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Melbourne | |
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Melbourne ( (listen) MEL-bərn, locally [ˈmɛɫbən]; Woiwurrung: Naarm) is the capital and most-populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Its name refers to an urban agglomeration of 9,993 km2 (3,858 sq mi), comprising a metropolitan area with 31 municipalities, and is also a common name for its city centre. The city occupies much of the coastline of Port Phillip bay and spreads into the Hinterland towards the Dandenong and Macedon ranges, Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley. It has a population of 5 million (19% of the population of Australia), and its inhabitants are referred to as "Melburnians".Home to Indigenous Australians for over 40,000 years, the Melbourne area served as a popular meeting place for local Kulin nation clans. A short-lived penal settlement was established at Port Phillip, then part of the British colony of New South Wales, in 1803, but it was not until 1835, with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania), that Melbourne was founded. It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named after the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city, Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into one of the world's largest and wealthiest metropolises.
Porto Alegre | |
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Porto Alegre (UK: , US: , local Portuguese: [ˈpoɾtu aˈlɛɡɾi] (listen); lit. '"Joyful Harbor"') is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,481,019 inhabitants (2016) makes it the twelfth most populous city in the country and the centre of Brazil's fifth largest metropolitan area, with 4,405,760 inhabitants (2010). The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian state.Porto Alegre was founded in 1769 by Manuel Jorge Gomes de Sepúlveda, who used the pseudonym José Marcelino de Figueiredo to hide his identity; but the official date is 1772 with the act signed by immigrants from the Azores, Portugal. The vast majority of the population is of European descent.
The city lies on the eastern bank of the Guaíba Lake (usually referred by the city population as Guaíba River), where five rivers converge to form the Lagoa dos Patos (Lagoon of the Ducks), a giant freshwater lagoon navigable by even the largest of ships.