Bangkok | |
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State | Bangkok |
Country | Thailand |
Capital | |
Population | 8600000 |
Postcode | 10200 |
Bangkok is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep. The town occupies 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi) from the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population of 10.539 million as of 2020, 15.3 percent of the country's population. Over fourteen million people (22.2 percent) lived within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region in the 2010 census, making Bangkok an extreme primate town, dwarfing Thailand's other metropolitan centres in both size and importance to the national economy.
Bangkok traces its roots to a small trading post during the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 15th century, which eventually grew and became the site of two capital cities: Thonburi in 1768 and Rattanakosin in 1782. Bangkok was at the heart of the modernization of Siam, later renamed Thailand, during the late-19th century, as the country faced pressures from the West. The city was in the centre of Thailand's political conflicts throughout the 20th century, as the country abolished absolute monarchy, embraced constitutional rule, and underwent numerous coups and lots of uprisings. The city, incorporated as a special administrative area under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in 1972, grew rapidly during the 1960s through the 1980s and now exerts a substantial impact on Thailand's politics, economy, education, media and modern society.
The Asian investment boom in the 1980s and 1990s led many multinational corporations to locate their regional headquarters in Bangkok.
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.