Lithuania

The Republic of Lithuania is a country in northern Europe. The Baltic Sea borders the country to the west and shares its borders with Belarus, Latvia, Poland and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast.

The Lithuanian landscape is predominantly flat, with a few low hills in the western uplands and eastern highlands. The highest point is Aukštasis at 294 metres. Lithuania has 758 rivers, more than 2 800 lakes and 99 km of the Baltic Sea coastline, which are mostly devoted to recreation and nature preservation. Forests cover just over 30% of the country.http://europa.eu/abc/european_countries/eu_members/lithuania/index_en.htm

Lithuanians are very proud nation - they were the last country to adopt Christianity in Europe in 1387 and the first to declare independence from the USSR in 1990.http://www.inyourpocket.com/country/lithuania.html<ref>

Present-day Lithuanians, along with Latvians and ancient Prussians, are descendants of the Balts, an Indo-European ethnic group that settled on the Baltic coast 4000 years ago. The name of Lithuania was first mentioned in the Quedlinburg Annals in 1009.http://www.iexplore.com/dmap/Lithuania/Overview

In 1236 the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas who was officially coronated as King of Lithuania, on July 6, 1253. Lithuania extended its territory to include most of present-day Belarus and Ukraine and by the end of the 14th century was the largest state in Europe. This power enabled Lithuania to withstand the advance of the Teutonic Knights and to reach, together with Poland, the decisive victory at the Zalgiris (Tannenberg) battle in 1410.http://www.iexplore.com/dmap/Lithuania/Overview An alliance with Poland in 1386 continued as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which was formed in 1569 and lasted until 1795 when the joint state was dissolved and its lands partitioned to Russia, Prussia and Austria.

After gaining its independence following World War I the country was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Lithuania was the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence in March 1990 a move not recognize by the USSR until September 1991. After soviet troops left Lithuania in 1993 it restructured its economy and joined both NATO and the European Union in the Spring of 2004.