Alexandria | |
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State | Virginia |
Country | United States of America |
Capital | |
Population | 160035 |
Postcode | 22314 |
Alexandria ( or ; Arabic: الإسكندرية al-ʾIskandariyya; Egyptian Arabic: اسكندرية Eskendereyya; Coptic: ⲣⲁⲕⲟϯ Rakodī; Greek: Αλεξάνδρεια Alexandria) is the second-largest city in Egypt and a major economic centre. With a population of 5,200,000, Alexandria is the largest city on the Mediterranean - also called the Bride of the Mediterranean by locals - the sixth-largest city in the Arab world and the ninth-largest in Africa. The city extends about 40 km (25 mi) at the northern coast of Egypt along the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandria is a popular tourist destination, and also an important industrial centre because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.
Alexandria was founded in c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and leader of the Greek League of Corinth, during his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. An Egyptian village named Rhacotis existed at the location and grew into the Egyptian quarter of Alexandria. Alexandria grew rapidly to become an important centre of Hellenistic civilization and remained the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman and Byzantine Egypt for almost 1,000 years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, when a new capital was founded at Fustat (later absorbed into Cairo).
Vladivostok | |
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State | |
Country | |
Capital | |
Population | 606589 |
Vladivostok (Russian: Владивосто́к, IPA: [vlədʲɪvɐˈstok] (listen)) is the largest city and the administrative centre of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Golden Horn Bay on the Pacific Ocean, covering an area of 331.16 square kilometres (127.86 square miles), with a population of 606,561 residents, up to 812,319 residents in the urban agglomeration. Vladivostok is the second-largest city in the Far Eastern Federal District, as well as the Russian Far East.
The city was founded in 1860 as a Russian military outpost after the Treaty of Aigun and the Convention of Peking with the Qing dynasty. In 1872, the main Russian naval base on the Pacific Ocean was transferred to the city, and thereafter Vladivostok began to grow. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Vladivostok was occupied in 1918 by foreign troops, the last of whom were not withdrawn until 1922, by that time the anti-revolutionary White Army forces in Vladivostok promptly collapsed, and Soviet power was established in the city.