Short answers, pulled from the story.
Argentina covers an area of 2,780,085 square kilometres, making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest in the Americas, and the eighth-largest in the world. It sits in the southern cone of South America, bordered by Chile to the west, Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south.
The name Argentina means made of silver or silver coloured in Italian, derived from the Latin argentum for silver. It first appeared on a Venetian map in 1536 and was probably given by Venetian and Genoese navigators associated with a legend of silver mountains in the La Plata Basin. A presidential decree in 1860 settled the country's official name as the Argentine Republic.
Argentina declared independence on the 9th of July 1816, when the Congress of Tucumán formalised the Declaration of Independence. The date is now celebrated as Independence Day, a national holiday. Independence followed the May Revolution of 1810 and an extended period of war and civil conflict that lasted until 1880.
By 1908 Argentina had reached seventh place in the world by per capita income, ahead of Denmark, Canada, and the Netherlands. The 1930 coup led by José Félix Uriburu marked the start of a steady economic and social decline that pushed the country back toward underdevelopment, though it remained among the fifteen richest countries until mid-century.
Juan Perón rose from head of the Labour Department to win the presidency by a landslide in the 1946 election. He nationalised strategic industries, raised wages, and enacted women's suffrage in 1947, while also suppressing dissidents. He was deposed in 1955 and exiled to Spain, returned in 1973 to win a third term, and died on the 1st of July 1974 at age 78.
The Dirty War was a period of state terrorism carried out under the military junta that took power in 1976, led by general Jorge Rafael Videla during the National Reorganization Process. It was part of Operation Condor and killed an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 left-wing activists and militants in Argentina alone, mostly through forced disappearance. It ended with the election of Raúl Alfonsín as president in 1983.