Stroggy, I think you should write about Israel...
Anyway - I'll give you some details of Slovenia next:
It's a country that has a short coast line, has Alps, and streaches out to the Panonia plains all on 20.000 square kilometers.
It has just under 2 million people (56% christian - 35% atheist).
It gained it's independency in 1991.
The brief history:
At the begining of the 7th century Slavic tribes moved into this area (curently there is some dispute weather Slovenes are a part of south (Croatians, Serbs,...) or west (Polish, Slovak,...) Slavic tribes. They formed a state KARANTANIA that had an elected monarch as a soverign (KNEZ), who got his power from the nobility (KOSEZI) for a five year long turn. After five years he was eithere re-elected or some other noble took his place). But due to the misfortunate aliances they had to recognise the sovregnity of the Frank empire (Charles the Great) as a part of the Bavarian feudal theritory. Thus German nobility got the position of th KNEZ and the loss of independency was here.
Then the theretory was devided into feudal land marks that were in the hands of Italian and German sovregns (under the holy roman empire of the german nation or the Venice republic).
Under the ocupation of Napoleon Bonaparte halfo of Slovene teritories were united with some neighbouring theritories to form Illiric provinces (early 19th century). As the resoult of thet the voices were raised to unite Slovenia (the first name, the flag and a sort of an national anthem as well as the first decleratin for unification came in 1848).
After that it was a political struggle to keep the language and a struggle to build up a national economy (under the Austrian - latter AustroUngarian - regime).
At the end of the WW1 Slovenia joined with Croatia, Bosnia and parts of Serbia (that were under the Habsburg monarchy) into an independant state, but was never formaly recognised, so they joined with the kingdom of Serbia (that united with the kingdom of Montenegro) into a kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - under the kings dictatorship named Yugoslavia.
On the 6th of April 1941 they were attacked by the German forces and surrendered within 6 days. During the time of ocupation there was also a civil war and the communist party emerged vistorious. On the 29th of November 1943 they made a constitution proclaiming the new Yugoslavia to be a republic - it later became a socialistic republic.
The communist movemant was so strong that their partisan army was recognised as a part of the allied armies (the 4th strongest) so they gaind a status of a state that has liberated itself (was very importaint because no foregin armies had bases here). This fact alowed Josip Broz Tito (the leader of the communist party) to develop his own model of state - and not to be a pupet of Stalin. Thus the regime in Yugoslavia was less extreme.
There were many ethnical differences and also different regions were unequaly developed, but the main problem was that all decisions to improve the way of life were made at an unpractical political level, so after the death of Tito the country was deep in depth and had no was out of the crisis (nor a strong enough persona to hold it all together).
So in 1991 Slovenia proclaimed its independance.
Slovenia is curiosly enough a country that holds some weird records:
Na Golici is the most played song in Europe after the WW2,
Martin Strel is the man who swam the rivers of Danube, Mississipy and Yongce (the world recor in ultra marathon swimming),
Our radio station Radio Center has the record of a DJ who aired for 4 days without sleep,
Our schools have the record of most people ever dancing the "cetvorka" simoltaniasly (all school kids of senior classes danced it at the same time on the streets of different cities),
The world ski jump record was set in Slovenia (Planica),
The ski course for the "Golden Fox" ladies slalom and Giant Slalom is the oldest regular event in the ladies world cup skiing competition,
The oldest grape-wine in the world is in Maribor (the second largest city in Slovenia),
The oldest olimpic gold medalist was a Slovenian (Leon Stukelj - died at the age of 101)...
There are many other things I could tell you, but don't wanna brag too much...
