* 1941 – World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organization is put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers after the Axis Operation 25 invasion.

* 1945 – Osijek, Croatia, is liberated from fascist occupation.

The date is celebrated in Croatia as Victory Day.

This farmland is a part of the Parapannonian Plain stretching into neighbouring Croatia and Serbia.

Sava is making a natural border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and towns like Brčko, Bosanski Šamac, Bosanska Gradiška lies on the river.

The road Karlovac-Plitvice Lakes-Knin, which is on the European route E71, is becoming increasingly unused because Croatia built a separate highway to the west of it.

The sport is also very popular on the eastern side of the Adriatic, especially in Slovenia ( where it is known as balinanje or colloquial playing boče or bale from Italian bocce or palle meaning balls ), Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Hercegovina ( in Serbo-Croatian known under the name of boćanje or simply playing boće ( colloquial also bućanje or playing balote ), originating in Italian boccie ).

The largest proportion of the sites is in the northern Croatia river valleys, and the most significant cultures whose presence was discovered include Starčevo, Vučedol and Baden cultures.

According to the work De Administrando Imperio written by the 10th-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, the Croats had arrived in what is today Croatia in the early 7th century, however that claim is disputed and competing hypotheses date the event between the 6th and the 9th centuries.

Separate coronation as King of Croatia was gradually allowed to fall into abeyance and last crowned king is Charles Robert in 1301 after which Croatia contented herself with a separate diploma

The population density is 75. 8 inhabitants per square kilometre, and the overall life expectancy in Croatia at birth is 75. 7 years.

Croatia is currently in the fourth or fifth stage of the demographic transition.

Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats ( 89. 6 %), while minorities include Serbs ( 4. 5 %), and 21 other ethnicities ( less than 1 % each ).

The demographic history of Croatia is marked by significant migrations, including the arrival of the Croats in the area growth of Hungarian and German speaking population since the personal union of Croatia and Hungary, and joining of the Habsburg Empire, migrations set off by Ottoman conquests and growth of Italian speaking population in Istria and in Dalmatia during Venetian rule there.

The Croatian language is the official language of Croatia, but minority languages are officially used in some local government units.

The politics of Croatia are defined by a parliamentary, representative democratic republic framework, where the Prime Minister of Croatia is the head of government in a multi-party system.

Executive power is exercised by the government and the President of Croatia.

The government (), the main executive power of Croatia, is headed by the prime minister, who has four deputy prime ministers, three of whom also serve as government ministers.

Further south, near Vukovar and near Šarengrad, there are two river islands ( Vukovarska ada and Šarengradska ada ) which have been part of SR Croatia ( during Yugoslavia ) but during the war they came under Serbian control.

In Croatia, from the 12th century, Glagolitic inscriptions appeared mostly in littoral areas: Istria, Primorje, Kvarner and Kvarner islands, notably Krk, Cres and Lošinj ; in Dalmatia, on the islands of Zadar, but there were also findings in inner Lika and Krbava, reaching to Kupa river, and even as far as Međimurje and Slovenia.

* Meteor hydrofoils are operated by a number of tour operators in Croatia, mostly for packaged tours, but there are also some scheduled services to islands in Adriatic.

Josip Broz Tito greeting Eleanor Roosevelt during her visit to the Brijuni islands, SR Croatia | Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia | Yugoslavia ( July 1953 )

Italy annexed south-western Drava Banovina, coastal parts of Croatia ( Dalmatia and the islands ), and attached Kosovo to Albania ( occupied since 1939 ).

This species breeds on islands in the Mediterranean particularly off Greece ( where two-thirds of the world's population breeds ), but also in the Canary Islands, Ibiza and off Spain, Italy, Croatia, Morocco and Algeria.

The Kornati () archipelago of Croatia, also known as the Stomorski islands, is located in the northern part of Dalmatia, south from Zadar and west from Šibenik, in the Šibenik-Knin county.

Pelagosa ), belonging to Croatia, are usually considered as islands off the peninsula and in this sense geographically grouped along with it.

Much of the population of the coastal regions of Croatia and the Adriatic islands has origins in Bosnia.

In Southern Europe, it has been found in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey, with unconfirmed reports in Andorra, Gibraltar and Monaco ; it has been introduced by humans to some European islands, such as Canary Islands.

In Croatia, the CARNet network connects the major Croatian towns and cities on the mainland and a number of settlements on the islands.

The Brijuni Agreement (, ) is a document signed on the Brijuni islands near Pula, Croatia, on 7 July 1991 by representatives of the Republic of Slovenia, Republic of Croatia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the political sponsorship of the European Community.

In the summer there are ferries and hydrofoils to Croatia run primarily by SNAV to Split and islands in central Dalmatia.

Čakavian is spoken mainly in the northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley of Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.

It is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along the eastern Adriatic: Adriatic islands, and sporadically in the mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro.

On May first the Balkan frontiers were once again reshuffled, with the creation of several puppet states, such as Croatia and Montenegro, the Albanian expansion into Greece and Yugoslavia, Bulgarian annexation of territories in the Greek North, creation of a Vlach state in the Greek mountains of Pindus and the annexation of all the Ionian and part of the Aegean islands into Italy.

Silba (; ) is an island in Croatia with an area of 15 km < sup > 2 </ sup >, northern Dalmatia, south-east of Lošinj, between the islands of Premuda and Olib.

Unlike its northern neighbour Croatia, Montenegro has no large inhabited islands along the coast.

The mission of the Croatian Navy ( HRM ) is to defend the integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia, to promote and protect its interest in the Adriatic Sea, islands and coast-lands.

Croatia has two main wine regions: Continental ( Kontinetalna ) and Coastal ( Primorska ), which includes the islands.

Recently Croatia has opted to build a bridge to the Pelješac peninsula to connect the Croatian mainland with the exclave but Bosnia and Herzegovina has protested that it will close their way to international waters ( although Croatian territory and territorial waters surround Bosnian-Herzegovinan ones completely ) and has suggested that the bridge must be higher than 55 meters for free passage of all types of ships.

Later in the same century, Croatia was so weak that its parliament authorized Ferdinand Habsburg to carve out large areas of Croatia and Slavonia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire for the creation of the Military Frontier ( Vojna Krajina, German Militaergrenze ) which would be ruled directly from Vienna's military headquarters.

Following the defeat of the Independent State of Croatia at the end of the war, a large number of Ustaše, and civilians supporting them ( ranging from sympathisers, young conscripts, anti-communists, and ordinary serfs who were allegedly motivated by Partisan crimes ) attempted to flee in the direction of Austria hoping to surrender to British forces and to be given refuge.

In 2003 USAID considered Croatia to be on a " glide path for graduation " along with Bulgaria.

Recently Croatia has opted to build a bridge to the Pelješac peninsula to connect the Croatian mainland with the exclave but Bosnia and Herzegovina has protested that it will close their way to international waters ( although Croatian territory and territorial waters surround Bosnian-Herzegovinan ones completely ) and has suggested that the bridge must be higher than 55 meters for free passage of all types of ships.

In addition to his administrative and legal impact on history, the Emperor Diocletian is considered to be the founder of the city of Split in modern-day Croatia.

In addition, among EU states, the Italian language is most likely to be learned as a second language in Malta by 61 % of the population, as well as in Slovenia by 15 % of the population, in Croatia by 14 % of the population, Austria by 11 % of the population, Romania by 8 % of the population, and by France and Greece by 6 % of the population.

The wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were largely about creating a new political framework of states, each of which would be ethnically and politically homogeneous.

In order to deport foreign Jews living in the Reich, Ribbentrop then had Luther negotiate agreements with the governments of Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia to allow Jews holding citizenship of those states to be deported.

Ribbentrop halted deportations from Romania and Croatia ; in the case of the former, he was insulted because the SS were negotiating with the Romanians directly, and in the case of the latter because the SS and Luther were jointly pressuring the Italians in their zone of occupation in Croatia to deport their Jews without first informing Ribbentrop, who was supposed to be personally kept abreast of all developments in Italo-German relations.

In the Eastern European countries of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Croatia and Romania, Merlot is often produced as a full bodied wine that can be very similar to Cabernet Sauvignon.

* 879 – Pope John VIII gives blessings to Branimir of Croatia and to the Croatian people, considered to be international recognition of the Croatian state.

Presently Slovenia ( 89 % Slovene ), Croatia ( 88 % Croat ) and Serbia ( 83 % Serb ) could be classified as nation states per se, whereas Macedonia ( 66 % Macedonian ), Montenegro ( 42 % Montenegrin ) and Bosnia and Herzegovina ( 47 % Bosniak ) are multinational states.

An olive tree on the island of Brijuni ( Brioni ), Istria in Croatia, has been calculated to be about 1, 600 years old.

* In late 2002, Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia adopted an interim agreement to settle the disputed Prevlaka Peninsula, allowing the withdrawal of the UN monitoring mission ( UNMOP ), but discussions could be complicated by the inability of Serbia and Montenegro to come to an agreement on the economic aspects of the new federal union.

* The first arboretum to be designed and planted is the Arboretum Trsteno, near Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Outside of the regions discussed above, Chardonnay can be found in cooler climate sites in Greece, Israel and Lebanon as well as Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, England, Georgia, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Serbia and Switzerland.

7, 000 spectators in the Hall Tivoli saw that the hosts became the first team to beat Croatia in this tournament despite 12 goals from Croatian right winger Mirza Džomba who was reputed to be the best handball player in the world at the time.

The US assistant secretary of state for European affairs told delegates at a NATO conference in Croatia that he hoped that Kosovo's future could be resolved in the months leading up to the alliance's next summit meeting in Romania in April of that year.

* Rakia is a type of fruit brandy produced in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia ; it may be made from plums, apples, quinces, pears, apricots, cherries, mulberries, grapes, or walnuts.

Croatia will be the first country that entered the EU alone ( since other countries entered together in 2004 and 2007 )

The Independent State of Croatia ( Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, or NDH ) was declared to be a member of the Axis on 10 April 1941 and joined the Tripartite Pact on June 15, 1941.