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Wilson broke with many of his closest political friends and allies in 1918-20, including Colonel House. Historians speculate that a series of minor strokes may have affected his personality. He desired a third term, but his Democratic party was in turmoil, with German voters outraged at their wartime harassment, and Irish voters angry at his failure to support Irish independence.

Wilson, a staunch opponent of antisemitism , was sympathetic to the plight of Jews, especially in Poland and in France. As President, Wilson repeatedly stated in 1919 that U.S. policy was to "acquiesce" in the Balfour Declaration but not officially support Zionism Walworth (1986) 473-83, esp. p. 481; Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, (1995) ch. 6; Frank W. Brecher, Reluctant Ally: United States Foreign Policy toward the Jews from Wilson to Roosevelt. (1991) ch 1-4. . After he left office Wilson wrote a letter of strong support to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine and objected to territorial concessions regarding its borders. In 1923 he wrote "The Zionist cause depends on rational northern and eastern boundaries for a self-maintaining, economic development of the country. This means, on the north, Palestine must include the Litani River and the watersheds of the Hermon, and on the east it must include the plains of the Jaulon and the Hauran. Narrower than this is a mutilation...I need not remind you that neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program, and to its realization the boundaries I have named are indispensable". Quoted in Palestine: The Original Sin , Meir Abelson

Until Wilson announced his support for suffrage, a group of women calling themselves Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House, holding banners such as "Mr. President What will you do for woman suffrage?" "Absolutely nothing." In January 1918, after years of lobbying and public demonstrations, Wilson finally announced his support of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. The Amendment passed the House but failed in the Senate. Finally, on June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the amendment.

The cause of his incapacitation was the physical strain of the demanding public speaking tour he undertook to obtain support of the American people for ratification of the Covenant of the League. After one of his final speeches to attempt to promote the League of Nations in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, 1919 , he collapsed. On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a serious stroke that almost totally incapacitated him, leaving him paralyzed on his left side and blind in his left eye. For at least a few months, he was confined to a wheelchair. Afterwards he could walk only with the assistance of a cane. The full extent of his disability was kept from the public until after his death on February 3, 1924.

Wilson was purposely, with few exceptions, kept out of the presence of Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, his cabinet or Congressional visitors to the White House for the remainder of his presidential term. His first wife, Ellen, had died in 1914, so his second wife, Edith, served as his steward, selecting issues for his attention and delegating other issues to his cabinet heads. This was, as of 2007, the most serious case of presidential disability in American history and was later cited as a key example why ratification of the 25th Amendment was seen as important.

* Vetoed Volstead Act in 1919. It was passed over his veto.

Wilson's chief of staff ("Secretary") was Joseph Patrick Tumulty 1913-1921, but he was largely upstaged after 1916 when Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, assumed full control of Wilson's schedule. An important foreign policy advisor and confidant was "Colonel" Edward M. House.

Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet in the Cabinet Room

Wilson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

The official White House portrait of President Woodrow Wilson

Wilson was a remarkably effective writer and thinker and his diplomatic policies had a profound influence on shaping the world. Diplomatic historian Walter Russell Mead has explained:

American foreign relations since 1914 have rested on Wilsonian idealism, argues historian David Kennedy, even if adjusted somewhat by the "realism" represented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger. Kennedy argues that every president since Wilson has, "embraced the core precepts of Wilsonianism. Nixon himself hung Wilson's portrait in the White House Cabinet Room. Wilson's ideas continue to dominate American foreign policy in the twenty-first century. In the aftermath of 9/11 they have, if anything, taken on even greater vitality." David M. Kennedy, "What 'W' Owes to 'WW': President Bush May Not Even Know It, but He Can Trace His View of the World to Woodrow Wilson, Who Defined a Diplomatic Destiny for America That We Can't Escape." The Atlantic Monthly Vol: 295. Issue: 2. (March 2005) pp 36+.

Quotation from Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People as reproduced in the film The Birth of a Nation.

While president of Princeton University, Wilson discouraged blacks from even applying for admission. Arthur Link, Wilson:The Road to the White House (Princeton University Press, 1947) 502 Princeton would not admit its first black student until the 1940s.

Wilson allowed many of his cabinet officials to establish official segregation in most federal government offices, in some departments for the first time since 1863. "His administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees." /ref>

Wilson and his cabinet members fired many black Republican office holders, but also appointed a few black Democrats. W.E.B. DuBois, a leader of the NAACP, campaigned for Wilson and in 1918 was offered an Army commission in charge of dealing with race relations. (DuBois accepted but failed his Army physical and did not serve.) Ellis, Mark. "'Closing Ranks' and 'Seeking Honors': W. E. B. du Bois in World War I" Journal of American History 1992 79(1): 96-124. ISSN 0021-8723 Fulltext in Jstor When a delegation of blacks protested his discriminatory actions, Wilson told them that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." In 1914, he told the New York Times that "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it."

Wilson was attacked by African-Americans for his actions, but he was also attacked by southern hard line racists, such as Georgian Thomas E. Watson, for not going far enough in restricting black employment in the federal government. The segregation introduced into the federal workforce by the Wilson administration was kept in place by the succeeding presidents and was not finally rescinded until the Truman Administration.

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.” Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (1931) V:59. .

Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's graduate school classmates at Johns Hopkins in 1883-1884. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. There is debate about whether Wilson made the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning; my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.", or whether it was invented by a film publicist. "Family Life", Essays on Woodrow Wilson and His Administration, American President: An Online Reference Resource, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia Others argue Wilson felt he had been tricked by Dixon and in public statements claimed he did not like the film; Wilson blocked its showing during the war. Link vol 2 pp 252-54. In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.”Although Wilson had a volatile relationship with American Blacks he was a friend of the Ethiopian Emperor Halie Selassie, a black African Monarch. A sword(a gift from Selassie) can still be seen in Wilson's Washington DC home. Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson 68:298

Wilson had some harsh words to say about immigrants in his history books. However, after he entered politics in 1910, Wilson worked to integrate new immigrants into the Democratic party, into the army, and into American life. For example, the war bond campaigns were set up so that ethnic groups could boast how much money they gave. He demanded in return during the war that they repudiate any loyalty to the enemy.

Irish Americans were powerful in the Democratic party and opposed going to war alongside their enemy Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. At Versailles, however, he reneged and the Irish-American community vehemently denounced him. Wilson, in turn, blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for the League of Nations, saying,

There is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say--I cannot say too often--any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready. American Rhetoric, "Final Address in Support of the League of Nations", Woodrow Wilson, delivered 25 Sept 1919 in Pueblo, CO. John B. Duff, "German-Americans and the Peace, 1918-1920" American Jewish Historical Quarterly 1970 59(4): 424-459. and Duff, "The Versailles Treaty and the Irish-Americans" Journal of American History 1968 55(3): 582-598. ISSN 0021-8723

In 1921, Wilson and his wife retired from the White House to a home in the Embassy Row section of Washington, D.C. Wilson continued going for daily drives and attended Keith's vaudeville theater on Saturday nights.

Wilson died in his S Street home on February 3, 1924. Because his plan for the League of Nations ultimately failed, he died feeling that he had lied to the American people and that his motives for joining the war had been in vain. He was buried in Washington National Cathedral.

Mrs. Wilson stayed in the home another 37 years, dying on December 28, 1961. Mrs. Wilson left the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to be made into a museum honoring her husband. Woodrow Wilson House opened as a museum in 1964.

The final resting place of Woodrow Wilson at the Washington National Cathedral

Wilson's Pierce Arrow, which resides in his hometown of Staunton, Virginia.

* His earliest memory, from age 3, was of hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war was coming.

* Wilson would forever recall standing for a moment at Robert E. Lee's side and looking up into his face.

* Wilson (born in Virginia and raised in Georgia) was the first Southerner to be elected since 1848 (Zachary Taylor) and the first Southerner to take office since Andrew Johnson in 1865.

* Wilson was also the first Democrat elected to the presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1892. The next Democrat elected was Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

* Wilson was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Wilson on the $100,000 gold certificate

* Wilson is the only U.S. President buried in Washington, D.C.

* Wilson remains the only American President to have earned a research doctoral degree.

* His carved initials are still visible on the underside of a table in the History Department at Johns Hopkins University.

* Wilson was one of only two Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt was the first) to become president of the American Historical Association.

* Wilson was president of the American Political Science Association in 1910.

* Wilson was the subject of the 1944 biographical film Wilson, directed by Henry King and starring Alexander Knox as Wilson. The picture was a commercial failure, despite receiving ten Oscar nominations and winning five.

*In Harry Turtledove's "Great War" trilogy of alternate history novels, Wilson is elected 9th President of the Confederate States of America on the Whig ticket in 1910.

* The book Stardust and Shadows, 2000, Toronto: Dundern Press by Charles Foster details an alleged relationship between silent-era motion picture actress Florence La Badie and Wilson.

*When President Wilson came to Europe to settle the peace terms, Wilson visited Pope Benedict XV in Rome, which made Wilson the first American President to visit the Pope while in office.

*Wilson was the only presidential candidate to defeat two former presidents in a single election (Roosevelt and Taft).

* Ambrosius, Lloyd E., “Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush: Historical Comparisons of Ends and Means in Their Foreign Policies,” Diplomatic History, 30 (June 2006), 509–43.

* Clements, Kendrick A. "Woodrow Wilson and World War I," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34:1 (2004). pp 62+.

* Hofstadter, Richard. "Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal" in The American Political Tradition (1948), ch. 10.

*Walworth, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson 2 Vol. (1958), Pulitzer prize winning biography.

* Wilson, Woodrow. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (1918).

* Woodrow Wilson Ancestral Home * John Wesley's Place in History at The DCL.

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (February 18, 1745 - March 5, 1827) was an Italian physicist known especially for the development of the first known electric battery in 1800.

In 1774, Volta became professor of physics in the Como high school. His passion had always been the study of electricity, and while still a young student he had even written a poem in Latin on this fascinating new discovery. His first scientific paper he titled ''De vi attractiva ignis electrici ac phaenomenis inde pendentibus

De vi attractiva ....

In 1775, Volta improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that produces a static electric charge. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, although it had actually been invented in 1764 by Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke , p.73 In 1776-77 he studied the chemistry of gases, discovered methane, and devised experiments such as the ignition of gases by an electric spark in a closed vessel. Volta also studied what we now call capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential V and charge Q, and discovering that for a given object they are proportional. This may be called Volta's Law of Capacitance, and likely for this work the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.

In 1779 he became professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, a chair he occupied for almost 40 years. In 1794, Volta married the daughter of Count Ludovico Peregrini, Teresa, with whom he raised three sons.

Around 1791 he began to study the "animal electricity" noted by Galvani when two different metals were connected in series with the frog's leg and to one another. He realized that the frog's leg served as both a conductor of electricity (we would now call it an electrolyte) and as a detector of electricity. He replaced the frog's leg by brine-soaked paper, and detected the flow of electricity by other means familiar to him from his previous studies of electricity. In this way he discovered the electrochemical series, and the law that the electromotive force (emf) of a galvanic cell, consisting of a pair of metal electrodes separated by electrolyte, is the difference of their two electrode potentials. That is, if the electrodes have emfs \mathcal{E}_{1,2} , then the net emf is \mathcal{E}_{2}-\mathcal{E}_{1} . (Thus, two identical electrodes and a common electrolyte give zero net emf.) This may be called Volta's Law of the electrochemical series.

In 1800, as the result of a professional disagreement over the galvanic response advocated by Luigi Galvani, he invented the voltaic pile, an early electric battery, which produced a steady electric current. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was zinc and silver. Initially he experimented with individual cells in series, each cell being a wine goblet filled with brine into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped. The electric pile replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine. (The number of cells, and thus the voltage it could produce, was limited by the pressure, exerted by the upper cells, that would squeeze all of the brine out of the cardboard of the bottom cell.)

In announcing his discovery of the pile, Volta paid tribute to the influences of William Nicholson, Tiberius Cavallo and Abraham Bennet. * (

The battery made by Volta is credited to have been the first cell. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is sulphuric acid. The electrolyte exists in the form 2H + and SO 4 2- . The zinc, which is higher than both copper and hydrogen in the electrochemical series, reacts with the negatively charged sulphate. ( SO 4 ) The positively charged hydrogen bubbles start depositing around the copper and take away some of its electrons. This makes the zinc rod the negative electrode and the copper rod the positive electrode.

We now have 2 terminals, and the current will flow if we connect them. The reactions in this cell are as follows:

However, this cell also has some disadvantages. It is unsafe to handle, as sulphuric acid, even if dilute, is dangerous. Also, the potential difference in the terminals finishes after some time. So it is not durable, and therefore, not a suitable choice.

In honour of his work in the field of electricity, Napoleon made him a count in 1810; in 1815 the Emperor of Austria named him a professor of philosophy at Padua.

Before 1796, Lombardy was ruled by Austria. From 1796 to 1815, Lombardy came under Napoleon's rule. After 1815, Lombardy was once again under Austrian rule. Thus Volta was once a subject of the Emperor of Austria, later a subject of Napoleon and then later a subject of the Emperor of Austria again. Giuliano Pancaldi, "Volta: Science and culture in the age of enlightenment", Princeton University Press, 2003.

The Tempio Voltiano, Como

He was a long-time correspondent of the Royal Society and was made a fellow (FRS). He received the Society's 1794 Copley Medal. He published his invention of the Voltaic pile battery in 1800 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He was in correspondence with scientists in Austria, which ruled Lombardy in his day, and in France. His 1800 paper was written in French.

Volta is buried in the city of Como. At the Tempio Voltiano near Lake Como there is a museum devoted to explaining his work. Count Volta's original instruments and papers are on display there. The building, along with his portrait, appeared on Italian 10.000 lira banknote, before the introduction of the euro.

In 1881 an important electrical unit, the volt, was named in his honor. There have also been innovations and discovories named after Alessandro Volta including the Toyota Alessandro Volta, the Volta Crater on the Moon and in 2006 a technology company named their loan origination platform Volta.

Volta entered retirement in Spain.

* Alessandro Volta on the 10000 Italian Lire banknote.

* Catholic Encyclopedia article on Alessando Volta.

* Press release on Volta loan origination software.

Canada ( ) is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area, and shares land borders with the United States to the south and northwest.

The lands have been inhabited for millennia by aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years War.

In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal, semi-autonomous polity. This began an accretion of additional provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and culminating in the Canada Act in 1982 which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.

A federation now comprising ten provinces and three territories, Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual and multicultural country, with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. Technologically advanced and industrialized, Canada maintains a diversified economy that is heavily reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship.

Jacques Cartier

The name Canada comes from a St. Lawrence Iroquoian word meaning "village" or "settlement." In 1535, inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct explorer Jacques Cartier toward the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word 'Canada' to refer to not only that village, but the entire area subject to Donnacona, Chief at Stadacona. By 1545, European books and maps began referring to this region as Canada.

The French colony of Canada referred to the part of New France along the Saint Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes. Later, it was split into two British colonies, called Upper Canada and Lower Canada until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, the name Canada was adopted for the entire country, and it was frequently referred to as the Dominion of Canada until the 1950s. As Canada asserted its political autonomy from Britain, the federal government increasingly used Canada on legal state documents and treaties. The Canada Act 1982 refers only to "Canada" and, as such, it is currently the only legal (and bilingual) name. This was reflected in 1982 with the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day.

The fur trade was Canada's most important industry until the 1800s

Aboriginal and Inuit tradition holds that the First Peoples inhabited parts of Canada prehistorically. Archaeological studies support a human presence in northern Yukon from 26,500 years ago, and in southern Ontario from 9,500 years ago. Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L'Anse aux Meadows circa AD 1000. The next Europeans to explore Canada's Atlantic coast included John Cabot in 1497 for England and Jacques Cartier in 1534 for France ; seasonal Basque whalers and fishermen would subsequently exploit the region between the Grand Banks and Tadoussac for over a century.

French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1603 and established the first permanent European settlements at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608. These would become respectively the capitals of Acadia and Canada. Among French colonists of New France, Canadiens extensively settled the St. Lawrence River valley, Acadians settled the present-day Maritimes, while French fur traders and Catholic missionaries explored the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay and the Mississippi watershed to Louisiana. The French and Iroquois Wars broke out over control of the fur trade.

The Death of General Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec in 1759, part of the Seven Years' War.

The English established fishing outposts in Newfoundland around 1610 and colonized the Thirteen Colonies to the south. A series of four Intercolonial Wars erupted between 1689 and 1763. Mainland Nova Scotia came under British rule with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713); the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded Canada and most of New France to Britain following the Seven Years' War.

The Royal Proclamation (1763) carved the Province of Quebec out of New France and annexed Cape Breton Island to Nova Scotia. It also restricted the language and religious rights of French Canadians. In 1769, St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island) became a separate colony. To avert conflict in Quebec, the Quebec Act of 1774 expanded Quebec's territory to the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and re-established the French language, Catholic faith, and French civil law in Quebec; it angered many residents of the Thirteen Colonies, helping to fuel the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized American independence and ceded territories south of the Great Lakes to the United States. Approximately 50,000 United Empire Loyalists fled the United States to Canada. New Brunswick was split from Nova Scotia as part of a reorganization of Loyalist settlements in the Maritimes. To accommodate English-speaking Loyalists in Quebec, the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the province into French-speaking Lower Canada and English-speaking Upper Canada, granting each their own elected Legislative Assembly.

Canada was a major front in the War of 1812 between the United States and British Empire. Its defence contributed to a sense of unity among British North Americans. Large-scale immigration to Canada began in 1815 from Britain and Ireland. The timber industry would also surpass the fur trade in importance in the early 1800s.

Robert Harris's painting of the Fathers of Confederation. The scene is an amalgamation of the Charlottetown and Quebec City conference sites and attendees.

The desire for Responsible Government resulted in the aborted Rebellions of 1837. The Durham Report (1839) would subsequently recommend responsible government and the assimilation of French Canadians into British culture. The Act of Union (1840) merged The Canadas into a United Province of Canada. French and English Canadians worked together in the Assembly to reinstate French rights. Responsible government was established for all British North American provinces by 1849.

The signing of the Oregon Treaty by Britain and the United States in 1846 ended the Oregon boundary dispute, extending the border westward along the 49th parallel, and paving the way for British colonies on Vancouver Island (1849) and in British Columbia (1858). Canada launched a series of western exploratory expeditions to claim Rupert's Land and the Arctic region. The Canadian population grew rapidly because of high birth rates; British immigration was offset by emigration to the United States, especially by French Canadians moving to New England.

An animated map, exhibiting the growth and refactoring of Canada's provinces and territories since Confederation.

Following several constitutional conferences, the British North America Act brought about Confederation creating "one Dominion under the name of Canada" on July 1, 1867 with four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Canada assumed control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to form the Northwest Territories, where Métis' grievances ignited the Red River Rebellion and the creation of the province of Manitoba in July 1870. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had united in 1866) and the colony of Prince Edward Island joined Confederation in 1871 and 1873, respectively.

Prime Minister John A. Macdonald's Conservative Party established a National Policy of tariffs to protect nascent Canadian manufacturing industries. To open the West, the government sponsored construction of three trans-continental railways (most notably the Canadian Pacific Railway), opened the prairies to settlement with the Dominion Lands Act, and established the North West Mounted Police to assert its authority over this territory. In 1898, after the Klondike Gold Rush in the Northwest Territories, the Canadian government decided to create the Yukon territory as a separate territory in the region to better control the situation. Under Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, continental European immigrants settled the prairies, and Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905.

Canadian soldiers would win the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917.

Canada automatically entered the First World War in 1914 with Britain's declaration of war, sending volunteers to the Western Front. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 erupted when conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden brought in compulsory military service over the objection of French-speaking Quebecers. In 1919, Canada joined the League of Nations independently of Britain; in 1931 the Statute of Westminster affirmed Canada's independence.

The Great Depression of 1929 brought economic hardship to all of Canada. In response, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Alberta and Saskatchewan presaged a welfare state as pioneered by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s and 1950s. Canada declared war on Germany independently during World War II under Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, three days after Britain. The first Canadian Army units arrived in Britain in December 1939. Canadian troops played important roles in the Battle of the Atlantic, the failed 1942 Dieppe Raid in France, the Allied invasion of Italy, and the Battle of the Scheldt during the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944. The Canadian economy boomed as industry manufactured military materiel for Canada, Britain, China and the Soviet Union. Despite another Conscription Crisis in Quebec, Canada finished the war with one of the largest armed forces in the world.

In 1949, Newfoundland joined Confederation as Canada's 10th province. Post-war prosperity and economic expansion ignited a baby boom and attracted immigration from war-ravaged European countries.

Quebec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Québécois nationalists began pressing for greater provincial autonomy. The separatist Parti Québécois first came to power in 1976. A referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980 was rejected by a solid majority of the population, and a second referendum in 1995 was rejected by a slimmer margin of just 50.6% to 49.4%. In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional; Quebec's sovereignty movement has continued nonetheless.

The Queen and the Registrar General signing the Constitution Act, 1982.

Under successive Liberal governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, a new Canadian identity emerged. Canada adopted its current Maple Leaf Flag in 1965. In response to a more assertive French-speaking Quebec, the federal government became officially bilingual with the Official Languages Act of 1969. Non-discriminatory Immigration Acts were introduced in 1967 and 1976, and official multiculturalism in 1971; waves of non-European immigration had changed the face of the country. Social democratic programs such as Universal Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, and Canada Student Loans were initiated in the 1960s and consolidated in the 1970s; provincial governments, particularly Quebec, fought these as incursions into their jurisdictions. Finally, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pushed through the patriation of the constitution from Britain, enshrining a Charter of Rights and Freedoms based on individual rights in the Constitution Act of 1982.

Economic integration with the United States has increased significantly since World War II. The Canada-United States Automotive Agreement (or Auto Pact) in 1965 and the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1987 were defining moments in integrating the two economies. Canadian nationalists continued to worry about their cultural autonomy as American television shows, movies and corporations became omnipresent. However, Canadians take special pride in their system of universal health care and their commitment to multiculturalism.

Parliament Hill, Ottawa.

Canada is a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, as head of state; the Canadian monarch also serves as head of state of fifteen other Commonwealth countries, putting Canada in a personal union relationship with those other states. The country is a parliamentary democracy with a federal system of parliamentary government and strong democratic traditions.