Magnesite is native magnesium carbonate occurring in white compact or granular masses, and also in rhombohedral crystals. It has been used as an ore of metallic magnesium but the primary source of magnesium is sea water. Is a source of magnesia for industrial chemicals. Commonly found in veins and masses derived from the alteration of serpentine through the action of waters containing carbonic acid. Magnesite has the formulae MgCo3 and a relative hardness of 4. Research Magnesite
Austria (in German Oesterreich that is, Eastern Empire) is a republic (formed in 1918 following the overthrow of the last Hapsburg emperor) in central Europe - prior to 1918 Austria or Austria-Hungary as it was also known, was an extensive duplex monarchy covering most of central Europe, inhabited by several distinct nationalities, and consisting of two semi-independent countries, each with its own parliament and government, but with one common sovereign, army, and system of diplomacy, and also with a common parliament.
Austria has a total area of 83,850 km2. The climate is temperate; continental, cloudy with cold winters with frequent rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains; cool summers with occasional showers. The terrain is mostly mountains with the Alps in the west and south; mostly flat, with gentle slopes along the eastern and northern margins. Natural resources are iron ore, crude oil, timber, magnesite, aluminium, lead, coal, lignite, copper and hydropower. The religion is 85% Roman Catholic, 6% Protestant and 9% other. The language - historically a cause of great controversy - is, since the break-up of the Austria-Hungarian empire German.
In 791 Charlemagne drove the Avars from the territory between the Ens and the Raab, and united it to his empire under the name of the Eastern Mark (that is March or boundary land); and from the establishment by him of a margraviate in this new province the presentempire took its rise. On the invasion of Germany by the Hungarians it became subject to them from 900 until 955, when Otho I, by the victory of Augsburg, reunited a great part of this province to the German Empire, which by 1043 had extended its limits to the Leitha. The margraviate of Austria was hereditary in the family of the counts of Babenberg (Bamberg) from 982 until 1156, in which year the boundaries of Austria were extended so as to include the territory above the Ens, and the whole was created a duchy.
The territory was still further increased in 1192 by the gift of the duchy of Styria as a fief from the Emperor Henry VI, Vienna being by this time the capital. The male line of the house of Bamberg became extinct in 1246, and the Emperor Frederick II declared Austria and Styria a vacant fief, the hereditary property of the German emperors. In 1282 the Emperor Rudolph granted Austria, Styria, and Garinthia, to his two sons, Albert and Rudolph. The former became sole ruler (duke), and from then until the end of the Great War Austria was under the reigning house of Hapsburg. Albert, who was an energetic ruler, was elected emperor in 1298, but was assassinated in 1308. The first of his successors worthy of mention was Albert V, son-in-law of the Emperor Sigismund. He assisted Sigismund in the Hussite wars, and was elected after his death King of Hungary and of Bohemia, and German emperor in 1438. Ladislaus, his posthumous son, was the last of the Austrian line proper, and its possessions devolved upon the collateral Styrian line in 1457; since which time the house of Austria furnished an unbroken succession of German emperors.
In 1458 the Emperor Frederick III, a member of this house, had conferred upon the country the rank of an archduchy before he himself became ruler of all Austria. His son Maximilian I, by his marriage with Mary, the surviving daughter of Charles the Bold, united the Netherlands to the Austrian dominions. After the death of his father in 1493 Maximilian was made Emperor of Germany, and transferred to his son Philip the government of the Netherlands. He also added to his paternal inheritance Tyrol, with several other territories, particularly some belonging to Bavaria, and acquired for his family new claims to Hungary and Bohemia. The marriage of his son Philip to Joanna of Spain raised the house of Hapsburg to the throne of Spain. Philip, however, died in 1506, and the death of Maximilian in 1519 was followed by the union of Spain and Austria; his grandson (the eldest son of Philip), Charles I, king of Spain, being elected Emperor of Germany as Charles V. Charles thus became the greatest monarch in Europe, but in 1521 he ceded to his brother Ferdinand all his dominions in Germany.
Ferdinand I, by his marriage with Anna, the sister of Louis II, king of Hungary, acquired the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, with Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, the appendages of Bohemia. To oppose him the way-wode of Transylvania, John Zapolya, sought the help of the sultan, Soliman II, who appeared in 1529 at the gates of Vienna, but was compelled to retreat. In 1535 a treaty was made by which John von Zapolya was allowed to retain the royal title and half of Hungary, but after his death new disputes arose, and Ferdinand maintained the possession of Lower Hungary only by paying Soliman the sum of 30,000 ducats annually from 1562. In 1556 Ferdinand obtained the imperial crown, when his brother Charles laid by the sceptre for a cowl. He died in 1564, leaving his territories to be divided amongst his three sons.
Maximilian II, the eldest, succeeded his father as emperor, obtaining Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia; Ferdinand, the second son, received Tyrol and Hither Austria; and Charles, the youngest, obtained Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Gorz. Maximilian died in 1576, and was succeeded in the imperial throne by his eldest son Rudolph II, who had already been crowned King of Hungary in 1572, and King of Bohemia, in 1575. Rudolph's reign was distinguished by the war against Turkey and Transylvania; the persecutions of the Protestants, who were driven from his dominions; the cession of Hungary in 1608; and in 1611 of Bohemia and his hereditary estates in Austria to his brother Matthias. Matthias, who succeeded Maximilian on the imperial throne, concluded a peace with the Turks, but was disturbed by the Protestant Bohemians, who took up arms in defence of their religious rights, thus commencing the Thirty Years' War. After his death in 1619 the Bohemians refused to acknowledge his successor, Ferdinand II, until after the battle of Prague in 1620, when Bohemia had to submit, and was deprived of the right of choosing her king. Lutheranism was strictly forbidden in all the Austrian dominions.
Hungary, which revolted under Bethlem Gabor, prince of Transylvania, was, after a long struggle, subdued. During the reign of Ferdinand III (1637-1657), successor of Ferdinand IL Austria was continually the theatre of war;
Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635; and Alsace to France in 1648, when peace was restored in Germany by the Treaty of Westphalia.
The Emperor Leopold I, son and successor of Ferdinand III, was victorious through the talents of Eugene in two wars with Turkey; and Vienna was delivered by Sobieski and the Germans from the attacks of Kara Mustapha in 1683. In 1687 he united Hungary to Transylvania, and in 1699 restored to Hungary the country lying between the Danube and the Theiss. It was the chief aim of Leopold to secure to Charles, his second son, the inheritance of the Spanish monarchy, and in 1701, upon the victory of French diplomacy in the appointment of the grandson of Louis XIV, the war of the Spanish succession commenced. Leopold died in 1705, but Joseph I, his eldest son, continued the war. As he died without children in 1711, his brother Charles was elected emperor, but was obliged to accede in 1714 to the Peace of Utrecht, by which Austria received the Netherlands, Milan, Mantua, Naples, and Sardinia. In 1720 Sicily was given to Austria in exchange for Sardinia. This monarchy now embraced over 190,000 square miles; but its power was weakened by new wars with Spain and France. In the peace concluded at Vienna (1735 and 1738) Charles VI was forced to cedeNaples and Sicily to Spain and part of Milan to the King of Sardinia; and in 1739, by the Peace of Belgrade, he was obliged to transfer to the Porte Belgrade, Serbia, etc, partly in order to secure the succession to his daughter Maria Theresa by the Pragmatic Sanction. He died in 1740.
On the marriage of Maria Theresa with Stephen, duke of Lorraine (the dynasty henceforth being that of Hapsburg-Lorraine), and her accession to the Austrian throne, the empire was threatened with dismemberment. Frederick II of Prussia subdued Silesia; the Elector of Bavaria was crowned in Lintz and Prague, and in 1742 chosen emperor under the name of Charles VII; Hungary alone supported the heroic and beautiful queen. Charles, however, died in 1745, and the husband of Theresa was crowned Emperor of Germany as Francis I; but a treaty concluded in 1745 confirmed to Frederick the possession of Silesia, and by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, Austria was obliged to cede the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla to Philip, Infant of Spain, and several districts of Milan to Sardinia. To recover SilesiaMaria Theresa formed an alliance with France, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, and entered upon the Seven Years' War; but by the Peace of Hubertsberg, 1763, Silesia was recognized as Prussian territory.
On the death of Francis I in 1765 Joseph II, his eldest son, was appointed to assist his mother in the government and elected Emperor of Germany. The partition of Poland in 1772 gave Galicia and Lodomeria to Austria, which also obtained Bukowina from the Porte in 1777. At the death of the empress in 1780 Austria contained 235,000 square miles, with a pop. estimated at 24,000,000.
The liberal home administration of the empress was continued and extended by her successor, Joseph II, who did much to further the spread of religious tolerance, education, and the industrial arts. The Low Countries, however, revolted, and he was unsuccessful in the war of 1788 against the Porte. His death took place in 1790. He was succeeded by his eldest brother, Leopold II, under whom peace was restored in the Netherlands, and in Hungary, and also with the Porte. On the death of his sister and her husband Louis XVI of France he formed an alliance with Prussia, but died in 1792, before the French revolutionary war broke out.
His son, Francis II, succeeded, and was elected German emperor, by which time France had declared war against him as King of Hungary and Bohemia. In 1795, in the third division of Poland, West Galicia fell to Austria, and by the Peace of Campo-Formio in 1797 she received the largest part of the Venetian territory as compensation for her loss of Lombardy and the Netherlands. In 1799 Francis, in alliance with Russia, renewed the war with France until 1801, when the Peace of Luneville was concluded. In 1804 Francis declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria as Francis I, and united all his states under the name of the Empire of Austria, immediately taking up arms once more with his alliesRussia and Great Britain against France. The war of 1805 was terminated by the Peace of Pressburg on December the 26th, by which Francis had to cede to France the remaining provinces of Italy, as well as to give up portions of territory to Bavaria, Wtirtemberg, and Baden, receiving in return Salzburg and Berchtesgaden. After the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine on July the 12th 1806 Francis was forced to resign his dignity as Emperor of Germany, which had been in his family more than 500 years. A new war with France in 1809 cost the monarchy 42,380 square miles of territory and 3,500,000 subjects. Napoleon married Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor, and in 1812 concluded an alliance with him against Russia. But in 1813 Francis again declared war against France, and formed an alliance with Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against his son-in-law. By the Congress of Vienna (1815) Austria gained Lombardy and Venetia, and recovered, together with Dalmatia, the hereditary territories which it had been obliged to cede.
In the troubled period following the French revolution of 1830 insurrections took place in Modena, Parma, and the Papal States (1831-1832), but were suppressed without much difficulty; and though professedly neutral during the Polish insurrections Austria clearly showed herself on the side of Russia, with whom her relations became more intimate as those between Great Britain and France grew more cordial. The death of Francis I in 1835 and accession of his son Ferdinand I made little change in the Austrian system of government, and much discontent was the consequence. In 1846 the failure of the Polish insurrection led to the incorporation of Cracow with Austria. In Italy the declarations of Pio Nono in favour of reform increased the difficulties of Austria, and in Hungary the opposition under Kossuth and others assumed the form of a great constitutional movement. In 1848, when the expulsion of Louis Philippe shook all Europe, Metternich found it impossible any longer to guide the helm of the state, and the government was compelled to admit a free press and the right of citizens to arms. Apart from the popular attitude in Italy and in Hungary, where the diet declared itself permanent under the presidency of Kossufch, the insurrection made equal progress in Vienna itself, and the royal family, no longer in safety, removed to Innsbruck. After various ministerial changes the emperor abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph; more vigorous measures were adopted; and Austria, aided by Russia, reduced Hungary to submission.
The year 1855 is memorable for the Concordat with the pope, which put the educational and ecclesiastical affairs of the empire entirely into the hands of the Papal see. In 1859 the hostile intentions of France and Sardinia against the possessions of Austria in Italy became so evident that she declared war by sending an army across the Ticino; but after disastrous defeats at Magenta and Solferino she was compelled to cedeMilan and the north-west portion of Lombardy to Sardinia. In 1864 she joined with the German states in the war against Denmark, but a dispute about Schleswig-Holstein involved her in a war with her allies (1866), while at the same time Italy renewed her attempts for the recovery of Venice. The Italians were defeated at Custozza and driven back across the Mincio; but the Prussians, victorious at Koniggratz (or Sadowa), threatened Vienna. Peace was concluded with Prussia on August the 23rd and with Italy on October the 8th, the result of the war being the cession of Venetia through France to Italy and the withdrawal of Austria from all interference in the affairs of Germany.
After 1866 Austria was occupied chiefly with the internal affairs of the empire. Hungarian demands for self-government were finally agreed to, and the Empire of Austria divided into the two parts: the Cisleithan and the Transleithan. This settlement was consummated by the coronation of the Emperor FrancisJoseph I, at Budapest, as King of Hungary, on the 8th of June, 1867. In the same year the Concordat of 1855 came up for discussion, and measures were passed for the re-establishment of civil marriage, the emancipation of schools from the domination of the church, and the placing of different creeds on a footing of equality. The fact of the Austro-Hungarian dominions comprising so many different nationalities had always given the central government much trouble, both in regard to internal and to external affairs. In regard to the ' Eastern Question,' for instance, the action of Austria had been hampered by the sympathies shown by the Magyars for their blood relations, the Turks, while the Slavs naturally were more favourable to Russia. During the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877-78 Austria remained neutral; but at its close, in the middle of 1878, it was decided, at the Congress of Berlin, that the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina should in future be administered by Austria-Hungary instead of Turkey.
Conflicts within the empire over the Balkan states led to the Great War, at the end of which many of the states declared their independence, and Austria became a smaller, independent republic itself. However, internal political divisions led to a civil war in 1934 in which the right-wing parties were victorious. Nazi supporters of the German leader, Adolf Hitler, made uprisings which were unsuccessful, and Hitler annexed Austria as part of the German Reich - though not without resistance from armed groups within Austria opposed to the Nazis. In 1945 with the end of the Second World War Austria became once more independent state. Research Austria
The Hellenic Republic of Greece is a country and island group in south east Europe. It has a total area of 131,940 km2. The climate is temperate with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. The terrain is comprised mostly of mountains with ranges extending into the sea as peninsulas or chains of islands. Natural resources are bauxite, lignite, magnesite, crude oil, marble. The religion is 98% Greek Orthodox, 1.3% Muslim, 0.7% other. The official language is Greek with English and French widely understood. The modern state of Greece dates back to 1822, when following a war of independence it declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire and a monachy was established. The monachy was ousted in 1924 before being restored in 1935, only to be replaced in 1974 by a multi-party democratic republic.
Greece is a CDP in Monroe County, New York, USA.
Greece is a town in Monroe County, New York, USA. Research Greece
The Republic of Kenya is a country in east Africa. It has a total area of 582,650 km2. The climate varies from being tropical along the coast to arid in the interior. The terrain is comprised of low plains that rise to central highlands bisected by the Great Rift Valley with a fertileplateau in the west Natural resources are gold, limestone, diatomite, salt barytes, magnesite, feldspar, sapphires, fluorspar, garnets, wildlife The religion is 38% Protestant, 28% Roman Catholic, 26% indigenous beliefs, 6% Muslim The official language is Swahili with English and numerous indigenous languages also spoken. The area of Kenya was originally inhabited by African tribes before being colonised by Arabs during the 8th century and later conquered by the Portuguese in the 15th century and taken by the British in 1895, becoming part of British East Africa before becoming a British colony in 1920 and independent in 1963 following an uprising and a republic in 1964. Research Kenya
The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is a country in east Asia. It has a total area of 120,540 km2. The climate is temperate with the rainfall concentrated in the summer. The terrain is mostly hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys with coastal plains wide in the west, and discontinuous in the east. Natural resources are coal, lead, tungsten, zinc, graphite, magnesite, iron ore, copper, gold, pyrites, salt, fluorspar, hydropower, The religion is Ch'ondogyo and Buddhism. The language is Korean.
Korea has long been divided by civil war, and following the Second World War was divided at the 38th parallel into Communist ruled North Korea and American-led South Korea, shortly afterwards an American led United Nations invasion of North Korea from South Korea ensued, but failed and the country remains divided. Research North Korea
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Agma
