The highest point in Cote d'Ivoire is Mount Nimba (1,752 m).

The Mount Nimba Nature Reserve, on the borders of Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea and Liberia, is a World Heritage site.

The elephant is a national symbol of the Ivory Coast.

The national football team of Cote d'Ivoire is known as the Elephants.

The ivory trade was developed in the Ivory Coast in the sixteenth century.

Many African settlers migrated to present-day Cote d'Ivoire before Europeans reached the region; others arrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the Ivory Coast (1460s).

The coastal area of the Ivory Coast became a French Protectorate in 1842.

The Ivory Coast was made a French Colony in 1893.

The Ivory Coast became part of French West Africa. French West Africa was formed in 1895.

The Federation included Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea (French Guinea), Mali (French Sudan) and Senegal. Later members were Benin (Dahomey), Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) Mauritania and Niger.

The Federation of French West Africa ended in 1958.

In 1958 the Ivory Coast was declared a republic within the French Community.

The Ivory Coast achieved independence from France in 1960.

The name of the country was officially changed from Ivory Coast to Cote d'Ivoire in 1986.

Felix Houphouet-Boigny was President of Cote d'Ivoire from 1960 to 1993.

A coup in Cote d'Ivoire overthrew President Henri Konan Bedie in 1999.

In 2002 a civil war in Cote d'Ivoire divided the country between the north and south; government troops held the south.

A United Nations Peacekeeping Force was sent to Cote d'Ivoire in 2004.

The Ouagadougou Political Agreement was signed in March 2007; the country was to be reunited and elections held.

Alassane Dramane Ouattara won the presidential election held in 2010.

In March 2016 the beach resort of Grand Bassam, near Abidjan, was attacked; eighteen people were killed.