Ljubljana is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It has been the cultural, economic and administrative centre of independent Slovenia since 1991. During antiquity, a Roman city called. Ljubljana itself was first mentioned in the first half of the 12th century. Situated at the middle of a trade route between the northern Adriatic Sea and the Danube region, it was the historical capital of Carniola, one of the Slovene-inhabited parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, it was under Habsburg rule from the Middle Ages until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. After World War II, Ljubljana became the capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it retained this status until Slovenia became independent in 1991 and Ljubljana became the capital of the newly formed state. The origin of name of the city, Ljubljana, is unclear. In the Middle Ages, both the river and the town were known by the German name Laibach; this name was in official use as an endonym until 1918, it remains frequent as a German exonym, both in common speech and official use.
The city is alternatively named Lublana in many English language documents. The city is called Lublana in Silesian, Lubiana in Latin: Labacum and anciently Aemona. For most scholars, the problem has been in how to connect the German names; the origin from the Slavic ljub- "to love, like" was in 2007 supported as the most probable by the linguist Tijmen Pronk, a specialist in comparative Indo-European linguistics and Slovene dialectology, from the University of Leiden. He supported the thesis; the linguist Silvo Torkar, who specialises in Slovene personal and place names, argued at the same place for the thesis that the name Ljubljana derives from Ljubija, the original name of the Ljubljanica River flowing through it, itself derived from the Old Slavic male name Ljubovid, "the one of a lovely appearance". The name Laibach, he claimed, was a hybrid of German and Slovene and derived from the same personal name; the symbol of the city is the Ljubljana Dragon. It is depicted on the top of the tower of Ljubljana Castle in the Ljubljana coat of arms and on the Ljubljanica-crossing Dragon Bridge.
It symbolises power and greatness. There are several explanations on the origin of the Ljubljana Dragon. According to a Slavic myth, the slaying of a dragon releases the waters and ensures the fertility of the earth, it is thought that the myth is tied to the Ljubljana Marshes, the expansive marshy area that periodically threatens Ljubljana with flooding. According to the celebrated Greek legend, the Argonauts on their return home after having taken the Golden Fleece found a large lake surrounded by a marsh between the present-day towns of Vrhnika and Ljubljana, it was there. This monster has evolved into the dragon, it is more believable that the dragon was adopted from Saint George, the patron of the Ljubljana Castle chapel built in the 15th century. In the legend of Saint George, the dragon represents the old ancestral paganism overcome by Christianity. According to another explanation, related to the second, the dragon was at first only a decoration above the city coat of arms. In the Baroque, it became part of the coat of arms, in the 19th and the 20th century, it outstripped the tower and other elements in importance.
Around 2000 BC, the Ljubljana Marshes in the immediate vicinity of Ljubljana were settled by people living in pile dwellings. Prehistoric pile dwellings and the oldest wooden wheel in the world are among the most notable archeological findings from the marshland; these lake-dwelling people lived through hunting and primitive agriculture. To get around the marshes, they used dugout canoes made by cutting out the inside of tree trunks, their archaeological remains, nowadays in the Municipality of Ig, have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since June 2011, in the common nomination of six Alpine states. The area remained a transit point for numerous tribes and peoples, among them the Illyrians, followed by a mixed nation of the Celts and the Illyrians called the Iapydes, in the 3rd century BC a Celtic tribe, the Taurisci. Around 50 BC, the Romans built a military encampment that became a permanent settlement called Iulia Aemona; this entrenched fort was occupied by the Legio XV Apollinaris.
In 452, it was destroyed by the Huns under Attila's orders, by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards. Emona housed 5,000 -- 6,000 played an important role during numerous battles, its plastered brick houses, painted in different colours, were connected to a drainage system. In the 6th century, the ancestors of the Slovenes moved in. In the 9th century, they fell while experiencing frequent Magyar raids. Not much is known about the area during the settlement of Slavs in the period between the downfall of Emona and the Early Middle Ages; the parchment sheet Nomina defunctorum, most written in the second half of 1161, mentions the nobleman Rudolf of Tarcento, a lawyer of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, who had bestowed a canon with 20 farmsteads beside the castle of Ljubljana to the Patriarchate. According to the historian Peter Štih's deduction, this happened between 1112 and 1125, thus representing the earliest mention of Ljubljana. Owned by a number of possessors, until the first half of the 12th century, the territory south of the Sava where the town of
Greece the Hellenic Republic, self-identified and known as Hellas, is a country located in Southern and Southeast Europe, with a population of 11 million as of 2016. Athens is largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is located at the crossroads of Europe and Africa. Situated on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, Turkey to the northeast; the Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a large number of islands, of which 227 are inhabited. Eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres; the country consists of nine geographic regions: Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace and the Ionian Islands.
Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, Western drama and notably the Olympic Games. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as poleis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Philip of Macedon united most of the Greek mainland in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great conquering much of the ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, in which Greek language and culture were dominant. Rooted in the first century A. D. the Greek Orthodox Church helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World. Falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence.
Greece's rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The sovereign state of Greece is a unitary parliamentary republic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, a high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the tenth member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001, it is a member of numerous other international institutions, including the Council of Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Greece's unique cultural heritage, large tourism industry, prominent shipping sector and geostrategic importance classify it as a middle power, it is the largest economy in the Balkans. The names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages and cultures.
The Greek name of the country is Hellas or Ellada, its official name is the Hellenic Republic. In English, the country is called Greece, which comes from Latin Graecia and means'the land of the Greeks'; the earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, in the Greek province of Macedonia. All three stages of the stone age are represented for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries, as Greece lies on the route via which farming spread from the Near East to Europe. Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is considered the birthplace of Western civilisation, beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea at around 3200 BC, the Minoan civilization in Crete, the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland; these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek.
The Mycenaeans absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, during a time of regional upheaval known as the Bronze Age collapse. This ushered from which written records are absent. Though the unearthed Linear B texts are too fragmentary for the reconstruction of the political landscape and can't support the existence of a larger state contemporary Hittite and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a "Great King" based in mainland Greece; the end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to the year of the first Olympic Games. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea, So
Brazil the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the fifth most populous. Its capital is Brasília, its most populated city is São Paulo; the federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 kilometers, it borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile and covers 47.3% of the continent's land area. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats; this unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, is the subject of significant global interest and debate regarding deforestation and environmental protection.
Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro. In 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system; the ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, now called the National Congress. The country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup d'état. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, after which civilian governance resumed. Brazil's current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. Due to its rich culture and history, the country ranks thirteenth in the world by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Brazil is considered an advanced emerging economy. It has the ninth largest GDP in the world by nominal, eight and PPP measures, it is one of the world's major breadbaskets, being the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years. It is classified as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country, with the largest share of global wealth in Latin America. Brazil is a regional power and sometimes considered a great or a middle power in international affairs. On account of its international recognition and influence, the country is subsequently classified as an emerging power and a potential superpower by several analysts. Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Union of South American Nations, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, it is that the word "Brazil" comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast.
In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a deep red dye, it was valued by the European textile industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. Throughout the 16th century, massive amounts of brazilwood were harvested by indigenous peoples along the Brazilian coast, who sold the timber to European traders in return for assorted European consumer goods; the official Portuguese name of the land, in original Portuguese records, was the "Land of the Holy Cross", but European sailors and merchants called it the "Land of Brazil" because of the brazilwood trade. The popular appellation eclipsed and supplanted the official Portuguese name; some early sailors called it the "Land of Parrots". In the Guarani language, an official language of Paraguay, Brazil is called "Pindorama"; this was the name the indigenous population gave to the region, meaning "land of the palm trees".
Some of the earliest human remains found in the Americas, Luzia Woman, were found in the area of Pedro Leopoldo, Minas Gerais and provide evidence of human habitation going back at least 11,000 years. The earliest pottery found in the Western Hemisphere was excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil and radiocarbon dated to 8,000 years ago; the pottery was found near Santarém and provides evidence that the tropical forest region supported a complex prehistoric culture. The Marajoara culture flourished on Marajó in the Amazon delta from 800 CE to 1400 CE, developing sophisticated pottery, social stratification, large populations, mound building, complex social formations such as chiefdoms. Around the time of the Portuguese arrival, the territory of current day Brazil had an estimated indigenous population of 7 million people semi-nomadic who subsisted on hunting, fishing and migrant agriculture; the indigenous population of Brazil comprised several large indigenous ethnic groups. The Tupí people were subdivided into the Tupiniquins and Tupinambás, there were many subdivisions of the other gro
2028 Summer Olympics
The 2028 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad, known as LA 2028, is a forthcoming international multi-sport event, scheduled to take place from July 21 to August 6, 2028, in Los Angeles, United States. The process of bidding for the host city was scheduled to begin in 2019, with the winning bid due to be announced in 2021. However, following the withdrawal of a number of cities from the bidding process for both the 2022 Winter Olympics and the 2024 Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee resolved in July 2017 to jointly award both the 2024 and 2028 Games, thus on July 31, 2017, an agreement was reached wherein Los Angeles would bid for the 2028 Games with $1.8 billion of additional funding from the IOC, which cleared the way for Paris to be confirmed as host of the 2024 Games. Both cities were formally announced as winners of their respective Games at the 131st IOC Session in Lima, Peru, on September 13, 2017; the bid was praised by the IOC for using a record-breaking number of existing and temporary facilities and relying on corporate money.
This is the third time that Los Angeles will have hosted the Summer Olympics, making it the third city after London and Paris to host the Games three times and the first American city to do so. These will be the fifth Summer Olympic Games to be hosted in the United States, the previous four occasions being St. Louis 1904, Los Angeles 1932, Los Angeles 1984, Atlanta 1996; these will be the fourth Olympics to be held in the U. S. state of California, the ninth Olympics to be held in the U. S. overall. On September 16, 2015, the International Olympic Committee announced five candidate cities for the 2024 Games: Budapest, Los Angeles and Rome; the candidature process was announced at the same time. Budapest and Rome withdrew their bids, leaving only Los Angeles and Paris. A similar situation had occurred during the bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics when Krakow, Lviv and Stockholm withdrew, resulting in a two-way race between Beijing and Almaty, where Beijing was declared the winner. On April 3, 2017 at the IOC convention in Denmark, Olympic officials met with bid committees from both Los Angeles and Paris to discuss the possibility of naming two winners in the competition to host the 2024 Summer Games.
After these withdrawals, the IOC Executive Board met in Lausanne, Switzerland to discuss the 2024 and 2028 bid processes on June 9, 2017. The IOC formally proposed electing the 2024 and 2028 Olympic host cities at the same time in 2017, a proposal, approved by an Extraordinary IOC Session on July 11, 2017 in Lausanne; the IOC set up a process where the Los Angeles and Paris 2024 bid committees, the IOC held meetings in July 2017 to decide which city would host in 2024 and who would host in 2028. Following the decision to award the 2024 and 2028 Games Paris was understood to be the preferred host for the 2024 Games. On July 31, 2017, the IOC announced Los Angeles as the sole candidate for the 2028 Games, allowing Paris to be confirmed as the host city for the 2024 Games. On August 11, 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to approve the bid. On September 11, 2017, Los Angeles received formal approval to host the 2028 Games from the IOC's evaluation commission. On September 13, 2017, Los Angeles was formally awarded the 2028 Games following a unanimous vote by the IOC.
On October 16, 2017, Los Angeles 2028 received official support from the state of California. On August 29, 2018, Olympic officials arrived for a two-day visit that included meetings with local organizers and a tour of the city's newest venues. On October 9, 2018, a movement called NOlympics LA released poll results stating that 45% of respondents from Los Angeles County and 47% from across California oppose bringing the 2028 Summer Games to Los Angeles. However, a different poll suggests that more than 88% of Angelenos are in favor of the city's hosting the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Los Angeles was elected as host city for the 2028 Summer Olympics at the 131st IOC Session in Lima, Peru on September 13, 2017; the three American IOC members, Anita DeFrantz, Angela Ruggiero and Larry Probst, were not eligible to vote in this election under the rules of the Olympic Charter. This was the third time that Los Angeles had been selected as an Olympics host city without facing a competitive bidding process, following similar outcomes in 1932 and 1984.
Los Angeles submitted bids for the Summer Olympics in 1924, 1928, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1976 and 1980, but lost out to Paris, London, Melbourne and Moscow respectively. More Los Angeles applied to be the U. S. candidate city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, but on that occasion Chicago was chosen as U. S. candidate by the United States Olympic Committee. While most host cities have seven years to prepare for the Olympic Games, Los Angeles will see an additional four years, giving the city eleven years for preparations; the Los Angeles bid relied on a majority of existing venues. Banc of California Stadium, which opened in 2018 as the home of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles FC, will host football and several events in athletics. Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park, home of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers upon its completion in 2020, will host the main opening ceremony and archery. A
Macedonia national basketball team
The North Macedonia national basketball team represents North Macedonia in international basketball. The Macedonian national basketball team is run by the Basketball Federation of Macedonia, the governing body of basketball in North Macedonia, created in 1992 and joined FIBA in 1993. Prior to 1993, Macedonia was part of the Yugoslavia national basketball team. Before 1991, Macedonia was a Federal Republic of Federation SFRJ and part of the national basketball team. After qualifying for EuroBasket 1999, the basketball team was placed in Group A, along with FR Yugoslavia and Israel. First game, Macedonia came out firing showing solid competitive play against the French Team, however lost by a narrow margin of 67–71. Next up, was Group A favorites FR Yugoslavia, showing superior play with their post up offense, Macedonia lost 68–83. With the final game of the group, Macedonia played a even match, luck was not on their side, losing 82–84, being eliminated from the tournament. Though Macedonia lost all 3 games, the team showed heart and talent with their impressive play against France and Israel.
Due to their small margin of the losses Macedonia ended. After qualifying for EuroBasket 2009, the Macedonian national basketball team was placed in Group A, along with Greece and Israel. Macedonia began the tournament with a heavy 54–86 loss to rivals Greece, but rebounded with an 82–79 victory over Israel. Despite dropping their last game against Croatia, the Israel result was enough to secure second round qualification. In the second round, Macedonia was placed in Group E alongside France and Russia. Macedonia lost to France in the second round opener. Against Russia, Macedonia was narrowly defeated by a score of 69–71; this performance was not enough to secure a berth in the knockout round. Macedonia considers this as a historic success for the national team, since it was only the country's second appearance in EuroBasket and the team advanced past the first round. In the final tournament rankings, Macedonia ranked 9th place with a record of 2–4. Through the qualifying round, Macedonia qualified for EuroBasket 2011 and was in Group C along with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Finland in the preliminary round.
The team lost their first game to Montenegro in overtime but won the remaining four against Croatia, Greece and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Macedonia advanced to the second round. In the second round, Macedonia was in Group F with Russia, Greece and Finland. Having beaten Greece and Finland in the preliminary round, Macedonia went into the second round with a 2–0 record. After beating Georgia, Macedonia qualified for the knockout round; the team beat Slovenia, but lost to Russia by 2 points after Sergey Monya made a buzzer-beating shot to win the final game of the second round. Macedonia, finished second in Group F. For the first time in the team's history, it reached the knockout round where it defeated host country Lithuania by 2 points in the quarterfinals. Macedonia lost to Spain in the semifinals, they finished in fourth place. By finishing in 4th place at EuroBasket 2011, Macedonia qualified for the 2012 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, it has been drawn into Group D along with New Zealand. In the first game against Angola, Macedonia came out non-aggressive in the 1st half falling to a 13 pt deficit at halftime.
During most of the match, the top Macedonian players showed fatigue due to the grueling playoff matches they had played for their club teams. In addition, Macedonia came out with a strong 4th quarter losing by a margin of 4 points, with the final score being 84–88 Angola. Top scorers for Macedonia against Angola were Antic with 17, McCalebb had 21. On the next match day, the day after with less than 24 hours of rest, Macedonia came out a lot stronger in the 1st quarter with a strong lead that carried over the entire game. New Zealand could not recover, fell to Macedonia by a margin of 22 points. Leading scorers for the game were Gecevski added 16, Antic had 17, McCalebb with 23; the Macedonian players got much needed rest, before the quarterfinals would begin in two days on 6 July. The team, following the 68–64 victory by New Zealand over Angola, won Group D and its opponent in the quarterfinals was to be the Group C runner-up, Dominican Republic. Macedonia lost the game 86 -- 76. By participating at the 2012 FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament, Macedonia has qualified for EuroBasket 2013 in Slovenia.
In a disappointing campaign, the Macedonian national team didn't manage to repeat the success from the previous Eurobasket, having one victory in five matches in the Group B against Serbia, good enough only for the last place in the group stage and 21st overall. The first game of the Eurobasket against Montenegro was demoralizing, as the Montenegrins won 81–80 in a controversial fashion, after the referees didn't call interference on the basket during Čekovski's last second game winning attempt, despite the fact that one of the Montenegrin players has gotten his hand trapped in the net. Macedonia's best performers were once again McCalebb and Antić, with 17.6 and 13.8 points per game, respectively. After the tournament, several of the Macedonian veteran players, led by captain Antić, announced their retiremen
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s