84 Facts About Lithuania

Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe.

The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were in a de facto personal union from 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Hedwig and Lithuania's Grand Duke Jogaila, who was crowned King jure uxoris Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland.

In World War II, Lithuania was occupied first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany.

On 11 March 1990, a year before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania passed the Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, becoming the first Soviet republic to proclaim its independence.

Lithuania is a developed country, with a high income advanced economy; ranking very high in the Human Development Index.

Related searches

Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, eurozone, the Nordic Investment Bank, Schengen Agreement, NATO and OECD.

The inhabitants of what is Lithuania then travelled less and engaged in local hunting, gathering and fresh-water fishing.

Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania.

Lithuania was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity.

From 1573, the Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania were elected by the nobility, who were granted ever-increasing Golden Liberties.

The state of Lithuania which had been built within the framework of the Act lasted from 1918 until 1940.

Lithuania continued to claim Vilnius as its de jure capital and relations with Poland remained particularly tense and hostile for the entire interwar period.

In January 1923, Lithuania staged the Klaipeda Revolt and captured Klaipeda Region which was detached from East Prussia by the Treaty of Versailles.

On 20 March 1939, after years of rising tensions, Lithuania was handed an ultimatum by Nazi Germany demanding it relinquish the Klaipeda Region.

When Nazi Germany and Soviet Union concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Lithuania was initially assigned to the German sphere of influence but was later transferred to the Soviet sphere.

Lithuania became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, German civil administration.

Lithuania became the first Soviet-occupied state to announce the restitution of independence.

People from all over Lithuania flooded to Vilnius to defend their legitimately elected Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania and independence.

On 25 October 1992, the citizens of Lithuania voted in a referendum to adopt the current constitution.

On 1 January 2015, Lithuania joined the eurozone and adopted the European Union's single currency as the last of the Baltic states.

On 24 February 2022, Lithuania declared the state of emergency in response to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Lithuania has a temperate climate with both maritime and continental influences.

Lithuania experienced a drought in 2002, causing forest and peat bog fires.

Lithuania is home to two terrestrial ecoregions: Central European mixed forests and Sarmatic mixed forests.

Lithuania has five national parks, 30 regional parks, 402 nature reserves, 668 state-protected natural heritage objects.

Related searches

In 2018 Lithuania was ranked fifth, second to Sweden in the Climate Change Performance Index .

Since Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence on 11 March 1990, it has maintained strong democratic traditions.

Lithuania was one of the first countries in the world to grant women a right to vote in the elections.

President of Lithuania is the head of state of the country, elected to a five-year term in a majority vote.

Law enforcement in Lithuania is primarily the responsibility of local Lietuvos policija commissariats.

Capital punishment in Lithuania was suspended in 1996 and fully eliminated in 1998.

Lithuania has the highest number of prison inmates in the EU.

Lithuania became a member of the United Nations on 18 September 1991, and is a signatory to a number of its organizations and other international agreements.

Lithuania gained membership in the World Trade Organization on 31 May 2001, and joined the OECD on 5 July 2018, while seeking membership in other Western organizations.

In 2011, Lithuania hosted the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ministerial Council Meeting.

Lithuania is active in developing cooperation among northern European countries.

Lithuania cooperates with Nordic and the two other Baltic countries through the NB8 format.

Nordic Council of Ministers and Lithuania engage in political cooperation to attain mutual goals and to determine new trends and possibilities for joint cooperation.

Lithuania, together with the five Nordic countries and the two other Baltic countries, is a member of the Nordic Investment Bank and cooperates in its NORDPLUS programme, which is committed to education.

Lithuania maintains greatly warm mutual relations with Georgia and strongly supports its European Union and NATO aspirations.

In 2013, Lithuania was elected to the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term, becoming the first Baltic country elected to this post.

In 2019 Lithuania condemned the Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria.

In December 2021, Lithuania reported that in an escalation of the diplomatic spat with China over its relations with Taiwan, China had stopped all imports from Lithuania.

Since the summer of 2005, Lithuania has been part of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, leading a Provincial Reconstruction Team in the town of Chaghcharan in the province of Ghor.

Lithuania has an open and mixed economy that is classified as high-income economy by the World Bank.

Related searches

Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, EU in 2004, Schengen in 2007 and OECD in 2018.

FDI into Lithuania spiked in 2017, reaching its highest ever recorded number of greenfield investment projects.

In 2017, Lithuania was third country, after Ireland and Singapore by the average job value of investment projects.

Lithuania has a flat tax rate rather than a progressive scheme.

Lithuania has granted a total of 39 e-money licenses, second in the EU only to the U K with 128 licenses.

In 1999, the Seimas of Lithuania adopted a Law on Product Safety, and in 2000 it adopted a Law on Food.

Foundation of the University of Vilnius in 1579 was a major factor of establishing local scientist community in Lithuania and making connections with other universities and scientists of Europe.

Lithuania was ranked 39th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021.

Lithuania has launched three satellites to space: LitSat-1, Lituanica SAT-1 and LituanicaSAT-2.

In 2017, Lithuania was top 30 in the world by average mobile broadband speeds and top 20 by average fixed broadband speeds.

Lithuania was top 7 in 2017 in the List of countries by 4G LTE penetration.

In 2016, Lithuania was ranked 17th in United Nations' e-participation index.

Lithuania is 44th globally ranked country on data center density according to Cloudscene.

Lithuania received its first railway connection in the middle of the 19th century, when the Warsaw – Saint Petersburg Railway was constructed.

In 2017, Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai, a company that operates most railway lines in Lithuania, received EU penalty for breaching EU's antitrust laws and restricting competition.

Lithuania has one of the largest fresh water supplies, compared with other countries in Europe.

Consequently, Lithuania is one of very few European countries where groundwater is used for centralized water supply.

Lithuania has a sub-replacement fertility rate: the total fertility rate in Lithuania was 1.

Poles in Lithuania are the largest minority, concentrated in southeast Lithuania .

Russians in Lithuania are the second largest minority, concentrated mostly in two cities.

Related searches

Lithuania provides free state-funded healthcare to all citizens and registered long-term residents.

In 2016, Lithuania ranked 27th in Europe in the Euro health consumer index, a ranking of European healthcare systems based on waiting time, results and other indicators.

Suicide in Lithuania has been a subject of research, but the main reasons behind the high rate are thought to be both psychological and economic, including: social transformations and economic recessions, alcoholism, lack of tolerance in the society, bullying.

Lithuania has one of the lowest health care prices in Europe.

Lithuania was historically home to a significant Jewish community and was an important centre of Jewish scholarship and culture from the 18th century until the eve of World War II.

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania proposes national educational policies and goals that are then voted for in the Seimas.

Several famous Lithuania-related architects are notable for their achievements in the field of architecture.

Lithuania has some very famous theatre directors well known in the country and abroad.

Lithuania was awarded more than forty times with special prizes.

Lithuania has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe.

Lithuania has a long farmhouse beer tradition, first mentioned in 11th century chronicles.

Lithuania is top 5 by consumption of beer per capita in Europe in 2015, counting 75 active breweries, 32 of them are microbreweries.

The microbrewery scene in Lithuania has been growing in later years, with a number of bars focusing on these beers popping up in Vilnius and in other parts of the country.

Constitution of Lithuania provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice.

Lithuania has produced a number of NBA players, including Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis, and current NBA players Jonas Valanciunas, Domantas Sabonis, and Ignas Brazdeikis.

Lithuania has won a total of 26 medals at the Olympic Games, including 6 gold medals in athletics, modern pentathlon, shooting, and swimming.

Discus thrower Virgilijus Alekna is the most successful Olympic athlete of independent Lithuania, having won gold medals in the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens games, as well as a bronze in 2008 Summer Olympics and numerous World Championship medals.

Lithuania has produced prominent athletes in athletics, modern pentathlon, road and track cycling, chess, rowing, aerobatics, strongman, wrestling, boxing, mixed martial arts, Kyokushin Karate, and other sports.

Lithuania hosted the 2021 FIFA Futsal World Cup, the first time Lithuania had hosted a FIFA tournament.