Fact about American flag

The United States Flag is the third oldest of the National Standards of the world; older than the Union Jack of Britain or the Tricolor of France.

The flag was first authorized by Congress June 14, 1777. This date is now observed as Flag Day throughout America.

The flag was first flown from Fort Stanwix, on the site of the present city of Rome, New York, on August 3, 1777. It was first under fire for three days later in the Battle of Oriskany, August 6, 1777.

It was first decreed that there should be a star and a stripe for each state, making thirteen of both; for the states at the time had just been erected from the original thirteen colonies.

The colors of the Flag may be thus explained: The red is for valor, zeal and fervency; the white for hope purity, cleanliness of life, and rectitude of conduct; the blue, the color of heaven, for reverence to God, loyalty, sincerity, justice and truth.

The star (an ancient symbol of India, Persia and Egypt) symbolized dominion and sovereignty, as well as lofty aspirations. The constellation of the stars within the union, one star for each state, is emblematic of our Federal Constitution, which reserves to the States their individual sovereignty except as to rights delegated by them to the Federal Government.

The symbolism of the Flag was thus interpreted by Washington: “We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing Liberty.”

In 1791, Vermont, and in 1792, Kentucky were admitted to the Union and the number of stars and stripes was raised to fifteen in correspondence. As other states came into the Union it became evident there would be too many stripes. So in 1818 Congress enacted that the number of stripes be reduced and restricted henceforth to thirteen representing the thirteen original states; while a star should be added for each succeeding state. That law is the law of today.

The name “Old Glory” was given to our National Flag August 10, 1831, by Captain William Driver of the brig Charles Doggett.

The Flag was first carried in battle at the Brandywine, September 11, 1777. It first flew over foreign territory January 28, 1778, at Nassau, Bahama Islands; Fort Nassau having been captured by the American in the course of the war for independence. The first foreign salute to the flag was rendered by the french admiral LaMotte Piquet, off Quiberon Bay, February 13, 1778.

The United States Flag is unique in the deep and noble significance of its message to the entire world, a message of national independence, of individual liberty, of idealism, of patriotism.

It symbolizes national independence and popular sovereignty. It is not the Flag of a reigning family or royal house, but of 205 million free people welded into a Nation, one and inseparable, united not only by community of interest, but by vital unity of sentiment and purpose; a Nation distinguished for the clear individual conception of its citizens alike of their duties and their privileges, their obligations and their rights.

It incarnates for all mankind the spirit of Liberty and the glorious ideal of human Freedom; not the freedom of unrestraint or the liberty of license, but an unique ideal of equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, safeguarded by the stern and lofty principles of duty, of righteousness and of justice, and attainable by obedience to self-imposed laws.

Floating from lofty pinnacle of American Idealism, it is a beacon of enduring hope, like the famous Bartholdi Statue of Liberty enlightening the World to the oppressed of all lands. It floats over a wondrous assemblage of people from every racial stock of the earth whose united hearts constitute an indivisible and invincible force for the defense and succor of the downtrodden.

It embodies the essence of patriotism. Its spirit is the spirit of the American nation. Its history is the history of the American people. Emblazoned upon its folds in letters of living light are the names and fame of our heroic dead, the Fathers of the Republic who devoted upon its altars their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Twice told tales of National honor and glory cluster thickly about it. Ever victorious, it has emerged triumphant from eight great National conflicts. It flew at Saratog, at Yorktown, at Palo Alto, at Gettysburg, at Minala bay, at Chateau-Thierry, at Iwo Jima. It bears witness to the immense expansion of our national boundaries, the development of our natural resources, and the splendid structure of our civilization. It prophesies the triumph of popular government, of civic and religious liberty and of national righteousness throughout the world.

The flag first rose over thirteen states along the Atlantic seaboard, with a population of some three million people. Today it flies over fifty states, extending across the continent, and over great islands of the two oceans; and two hundred and five million owe it allegiance. It has been brought to this proud position by love and sacrifice. Citizens have advanced it and heroes have died for it. It is the sign made visible of the strong spirit that has brought liberty and prosperity to the people of America. It is the flag of all us alike. Let us accord it honor and loyalty.

History of Egypt

• The Nile as lifeline: from 6000 BC

From about 6000 BC various communities of hunter-gatherers make the Nile the centre of their territory, around which they roam. But the drying of the Sahara increasingly confines them to the river area. The unusual habit of this great river - flooding every year and depositing a layer of rich moist soil on the surrounding region - is ideally suited to the development of settled agriculture. The river takes upon itself two otherwise laborious tasks, irrigation and the enriching of the soil.

By about 3100 BC these communities have become sufficiently prosperous and stable to be united in a single political entity - the first Egyptian dynasty.

• The first dynasty: from c.3100 BC

The unifying of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom is the event pointed to by the ancient Egyptians themselves as the beginning of their civilization. 

Lower Egypt is roughly the broad delta of the river, where it separates into many branches before flowing into the Mediterranean. Upper Egypt is the long main channel of the river itself, possibly as far upstream as boats can reach - to the first waterfall or cataract, at Aswan.


Egyptian tradition credits the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt to a king called Menes. But that is merely a word meaning 'founder'. It is possible that the real historical figure is a ruler by the name of Narmer, who features in warlike mood in superb low-relief carving on a plaque of green siltstone (now in the Egyptian museum in Cairo).

Whatever the name, the first historical dynasty is brought into being by the king or pharaoh who in about 3100 BC establishes control over the whole navigable length of the Nile. His is the first of thirty Egyptian dynasties, spanning nearly three millennia - an example of social continuity rivalled in human history only by China.



In the early centuries, and again in the closing stages of ancient Egypt, the capital is at Memphis, near modern-day Cairo. But at the peak of Egyptian power, during the period from about 2000 to 1200 BC, the city of Thebes - several hundred kilometres up the Nile - is a place of greater importance.

The pyramids remain today to show the early greatness of Memphis, in the period known as the Old Kingdom. Similarly the temples of Karnak and Luxor are witness to the extravagant wealth of Thebes during the eras described as the Middle Kingdom and the New Empire.

• The Old Kingdom: c.2580-c.2130 BC

The period known as the Old Kingdom runs from the 4th to the 6th of Manetho's dynasties and begins several centuries after the unification of Egypt. During the intervening period little is known of the pharaohs except their names, deriving from stone inscriptions (from as early as the 1st dynasty the Egyptian civilization enjoys the advantages of writing, soon to be followed by a sophisticated calendar). Of some pharaohs even the names are missing.

The change to more solid evidence comes in the time of Zoser, the greatest pharaoh of the 3rd dynasty (the Old Kingdom is sometimes taken as beginning with his reign, before the 4th dynasty). A new stability is reflected in the splendour of Zoser's monument - Egypt's first stone pyramid, built at Saqqara in about 2620 BC.


Zoser's funerary example is taken to even more elaborate lengths at Giza by his successors a century later, in the 4th dynasty (c.2575-c.2465 BC).

The three great pyramids at Giza are built between about 2550 and 2470 BC for Khufu, his son Khafre (probably also responsible for the sphinx) and his grandson Menkure. This is also the period when the Egyptian practice of mummification begins, aiming to preserve the body for life in the next world. The earliest known example of any part of a mummified body is the internal organs of Khufu's mother, Hetepheres. Her body itself is lost, but her innards survive within the canopic jars which play an essential part in the ritual of mummification.


Some details are known of Egypt's first great period from evidence other than monuments. Records survive of events during six years of the reign of Khufu's father, Sneferu. They include several elements characteristic of Egypt's imperial development.

There is a raid far south into Nubia, with the capture of numerous slaves and cattle. Forty ships ships arrive from Lebanon with the cargoes of cedar required for Egyptian building projects. Mining operations are undertaken in the Sinai region, already long known for its valuable copper deposits.




The pharaohs of the 5th and 6th dynasties continue to rule from Memphis and their lives are known in increasing detail from inscriptions. One example is an enthusiastic letter of thanks sent by the last king of the 6th dynasty, Pepi II, to a governor of Aswan who has brought him a Pygmy dancer from Nubia. The governor, Harkhuf, is so proud of the document that he has its text engraved on the facade of his tomb.

But the pharaohs of the 6th dynasty have lost the vigour of their predecessors. Their rule is followed by a century of anarchy, covering the 7th to 10th dynasties and known as the First Intermediate Period (c.2130-c.2000 BC).

• The Middle Kingdom: c.2000-c.1630 BC

When stability returns, it is under the rule of a family deriving their power from middle Egypt. Mentuhotep II (also known by his throne name, Nebhepetre) wins control of the whole country in about 2000 BC. His base is Thebes, which now begins its central role in the story of ancient Egypt - though relatively little survives of Mentuhotep's own monuments in the region.

The Middle Kingdom, spanning the 11th and 12th dynasties, is notable for the first serious effort to colonizeNubia. This region now becomes of great importance to Egypt's trade in luxuries. Nubia's mines are the chief source of Egyptian gold. Rare commodities such as ivory and ebony, the skins of leopards and the plumes of ostriches, now travel down the upper Nile to be traded for Egyptian goods.


The market place is at the second cataract (today submerged under Lake Nasser). Here the Nubians exchange their commodities - and their slaves, always an important element in the trade of this region - for the manufactured goods and the weapons of the more developed economy.

The Middle Kingdom lasts for four centuries before giving way to another era defined only as falling between kingdoms - the Second Intermediate Period. It is far less chaotic than the previous intermediate period, but is almost equally vague. The reason is that very little is known of the foreigners, called by Manetho the Hyksos, who establish themselves with a capital city somewhere in the delta.
 The Hyksos derive from Asia, probably from Palestine or Phoenicia, and they worship a Syrian god. But they adapt fully to Egyptian ways, identifying their god as Sethand ruling as pharaohs (the 15th and 16th ofManetho's dynasties).

The Hyksos are in Egypt for almost a century (c.1630-c.1540 BC). For much of this time they control the whole country (their monuments are found as far south as Nubia). But eventually a powerful family in Thebes (the 17th dynasty) grows strong enough to drive the intruders north. One of its members, Ahmose, completes the task of expelling them from Egypt - and is accorded by Manetho the honour of heading the most glorious dynasty of all, the 18th, at the start of the New Kingdom.

History of Japan

Geography

An archipelago in the Pacific, Japan is separated from the east coast of Asia by the Sea of Japan. It is approximately the size of Montana. Japan's four main islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku. The Ryukyu chain to the southwest was U.S.-occupied from 1945 to 1972, when it reverted to Japanese control, and the Kurils to the northeast are Russian-occupied.

Government

Constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government.

History

Legend attributes the creation of Japan to the sun goddess, from whom the emperors were descended. The first of them was Jimmu, supposed to have ascended the throne in 660 B.C. , a tradition that constituted official doctrine until 1945.

Recorded Japanese history begins in approximately A.D. 400, when the Yamato clan, eventually based in Kyoto, managed to gain control of other family groups in central and western Japan. Contact with Korea introduced Buddhism to Japan at about this time. Through the 700s Japan was much influenced by China, and the Yamato clan set up an imperial court similar to that of China. In the ensuing centuries, the authority of the imperial court was undermined as powerful gentry families vied for control.

At the same time, warrior clans were rising to prominence as a distinct class known as samurai. In 1192, the Minamoto clan set up a military government under their leader, Yoritomo. He was designated shogun (military dictator). For the following 700 years, shoguns from a succession of clans ruled in Japan, while the imperial court existed in relative obscurity.

First contact with the West came in about 1542, when a Portuguese ship off course arrived in Japanese waters. Portuguese traders, Jesuit missionaries, and Spanish, Dutch, and English traders followed. Suspicious of Christianity and of Portuguese support of a local Japanese revolt, the shoguns of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) prohibited all trade with foreign countries; only a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki was permitted. Western attempts to renew trading relations failed until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed an American fleet into Tokyo Bay. Trade with the West was forced upon Japan under terms less than favorable to the Japanese. Strife caused by these actions brought down the feudal world of the shoguns. In 1868, the emperor Meiji came to the throne, and the shogun system was abolished.

History of Ukraine

Geography:

Located in southeast Europe, the country consists largely of fertile black soil steppes. Mountainous areas include the Carpathians in the southwest and the Crimean chain in the south. Ukraine is bordered by Belarus on the north, by Russia on the north and east, by the Black Sea on the south, by Moldova and Romania on the southwest, and by Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland on the west.

Government:

Constitutional republic.

History:

Ukraine was known as “Kievan Rus” (from which Russia is a derivative) up until the 16th century. In the 9th century, Kiev was the major political and cultural center in eastern Europe. Kievan Rus reached the height of its power in the 10th century and adopted Byzantine Christianity. The Mongol conquest in 1240 ended Kievan power. From the 13th to the 16th century, Kiev was under the influence of Poland and western Europe. The negotiation of the Union of Brest-Litovsk in 1596 divided the Ukrainians into Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic faithful. In 1654, Ukraine asked the czar of Moscovy for protection against Poland, and the Treaty of Pereyasav signed that year recognized the suzerainty of Moscow. The agreement was interpreted by Moscow as an invitation to take over Kiev, and the Ukrainian state was eventually absorbed into the Russian Empire.

After the Russian Revolution, Ukraine declared its independence from Russia on Jan. 28, 1918, and several years of warfare ensued with several groups. The Red Army finally was victorious over Kiev, and in 1920 Ukraine became a Soviet republic. In 1922, Ukraine became one of the founders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In the 1930s, the Soviet government's enforcement of collectivization met with peasant resistance, which in turn prompted the confiscation of grain from Ukrainian farmers by Soviet authorities; the resulting famine took an estimated 5 million lives. Ukraine was one of the most devastated Soviet republics after World War II. (For details on World War II, see Headline History, World War II.) On April 26, 1986, the nation's nuclear power plant at Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. On Oct. 29, 1991, the Ukrainian parliament voted to shut down the reactor within two years' time and asked for international assistance in dismantling it.

History of USA

When to date the start of the history of the United States is debated among historians. Older textbooks started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and emphasized the European background or started in 1600 and emphasized the American frontier. In recent decades American schools and universities typically have shifted back in time to include more on the colonial period and much more on the prehistory of the Native peoples.^[1][2]

Indigenous peoples lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years and developed complex cultures before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. The Spanish had small settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. By the 1770s,thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. In the 1760s British government imposed a series of new taxes while rejecting the American argument that any new taxes had to be approved by the people. Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party (1774), led to punitive laws (the Intolerable Acts) by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts. American Patriots (as they were called at the time as a term of ridicule) adhered to a political ideology called republicanism that emphasized civic duty, virtue, and opposition to corruption, fancy luxuries and aristocracy.

All 13 colonies united in a Congress that led to armed conflict in April 1775. The Patriots drove the royal officials out of every colony and set up state governments. On July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independencedrafted by Thomas Jefferson.

With large-scale military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the American Patriots won the Revolutionary War. The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River (except Florida and Canada). The central government established by the Articles of Confederationproved ineffectual at providing stability, as it had no authority to collect taxes and had no executive officer. Congress called a convention to meet secretly in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. It wrote a a new Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791 a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. With George Washington as the Union's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief political and financial adviser, a strong central government was created. When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of the US. A second and last war with Britain was fought in 1812.

Encouraged by the notion of Manifest Destiny, federal territory expanded all the way to the Pacific. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit off the institution, producing high-value cotton exports to feed increasing high demand in Europe. The 1860 presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincolnon a platform of ending the expansion of slavery and putting it on a path to extinction. Seven cotton-based deep South slave states seceded and founded the Confederacy in 1861. No nation ever recognized the Confederacy, but it opened the war by attacking Fort Sumter in April 1861. A surge of nationalist outrage in the North fueled a long, intense American Civil War (1861-1865). It was fought largely in the South as the overwhelming material and manpower advantages of the North proved decisive in a long war. The result was restoration of the Union, the impoverishment of the South, and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era (1863–77) legal and voting rights were extended to the Freedmen (freed slaves). The national government emerged much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, legal segregation and Jim Crow laws kept African-Americans as second class citizens in the South with little power until the 1960s.

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and Midwest and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed with the work of Chinese immigrants and large-scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Mass dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s, which led to many social and political reforms. In 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed women's suffrage (right to vote). This followed the 16th and 17th amendments in 1909 and 1912, which established the first national income tax and direct election of US senators to Congress.

Initially neutral in World War I, the US declared war on Germany in 1917 and funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wideGreat Depression. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform. The New Deal, which defined modern American liberalism, included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II alongside Britain, the Soviet Union and the smaller Allies. The US financed the Allied war effort and helped defeat Nazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newly invented atomic bombs, defeated and occupied Japan in the Pacific War.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers after World War II. During Cold War, the US and the USSR confronted one another indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, proxy wars and propaganda campaigns.US foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan along with the policy of "containment" or stopping the spread of communism. The US joined wars in Korea and Vietnam to stop its spread. In the 1960s, in large part due to the strength of the civil rights movement, another wave of social reforms were enacted during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African-Americans and other minorities. Native American activism also rose. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States as the world's only superpower. As the 21st century began, international conflict centered around the Middle East and spread to Asia and Africa following the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaedaon the United States. In 2008 the United States had its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, which has been followed by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.

History Of Brazil

The Portuguese were the first European settlers to arrive in the area, led by adventurous Pedro Cabral, who began the colonial period in 1500. The Portuguese reportedly found native Indians numbering around seven million. Most tribes were peripatetic, with only limited agriculture and temporary dwellings, although villages often had as many as 5000 inhabitants. Cultural life appears to have been richly developed, although both tribal warfare and cannibalism were ubiquitous. The few remaining traces of Brazil's Indian tribes reveal little of their lifestyle, unlike the evidence from other Andean tribes. Today, fewer than 200,000 of Brazil's indigenous people survive, most of whom inhabit the jungle areas.

Other Portuguese explorers followed Cabral, in search of valuable goods for European trade but also for unsettled land and the opportunity to escape poverty in Portugal itself.   The only item of value they discovered was the pau do brasil (brazil wood tree) from which they created red dye. Unlike the colonizing philosophy of the Spanish, the Portuguese in Brazil were much less focused at first on conquering, controlling, and developing the country. Most were impoverished sailors, who were far more interested in profitable trade and subsistence agriculture than in territorial expansion. The country's interior remained unexplored.

Nonetheless, sugar soon came to Brazil, and with it came imported slaves.  To a degree unequaled in most of the American colonies, the Portuguese settlers frequently intermarried with both the Indians and the African slaves, and there were also mixed marriages between the Africans and Indians. As a result, Brazil's population is intermingled to a degree that is unseen elsewhere. Most Brazilians possess some combination of European, African, Amerindian, Asian, and Middle Eastern lineage,and this multiplicity of cultural legacies is a notable feature of current Brazilian culture.

The move to open the country's interior coincided with the discovery in the 1690s of gold in the south-central part of the country. The country's gold deposits didn't pan out, however, and by the close of the 18th century the country's focus had returned to the coastal agricultural regions. In 1807, as Napoleon Bonaparte closed in on Portugal's capital city of Lisbon, the Prince Regent shipped himself off to Brazil. Once there, Dom Joao established the colony as the capital of his empire. By 1821 things in Europe had cooled down sufficiently that Dom Joao could return  to Lisbon, and  he left his son Dom Pedro I in charge of Brazil. When the king attempted the following year to return Brazil to subordinate status as a colony, Dom Pedro flourished his sword and declared the country's independence from Portugal (and his own independence from his father).

In the 19th century coffee took the place of sugar as Brazil's most important product. The boom in coffee production brought a wave of almost one million European immigrants, mostly Italians, and also brought about the Brazilian republic. In 1889, the wealthy coffee magnates backed a military coup, the emperor fled, and Brazil was no more an imperial country. The coffee planters virtually owned the country and the government for the next thirty years, until the worldwide depression evaporated coffee demand. For the next half century Brazil struggled with governmental instability, military coups, and a fragile economy. In 1989, the country enjoyed its first democratic election in almost three decades. Unfortunately, the Brazilians made the mistake of electing Fernando Collor de Mello. Mello's corruption did nothing to help the economy, but his peaceful removal from office indicated at least that the country's political and governmental structures are stable.

Brazil has the sixth largest population in the world--about 148 million people--which has doubled in the past 30 years. Because of its size,  there are only 15 people per sq. km, concentrated mainly along the coast and in the major cities, where two-thirds of the people now live: over 19 million in greater Sao Paulo and 10 million in greater Rio.

The immigrant Portuguese language was greatly influenced by the numerous Indian and African dialects they encountered, but it remains the dominant language in Brazil today. In fact, the Brazilian dialect has become the dominant influence in the development of the Portuguese language, for the simple reason that Brazil has 15 times the population of Portugal and a much more dynamic linguistic environment.  

History of Pakistan

HISTORY:Pakistan traces its history back to 2,500 years B.C., when a highly developed civilization in the Indus Valley, excavations at Harappa, Moenjodaro, Kot Diji and Mehr Garh have brought to light, the evidence of an advanced civilization existing even in more ancient times.

Around 1,500 B.C., the Aryans overwhelmed this region, and influenced the Hindu civilization, whose center moved to Ganges Valley, further east. Later, the Persians occupied the northern region in the 5th century B.C. up to the 2nd century A.D. The Greeks came in 327 B.C., under Alexander of Macedonia, and passed away like a meteor. In 712 AD, the Arabs, led by Muhammad Bin Qasim, Landed somewhere near modern Karachi and ruled the lower half of Pakistan for two hundred years. During this time, Islam took roots in the soil and influenced the life, culture and traditions of the people.

In the 10th century AD, began the systematic conquest of South Asia by the Muslims from Central Asia, who ruled here up to the 18th century,. Then the British became the masters of the land and ruled for nearly 200 years and for only 100 years over what is Pakistan now. The Muslim revival began towards the end of the last century when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a renowned Muslim leader and educationist, launched a movement for intellectual renaissance of the Muslims of South Asia. In 1930, the well known poet - philosopher, Allama muhammad Iqbal, conceived the idea of a separate state for the Muslims of the South Asia. In 1940, a resolution was adopted by the all-India Muslim League, demanding a separate dependent homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. After seven years of un-tiring struggle under the brilliant leadership of Quaid-e-Azam (The great leader) Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan emerged on the world map as a sovereign state, on 14th August, 1947.