History of Poland

The history of Poland results from the migrations of Slavs who established permanent settlements on the Polish lands during the Early Middle Ages. In 966 AD, Duke Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty adopted Western Christianity; in 1025 Mieszko's son Bolesław I Chrobry formally established a medieval kingdom. The period of the Jagiellonian dynasty in the 14th-16th centuries brought close ties with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a cultural Renaissance in Poland and territorial expansion that culminated in the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569.

Poland's flag consists of two equal-sized horizontal bars. The upper bar is white and the lower red. The coat-of-arms is a white eagle on a red field. Legend has it that while hunting the first king of the Poles encountered a huge white eagle making a strange cry and hovering over a nest of young. Such white birds were not known in the land and the King took it as an omen. The national anthem, Jeszcze Polska nie Zginȩła ("Poland Has Not Yet Perished"), was written in 1797 by an émigré soldier-poet, Józef Wybicki, serving in the Polish legions of Napoleon Bonaparte's army in Italy. It was adopted in 1918.