On 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The rest of Europe would soon choose a side, and within a month the guns of August were sounding. Although the world knew about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June, everyone expected the reaction to be localized and within appropriate bounds. Everyone, that is, …
On 27 July 1948, Dorothea Bleek died. Dorothea had followed in her father’s footsteps, documenting the culture, language, and thousands-of-years-old rock art of Southern Africa. And although Dorothea continued to demur to her father’s expertise throughout her life, it was her books that brought the San to the attention of more academics. Her book, A …
Royal families do not always stay royal. In the case of the royal family of Bulgaria, exile came on 16 September 1946 after the Soviet Army rolled into Bulgaria and held a referendum. Tsar Boris III had died (most likely poisoned) in 1943, and his young son Simeon was created Tsar under a regency. In …
The Gambia is an interesting place. It was a part of both the Mali and Songhai Empires. Ibn Battuta visited in the 1300s and had lovely things to say about the justice-minded people who lived there. It’s nearly completely surrounded by Senegal. And it is littered with stone circles resembling versions of Stonehenge. Not much …
“When I am dead, I will not hurt anymore, will it Mama? When I am dead, build me a little monument of stones in the woods.” From the diary of Tsarevich Aleksei Romanov In the earliest morning hours of 17 July 1918, the Imperial Family of Russia was murdered in a Siberian basement. This part …
There is something intriguing about Ethiopia. The only Jewish nation in Africa, mentioned in the Bible in the person of the legendary Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. It was Makeda’s son Menilek I who founded the Solomonic Dynasty that ruled Ethiopia, with an interruption of a few hundred years in the Middle Ages, until 1974. …
What do a Roman Emperor, a medieval Balkan nation, the devil, and 2020 have in common? A name – Dukljan. Depending on the person doing the talking, Emperor Diocletian (who was born in what is now Solin, Croatia), was either terrible in his murderousness or a successful reformer of bureaucracy who abdicated rather than overstay …
Roman ruins are everywhere in the Balkans. The Romans, after the Batonnian Uprising, repopulated the province of Illyricum with their own people. The region was first pagan, and St Paul himself preached through Illyricum. By the year 300, 10% of the Roman empire was Christian. In the last gasps of a pagan majority, the …
It would probably straighten up a few things in popular culture if the Balkan contribution to ruling the Roman Empire were more well known. Obviously the Romans were in the Balkans and they ruled the Balkans; they left tons of evidence. But for more than two hundred years the Balkans also ruled the Romans, …
Apartheid in South Africa began its long, slow fall on 16 June 1976 when students in Soweto took to the street to protest being forced to study school subjects in Afrikaans. June 16 is now celebrated as Youth Day in South Africa, a day when the courage of students resulted in the horrible deaths …
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