1.
Baltic states
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The Baltic states cooperate on a regional level in several intergovernmental organizations. While the native populations of Latvia and Lithuania are known as Baltic people, another Baltic identity, Baltic German, began to develop during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade. After the collapse of Livonia, parts of Latvia and Estonia came under influence of the Commonwealth and this lasted until the 18th century, when the lands of all three modern countries were gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire. The Baltic states gained independence after World War I, but were occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, all three countries are members of the European Union, NATO and the Eurozone. They are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain high Human Development Index, Estonia and Latvia are also members of the OECD, while Lithuania is a prospective candidate. The term Baltic stems from the name of the Baltic Sea – a hydronym dating back to the 11th century, although there are several theories about its origin, most ultimately trace it to Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This meaning is retained in modern Baltic languages, where baltas, however the modern names of the region and the sea, that originate from this root, were not used in either of the two languages prior to the 19th century. In English Ost is East, and in fact, the Baltic Sea mostly lies to the east of Germany, Denmark, Norway, in the 13th century pagan Baltic and Finnic peoples in the region became a target of the Northern Crusades. In the aftermath of the Livonian crusade, a crusader state officially named Terra Mariana and it was divided into four autonomous bishoprics and lands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. After the Brothers of the Sword suffered defeat at the Battle of Saule, Northern Estonia initially became a Danish dominion, but it was purchased by the Teutonic Order in the mid-14th century. The Lithuanians were also targeted by the crusaders, however they were able to resist and it allied with the Kingdom of Poland. After the Union of Krewo in 1385 created a union between the two countries, they became ever more closely integrated and finally merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. After victory in the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War, the Polish–Lithuanian union became a political power in the region. In 1558 Livonia was attacked by the Tsardom of Russia and the Livonian war broke out, the rulers of different regions within Livonia sought to ally with foreign powers, which resulted in Polish–Lithuanian, Swedish and Danish involvement. In the aftermath of conflicts of the 17th century, much of the Duchy of Livonia. These newly acquired Swedish territories, as well as Ingria and Kexholm, at the beginning of the 18th century the Swedish Empire was attacked by a coalition of several European powers in the Great Northern War. Among these powers was Russia, seeking to restore its access to the Baltic Sea, during the course of the war it conquered all of the Swedish provinces on the Eastern Baltic coast. This acquisition was legalized by the Treaty of Nystad in which the Baltic Dominions were ceded to Russia, under Russian rule these territories came to be known as Ostsee Governorates
2.
Danube
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The Danube is Europes second-longest river, after the Volga River, and also the longest river in the European Union region. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe, the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries, the Latin name Dānuvius is one of a number of Old European river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu. Other river names from the root include the Dunajec, Dzvina/Daugava, Don, Donets, Dnieper, Dniestr. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means fluid, drop, in Avestan, in the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra. Known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning strong, in Latin, the Danube was variously known as Danubius, Danuvius or as Ister. The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris for the upper Danube and Istros for the lower Danube, the Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, the bringer of luck. The Latin name is masculine, as are all its Slavic names, the German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe wetland. Classified as a waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach. The Danube then flows southeast for about 2,800 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and its drainage basin extends into nine more. The highest point of the basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border. The land drained by the Danube extends into other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges, from its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tributaries are, The Danube flows through many cities, including four national capitals, more than any other river in the world. Danube remains a mountain river until Passau, with average bottom gradient 0. 0012%. Middle Section, From Devín Gate to Iron Gate, at the border of Serbia and Romania, the riverbed widens and the average bottom gradient becomes only 0. 00006%. Lower Section, From Iron Gate to Sulina, with average gradient as little as 0. 00003%, about 60 of its tributaries are also navigable. In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central, the amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was difficult by the NATO bombing of three bridges in Serbia during the Kosovo War
3.
Sava
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The Sava is a river in Central and Southeastern Europe, a right tributary of the Danube. It flows through Slovenia, Croatia, along the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its central part is a border of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The Sava forms the border of the Balkan Peninsula. The Sava is 990 kilometres long, including the 45-kilometre Sava Dolinka headwater rising in Zelenci and it is the greatest tributary of the Danube by volume of water, and second-largest after Tisza in terms of catchment area and length. It drains a significant portion of the Dinaric Alps region, through the tributaries of Drina, Bosna, Kupa, Una, Vrbas, Lonja, Kolubara, Bosut. The Sava is one of the longest rivers in Europe and among a handful of European rivers of that length that do not drain directly into a sea. The population in the Sava River basin is estimated at 8,176,000, the Sava is navigable for larger vessels from the confluence of the Kupa River in Sisak, Croatia, approximately two-thirds of its length. The Sava River is formed from the Sava Dolinka and the Sava Bohinjka headwaters in northwest Slovenia, the Sava Dolinka rises at the Zelenci Pools near Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, in a valley separating the Julian Alps from the Karavanke mountain range. The spring is located near the Slovene-Italian border at 833 metres above sea level, the Sava Dolinka spring is fed by groundwater possibly exhibiting bifurcation of source karst aquifer to the Sava and Soča basins. Nadiža creek, a losing stream flowing nearby, is the source of Zelenci Pools water. The Sava Dolinka is considered the Savas initial, 45-kilometre segment, the Sava Bohinjka originates in Ribčev Laz, at the confluence of the Jezernica, a short watercourse flowing out from Lake Bohinj and the Mostnica River. The watercourse flows 41 kilometres —including the length of the Savica—east to Radovljica, downstream from the confluence, the river is referred to as the Sava. The Sava is located in Southeast Europe, flowing through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and its total length is 990 kilometres, including the 45-kilometre Sava Dolinka and the 945-kilometre Sava proper. As a right tributary of the Danube, the river belongs to the Black Sea drainage basin and it is also the largest tributary of the Danube by discharge. The river course is used to describe the northern boundary of the Balkans. Before the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, the river was located completely inside Yugoslav borders, downstream of Radovljica, the Sava proceeds southeast towards Kranj. Between Kranj and Medvode, its course comprises the Lake Trboje and the Lake Zbilje reservoirs, built for the Mavčiče, the Sava then flows through the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, where another reservoir is located on the river, adjacent to the Tacen Whitewater Course
4.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
5.
Musala
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Musala (Bulgarian, Мусала, from Arabic through Ottoman Turkish, Musalla, near God or place for prayer is the highest peak in the entire Balkan Peninsula, standing at 2,925 m. The summit of the Rila mountain range in southwestern Bulgaria, Musala is the highest peak between the Alps and the Caucasus and the highest in Eastern Europe bar the Caucasus, with a prominence of 2473 m, Musala is the 7th most prominent mountain peak in Europe. A Cosmic Ray Station was built on the peak in 1960 with cooperation from the Hungarian Academy of Science, the station conducted scientific experiments using a muon telescope. The station was destroyed by a fire on October 29,1983. With an average temperature of -2.3 °C Musala is the coldest place in Bulgaria. Temperatures stay below 0 °C for about 8 months each year, due to this about 45% of the annual precipitation on Musala is snow, and snow cover lasts for about 200 days. Three of the rivers of Bulgaria, the Iskar, Maritsa. The next highest peaks in the vicinity of Musala are Little Musala, Peak Musala has an alpine climate with cold, long winters and short, cool summers. Usually, through winter, the temperatures dont exceed the point for months. Snow cover lasts for about 8–9 months, through the summer, temperatures rarely go above 14-15C. The summer season lasts for 2 months, and snowfalls are possible. For the period 1931-2013, the highest recorded temperature was 20.0 °C, the average annual temperature is −2.5 °C, which makes the peak the coldest place in Bulgaria. Musala Glacier on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Musala Peak, Musala – controllable web camera Musala climb on youtube
6.
Bulgaria
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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period and its ancient history saw the presence of the Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Alans and Huns. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, the following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 it became a one-party socialist state as part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, in December 1989 the ruling Communist Party allowed multi-party elections, which subsequently led to Bulgarias transition into a democracy and a market-based economy. Bulgarias population of 7.2 million people is predominantly urbanised, most commercial and cultural activities are centred on the capital and largest city, Sofia. The strongest sectors of the economy are industry, power engineering. The countrys current political structure dates to the adoption of a constitution in 1991. Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative. Human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria can be traced back to the Paleolithic, animal bones incised with man-made markings from Kozarnika cave are assumed to be the earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans. Organised prehistoric societies in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture, the latter is credited with inventing gold working and exploitation. Some of these first gold smelters produced the coins, weapons and jewellery of the Varna Necropolis treasure and this site also offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies. Thracians, one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians, began appearing in the region during the Iron Age. In the late 6th century BC, the Persians conquered most of present-day Bulgaria, and kept it until 479 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in the 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control, by this time, Christianity had already spread in the region. A small Gothic community in Nicopolis ad Istrum produced the first Germanic language book in the 4th century, the first Christian monastery in Europe was established around the same time by Saint Athanasius in central Bulgaria. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, in 680 Bulgar tribes under the leadership of Asparukh moved south across the Danube and settled in the area between the lower Danube and the Balkan, establishing their capital at Pliska
7.
Balkans
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The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with various and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea, the highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres in the Rila mountain range. In Turkish, Balkan means a chain of wooded mountains, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment, a reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, a third possibility is that Haemus derives from the Greek word haema meaning blood. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon, Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhons blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, there is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊. The concept of the Balkans was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, during the 1820s, Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term, zeunes goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has an area of about 470,000 km2. It is more or less identical to the known as Southeastern Europe. As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria, the current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, the Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania
8.
Balkan Mountains
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The Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea, the highest peaks of the Balkan Mountains are in central Bulgaria. The highest peak is Botev at 2,376 m, which makes the range the third highest in the country, after Rila. The mountains are the source of the name of the Balkan Peninsula, the mountain range forms the watershed between the Black Sea and Aegean Sea catchment areas, with the exception of an area in west, where it is crossed by the spectacular Iskar Gorge. The karst relief determines the number of caves, including Magura, featuring the most important and extended European post-Palaeolithic cave painting, Ledenika, Saeva dupka, Bacho Kiro. The most notable formation are the Belogradchik Rocks in the west. There are several important protected areas, Central Balkan National Park, Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park, Bulgarka Nature Park and Sinite Kamani Nature Park, the Balkan Mountains are remarkable for their flora and fauna. Edelweiss grows there in the region of Kozyata stena, some of the most striking landscapes are included in the Central Balkan National Park with steep cliffs, the highest waterfalls in the Balkan Peninsula and lush vegetation. There are a number of important nature reserves such as Chuprene, Kozyata stena, most of Europes large mammals inhabit the area including the brown bear, wolf, boar, chamois and deer. The Balkan Mountains played a role in the history of Bulgaria since its foundation in 681 AD. It is believed the name was brought to the region in the 7th century by Bulgars who applied it to the area, in Bulgarian, the word balkan means mountain. It may have derived from the Persian bālkāneh or bālākhāna, meaning high, above, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. In Turkish balkan means a chain of wooded mountains In the Antiquity and the Middle Ages the mountains were known by their Thracian name, scholars consider that Haemus is believed that the name is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, mountain ridge. The name of the place where the range meets the Black Sea, other names used to refer to the mountains in different time periods include Aemon, Haemimons, Hem, Emus, the Slavonic Matorni gori and the Turkish Kodzhabalkan. Geologically, the Balkan Mountains are a part of the Alp-Himalayan chain that stretches across most of Europe. It can be divided into two parts, the main Balkan Chain and the Pre-Balkans to the north, which intrude slightly into the Danubian Plain, the range consists of around 30 portions called mountains. The Eastern Balkan Mountains from the Vratnik Pass to Cape Emine with a length of 160 kilometres, the eastern Balkan Mountains forms the lowest part of the range. The Balkan Mountains form a divide between the rivers flowing to the Danube in the north and those flowing to the Aegean Sea in the south
9.
Serbia
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Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a sovereign state situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. Relative to its territory, it is a diverse country distinguished by a transitional character, situated along cultural, geographic, climatic. Serbia numbers around 7 million residents, and its capital, Belgrade, following the Slavic migrations to the Balkans from the 6th century onwards, Serbs established several states in the early Middle Ages. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by Rome and the Byzantine Empire in 1217, in the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the regions first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro which dissolved peacefully in 2006, in 2008 the parliament of the province of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community. Serbia is a member of organizations such as the UN, CoE, OSCE, PfP, BSEC. An EU membership candidate since 2012, Serbia has been negotiating its EU accession since January 2014, the country is acceding to the WTO and is a militarily neutral state. Serbia is an income economy with dominant service sector, followed by the industrial sector. The country ranks high on the Social Progress Index as well as the Global Peace Index, relatively high on the Human Development Index, located at the crossroads between Central and Southern Europe, Serbia is found in the Balkan peninsula and the Pannonian Plain. Serbia lies between latitudes 41° and 47° N, and longitudes 18° and 23° E. The country covers a total of 88,361 km2, which places it at 113th place in the world, with Kosovo excluded, the area is 77,474 km2. Its total border length amounts to 2,027 km, all of Kosovos border with Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro are under control of the Kosovo border police. The Pannonian Plain covers the third of the country while the easternmost tip of Serbia extends into the Wallachian Plain. The terrain of the part of the country, with the region of Šumadija at its heart. Mountains dominate the third of Serbia. Dinaric Alps stretch in the west and the southwest, following the flow of the rivers Drina, the Carpathian Mountains and Balkan Mountains stretch in a north–south direction in eastern Serbia. Ancient mountains in the southeast corner of the country belong to the Rilo-Rhodope Mountain system, elevation ranges from the Midžor peak of the Balkan Mountains at 2,169 metres to the lowest point of just 17 metres near the Danube river at Prahovo. The largest lake is Đerdap Lake and the longest river passing through Serbia is the Danube, the climate of Serbia is under the influences of the landmass of Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea
10.
Black Sea
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The Black Sea is a body of water between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. It is supplied by a number of rivers, such as the Danube, Dnieper, Rioni, Southern Bug. The Black Sea has an area of 436,400 km2, a depth of 2,212 m. It is constrained by the Pontic Mountains to the south and by the Caucasus Mountains to the east, the longest east-west extent is about 1,175 km. The Black Sea has a water balance, that is, a net outflow of water 300 km3 per year through the Bosphorus. Mediterranean water flows into the Black Sea as part of a two-way hydrological exchange, the Black Sea drains into the Mediterranean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean, via the Aegean Sea and various straits. The Bosphorus Strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and these waters separate Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch, the water level has varied significantly. Due to these variations in the level in the basin. At certain critical water levels it is possible for connections with surrounding water bodies to become established and it is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. When this hydrological link is not present, the Black Sea is a basin, operating independently of the global ocean system. Currently the Black Sea water level is high, thus water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Turkish Straits connect the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea, and comprise the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern limit of the Sea of Marmara, a line joining Cape Takil and Cape Panaghia. Strabos Geographica reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called the Sea, for the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the Hospitable sea, Εὔξεινος Πόντος Eúxeinos Póntos. This is a euphemism replacing an earlier Inhospitable Sea, Πόντος Ἄξεινος Póntos Áxeinos, strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called inhospitable before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to hospitable after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline and it is also possible that the epithet Áxeinos arose by popular etymology from a Scythian word axšaina- unlit, dark, the designation Black Sea may thus date from antiquity. A map of Asia dating to 1570, entitled Asiae Nova Descriptio, from Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, english-language writers of the 18th century often used the name Euxine Sea to refer to the Black Sea
11.
Adriatic Sea
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The Adriatic Sea /ˌeɪdriˈætᵻk/ is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula and the Apennine Mountains from the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto to the northwest, the countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro and Slovenia. The Adriatic contains over 1,300 islands, mostly located along its eastern, Croatian and it is divided into three basins, the northern being the shallowest and the southern being the deepest, with a maximum depth of 1,233 metres. The Otranto Sill, a ridge, is located at the border between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. The prevailing currents flow counterclockwise from the Strait of Otranto, along the eastern coast, tidal movements in the Adriatic are slight, although larger amplitudes are known to occur occasionally. The Adriatics salinity is lower than the Mediterraneans because the Adriatic collects a third of the water flowing into the Mediterranean. The surface water temperatures range from 30 °C in summer to 12 °C in winter. The Adriatic Sea sits on the Apulian or Adriatic Microplate, which separated from the African Plate in the Mesozoic era, the plates movement contributed to the formation of the surrounding mountain chains and Apennine tectonic uplift after its collision with the Eurasian plate. In the Late Oligocene, the Apennine Peninsula first formed, separating the Adriatic Basin from the rest of the Mediterranean, all types of sediment are found in the Adriatic, with the bulk of the material transported by the Po and other rivers on the western coast. The western coast is alluvial or terraced, while the eastern coast is indented with pronounced karstification. There are dozens of protected areas in the Adriatic, designed to protect the seas karst habitats. The sea is abundant in flora and fauna—more than 7,000 species are identified as native to the Adriatic, many of them endemic, rare and threatened ones. The Adriatics shores are populated by more than 3.5 million people, the earliest settlements on the Adriatic shores were Etruscan, Illyrian, and Greek. By the 2nd century BC, the shores were under Romes control, following Italian unification, the Kingdom of Italy started an eastward expansion that lasted until the 20th century. Following World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, the former disintegrated during the 1990s, resulting in four new states on the Adriatic coast. Italy and Albania agreed on their maritime boundary in 1992, Fisheries and tourism are significant sources of income all along the Adriatic coast. Adriatic Croatias tourism industry has grown faster economically than the rest of the Adriatic Basins, maritime transport is also a significant branch of the areas economy—there are 19 seaports in the Adriatic that each handle more than a million tonnes of cargo per year. The largest Adriatic seaport by annual cargo turnover is the Port of Trieste, in the southeast, the Adriatic Sea connects to the Ionian Sea at the 72-kilometre wide Strait of Otranto
12.
Ionian Sea
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The Ionian Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania to the north, all major islands in the sea belong to Greece. They are collectively referred to as the Ionian Islands, the ones being Corfu, Zakynthos, Kephalonia, Ithaca. There are ferry routes between Patras and Igoumenitsa, Greece, and Brindisi and Ancona, Italy, that cross the east and north of the Ionian Sea, and from Piraeus westward. Calypso Deep, the deepest point in the Mediterranean at −5,267 m, is located in the Ionian Sea, the sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world. The name Ionian comes from the Greek language Ἰόνιον, Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io. In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios was used as an epithet for the sea because Io swam across it, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the name may derive from Ionians who sailed to the West. There were also narratives about other eponymic legendary figures, according to one version, Ionius was a son of Adrias, according to another, Ionius was a son of Dyrrhachus. When Dyrrhachus was attacked by his own brothers, Heracles, who was passing through the area, came to his aid, the corpse was cast into the sea, which thereafter was called the Ionian Sea. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Ionian Sea as follows, On the North. A line running from the mouth of the Butrinto River in Albania, to Cape Karagol in Corfu, along the North Coast of Corfu to Cape Kephali, from the mouth of the Butrinto River in Albania down the coast of the mainland to Cape Matapan. A line from Cape Matapan to Cape Passero, the Southern point of Sicily, the East coast of Sicily and the Southeast coast of Italy to Cape Santa Maria di Leuca
13.
Aegean Sea
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The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the Greek and Anatolian peninsulas, i. e. between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles, the Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea was known as Archipelago, but in English this words meaning has changed to refer to the Aegean Islands and, generally. In ancient times, there were various explanations for the name Aegean, a possible etymology is a derivation from the Greek word αἶγες – aiges = waves, hence wavy sea, cf. also αἰγιαλός, hence meaning sea-shore. The Venetians, who ruled many Greek islands in the High and Late Middle Ages, popularized the name Archipelago, in some South Slavic languages the Aegean is often called White Sea. The Aegean Sea covers about 214,000 square kilometres in area, the seas maximum depth is 3,543 metres, east of Crete. The Aegean Islands are found within its waters, with the following islands delimiting the sea on the south, Kythera, Antikythera, Crete, Kasos, Karpathos, many of the Aegean Islands, or chains of islands, are actually extensions of the mountains on the mainland. One chain extends across the sea to Chios, another extends across Euboea to Samos, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Aegean Sea as follows, On the South. In the Dardanelles. A line joining Kum Kale and Cape Helles, the dense Mediterranean water sinks below the Black Sea inflow to a depth of 23–30 metres, then flows through the Dardanelles Strait and into the Sea of Marmara at velocities of 5–15 cm/s. The Black Sea outflow moves westward along the northern Aegean Sea, Aegean Sea Intermediate Water – Aegean Sea Intermediate Water extends from 40–50 m to 200–300 metres with temperatures ranging from 11–18 °C. Aegean Sea Bottom Water – occurring at depths below 500–1000 m with a uniform temperature. The current coastline dates back to about 4000 BC, before that time, at the peak of the last ice age sea levels everywhere were 130 metres lower, and there were large well-watered coastal plains instead of much of the northern Aegean. When they were first occupied, the islands including Milos with its important obsidian production were probably still connected to the mainland. The present coastal arrangement appeared c.7000 BC, with post-ice age sea levels continuing to rise for another 3,000 years after that, the subsequent Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean Sea have given rise to the general term Aegean civilization. In ancient times, the sea was the birthplace of two ancient civilizations – the Minoans of Crete and the Mycenean Civilization of the Peloponnese, later arose the city-states of Athens and Sparta among many others that constituted the Athenian Empire and Hellenic Civilization. Plato described the Greeks living round the Aegean like frogs around a pond, the Aegean Sea was later invaded by the Persians and the Romans, and inhabited by the Byzantine Empire, the Bulgarians, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Seljuq Turks, and the Ottoman Empire. The Aegean was the site of the democracies, and its seaways were the means of contact among several diverse civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Many of the islands in the Aegean have safe harbours and bays, in ancient times, navigation through the sea was easier than travelling across the rough terrain of the Greek mainland
14.
Peninsula
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A peninsula is a piece of land surrounded by water on the majority of its border, while being connected to a mainland from which it extends out. Examples include the upper and lower peninsulas of the state of Michigan, the surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily named as a single body of water. Peninsulas are not always named as such, one can also be a headland, cape, island promontory, bill, point, a point is generally considered a tapering piece of land projecting into a body of water that is less prominent than a cape. A river which courses through a very tight meander is also said to form a peninsula within the loop of water. In English, the plural of peninsula is peninsulas or, less commonly, peninsulas can be found on coastlines and in smaller bodies of water throughout the world, ranging in scale from square meters to millions of square kilometers. Theres the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, and in Southern Europe theres the Iberian Peninsula, the Italian Peninsula, south America has the Brunswick Peninsula, and Antarctica has the Antarctic Peninsula. In Africa, theres the Horn of Africa, and in Australia, asia has the 3 largest peninsulas in the world, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian Peninsula, and the Indochinese Peninsula
15.
Mount Musala
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Musala (Bulgarian, Мусала, from Arabic through Ottoman Turkish, Musalla, near God or place for prayer is the highest peak in the entire Balkan Peninsula, standing at 2,925 m. The summit of the Rila mountain range in southwestern Bulgaria, Musala is the highest peak between the Alps and the Caucasus and the highest in Eastern Europe bar the Caucasus, with a prominence of 2473 m, Musala is the 7th most prominent mountain peak in Europe. A Cosmic Ray Station was built on the peak in 1960 with cooperation from the Hungarian Academy of Science, the station conducted scientific experiments using a muon telescope. The station was destroyed by a fire on October 29,1983. With an average temperature of -2.3 °C Musala is the coldest place in Bulgaria. Temperatures stay below 0 °C for about 8 months each year, due to this about 45% of the annual precipitation on Musala is snow, and snow cover lasts for about 200 days. Three of the rivers of Bulgaria, the Iskar, Maritsa. The next highest peaks in the vicinity of Musala are Little Musala, Peak Musala has an alpine climate with cold, long winters and short, cool summers. Usually, through winter, the temperatures dont exceed the point for months. Snow cover lasts for about 8–9 months, through the summer, temperatures rarely go above 14-15C. The summer season lasts for 2 months, and snowfalls are possible. For the period 1931-2013, the highest recorded temperature was 20.0 °C, the average annual temperature is −2.5 °C, which makes the peak the coldest place in Bulgaria. Musala Glacier on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Musala Peak, Musala – controllable web camera Musala climb on youtube
16.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
17.
Classical antiquity
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It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
18.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
19.
Thracians
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The Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting a large area in southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family, the study of Thracians and Thracian culture is known as Thracology. Thracians are one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians. The first historical record about the Thracians is found in the Iliad, the ethnonym Thracian comes from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ or Θρᾴκιος/Ionic, Θρηίκιος, and the toponym Thrace comes from Θρᾴκη/Ion. These forms are all exonyms as applied by the Greeks, in Greek mythology, Thrax was regarded as one of the reputed sons of the god Ares. In the Alcestis, Euripides mentions that one of the names of Ares himself was Thrax since he was regarded as the patron of Thrace, the origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in the absence of written historical records. Evidence of proto-Thracians in the period depends on artifacts of material culture. Leo Klejn identifies proto-Thracians with the multi-cordoned ware culture that was pushed away from Ukraine by the advancing timber grave culture and we speak of proto-Thracians from which during the Iron Age Dacians and Thracians begin developing. Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not manage to form a political organization until the Odrysian state was founded in the fifth century BC. A strong Dacian state appeared in the first century BC, during the reign of King Burebista, including the Illyrians, the mountainous regions were home to various peoples regarded as warlike and ferocious Thracian tribes, while the plains peoples were apparently regarded as more peaceable. Thracians inhabited parts of the ancient provinces of Thrace, Moesia, Macedonia, Dacia, Scythia Minor, Sarmatia, Bithynia, Mysia, Pannonia, and other regions of the Balkans and Anatolia. This area extended over most of the Balkans region, and the Getae north of the Danube as far as beyond the Bug and including Panonia in the west. Aligning themselves in kingdoms and tribes, they never displayed any form of unity beyond short. Similar to the Celtic and Slavic tribes, most people are thought to have lived simply in small fortified villages, although the concept of an urban center was not developed until the Roman period, various larger fortifications which also served as regional market centers were numerous. Yet, in general, despite Greek colonization in such areas as Byzantium, Apollonia and other cities, the first Greek colonies in Thrace were founded in the eighth century BC. Thrace south of the Danube was ruled for half a century by the Persians under Darius the Great. In the first decade of the sixth century BC, the Persians invaded Thrace, Thracians were forced to join the invasions of European Scythia and Greece. According to Herodotus, the Bithynian Thracians also had to contribute a large contingent to Xerxes invasion of Greece in 480 BC, Darius left in Europe one of his commanders named Megabazus whose task was to accomplish conquests in the Balkans
20.
Thrace
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It comprises southeastern Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, and the European part of Turkey. In antiquity, it was referred to as Europe, prior to the extension of the term to describe the whole continent. The name Thrace comes from the Thracians, an ancient Indo-European people inhabiting Southeastern Europe, the word itself was established by the Greeks for referring to the Thracian tribes, from Ancient Greek Thrake, descending from Thrāix. The name of the continent Europe first referred to Thrace proper, the region obviously took the name of the principal river there, Hebros, probably from the Indo-European arg white river, according to an alternative theory, Hebros means goat in Thracian. In Turkey, it is referred to as Rumeli, Land of the Romans. The name appears to derive from an ancient heroine and sorceress Thrace, who was the daughter of Oceanus and Parthenope, the historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. In one ancient Greek source, the very Earth is divided into Asia, Libya, Europa and this largely coincided with the Thracian Odrysian kingdom, whose borders varied over time. After the Macedonian conquest, this regions former border with Macedonia was shifted from the Struma River to the Mesta River and this usage lasted until the Roman conquest. Henceforth, Thrace referred only to the tract of land covering the same extent of space as the modern geographical region. The medieval Byzantine theme of Thrace contained only what today is Eastern Thrace, the largest cities of Thrace are, İstanbul, Plovdiv, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Haskovo, Yambol, Komotini, Alexandroupoli, Xanthi, Edirne, Çorlu and Tekirdağ. Most of the Bulgarian and Greek population are Christians, while most of the Turkish inhabitants of Thrace are Muslims, Ancient Greek mythology provides them with a mythical ancestor, named Thrax, son of the war-god Ares, who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear in Homers Iliad as Trojan allies, led by Acamas, later in the Iliad, Rhesus, another Thracian king, makes an appearance. Cisseus, father-in-law to the Trojan elder Antenor, is given as a Thracian king. Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the River Axios in the west to the Hellespont, Greek mythology is replete with Thracian kings, including Diomedes, Tereus, Lycurgus, Phineus, Tegyrius, Eumolpus, Polymnestor, Poltys, and Oeagrus. In addition to the tribe that Homer calls Thracians, ancient Thrace was home to other tribes, such as the Edones, Bisaltae, Cicones. Thrace is also mentioned in Ovids Metamorphoses in the episode of Philomela, Procne, Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister, Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing Itys, at the end of the myth, all three turn into birds – Procne, a swallow, Philomela, a nightingale, and Tereus, a hoopoe
21.
Zeus
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Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
22.
Thracian language
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The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times in Southeast Europe by the Thracians, the northern neighbors of the Ancient Greeks. The Thracian language exhibits satemization, it belonged to the satem group of Indo-European languages or it was strongly influenced by satem languages. The language was still in use at least until the sixth century AD, the place where the monasteries were founded was called Cutila, which may be a Thracian name. The further fate of the Thracian language is a matter of dispute, some authors like Harvey Mayer group Thracian and Dacian into a southern Baltic linguistic family. The Thracian language was spoken in what is now Bulgaria, eastern Republic of Macedonia, Northern Greece, European Turkey, eastern Serbia is usually considered by paleolinguists to have been a Daco-Moesian language area. Some of the longer inscriptions may indeed be Thracian in origin but they may not reflect actual Thracian language sentences, but rather jumbles of names or magical formulas. Enough Thracian lexical items have survived to show that Thracian was a member of the Indo-European language family, other ancient Greek lexical items were not specifically identified as Thracian by the ancient Greeks but are hypothesized by paleolinguists as being or probably being of Thracian origin. Other lexical items are hypothesized on the basis of local anthroponyms, toponyms, hydronyms, oronyms, below is a table showing both words cited as being Thracian in classical sources, and lexical elements that have been extracted by paleolinguists from Thracian anthroponyms, toponyms, etc. See also the List of reconstructed Dacian words, significant cognates from any Indo-European language are listed. However, not all items in Thracian are assumed to be from the Proto-Indo-European language. They include the element in Parthenon, balios, bounos, hill. The Thracian horseman hero was an important figure in Thracian religion, mythology, depictions of the Thracian Horseman are found in numerous archaeological remains and artifacts from Thracian regions. From the Duvanli ring and from cognates in numerous Indo-European languages, mezēna is seen to be a Thracian word for horse, deriving from PIE *mend-. Ut- based on the PIE root word ud- and based on several Thracic items, would have meant upon, up, and Utaspios is theorized to have meant On horse, parallel to ancient Greek epi-hippos. The early Indo-European languages had more than one word for horse, for example Latin had equus from PIE *ekwo- and mannus from another IE root, in many cases in current Thracology, there is more than one etymology for a Thracian lexical item. For example, Thracian Diana Germetitha has two different proposed etymologies, Diana of the bosom or Diana of the warm radiance. In other cases, etymologies for the Thracian lexical items may be sound, only four Thracian inscriptions of any length have been found. The first is a ring found in 1912 in the town of Ezerovo, Bulgaria
23.
Typhon
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Typhon, also Typhoeus, Typhaon or Typhos, was a monstrous giant and the most deadly creature in Greek mythology. Typhon was the last son of Gaia, and was fathered by Tartarus, Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. The mythographer Apollodorus adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants, numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply earth-born, with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia to give her a son as strong as Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, several sources locate Typhons birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus. The poet Pindar calls Typhon Cilician, and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in the famous Cilician cave, in Aeschylus Prometheus Bound, Typhon is called the dweller of the Cilician caves, and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus have Typhon born in Cilicia. The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a possible Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Zeus father Cronus and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to them, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia under Arimon, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as fell and cruel, and neither like gods nor men. Three of Pindars poems have Typhon as hundred-headed, while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, a Chalcidian hydria, depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails below. For Nicander, Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with heads, hands, and wings. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, one of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and his body was all winged, unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks, and fire flashed from his eyes. The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnuss Dionysiaca, Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhons sepentine nature, giving him a tangled army of snakes, snaky feet, and hair. Nonnus also gives Typhon legions of arms innumerable, and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had many hands, according to Hesiods Theogony, Typhon was joined in love to Echidna, a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon fierce offspring. The Theogony next mentions an ambiguous she, which refer to Echidna. The lyric poet Lasus of Hermione adds the Sphinx, later authors mostly retain these offspring of Typhon by Echidna, while adding others
24.
Innocent VIII
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Pope Innocent VIII, born Giovanni Battista Cybo, was Pope from 29 August 1484 to his death in 1492. Born into a prominent Genoese family he entered the church and was bishop in 1467 before being elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV. He was elected Pope in 1484 as compromise candidate after a stormy conclave, Giovanni Battista Cybo was born in Genoa of Greek ancestry, the son of Arano Cybo or Cibo and his wife Teodorina de Mari, of an old Genoese family. His paternal grandparents were Maurizio Cybo and his wife Seracina Marocelli, Arano Cybo was a senator in Rome under Pope Calixtus III. Giovanni Battistas early years were spent at the Neapolitan court, and subsequently he went to Padua, in Rome he became a priest in the retinue of cardinal Calandrini, half-brother to Pope Nicholas V. In 1467, he was made Bishop of Savona by Pope Paul II, in 1473, with the support of Giuliano Della Rovere, later Pope Julius II, he was made cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV, whom he succeeded on 29 August 1484 as Pope Innocent VIII. The papal conclave of 1484 was riven with faction, while gangs rioted in the streets, shortly after his coronation Innocent VIII addressed a fruitless summons to Christendom to unite in a crusade against the Turks. A protracted conflict with King Ferdinand I of Naples was the principal obstacle, the immediate conflict was not ended until 1494, after Innocent VIIIs death. Bayezid II ruled as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1481 to 1512 and his rule was contested by his brother Cem who sought the support of the Mamluks of Egypt. Defeated by his brothers armies, Cem sought protection from the Knights of St. John in Rhodes, prince Cem offered perpetual peace between the Ottoman Empire and Christendom. However, the sultan paid the Knights a large amount to keep Cem captive, Cem was later sent to the castle of Pierre dAubusson in France. Sultan Bayezid sent a messenger to France and requested Cem to be kept there, in March 1489 Cem was transferred to the custody of Innocent VIII. Cems presence in Rome was useful because whenever Bayezid intended to launch a campaign against the Christian nations of the Balkans. In exchange for maintaining the custody of Cem, Bayezid paid Innocent VIII120,000 crowns, a relic of the Holy Lance, and an annual fee of 45,000 ducats. Cem died in Capua on February 25,1495, while on an expedition under the command of King Charles VIII of France to conquer Naples. Kramer would later claim that witchcraft was to blame for bad weather, both the papal letter appended to the work and the supposed endorsement of Cologne University for it are problematic. In 1487, Innocent confirmed Tomas de Torquemada as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, also in 1487, Innocent issued a bull for the extermination of the Waldensians, offering plenary indulgence to all who should engage in the Crusade against them. Alberto de Capitanei, archdeacon of Cremona, responded to the bull by organizing a crusade to fulfill its order and launched an offensive in the provinces of Dauphiné and Piedmont
25.
Ottoman dynasty
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The Ottoman dynasty was made up of the members of the imperial House of Osman. According to Ottoman tradition, the family originated from the Kayı tribe branch of the Oghuz Turks, the Ottoman dynasty, named after Osman I, ruled the Ottoman Empire from c.1299 to 1922. During much of the Empires history, the sultan was the regent, head of state. The imperial family was deposed from power and the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922 after the Turkish War of Independence, the Republic of Turkey was declared the following year. The living members of the dynasty were sent into exile as persona non gratae, though some have been allowed to return. In its current form, the family is known as the Osmanoğlu family, before Orhans proclamation of the dynasty, the tribe was known as the Bilecik Söğüt Beylik or Beys but was renamed Osmanlı in honor of Osman. The Ottoman dynasty is known in modern Turkish as Osmanlı Hanedanı, meaning House of Osman, in Ottoman Turkish it was known as Hanedan-ı Âl-i Osman, thus they still formally acknowledged the sovereignty of the Seljuk Empire and its successor, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. The first Ottoman ruler to claim the title of Sultan was Murad I. The holder of the title Sultan was in Arabic-Islamic dynasties originally the power behind the throne of the Caliph in Bagdad, the Ottoman sultans also claimed the title of Caliph starting with Murad I, who transformed the Ottoman state into a transcontinental empire. With the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II Fatih claimed the title Kaysar-i-Rûm Emperor of Rome and he appointed the Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius Scholarius, whom he protected and whose status he elevated into leader of all the Eastern Orthodox Christians. As Emperor of Rome he laid claim to all Roman territories, Sultan Mehmed II also took the title of Padishah, a Persian title meaning Master of Kings and ranking as Emperor, claiming superiority among the other kings. He was the first Ottoman ruler to adopt the title of Padishah. The Ottoman claim to caliphate was strengthened when they defeated the Mamluks in 1517, as the empire grew, sultans adopted secondary titles expressing the empires claim to be the legitimate successor of the absorbed states. Furthermore, they tended to enumerate even regular provinces, not unlike the long lists of -mainly inherited- feudal titles in the style of many Christian European monarchs. Some early Ottoman Sultans even had to accept the status in the eyes of a foreign overlord. However, the Ottoman Caliphate too was abolished soon afterwards, and Abdulmecid II was utterly deposed and expelled from Turkey with the rest of the Ottoman dynasty on 3 March 1924
26.
Bulgar
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The Bulgars were semi-nomadic warrior Turkic tribes who flourished in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century. Emerging as nomadic equestrians in the Volga-Ural region, according to some researchers their roots can be traced to Central Asia, during their westward migration across the Eurasian steppe the Bulgars absorbed other ethnic groups and cultural influences, including Hunnic, Iranian and Indo-European people. Modern genetic research on Central Asian Turkic people and ethnic groups related to the Bulgars points to an affiliation with western Eurasian and European populations, the Bulgars spoke a Turkic language, i. e. Bulgar language of Oghuric branch. They preserved military titles, organization and customs of Eurasian steppes, as well as pagan shamanism, the Bulgars became semi-sedentary during the 7th century in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, establishing the polity of Old Great Bulgaria c. 635, which was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in 668 AD,679, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire. In the Balkans, the Bulgars became a political and military elite, and merged with previous populations, such as the Thracians and Vlachs, and were Slavicized, thus forming modern Bulgarians. The remaining Pontic Bulgars migrated in the 7th century to the Volga River, the Volga Tatars and Chuvash people claim to be originated from the Volga Bulgars. The etymology of the ethnonym Bulgar is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD. Since the work of Wilhelm Tomaschek, it is said to be derived from the Common Turkic bulğha, bulga- or bulya. Other scholars have added that bulğha might also imply stir, disturb, confuse. Peter A. Boodberg noted that the Buluoji in the Chinese sources were recorded as remnants of the Xiongnu confederation, and had strong Caucasian elements. Another theory linking the Bulgars to a Turkic people of Inner Asia has been put forward by Boris Simeonov, who identified them with the Pugu, a Tiele and/or Toquz Oguz tribe. The Pugu were mentioned in Chinese sources from 103 BC up to the 8th century AD, the names Onoğur and Bulgar were linked by later Byzantine sources for reasons that are unclear. Karatay interpreted gur/gor as country, and noted the Tekin derivation of gur from the Altaic suffix -gir, generally, modern scholars consider the terms oğuz or oğur, as generic terms for Turkic tribal confederations, to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning kinship or being akin to. The terms initially were not the same, as oq/ogsiz meant arrow, while oğul meant offspring, child, son, oğuš/uğuš was tribe, clan, and the verb oğša-/oqša meant to be like, resemble. There also appears to be an association between the Bulgars and the preceding Kutrigur and Utigur – as Oğur tribes, with the ethnonym Bulgar as a spreading adjective. Golden considered the origin of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be obscure and he noted, however, an implication that the Kutrigurs and Utigurs were related to the Šarağur, and that according to Procopius these were Hunnish tribal unions, of partly Cimmerian descent. Karatay considered the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be two related, ancestral people, and prominent tribes in the later Bulgar union, but different from the Bulgars, among many other theories regarding the etymology of Bulgar, the following have also had limited support. An Eastern Germanic root meaning combative, according to D, the origin of the early Bulgars is still unclear
27.
Rumelia
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Rumelia, also known as Turkey in Europe, was a historical term describing the area now referred to as the Balkans when it was administered by the Ottoman Empire. As such, it was used in Greek, Turkish, Albanian. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum meant the Sultanate of Anatolia, the name Rumelia was ultimately applied to a province composed of central Albania and north-western Macedonia, with Bitola for its chief town. Owing to administrative changes effected between 1870 and 1875, the name ceased to correspond to any political division. Eastern Rumelia was constituted as a province of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin,1878. The Kosovo Vilayet was created in 1877 and this region in Turkey is also referred to as Eastern Thrace or Turkish Thrace. In Greece, the term Ρούμελη has been used since Ottoman times to refer to Central Greece, the word Rumeli is also used in some cases to refer exclusively to the part of Istanbul Province that is situated west of the Bosphorus
28.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
29.
Balkan Region
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Balkan Region is one of the regions of Turkmenistan. It is in the far west of the country, bordering Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea and its capital is Balkanabat, formerly known as Nebit Dag. Balkan is Turkish for Wooded mountain and it has an area of 139,270 square kilometers and a population of approximately 553,500 people. Its population density of 3.3 persons per square kilometer is the lowest in Turkmenistan, other cities include, Bereket, Türkmenbaşy, Gumdag, Serdar, Hazar, Gyzyletrek, Esenguly. The Balkan Region has significant energy reserves, which account for 94% of Turkmenistans natural gas production and it also generates 18% of the countrys electric power. Due to the low water supply, agriculture is negligible. Off its Caspian shores the Balkan Province includes the island of Ogurja Ada, Balkan Region is administratively divided into six districts and seven cities
30.
Turkmenistan
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Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. In medieval times, Merv was one of the cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the movement in Central Asia. In 1924, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmenistan possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, since 1993, citizens have received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007. According to Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries, after suspending the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution. Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia, part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population. In the 10th century, the name Turkmen was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam, There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Turkmen soldiers in the service of the played a important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan. In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire, in the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups. The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, by the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro. Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period, in the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that groups dispersal by the Uzbek rulers. According to Paul R. Spickard, Prior to the Russian conquest, Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century. From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk, the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates, in 1916 the Russian Empires participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia. In 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia, by the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, during the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events
31.
John Bacon Sawrey Morritt
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John Bacon Sawrey Morritt was an English traveller, politician and classical scholar. Born about 1772, he was son and heir of John Sawrey Morritt, both parents were buried in a vault in Rokeby Church, where their son erected to their memory a monument with a poetic inscription. Morritt, who had been in Paris during 1789, and was educated at St Johns College, Cambridge where he was admitted later that year and he graduated B. A.1794 and M. A.1798. He inherited a fortune, including the estate of Rokeby. Early in 1794, Morritt set off east, and spent two years in travelling, mainly in Greece and Asia Minor, one consequence of his journeying was the wide adoption in English of the term Balkan Mountains by English speakers, in place of the classical name Haemus Mons. The use of Balkan peninsula for south-east Europe came a little later, Morritt travelled from Vienna to Istanbul, where the embarrassed Robert Liston found the British embassy was in no state to lodge him. On a quest for Troy, he arrived, with James Dallaway and other Englishmen, from Lesbos on 6 November 1794, landing about twenty miles below Cape Lectum, there he made a survey of the supposed scene of the Iliad. A conservative in politics, Morritt was returned to parliament by the borough of Beverley at a by-election in 1799, there he had the support of Lord Yarborough and Sir Christopher Sykes. He was defeated at the dissolution in 1802, in 1806, Morritt served as high sheriff of Yorkshire, and in 1807 he made a speech at the nomination of William Wilberforce for Yorkshire. In 1814 he was elected on a by vacancy for the constituency of Northallerton, which he represented until 1818, Morritt paid Sir Walter Scott a visit in the summer of 1808, and was again his guest in 1816 and January 1829. Scott, on his return from London in 1809, spent a fortnight at Rokeby, in December 1811 he told Morritt his intention of making it the scene of a poem, and received in reply a letter on its history. Scotts second stay in autumn 1812 resulted in Rokeby, praised for its local descriptions and it was dedicated to Morritt, who was entrusted with the secret of the authorship of the Waverley novels. Scotts visits were renewed in 1815,1826,1828, and in September 1831 on his last journey to London, Letters which passed between them are included in John Gibson Lockharts Life of Scott, others are in Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott. Morritt, on Scotts invitation, became a contributor to the Quarterly Review, and his poem The Curse of Moy. It was on the advice of his friend Thomas Lawrence that Morritt bought the Rokeby Venus and he was also acquainted with Stewart Rose, Richard Payne Knight, Sir Humphry Davy, and Robert Southey who visited Rokeby in 1812 and 1829. Morritt was one of the founders and a member of the first committee of the Travellers Club, Sir William Fraser mentioned him as a brilliant raconteur. Morritt died at Rokeby Park,12 July 1843, aged 71 and he was buried by his wifes side in a vault under Rokeby Church, where a marble tablet, surmounted by a bust of him, was placed in their memory. Morritt retaliated with Additional Remarks on the Topography of Troy, in answer to Mr. Bryants last Publications, in 1810 Morritt published a pamphlet on the state of parties, Advice to the Whigs, by an Englishman
32.
August Zeune
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Johann August Zeune was a German teacher of geography and Germanic languages, as well as the founder of the Berlin Foundation for the Blind. Zeune was born on 12 May 1778 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg as the son of Johann Karl Zeune, in his parents house, he was educated by his father and tutor. In 1798 Zeune started studying at the Wittenberg University enrolled and he graduated with his thesis on the history of geography, and was awarded for a short time the dignity of an academic faculty, as a Quasi-professor of Geography. His novel „Höhenschichten-Karte” Topological map of the earth, had made him famous in academic circles, in 1803, he moved to Berlin and became a teacher at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. In Berlin, where he lived as a scholar, he was on terms with Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He applied unsuccessfully for an expedition into the interior of Africa, in the field of ophthalmology Zeune expanded his knowledge to the founder of the first European foundation for the Blind, Valentin Haüy in Paris. King Frederick William III decreed on 11 August 1806 to create a foundation for the blind in Berlin, on 13 October the same year he was able to start classes. It was the first blind school in Germany, with money from friends and his own fortune, he saved the school by the time of distress. Johann August Zeune was a professor of geography in 1810 in Berlin, from 1811 to 1821 he lectured at the University of Berlin also about German language and literature. Educational skills were presented in his Manual of Education of the Blind Belisarius, after the French occupation, he joined as a political journalist of decidedly patriotic stance. August Zeune died on November 14,1853 in Berlin, after he had lost his eyesight in old age, expedition into the Inner World of the Blind. In, Süddeutsche Zeitung,26 January 2004, heinrich Kühne, Heinz Motel, Berühmte Persönlichkeiten und ihre Verbindung zu Wittenberg. Verlag des Göttinger Tageblatt, Göttingen 1990, ISBN 3-924781-17-6, Berlins Father of the Blind and his Times Bostelmann & Siebenhaar, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-936962-05-7. Rotary Club, Famous Wittenbergers and their Guests, unfortunately, for the most part become beggars. Support of the Blind between the Enlightenment and industrialization, /. leider zum größten Theile Bettler geworden. Organisierte Blindenfürsorge zwischen Aufklärung und Industrialisierung, hans-Eugen Schulze, Review of, Friedrich Dreves. Unfortunately, for the most part become beggars, - Organized the Blind in Prussia between the Enlightenment and Industrialization. Rezension zu, Friedrich Dreves. leider zum größten Theile Bettler geworden, - Organisierte Blindenfürsorge in Preußen zwischen Aufklärung und Industrialisierung
33.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
34.
Yugoslavia
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Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast Europe during most of the 20th century. The Serbian royal House of Karađorđević became the Yugoslav royal dynasty, Yugoslavia gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The country was named after the South Slavic peoples and constituted their first union, following centuries in which the territories had been part of the Ottoman Empire, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929, it was invaded by the Axis powers on 6 April 1941. In 1943, a Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was proclaimed by the Partisan resistance, in 1944, the king recognised it as the legitimate government, but in November 1945 the monarchy was abolished. Yugoslavia was renamed the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946 and it acquired the territories of Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar from Italy. Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country as president until his death in 1980, in 1963, the country was renamed again as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The constituent six socialist republics that made up the country were the SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, SR Macedonia, SR Montenegro, SR Serbia, and SR Slovenia. Serbia contained two Socialist Autonomous Provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, which after 1974 were largely equal to the members of the federation. After an economic and political crisis in the 1980s and the rise of nationalism, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics borders, at first into five countries, eventually, Serbia and Montenegro accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about shared succession. Serbia and Montenegro themselves broke up in 2006 and became independent states, the concept of Yugoslavia, as a single state for all South Slavic peoples, emerged in the late 17th century and gained prominence through the Illyrian Movement of the 19th century. The name was created by the combination of the Slavic words jug, Yugoslavia was the result of the Corfu Declaration, as a project of the Serbian Parliament in exile and the Serbian royal Karađorđević dynasty, who became the Yugoslav royal dynasty. The country was formed in 1918 immediately after World War I as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by union of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and it was commonly referred to at the time as the Versailles state. Later, the government renamed the country leading to the first official use of Yugoslavia in 1929, on 6 January 1929 King Alexander I suspended the constitution, banned national political parties, assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia. He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions and he imposed a new constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931. None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I, Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia. He decided to abolish Yugoslavias historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas, the banovinas were named after rivers. Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance, the effect of Alexanders dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs from the idea of unity. During his reign the flags of Yugoslav nations were banned, Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin, Prince Paul
35.
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
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The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state in Southeast Europe and Central Europe, that existed during the interwar period and first half of World War II. It was formed in 1918 by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats, the Kingdom of Montenegro had united with Serbia five days previously, while the regions of Kosovo, Vojvodina and Vardar Macedonia were parts of Serbia prior to the unification. For its first eleven years of existence, the Kingdom was officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia by King Alexander I on 3 October 1929. The state was ruled by the Serbian dynasty of Karađorđević, which ruled the Kingdom of Serbia under Peter I from 1903 onwards. Peter I became the first king of Yugoslavia until his death in 1921 and he was succeeded by his son Alexander I, who had been regent for his father. He was known as Alexander the Unifier and he renamed the kingdom Yugoslavia in 1929 and he was assassinated in Marseille by Vlado Chernozemski, a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, during his visit to France in 1934. The crown passed to his then-still under-aged son Peter and his cousin Paul ruled as Prince regent until 1941, when Peter II would come of age. The royal family flew to London the same year, prior to the country being invaded by the Axis powers, in April 1941, the country was occupied and partitioned by the Axis powers. A royal government-in-exile, recognized by the United Kingdom and, later, in 1944, after pressure from the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the King recognized the government of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia as the legitimate government. This was established on 2 November following the signing of the Treaty of Vis by Ivan Šubašić, Trumbić faced initial hostility from Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, who preferred an enlarged Serbia over a unified Yugoslav state. In 1916, the Serbian Parliament in exile decided on the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at a meeting inside the Municipal Theatre of Corfu. The Kingdom was formed on 1 December 1918 under the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, on 1 December 1918, the new kingdom was proclaimed by Alexander Karađorđević, Prince-Regent for his father, Peter I of Serbia. The creation of the state was supported by pan-Slavists and Serbian nationalists, for the pan-Slavic movement, all of the South Slav people had united into a single state. For Serbian nationalists, the goal of uniting the majority of the Serb population across south-eastern Europe into one state was also achieved. Furthermore, as Serbia already had a government, military, and police force, the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes participated in the Paris Peace Conference with Trumbić as the countrys representative. Almost immediately, it ran into disputes with most of its neighbours, Slovenia was difficult to determine, since it had been an integral part of Austria for 400 years. The Vojvodina region was disputed with Hungary, Macedonia with Bulgaria, a plebiscite was also held in the Province of Carinthia, which opted to remain in Austria. Austrians had formed a majority in this region although numbers reflected that some Slovenes did vote for Carinthia to become part of Austria, the Dalmatian port city of Zadar and a few of the Dalmatian islands were given to Italy
36.
Italian Peninsula
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The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is the central and the smallest of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe. It extends 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south, the peninsulas shape gives it the nickname lo Stivale. Three smaller peninsulas contribute to this shape, namely Calabria, Salento. Geographically, the Italian peninsula consists of the south of a line extending from the Magra to the Rubicon rivers. It excludes the Po Valley and the slopes of the Alps. All of the lies within the territory of the Italian Republic except for the microstates of San Marino. Additionally, Sicily, Elba and other islands, such as Palagruža, are usually considered as islands off the peninsula. The peninsula lies between the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, the Ionian Sea on the south, and the Adriatic Sea on the east, the backbone of the Italian peninsula consists of the Apennine Mountains, from which it takes one of its names. Most of its coast is lined with cliffs, the Italian Peninsulas location between the centre of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea made it the target of many conquests. The peninsula has mainly a Mediterranean climate, though in the parts the climate is much cooler. Its natural vegetation includes macchia along the coasts and deciduous and mixed coniferous forests in the interior. Political divisions of the peninsula sorted by area, Apennine Mountains Roman Republic Roman Italy Insular Italy Media related to Italian Peninsula at Wikimedia Commons
37.
Iberian Peninsula
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The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, also known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia. Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
38.
Breakup of Yugoslavia
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The breakup of Yugoslavia occurred as a result of a series of political upheavals and conflicts during the early 1990s. After a period of crisis in the 1980s, constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia split apart. The wars primarily affected Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, in addition, two autonomous provinces were established within Serbia, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Each of the republics had its own branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia party and a ruling elite, after his death in 1980, the weakened system of federal government was left unable to cope with rising economic and political challenges. In the 1980s, Kosovo Albanians started to demand that their autonomous province be granted the status of a constituent republic, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1990 along federal lines. Nationalist rhetoric on all sides became increasingly heated, in 1991, one republic after another proclaimed independence, but the status of Serb minorities outside Serbia was left unsolved. Before World War II, major tensions arose from the first, monarchist Yugoslavias multi-ethnic make-up and relative political, fundamental to the tensions were the different concepts of the new state. The Croats and Slovenes envisaged a federal model where they would enjoy greater autonomy than they had as a crown land under Austria-Hungary. Under Austria-Hungary, both Slovenes and Croats enjoyed autonomy with free hands only in education, law, religion, and 45% of taxes. The Serbs tended to view the territories as a just reward for their support of the allies in World War I, the assassination and human rights abuses were subject of concern for the Human Rights League and precipitated voices of protest from intellectuals, including Albert Einstein. It was in this environment of oppression that the insurgent group. During World War II, the tensions were exploited by the occupying Axis forces which established a Croat puppet state spanning much of present-day Croatia and Bosnia. The Axis powers installed the Ustaše as the leaders of the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaše resolved that the Serbian minority were a fifth column of Serbian expansionism, and pursued a policy of persecution against the Serbs. The policy dictated that one-third of the Serbian minority were to be killed, one-third expelled, both Croats and Muslims were recruited as soldiers by the SS. At the same time, former royalist, General Milan Nedić, was installed by the Axis as head of the government and local Serbs were recruited into the Gestapo. The official Yugoslav post-war estimate of victims in Yugoslavia during World War II was 1,704,000, subsequent data gathering in the 1980s by historians Vladimir Žerjavić and Bogoljub Kočović showed that the actual number of dead was about 1 million. Of that number,330,000 to 390,000 ethnic Serbs perished from all causes in Croatia and Bosnia, Yugoslavia was in its heyday a regional industrial power and an economic success. From 1960 to 1980, annual gross domestic product growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, literacy was 91 percent, Yugoslavia was a unique state, straddling both the East and West
39.
Balkanization
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Foreign policies can be precipitous to Balkanization. The term is nondescript since the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were Balkan in origin and, for the most part, counter-examples to the term. The term refers to the division of the Balkan peninsula, formerly ruled almost entirely by the Ottoman Empire and it was coined in the early 19th century and has a strong negative connotation. The larger countries within Europe, often being the result of the union of several regions or nations, have faced the perceived issue of Balkanization. Two referendums have been held to decide this question, one in 1980, less mainstream, smaller movements also exist in the western provinces, namely Alberta, to protest what is seen as a domination by Quebec and Ontario of Canadian politics. Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow had also considered separation from Canada if the 1995 Quebec independence referendum had succeeded, independence movements within Britain also exist in England, Wales, Cornwall and Northern Ireland. The term is used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance. However, Robert Morgus and Tim Maurers study suggests that the alarmist term “Balkanization” should be replaced with more terms such as fragmentation. The term has been used in American urban planning to describe the process of creating gated communities
40.
Southeast Europe
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Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical region of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkan peninsula. These boundaries can vary due to political, economic, historical, cultural. The first known use of the term Southeast Europe was by Austrian researcher Johann Georg von Hahn as a broader term than the traditional Balkans and this concept is based on the boundaries of the Balkan peninsula. The countries that have described as being entirely within the region are, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia. Countries that are, at least partially, described to be within the region are, Croatia, Greece, east Thrace comprises Edirne Province, Kırklareli Province, Tekirdağ Province, and part of Istanbul Province. The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was an institution aimed at strengthening peace, democracy, human rights and it was replaced by the Regional Cooperation Council in February 2008. It had 235.6 million euro of funding available from 2007–2013
41.
European Union
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The European Union is a political and economic union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe. It has an area of 4,475,757 km2, the EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. Within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished, a monetary union was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU operates through a system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community, the community and its successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to its remit. While no member state has left the EU or its antecedent organisations, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union in 1993 and introduced European citizenship. The latest major amendment to the basis of the EU. The EU as a whole is the largest economy in the world, additionally,27 out of 28 EU countries have a very high Human Development Index, according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU has developed a role in external relations and defence. The union maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7, because of its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower. After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the nationalism which had devastated the continent. 1952 saw the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the supporters of the Community included Alcide De Gasperi, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and Paul-Henri Spaak. These men and others are credited as the Founding fathers of the European Union. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome and they also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958, the EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC, although they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand, Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members. During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power, Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission. In 1973, the Communities enlarged to include Denmark, Ireland, Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum
42.
Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe
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The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was an institution aimed at strengthening peace, democracy, human rights and economy in the countries of South Eastern Europe from 1999 to 2008. It was replaced by the Regional Cooperation Council in February 2008, the RCC replaced it because it is more regionally owned than the Stability Pact, which was driven more by outside partners such as the EU. The pact was created at the initiative of the European Union on June 10,1999 in Cologne, all of the countries of the region, except for Serbia and Montenegro and Moldova, were present at the founding conference. The pact was created following the escalation of Kosovo War, stability of Kosovo was among the primary objectives, the South-East European Cooperation Process should be playing an important role in this process. The last meeting of the SPSEE took place on 28 February 2008, the Special Coordinator is a head of the Stability Pact. Since 2002, the position is held by Erhard Busek, the pact is divided among three Working Tables, with the fourth, Regional Working Table, coordinating actions between them. Each of the Working Tables is responsible for a set of issues, working with participant countries governments, consists of five task forces, Media, Education and Youth, Local Democracy and Cross Border Cooperation, Parliamentary Cooperation and Gender Issues. Apart from its Director WT I relies on the work of two experts Srđan Cvijić and Talia Boati, completed a matrix of bilateral free trade agreements between countries of the region. Kosovo is also participating, but not all FTAs with it are ready yet, there is a proposal to unite the multiple FTAs into a single free trade area. Agreement was due to be signed by the first half of 2006, formation of a South-East Europe Regional Energy Market for electricity and natural gas. Participating are the partners of the pact as well as Greece. This process was enhanced by the recent creation of a common European Energy Community between the European Union and the countries participating in the pact and Kosovo. Turkey has delayed its participation with six months, because of problems with implementation of the environment parts of the acquis communautaire, Moldova, Ukraine and Norway are expected to join later. Working Table III deals with questions of internal and external security. The aim is to establish a security environment in the region and to promote regional co-operation in fighting organised crime. It is divided into two sub-tables, the first one deals with Justice and Home Affairs and the second one with Defence and Security Sector Reform issues
Albania: 28,750 km2 (100% of total land)
Bulgaria : 110,800 km2 (100%)
Bosnia and Herzegovina: 51,180 km2 (100%)
Kosovo[a]: 10,908 km2 (100%)
Macedonia: 25,710 km2 (100%)
Montenegro: 13,810 km2 (100%)
Croatia (southern mainland): 26,033 km2 (46%)[28][29]
Greece (mainland): 104,470 km2[30] (80%)
Italy (Trieste and Monfalcone): 300 km2 (0.1%)
Romania (mainland Dobruja): 12,000 km2 (5%)
Serbia (southern part excluding Vojvodina, northern Belgrade) 54,000 km2 (65%)
Slovenia (southwestern part): 5,000 km2 (25%)
Turkey (European part): 23,764 km2 (3%)
_7.JPG)
Aerial photo of Camp Bondsteel, the main base of the United States Army under KFOR command in Kosovo
Albania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Greece
Kosovo[a]
Macedonia
Montenegro
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia
Turkey
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Wikimedia Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Travel guide from Wikivoyage
