The highest point in Liberia is Mount Wuteve (1,380 m).

The Portuguese arrived in the region in the middle of the fifteenth century.

Europeans called Liberia the [Malagueta] Pepper Coast or Grain Coast.

The British set up trading posts along the Grain Coast in 1663.

British trading posts were destroyed by the Dutch.

The American Colonization Society promoted resettling freed American slaves in Africa.

The resettlement of freed slaves in Liberia began in 1822.

The name Liberia is derived from "liber", the latin word for free.

The first settlement called Christopolis was later renamed Monrovia after US President James Monroe.

The Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company opened the Firestone Rubber Plantation in Liberia in 1926.

Forced labour practices in Liberia were abolished in 1936.

William Tubman was Liberia's longest serving president (1944 to 1971).

A number of people were killed during the Rice Riots in Monrovia, in 1979, when people protested over the proposal to increase the cost of rice.

In 1980 President William Tolbert was executed during a coup led by Samual Doe.

Civil war (1989-1996) began when Charles Taylor of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia led an uprising against the government.

Charles Taylor won the presidential election in 1997.

Civil war broke out again in 1999.

A peace agreement was signed in August 2003. Charles Taylor was exiled to Nigeria.

Charles Taylor was charged with war crimes in the International Criminal Court in The Hague over his alleged role in the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Blood Diamond, the film set in Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s, highlighted the use of illegal diamond profits to fund fighting in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who won the Liberian presidential elections in 2005, became the first female president in Africa.

In April 2012 former president Charles Taylor was found guilty of war crimes for aiding rebels in Sierra Leone. He was sentenced to a 50 year prison term.

In a three year period from 2013 Ebola claimed the lives of 4,809 people in Liberia.