From the 14th to the 16th centuries Brunei Darussalam was the seat of a powerful sultanate extending over Sabah, Sarawak and the southern Philippines. Thus, the current Sultan represents one of the oldest continuously ruling dynasties in the world. By the 19th century, the Brunei Darussalam Empire had been whittled away by wars, piracy and the colonial expansion of European powers.
In 1847, the sultan ended a treaty with Great Britain and in 1888 Brunei Darussalam officially became a British protectorate. In 1906, the Residential System was established in Brunei Darussalam. A British Resident was nominated as a representative of the British government to advise the sultan in all matters except Malay customs, traditions and Islamic religion.
The 1959 Agreement established a written constitution which gave Brunei Darussalam internal self-government. In 1971, the agreement was amended and revised to assert full internal independence except defence and external affairs.
In June 5, 1966 His Highness Sultan Haji Sir Muda Omar Ali Saifuddien abdicated in favour of his son Pengiran Muda Mahkota Hassanal Bolkiah. On January 1, 1984 Brunei Darussalam resumed full independence and the Sultan took office as Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Home Affairs Minister, presiding over a cabinet of six. In October 1986, the cabinet was expanded to 11 members, with His Majesty relinquishing the portfolios of Finance and Home Affairs and taking over the Defence portfolio which his late father had held since 1984. In 1988 another reshuffle brought about the elevation of the deputy minister to a full minister and the creation of the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources designed to boost the country's development.
In spite of the sizable non-Muslim population (about 1/3 of the population) and criticism by the international community, the Sultan still announced Brunei's adoption of Sharia law in 2013 to fully enforce on the Muslim majority and partially enforce on non-Muslims. It was expected to take full effect in 2016 after 3 phases, and had begun partial enforcement in its first phase in 2014. It is the first country in East and Southeast Asia to practice Sharia law.
Brunei is divided into four districts ("daerahs") and 38 subdistricts ("mukims").
The daerah of Temburong is physically separated from the rest of Brunei by the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
Over 90% of Brunei's total population lives in 15 of the 38 mukims.
Officially, there are no places in Brunei that have "city" status. Some of the important places are:
Given that Brunei is an oil-rich country, Brunei gets most of its income from selling natural resources. .
Brunei uses the Brunei Ringgit to trade. However, the Singapore dollar can be used here as both currencies are of the same value.
Taka
The Taka is the currency of Bangladesh. The most commonly used symbol for the Taka is Tk and ৳. This is used on receipts while purchasing goods and services. One taka is divided into 100 poisha.
In Bengali, the word "taka" is also used to mean any money, currency, or notes.
Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of the country, prints the currency, except for one taka and two taka notes, which are made by the Ministry of Finance.
Bogotá
Bogota is the capital (city) of Colombia. As of 2009, more than 7 million people live in Bogota, which makes it the largest city in Colombia. It is about 2,640 meters above sea level, on top a plateau (a mountain with a flat top). This makes it the third highest capital in the world. With many universities and libraries, Bogotá has become known as "The Athens of South America".The weather is usually nice during the day and cool at night. It has a series of bike paths (trails that are made for bikes) that wind through the city. It has many recreational and amusement parks open to the public. The current mayor is Claudia López.
Originally, Native Americans called Muisca lived in the area. Then, in 1538, Gonzalo Jimenes de Quezada, a Spanish conqueror, founded Bogota. Bogota became a center of trade, art, and education. Some of the oldest universities in the Americas are in Bogota. After Independence from Spain, Bogota became the capital of Gran Colombia in 1819.
Bogota has had extremely awful moments. In 1948, a presidential candidate, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, was murdered while doing a speech in front of hundreds of persons. This tragic moment brought with it terrible consequences: one of the most remembered one is the "Bogotazo". The "Bogotazo" started as a political party war, the blue party, self named the "conservatives", began to hunt and kill every single member of the red party, the "liberals". The remaining blue party members decided to create the "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia" (FARC); however, this group was ironically created to protect the oppressed people from their oppressors. Nowadays, this group is known as terrorists and murderers;nevertheless, Colombia's capital city, Bogota, has not being attacked in the last few years.
Aymara people
The Aymara are members of a tribe of Native Americans that live in Bolivia and Peru. They are native to the area around Lake Titicaca. They speak the Aymara language. They call themselves Aymaras.
The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is Aymara.
The many-colored flag of the tribe is called the Wiphala.
Perihelion
The perihelion is the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid or comet that is nearest to the sun. It is the opposite of aphelion, which is the point farthest from the sun.
The word perihelion stems from the Greek words "peri," meaning near, and "Helios," meaning the Greek god of the sun. So it referred to as perihelion. (The similar word, perigee, refers to the nearest point in some object's orbit of Earth.)
All planets, comets and asteroids in our solar system have approximately elliptical (a kind of non-circular) orbits. Thus, they all have a closest and a farthest point from the sun: a perihelion and an aphelion. Orbital eccentricity measures the flatness of the orbit. Any single revolution of a body around the sun is only approximately elliptical, because the precession of the perihelion prevents the orbit from being a simple closed curve such as an ellipse. This causes Milankovich cycles.
Earth comes closest to the sun every year around January 3. It is farthest from the sun every year around July 4. The difference in distance between Earth's nearest point to the sun in January and farthest point from the sun in July is 3.1 million miles (5 million kilometers). Earth is about 91.4 million miles (147.1 million kilometers) from the sun in early January, in contrast to about 94.5 million miles (152 million kilometers) in early July.
When Earth is closest to the sun, it is winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. Thus it is possible to see that Earth's distance from the sun does not noticeably cause the seasons to change; the relatively minor effects of differences in distance is somewhat masked by the mainly oceanic southern hemisphere vs the half- continental northern hemisphere. Therefore, the Earth's seasons come and go mainly because Earth does not rotate with its axis exactly upright with respect to the plane of our world’s orbit around the sun. Earth's axial tilt is 23.5 degrees. This puts the Sun farther south in December and January, so the north has winter and the south has summer. Thus winter falls on that part of the globe where sunlight strikes least directly. Summer falls on that part of the globe where sunlight strikes most directly.
Johnston Atoll
The island is named after Captain James Johnston, who discovered it in 1807. The island was mined for guano until 1890. After that, it was used as an army base.
Llama
A Llama ("Lama glama") is a mammal of the "Camelidae" family. It is from South America, the Andes Mountains of Peru and Ecuador.
Sometimes the name "llama" is used for all four South American camelids.