Short answers, pulled from the story.
Romania derives from the local word for Romanians, which descends from the Latin romanus, meaning "Roman" or "of Rome". The ethnonym is first attested in the sixteenth century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia. The oldest surviving document written in Romanian, the 1521 "Letter of Neacșu from Câmpulung", contains the first documented use of the name in a country context.
The modern Romanian state formed in 1859 when Alexandru Ioan Cuza was simultaneously elected ruler of Moldavia and Wallachia. Romania proclaimed independence from the Ottoman Empire on the 10th of May 1877, and this independence was formalised by the Treaty of Berlin. Carol I was crowned king in 1881.
Romania initially allied with Nazi Germany, losing Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in 1940 and ceding Northern Transylvania to Hungary under Axis pressure. On the 23rd of August 1944, King Mihai I removed Marshal Antonescu from power and Romania switched sides to join the Allies. Romania regained Northern Transylvania through the Paris Peace Treaties after the war.
A protest in Timișoara in December 1989, begun in support of Reformed pastor László Tőkés, escalated into a nationwide uprising against Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist regime. The revolution ended with the execution of Ceaușescu and his wife Elena on the 25th of December 1989. The first free elections since 1937 followed in May 1990.
Romania holds the second-largest and best-preserved river delta in Europe, the Danube Delta, which covers 5,800 square kilometres and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The country has one of the largest areas of undisturbed forest in Europe, covering nearly 27% of its territory, and is home to roughly 50% of Europe's brown bears (excluding Russia) and about 20% of its wolves.
Romania has accumulated 306 all-time Summer Olympics medals, ranking twelfth among all countries if ranked independently. At the 1984 Summer Olympics, Romania placed second in the overall medal rankings with 53 medals, 20 of them gold. Steaua București became the first Eastern European club to win the UEFA Champions League in 1986, and the national football team reached a FIFA world ranking of third in 1997.