Ice Hockey World Championships
Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in January 1993. The IIHF recognized the Czech Republic's team as the successor to Czechoslovakia and it retained its position in the top division. Slovakia's team began in the lowest division (Pool C) in 1994 and was forced to work its way up. Following this, the next decade was dominated by the so-called "Big Six"–Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden and the United States. From 1992 to 1996, five different teams won the World Championship. At the 1993 World Championships, Russia won its first title as an independent nation and the Czech Republic won its first medal (bronze). In 1994, the Canadian team finished the preliminary round undefeated and defeated Finland in the final to win their first World Championship since 1961. The following year in Sweden, the Finnish team won its first ever World Championship. Led by their top line of Saku Koivu, Ville Peltonen and Jere Lehtinen, the Finns defeated rival Sweden in the gold medal game. At the 1995 Pool B championships, Slovakia, led by Peter Šťastný won Pool B and was promoted to the top division, where it has remained ever since. In 1996, the Czech Republic won its first World Championship as a separate country. During this period, the United States was the only one of the "Big Six" not to win the World Championship, although they did win the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and their bronze at that year's World Championship was their first medal since 1962.
In the mid-1990s, several new teams such as Slovakia, Latvia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine were quickly improving and older nations such as Austria, France, Italy, Norway and Switzerland were at risk of being relegated to Pool B. The IIHF feared that it would lose advertising revenue if that happened, so the number of teams was increased to 16 starting in 1998.
Czech Social Democratic Party
The Social Democratic Czechoslavonic party in Austria () was a political group founded on 7 April 1878 in Austria-Hungary as a regional wing of the Social Democratic Party of Austria. It represented much of the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Austrian parliament, and its significant role in the political life of the empire was one of the factors that led to the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War, the party became one of the leading parties of the first Czechoslovak Republic. Its members were split over whether to join the Comintern, which in 1921 resulted in the fracturing of the party, with a large part of its membership then forming the new Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
During the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, the party was officially abolished, but its members organized resistance movements contrary to the laws of the German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, both at home and abroad. After the re-establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1945, the party returned to its pre-war structure and became a member of the National Front which formed a new governing coalition. In 1948, after the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia gained a parliamentary majority, the Czech Social Democratic Party was incorporated into the Communist Party. At the time of the Prague Spring, a reformist movement in 1968, there were talks about allowing the recreation of a Social Democratic party, but Soviet intervention put an end to such ideas. It was only after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that the party was recreated. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which came into effect on 1 January 1993, the ČSSD has been one of the major political parties of the Czech Republic, and until October 2017 was always one of the two parties with the largest number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies.