History
The civil government was transferred from Rio de Janeiro's Catete Palace to Brasília on April 21, 1960, which was then split off from Goiás (major part) and Minas Gerais. After the transfer, the municipality of Rio de Janeiro became the Estado da Guanabara (State of Guanabara), which existed from 1960 until 1975 when the State of Guanabara and the State of Rio de Janeiro merged and assumed the name of Rio de Janeiro State, having as capital the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Originally, the majority of the population consisted of "Candango" workers from other states who built the capital and federal government employees who were transferred to the new capital. The capital is a thoroughly planned city with designated areas for residence, businesses, schools, churches, etc. No streets have names, but are identified instead by letters and numbers arranged in a geographical system according to blocs (Q-Quadras) and sectors (S-Setor e.g.: SB - Setor Bancario or "Bank Section"). Originally built for up to one million inhabitants, the city now has more than twice that number. Due to its complex organization, the growth of the city itself has been slow. This has forced many to settle in neighboring cities around Brasília, which now house a significant percentage of the whole population.
Read more about this topic: Federal District (Brazil)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)