West Bengal is a state in eastern India. With Bangladesh, which lies on
its eastern border, the state forms the ethno-linguistic region of
Bengal. To its northeast lie the states of Assam and Sikkim and the
country Bhutan, and to its southwest, the state of Orissa. To the west
it borders the state of Jharkhand and Bihar, and to the northwest,
Nepal. The region that is now West Bengal was part of a number of
empires and kingdoms during the past two millennia. The British East
India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of
Plassey in 1757, and the city of Kolkata, then Calcutta, served for
many years as the capital of British India. A hotbed of the Indian
independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was
divided in 1947 into two separate entities, West Bengal—a state of
India, and East Pakistan belonging to the new nation of Pakistan.
Following India's independence in 1947, West Bengal's economic and
political systems were dominated for many decades by Marxism, Naxalite
movements and trade unionism. An agriculture-dependent state, West
Bengal occupies only 2.7% of the India's land area, though it supports
over 7.8% of Indian population, and is the most densely populated state
in India. West Bengal has been ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front for
three decades, making it the world's longest-running democratically
elected communist government. Since the late 1990s, the state has seen
a resurgence in its economy after decades of stagnation.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bengal>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1494:
Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the newly
discovered lands of the Americas and Africa between the two countries.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas>
1628:
The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document that set
out specific liberties of the subject, was granted the Royal Assent by
Charles I.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petition_of_Right>
1776:
Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee presented a resolution to the
Second Continental Congress, which called for the Thirteen Colonies to
declare independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Resolution>
1880:
War of the Pacific: Chilean forces captured Morro de Arica from Peru.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arica>
1981:
The Israeli Air Force attacked and disabled the Osirak nuclear reactor,
assuming it was producing plutonium to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera>
1982:
Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, opened to the
public.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceland>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
indefatigable (adj):
Extremely persistent; untiring
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indefatigable>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
--Paul Gauguin
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin>