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Hello fellow nations

Upper tyja nepus wrote:

Я русский

I'm also Russian

30th May 1922 (100 years ago): The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

The Lincoln Memorial is a U.S. national memorial built to honor the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument, and is in the form of a neoclassical temple. The memorial's architect was Henry Bacon. The designer of the memorial interior's large central statue, Abraham Lincoln (1920), was Daniel Chester French; the Lincoln statue was carved by the Piccirilli brothers. The painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin, and the epitaph above the statue was written by Royal Cortissoz, it reads, "In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever." Dedicated in May 1922, it is one of several memorials built to honor an American president. It has always been a major tourist attraction and since the 1930s has sometimes been a symbolic center focused on race relations.

The first public memorial to United States President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., was a statue by Lot Flannery erected in front of the District of Columbia City Hall in 1868, three years after Lincoln's assassination. Demands for a fitting national memorial had been voiced since the time of Lincoln's death. In 1867, Congress passed the first of many bills incorporating a commission to erect a monument for the sixteenth president. An American sculptor, Clark Mills, was chosen to design the monument. His plans reflected the nationalistic spirit of the time, and called for a 21 m structure adorned with six equestrian and 31 pedestrian statues of colossal proportions, crowned by a 3.7 m statue of Abraham Lincoln. Subscriptions for the project were insufficient.

The matter lay dormant until the start of the 20th century, when, under the leadership of Senator Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois, six separate bills were introduced in Congress for the incorporation of a new memorial commission. The first five bills, proposed in the years 1901, 1902, and 1908, met with defeat because of opposition from Speaker Joe Cannon. The sixth bill (Senate Bill 9449), introduced on 13 December 1910, passed. The Lincoln Memorial Commission had its first meeting the following year and United States President William H. Taft was chosen as the commission's president. Progress continued at a steady pace and by 1913 Congress had approved of the commission's choice of design and location.

There were questions regarding the commission's plan. Many thought that architect Henry Bacon's Greek temple design was far too ostentatious for a man of Lincoln's humble character. Instead, they proposed a simple log cabin shrine. The site too did not go unopposed. The recently reclaimed land in West Potomac Park was seen by many to be either too swampy or too inaccessible. Other sites, such as Union Station, were put forth. The Commission stood firm in its recommendation, feeling that the Potomac Park location, situated on the Washington Monument–Capitol axis, overlooking the Potomac River and surrounded by open land, was ideal. Furthermore, the Potomac Park site had already been designated in the McMillan Plan of 1901 to be the location of a future monument comparable to that of the Washington Monument.

With Congressional approval and a $300,000 allocation, the project got underway. On 12 February 1914, contractor M. F. Comer of Toledo, Ohio; resident member of the memorial's commission, former Senator Joseph C. S. Blackburn of Kentucky; and the memorial's designer, Henry Bacon conducted a groundbreaking ceremony by turning over a few spadefuls of earth. The following month is when actual construction began. Work progressed steadily according to schedule. Some changes were made to the plan. The statue of Lincoln, originally designed to be 3.0 m tall, was enlarged to 5.8 m to prevent it from being overwhelmed by the huge chamber. As late as 1920, the decision was made to substitute an open portal for the bronze and glass grille which was to have guarded the entrance. Despite these changes, the Memorial was finished on schedule. Commission president William H. Taft – who was then Chief Justice of the United States – dedicated the Memorial on 30 May 1922, and presented it to United States President Warren G. Harding, who accepted it on behalf of the American people. Lincoln's only surviving son, 78-year-old Robert Todd Lincoln, was in attendance. Prominent African Americans were invited to the event and discovered upon arrival they were assigned a segregated section guarded by U.S. Marines.

The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address. The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech delivered on 28 August 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Like other monuments on the National Mall – including the nearby Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, and World War II Memorial – the national memorial is administered by the National Park Service under its National Mall and Memorial Parks group. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 15 October 1966, and was ranked seventh on the American Institute of Architects' 2007 list of America's Favorite Architecture. The memorial is open to the public 24 hours a day, and more than 7 million people visit it annually.

Wow, this region has less than 350 nations.

LGBTQIA+ pride month is here i think we should do an inclusion project across our region maybe take it to the world assembly

Happy Pride Month, FNR!

I'm pleased to announce that My Nation has adopted a new flag for the duration of the month! The flag is a combination of the Canadian flag and the Pride flag, in support of the LGBTQ+ community. The flag also features a golden maple leaf in the middle, signifying that on June 8th, My Nation will be four years old!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be listening to some compositions by Steven Reineke, a favourite composer and conductor of mine who's a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

I have an new flag too
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3rd June 1839 (183 years ago): In Humen, China, Lin Zexu destroys 1.2 million kilograms of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War

The Anglo-Chinese War, also known as the Opium War or the First Opium War, was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the loss of private opium stocks after China's seizure of opium stocks at Canton to stop the banned opium trade, and threatening the death penalty for future offenders. The British government insisted on the principles of free trade, equal diplomatic recognition among nations, and backed the merchants' demands. The British navy defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons, and the British then imposed a treaty that granted territory to Britain and opened trade with China. Twentieth century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a Century of humiliation, and many historians considered it the beginning of modern Chinese history.

In the 18th century, the demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials.

In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalise and tax opium, appointed Viceroy Lin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely. Lin wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria, which she never saw, appealing to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade. Lin then resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. He arrived in Guangzhou at the end of January and organized a coastal defense. In March, British opium dealers were forced to hand over 2.37 million pounds of opium. On 3 June, Lin ordered the opium to be destroyed in public on Humen Beach to show the Government's determination to ban smoking. 500 workers laboured for 23 days to destroy it, mixing the opium with lime and salt and throwing it into the sea outside of Humen Town. Lin composed an elegy apologising to the gods of the sea for polluting their realm.

In compensation for the opium destroyed by Commissioner Lin, British traders demanded compensation from their home government. This put pressure on India from China as the overwhelming demand for opium was straining as the fixed supply simply no longer reached demands. However, British authorities believed that the Chinese were responsible for payment

All other supplies were confiscated and a blockade of foreign ships on the Pearl River was ordered. The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its superior naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire. In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties—which granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to British subjects in China, opened five treaty ports to British merchants, and ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Empire. The failure of the treaty to satisfy British goals of improved trade and diplomatic relations led to the Second Opium War (1856–60). The resulting social unrest was the background for the Taiping Rebellion, which further weakened the Qing regime.

4th June 1920 (102 years ago): Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris

On 11 November 1918, World War I ended for Austria-Hungary with a complete military defeat, even if at the time of the collapse, all forces were standing outside the borders of 1914. With the collapse of the army, Austria-Hungary also collapsed. The ethnic groups of the Kingdom of Hungary called for independent nation-states.

Upon the dissolution and break-up of Austria-Hungary, the Hungarian Democratic Republic and then the Hungarian Soviet Republic were briefly proclaimed in 1918 and 1919, respectively. The short-lived communist government of Béla Kun launched what was known as the "Red Terror", involving Hungary in an ill-fated war with Romania. In 1920, the country fell into a period of civil conflict, with Hungarian anti-communists and monarchists violently purging the nation of communists, leftist intellectuals, and others whom they felt threatened by, especially Jews. This period was known as the "White Terror". In 1920, after the pullout of the last of the Romanian occupation forces, the Kingdom of Hungary was restored. It existed as a country from 1920 to 1946 under the rule of Regent Miklós Horthy, who nominally represented the Hungarian monarchy. In reality there was no king, and attempts by King Charles IV to return to the throne shortly before his death were prevented by Horthy.

Hungary under Horthy was characterized by its conservative, nationalist and fiercely anti-communist character. The government was based on an unstable alliance of conservatives and right-wingers

The Treaty of Trianon (French: Traité de Trianon, Slovak: Trianonská mierová zmluva, Hungarian: Trianoni békeszerződés) was prepared at the Paris Peace Conference and was signed in the Grand Trianon château in Versailles on 4 June 1920. It formally ended World War I between most of the Allies of World War I and the Kingdom of Hungary. French diplomats played the major role in designing the treaty, with a mind to establishing a French-led coalition of the newly formed states. It regulated the status of the Kingdom of Hungary and defined its borders generally within the ceasefire lines established in November–December 1918 and left Hungary as a landlocked state that included 93,073 square kilometres, 28% of the 325,411 square kilometres that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). The truncated Kingdom had a population of 7.6 million, 36% compared to the pre-war kingdom's population of 20.9 million. In the last census before the Treaty of Trianon held in 1910, which recorded population by language and religion, but not by ethnicity, speakers of the Hungarian language included approximately 48% of the entire population of the Kingdom of Hungary. Though the areas that were allocated to neighbouring countries had a majority of non-Hungarians (based on the 1910 census: 54% Romanians in Transylvania, 58% Slovaks in Upper Hungary, 40% Serbo-Croatians in Vojvodina, 54% Ruthenians in Carpathian Ruthenia, 62% Croats in Croatia, 48% Italians in Fiume, 74% Germans in Őrvidék, 80% Slovenes in Muravidék), in them lived 3.3 million Hungarians – 31% – who were now in a minority status. The treaty limited Hungary's army to 35,000 officers and men, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy ceased to exist. These decisions and their consequences have been the cause of deep resentment in Hungary ever since.

The principal beneficiaries were the Kingdom of Romania, the Czechoslovak Republic, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and the First Austrian Republic. One of the main elements of the treaty was the doctrine of "self-determination of peoples", and it was an attempt to give the non-Hungarians their own national states. In addition, Hungary had to pay war reparations to its neighbours. The treaty was dictated by the Allies rather than negotiated, and the Hungarians had no option but to accept its terms. The Hungarian delegation signed the treaty under protest, and agitation for its revision began immediately.

Despite of the much-touted "people's self-determination" idea of the Allied Powers, after World War I only one plebiscite (later known as the Sopron plebiscite) was allowed concerning disputed borders on the former territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. It settled a small territorial dispute between the First Austrian Republic and the Kingdom of Hungary. During the Sopron-area plebiscite in 1921, the polling stations were supervised by British, French, and Italian army officers of the Allied powers. The 1918-1920 period however, was marked by multiple general assemblies of minorities in Austria-Hungary where their elected representatives would express the aims of their people, such as the National Assembly of Romanians of Transylvania and Hungary on 1st of December 1918 who decreed by unanimous vote "the unification of those Romanians and of all the territories inhabited by them with Romania", the National Assembly of Germans of Transylvania and Banat in 1919 who passed a declaration to support the decision to unite with the Kingdom of Romania, or the Slovak National Council's issue of the Martin Declaration in 1918, in effect declaring Slovakia's independence and presaging Slovakia's unification with the Czech lands as part of a new state.

Hungary's interwar politics were dominated by an obsession with the territorial losses suffered in this treaty, with the resentment continuing until the present. By the arbitrations of Germany and Italy, Hungary expanded its borders towards neighbouring countries before and during World War II. This started by the First Vienna Award, then was continued with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1939 (annexation of the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia and a small strip from eastern Slovakia), afterwards by the Second Vienna Award in 1940, and finally by the annexations of territories after the breakup of Yugoslavia. This territorial expansion was short-lived, since the post-war Hungarian boundaries in the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947 were nearly identical to those of 1920 (with three villages – Horvátjárfalu, Oroszvár, and Dunacsún – transferred to Czechoslovakia).

Upper tyja nepus wrote:

Я русский

Харош

Fryke wrote:

Having an actual flag? Lame :P

You tell em mate

Mtsk wrote:

Харош

ZAPOW