Facts about Romania

Romania is a semi-presidential democratic republic where executive functions are shared between the president and the prime minister.

The territory of Romania has been inhabited by different groups of people since prehistory.

Football (soccer) is popular, the most internationally known player being Gheorghe Hagi, who played for Steaua Bucure?ti (Romania), Real Madrid, FC Barcelona (Spain) and Galatasaray (Turkey), among others.

Romania was proclaimed a republic, and remained under direct military and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s.

Historically, Greater Romania—Romвnia Mare—represented one of the ideals of Romanian nationalism, and remains to many as a "paradise lost."

In 1916 Romania entered World War I on the Allies (Entente) of World War I side, after the Entente countries agreed to recognize Romanian rights over Transylvania, which at that time was part of Austria-Hungary.

Romania's geographical diversity has led to an accompanying diversity of flora and fauna.

The Romanian Armed Forces (For?ele Armate Romвne or Armata Romвn?) consists of three branches: Land, naval, and air forces.

In 1986, the Romanian soccer club Steaua Bucure?ti became the first Eastern European club ever to win the prestigious European Champions Cup title.

Romania achieved at that time its greatest territorial extent, managing to unite all the historic Romanian lands (which were also inhabited by a majority of Romanians).

The union of the regions of Transylvania, Maramure?, Cri?ana and Banat with the Old Kingdom of Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon.

Located in the southeast, it is the industrial and commercial center of Romania.

To exploit the nationalistic connotation of the term, a Greater Romania nationalist political party uses it as its name.

The Socialist parties that emerged from the National Salvation Front (FSN) governed Romania from 1990 until 1996 through several coalitions and governments with Ion Iliescu as head of state.

Romanians have had numerous tales and poems about love, faith, kings, princesses, and witches.

Customs related to certain times of year are the colinde - Romanian Christmas carols, sorcova on New Year's Eve, or the M?r?i?or custom on the March 1 marking the spring.

Romania has reached the Davis Cup finals three times.

Basarab I founded the Romanian principality of Wallachia during the thirteenth century, and Drago? founded Moldavia during the fourteenth century.

The nation is also known for the despot Nicolae Ceau?escu who developed a cult of personality, deepened the country's communist police state, and imposed policies that impoverished Romanians and exhausted the economy.

On March 26, 1881, the principality was raised to a monarchy and Prince Carol became King Carol I of Romania (1839-1914).

The subsequent disintegration of the FSN produced several political parties including the Democratic Party (PD), the Romanian Democrat Social Party (PDSR, later Social Democratic Party, PSD), and the ApR (Alliance for Romania).

Romania's fascist government during the Second World War was responsible for the deportations to concentration camps and executions of between 280,000 to 380,000 Jews.

By the end of the war, the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires had disintegrated; governing bodies created by the Romanians of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina chose union with the Kingdom of Romania, resulting in Greater Romania.

Romanian is spoken as a first language by 91 percent of the population, with Hungarian and Romani being the most important minority languages, spoken by 6.7 percent and 1.1 percent respectively).

The Romanian Orthodox Church did not oppose the regime, and priests helped the administration.

Romanian Orthodoxy descends from the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity of 1054, and has a more mystical slant than Roman Catholicism.

Romania has a significant Turkish Muslim minority of 67,500 people in Dobrudja.

Romania is the world's second largest plum producer and almost the entire plum production becomes the famous ?uic? (a plum brandy).

The official language is Romanian, an Eastern Romance language, which has Latin roots that date back to the Roman occupation, and contains words from Greek, Slavic languages, and Turkish.

From 1918 to 1938, Romania was a liberal constitutional monarchy facing the rise of the nationalistic, anti-semitic parties, particularly Iron Guard, which took about 15 percent of the votes in the general elections of 1937.

In 1918, at the end of World War I, Transylvania and Bessarabia united with the Romanian Old Kingdom.

The debate was politically charged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because of territorial conflicts concerning Transylvania between Romania and Hungary.

The first half of the twentieth century is regarded as the golden age of Romanian culture.

About 88 percent of all Romanian citizens have a color television set in their household and 90 percent have a refrigerator.

In 2006, President Traian B?sescu approved a new law under which religious denominations can only receive official registration if they have at least 20,000 members, or about 0.1 percent of Romania's total population.

Romania has a large, upper-middle-income economy, the nineteenth largest in Europe by total nominal GDP and the fifteenth largest based on purchasing power parity.

Romanians consider their doina (a sad song either about one's home or about love, composed like an epic ballad) unique in the world.

The union of Bucovina and Bessarabia with Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles.

The 2002 census recorded that Romania had a population of 21,680,974 which was expected to gently decline as a result of sub-replacement fertility rates.

During the period of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary (1867-1918), Romanians in Transylvania experienced a period of severe oppression under the Magyarization policies of the Hungarian government.

The first book printed in the Romanian language was a catechism of Deacon Coresi in 1559.

The culture of Romania is rich and varied.

Elie Wiesel, a Romania-born American novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Via an 1866 coup d'etat, also known as the Abominable Revolution, Cuza was exiled and replaced by Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who became known as Prince Carol I of the Principality of Romania.

To achieve this goal, he imposed policies that impoverished Romanians and exhausted the Romanian economy.

Romania also acquired the Southern Dobruja territory called "The Quadrilateral" from Bulgaria as a result of its participation in the Second Balkan War in 1913.

Alongside the county structure, Romania is divided into eight development regions, which correspond to divisions in the European Union, and are used for co-ordinating regional development projects and for statistical purposes.

After a series of privatizations and reforms, government intervention in the Romanian economy is somewhat lower than in other European economies.

The Carpathian Mountains dominate the centre of Romania, with 14 of its peaks reaching above the altitude of 6500 feet (2000 metres).

Before the nineteenth century, Romanian documents use interchangeably two spelling forms: Romвn and Rumвn.

Romania is a secular state with no state religion.

Romania's terrain is distributed roughly equally between mountainous, hilly and lowland territories.

Nineteenth-century Hungarian historians largely supported the migration theory, which maintained that Transylvania was not inhabited by Romanians at the time of the Magyar arrival in central Europe during the tenth century.

During this period, cinematography started to develop in Romania and the first successful short films were made based on Ion Luca Caragiale plays.

The average gross wage per month in Romania is 1387 lei (as of April 2007), equating to Ђ443.13 (US$600.17) based on international exchange rates and $827.57 based on purchasing power parity.

The exact region where the Romanian language and people formed is not only a scientific puzzle, but also a heated political controversy.

From 1938 to 1944, Romania was a dictatorship under King Carol II, who abolished the parliamentary regime and ruled with his camarilla.

In 1940, Romania lost territory in both east and west: In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina.

The modern state of Romania was formed by the merging of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859.

Another humanist was Dimitrie Cantemir, who wrote histories of Romania and Moldavia.

Romania has a high literacy rate—97.3 percent of the total population age 15 and over can read and write.

On April 19th, 2007, the Romanian Parliament suspended President Traian Basescu on charges of unconstitutional conduct.

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 resulted in more than 1000 deaths in Timi?oara and Bucharest, and brought about the fall of Ceau?escu and the end of the communist regime in Romania.

Ethnic Romanians make up 89.5 percent of the population, Hungarians 6.6 percent, and Roma about 2 percent.

Maria T?nase is considered to be one of the greatest Romanian folk singers, and Grigore Le?e and Taraful Haiducilor are two of the most famous musicians.

During this period, Romania's resources were drained by mixed Soviet-Romanian companies, in addition to excessive war reparations paid to the USSR.

The Romanian military campaign ended in disaster as the Central Powers conquered most of the country and captured or killed most of its army within four months.

Romanians are hospitable and generous—guests are always fed.

The entire Bible was not published in Romanian until monks at the monastery of Snagov, near Bucharest, translated and printed "Biblia de la Bucure?ti ("The Bucharest Bible") in 1688.

The dominant religious body is the Romanian Orthodox Church, whose members make up 86.7 percent of the population according to the 2002 census.

Most Romanian historians support the theory of Daco-Romanian continuity, and maintain that Transylvania was continuously inhabited by the ancestors of Romanians.

Romanian cuisine is diverse, greatly influenced by the cuisines of Germans, Serbians, and Hungarians.

During his reign the three principalities largely inhabited by Romanians were for the first time united under a single rule.

The Getae or Dacians, a Thracian tribe inhabited the territory of today's Romania since at least 513 B.C.E.

Romania was awarded the territory between Dniester and the Southern Bug by Germany to administer it under the name Transnistria.

After achieving national unity in 1918, Romanian literature entered what can be called a golden age, characterized by the development of the Romanian novel.

Romania is the world's ninth largest wine producer.

In 1999 Romania's economy contracted for a third straight year, requiring a $547-million loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Unemployment in Romania was at 4.5 percent in April 2007 which is low compared to other middle-sized or large European countries such as Poland, France, Germany and Spain.

The earliest surviving document in Romanian is a letter written in 1521, sent by Neac?u of Campulung to the jude (judge and mayor) of Bra?ov, Hans Benkner, warning of an Ottoman attack.

Romania entered World War II under the command of the German Wehrmacht in June 1941, declaring war to the Soviet Union in order to recover Bessarabia and northern Bukovina.

In August 1944, a coup led by King Mihai deposed the Antonescu dictatorship and put Romania's armies under Red Army command.

Education in Romania is free and compulsory from age six to 16.

Romania is poorer than other European Union nations, but it has a rich and varied culture.

During Ottoman rule, through Greek merchants of Istanbul, Greek culture influenced Romanian literature.

The longest bridge in Europe was constructed by Anghel Saligny linking Dobruja with the rest of Romania.

Ilie N?stase, the tennis player, is another internationally known Romanian sports star.

Many non-Hindus have adopted elements of Hindu belief and practice while identifying with a different religion, or with no organized religion at all.

The Romanian judicial system is influenced by the French model, is based on civil law, and is inquisitorial in nature.

Romania is a country in Southeastern Europe bordering Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.

Romanian painters who rose to prominence in the nineteenth century after studying in Western Europe, include Nicolae Grigorescu, known for landscapes and rural life, and portrait painter Theodor Aman.

After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989-19 91, Romania was left with an obsolete industrial base and a pattern of industrial capacity unsuited to its needs.

Romania revalued its currency in 2005, making 10,000 "old" lei equal to one "new" leu.

Other important religions include Roman Catholicism (4.7 percent), Protestantism (3.7 percent), Pentecostal denominations (1.5 percent) and the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church (0.9 percent).

Post-Cold War Romania developed closer ties with Western Europe, eventually joining NATO in 2004.

Dosoftei, a Moldavian scholar, published in Poland in 1673, the first Romanian metrical psalter, producing the earliest known poetry written in Romanian.

The earliest translations of books into Romanian were from Old Church Slavonic religious texts of the fifteenth century.

Romania has a stretch of coast along the Black Sea, and the eastern and southern Carpathian Mountains run through its center.

The name "Romania," first used in 1859, reflects the influence of ancient Rome on the nation's language and culture.

Many Romanians take pride in being the most eastern Romance people, completely surrounded by non-Latin peoples ("a Latin island in a Slavic sea").

During the period of Soviet rule, Romania's resources were drained, and there were hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a large range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens.

Close ties with the Arab countries (and the Palestinian Liberation Organization) allowed Romania to play a key role in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-PLO peace processes.

The first book printed in Romania was a Slavonic religious book in 1508.

Mihai Eminescu wrote lyric poetry rooted in Romanian traditions, but was also influenced by German philosophy and Hindu traditions.

The belief in vampires popularized in the nineteenth century story of Dracula, is a part of Romania folk culture.

Vasile Alecsandri (1821 – 1890), a prolific writer, contributed poetry, prose, several plays, and collections of Romanian folklore.

In 2002, the oldest modern human (Homo sapiens) remains in Europe, were discovered in a cave near Anina, Romania.