The first Lithuanians were a branch of an ancient Indo-European group known as the Balts, whose tribes also included the original Prussian and Latvian people.

* March 14 – Jānis Čakste, Latvian politician, first president of Latvian Republic ( b. 1859 )

Latvian in Latin script was first based upon the German alphabet, while the alphabet of the Latgalian dialect was based on the Polish alphabet.

At the age of three Marta was taken by an aunt and sent to Marienburg ( the present-day Alūksne in Latvia, near the border with Estonia and Russia ) where she was raised by Johann Ernst Glück, a Lutheran pastor and educator who was the first to translate the Bible into Latvian.

On 22 July 2005, the first Latvian gay pride march took place in Riga, surrounded by protesters.

Their form seriously dipped in 1998 – 99 as they were rooted to the bottom of the table for much of the first half of the season, but they again avoided relegation on the last day of the season after a late run of good results, helped by the intervention of Latvian Marian Pahars and old hero Le Tissier ( The so-called " Great Escape ").

While the notion of needing to remove alien influences to reconstruct Latvian traditions was preserved into later times, the attempts to create an Olympus-like pantheon of pseudo-gods eventually stopped as national romanticism was replaced by realism and came to be criticized in the first half of 20th century.

Russian artist Viatcheslav Koleichuk claimed that the idea of tensegrity was invented first by Karl Ioganson, Russian artist of Latvian descent, who contributed some works to the main exhibition of Russian constructivism in 1921.

Between 1877 – 1882 the political and literary weekly newspaper Liepājas Pastnieks was published – the first Latvian language newspaper in Liepāja.

Tal won his first Latvian title in 1953, and was awarded the title of Candidate Master.

During the first period of Latvian independence, besides those employed by the railways, small business, trades and crafts were the most important economic activities in the town.

The town is named after Krišjānis Valdemārs, born in nearby Ārlava parish, who was one of the leaders of the first Latvian National Awakening.

The lats was first introduced in 1922, replacing the Latvian rublis at a rate of 1 lats = 50 rubļi.

The first head of the 4th Directorate was Janis Karlovich Berzin, a Latvian Communist and former member of the Cheka, who remained in the post until 28 November 1937, when he was arrested and subsequently liquidated during Joseph Stalin's purges.

The first recorded Westerner to reach the river that feeds the falls was Latvian explorer Aleksandrs Laime, also known as Alejandro Laime to the native Pemon tribe.

On October 8 and 9 the first congress of the Latvian People's Front was held.

There she received her first education in Latvian primary school at a refugee camp in Lübeck, Germany.

Although not a candidate in the first ballot, she was drafted by the Saeima ( Latvian Parliament ) and was elected to the office of President of Latvia on 20 June.

The first Latvian corporation, Lettonia was founded in 1870 at the University of Tartu ( then Dorpat ).

He first entered politics in 1988 as one of the founders of the Latvian National Independence Movement ( LNNK ), a political organization promoting Latvia's independence from the Soviet Union.

In its first election in 1993, Latvian Way won 32. 4 % of popular vote and became the leading party in a coalition government.

However at the 2010 elections, the first after the Latvian economic crisis, the party lost most of its support, winning just 4 seats in the elections.

Latvian appeared in a hymnal in 1530 and in a printed Catechism in 1585.

Already during czarist Russian rule, two editions appeared of the Latvian Konversācijas vārdnīca ( 2 volumes, 1891 – 1893 ; 4 volumes, 1906 – 1921 ).

The bands interviews appeared in dozens of the magazines, Latvian dailies.

Asking who could appreciate such literature in Latvian ( Alunāns ' book was the first major translation of classic foreign poetry into Latvian ), Brasche warned that those daring to dream of " a Young Latvia " would meet the tragic fate of the boatman in Heine's poem " Die Lorelei ," a translation of which appeared in Alunāns ' anthology.

The group is usually divided into two sub-groups: Western Baltic, containing only extinct languages, and Eastern Baltic, containing both extinct and the two living languages in the group: Lithuanian ( including both Standard Lithuanian and Samogitian ) and Latvian ( including both literary Latvian and Latgalian ).

The River Daugava ( in Latvian ) or Western Dvina (;,, Дзвiна, Dzvina ; ), not to be confused with Northern Dvina, is a river rising in the Valdai Hills, Russia, flowing through Russia, Belarus, and Latvia, draining into the Gulf of Riga in Latvia, an arm of the Baltic Sea.

Therefore, some Latvian diplomatic and consular representations continued to function from 1940 through 1991 in some Western countries ( USA, Australia, UK etc.

Members of the Latvian diplomatic service in Western countries continued to formulate and express the official opinion of the Republic of Latvia, and protected the interests of Latvia and their citizens abroad throughout these 50 years.

Latvia was not allowed to establish a government-in-exile in any Western country or sign the Declaration of the United Nations ( 1942 ), as Latvian diplomats wished.

The Latvian electronics industry had trouble competing with Western companies when the markets were opened in the early 1990s.

As in Estonia and Lithuania, the partisans were killed off and infiltrated by the MVD and NKVD over time, and as in Estonia and Lithuania, Western assistance and intelligence was severely compromised by Soviet counter-intelligence and Latvian double agents such as Augusts Bergmanis and Vidvuds Sveics.

On 5 June 1946, the Latvian SSR legislature passed a regulation on language reform that officially replaced the letter Ŗ with R in print.

The letters CH, Ō and Ŗ continue to be used in print throughout most of the Latvian diaspora communities, whose founding members left their homeland before the post-World War II Soviet-era language reforms.

Since the early 20th century it has been commonly accepted that Old Irish Bel ( l ) taine is derived from a Common Celtic * belo-te ( p ) niâ, meaning " bright fire " ( where the element * belo-might be cognate with the English word bale in ' bale-fire ' meaning ' white ' or ' shining '; compare Anglo-Saxon bael, and Lithuanian / Latvian baltas / balts, found in the name of the Baltic ; in Slavic languages byelo or beloye also means ' white ', as in Беларусь ( White Russia or Belarus ) or Бе ́ лое мо ́ ре Sea ).

The name was a tribute to the Latvian players, notably Karlis Betins, who analysed it in the early part of the 20th century.

As late as the mid-19th century the population of many of these municipalities still had a German majority, with an Estonian or Latvian minority.

19th century bathhouse in Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum.

Old Curonian disappeared in the course of the 16th century, leaving substrata in western dialects of the Latvian and Lithuanian, namely the Samogitian dialect.

In the late 18th century, a small but vibrant Herrnhutist movement played a significant part in the development of Latvian literary culture, before it was absorbed in to the mainstream Lutheran denomination.

Though officially adopted in 1922, the Latvian flag was in use as early as the 13th century.

Imants Kalniņš has been one of the most loved composers in Latvian music for the past half century, and his phenomenon is showing no sign of fading.

From the end of the 18th century through 1917 names and territories of the Governorate of Courland (, ), the Governorate of Livland (, ) and the Governorate of Estland (, ) remained unchanged ; the February Revolution of 1917 was followed by an internal redistribution of Latvian and Estonian lands between the latter two.

Despite the policy of Russification which was introduced there, Latvian nationalist sentiments were more directed towards the Baltic-German landowners, who had formed the governing elite in the Baltic territories since the conquest of the Latvian tribes by predominantly German military orders in the 13th century Livonian Order.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, they assimilated, in present-day Latgale, an unknown East-Baltic tribe, who thus became a part of today's ethnic Latvians ( the Latvian term latgalieši " Latgalians ", in the sense of " Eastern Latvians ", dates only to the early 20th century ).

At the beginning of the 13th century, German crusaders from Gotland and the northern Holy Roman Empire conquered the Livonian and Latvian lands along the Daugava and Gauja rivers.

Prior to their arrival in the area of Wenden in the 12th century, the Vends are believed to have settled in Wynda county ( Latvian: Ventava ) by the Venta River near the present city of Ventspils in western Latvia.

The Balts east of a slight ridge at Viļaka were gradually Russified from the 15 – 16th centuries, but the philologists August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein and Kārlis Mīlenbahs, conducting linguistic field research in the area in the late 19th and early 20th century, found that many people, called " Russian Latvians " by the local Russians, still spoke the High Latvian dialect.

The account of his expedition and death is given by Henry of Livonia, an early thirteenth century German chronicler of Latvian history, spanning the years 1186-1227.