1.
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
2.
Provinces of Bulgaria
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The provinces of Bulgaria are the first level administrative subdivisions of the country. Since 1999, Bulgaria has been divided into 28 provinces which correspond approximately to the 28 districts, the provinces are further subdivided into 265 municipalities. Sofia – the capital city of Bulgaria and the largest settlement in the country, is the centre of both Sofia Province and Sofia City Province. The capital is included in Sofia Capital Municipality, which is the municipality comprising Sofia City province. The provinces do not have official names – legally, they are not named, in Bulgaria they are usually called Oblast, occasionally they are referred to as Oblast and rarely as oblast with administrative centre. The Bulgarian term област is preferably translated into English as province, in order to avoid disambiguation and distinguish from the unit called окръг. Anyhow, there are instances of use of distinct and region to name these contemporary 28 units, – in a website of the European Commission In 1987, the then-existing 28 districts were transformed into 9 large units, which survived until 1999. The 9 large provinces are listed below, along with the districts comprising them. On 1 January 1999, the old districts were restored, but the designation province was kept
3.
Sliven Province
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Sliven Province is a province in southeastern Bulgaria, named after its administrative and industrial centre — the city of Sliven. It embraces a territory of 3,544.1 km² that is divided into four municipalities, with a population, as of December 2009. The Sliven province contains four municipalities, the following table shows the names of each municipality in English and Cyrillic, the main town or village, and the population of each as of December 2009. Sliven is situated at the foot of the rock massif Sinite Kamani. The town is famous for its fresh air, clean water sources, mild winter. Sliven is the only Bulgarian town that has never changed its Slavonic name, here lived Thracians, Romans, Slavs, and Ancient Greeks. The first Roman settlement on place, Tuida, was a famous trade centre. Sliven was mentioned as a big town for the first time in 1153 by the Arab traveler Idrisi. As of the end of 2009, the population of the province, announced by the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute, numbered 204,887 of which 22. 3% are inhabitants over 60 years old. According to the 2001 census, the province had a population of 218474 inhabitants, of whom 163188 were Bulgarians,26777 Roma,22971 Turks, etc. Religious adherence in the according to 2001 census, The Sinite Kamani Nature Park is famous for its nature landmarks. Halkata — the arc-shaped rock garland, possessing, according to the legends, the forms that the nature has sculptured in the cave Zmeevi dupki – Zmeyat, Orelat and Vladishkiyat tron are amazing. The ancient beech forest in the vicinity of the Kushbunar spring in the region of Karandila is picturesque, the specific climate and lay conditions of the nature park determine the great diversity of flora and fauna. The plant species are more than 1000, about 900 of which are representative of high species, the invertebrate animals are represented by 235 species — eight species of fish, nine species of amphibians, nineteen species of reptiles,165 species of birds and 34 species of mammals. The lay is of typical mountain type — steep and ravine slopes, the north and northwest winds, called bora, famous as the wind of the town of Sliven and the night breeze are typical for the region. Through the park flow many rivers and their beds form numerous shoots, provinces of Bulgaria List of villages in Sliven Province Photos of Sliven Photo Reportages from Sliven
4.
Eastern European Time
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Eastern European Time is one of the names of UTC+02,00 time zone,2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time, so that it uses UTC+03,00 during the summer, a number of African countries use UTC+02,00 all year long, where it is called Central Africa Time, although Egypt and Libya also use the term Eastern European Time. The following countries, parts of countries, and territories use Eastern European Time all year round, Egypt, since 21 April 2015, used EEST from 1988–2010, Kaliningrad Oblast, since 26 October 2014, also used EET in years 1945 and 1991–2011. Libya, since 27 October 2013, switched from Central European Time, used year-round EET from 1980–1981, 1990–1996 and 1998–2012. Belarus, in years 1922–30 and 1990–2011 In Poland this time was used in years 1918–22, in time of World War II, Germany implemented MET in east occupied territories. Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol used EET as part of Ukraine in years 1991-94 and 1996-2014 Turkey, used EET in years 1910-1978, now uses year round DST timezone called Further-eastern European Time or Turkey Time. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus also uses FET, sometimes, due to its use on Microsoft Windows, FLE Standard Time or GTB Standard Time are used to refer to Eastern European Time. Since political, in addition to geographical, criteria are used in the drawing of time zones. The EET time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, the easternmost part of the Republic of Macedonia, including the city of Strumica. The absolutely easternmost part of Serbia, in the Pirot District, the easternmost town in Norway, Vardø, lies at 30°51 E, which is located east of even of the central meridian of UTC+2, i. e. east of Istanbul and Alexandria. The Norwegian-Russian border is the place where CET borders Moscow time. There is a point at the Norway-Finland-Russia tripoint, near the town of Rayakoski. Belarus is located between 23°11′E and 32°47′E and is fully located with the physical UTC+2 area, but it uses UTC+3 year around. This also includes the city of Anapa, at the westernmost tip of the Krasnodar Krai near the entrance to the Sea of Azov, the Norway–Russia–Finland tri-zone point at Muotkavaara is surrounded by three different times in winter, two in summer. It had three time zones year-around before 2014, two of the four tripoints of Belarus and the tripoint of the Kaliningrad Region are surrounded by three different times in winter
5.
Daylight saving time
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Daylight saving time is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that evening daylight lasts an hour longer, while sacrificing normal sunrise times. Typically, regions that use Daylight Savings Time adjust clocks forward one hour close to the start of spring, American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin proposed a form of daylight time in 1784. New Zealander George Hudson proposed the idea of saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation, starting on April 30,1916, many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the energy crisis of the 1970s. The practice has both advocates and critics, DST clock shifts sometimes complicate timekeeping and can disrupt travel, billing, record keeping, medical devices, heavy equipment, and sleep patterns. Computer software often adjusts clocks automatically, but policy changes by various jurisdictions of DST dates, industrialized societies generally follow a clock-based schedule for daily activities that do not change throughout the course of the year. The time of day that individuals begin and end work or school, North and south of the tropics daylight lasts longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the effect becoming greater as one moves away from the tropics. However, they will have one hour of daylight at the start of each day. Supporters have also argued that DST decreases energy consumption by reducing the need for lighting and heating, DST is also of little use for locations near the equator, because these regions see only a small variation in daylight in the course of the year. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season, unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some monasteries of Mount Athos and all Jewish ceremonies. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells, despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose DST, 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklins day. Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, whose shift work job gave him time to collect insects. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk and his solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament Robert Pearce, a select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearces bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915, william Sword Frost, mayor of Orillia, Ontario, introduced daylight saving time in the municipality during his tenure from 1911 to 1912. Starting on April 30,1916, the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime, Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the year
6.
Eastern European Summer Time
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Eastern European Summer Time is one of the names of UTC+3 time zone,3 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used as a daylight saving time in some European and Middle Eastern countries. During the winter periods, Eastern European Time is used, since 1996 European Summer Time has been observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, previously the rules were not uniform across the European Union. Syria, since 1983 Ukraine, Moscow Summer Time in years 1981–89, regular EEST from 1992 In one year 1991 EEST was used also in Moscow, egypt has previously used EEST from 1957–2010 and 2014–2015. Turkey, has previously used EEST from 1970-1978 EEST, Moscow Summer Time from 1979–1983, and EEST from 1985-2016
7.
Vehicle registration plates of Bulgaria
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The characters displayed in the main field of the plate are, a one- or two-letter province code four numerals a final two-letter code, known as the series. The format is thus XX NNNN YY, where XX is the code, NNNN is the serial number. Since 1992, only glyphs that are common to both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets have been used on Bulgarian plates. In Bulgarian order, these are, А, В, Е, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, У, Х, all of these are used as part of the province codes. Only nine letters are used in the series, of which А is the only vowel, the three that are not used in the series, are Е, reserved exclusively for trailers and caravans, О and У. The format X AAAAAA may be used in vanity plates, where A represents either letters or numbers chosen by the owner, the price of such a custom plate is a bit over €3,500, so these are rare. Not counting the Е series, which is reserved for trailers, nor the vanity plates with no series letters and this total ran out in Sofia in late 2005, and was replaced with СА in early 2006, In 2014, CB begun to be used. Note that the number 0 is written normally, while the letter O is egg-shaped, black letters on a white background, in the format, X NN-NN. State vehicles retained the black on white format, while private vehicles were given black plates with white lettering, in early 80s, after all the combinations with the letter C were exhausted in Sofia, a new format was introduced in the capital beginning with A, namely AYY-NNNN. Plates with the combinations AAB-NNNN and ABC-NNNN were issued before the standard was changed again in 1986. A new issue of plates is introduced with the format of X NNNN Y. Yellow for private plates, white for state-owned vehicles, with previous-style plates no longer valid and these new plates used ISO7591 standard font & size and had reflective surfaces. A similar system is used in Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, regions are as per ISO 3166-2, BG. The new 1992 issue of plates used a background, in the format X NNNN Y. All former yellow background plates became invalid, in 1993, The hyphens/stops between letter and number blocks were also phased out and also became invalid in 1993. During the mid-1990s, the X NNNN Y combinations began to run out in many provinces, between 2000-2008, The left-hand blue band Bulgaria flag was phased in, eventually becoming a legal requirement on 1 Jul 2006. These plates were all in the X NNNN YY format, but the shape of the letters was changed to the current standard – namely and these plates all began with the series AA, thereby repeating some combinations that had already existed before, albeit without the EU strip. After October 2008 On the 1st Jan 2007 Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union, usually, the expiry date is inscribed on the red strip
8.
Bulgarian language
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Bulgarian /bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, with the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Bulgarian became one of the official languages of the European Union. Development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods, prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian – a literary norm of the southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible, Middle Bulgarian – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar, present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing, as Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, the Slavic language. In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ. In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот, непонятен, ядро and others. As usual in cases, many other loans from French, English. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and linguistic chaos ensued. Eventually the eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography, the language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel. This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgarias, E. g. млеко – milk, хлеб – bread. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have ya, or an open e sound. The literary language norm, which is based on the Eastern dialects
9.
Hajduk
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Hajduk is a term most commonly referring to outlaws, brigands, highwaymen or freedom fighters in Southeastern Europe, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe. In the Ottoman Empire, the term hajduk was used for Balkan bandits, brigands, in the 17th century, the concept was firmly established in the Ottoman Balkans, related to increased taxes, Christian victories against the Ottomans, and general security decline. Hajduk bands predominantly numbered one hundred men each, with a hierarchy under one leader. They targeted Ottoman representatives and rich people, mainly Muslims, for plunder or punishment to oppressive Ottomans, in Balkan folkloric tradition, the hajduk is a romanticised hero figure who steals from, and leads his fighters into battle against, the Ottoman or Habsburg authorities. They are comparable to the English legend of Robin Hood and his merry men, as such, the term could also refer to any robber and carry a negative connotation. The etymology of the hajduk is unclear. One theory is that hajduk was derived from the Turkish word haidut or haydut, another theory suggests that the word comes from the Hungarian hajtó or hajdó, meaning a drover. Indeed, these two theories do not necessarily contradict each other, as the Balkan word is said to be derived from the Turkish word haiduk or hayduk, other spellings in English include ajduk, haydut, haiduk, haiduc, hayduck, hayduk. In 1604–1606, István Bocskay, Lord of Bihar, led an insurrection against the Habsburg Emperor, whose army had recently occupied Transylvania and begun a reign of terror. The bulk of Bocskays army was composed of serfs who had fled from the war. These peasants, freelance soldiers, were known as the hajduk, as a reward for their service, Bocskay emancipated the hajduk from the jurisdiction of their lords, granted them land, and guaranteed them rights to own property and to personal freedom. The emancipated hajduk constituted a new warrior estate within Hungarian feudal society, and the whole area is called Hajdúság. Unusually for this period, Polish-Lithuanian hajduks wore uniforms, typically of grey-blue woolen cloth, with red collar and their principal weapon was a small calibre matchlock firearm, known as an arquebus. For close combat they also carried a variety of sabre, capable of hacking off the heads of enemy pikes. Contrary to popular opinion, the small axe they often wore tucked in their belt was not a combat weapon, in the mid-17th century hajduk-style infantry largely fell out of fashion in Poland-Lithuania, and were replaced by musket-armed infantry of Western style. The Serbs established a Hajduk army that supported the Austrians, the army was divided into 18 companies, in four groups. In this period, the most notable obor-kapetans were Vuk Isaković from Crna Bara, Mlatišuma from Kragujevac, the term haiduci was used by the Romanian resistance movement Haiducii Muscelului, between 1947 and 1959, which opposed the Soviet occupation and the Communist government. Hobsbawm invented the social bandit to describe outlaws who operate on the edges of rural societies by fighting against authorities and sometimes helping the ordinary people
10.
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
11.
Voivode
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Voivode is an Eastern European title that originally denoted the principal commander of a military force. It derives from the word vojevoda, which in early Slavic meant the bellidux, i. e. the military commander of an area, in Byzantine times it referred to mainly military commanders of Slavic populations, especially in the Balkans. In medieval Serbia it meant an official and - before the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century - the commander of a military area. During Ottoman times, Voivode was the title borne by the ruler of a province, whose powers included the administration, security, the same title was borne by the Ottoman official who oversaw the “Chora Metzovo” each time. The word gradually came to denote the governor of a province, the territory ruled or administered by a voivode is known in English as a voivodeship. In the English language, the title is translated as duke or prince. In Eastern European terminology, the rank of a voivode is considered equal of that of a German Herzog, a voivode was often considered to be an assistant of the Knyaz. During military actions the voivode was in charge of an army that consisted of the local population, the voj, while the knyaz had its own regular military formation. As of 2016 in Poland the term means the centrally-appointed governor of a Polish province or voivodeship. The Polish title is rendered in English as palatine or prince palatine. Other similar titles include Margrave, Governor-General, and others, with the expansion of the Russian Empire the title of voivode was superseded by namestnik. Later, voivode denoted the highest military rank in the principalities of Montenegro and Serbia, in the Romanian medieval principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, voievode became part of the official titulature of the sovereign prince, showing his right to lead the entire army. Voivode or vajda was also the title of the Hungarian governors of Transylvania in the Middle Ages, baida was a title of a Ruthenian nobleman and Cossack leader Dmytro Vyshnevetsky. Similarly, the leaders in the Balkans were called voivodes. The term derives from Slavic voi or vojsko + vodi, the word has developed to take various forms in the modern Slavic languages, such as vojvoda, wojewoda, воевода, войвода or воевода, воєвода, vévoda and војвода. It has also borrowed into some non-Slavic languages, taking such forms as voievod, vajda. Voivode is also related to state such as Vojvodina, Polish provinces voivodeship. For this reason, the Slavic terms are translated as duke
12.
Massif
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In geology, a massif is a section of a planets crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its structure while being displaced as a whole. The term is used to refer to a group of mountains formed by such a structure. In mountaineering and climbing literature, a massif is frequently used to denote the mass of an individual mountain. The massif is a structural unit of the crust than a tectonic plate and is considered the fourth largest driving force in geomorphology. The word is taken from French, where it is used to refer to a mountain mass or compact group of connected mountains forming an independent portion of a range. One of the most notable European examples of a massif is the Massif Central of the Auvergne region of France, the Face on Mars is an example of an extraterrestrial massif. Massifs may also form such as with the Atlantis Massif
13.
Ulmus minor subsp. minor
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Minor Richens, the Smooth-leaved Elm, Narrow-leafed Elm or East Anglian Elm, is a subspecies of the Field Elm native to southern Europe and Asia Minor including Iran. Minor was used by R. H. Richens for Field Elm that was not English Elm, Cornish Elm, many publications, however, continue to use plain Ulmus minor for Richenss Ulmus minor subsp. Indeed Dr Max Coleman of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh argued in his 2002 paper British Elms that there was no distinction between species and subspecies. The Smooth-leaved Elm is a tree that can grow to 35 m. The apetalous perfect wind-pollinated flowers, and fruit are similar to those of the species. Research currently in hand by Cemagref at Le Pepiniére forestiére de l’Etat, Guémené-Penfao, France, good performance in the field may also be owing to resistance to bark beetle feeding or breeding. As the tree suckers readily, its resources are not considered endangered. The subspecies has a moderate to high susceptibility to the elm leaf beetle Xanthogaleruca luteola, many mature specimens still survive in England, notably in East Anglia. Narrow-leaved elm was planted as an ornamental urban tree. The largest recorded tree in the UK grew at Amwell, Herts, measuring 40 m in height and 228 cm d. b. h. in 1911. Another famous specimen was the great elm that towered above its two siblings at the bottom of Long Melford Green, Long Melford, Suffolk, till the group succumbed to disease in 1978. The three were survivors of a clone of at least nine elms, one dating from 1757. The Long Melford elms were painted in 1940 by the watercolourist S. R. Badmin in his Long Melford Green on a Frosty Morning, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The largest known surviving trees are at East Coker, Somerset, Termitts Farm near Hatfield Peverel, Essex and Melchbourne, variegata The trees natural range in eastern England overlaps with that of Wych Elm, the two species hybridizing to produce elms of the Ulmus × hollandica type. Minor is believed to have hybridized also with Plot Elm to create Ulmus × viminalis, brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York, acc. nos.350001, X02487. 3 trees, listed as U. carpinifolia, no acc. details available, brighton & Hove City Council, NCCPG Elm Collection. Royal Botanic Garden, Wakehurst Place, as U. carpinifolia Gled. acc. nos. 1975-6201, 1977-6682, collected by Melville
14.
Sliven Peak
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Sliven Peak rises to 530 m in the east extremity of Melnik Ridge, Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. The peak has precipitous rocky slopes and partly ice-free northern slopes, overlooking Kaliakra Glacier to the northwest and Struma Glacier to the south. The feature is named after the Bulgarian town of Sliven, scale 1,200000 topographic map No.3373. Madrid, Servicio Geográfico del Ejército,1991, S. Soccol, D. Gildea and J. Bath. Antarctica, Livingston Island and Greenwich Island, South Shetland Islands,1,100000 scale topographic map, Antarctica, Livingston Island and Greenwich, Robert, Snow and Smith Islands. Scale 1,250000 topographic map of Antarctica, scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, 1993–2016. This article includes information from the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria which is used with permission
15.
Livingston Island
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Livingston Island is an Antarctic island in the South Shetland Islands, Western Antarctica lying between Greenwich Island and Snow Islands. There are many islets and rocks in the waters, particularly off the north coast. More sizable among the adjacent smaller islands are Rugged Island off Byers Peninsula, Half Moon Island in Moon Bay, Desolation Island in Hero Bay, ice cliffs, often withdrawing during recent decades to uncover new coves, beaches and points, form most of the coastline. Typical of the island’s glaciology are the conspicuous ash layers originating from volcanic activity on the neighbouring Deception Island, the local variety of the Antarctic Peninsula weather is particularly changeable, windy, humid and sunless. Says Australian mountaineer Damien Gildea, ‘Livingston got just about the worst weather in the world’, a US seasonal field camp on Byers Peninsula was wrecked by storm and emergency evacuated in February 2009. Whiteouts are common, and blizzards can occur at any time of the year, temperatures are rather constant, rarely exceeding 3 °C in summer or falling below −11 °C in winter, with wind chill temperatures up to 5 to 10 °C lower. Below are the temperatures of the warmest month, coldest month, yearly average. It was only during the century that any land was discovered in what are now the ‘political’ territories of Antarctica. That was the first land discovered south of 60° south latitude. A few months later Smith revisited the South Shetlands to land on King George Island on 16 October 1819, in the meantime, a Spanish vessel had been damaged by severe weather in the Drake Passage and sunk off the north coast of Livingston in September 1819. The 74-gun ship San Telmo commanded by Captain Rosendo Porlier was the flagship of a Spanish naval squadron, the more than 600 persons killed when the San Telmo sank were the first recorded people to die in Antarctica. While no one survived, parts of her wreckage were found subsequently by sealers on Half Moon Beach, during December 1819 William Smith returned with his ship to the South Shetlands. Remains of huts and sealer artefacts are found on Livingston. The names of geographical features on the island also refer to its early history. However, names like Livingston, Mount Friesland and Renier Point also became established during the first few seasons after the discovery of the islands, the toponyms Friesland and Smolensk are now preserved as Mount Friesland and Smolensk Strait respectively. The first modern, post-sealer habitation facility on Livingston Island was the British base camp Station P that operated in Hannah Point area during the 1957/58 summer season, the permanent scientific bases of Juan Carlos I and St. Kliment Ohridski were established in 1988 at South Bay. Other base facilities are the small Shirreff Base on Cape Shirreff since 1991, occasional field camps support research in remote areas of the island. There are two Historic Sites or Monuments of Antarctica on the island, San Telmo Cairn at Cape Shirreff commemorates the 644 officers, soldiers and seamen lost when the Spanish warship San Telmo sank nearby in September 1819
16.
South Shetland Islands
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The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands, lying about 120 kilometres north of the Antarctic Peninsula, with a total area of 3,687 square kilometres. By the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, the islands sovereignty is neither recognized nor disputed by the signatories, the islands have been claimed by the United Kingdom since 1908 and have been part of the British Antarctic Territory since 1962. They are also claimed by the governments of Chile and by Argentina, several countries maintain research stations on the islands. Most of them are situated on King George Island, benefitting from the airfield of the Chilean base Eduardo Frei, there are sixteen research stations to date in different parts of the islands, with Chilean stations being the greatest in number. Research is often a shared duty of nations, with the Chilean-United States Shirreff Base being one example, the Dutchman Dirck Gerritsz in 1599, or the Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla in 1603, supposedly sailed south of the Drake Passage in the South Shetland Islands area. In 1818 Juan Pedro de Aguirre obtained permission from the Buenos Aires authorities to establish a base for sealing on some of the islands near the South Pole. Thus Livingston Island became the first land discovered south of the 60th southern latitude. Smith revisited the South Shetlands, landed on King George Island on 16 October 1819, meanwhile, the Spanish Navy ship San Telmo sank in September 1819 whilst trying to go through the Drake Passage. Parts of her wreckage were found months later by sealers on the north coast of Livingston Island. From December 1819 to January 1820, the islands were surveyed and mapped by Lieutenant Edward Bransfield on board the Williams, the discovery of the islands attracted British and American sealers. The first sealing ship to operate in the area was the brig Espirito Santo, the ship arrived at Rugged Island off Livingston Island, where its British crew landed on Christmas Day 1819, and claimed the islands for King George III. A narrative of the events was published by the master, Joseph Herring. The Espirito Santo was followed from the Falkland Islands by the American brig Hersilia, commanded by Captain James Sheffield, having circumnavigated the Antarctic continent, the Russian Antarctic expedition of Fabian von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev arrived at the South Shetlands in January 1821. The Russians surveyed the islands and named them, landing on both King George Island and Elephant Island, the name New South Britain was used briefly, but was soon changed to South Shetland Islands. The name South Shetland Islands is now established in international usage, both island groups lie at a similar distance from the South Pole and North Pole respectively, but the South Shetlands are much colder. Seal hunting and whaling was conducted on the islands during the 19th, from 1908 the islands were governed as part of the Falkland Islands Dependency, but they have only been occupied since the establishment of a scientific research station in 1944. The archipelago, together with the nearby Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia, is a popular tourist destination during the austral summer. As a group of islands, the South Shetland Islands are located at 62°0′S 58°0′W and they are within the region 61° 00–63°37 South, 53° 83–62°83 West
17.
Antarctica
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It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14,000,000 square kilometres, it is the fifth-largest continent, for comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness, Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is a desert, with precipitation of only 200 mm along the coast. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89.2 °C, though the average for the quarter is −63 °C. Anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Organisms native to Antarctica include many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra. The continent, however, remained neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of easily accessible resources. In 1895, the first confirmed landing was conducted by a team of Norwegians, Antarctica is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System that have consulting status. Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, and thirty-eight have signed it since then, the treaty prohibits military activities and mineral mining, prohibits nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal, supports scientific research, and protects the continents ecozone. Ongoing experiments are conducted by more than 4,000 scientists from many nations, the name Antarctica is the romanised version of the Greek compound word ἀνταρκτική, feminine of ἀνταρκτικός, meaning opposite to the Arctic, opposite to the north. Aristotle wrote in his book Meteorology about an Antarctic region in c.350 B. C, marinus of Tyre reportedly used the name in his unpreserved world map from the 2nd century A. D. Before acquiring its present geographical connotations, the term was used for locations that could be defined as opposite to the north. For example, the short-lived French colony established in Brazil in the 16th century was called France Antarctique, the first formal use of the name Antarctica as a continental name in the 1890s is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew. Antarctica has no population and there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century. Explorer Matthew Flinders, in particular, has credited with popularising the transfer of the name Terra Australis to Australia. Cook came within about 120 km of the Antarctic coast before retreating in the face of ice in January 1773. The first confirmed sighting of Antarctica can be narrowed down to the crews of ships captained by three individuals, according to various organisations, ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica or its ice shelf in 1820, von Bellingshausen, Edward Bransfield, and Nathaniel Palmer
18.
Upper Thracian Plain
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The Upper Thracian Plain constitutes the northern part of the historical region of Thrace. It is located in southern Bulgaria, between the Sredna Gora mountains to the north and west, the Rhodopes, Sakar and Strandzha to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. A fertile agricultural region, the Upper Thracian Plain proper has an area of 16,032 square kilometres, the plain is part of Northern Thrace. The highest temperature recorded in Bulgaria occurred here, it was 45.2 °C at Sadovo in 1916, the precipitation is 550 millimetres a year. Important rivers are the Maritsa and its tributaries, the Tundzha, the Stryama, the Topolnitsa, important cities include Plovdiv, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Pazardzhik, Asenovgrad, Haskovo, Yambol and Sliven
19.
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
20.
Sofia
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Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. The city has a population of 1.26 million, while 1.68 million people live in its metropolitan area, the city is located at the foot of Vitosha Mountain in the western part of the country, within less than 50 kilometres drive from the Serbian border. Its location in the centre of the Balkan peninsula means that it is the midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, whereas the Aegean Sea is the closest to it, Sofia has been an area of human habitation since at least 7000 BC. Being Bulgarias primate city, Sofia is a hometown of many of the local universities, cultural institutions. Sofia is one of the top 10 best places for business in the world. Sofia is Europes most affordable capital to visit as of 2013, for the longest time the city possessed a Thracian name, derived from the tribe Serdi, who were either of Thracian, Celtic, or mixed Thracian-Celtic origin. It seems that the first written mention of Serdica was made during his reign, during the Romans civitas Serdenisium was mentioned the brightest city of the Serdi in official inscriptions. The city was major throughout the past ever since Antiquity, when Roman emperor Constantine the Great referred to it as my Rome, other names given to Sofia, such as Serdonpolis and Triaditza, were mentioned by Byzantine Greek sources or coins. The Slavic name Sredets, which is related to middle and to the citys earliest name, the city was called Atralissa by the Arab traveller Idrisi and Strelisa, Stralitsa or Stralitsion by the Crusaders. The name Sofia comes from the Saint Sofia Church, as opposed to the prevailing Slavic etymology among Bulgarian cities and towns. It is ultimately derived from the Egyptian Kemetic word sbÅ, meaning star, door, teaching and wisdom and this was a tradition of collection of wise literature, shared between Mediterranean cultures, which was called sophia in Greek. In these documents the city is called Sofia, but at the time the region and the citys inhabitants are still called Sredecheski. The city became popular to the Ottomans by the name Sofya. In 1879 there was a dispute about what the name of the new Bulgarian capital should be, the citys name is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the o, in contrast with the tendency of foreigners to place the stress on i. The female given name Sofia is pronounced by Bulgarians with a stress on the i, Sofia has an area of 492 km2, while Sofia City Province has an area of 1344 km2. Sofias development as a significant settlement owes much to its position in the Balkans. It is situated in western Bulgaria, at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the Sofia Valley that is surrounded by the Balkan mountains to the north. The valley has an altitude of 550 metres
21.
Burgas
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It is the capital of Burgas Province and an important industrial, transport, cultural and tourist centre. The city is surrounded by the Burgas Lakes and located at the westernmost point of the Black Sea, the LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas is the largest oil refinery in southeastern Europe and the largest industrial enterprise. The Port of Burgas is the largest port in Bulgaria, Burgas is the center of the Bulgarian fishing and fish processing industry. A similar literal composition have the cities Burgos in Spain and numerous cities containing the Germanic burg city such as Hamburg,15 centuries later, the settlement was mentioned by the Byzantine poet Manuel Phil as Pyrgos, a word identical in meaning with the Greek word for tower. There are several explanations for the names origin. By one of them, the name comes from Gothic name baurgs as meaning signified consolidated walled villages. Kiril Vlahov, the name of the city comes from the Thracian word pyurg as meaning fortification of wooden beams and it is also suggested that the name ultimately comes from the name of khan Burtaz. Burgas is situated in the westernmost point of the bay of the same name, Burgas is located 389 kilometres from Sofia,272 km from Plovdiv, and 335 km from Istanbul. To the west, south and north, the city is surrounded by the Burgas Lakes, Burgas, Atanasovsko and Mandrensko, pan-European corridor 8 passes through the city, the European routes E87 and E773, and the longest national rout I/6. The St. Anastasia Island is a part of the city, Burgas has a humid subtropical climate, with some continental influences. The summertime in Burgas lasts about five months from mid-May until late September, average temperatures during high season is 24 °C. Summertime sea temperatures stay around 23 °C-24 °C at sunrise and go up to 29 °C-30 °C at dawn, winters are milder compared with the inland part of the country, with average temperatures of 4 °C-5 °C and below 0 °C during the night. Snow is possible in December, January, February and rarely in March, snow falls in winter only several times and can quickly melt. The highest temperature was recorded in August 2003, at 42.8 °C, the Burgas Wetlands are highly recognized for their significance to biodiversity and as a resource pool for products used by people. Lake Burgas is Bulgarias largest lake and is in the middle of the city and it is important for migrating birds. Over 250 species of birds inhabit the area,61 of which are endangered in Bulgaria and 9 globally. The lakes are home to important fish and invertebrates. In the site have been recorded several IUCN Red-Listed species of animals —5 invertebrates,4 fish,4 amphibians,3 reptiles,5 birds and 3 mammals
22.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
23.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
24.
Yambol
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Yambol is a city in southeastern Bulgaria and administrative centre of Yambol Province. It lies on both banks of the Tundzha river in the region of Thrace. The administrative centres of two municipalities are situated in Yambol, one is of the rural area of Tundzha Municipality and the other is of the homonymous Yambol Municipality that embraces the city itself. Yambol Peak on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Yambol, the surrounding area has been inhabited since the Neolithic and was the location of the ancient Thracian royal city of Kabyle. It was founded or refounded by Philip II of Macedon as an Ancient Greek polis, Yambol was founded by Roman Emperor Diocletian in AD293, though it was named Diospolis, the name also reflected the emperors name. The name later evolved through Diampolis, Hiambouli, Dinibouli, Dbilin and it was destroyed by the Avars in 583. It has been an important Bulgarian center ever since, the town expanded during the reign of Khan Omurtag of the First Bulgarian Empire and a new fortress was built. Its significance as near the point made it an important center for both trade and military purposes. During the reign of Boris I and Tsar Simeon the first literary centers were established, books were imported from Preslav and Ohrid literary schools and they were studied in the towns churches. During the reign of Tsar Kaloyan, the town again raised in importance, during the Ottoman period the town had a very large Muslim population as well. Ottomans conquered it in 1373, but a militarized semi-independent Bulgarian population remained as voyinuks in the part of the city. The predominant religion is Orthodox Christianity with a number of churches being present erected in 1888, there also exist Eastern Rite Catholic, in modern times Yambol, was a center of the Yambol okolia since 1878, then Yambol okrug since 1948. In 1984 it became part of the newly formed Burgas Oblast where it remained for 10 years, since the early 1990s Yambol is the center of Yambol oblast. During the Balkan War, Yambol was the headquarters of First Bulgarian Army, the city was affected by the turmoils of the early 20th century. I Some Bulgarian refugees from East Thrace, attacked by the Turkish Army in The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 and its Greek population left during the exchange of populations. It also hosted Bulgarian Macedonian refugees from the failed 1903 Ilinden Uprising, during World War I, Yambol hosted a base for Luftstreitkräfte zeppelins used for missions in Romania, Russia, Sudan and Malta. The town was chosen by the Germans due to its favorable location, in the early 21st century, the city became the first one in Bulgaria to use natural gas for domestic purposes. The population of Yambol during the first decade after the liberation of Bulgaria exceeded 10,000, being 11,241 in 1887
25.
Nova Zagora
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Nova Zagora is a town located in the southeastern plains of Bulgaria in Sliven Province. It is the centre of Nova Zagora Municipality. As of December 2009, the town has a population of 23,625 inhabitants, the first traces of life in the region date back thousands of years. Many archeological sites are located in the region, showing settlements dating back to the Stone Age, the most prominent archeological site is in the nearby village of Karanovo. The Nova Zagora Historical Museum has many historically significant artifacts dating back to this era, the region is very fertile, growing a wide range of produce including grapes, sunflowers and cereals. The municipality has a manufacturing base including machine tools producer ZMM Ltd. agriculture equipment maker Perla Ltd. Nova Zagora is located on the main Sofia-Plovdiv-Burgas railroad, as well as the Trakia Highway that runs from Sofia to Burgas. It is 35 km east of Stara Zagora and 30 km west of Sliven, the Nova Zagora Municipality is part of the Sliven administrative district. Nova Zagora has Roma and Turkish minority, official estimates indicate that approximately 12 percent of the population is from these ethnic minorities, while unofficial estimates are higher. The town suffers from high levels of unemployment, and the population has been declining, the climate is mild, with the average winter temperature at 1.2 degrees Celsius, and the average August temperature of 23.5 degrees. The town has a variety of facilities, including tennis. Nova Zagora is twinned with, Feres, Greece Estoril, Portugal Petroșani, Romania Taraclia, Republic of Moldova
26.
Peach
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The peach is a deciduous tree native to the region of Northwest China between the Tarim Basin and the north slopes of the Kunlun Shan mountains, where it was first domesticated and cultivated. It bears an edible fruit called a peach or a nectarine. The specific epithet refers to its widespread cultivation in Persia. It belongs to the genus Prunus which includes the cherry, apricot, almond and plum, the peach is classified with the almond in the subgenus Amygdalus, distinguished from the other subgenera by the corrugated seed shell. Peach and nectarines are the species, even though they are regarded commercially as different fruits. The Peoples Republic of China is the worlds largest producer of peaches, Prunus persica grows to 4–10 m tall and 6 in. in diameter. The leaves are lanceolate, 7–16 cm long, 2–3 cm broad, the flowers are produced in early spring before the leaves, they are solitary or paired,2. 5–3 cm diameter, pink, with five petals. The fruit has yellow or whitish flesh, an aroma. The flesh is very delicate and easily bruised in some cultivars, the single, large seed is red-brown, oval shaped, approximately 1. 3–2 cm long, and is surrounded by a wood-like husk. Peaches, along with cherries, plums and apricots, are stone fruits, there are various heirloom varieties, including the Indian peach, which arrives in the latter part of the summer. Cultivated peaches are divided into clingstones and freestones, depending on whether the flesh sticks to the stone or not, Peaches with white flesh typically are very sweet with little acidity, while yellow-fleshed peaches typically have an acidic tang coupled with sweetness, though this also varies greatly. Both colors often have red on their skin. The scientific name persica, along with the word peach itself, the Ancient Romans referred to the peach as malum persicum Persian apple, later becoming French pêche, hence the English peach. The scientific name, Prunus persica, literally means Persian plum, fossil endocarps with characteristics indistinguishable from those of modern peaches have been recovered from late Pliocene deposits in Kunming, dating to 2.6 million years ago. In the absence of evidence that the plants were in other ways identical to the modern peach, until recently, it was believed that the cultivation started circa 2000 BC. Nevertheless, the recent evidence indicates that domestication occurred as early as 6000 BC in Zhejiang Province of China, the oldest archaeological peach stones are from the Kuahuqiao site. Archaeologists point at the Yangzi River valley as the place where the selection for favorable peach varieties likely took place. Peaches were mentioned in Chinese writings as far back as the 10th century BC and were a fruit of kings
27.
Sarakatsani
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Historically centered on the Pindus mountains and other mountain ranges of continental Greece, most Sarakatsani have abandoned the transhumant way of life and have been urbanised. According to another theory, the name derives from the village of Sakaretsi, a popular theory, based on linguistics and material culture, suggests that the Sarakatsani are descended from the Dorians, who were isolated for centuries in the mountains. Their origins have been the subject of broad and permanent interest, many of the 19th century descriptions of the Sarakatsani do not differentiate them from the other great shepherd people of Greece, the Vlachs, a Romance-speaking population. In many instances the Sarakatsani were identified as Vlachs, the Sarakatsani have also been referred to as Roumeliotes or Moraites, names based on where they lived. Since the 20th century a multitude of scholars have studied the linguistic, among these, Danish scholar Carsten Høeg, who traveled twice to Greece between 1920 and 1925 and studied the dialect and narrations of the Sarakatsani, is arguably the most influential. He found no traces of foreign elements in the Sarakatsani dialect, furthermore, he looked for examples of nomadism in classical Greece, similar to that of the Sarakatsani. He visited the Sarakatsani of Epirus and mentioned other groups with no fixed villages in other parts of Greece as well. Beuermann, a German scholar, rejects Høegs interpretations that the Sarakatsani are the purest of the ancient Greek population, there appears to be no written mention of the Sarakatsani previous to the 18th century, but that does not necessarily imply that they did not exist earlier. It is likely the term Sarakatsani is a new generic name given to an old population that lived for centuries in isolation from the other inhabitants of what is today Greece. She also points out the similarity between their art and the geometric art of pre-classical Greece. He also highlights the differences between them and the Vlachs, regarding the Sarakatsani as a social group within the Greek nation. There are other less popular theories about the origin of the Sarakatsani, among them E. Romanian and Aromanian scholars have tried to prove a common origin for the Sarakatsani and the Aromanians. The Sarakatsani partially share a common geographic distribution with the Vlachs in Greece, despite the differences between the two populations, they are often confused with each other due to their common transhumant way of life. Moreover, the term Vlach has been used in Greece since the Byzantine times to refer indiscriminately to all transhumant pastoralists. John Campbell states, after his own work among the Sarakatsani in the 1950s, that the Sarakatsani are in a different position from the Vlachs, meaning the Aromanians. The Vlachs are usually bilingual in Greek and Aromanian, while the Sarakatsani communities have always spoken only Greek and have no other language. He also asserts that the pressure on the limited areas available for winter grazing in the coastal plains has resulted in disputes between the two groups on the use of the pastures. The Sarakatsani also differ from the Vlachs in that they dower their daughters, assign a lower position to women, the Sarakatsani themselves have always stressed their Greek identity and deny having any relationship with the Vlachs
28.
Bora (wind)
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The Bora is a northern to north-eastern katabatic wind in the Adriatic, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia, Poland, Russia and Turkey. The same root is found in the name of the Greek mythological figure of Boreas/Βορέας, historical linguists speculate that the name may derive from a Proto-Indo-European root *gworh- meaning mountain and giving rise to Germanic burg and berg. A similar pattern is seen in the name of the buran winds of central Asia. In Modern Greek, the word describes a intense summer rain that lasts for a few minutes. In Croatian burno means violently and is used to describe the weather. The changeable Bora can often be felt all over Montenegrin Littoral, Dalmatia, Istria, the Slovenian Littoral, Trieste, the Bora is most common during the winter. As the air grows even colder and thus denser at night and its initial temperature is so low that even with the warming occasioned by its descent it reaches the lowlands as a cold wind. The area where some of the strongest bora winds occur is the Velebit mountain range in Croatia, Bora occurs because these two divided masses tend to equalize. Sailing during the Bura can be challenging and it requires caution, short, high waves with white crests are its characteristics, making the navigation difficult. The small drops formed by the wind create a so-called sea smoke that reduces the visibility significantly, experienced seamen have a proverb, When Bura sails, you dont. Near the towns of Senj, Stara Novalja, Karlobag and the portal of the Sveti Rok Tunnel in Croatia. On 21 December 1998 the speed of a gust on the Maslenica Bridge was measured at a speed of 248 kilometres per hour. During 22 to 25 December 2003 on A1 highway near Sveti Rok Tunnel new record was measured at speed of 304 kilometers per hour. In February 2012, during the Eastern European Cold Wave, the shoreline in Senj froze and snow piled up after a 150 km/h bora plummeted the temperature to −14 °C, the bora ripped the trees from the soil and destroyed roofs of houses. On the island of Pag, the bora threw fish out of the sea, in many Croatian coastal cities, fresh water froze inside the pipes. Because the region separates the lower Adriatic coast from the Julian Alps range and they have influenced the regions traditional lifestyle and architecture. Towns on the coast, where the bora frequently occurs, are built densely with narrow streets in part because of the wind, buildings in several towns and villages in Slovenia and the Province of Trieste have stones on their roofs to prevent the tiles from being blown off. A strong bora will often be reported on Italian television news, Slovenian towns where the strongest bora occurs are Ajdovščina, Vipava and, to a lesser extent, Nova Gorica
29.
Precipitation
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In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel, Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and precipitates. Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but suspensions, because the vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated, Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called showers, moisture that is lifted or otherwise forced to rise over a layer of sub-freezing air at the surface may be condensed into clouds and rain. This process is active when freezing rain is occurring. A stationary front is often present near the area of freezing rain, provided necessary and sufficient atmospheric moisture content, the moisture within the rising air will condense into clouds, namely stratus and cumulonimbus. Eventually, the droplets will grow large enough to form raindrops. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy, thundersnow is possible within a cyclones comma head and within lake effect precipitation bands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation, on the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. The movement of the trough, or intertropical convergence zone. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 cubic kilometres of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 cubic kilometres of it over the oceans and 107,000 cubic kilometres over land. Given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres, Climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Precipitation may occur on celestial bodies, e. g. when it gets cold, Mars has precipitation which most likely takes the form of frost. Precipitation is a component of the water cycle, and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet. Approximately 505,000 km3 of water falls as precipitation each year,398,000 km3 of it over the oceans, given the Earths surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall, Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice
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Sunshine duration
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It is a general indicator of cloudiness of a location, and thus differs from insolation, which measures the total energy delivered by sunlight over a given period. Sunshine duration is usually expressed in hours per year, or in hours per day, the first measure indicates the general sunniness of a location compared with other places, while the latter allows for comparison of sunshine in various seasons in the same location. Another often-used measure is percentage ratio of recorded bright sunshine duration, an important use of sunshine duration data is to characterize the climate of sites, especially of health resorts. This also takes account the psychological effect of strong solar light on human well-being. It is often used to promote tourist destinations, if the Sun were to be above the horizon 50% of the time for a standard year consisting of 8,760 hours, apparent maximal daytime duration would be 4,380 hours for any point on Earth. However, there are physical and astronomical effects that change that picture, namely, atmospheric refraction allows the Sun to be still visible even when it physically sets below the horizon. For that reason, average daytime is longest in polar areas, places on the Arctic Circle have the longest total annual daytime,4,647 hours, while the North Pole receives 4,575. Because of elliptic nature of the Earths orbit, the Southern Hemisphere is not symmetrical, the Equator has a total daytime of 4,422 hours per year. Given the theoretical maximum of daytime duration for a given location, bright sunshine hours represent the total hours when the sunlight is stronger than a specified threshold, as opposed to just visible hours. Visible sunshine, for example, occurs around sunrise and sunset, measurement is performed by instruments called sunshine recorders. For the specific purpose of sunshine duration recording, Campbell–Stokes recorders are used, when the intensity exceeds a pre-determined threshold, the tape burns. The total length of the trace is proportional to the number of bright hours. Another type of recorder is the Jordan sunshine recorder, newer, electronic recorders have more stable sensitivity than that of the paper tape. In 2003, the duration was finally defined as the period during which direct solar irradiance exceeds a threshold value of 120 W/m². The sky is clear in these regions, and fair weather is virtually perpetual, the descending branch of the Hadley cell and the long-term lack of atmospheric disturbances helps to explain the seemingly endless supply of sunny, cloud-free days in the deserts. Low clouding conditions are associated with rainfall shortage, as seen in these dry regions. In the belt encompassing northern Chad and the Tibesti Mountains, northern Sudan, southern Libya, some places in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula receive 3, 600–3,800 hours of bright sunshine annually. The largest sun-baked region in the world is North Africa, the sunniest month in the world is December in Eastern Antarctica, with almost 23 hours of bright sun daily
31.
Bulgarians
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Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization, the population of Bulgaria descend from peoples with different origins and numbers. They became assimilated by the Slavic settlers in the First Bulgarian Empire, from the indigenous Thracian people certain cultural and ethnic elements were taken. Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians, Celts, Goths, Romans, Greeks, the Thracian language has been described as a southern Baltic language. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have preserved in modern Bulgarians. Medieval historians claimed that the Triballi are the largest tribe and that subsequently changed their name to Bulgarians or Serbs. Others claimed that the Paeonians are Bulgarians, others claimed that the Moesi, according to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. The latter gradually inflicting total linguistic replacement of Thracian if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized and they continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor. The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups, the Sklavenoi and Antes, some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians. The control of the Bulgars in the west was indirect and in the hands of the Slavic chiefs, the Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. However, any connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and contorted etymologies. The Bulgars are not thought to have numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. Their archeological evidence is concentrated in northeast Bulgaria and in Macedonia, mixed Bulgar-Slavic settlements emerged according to archeological evidence. Omurtag was the last ruler with a Turkic name and during the reign of Boris the Slavonic language reached an official level, a substantional number of loan words of the Bulgar language remained in the Medieval Bulgarian Slavic language and fewer survived in the modern. During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic, the major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar, in different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681, after the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century
32.
Romani people in Bulgaria
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Romani people in Bulgaria constitute one of the countrys largest ethnic minorities. The Romani are the third or second largest ethnic group, depending on the data, the 2011 census recorded a lower figure than that in 2001. While Romani have the highest birth rate in Europe and are considered the fastest growing group, and they also tend to have high death and immigration rates. The Romani people in Bulgaria speak Bulgarian, Turkish or Romani, depending on the region, the Romani people have darker pigmentation than most of Bulgarias ethnic groups as a result of their Indian descent. They are not concentrated in regions, but are rather spread throughout the country in similar frequencies. However, there are villages with Romani majority, in Bulgaria, Romani are most commonly referred to as Tsigani, an exonym that some Romani resent and others embrace. The form of the endonym Roma in Bulgarian is romi, in Bulgaria Roma are discriminated, 59% to 80% of non-Roma have negative feelings towards Roma. They are emancipated social group, having higher crime, unemployment, birth, death and poverty rates, though most live in poverty, the Romani are represented in Bulgarian mafia and rich Romani crime bosses deal with drug trade and prostitution. Though most of them are unemployed, they have a high rate of child sex workers. Roma constitute the majority of population according to self-identification of inmates. According to 2002 data, the poverty rate among Romani is 61. 8%, in 1997, 84% of Bulgarian Romani lived under the poverty line, compared with 32% of ethnic Bulgarians. In 1994, the poverty rate of Romani was estimated at 71. 4%, however, they enjoy more financial aid than other citizens, especially for children, which may have prompt the higher birth rates of the Romani. Many live with humanitarian aid without working, in 2011 the share of Romani with university degree reached 0. 3%, while 6. 9% have secondary education, the same share was 22. 8%/47. 6% for Bulgarians. The Turks are more negative towards the Romani than the Bulgarians, with 30-50% rejecting various interactions and friendship with Romani. Although only 25% of Romani parents object to their children to be married with a Bulgarian, Romani are avoided by the majority traditionally, especially for marriage, however, there are ethnically mixed people with Gypsy and Bulgarian parents who are called жоревци zhorevtsi. The rights of the Romani people in the country are also represented by political parties and cultural organizations, the Romani people originate from Northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi and it shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali. Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India, in February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India
33.
Bulgarian Turks
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Bulgarian Turks are a Turkish ethnic group from Bulgaria. As of 2011 there are 588,318 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8. 8% of the population and they primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen, Silistra, Razgrad and Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, Netherlands, and Sweden, however, it has also been suggested that some Turks living today in Bulgaria may be direct ethnic descendants of earlier medieval Pecheneg, Oğuz, and Cuman Turkic tribes. The haplotypes of the Turks from Bulgaria as converted to make up the following frequencies, J2, I2, E, H, R1a, R1b, I1, J1. The most common haplogroup of the Turkish people from Turkey is also J2, the second most common haplogroup I2 is negligible in Turkey and Asia, and came out the most common among Bulgarians and in the Balkans. The Roma people are least proximal to the ethnic groups largely carrying haplogroup H. The haplogroups N and Q normally represent Altaic and Central Asian ancestry, FST and RST calculate allele frequencies among populations and the distribution of evolutionary distances among alleles. A Bulgarian and other population studies observed concluded that there is not much differiation. However, no procedure has been developed to date for testing whether single-locus RST and FST estimates are significantly different, Turks settled in the territory of modern Bulgaria during and after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Being the dominant group in the Ottoman Empire for the five centuries, they played an important part in the economic. Waves of impoverished Turks settled fertile lands, while Bulgarian families left their strategic settlements, the Ottoman officer Stanislas Saint Clair in 1876 based on Ottoman teskere estimated roughly the same proportions and that Turkish males in the Danube Vilayet represent 36% of the male population. Between 1876 and 1878, through emigration, massacres, epidemics, the flow of Turks to Anatolia continued in a steady pattern depending on the policies of the ruling regimes until 1925 after which immigration was regulated. During the 20th century Bulgaria also practiced forced deportations and expulsions and that program, which began in 1984, forced all Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria to adopt Christian names and renounce all Muslim customs. The motivation of the 1984 assimilation campaign was unclear, however, the official government claim was that the Turks in Bulgaria were really Bulgarians who were Turkified, and that they voluntarily chose to change their Turkish/Muslim names to Bulgarian/Slavic ones. During this period the Bulgarian authorities denied all reports of ethnic repression, during the name-changing phase of the campaign, Turkish towns and villages were surrounded by army units. Citizens were issued new identity cards with Bulgarian names, failure to present a new card meant forfeiture of salary, pension payments, and bank withdrawals. Birth or marriage certificates would be issued only in Bulgarian names, traditional Turkish costumes were banned, homes were searched and all signs of Turkish identity removed. Turkish names on gravestones were replaced with Bulgarian names, according to estimates,500 to 1,500 people were killed when they resisted assimilation measures, and thousands of others were sent to labor camps or were forcibly resettled
34.
Armenians in Bulgaria
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Armenians are the fifth largest minority, after Russians, in Bulgaria, numbering 6,552 according to the 2011 census, down from 10,832 in 2001, while Armenian organizations estimate up to 22,000. Armenians have lived in the Balkans since no later than the 5th century, since then, the Armenians have had a continuous presence in Bulgarian lands and have often played an important part in the history of Bulgaria from early Medieval times until the present. The main centres of the Armenian community in the country are the major cities Plovdiv, Varna, Sofia and Burgas. The traditional language of the community is Western Armenian, though since education during the Communist period in Bulgaria was in Eastern Armenian, Bulgarian, being the official language, is spoken fluently by almost all Armenians in the country. They had very strong ties and influenced the Bulgarian sect of the Bogomils and were assimilated into it, Bulgarianized. The mother of 11th-century Bulgarian tsar Samuil was the daughter of the Armenian king, maria, the wife of 10th-century Tsar Peter I, was the granddaughter of Byzantine emperor of Armenian origin, Romanos I Lekapenos. Another Byzantine emperor—Basil I, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty and those coming from Armenia were forced to seek a new homeland because of their countrys devastation by Arabs, Persians, and Turks. In 1878, there were 5,300 Armenians in the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, at the time of the Balkan Wars the Armenians in Bulgaria numbered about 35,000. Bulgarian authorities honored Andranik and Nzhdeh with the Order of Bravery, after the events surrounding the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire 22,000 additional Armenians sought refuge in Bulgaria during the government of Aleksandar Stamboliyski in 1922. Since the 1990s the population of Armenians in Bulgaria has continually decreased due to immigration and assimilation, the Armenian General Benevolent Union publishes a monthly bulletin Parekordzagani Tsayn. All churches are under an eparchy based in Sofia, the Armenian Evangelical Church in Bulgaria is located in Plovdiv. Арменците в България — култура и идентичност, the language of the Paulicians and Pomaks, http, //www. saching. com/Articles/The-Language-of-the-Paulicians-and-Pomaks-17121. html Едуард Селян. Коренът джур в българска езикова среда, Охридски, София,1983, бр.12 -13, с.137 –139. Official website of the Armenian community in Bulgaria Bulgaria-Armenia article on Armeniapedia. org Edouard Selian, the Descendants of Paulicians, the Pomaks, Catholics, and Orthodox
35.
Demetrius of Thessaloniki
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Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki is a Christian martyr of the early 4th century AD. During the Middle Ages, he came to be revered as one of the most important Orthodox military saints and his feast day is 26 October for Eastern Orthodox Christians following the Gregorian calendar and 8 November for those following the Julian calendar. In the Roman Catholic church he is most commonly called Demetrios of Sermium, the spelling Demetrius is a romanization of the ancient Greek pronunciation, the Byzantine and Modern Greek pronunciation is romanized as Dimitrios or Demetrios. See Demetrios for more on the etymology of the name, in Russian, he is called Димитрий Солунский and was a patron saint of the Rurik dynasty from the late 11th century on. Izyaslav I of Kiev founded the first East Slavic monastery dedicated to this saint, the name Dimitry is in common use. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church reveres St. Demetrios on 26 October as Димитровден, the Romanian Orthodox Church revers St. Demetrios on 26 October as Sf. The Serbian Orthodox Church reveres St. Demetrios as Димитрије, having a feast of Mitrovdan on 8 November, the Macedonian Orthodox Church reveres St. Demetrios on 8 November as Митровден He is known among Albanian-speakers in Kosovo as Shmitri, and in Albania as Shën Dhimitri. He is known in Lebanon as Mar Dimitri or Mitri for short and he is known in the Coptic Church as St. Demetrios of Thessalonica. He is venerated in the Coptic Church on 8 November, the earliest written accounts of his life were compiled in the 9th century, although there are earlier images of him, and the 7th-century Miracles of Saint Demetrios collection. According to these accounts, Demetrios was born to pious Christian parents in Thessaloniki. His very large church in Thessaloniki, the Hagios Demetrios, dates from the mid-5th century, Thessaloniki remained a centre of his veneration, and he is the patron saint of the city. Hence later traditions about Demetrius regard him as a soldier in the Roman army, unsurprisingly, he was extremely popular in the Middle Ages. Some scholars believe that for four centuries after his death, St. Demetrios had no physical relics, what are still purported to be his remains subsequently appeared in Thessaloniki, but the local archbishop John, who compiled the first book of the Miracles ca. 610, was dismissive of their authenticity. These are now kept in Hagios Demetrios. According to believers, these relics were ascertained to be genuine after they started emitting a liquid and this gave the saint the epithet Myrovlētēs. This day is known as Demetrius Saturday, St. Demetrios was initially depicted in icons and mosaics as a young man in patterned robes with the distinctive tablion of the senatorial class across his chest. But an icon of the late 11th century in Saint Catherines Monastery on Mount Sinai shows him as before and this may be due to iconic depiction customs on how saints are depicted
36.
Hadzhi Dimitar
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Dimitar Nikolov Asenov, better known as Hadzhi Dimitar, was one of the most prominent Bulgarian voivods and revolutionaries working for the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Dimitar was born in Sliven to the family of the merchant Nikola Asenov, when he was two years old, his family went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, from which point onward, Dimitar was considered to be a hajji. During Hadzhi Stavris Uprising of 1862 Hadzhi Dimitar wandered through the Balkan Mountains with a band of revolutionaries for the whole summer and he joined the band of Stoyan Voyvoda in 1864 as a standard bearer. The band consisted of people and was formed after the murder of the Greek bishop of Veliko Tarnovo. However, it disbanded before entering the city and its members separated from their leader, Hadzhi Dimitar assumed command and led the band into the Balkan Mountains near Sliven and then to Romania in August. Another band was formed in the home of Georgi Sava Rakovski on 21 May 1865, among its members were Hadzhi Dimitar, Stefan Karadzha, Yurdan Yurdanov, Petar Shivarov and Todor Shivarov. The band crossed the Danube near Silistra on 13 June and headed for the mountains near Kotel through the Ludogorie and it was active in the region of the Tundzha, Tvarditsa, Karlovo, Gabrovo and the well-known hajduk gathering place Aglikina Polyana. This band returned to Romania in August 1865, a 20-member band crossed the Danube from Romania in the summer of 1866. It was led by Dyado Zhelyo, Hadzhi Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and it split into three after reaching the mountains and was active until the autumn, when it regrouped to return to Romania. The band of Hadzhi Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha was established in Romania in 1868, dimitars band crossed the Danube at Vardim in a sailing boat on 5 July and engaged in a battle with an Ottoman pursuing party of a thousand men in the vineyards of Karaisen near Pavlikeni. The band managed to give the enemy the slip and reached the territory of Gorna Lipitsa, a second battle followed there on 7 July, in which the band caused considerable damage to the Ottomans while only losing one member and getting two others wounded. The band proceeded to Vishovgrad, where it fought on 8 July. On the next day, not far south-southeast, there followed a fight in which Karadzha was wounded and captured. His death inspired Hristo Botevs poem Hadzhi Dimitar in 1873 and he, who falls while fighting to be free can never die, for him the sky and earth, the trees and beasts shall keen, to him the minstrels song shall rise. Hadzhi Dimitar Peak on Graham Land, Antarctica is named after Hadzhi Dimitar
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Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
38.
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
39.
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
40.
Hellenistic period
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It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
41.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
42.
Philip II of Macedon
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Philip II of Macedon was the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings, the son of King Amyntas III. However, his assassination led to the succession of his son Alexander. Philip was the youngest son of the king Amyntas III and Eurydice I, in his youth, Philip was held as a hostage in Thebes, which was then the leading city of Greece. In 364 BC, Philip returned to Macedon, the deaths of Philips elder brothers, King Alexander II and Perdiccas III, allowed him to take the throne in 359 BC. Originally appointed regent for his infant nephew Amyntas IV, who was the son of Perdiccas III, Philips military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He first had to remedy a predicament which had greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. Using diplomacy, Philip pushed back the Paionians and Thracians promising tributes, momentarily free from his opponents, he concentrated on strengthening his internal position and, above all, his army. Philip had married Audata, great-granddaughter of the Illyrian king of Dardania, however, this did not prevent him from marching against the Illyrians in 358 and crushing them in a ferocious battle in which some 7,000 Illyrians died. By this move, Philip established his authority inland as far as Lake Ohrid, the Athenians had been unable to conquer Amphipolis, which commanded the gold mines of Mount Pangaion. So Philip reached an agreement with Athens to lease the city to them after its conquest, however, after conquering Amphipolis, Philip kept both cities. As Athens had declared war against him, he allied Macedon with the Chalkidian League of Olynthus and he subsequently conquered Potidaea, this time keeping his word and ceding it to the League in 356. In 357 BC, Philip married the Epirote princess Olympias, who was the daughter of the king of the Molossians, Alexander was born in 356, the same year as Philips racehorse won at the Olympic Games. During 356 BC, Philip conquered the town of Crenides and changed its name to Philippi and he then established a powerful garrison there to control its mines, which yielded much of the gold he later used for his campaigns. In the meantime, his general Parmenion defeated the Illyrians again, in 355–354 he besieged Methone, the last city on the Thermaic Gulf controlled by Athens. During the siege, Philip was injured in his eye, despite the arrival of two Athenian fleets, the city fell in 354. Philip also attacked Abdera and Maronea, on the Thracian coast, Philip was involved in the Third Sacred War which had begun in Greece in 356. In summer 353 he invaded Thessaly, defeating 7,000 Phocians under the brother of Onomarchus, the latter however defeated Philip in the two succeeding battles
43.
Alexander the Great
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Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of twenty and he was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of historys most successful military commanders. During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16, after Philips assassination in 336 BC, he succeeded his father to the throne and inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. Alexander was awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his fathers Panhellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia, in 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Empire and began a series of campaigns that lasted ten years. Following the conquest of Anatolia, Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of battles, most notably the battles of Issus. He subsequently overthrew Persian King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety, at that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. He sought to reach the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea and invaded India in 326 BC and he eventually turned back at the demand of his homesick troops. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, the city that he planned to establish as his capital, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexanders surviving generals, Alexanders legacy includes the cultural diffusion which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism. He founded some twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt, Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. He became the measure against which military leaders compared themselves, and he is often ranked among the most influential people in human history. He was the son of the king of Macedon, Philip II, and his wife, Olympias. Although Philip had seven or eight wives, Olympias was his wife for some time. Several legends surround Alexanders birth and childhood, sometime after the wedding, Philip is said to have seen himself, in a dream, securing his wifes womb with a seal engraved with a lions image. Plutarch offered a variety of interpretations of dreams, that Olympias was pregnant before her marriage, indicated by the sealing of her womb. On the day Alexander was born, Philip was preparing a siege on the city of Potidea on the peninsula of Chalcidice. That same day, Philip received news that his general Parmenion had defeated the combined Illyrian and Paeonian armies, and it was also said that on this day, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, burnt down. This led Hegesias of Magnesia to say that it had burnt down because Artemis was away, such legends may have emerged when Alexander was king, and possibly at his own instigation, to show that he was superhuman and destined for greatness from conception
44.
Thracia
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Thracia or Thrace is the ancient name given to the southeastern Balkan region, the land inhabited by the Thracians. From the perspective of classical Greece, Thracia included the north of Thessaly. With the annexation of the Thracian kingdom by the Roman Empire, by order of emperor Claudius, in AD46, after the administrative reforms of the 3rd century, Thracia was reduced to the territory of the six small provinces of the Diocese of Thrace. Later still, the medieval Byzantine theme of Thracia contained only what today is Eastern Thrace, the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace became a Roman client kingdom c.20 BC, while the Greek city-states on the Black Sea coast came under Roman control, first as civitates foederatae. After the death of the Thracian king Rhoemetalces III in 46 AD and an unsuccessful anti-Roman revolt, the area of the Thracian Chersonese was excluded from its governors purview and administered as part of the emperors personal domains. The provinces first capital, where the Roman governor resided, was Heraclea Perinthus, Thracia was an imperial province, headed initially by a procurator, and, after c. 107/109, by a legatus Augusti pro praetore, otherwise, the internal structure of the old Thracian kingdom was retained and only gradually superseded by Roman institutions. 136 they were abolished altogether as official administrative divisions, during the campaigns to confront these raiders, Emperor Decius fell in the Battle of Abritus in 251. So by the end of Roman antiquity, the phenomenon of Romanization occurs only upon the Lower Moesia, as regards the Thracian dispersion outside the borders, from epigraphic evidence we know the presence of many Thracians throughout the Roman Empire from Syria and Arabia until Britain. Under the administrative reforms of Diocletian, Thracias territory was divided into four provinces, Thracia, Haemimontus, Rhodope. It was headed by a governor with the rank of consularis, the four Thracian provinces, along with the two provinces of Moesia Inferior, were grouped into the diocese of Thraciae, which in turn was part of the Prefecture of the East. Militarily, the region was under the control of the magister militum per Thracias. Ancient episcopal sees of the Late Roman province of Thracia listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees, Thraco-Roman Soustal, tabula Imperii Byzantini, Band 6, Thrakien. Vienna, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
45.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
Bulgaria
Alba Iulia, Romania
Gera, Germany
Pécs, Hungary
Voronezh, Russia
Svetlahorsk, Belarus
Ternopil, Ukraine
Tekirdağ, Turkey
Chongqing, China
Kutaisi, Georgia
Kaisariani, Greece
Jerash, Jordan
Cheonan, South Korea
Taraclia, Moldova
"Sliven". Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). 1911.
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