Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It covers 1,104,300 square kilometres and borders Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Sudan. It is the world's 26th-largest country and the most populous landlocked country in the world.
Ethiopia is one of the earliest sites of anatomically modern humans, and its Omo-Kibish I is the oldest known Homo sapiens skeleton, dated to 196,000 years ago. The Awash Valley produced Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis found in 1974, who lived about 3.2 million years ago, and Ardi, a 4.2 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus found by Tim D. White in 1994.
Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century during the Kingdom of Aksum, with a coin dated to 324 showing it was the second country to officially adopt the religion, after Armenia in 301. Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum after converting members of the royal court.
Ethiopia, along with Liberia, is the only African country never fully colonized. It defeated Italy's colonial forces at the Battle of Adwa on the 1st of March 1896 and remained independent during the Scramble for Africa, though it lost sovereignty from 1936 to 1941 under Italian rule before British and Arbegnoch forces liberated it.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a 6,450-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile River, completed in 2023 and slated to be the largest hydroelectric power station in Africa. The project has strained Ethiopia's relations with Egypt and Sudan over water rights to the Nile.
Haile Selassie was deposed on the 12th of September 1974 by the Derg, a Soviet-backed military junta of military and police officers that abolished the monarchy in March 1975. Mengistu Haile Mariam gained undisputed leadership in 1977 and ruled until EPRDF forces took Addis Ababa in May 1991.
Ethiopia has over 80 ethnic groups, the four largest being the Oromo, Amhara, Somali, and Tigrayans. According to the 2007 national census, the Oromo are the largest at 34.4 percent of the population, followed by the Amhara at 27.0 percent, Somalis at 6.2 percent, and Tigrayans at 6.1 percent.