This decade (group of ten years) is sometimes called the "Greed decade" in English speaking countries. Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, this is when the word "yuppie" was used to describe "young urban professionals" – young adults who lived in cities and started to get good jobs. This was also the rise of a more conservative period in these countries – Ronald Reagan was president for most of this time in the United States, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister of Canada.
This decade also saw the Soviet Union fight a war that seemed endless in Afghanistan, civil war in Ethiopia, and the fall of the Berlin Wall which started the end of the Cold War and of Communism in Eastern Europe.
The "eighties" are also well known for their extreme fashions, such as "big hair", New Wave, punk rock, funk, or preppies. Rap music first started to get big in the 80s, and often went with breakdancing in what is now called the "old school" days. Many developments were also made in computer technology during these years, and video games became popular.
In sports, Italy and Argentina won the FIFA World Cup. The Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics won the World Series. The Pittsburgh Steelers, Oakland Raiders, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins, Los Angeles Raiders, Chicago Bears and New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Finally, the Los Angeles Lakers dominated the NBA, with only the Houston Rockets winning a title.
1990s
The 1990s was the decade that started on January 1, 1990, and ended on December 31, 1999.
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North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia (, Low Franconian: "Noordrien-Wesfale", Low German: "Noordrhien-Westfalen", Kölsch: "Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale") is the federal state (Bundesland) with the highest population in Germany. It is in the western part of Germany and has 18,033,000 inhabitants. The capital is Düsseldorf, while the city with the most inhabitants is Cologne.
North Rhine-Westphalia is divided into five government regions:
Computer program
A computer program is a list of instructions that tell a computer what to do. Everything a computer does is done by using a computer program. Programs stored in the memory of a computer ("internal programming") let the computer do one thing after another, even with breaks in between. John von Neumann, a mathematician born in Hungary, came up with this idea in the late 1940s. The first digital computer designed with internal programming capacity was the EDVAC (which means Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), built in 1949.
Some examples of computer programs:
A computer program is stored as a file on the computer's hard drive. When the user runs the program, the file is read by the computer, and the processor reads the data in the file as a list of instructions. Then the computer does what the computer program tells it to do.
A computer program is written by a programmer. It is very difficult to write in the ones and zeroes of machine code, which is what the computer can read, so computer programmers write in a programming language, such as BASIC, C, or Java. Once it is written, the programmer uses a compiler to turn it into a language that the computer can understand.
There are also bad programs, called malware, written by people who want to do bad things to a computer. Some are spyware, trying to steal information from the computer. Some try to damage the data stored on the hard drive. Some others send users to web sites that offer to sell them things. Some are computer viruses or ransomware.
Data
The word data means "known facts". Data especially refers to numbers, but can mean words, sounds, and images. Metadata is data about data. It is used to find data.
Originally, data is the plural of the Latin word "datum," from "dare," meaning "give". "Datum" is rarely used in English. So data often gets used as if it were a singular word. Some people like to say "data are", not "data is".
2000s (decade)
The 2000s, also known as the noughties was the decade that started on January 1, 2000, and ended on December 31, 2009.
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ) is a city in Germany. It is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg and of the Administrative District of Stuttgart ("Regierungsbezirk"). Stuttgart is on the river Neckar. In December 2011, 613,392 people live there.
Stuttgart is currently the sixth largest German city and Stuttgart Region is the nation's third largest region. The city is divided into 23 city districts.
Stuttgart is the home of two car manufacturers: Mercedes Benz and Porsche. Porsche is in Zuffenhausen (North) and Mercedes in Untertürkheim (Southeast).
Stuttgart has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification).
Stuttgart has 613,392 people within city limits. It is the 6th largest city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt am Main. According to a 2005 estimate, the Stuttgart urban area had between 1,238,000 and 1,250,000 people. Its metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million (2008).
The University of Stuttgart is one of the city's higher education institutions.
Schwerin
Schwerin (, , ; Mecklenburgian Low German: "Swerin"; Latin: "Suerina", "Suerinum") is the capital city of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It has a population of 97,000. It is the second biggest city (behind Rostock) in the state. It is the smallest capital of a German state.
Canton of Schwyz
Schwyz was one of the first cantons of Swiss canton ("Urkanton").
The capital is Schwyz and the main language is German (91%). It has an area of 908 km² and 130200 inhabitants. Schwyz is near to Lucerne.
The Canton of Schwyz is divided into six districts and 30 municipalities, although the districts Einsiedeln, Küssnacht and Gersau simply contain the municipality of the same name.
Russia
Russia (), officially called the Russian Federation () is a country that is in Eastern Europe and in North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by land area. About 146.7 million people live in Russia according to the 2019 census. The capital city of Russia is Moscow, and the official language is Russian.
Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has borders over water with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the United States by the Bering Strait.
Russia is a very large and diverse country. From 1922 to 1991, it used to be the main part of the Soviet Union. It was a country based on Communism, but today its government is a federal semi-presidential republic. It has elements of democracy. The President is chosen by direct election, but challenging candidates do not have access to the mass media, and so have almost no chance of winning. Its current President is Vladimir Putin. The President rules the country, and the Russian Parliament plays a secondary role.
Russia has 85 regional parliaments, and the presidents of these areas are very rarely ever displaced in an election. As a typical example, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was President of the Republic of Kalmykia in the Russian Federation from 1993 to 2010. Such a long tenure is not unusual in Russia, and suggests that the electoral system is heavily biased to keep incumbents in power.
At , Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the world's eighth most populous nation with 143 million people as of 2012. Russia produces a lot of energy made from oil and natural gas.