Pakistan is a country located in South Asia that overlaps with the Greater Middle East. It has a thousand-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea in the south and borders Afghanistan and Iran to the west, India to the east and the People's Republic of China in the far northeast. The name Pakistan means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu and Persian and was coined in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never. Pakistan is the sixth-most populous country in the world and the second-most populous Muslim country. Pakistan was established as a modern state in 1947, but the region has a long history of settlement, including by the Indus Valley Civilization. The region was invaded by Afghans, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, and was incorporated into British Raj in the 19th century. Since independence, Pakistan has seen both instability, with the loss of East Pakistan, and significant military and economic growth. Pakistan has the seventh-largest armed forces in the world and is a declared nuclear weapons state.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1453: Constantinople fell to an Ottoman army led by Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople)
1660: English Restoration: The monarchy in England was restored under King Charles II on Oak Apple Day. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Restoration)
1919: Observations made by Arthur Eddington during a solar eclipse confirmed part of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stanley_Eddington)
1953: Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest)
1999: Olusegun Obasanjo took office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun_Obasanjo)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." -- G. K. Chesterton (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton)