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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

indefatigable (adj): Extremely persistent; untiring http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indefatigable

___________________________ 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