the word "kingfisher" in their English vernacular names, many of these birds are not specialist fish-eaters; none of the species in Halcyoninae are.
The centre of kingfisher diversity is the Australasian realm, but the group originated in the Indomalayan region around 27 million years ago and invaded the Australasian realm a number of times. Fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming and Middle Eocene rocks in Germany, around 30–40 million years ago. More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene rocks of Australia (5–25 million years old). Several fossil birds have been erroneously ascribed to the kingfishers, including Halcyornis, from the Lower Eocene rocks in Kent, which has also been considered a gull, but is now thought to have been a member of an extinct family.
Amongst the three subfamilies, the Alcedininae are basal to the other two subfamilies. The few species found in the Americas, all from the subfamily Cerylinae, suggest that the sparse representation in the Western Hemisphere resulted from just two original colonising events. The subfamily is a comparatively recent split from the Halcyoninae, diversifying in the Old World as recently as the Miocene or Pliocene.


The family Thraupidae was introduced (as the subfamily Thraupinae) in 1847 by German ornithologist Jean Cabanis. The type genus is Thraupis.
The family Thraupidae is a member of an assemblage of over 800 birds known as the New World, nine-primaried oscines. The traditional pre-molecular classification was largely based on the different feeding specializations. Nectar-feeders were placed in Coerebidae (honeycreepers), large-billed seed-eaters in Cardinalidae (cardinals and grosbeaks), smaller-billed seed-eaters in Emberizidae (New World finches and
sparrows), ground-foraging insect-eaters in Icteridae (blackbirds) and fruit-eaters
in Thraupidae. This classification was known to be problematic as analyses using other morphological characteristics often produced conflicting phylogenies. Beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, a series of molecular phylogenetic studies led to a complete reorganization of the tradition families. Thraupidae now includes large-billed seed eaters, thin-billed nectar feeders, foliage gleaners as well as fruit-eaters.
One consequence of redefining the family boundaries is that for many species their common names are no longer congruent with the families in which they are placed. As of July 2020 there are 39 species with "tanager" in the common name that are not placed in Thraupidae. These include the widely distributed scarlet tanager and western tanager which are both now placed in Cardinalidae. There are also 106 species within Thraupidae that have "finch" in their common name.
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 revealed that many of the traditional genera were not monophyletic. In the resulting reorganization six new genera were introduced, eleven genera were resurrected and seven genera were abandoned.
As of July 2021 the family contains 386 species which are divided into 15 subfamilies and 106 genera. For a complete list, see the article List of tanager species.


The tanagers (singular /ˈtænədʒər/) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotropical birds.
Traditionally, the family contained around 240 species of mostly brightly colored fruit-eating birds. As more of these birds were studied using modern molecular techniques, it became apparent that the traditional families were not monophyletic. Euphonia and Chlorophonia, which were once considered part of the tanager family, are now treated as members of the Fringillidae, in their own subfamily (Euphoniinae). Likewise, the genera Piranga (which includes the scarlet tanager, summer tanager, and western tanager), Chlorothraupis, and Habia appear to be members of the cardinal family, and have been reassigned to that family by the American Ornithological Society.


Tanagers are restricted to the Western Hemisphere and mainly to the tropics. About 60% of tanagers live in South America, and 30% of these species live in the Andes. Most species are endemic to a relatively small area.


The plushcap has no close relatives and is now placed in its own subfamily. It was previously placed either in the subfamily Catamblyrhynchinae within the Emberizidae or in its own family Catamblyrhynchidae.
Catamblyrhynchus – plushcap


Gomphocerinae, sometimes called "slant-faced grasshoppers", are a subfamily of grasshoppers found on every continent but Antarctica and Australia.


Auth. Fieber, 1853; widespread - selected genera
Aeropedellus Hebard, 1935
Bruneria McNeill, 1897
Chorthippus Fieber, 1852
Gomphoceridius Bolívar, 1914
Gomphocerippus Roberts, 1941
Gomphocerus Thunberg, 1815
Myrmeleotettix Bolívar, 1914
Pseudochorthippus Defaut, 2012


February – The Hartford Convention arrives in Washington, D.C.
February 3 – The first commercial cheese factory is founded in Switzerland.
February 4 – The first Dutch student association, the Groninger Studentencorps Vindicat atque Polit, is founded in the Netherlands. The first rector of the senate is B. J. Winter.
February 6 – New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to John Stevens.
February 12 – Atlanta: The first rumors of a human biological weapon surface, when an Atlanta Gazette clerk resigns two days after the typhoid outbreak, and claims he overhead an editor say it was not newsworthy.  [[]]
February 17 – The Spanish reconquest of Latin America begins.
February 18 – The War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom (including Canada) officially ends, following ratification of the Treaty of Ghent (1814) in Washington, D.C.
February 26 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba.


1815 (MDCCCXV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1815th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 815th  year of the 2nd millennium, the 15th  year of the 19th century, and the  6th   year of the 1810s decade. As of the start of 1815, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.


April 5–12 – Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies  blows its top explosively during an eruption, killing upwards of 92,000, and propelling thousands of tons of aerosols (Sulfide gas compounds) into the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). The high level gases reflect sunlight, and cause the widespread cooling (known as a volcanic winter) and heavy rains of 1816, snows in June and July in the northern hemisphere, widespread crop failures, and subsequently famine, which is why 1816 is later known as the Year Without a Summer.
April 21 – The eastern part of the former Garhwal Kingdom is joined with Kumaon division, under the administration of the British Raj.
April 24 – The Second Serbian Uprising against Ottoman rule takes place in Takovo, Ottoman Serbia. By the end of the year Serbia is acknowledged as a semi-independent state; the ideals of the First Serbian Uprising have thus been temporarily achieved.


Larus is a large genus of gulls with worldwide distribution (by far the greatest species diversity is in the Northern Hemisphere).
Many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. Until about 2005–2007, most gulls were placed in this genus, but this arrangement is now known to be polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of the genera Ichthyaetus, Chroicocephalus, Leucophaeus, and Hydrocoloeus (this last had been recognized more often than the other genera) for several species traditionally included in Larus.
They are in general medium to large birds, typically grey or white, often with black markings on their heads or wings. They have stout, longish bills and webbed feet.
The taxonomy of the large gulls in the herring and lesser black-backed complex is very complicated, with different authorities recognising between two and eight species.


The circumpolar group of Larus gull species has often been cited as a classic example of the ring species. The range of these gulls forms a ring around the North Pole. The European herring gull, which lives primarily in Great Britain and Northern Europe, can hybridize with the American herring gull (living in North America), which can also interbreed with the Vega or East Siberian gull, the western subspecies of which, Birula's gull, can hybridize with Heuglin's gull which, in turn, can interbreed with the Siberian lesser black-backed gull (all four of these live across the north of Siberia). The last is the eastern representative of the lesser black-backed gulls back in northwestern Europe, including Great Britain. However, the lesser black-backed gulls and herring gull are sufficiently different that they rarely interbreed; thus, the group of gulls forms a continuum except in Europe, where the two lineages meet. However, a recent genetic study has shown that this example is far more complicated than presented here, and probably does not constitute a true ring species.


The most notable wars and/or other conflicts of the decade include:
The Cold War (1945–1991)
The Vietnam War came to a close in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. The following year, Vietnam was officially declared reunited.
Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) – Although taking place almost entirely throughout the 1980s, the war officially started on December 27, 1979.
Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) – resulting in intervention by multiple countries on the Marxist and anti-Marxist sides, with Cuba and Mozambique supporting the Marxist faction while South Africa and Zaire support the anti-Marxists.
Ethiopian Civil War (1974–1991)
The Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974)
The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 in South Asia, engaging East Pakistan, West Pakistan, and India
1971 Bangladesh genocide
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)
Yom Kippur War (1973) – the war was launched by Egypt and Syria against Israel in October 1973 to recover territories lost by the Arabs in the 1967 conflict. The Israelis were taken by surprise and suffered heavy losses before they rallied. In the end, they managed to repel the Egyptians (and a simultaneous attack by Syria in the Golan Heights) and crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt proper. In 1978, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in the United States, ending outstanding disputes between the two countries. Sadat's actions would lead to his assassination in 1981.
Indian emergency (1975–1977)
Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) – A civil war in the Middle East which at times also involved the PLO and Israel during the early 1980s.
Western Sahara War (1975–1991) – A regional war pinning the rebel Polisario Front against Morocco and Mauritania.
Ugandan–Tanzanian War (1978–1979) – the war which was fought between Uganda and Tanzania was based on an expansionist agenda to annex territory from Tanzania. The war resulted in the overthrow of Idi Amin's regime.
The Ogaden War (1977–1978) was another African conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia over control of the Ogaden region.
The Rhodesian Bush War (1964-1979)


On January 5, 1970, the 7.1 Mw Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Between 10,000 and 14,621 were killed and 26,783 were injured.
On May 31, 1970, the 1970 Ancash earthquake caused a landslide that buried the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people were killed.  "Essay on Super Cyclone in Orissa"
The 1970 Bhola cyclone, a 120-mph (193 km/h) tropical cyclone, hit the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on November 12 and 13, 1970, killing an estimated 500,000 people.  The storm remains to date the deadliest tropical cyclone in world history.
On October 29, 1971, the 1971 Odisha cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian state of Odisha, killed 10,000 people.
June, 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit the east coast of the United States, resulting in 128 deaths and causing over $2.1 Billion in damage.
On April 3, 1974, the 1974 Super Outbreak occurred in the U.S. producing 148 tornadoes and killing a total of 330 people.
On December 24, 1974, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian city of Darwin.
Bangladesh famine of 1974 — Official records claim a death toll of 26,000. However, various sources claim about 1,000,000.
On August 8, 1975, the Banqiao Dam, in China's Henan Province, failed after a freak typhoon; over 200,000 people perished.
On February 4, 1976, a major earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras killed more than 22,000.
On July 28, 1976, a 7.5 earthquake flattened Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people and injuring 164,851.
On August 17, 1976,   a magnitude 8 earthquake struck Moro Gulf near the island of Sulu in Mindanao, Philippines causing a tsunami killing 5,000 to 8,000 people.
Super Typhoon Tip affected areas in the southwestern Pacific Ocean from October 4–19, 1979.  Off the coast of Guam, Tip became the largest and most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded, with a gale diameter of almost 1,400 miles, 190-mph winds, and a record intensity of 870 millibars.


The most notable terrorist attacks of the decade include:
The Munich massacre takes place at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Palestinians belonging to the terrorist group Black September organization kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes.
Rise in the use of terrorism by militant organizations across the world. Groups in Europe like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang were responsible for a spate of bombings, kidnappings, and murders. Violence continued in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Radical American groups existed as well, such as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, but they never achieved the size or strength of their European counterparts.
On September 6, 1970, the world witnessed the beginnings of modern rebellious fighting in what is today called as Skyjack Sunday. Palestinian terrorists hijacked four airliners and took over 300 people on board as hostage. The hostages were later released, but the planes were blown up.


Worldwide
1973 oil crisis and 1979 energy crisis
The presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state and heads of government in a number of countries across the world, many being the first women to hold such positions, such as Soong Ching-ling continuing as the first Chairwoman of the People's Republic of China until 1972, Isabel Perón as the first woman President in Argentina in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979.
Americas
United States President Richard Nixon resigned as president on August 9, 1974, while facing charges for impeachment for the Watergate scandal.
Augusto Pinochet rose to power as ruler of Chile after overthrowing the country's Socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. Pinochet would remain the dictator of Chile until 1990.
Suriname was granted independence from the Netherlands on November 25, 1975.
In Guyana, the Rev. Jim Jones led several hundred people from his People's Temple in California to create and maintain a Utopian Marxist commune in the jungle named Jonestown. Amid allegations of corruption, mental, sexual, and physical abuse by Jones on his followers, and denying them the right to leave Jonestown, a Congressional committee and journalists visited Guyana to investigate in November 1978. The visitors (and several of those trying to leave Jonestown with them) were attacked and shot by Jones' guards at the airport while trying to depart Guyana together. Congressman Leo Ryan was among those who were shot to death. The demented Jones then ordered everyone in the commune to commit suicide. The people drank or were forced to drink, cyanide-laced fruit punch (Flavor Aid). A total of over 900 dead were found (approximately 1/3 of which were children), including Jones, who had shot himself.  Multiple units of the United States military were organized, mobilized, and sent to Guyana to recover over 900 deceased Jonestown residents.  After rejections from the Guyanese Government for the United States to bury the Jonestown dead in Guyana, US military personnel were then tasked to prepare and transport the human remains from Guyana for burial in the USA.  The US General Accounting Office later detailed an approximate cost of $4.4 million (in taxpayer dollars) for Jonestown's clean-up and recovery operation expenses.
Greenland was granted self-government (or "home rule") within the Kingdom of Denmark on November 29, 1979.
Europe
Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party rose to power in the United Kingdom in 1979, initiating a neoliberal economic policy of reducing government spending, weakening the power of trade unions, and promoting economic and trade liberalization.
Francisco Franco died after 39 years in power. Juan Carlos I was crowned king of Spain and called for the reintroduction of democracy. The dictatorship in Spain ended. The first general elections were held in 1977 and Adolfo Suárez became Prime minister of Spain after his Centrist Democratic Union won. The Socialist and Communist parties were legalized. The current Spanish Constitution was signed in 1978.
In 1972, Erich Honecker was chosen to lead East Germany, a role he would fill for the whole of the 1970s and 1980s. The mid-1970s were a time of extreme recession for East Germany, and as a result of the country's higher debts, consumer goods became more and more scarce. If East Germans had enough money to procure a television set, a telephone, or a Trabant automobile, they were placed on waiting lists which caused them to wait as much as a decade for the item in question.
The Soviet Union under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, having the largest armed forces and the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, pursued an agenda to lessen tensions with its rival superpower, the United States, for most of the seventies. That policy known as détente abruptly ended with the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan at the end of 1979. While known as a "period of stagnation" in Soviet historiography, the Seventies are largely considered as a sort of a golden age of the USSR in terms of stability and relative well-being. Nevertheless, hidden inflation continued to increase for the second straight decade, and production consistently fell short of demand in agriculture and consumer goods manufacturing. By the end of the 1970s, signs of social and economic stagnation were becoming very pronounced.
Enver Hoxha's rule in Albania was characterized in the 1970s by growing isolation, first from a very public schism with the Soviet Union the decade before, and then by a split in friendly relations with China in 1978. Albania normalized relations with Yugoslavia in 1971, and attempted trade agreements with other European nations, but was met with vocal disapproval by the United Kingdom and United States.
1978 would become known as the "Year of Three Popes". In August, Paul VI, who had ruled since 1963, died. His successor was Cardinal Albino Luciano, who took the name John Paul. But only 33 days later, he was found dead, and the Catholic Church had to elect another pope. On October 16, Karol Wojtyła, a Polish cardinal, was elected, becoming Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523.
Asia
On September 17, 1978, the Camp David Accords were signed between Israel and Egypt. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty. They also resulted in Sadat and Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
Major changes in the People's Republic of China. US president Richard Nixon visited the country in 1972 following visits by Henry Kissinger in 1971, restoring relations between the two countries, although formal diplomatic ties were not established until 1979. In 1976, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both died, leading to the end of the Cultural Revolution and beginning a new era. After the brief rule of Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader, and began to shift the country towards market economics and away from ideologically driven policies. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping visited the US.
In 1971, the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek, then-President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), were expelled from the United Nations and replaced by the People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, and in 1978 his son Chiang Ching-kuo became president, beginning a shift towards democratization in Taiwan.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein began to rise to power by helping to modernize the country. One major initiative was removing the Western monopoly on oil, which later during the high prices of 1973 oil crisis would help Hussein's ambitious plans. On July 16, 1979, he assumed the presidency cementing his rise to power. His presidency led to the breaking off of a Syrian-Iraqi unification, which had been sought under his predecessor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and would lead to the Iran–Iraq War starting in the 1980s.
Japan's economic growth surpassed the rest of the world in the 1970s, unseating the United States as the world's foremost industrial power.
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took over Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.
From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide that killed nearly two million.
On April 13, 1975, the Lebanese Civil War began.
In 1978, Zia ul Haq came to power
In 1979, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged in jail
Africa
Idi Amin, President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, after rising to power in a coup became infamous for his brutal dictatorship in Uganda. Amin's regime persecuted opposition to his rule and pursued a racist agenda of removing Asians from Uganda (particularly Indians who arrived in Uganda during British colonial rule). Amin initiated the Ugandan–Tanzanian War in 1978 in alliance with Libya based on an expansionist agenda to annex territory from Tanzania which resulted in Ugandan defeat and Amin's overthrow in 1979.
South African activist Steve Biko died in 1977.
Francisco Macías Nguema ruled Equatorial Guinea as a brutal dictator from 1969 until his overthrow and execution in 1979.
Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who had ruled the Central African Republic since 1965, proclaimed himself Emperor Bokasa I and renamed his impoverished country the Central African Empire in 1977. He was overthrown two years later and went into exile.