Facts about Romania
Life expectancy of the total population of Romania is 71.35 years: Religions in Romania are: Official language of romania is Romanian, while Hungarian and German are also spoken there. Romanians consume 253,800 barrels of petroleum per day. Romania's Danube Delta, a World Heritage site, is the second largest delta in Europe. The Dacian fortresses of the Orastie Mountains date from the Late Iron Age. German craftsmen and merchants, known as the"Saxons of Transylvania", founded the medieval town of Sighisoara. Churches in Transylvanian villages were fortified because of repeated attacks on the region. Bram Stoker based his novel "Dracula" on Vlad Dracul, the fifteenth century Wallachian prince. Victor Babes (1854-1926) founded the Institute of Pathology and Bacteriology in Bucharest. Gheorghe Marinescu (1863-1938), the professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, was the first to see living nervous cells with a microscope. George Emil Palade, a pioneer of modern cell biology, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1974. Grigore Moisil (1906-1973), a professor of mathematical logic and computer science at the University of Bucharest, encouraged Romanian scientists to build a computer in 1957. In 1866 Karl of Hohenzollern, a German prince, was chosen as the Romanian King (Carol I). Ferdinand I became the King of Romania in 1914. Ferdinand's wife, Queen Marie, was a granddaughter the United Kingdom's Queen Victoria. In the Second Balkan War (1913) Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Romania and the Ottoman Empire fought against Bulgaria. In 1939 Bernat Hecht, the father of the UK politician Michael Howard, moved to Wales to escape persecution of Jews in Romania. Only half of Romania's Jewish population survived the Second World War. The end of the Second World War saw the formation of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova, formerly part of Romania. Romania was a member of COMECON, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (1949-91) and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. The "Warsaw Pact" (1955-1991) allowed Red Army bases in member states. (Warsaw Treaty Organisation member countries were Albania (until 1968), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic), East Germany (DDR), Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union). Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania intervened on behalf of Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion of that country in 1968. Josip Broz "Tito" of Yugoslavia (not a Warsaw Pact country) was also against the Soviet action. Following the invasion, Albania left the Warsaw Pact although it had not been an active member since the early 1960s. Romania lies on the Black Sea coast of southeastern Europe. The Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Alps divide the country into three physical and historical regions: Wallachia in the south, Moldavia in the northeast, and Transylvania in the country's center. The majority of the people are Romanian (89 percent), but the Hungarian minority, living in the Transylvanian basin, numbers some 1.7 million. Communists took power in 1947 and installed a Soviet-style government. Under President Nicolae Ceausescu, however, Romania steered its own course, refusing to participate in Warsaw Pact maneuvers and conducting half its trade with the West. Police arrested dissidents and monitored contacts with foreigners. A producer of grain and oil, Romania—so named because it was a colony of imperial Rome—is also a favored Black Sea vacation spot. But Romanian citizens enjoyed little of the bounty under communism. To help repay bank loans, petroleum and agricultural produce were exported during the 1980s, while imports were restricted, electricity was rationed, and shop shelves lay bare. With decline in production, basic commodities remained scarce and exports slowed. In 1989 government security police killed demonstrators in Timisoara and Bucharest, igniting a revolution. The ensuing execution of Ceausescu and his wife ended their reign of repression, deprivation, and ethnic discrimination. The governments that followed have been laboring under massive foreign debt. Significant levels of public and private corruption impede economic growth and undercut public trust in new democratic institutions. Romania joined NATO in 2004, and is planning to join the EU in 2007. These facts were posted on November 18,2006. |
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