Littles: MISC. COUNTRIES, ENTITIES
PEOPLES AND PLACES
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Acadia
The former name of a French colony that settled in eastern Canada
around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Exiles from Acadia later
settled in southern Louisiana.
(AHD, 1971, p.1)
Acadia History:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/lwjones/acadhist.htm
1713 The French colony of
Acadia, now Nova Scotia, was ceded to Great Britain. The Acadians
had come from western France to fish and farm. Those who would not
swear allegiance to the crown were deported. Many of these deportees
went to the bayou country of Louisiana.
(WUD, 1994, p.7)(WSJ, 9/4/96, p.A12)
Aden
The City of Aden draws its vitality from the Port of Aden. The story
of Aden as a trading centre stretches back over 3000 years. Marco
Polo and Ibn Batuta visited it in the 11th and 12th Centuries.
Port of Aden: http://www.portofaden.com/History.htm
1524 Aden became a tributary of
Portugal.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.12)
1937
Apr 1, Aden became a British colony.
(OTD)
1963 Aden (South Yemen) was
amalgamated with the British protectorate to form the Federation of
South Arabia which resulted in rioting.
(www.atlapedia.com/online/countries/yemen.htm)
1964 Jun, It was agreed that
the Federation of South Arabia (Aden-South Yemen) would gain
independence from Britain in 1968.
(www.atlapedia.com/online/countries/yemen.htm)
1967 Nov 28, Yemen gained
independence from Britain. British troops withdrew and the People's
Republic of Yemen was declared with Qahtan ash-Sha'abi as the
country's first President.
(www.atlapedia.com/online/countries/yemen.htm)
1978 Jun 26, There was a coup
in Southern Yemen (formerly Aden). Pres. Salem Rubaye Ali was
ousted, tried and shot. He was succeeded by Ali Nasir Muhammad.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)
Akkad
The dynasty of Akkad (later Iraq) consisted of 5 rulers in
Mesopotamia from about 2350BC to 2230.
2334-2279 Sargon I (2371BC-2315BC) founded and
ruled the city-state of Akkad, after he left the city of Kish where
he was an important official. He was the first ruler to maintain a
standing army. His empire lasted less than 200 years.
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
2320BC Sargon conquered the independent
city-states of Sumer and instituted a central government.
(http://eawc, p.2)
2315BC-2306BC Rimush, son of Sargon, ruled Akkad.
He was assassinated.
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
2306BC-2291BC Manishtusu, another son of Sargon,
took power over Akkad. He died in a palace revolt.
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
2300BC Akkadian armies conquered Nagar about this
time.
(MT, summer 2003, p.13)
2291BC-2254BC Naram-Sin ruled Akkad. He defeated a
rebel coalition in Sumer and re-established Akkadian power. He
re-conquered Syria, Lebanon, and the Taurus mountains, destroying
Aleppo and Mari in the process. During his reign the Gutians
sacked the city of Agade and eventually destroyed all of Sumer
(southern Iraq). During his reign Naram-Sin campaigned against the
region of Magan (Oman).
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
2254BC-2230BC Shar-Kali-Sharri, son of Naram-Sin,
ruled Akkad. He fought to preserve the realm but it disintegrated
under rebellion and invasion.
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
2230BC-2118BC Gutians, a tribe from the Zagros
region of Iran, gained power in Mesopotamia and Gutian kings
dominated the area.
(http://tinyurl.com/ctv5f)
1000BC A clay tablet, described as an
Akkadian-language letter, dating to about this time was placed on
display in 2011 in Jerusalem. The letter was from the Canaanite King
Abdi-Heba to the king of Egypt. It was found in excavations of a
site from the First Temple period.
(SFC, 6/21/11, p.A6)
Alawites
A religious group that broke
away from Shiite Islam in Syria. They number about 1.7 million and
comprise 12% of Syria’s population. Hafez Assad is a member of the
sect.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.A8)
Alderney
http://states.alderney.net/
One of the Channel Islands
Amorites
2100BC Byblos ( Pre-Phoenician city) was
burned to the ground probably by the Amorites.
(NG, Aug., 1974, S.W. Matthews, p.156)
2000-1600BC In Mesopotamia the Old Babylonian
period began after the collapse of Sumer, probably due to an
increase in the salt content of the soil that made farming
difficult. Weakened by poor crops and lack of surplus goods, the
Sumerians were conquered by the Amorites, situated in Babylon. The
center of civility shifted north. The Amorites preserved much of the
Sumerian culture but introduced their own Semitic language, an early
ancestor to Hebrew, into the region.
(http://eawc, p.2)
1500-1200BC The Amorites in the time of Moses came
from northeast Syria.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.11)
Andaman Islands
The aboriginal people in these islands off the
coast of India in the Bay of Bengal included the Great Andamanese,
Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese.
(SSFC, 8/17/03, p.M3
1858 The British colonized the
Andaman Islands home to 10 tribes of the Great Andamanese comprising
some 5,000 people. Most were killed or died of diseases brought by
the colonizers. In 2010 the last speaker of Bo, one of the ten
dialects used by the tribes, died.
(Reuters, 2/6/10)
1942 Mar 23, The Japanese
occupied the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
(HN, 3/23/98)
2003 Madhusree Mukerjee
authored "The Land of the Naked People: Encounters With Stone Age
Islanders."
(SSFC, 8/17/03, p.M3)
Andorra
A republic in the E. Pyranees
between France and Spain, once under the joint suzerainty of France
and the Spanish Bishop of Urgel. Its size is 191 sq mls. The capital
is Andorra la Vella.
(WUD, 1994, p. )(SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-14)(Hem.,
3/97, p.74)
839 The first official mention
of Andorra was recorded in the records of the cathedral at Seu
d’Urgell in Spain.
(Hem., 3/97, p.74)
1278 The co-principality was
created after long-running ownership disputes between the Bishops of
Seu and the Counts of Foix. They agreed to recognize each other as
co-princes of Andorra.
(Hem., 3/97, p.74)
1939 Sep 25, Andorra and
Germany finally signed an official treaty ending WW I. The 1919
Versailles Peace Treaty failed to include Andorra.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1993 Andorra ended as a
co-principality and became legally independent. The parliament
chamber had 28 seats, 4 representatives for each of its 7 parishes.
(Hem., 3/97, p.74)(SSFC, 6/24/07, p.G3)
1996 Andorra was still
technically at war with Germany for not having signed the Peace at
Westphalia in 1648. Its population stood at about 65,000.
(SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-14)
2007 Sep 1, Life expectancy in
Andorra was reported to be longer than in any other world country,
while the same in Swaziland was reported to be the shortest.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.14)
2007 Andorra’s population
numbered about 80,000.
(SSFC, 6/24/07, p.G3)
Anguilla
An island in the British West Indies.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/americas/Anguilla_sm97.gif
Antilles
ABC Islands: Aruba, Bonaire,
and Curacao of the Netherland Antilles are located off of Venezuela.
[see Netherland Antilles]
(Hem., 12/96, p.28)
Barbados is an island in the
East Lesser Antilles in the East West Indies.
(WUD, 1994, p.118)
60 Mil BC The Antilles Islands [of the West
Indies] broke off from the Mesoamerican mainland about 60 million
years ago. The islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico
comprise the Greater Antilles, and a group of smaller islands
comprise the Lesser Antilles.
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.15)(WUD, 1994, p.65)
1642 Curacao became a colony of
the Netherlands.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.72)
1648 The island of St. Martin
in the Lesser Antilles was divided between the French and Dutch. The
southern half went to the Dutch as Sint Maarten, while the northern
half, Saint Martin, became part of the French department of
Guadeloupe. Legend has it that a Dutchman and a Frenchman stood back
to back at the center of the island and paced of their shares. The
Dutchman stopped often to drink beer and was left with the smaller
share.
(NH, 10/96, p.60) (SFEC, 2/16/96, p.T6)
1759 Apr 23, British seized
Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.
(AP, 4/23/98)
1759 May 1, British fleet
occupied Guadeloupe, in the West Indies. [see Apr 23]
(MC, 5/1/02)
1795 Aug 25, Curacao slaves
opponents returns to St Christopher.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1804 Jan 31, British
vice-admiral William Bligh (of HMS Bounty infamy) fleet reached
Curacao (Antilles).
(MC, 1/31/02)
1804 Feb 26, Vice-Admiral
William Bligh ended the siege of Fort Amsterdam, Willemstad
(Curacao, SW Indies).
(SC, 2/26/02)
1832 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas in St. Martin at Cape Receiver.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1914 The discovery of oil in
Venezuela prompted Royal Dutch/Shell to build an oil refinery on
Curacao.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.72)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines
attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1954 Dec 15, With the
proclamation of the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the
Netherlands Antilles attained equal status with the Netherlands
proper and Suriname in the overarching Kingdom of the Netherlands.
(SSFC, 10/9/11,
p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura%C3%A7ao_and_Dependencies)
1969 Jul 8, Thor Heyerdahl and
his crew sailed their reed raft Ra for 8 weeks days from Morocco and
abandoned their trip 1 week shy of Barbados. Heyerdahl sailed across
the Atlantic in his Egyptian reed boat, Ra, and reported on garbage
floating everywhere in the sea.
(V.D.-H.K.p.343)(MC, 7/8/02)
1970 May 17, Thor Heyerdahl
(d.2002), Norwegian anthropologist, left Morocco aboard Ra II, a
papyrus reed boat, and sailed 3,270 nautical miles across the
Atlantic to Barbados in 57 days. [see Jul 12]
(SFC, 4/19/02, p.A2)(MC, 5/17/02)
1970 Jul 12, Thor Heyerdahl
crossed the Atlantic Ocean in "Ra" and docked in Barbados.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1971 Bonaire, Netherland
Antilles, outlawed spearfishing off the island.
(SFEC, 10/6/96,
T8)(www.geographia.com/bonaire/bondiv01.htm)
1996 Jul 7-28, Hurricane Cesar
caused 51 deaths in Caribbean and Central America. The storm hit
Costa Rica, Curacao, Aruba, San Andres and Nicaragua.
(AP, 9/11/04)(www.wunderground.com)
1998 Aug 3, US researchers
announced the discovery of a number of new species on the island of
Navassa, a US territory of 2 sq. miles in the Greater Antilles, 40
miles west of Haiti.
(SFC, 8/4/98, p.A3)
2001 Mar 15, A St. Maarten
registered boat carrying illegal migrants sank near St. Martin and
at least 20 people were killed.
(SFC, 3/16/01, p.A16)
2001 Mar 24, An Air Caraibes
Twin Otter plane with mostly French tourists from St. Maarten
crashed on the Caribbean island of St. Barthelemy and killed all 19
aboard and one person in the house.
(WSJ, 3/26/01, p.A1)(AP, 3/24/02)
2003 May 23, The Democratic
Party in the Dutch Caribbean territory of St. Maarten won
legislative elections, winning support for its platform of working
with the regional government before seeking independence from the
Netherlands.
(AP, 5/24/03)
2006 Jan 27, Five Caribbean
islands held their last parliamentary elections as members of a
unified Netherlands Antilles. Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, Saba
and St. Eustatius have set a target date of July 1, 2007 for
breaking off to form their own governments.
(AP, 1/27/06)
2006 Nov 2, In St. Maarten 4
French nationals were convicted of beating two gay American tourists
in this Dutch Caribbean island and were sentenced to between six
months and six years in prison.
(AP, 11/2/06)
2007 Sep 3, Hurricane Felix,
having passed the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire with
little damage, rapidly strengthened into a dangerous Category 5
storm and churned toward Central America, where forecasters said it
could arrive as a "potentially catastrophic" storm.
(AP, 9/3/07)(SFC, 9/3/07, p.A17)
2010 Sep 17, In St. Maarten two
major parties expected to dominate the election of 15 parliamentary
representatives who will lead the Dutch territory when it becomes an
autonomous country next month. St. Maarten and Curacao will become
countries within the Dutch kingdom when the Netherlands Antilles are
dissolved Oct. 10. The islands of Saba, St. Eustatius and Bonaire
will become special Dutch municipalities and respond directly to the
Dutch government.
(AP, 9/17/10)
2010 Oct 10, The former Dutch
Caribbean colonies of Curacao and St. Maarten became autonomous
countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in a change of
constitutional status dissolving the Netherlands Antilles.
(Reuters, 10/10/10)
2010 Dec 6, A motorboat
overloaded with mostly Haitian migrants slammed into a reef off the
British Virgin Islands and capsized as it tried to evade
authorities. At least 8 people were killed, including two infants.
25 people were rescued. Police in St. Maarten arrested three
Haitians and said they will be charged with human smuggling in the
case.
(AP, 12/7/10)(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 St. Maarten has about
40,000 citizens on its 13 square mile (34 square km) territory, the
southern third of an island shared with French-ruled St. Martin. It
is the smallest land mass in the world to be divided between two
sovereign nations.
(AP, 9/18/10)
Arara
A South American tribe. They
used to cut off the heads of their enemies, skin them, decorate the
craniums with feathers and trinkets, and display them as trophies.
(NH, 6/97, p.14)
Aral Sea
1936 The USSR began using
Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea to test deadly germs. In 1988
anthrax from Sverdlovsk was shipped in and buried there.
(SFC, 3/24/03, p.A5)
1950 Between Uzbekistan and
Kazakstan the surface area of the Aral Sea was 67,000 sq. km. and
shrinking
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A18)
1988 Spring, Soviet germ
scientists transferred hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria into
canisters with bleach and sent them for storage to Vozrozhdeniye
Island (Renaissance Island) in the Aral Sea, shared by Kazakstan and
Uzbekistan. Western estimates had 100-200 tons buried at 5-8 feet.
In 2002 Pentagon engineers dug up the site and neutralized the
anthrax.
(SFC, 6/2/99, p.A10,11)(SFC, 3/24/03, p.A5)
1991 Vozrozhdeniye Island
(Renaissance Island) in the Aral Sea became the property of
Kazakstan and Uzbekistan.
(SFC, 3/24/03, p.A5)
1997 Between Uzbekistan and
Kazakstan the surface area of the Aral Sea was 30,000 sq. km. and
shrinking
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A18)
2015 Between Uzbekistan and
Kazakstan the surface area of the Aral Sea was projected to be down
to13,000 sq. km..
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A18)
Ascension
British Island in the south Atlantic.
1Mil BC Ascension Island, the top of a volcano,
broke through the surface of the Atlantic Ocean about this time.
Since then the island has grown to about 100 square km.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.159)
1501 May 20, Portuguese
explorer Joao da Nova Castelia (1460-1509) discovered the Ascension
Islands on Ascension Day.
(www.eoearth.org/article/Ascension_scrub_and_grasslands)
1815 Oct 22, Ascension Island
was garrisoned by the British Admiralty. For administrative purposes
it was treated as a ship, the HMS Ascension.
(Econ, 12/18/10,
p.160)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island)
1836 Jul 20, Charles Darwin
climbed Green Hill on Ascension.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1899 A telegraph cable
connecting Britain to Cape Town came ashore on Ascension Island.
(Econ, 12/18/10, p.160)
1922 Britain decommissioned the
HMS Ascension and the island became a dependency of St. Helena.
Ascension Island issued its first postage stamps.
(Econ, 12/18/10,
p.160)(www.britlink.org/ascension.html)
Ashanti
1824 The Ashanti tribe in West
Africa defeated the troops under Sir Charles MacCarthy. His polished
skull then became a prized feature of the annual yam festival.
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-12)
Assyrians
1300-612BC The Assyrians, a Semitic people,
established an empire that spread out from Assur in northern
Mesopotamia.
(http://eawc, p.4)
1250BC By this time the Assyrians committed
themselves to conquering the Kassite Empire to the south.
(http://eawc, p.4)
1225BC The Assyrian ruler, Tukulti-Ninurta,
captured Babylon and the region of southern Mesopotamia, but their
control did not last long.
(http://eawc, p.5)
1114-1076 Tiglath-Pileser I ruled the Assyrian
empire.
(http://eawc, p.5)
722-705BC Sargon II, king of Assyria. [see 721BC]
(WUD, 1994, p.1269)
721-705BC Sargon II, king of Assyria. [see 722BC]
(AM, 7/01, p.33)
Asturias
842 Mar 20, Alfonso II the
Chaste, king of Asturia (791-842), died. Asturias was a kingdom in
NW Spain.
(MC, 3/20/02)(WUD, 1994 p.92)
Avars
626 Aug 7, Battle at
Constantinople: Slavs, Persians and Avars were defeated. Emp.
Heraclius repelled the attacks. The attacks began in 625.
(PCh, 1992, p.60)(MC, 8/7/02)
Aymara
400-500AD The Aymara people lived on the shores of
Lake Titicaca between Bolivia and Peru since the 5th century. Their
ancient capital was Tiahuanaco. Their world is described in “Valley
of the Spirits” (1996) by Alan L. Kolata.
(NH, 8/96, p.14)
Azores
A chain of nine islands, 740
miles off the coast of Portugal, make up the Azores. The 3rd island
is named Terceira.
SFEC, 5/24/98, p.A10)
1493 Feb 18, Columbus landed on
the island of Santa Maria, the southernmost island of the
Portuguese-controlled Azores.
(ON, 8/09, p.3)
1580-1640 The Azores was occupied by Spain and
bullfighting was introduced.
(SFEC, 5/24/98, p.A10)
1891-1975 Domingos Rebelo, artist and sculptor.
His work included “The Emigrants” (1929), the picture of a couple on
a quay at Ponta Delgada, waiting to embark to America.
(WSJ, 8/28/00, p.A25)
1968 May 22, The
nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, sank in
the Atlantic Ocean. The remains of the sub were later found on the
ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
(AP, 5/22/07)
1989 Feb 8, In the Azores 144
people were killed when an American-chartered Boeing 707 filled with
Italian tourists slammed into fog-covered Santa Maria mountain.
(AP, 2/8/99)
1998 A 5.8 earthquake hit the
Azores Islands and killed 10 people and injured about a 100. Some
1000 were left homeless.
(SFC, 7/10/98, p.A18)
1999 Dec 11, In the Azores a
SATA airline ATP turboprop crashed on Sao Jorge island and all 35
people aboard were killed.
(SFEC, 12/12/99, p.D1)
2003 Mar 16, Pres. Bush met
with PM Tony Blair and Spain’s PM Jose Maria Aznar in the Azores and
made it clear they were ready to go to war with or without UN
endorsement. Bush said “Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the
world.”
(SFC, 3/17/03, p.A1)
Aztecs
Speak the Nahuatl language and used a spear thrower called an
"Atlatl."
(WSJ, 10/24/95, p.A-1)
Their ritual calendar had a 260-day cycle and used 20 day signs in
combination with the numbers 1-13. Tochtli (rabbit) was the 8th of
the 20 signs.
(NH, 4/97, p.24)
An Aztec legend states that the hummingbird god told ancient Aztecs
to build their city at the spot where they find an eagle eating a
snake on a cactus. The site at Lake Texcoco met the requirement and
there Mexico City was found.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.E3)
14th-15th C. A human skull was sculpted out of
shimmering rock crystal.
(NH, 10/96, p.34)
1502 Ahuizotl, ruler of the
Aztecs, was likely cremated on a funeral pyre about this time. In
2007 Mexican archeologists found underground chambers in Mexico City
they believed to contain his remains.
(AP, 8/4/07)
1502 Montezuma Xocoyotl
(Montezuma II), an Aztec prince, inherited the Aztec throne.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.8)(ON, 10/00, p.1)
1500s The Aztecs played
ollamalitzli. The game placed a rubber ball through a stone ring and
the loser was often beheaded.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)
1517 An Aztec chronicler
described a comet as a “flaming ear of corn.”
(NG, 12/97, p.97)
1519 Nov 8, The Aztec and
their leader, Moctezuma, welcomed Hernando Cortez and his 650
explorers to their capital at Tenochtitlan. Spanish adventurer
Hernando Cortez and his force of about 300 Spanish soldiers, 18
horses and thousands of Mexico's native inhabitants who had grown
resentful of Aztec rule marched unmolested into Tenochtitlán,
the capital city of the Aztec empire. The Aztec ruler Montezuma,
believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl,
whose return had been foretold for centuries, greeted the arrival of
these strange visitors with courtesy--at least until it became clear
that the Spaniards were all too human and bent on conquest. Cortez
and his men, dazzled by the Aztec riches and horrified by the human
sacrifice central to their religion, began to systematically plunder
Tenochtitlán and tear down the bloody temples. Montezuma's
warriors attacked the Spaniards but with the aid of Indian allies,
Spanish reinforcements, superior weapons and disease, Cortez
defeated an empire of approximately 25 million people by August 13,
1521.
(ATC, p.16)(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)(HNPD, 11/8/98)
1520 A smallpox epidemic raged
in Vera Cruz, Mexico. The 16th century smallpox epidemic in Mexico
and Central America killed about half of the Aztecs.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.12)(SFEC, 1/30/00, Z1 p.2)
1541 The "Codex Mendoza" was an
Aztec pictorial manuscript of this time. It showed tribute received
by the Aztecs from people like the Mixtec with turquoise shields and
beads. It also showed 3 young people being stoned to death for
drunkenness.
(NH, 4/97, p.24)(Arch, 1/05, p.29)
1999 Gary Jennings, author of
historical novels, died at age 70. His novels included "Aztec,"
about the Aztec war with the Spanish conquistadors.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.E2)
Bactria
An ancient country in west Asia between the Oxus River and the Hindu
Kush Mountains.
(WUD, 1994, p.110)
333BC The Achaemenid King of
Persia, Darius III, died in Bactria. Bessus, the satrap of Bactria
had him murdered.
(AHD, 1971,
p.10)(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty29.html)
333BC Alexander the Great
(353BC-323BC), married a barbarian (Sogdian) princess, Roxana, the
daughter of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes. Alexander also married the
daughter of Darius, whom he defeated in 333, while staying firmly
attached to his comrade, Hephaistion.
(V.D.-H.K.p.68)(Hem., 2/97, p.116)(WSJ, 5/15/98,
p.W11)
37 Some 20,000 pieces of
jewelry and other objects were buried about this time with a
warrior-prince and 5 women in northern Afghanistan. In 1978-79 a
team led by Russian archeologist Viktor Sarianidi discovered their 6
sealed tombs at a site called Tillya Tepe (hill of gold). The
findings became known as the “Golden Hoard of Bactria.”
(WSJ, 11/19/08, p.D7)
Balkar
Independent Muslim warriors who live in the Caucasus Mountains
between the Black and Caspian seas. During WW II Stalin shipped most
of them to Siberia.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T2)
1827 Balkaria, a Caucasus
region later known as known as Kabardino-Balkari, was annexed by
Russia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kabardino-Balkaria)
1956 The Balkars were allowed
to return home.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T2)
Bantu
1000 AD By this time the whole of East and Central
Africa was occupied by the Bantu people. Older inhabitants such as
the Hottentots and Bushmen were either absorbed or pushed into less
desirable places such as the Kalahari.
(Enc. of Africa, 1976, p.169)
1000-1300AD Bantu people called
the Shona build the Great Zimbabwe, which means “Houses of Stone.”
This grand city becomes Zimbabwe’s capital and trade center.
(ATC, p.135)
Bashkortostan
http://www.bashedu.ru/bashkortostan/bash_e.htm
Bayaka
Pygmy people from the rain
forests of central Africa.
1996 CD Bayaka: The
Extraordinary Music of the BaBezele Pygmies was produced. It
featured an hour of yodels and songs... with the delicate tone
of the mondume. It was made with a 96-page booklet.
(Hem, 4/96, p.144)
Bedouins
c0AD Some inscriptions in a
pre-Islamic Arabic language called Safaitic show that Bedouins
followed the custom of exiling any person who made trouble with his
own tribe to the territory of another tribe until he solved his
problem and appeased the complaining member.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.11)
Berbers
A Muslim people numbering 15 million in Algeria
and Morocco.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.A8)
Mauritania is named after the ancient Berber
Kingdom of Mauretania, which later became a province of the Roman
Empire, even though the modern state covers a territory far to the
southwest of the old kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritania)
Bessarabia
A region in Moldavia northeast of Romania and
southwest of the Dniester River.
(WUD, 1994, p.142)
1812 Russia acquired
Bessarabia, the north eastern part of the original principality of
Moldavia, in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War (1806-1812).
(Econ, 1/6/07,
p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessarabia)
1853 Jul, Supported by Britain,
the Turks took a firm stand against the Russians, who occupied the
Danubian principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish
border. The Crimean War got under way in October. It was fought
mainly on the Crimean Peninsula between the Russians and the
British, French, and Ottoman Turkish, with support, from January
1855, by the army of Sardinia-Piedmont. The war aligned Anglican
England and Roman Catholic France with Islam’s sultan-caliphs
against the tsars, who saw themselves as the world’s last truly
Christian emperors.
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ,
10/2/10, p.89)
1856 Mar 30, Russia signed the
Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War. It guaranteed the integrity
of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern
Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was
neutralized, and the Danube River was opened to the shipping of all
nations. In 2010 Allen Lane authored “Crimea: The Last Crusade.”
(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143040/Crimean-War)(Econ,
10/2/10, p.89)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign
Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin
to invade Finland. Secret protocols, made public years later, were
added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia to be
within the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland was partitioned along
the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. Germany retained Lithuania
enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius. Just days after the signing,
Germany invaded Poland, and by the end of September, both powers had
claimed sections of Poland.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 8/23/97) (HNPD,
8/22/98)(HN, 8/23/98)
1940 Jun 26, The Soviet Union
delivered an ultimatum to Romania and 2 days later occupied
Bessarabia and North Bukovina.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Bessarabia_by_the_Soviet_Union)
Biafra
A secessionist state of southeast Nigeria.
(WUD, 1994, p.144)
1967 May 29, Lt. Col. Emeka
Ojukwu declared the independence of Biafra from Nigeria.
(http://flagspot.net/flags/ng-biaf.html)
1967 Jul 6, The Biafran War
erupted. The war, which lasted more than two years, claimed some
600,000 lives.
(AP, 7/6/97)
1968 Sep 15, The Organization
of African Unity condemned the secession of Biafra.
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)
Bismarck Archipelago
A group of islands in the
South Pacific, NE of New Guinea.
(WUD, 1994, p.962)
1700 Feb 27, The Pacific Island
of New Britain was discovered.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1942 Jan 20, There was a
Japanese air raid on Rabaul, New Britain.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1943 Oct 12, The US bombed
Rabaul, New Britain (S. Pacific, Bismarck Archipelago).
(WUD, 1994 p.962)(MC, 10/12/01)
Borneo
See Indonesia.
The island of Borneo, the 3rd
largest in the world, was divided among the sultanate of Brunei,
Indonesia, and the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, whose
capital is Kota Kinabalu.
(SFEC, 10/18/98, p.T10)
British Guyana
See Guyana
Burgundy
524 Jun 21, Battle at Vezerone:
Burgundy beat France.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1178 Jul 30, Frederick I
(Barbarossa), Holy Roman Emperor, was crowned King of Burgundy
(MC, 7/30/02)
1306 Pierre Dubois, a counselor
for the Duke of Burgundy, called for a European federation.
(Econ, 1/3/04, p.39)
1396 Jul 31, Philip the Good,
Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Limburg, count, was born.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1454 Feb 17, At a grand feast,
Philip the Good of Burgundy took the "vow of the pheasant," by which
he swore to fight the Turks.
(HN, 2/17/99)
1467 Jun 15, Philip the Good,
Duke of Burgundy, died.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1504 May 5, Anton of Burgundy
(~82), the Great Bastard, knight, died.
(MC, 5/5/02)
Cabinda
Portuguese territory and
enclave of Angola on the west coast of Africa.
(WUD, 1994, p.206)
Canaanites
c1500BC Linguistic evidence shows that the
Canaanites (now more commonly known as the Phoenicians) were
non-Jewish Semites whose language was almost identical with Hebrew.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.12)(L.C.-W.P.p.87-89)(WSJ,
4/17/97, p.A20)
1490-1436BC Tuthmosis III, ruled as Pharaoh of
Egypt. In the 15th cent. BC Thutmose III led his army from Egypt to
Megiddo and outflanked the chariots of the Canaanite forces that had
revolted against him.
(L.C.-W.P.p.87-89)(WSJ, 4/17/97, p.A20)
Cape Verde
Africanet: http://www.africanet.com/countries/capeverde.htm#HISTORY
History: http://users.erols.com/kauberdi/CVHistory.htm
Links: http://users.erols.com/kauberdi/index.html
c1450 The Portuguese brought
slaves to the uninhabited Cape Verde Island.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A8)
1487 Bartolomeo Dias,
Portuguese explorer, set out from Lisbon in August, and sailed south
to the Cape Verde Islands and past Cape Cross. Storms forced him out
to sea and when the winds moderated he continued east but found
nothing. He turned north and then sighted land.
(V.D.-H.K.p.173)
1974 Mario Soares, the foreign
minister of Portugal, helped negotiate a cease-fire that led to
independence.
(SFC, 4/19/00, p.A10)
1975 Jul 5, The Cape Verde
Islands officially became independent after 500 years of Portuguese
rule.
(SFC, 8/5/9, p.A8)(AP, 7/5/00)
1992 Singer Cesaria Evora
recorded her album "Miss Perfumado." She was discovered by producer
Jose Da Silva who established her in Paris.
(SFC, 9/13/99, p.)
2006 Dec 21, Cape Verde PM Jose
Maria das Neves said Africa must stop blaming its colonial past for
its problems and instead point the finger at the continent's
leaders.
(AFP, 12/21/06)
2007 Feb 8, In Cape Verde 3
Italian women, aged 17-33, were brutally attacked while vacationing,
dragged into the woods, pelted with stones and left for dead at the
bottom of a hole. One woman survived. 3 local men were arrested.
(AP, 2/10/07)
2009 Aug 14, Hillary Clinton
ended her whirlwind seven-nation African trip at Cape Verde, with a
tough love message that Africans must tackle their own problems.
(AFP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 17, Russian media
reported that the Arctic Sea has been found near Cape Verde and that
the ship's 15-man Russian crew has been taken aboard a Russian naval
vessel.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Sep 27, In Venezuela Pres.
Hugo Chavez proposed that South American and African nations unite
to create a cross-continental mining corporation to keep control of
their resources. Chavez made diplomatic inroads in Africa at a
summit of South American and African leaders where he offered
Venezuela's help in oil projects, mining and financial assistance.
Venezuela signed agreements to work together on oil projects with
South Africa, Mauritania, Niger, Sudan and Cape Verde.
(Reuters, 9/27/09)(AP, 9/28/09)
2010 Dec 28, West African
leaders Boni Yayi of Benin, Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma and
Pedro Pires of Cape Verde met with incumbent Ivory Coast leader
Laurent Gbagbo to deliver an ultimatum from the ECOWAS regional bloc
to step down or face removal by force. But Gbagbo's government
signaled he was unlikely to agree to cede power to Alassane
Ouattara.
(Reuters, 12/28/10)(SFC, 12/29/10, p.A4)
2011 Aug 7, Cape Verde
islanders voted for a new president as Pedro Pires wrapped up two
terms at the helm of a nation hailed for its stable democracy. His
ruling party faced a split vote. A run-off was scheduled for August
21.
(AFP, 8/8/11)
2011 Aug 21, In Cape Verde, one
of Africa's most stable and prosperous nations, liberal opposition
candidate Jorge Carlos Fonseca unseated the party which held the
presidency for a decade. Fonseca, a former foreign minister, won
54.90 percent of the vote, besting his socialist rival Manuel
Inocencio Sousa, who garnered 45.91 percent of the vote.
(AFP, 8/22/11)
Caroline Islands
The largest islands are Palau (Belau), Yap, Chuuk (Truk), Pohnpei
(Ponape), and Kosrae.
1686 A Spaniard by the name of
Francisco Lazcano named a group of about 500 small coral islands
east of the Philippines, the Caroline Islands, after King Charles II
of Spain who funded the expedition.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Islands)
1899 Germany bought the
Caroline Islands, a group of about 500 small coral islands east of
the Philippines, from Spain for 25 million pesetas.
(Econ, 11/19/11,
p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Islands)
1914 Japan occupied the
Caroline Islands and received a League of Nations mandate over them
in 1920.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Islands)
1945 After WW II the Caroline
Islands became trust territories of the United States, eventually
gaining independence as Micronesia in 1986 and Palau in 1994.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Islands)
Carpatho-Rusyns
The ethnic group of Andy
Warhol’s parents.
(WSJ, 4/26/96, p.A-1)
Ceylon: See Sri Lanka
Chagos Islands
A 65-island archipelago in the
Indian Ocean.
1967-1973 The entire population of the Chagos
archipelago, which lies 2,200 miles east of Africa and around 1,000
miles southwest of India, was relocated by this year. Britain leased
Diego Garcia, the main island, to the US and barred anyone from
entering the archipelago except by permit.
(AP, 10/9/03)
1968 The British government
expelled nearly 2,000 inhabitants to make way for a strategic US
military base on Diego Garcia Island.
(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A12)
1971 An immigration order
banned the Ilois islanders from their native lands.
(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A12)
2000 The 1971 immigration ban
was ruled illegal. Some 4,500 exiles living in Mauritius and the
Seychelles had the right to return.
(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A12)
2003 Oct 9, A British
judge ruled that former residents of the Chagos archipelago have no
right to return home or get compensation. Britain had leased Diego
Garcia, the main island, to the US in the late 1960s and barred
anyone from entering the archipelago except by permit.
(AP, 10/9/03)
2007 May 23, The High Court in
London upheld a ruling letting families return to their Indian Ocean
island homes, from where they were forced out 30 years ago to make
way for a US military base. The Court of Appeal backed a High
Court ruling in May last year that allowed the families to return to
the Chagos Islands, except for Diego Garcia, a launchpad for US
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(AFP, 5/23/07)
2008 Oct 22, The British
government won its appeal to the highest court against previous
rulings allowing displaced Indian Ocean Chagos islanders to return
home. The resettlement of the Chagossians in the 1960s and1970s
allowed Britain to lease the main island, Diego Garcia, to the
United States military for 50 years.
(AFP, 10/22/08)
2010 Apr 1, Britain said it
will create the world's largest marine reserve by banning fishing
around the Chagos Islands, a U.K.-owned archipelago in the Indian
Ocean. The cluster of 55 islands is spread across about a quarter of
a million square miles of ocean.
(AP, 4/1/10)
Chaldeans
1,000BC Chaldians traced their origins to about
this time in Babylon.
(SFC, 9/30/00, p.A12)
614BC The Babylonians
(particularly, the Chaldeans) with the help of the Medes, who
occupied what is today Iran, began a campaign to destroy the
Assyrians.
(http://eawc, p.8)
612BC Ninevah (Mesopotamia)
fell to the Babylonians. The Chaldeans, a Semitic people, then ruled
the entire region thereby issuing in the New Babylonian period that
lasted to 539BC.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.174)
546BC The Persians destroyed
Egypt’s alliance with the Chaldeans, Lydia and Sparta by first
capturing Lydia then the Chaldaeans.
(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty26.html)
539BC Babylon, under Chaldean
rule since 612BC, fell to the Persians. Cyrus the Persian captured
Babylon after the New Babylonian leader, Belshazaar, failed to read
“the handwriting on the wall.” The Persian Empire under Cyrus lasted
to 331BC, when it was conquered by Alexander the Great. Cyrus
returned some of the exiled Jews to Palestine, while other Jews
preferred to stay and establish a 2nd Jewish center, the first being
in Jerusalem.
(NG, Aug., 1974, S.W. Matthews,
p.174)(http://eawc, p.8,9)
431 The Assyrians and Chaldeans
broke from what was to become the Roman Catholic Church over a
theological dispute.
(WSJ, 3/12/00, p.A10)
1551 Pope Eugenius IV brought
some of the Middle-Eastern Christians back into the Western
Christian fold when he established the Chaldean rite of the Catholic
Church.
(WSJ, 3/12/00, p.A10)
2000 Sep, Hundreds of Chaldeans
sought refuge in the US via immigration through Mexico. Some 120,000
Chaldeans lived in the Detroit area.
(SFC, 9/30/00, p.A10)
Chonos
A tribe of sea-faring nomads
who worked the Chonos Islands off the coast of Chile. They hunted
fish and seals by hurling harpoons from plank canoes.
(SFC, 5/19/96, Zone 1, p.4)
Chuvashia
http://www.nupi.no/cgi-win/Russland/a_enhet.exe/CHUVASHIA
Cilicia
Cilicia was an ancient country and later a Roman
province in Asia Minor.
(WUD, 1994, p.266)
Cimmerians
700-600BCE A migration of the Cimmerians
and Scythians took place in the seventh century BC. These were
nomadic tribes from the Russian steppes, who made their way round
the eastern end of the Caucasus, burst through into the Moghan
plains and the basin of Lake Urmia, and terrorized Western Asia for
several generations, till they were broken by the power of the Medes
and absorbed in the native population. It was they who made an end
of the Kingdom of Urartu, and the language they brought with them
was probably an Indo-European dialect answering to the basic element
in modern Armenian.
(http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/bryce2.htm)
Circassia
Circassia, also known as Cherkessia in Russian, is a region in
Caucasia. Historically it comprised the southern half of the current
Krasnodar Territory and most of the interior of the current
Stavropol Territory, but now only refers to a portion of the
Karachay-Cherkessia Republic, Adyghe Republic and Kabardino-Balkaria
Republic of the Russian Federation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassia)
1763-1864 The Circassians, residents of the
northwest Caucasus, fought against the Russians in the
Russian-Circassian War only succumbing to a scorched earth campaign
initiated in 1862 under General Yevdokimov. Afterwards, large
numbers of Circassians fled and were deported to the Ottoman Empire,
others were resettled in Russia far from their home territories.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassians)
1942 Nov, In Balkaria, Central
Asia, a valley-full of women and children were hunted down in
several villages and butchered by the joint NKVD and Red Army task
force under the command of captain Nakin. This became known as the
Cherek massacre.
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.86)(http://tinyurl.com/y7b5tse)
1944 Mar 8, The Soviet
government celebrated International Women's Day by forcibly
deporting almost the entire Balkar population to Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Omsk Oblast in Siberia. Starting on 8 March and
finishing the following day, the NKVD loaded 37,713 Balkars onto 14
train echelons bound for Central Asia and Siberia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkars)
2010 Oliver Bullough authored
“Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the
Caucasus.”
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.86)
Cocos Islands
1886 The Clunies-Ross family
was granted the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean, about 2,700
kilometers (1,680 miles) northwest of Perth, by Queen Victoria.
Captain John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish trader, had landed there in
1825.
(AFP, 1/21/08)
1978 Control of the Cocos
Islands was ceded to Australia by a descendent of the Clunies-Ross
family, which settled the Indian Ocean coral atolls in 1827.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.84)
Cofan
A native Indian group of the
Ecuadorian Amazon.
(NH, 5/96, p.8)
Congo-Brazzaville
See Republic of Congo
Cook Islands
c1200 Polynesians settled the
14 Cook Islands that included Rarotonga.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)
c1600 Spanish explorers Alvaro
de Mendana and Pedro Fernandez de Quiros visited the Cook Islands
but overlooked Rarotonga, the largest one.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T5)
1722 Apr 5, Dutch explorer
Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island, a Polynesian Island 1400
miles from the coast of South America. They noted that the island
was treeless and wondered how massive statues were erected. Much of
the population was later wiped out and the island became a
possession of Chile. An indigenous script called rongorongo survived
but by 2002 was still not deciphered. In 2005 Steven Roger Fischer
authored “Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of
Easter Island.”
{Polynesia, Chile, Netherlands, Explorer}
1773 Captain James Cook found a
group of islands 1800 miles northeast of New Zealand. They became
known as the Cook Islands. "A couple of years ago, the Cook Islands
hired a lawyer from the United States to draft an asset protection
statute that instantly made the islands one of the best places in
the world to protect assets from creditors.
(Hem, 8/95, p.38)
1789 The HMS Bounty made a
brief stop at the Cook Island of Rarotonga before moving on to
Pitcairn Island.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T6)
1791 May 8, Capt. Edward
Edwards set sail from Tahiti in the Pandora with the Bounty
mutineers abandoned by Fletcher Henderson.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1821 The London Missionary
Society brought the Book of Common Prayer to Rarotonga.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1841 The Rarotonga church at
Titikaveka was built of coral blocks.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1849 The church at Arorangi,
Rarotonga, was built. It has the graveyard of Papeiha, the
Christianized Tahitian missionary who first preached the Gospel to
the islanders.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1855 The high-steepled church
in Avarua, Rarotonga, was built.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1901 Jun 11, Cook Islands were
annexed & proclaimed a part of New Zealand.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1928 Robert Dean Frisbie,
American expatriate South Seas writer, stated “I have hunted long
for this sanctuary.”
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1951-1960 Flying to Tahiti during this time
involved taking off in a flying boat from Fiji with an overnight
stop in Samoa and a refueling stop at Aitutaki Island.
(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.C8)
1964 The ship Yankee ran
aground off the island of Rarotonga after circling the world 7
times.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T6)
1965 Rarotonga of the Cook
Islands was colonized by the British but ruled until this year by
New Zealand.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T6)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1981 Sir Albert Henry, the
first prime minister of the Cook Islands, died. He had been stripped
of his knighthood by Queen Elizabeth when it was learned that he had
used government funds to pay for charter flights home for expatriate
voters friendly to his party.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, p.T7)
1997 Nov 3, Some 20 people were
missing after a cyclone struck. Typhoon Martin killed at least 5
people.
(WSJ, 11/4/97, p.A1)(SFC,11/8/97, p.A16)
2004 Oct 24, Six men on
Pitcairn Island were convicted of charges ranging from rape to
indecent assault following trials that exposed a culture of sexual
abuse. They received up to 6 years with suspensions pending appeal.
(AP, 10/25/04)(SFC, 10/30/04, p.A2)
2004 Nov 8, Pitcairn Island
selected its 1st female mayor, Brenda Christian, to fill the post
until a Dec 15 election. Former Mayor Steve Christian was among the
6 men convicted of 5 rape charges.
(SFC, 11/9/04, p.A3)
2006 Oct 30, In London 6 men
from remote Pitcairn Island lost their final appeal against their
convictions for a string of sex attacks dating back 40 years.
(AP, 10/30/06)
Copts
A Christian group in Egypt.
They number about 10 million.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.A8)
Corsica
535BC Control of Corsica
heralded the greatest extent of Etruscan influence.
(NG, 6/1988, p.710)
1768 May 15, By the Treaty of
Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A1)(HN, 5/15/99)
1769 Aug 15, Napoleon Bonaparte
(d.1821), ruler of France and continental Europe, was born on the
island of Corsica.
(AP, 8/15/97)(WUD, 1994, p.950)(HN, 8/15/98)
1794 Jul 12, British Admiral
Lord Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica.
(HN, 7/12/98)
1794 Aug 21, France surrendered
the island of Corsica to the British.
(HN, 8/21/98)
1998 Feb 6, In Corsica Claude
Erignac, the French governor, was shot a killed by 2 gunmen. In 2003
French police arrested Yvan Colonna for the murder.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.A11)(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.A3)
1999 May 4, Prime Minister
Jospin dissolved an antiterrorist squad linked to the firebombing of
a restaurant in Corsica frequented by nationalists.
(WSJ, 5/5/99, p.A1)
2003 Jul 6, Corsicans voted in
a historic referendum to give local officials more say in running
the Mediterranean island, an attempt to end years of attacks by
separatists fighting French rule.
(AP, 7/6/03)
2003 Jul 7, In Corsica
explosions rocked vacation homes owned by mainland French in new
nationalist violence a day after Corsicans rejected a plan designed
to set up a single executive body to run Corsican affairs.
(AP, 7/7/03)
Curacao
ABC Islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao of the Netherland Antilles
are located off of Venezuela. [see Netherland Antilles]
(Hem., 12/96, p.28)
Curacao is the largest of the ABC Islands. Willemstad is the
capital.
(Econ, 5/1/10, p.38)
1499 Alonso de Ojeda, a
Columbus Spanish lieutenant, and Amerigo Vespucci landed at Curacao.
(SSFC, 10/9/11,
p.C3)(http://www.curacao-travelguide.com/history/)
1642 Curacao became a colony of
the Netherlands.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.72)
1795 Aug 25, Curacao slaves
opponents returns to St Christopher.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1804 Jan 31, British
vice-admiral William Bligh (of HMS Bounty infamy) fleet reached
Curacao (Antilles).
(MC, 1/31/02)
1804 Feb 26, Vice-Admiral
William Bligh ended the siege of Fort Amsterdam, Willemstad
(Curacao, SW Indies).
(SC, 2/26/02)
1914 The discovery of oil in
Venezuela prompted Royal Dutch/Shell to build an oil refinery on
Curacao.
(Econ, 6/19/04, p.72)
1940
Jul, Jan Zwartendijk, a Dutch diplomat, and Chiune Sugihara, a
Japanese diplomat, worked together to save some 2,000 thousand
Polish Jews, who had fled to Lithuania by issuing them visas for
Japan, China and the Dutch colonies in South America. Zwartendijk
wrote out the so called Curacao visas, while Sugihara issued the
transit visas. The Sugihara family was later captured by the
Russians and placed in a concentration camp for 1 1/2 years.
(SFC, 9/7/96, p.A13)(SFC, 9/9/96,
p.A16)(www.remember.org/witness/righteous.html)
1954 Dec 15, With the
proclamation of the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the
Netherlands Antilles attained equal status with the Netherlands
proper and Suriname in the overarching Kingdom of the Netherlands.
(SSFC, 10/9/11,
p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura%C3%A7ao_and_Dependencies)
1954 The 5 islands of the
Netherlands Antilles were federated. These included Bonaire,
Curacao, St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.38)
1969 May 30, Refinery workers
on Curacao set fires in Willemstad. Marines from the Netherlands
restored order.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.38)
1996 Jul 7-28, Hurricane Cesar
caused 51 deaths in Caribbean and Central America. The storm hit
Costa Rica, Curacao, Aruba, San Andres and Nicaragua.
(AP, 9/11/04)(www.wunderground.com)
2002 Aug 31, The justice
minister of the Netherlands Antilles said Colombian assassins are
behind a series of execution-style slayings in Curacao, which has
seen drug seizures soar in recent years. There have been 28 killings
since the beginning of the year.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2004 Apr 5, The governing
coalition of Curacao, a Dutch Caribbean territory, collapsed over
allegations that the justice minister gave favors to a political
donor convicted of corruption.
(AP, 4/6/04)
2006 Jan 27, Five Caribbean
islands held their last parliamentary elections as members of a
unified Netherlands Antilles. Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, Saba
and St. Eustatius have set a target date of July 1, 2007 for
breaking off to form their own governments.
(AP, 1/27/06)
2009 Sep 25, On the Dutch
Caribbean island of Curacao James Hogan (49), a US diplomat, was
reported missing by his wife. On Oct 1 authorities confirmed that
DNA on bloody clothes found along Baya Beach matched with Hogan.
Curacao, the headquarters of the Netherlands Antilles government,
lies about 40 miles (65km) off Venezuela's coast.
(AP, 10/2/09)
2010 Oct 10, Curacao, St
Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius were scheduled to go their
own ways. The former Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curacao and St.
Maarten became autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the
Netherlands in a change of constitutional status dissolving the
Netherlands Antilles.
(Econ, 5/1/10, p.38)(Reuters, 10/10/10)
2011 Jul 22, In Curacao
Moustapha Khalesa (20), a Dubai-born Canadian citizen, stabbed
24-year-old Kan Mei Chan of the US to death in a medical university
dorm as she rushed to help a professor who Khalesa had also stabbed.
(AP, 7/26/11)
Curonians
A tribe of people on the
eastern shore of the Baltic Sea west of the Lithuanians.
925 In the Icelandic
“Egils-saga” there is an account of how Thorolf and Egil harried in
Curonia about this time. Details in the life of a Curonian feudal
lord are revealed.
(DrEE, 11/23/96, p.3)
1045-1066 King Harold Hardready reigned in Norway.
During this time Snorre Sturleson wrote the “Heimskringla.” In his
Ynglingasaga he said that in 1049 under King Svein and in 1051 under
King Magnus, a special sermon against Curonian pirates was
introduced in the Danish churches.
(DrEE, 11/23/96, p.3)
Cypress
1300BC A Levantine city-state of the era.
(MT, 3/96, p.3)
Dacia
An ancient kingdom and later a
Roman province in southern Europe between the Carpathian Mountains
and the Danube corresponding generally to modern Rumania and
adjacent regions.
(WUD, 1994, p.363)
650 BC These Transylvanian people are first known
from their contacts with the Greeks about this time.
(WSJ, 6/18/97, p.A20)
103-105AD Apolodorus of Damascus built a bridge
over the Danube for Emperor Trajan. It connected the Roman provinces
of Moesia Superior and Dacia (the Yugoslavian and Romanian banks
respectively).
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.26)
105AD Flavius Cerialis, prefect
of Cohort IX of Batavians at Vindolanda in northern England, was
transferred to the Danube to join Trajan’s forces gathering for the
Second Dacian War.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.17)
Dahomey (see Benin)
Dutch Guiana (see Surinam)
Eastern Slavonia
An area of northeastern Croatia bordering on
Serbia whose capital is Vukovar. Before the Bosnian war its ethnic
population was relatively balanced.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A12)
1991 Serbs captured eastern
Slavonia and most of its 68,000 Croat residents were displaced to
other parts of Croatia.
(SFC, 4/11/97, p.A12)
Etruscans
c600BC The Etruscans, believed to be natives of
Asia Minor, established cities that stretched from northern to
central Italy. They developed the arch and the vault, gladiatorial
combat for entertainment, and the study of animals to predict future
events.
(http://eawc, p.8)
484-420BC Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans
were Lydians who had immigrated to Italy from Asia Minor. But modern
scholars believe the Etruscans evolved from an indigenous population
of Iron Age farmers of the Villanovan culture.
(NG, 6/1988, p.710)
484-420BC The Greeks always called the Etruscans
the Tyrrhenians, after the prince Tyrrhenus who, according to
Herodotus, led them to the shores of Etruria.
(NG, 6/1988, p.718)
474BC The Etruscans were routed
by the Greeks of Syracuse in a sea battle off Cumae near Naples.
(NG, 6/1988, p.739)
396BC Sacking of Veio (Etruscan
city), after a ten-year siege, ended the city’s long conflict with
Rome. (NG, 6/1988, p.711)
295BC The Battle of Sentinum.
Etruria was defeated by Rome and the Etruscan decline continued for
more than 200 years. (NG, 6/1988, p.739)
French Equatorial Africa
A federation of French
territories in Central Africa that included Chad, Gabon, Middle
Congo and Ubanga-Shari. Each became autonomous in 1958.
(WUD, 1994, p.567)
1875 Jan 14, Dr. Albert
Schweitzer, French theologian who set up a native hospital in French
Equatorial Africa in 1913, was born.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1910 French Equatorial Africa
was a former administrative grouping of four French territories in
west central Africa. It was first formed by the federation of 3
French imperial colonies: Gabon, Middle Congo, and
Ubangi-Shari-Chad. It comprised a total area of 969,112 square miles
(2,500,000 sq km). Chad was separated from Ubangi-Shari in 1920 to
form a fourth colony.
(www.discoverfrance.net)
1934 French Equatorial Africa
was transformed into a unified territory of France, but in 1946 it
was re-divided into four separate overseas territories.
(www.discoverfrance.net)
1958 Nov 28, The Middle Congo
province of French Equatorial Africa voted to proclaim itself
independent as the Congo Republic (Brazzaville).
(DT internet 11/28/97)
1958 Nov 28, The African nation
of Chad became an autonomous republic within the French community.
(AP, 11/28/97)
French Guiana (French Guyana)
A Dept. of France on the NE coast of South America.
(WUD, 1994, p.567)
1749 Jean Godin, French
geographer, left Peru in an attempt to leave the continent by an
eastern route and became stranded in French Guiana for over 20
years. In 2004 Robert Whitaker authored “The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True
Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon.” It was an account
of Jean Godin (d.1792), French mapmaker, and his Peruvian wife.
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.81)
1852 France established its
penal colony at Devil’s Island, French Guiana. It was one of 3
islands called the Iles du Salut (Islands of Salvation). Some 70,000
convicts were sent there until 1946. The penal colony operated until
1951.
(SSFC, 12/15/02,
p.L5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Guiana)
1895 Jan 5, French Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus, convicted of treason, was publicly stripped of his rank. He
was ultimately vindicated. Dreyfus, a Jew falsely accused of spying
for the Germans, was imprisoned alone on Devil’s Island until 1899.
(AP, 1/5/98)(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)
1899 Sep 19, French Capt.
Alfred Dreyfus won a pardon after a retrial was forced by public
opinion. He was soon released from Devil's Island in French Guiana.
(PCh, 1992,
p.628)(www.spiritus-temporis.com/alfred-dreyfus/)
1953 Aug 22, France closed the
penal colony on Devil's Island.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1968 Kourou, French Guiana,
launched its 1st commercial satellite. A space center opened there
in 1970.
(AP, 8/27/02)
1996 Jun, The 1st Ariana 5 test
rocket crashed on launch at Kourou.
(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.B2)
1996 In the capital of Cayenne
high school students demonstrated against French control of the
school system.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.T9)
1997 Oct, The 2nd Ariana 5 test
rocket was launched at Kourou and experienced a spin problem.
(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.B2)
1998 Oct 21, The 3rd Ariana 5
test rocket was launched at Kourou. It successfully simulated the
launch of a mockup satellite.
(WSJ, 10/22/98, p.B2)
2003 Sep 27, Europe's first
mission to the moon blasted off aboard a European Ariane rocket from
French Guiana. The SMART-1 probe made it to within 3,100 miles of
the moon on Nov 15, 2004, and proceeded to move into an elliptical
orbit. The spacecraft ended its mission Sep 3, 2006, when it crashed
into the lunar surface.
(AP, 9/28/03)(SFC, 11/17/04, p.A3)(SSFC, 9/3/06,
p.A5)
2004 Jul 17, An Ariane 5 rocket
took off from French Guyana (Guiana) carrying the heaviest
commercial telecom satellite ever.
(WSJ, 7/19/04, p.A1)
2009 May 14, A French rocket
carrying the largest space telescope ever was launched into space on
a mission that European scientists hope will help unravel the
mystery of the universe's creation. The Ariane-5 rocket was loaded
with the Herschel space telescope and the Planck spacecraft,
carrying a payload of 5.3 tons (4.81 metric tons) when it launched
from the city of Kourou near the jungles of French Guiana.
(AP, 5/15/09)
2010 Jan 10, Voters in French
Guiana overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to give local government
more autonomy while remaining a part of France. 70% voted "no," with
48% turnout.
(AP, 1/10/10)
2011 Sep 9, Anglo Dutch Shell
announced that it had discovered oil in deep waters around 150 km
(90 miles) off the coast of French Guiana following a joint venture
drilling project with venture energy partners Total, Tullow and
Northpet.
(AFP, 9/9/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Russian rocket
launched the first 2 satellites of the EU’s Galileo navigation
system from French Guiana, in an ambitious bid to rival the American
GPS network.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 16, A Soyuz rocket
carrying six satellites launched from French Guiana in the
Russian-built rocket model's second mission this year. It was to
first release a French Earth observation satellite, Pleiades 1. Next
to come would be four French micro-satellites and a Chilean Earth
observation satellite was to be released last.
(AP, 12/16/11)
French Polynesia
A South Pacific territory of
France. A group of 5 archipelagos, included are the Society Islands,
the Marquesas, the Tuamotu Archipelago (which is also called the Low
Archipelago or the Paumotu Archipelago) and other scattered groups.
Formerly French Oceania. Also Bora Bora, Tahiti and Maupiti.
(WUD, 1994, p.567,1522)(SFC,11/27/97, p.B5)(SFEC,
1/18/98, p.T1)
1767 The English found their
way to Tahiti.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)
1769 A transit of Venus took
place. It was timed in Tahiti by the party of James Cook
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.79)
1777 Dec 8, Captain Cook left
the Society Islands (French Polynesia).
(MC, 12/8/01)
1789 Sep, Fletcher Henderson
left Tahiti with the Bounty with a light crew. 16 men were left
abandoned.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1791 May 8, Capt. Edward
Edwards set sail from Tahiti in the Pandora with the Bounty
mutineers abandoned by Fletcher Henderson.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1880 Jun 29, France annexed
Tahiti.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1835 Nov 15, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached Tahiti.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1880 The French colonized
Polynesia.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)
1891 Apr 1, Paul Gauguin
(1848-1903), French painter, abandoned his wife and 5 children and
left Marseille for Tahiti.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)(MC, 4/1/02)(SSFC, 5/11/03,
p.C7)
1891 Jun 9, Painter Paul
Gauguin arrived in Papeete, Tahiti.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1891 Painter Paul Gauguin
painted his landscape “Haere Mai,” which means “Come here!” in
Tahitian.
(SSFC, 10/23/11,
p.M5)(http://tinyurl.com/3qex6r3)
1896 Paul Gauguin made his
sculpture “Tahitian Girl.”
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.62)
1901 Paul Gauguin left Tahiti
for the Marquesas and arrived at Hiva Oa.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T1,6)
1905 Feb 8, A cyclone hit
Tahiti and adjacent islands killing some 10,000 people.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1970 Feb 20, Cheyenne Brando
(d.1995), daughter of Marlon, was born in Papeete, Tahiti.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Brando)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1972 David McTaggart (d.2001),
one of the founders of Greenpeace Int’l., sailed his small boat into
the French nuclear-testing site at Mururoa atoll in the South
Pacific.
(SFC, 3/24/01, p.A22)(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.A31)
1976 May 1, Kawika Kapahulehua
(d.2007 at 76), leading a 15-man crew on a double-hulled canoe with
sails, departed Hawaii to Tahiti. Organizer and anthropologist Ben
Finney wanted to prove the trip was possible. They reached Tahiti
after 34 days despite issues of ethnicity raised by part of the
crew. Mau Piailug (1932-2010), Micronesian master navigator, steered
the Hokule’a (Star of Gladness) by the stars, the feel of the wind
and the look of the sea.
(SFC, 5/28/07, p.D3)(Econ, 7/24/10, p.84)
1977 Francis Sanford
(1912-1996) helped write a statute in the French National Assembly
that provided autonomy in daily affairs to the territory.
(SFC, 12/23/96, p.A16)
1977 Roman Polanski, film
director, was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old model at
the home of Jack Nicholson. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual
intercourse with a minor and left the country on bail to film
"Hurricane" in Tahiti, and then fled to Paris.
(SFC, 10/2/97, p.E3)
1978 Oct 9, Jacques Brel,
Belgian cabaret singer, died at 49. He was buried at Atuona on the
Marquesas Island of Hiva Oa.
(MC, 10/9/01)(SSFC, 10/11/03, p.C9)
1984 The French granted
Polynesia internal autonomy.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)
1990 Jul 4, France performed
nuclear test at Muruora Island.
(www.seismo.ethz.ch/bsv/nuclear_explosions/undergr/france.html)
2002 Sep 12, Tahitian
authorities found a 55-foot catamaran, the Hakuna Matata, that
belonged to former NBA star Bison Dele (b.1969 as Brian Carson
Williams). His brother, Kevin Williams (Miles Dabord) was seen
docking the catamaran on July 16 in Taravao, Tahiti. Williams met
his girlfriend on July 8 in Papeete and described a scuffle that
left 3 people dead. He was last seen Sept. 5 in Phoenix, when he
tried to pick up an order for $500,000 in American Double Eagle
coins using his brother’s passport. A comatose Williams was arrested
Sep 19 at a San Diego hospital and died Sep 27.
(SFC, 9/14/02, p.A15)(SFC, 9/17/02, p.A1)(SFC,
9/19/02, p.A7)(SFC, 9/20/02, p.A1)(SFC, 9/21/02, p.A1)(SFC, 9/28/02,
p.A5)
2004 May, In Tahiti the Union
for Democracy coalition of Oscar Temaru won elections with a 1-seat
majority, dislodging Gaston Flosse from a long incumbency.
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.48)
2004 Oct 9, In Tahiti a
defection led to new elections that ousted the government of Oscar
Temaru in favor of Gaston Flosse by 1 seat. Temaru refused to leave
the presidential premises.
(Econ, 11/13/04, p.48)
2007 Aug 8, Researchers from
the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported that coral
coverage in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Indonesia's
Sumatra island to French Polynesia, had dropped 20 percent in the
past two decades. They said the decline was driven by climate
change, disease and coastal development.
(AP, 8/8/07)
2007 Aug 9, A small airplane
plunged into the sea moments after taking off from the French
Polynesian resort island of Moorea, apparently killing all 20 people
aboard in the territory's worst-ever plane crash.
(AP, 8/10/07)
2011 Oct 9, In French Polynesia
German tourist Stefan Ramin (40) was murdered while visiting Nuku
Hiva island. Haiti, a 31-year-old local guide, said Ramin was
injured and then attempted to sexually assault Ramin’s girlfriend
Heike Dorsch (37). Human remains were found in a charred pit on the
island on Oct 12.
(AFP, 10/18/11)
Friesland (Frisia)
Friesland is currently the
northernmost province of the Netherlands. Its population is 600,000,
and the capital is Leeuwarden.
1-100AD A Teutonic tribe known as the Frisians (or
Friesians) settled in what is now the Netherlands in the first
century A.D.
(HNQ, 3/5/00)
600-700 In the seventh century the Frisians
clashed with the Franks and resisted Christianity, but succumbed to
Frankish rule and accepted Christianity a century later. Citizens of
the Netherlands’s province of Friesland are still called Frisians
and the Frisian language is still spoken there.
(HNQ, 3/5/00)
754 Jun 5, Friezen murdered
bishop Boniface [Winfrid], English saint, archbishop of Dokkum, and
over 50 companions.
(MC, 6/5/02)
988 May 6, Dirk II, West
Frisian count of Holland, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1345 The Frisian victory over
the Dutch on the beach at Warns was their last before the Dutch took
over.
(WSJ, 5/13/98, p.A20)
1512 Nov 16, Jemme Herjuwsma,
Fries rebel, was beheaded.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1512 Nov 17, Kempo Roeper,
Frisian rebel, was quartered.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1538 Feb 26, Worp van Thabor,
Frisian abbot of Thabor (Chronicon Frisiae), died.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1549 May 27, Lijsbeth Dirksdr,
Friesian Anabaptist, drowned.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1555 May 25, Gemma Frisius
(46), Frisian geographer, astronomer, died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1579 Mar 23, Friesland joined
the Union of Utrecht.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1888 Apr 16, Drentse and Friese
peat cutters went on strike.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1912 Nov 25, Johannes D. De
Jong, Frisian poet and photographer (Kar £t twa), was born.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1998 Ernst Langhout, a
singer-songwriter, increased his sales when he began singing in his
native Frisian language.
(WSJ, 5/13/98, p.A20)
Galapagos Islands
The volcanic archipelago has
13 big islands, 6 small ones and 107 islets and rocks.
(SFEC, 11/19/00, p.T8)
1535 Mar 10, Bishop Tomas de
Berlanga discovered the Galapagos Islands.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1790s Floreana Island began
serving as a mail drop for whalers and seal hunters.
(SFEC, 11/19/00, p.T8)
1813 Apr, Captain David Porter
of the U.S. Navy sailed the USS Essex into the Galapagos Archipelago
after a six month journey around Cape Horn, eager to find a way to
help his country in their powder-keg relations with Great Britain.
Capt. Porter made his first landfall at a place called Post Office
Bay, on Charles Island, and raided the barrel there that served as
the informal but effective communications link between whaling ships
and the outside world. The primitive post box, a barrel system of
drop-off and pick-up, had been established some 20 years earlier,
but its efficiency had become well-known. Inside of half a year,
Capt. Porter and the Essex had captured 12 British whalers and
devastated the whale British industry in the Pacific, forcing a
reallocation of Royal Navy ships to a distant region far from the
“home front” in North America.
(Terraquest,
http://www.terraquest.com/assignment/assignment.html)
1835 Sep 15, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands, a scattering of 19
small islands and scores of islets.
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. T-5)(MC, 9/15/01)
1835 Sep 17, Charles Darwin
landed on Chatham in the Galapagos archipelago.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1835 Sep 23, HMS Beagle sailed
to Charles Island in the Galapagos archipelago.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1835 Oct 8, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin reached James Island, Galapagos archipelago.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1835 Oct 20, HMS Beagle left
the Galapagos Archipelago and sailed to Tahiti.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1964 Nathan W. Cohen (d.1997 at
78) organized the Galapagos Int’l. Scientific Expedition. 65
scientists spent 2 months of research there and dedicated the Darwin
Research Station there.
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A22)
1977 Robert Ballard and John B.
Corliss dived 9,000 feet into the Galapagos Rift Zone and found
previously unknown creatures thriving on bacteria from that depended
on sulfur from volcanic vents.
(SFC, 7/31/98, p.A3,13)
1998 Sep 15, The Cerro Azul
volcano on Isabela Island began erupting and threatened turtle
colonies.
(SFC, 9/18/98, p.D8)
Gandhara
~100-200AD A report from London on 6/27/96 said
that the British Library had acquired Buddhist texts that date back
as early as the 2nd cent AD. The texts were believed to be part of
the canon of the Sarvastivadin sect, which dominated Gandhara, now
north Pakistan and east Afghanistan.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.A12)
Garifuna
Legend held that indigenous Arawak-speaking
peoples of Northern Brazil arrived on the island of St. Vincent long
before the Europeans. They later took in ship wrecked Africans.
(SFC, 7/25/07, p.E1)
1793 The British took over the
island of St. Vincent and a series of wars ensued against the black
Caribs.
(SFC, 7/25/07, p.E2)
1795 The British won a battle
against the local Garifuna on St. Vincent.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T11)
1797 Some 5,000 black Carib
Indians, also known as Garifuna or Garinagu, were exiled from St.
Vincent Island to Roatan Island off of Honduras. The Garifuna
defined themselves not by country or territory but by language and
culture.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.T11)(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A6)
1998 It was reported that over
100,000 Garifuna, perhaps 50% of their entire people, had migrated
to the US, mostly to Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A6)
2001 UNESCO proclaimed the
Garifuna language, music and dance Masterpieces of the Oral and
Intangible heritage of Humanity.
(SFC, 7/25/07, p.E2)
Gilbert and Ellice Islands
A widely scattered island
group in the central Pacific under British control. They included
Christmas Island under Australia.
(WUD, 1994, p.597,263)
1942 Feb 1, Planes of the U.S.
Pacific fleet attacked Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert
Islands.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1942 Aug 17, Marine Raiders
attacked Makin Island in the Gilbert Islands from two submarines.
(HN, 8/17/98)
1942 Aug 19, 19 US Marines died
during a commando raid on Makin atoll in the Gilbert Islands. The
raid was 2,000 miles behind enemy lines and 9 Marines were left
behind. The 1943 movie, “Gung Ho,” was based on the raid and
starred Randolph Scott as Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, leader of the
raid. In 2001 the bodies of 13 Marines, who died on Makin, were
reburied at Arlington National Cemetery.
(SFC, 12/26/00, p.A1)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.A3)
1943 Nov 20, US Marines began
landing on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands,
encountering fierce resistance from Japanese forces but emerging
victorious three days later. The US 2nd marine division invaded the
tiny isle of Betio on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilberts. It was the first
seriously opposed landing experienced by the Americans in WWII.
After 3 days 1,027 US Marine and Navy personnel were killed. Of some
4,800 Japanese and Korean laborers on Betio, 146 survived, including
17 Japanese troops. In 2006 John Wukovits authored “One Square Mile
Of Hell.”
(AP,
11/20/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa)(AH, 6/07,
p.72)
1943 Nov 22, US troops landed
on Abemada, Gilbert Island.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1943 Nov 23, During World War
II, U.S. forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from
the Japanese. [part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands] Makin Atoll
was the first central Pacific island to be reconquered by the
Allies.
(AP, 11/23/97)(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)
1957 May 15, The 1st British
hydrogen bomb destroyed Christmas Island in South Pacific. The 200 -
300 kilotons yield was less than expected.
(www.atomicarchive.com/Timeline/Time1950.shtml)
1962 Apr 25,
Operation Dominic began with a test blast on Christmas Island. The
operation was a series of 105 nuclear test explosions conducted in
1962 and 1963 by the United States. Those conducted in the Pacific
are sometimes called Dominic I. The blasts in Nevada are known as
Dominic II.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Dominic_I_and_II)
1962 May 25, US performed
fizzled nuclear test at Christmas Island. The Tanana blast was part
of Operation Dominic.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Dominic_I_and_II)
1999 Mar 27, On Christmas
Island the crazy ant, Anoplolepis gracilipes, was reported to be
decimating the local crab population. The ant was introduced by west
African traders about 50 years earlier.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.C1)
Gitskan
1993 The Delgamuukw Decision
gave the Gitskan Indians of British Columbia unextinguished but
non-exclusive rights to their traditional territory, 58,000 sq.
miles near Smithers, BC. The Indians appealed and argued that their
rights were absolute and exclusive.
(G&M, 2/2/96, p.A-2)
1994 The Gitskan and the BC
government agreed to try to reach a negotiated settlement over their
differences.
(G&M, 2/2/96, p.A-2)
1996 Feb. The BC government
abandoned land-claims negotiations with the Gitskan Indians.
(G&M, 2/2/96, p.A-2)
Gold Coast
Former British territory in
West Africa that became part of Ghana
(WUD, 1994 p.607)
1954 Jun 15, The Convention
People’s Party, led by Kwame Nkrumah, won the Gold Coast elections
(later part of Ghana).
(HT, 6/15/00)
Guadeloupe
1493 Nov 4, Christopher
Columbus discovered Guadeloupe during his second expedition.
(HN, 11/4/98)
1635 Jun 28, The French colony
of Guadeloupe was established in the Caribbean.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1648 The island of St. Martin
in the Lesser Antilles was divided between the French and Dutch. The
southern half went to the Dutch as Sint Maarten, while the northern
half, Saint Martin, became part of the French department of
Guadeloupe. Legend has it that a Dutchman and a Frenchman stood back
to back at the center of the island and paced of their shares. The
Dutchman stopped often to drink beer and was left with the smaller
share.
(NH, 10/96, p.60) (SFEC, 2/16/96, p.T6)
1737 French Captain Gabriel
Mathieu de Clieu (d.1774) was appointed governor of Martinique and
the neighboring island of Guadeloupe.
(ON, 10/2010, p.12)
1739 Dec 25, Chevalier de
Saint-Georges (d.1799) was born on the Caribbean island of
Guadeloupe. He was the first African American musician to achieve
international renown as a classical composer, violinist and
conductor.
(http://ChevalierDeSaintGeorges.Homestead.com/Page1.html)
1759 Apr 23, British seized
Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1759 May 1, British fleet
occupied Guadeloupe, in the West Indies. [see Apr 23]
(MC, 5/1/02)
1804 Jul 21, Victor Schoelcher,
abolished French slavery, was born in Guadeloupe.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1976 Jul 8, A volcano erupted
on Guadeloupe and frightened the capital, Basse-Terre. A phreatic
eruption of the Soufriere volcano cracked open the summit dome
(www.ipgp.jussieu.fr/~beaudu/soufriere/smithsonian76.html#sean_0109)
2003 Dec 7, Voters on the
French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique rejected
reforms to their legislatures that opponents had criticized as a
step toward independence from France.
(AP, 12/8/03)
2004 Mar 28, Guadeloupe's
leader conceded defeat in regional elections that pushed her
conservative party out of power for the first time in 12 years, a
loss seen as public backlash toward moves to win greater autonomy
from Paris.
(AP, 3/29/04)
2005 Nov 25, In Guadeloupe
youths set up flaming tire barricades and threw rocks at police in
clashes sparked by a motorcycle crash at a police checkpoint.
(AP, 11/25/05)
2005 Guadeloupe’s population
was 420,000. The unemployment rate was 39%.
(AP, 11/26/05)
2006 Sep 30, André
Schwarz-Bart (b.1928), French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins,
died in Guadeloupe. His books included the novel “The Last of the
Just” (1960), based on the Jewish teaching that the fate of the
world lies with 36 just men.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Schwarz-Bart)(WSJ, 12/9/06,
p.P12)
2006 Nov 2, In St. Maarten 4
French nationals were convicted of beating two gay American tourists
on Guadelupe and were sentenced to between six months and six years
in prison.
(AP, 11/2/06)
2009 Feb 16, On the French
island of Guadeloupe police detained about 50 people after coming
under a barrage of stones as they tried to take down barricades. On
Martinique as many as 10,000 demonstrators marched through the
narrow streets of the capital to protest spiraling food prices and
denounce the business elite.
(AP, 2/16/09)
2009 Feb 18, In Guadeloupe
rioters manning barricades fatally shot Jacques Bino, tax agent and
union member, in a housing project in Pointe-a-Pitre, as he returned
home from protests. This was the first death in unrest that has
convulsed France's Caribbean islands for weeks.
(AP, 2/18/09)
2009 Feb 19, France bowed to
demands for wage increases in Guadeloupe in the hope of ending a
month-long strike that has plunged the French Caribbean island into
rioting.
(AP, 2/19/09)
2009 Feb 27, Unions in
Guadeloupe scored a victory in getting a deal to raise some workers'
salaries, but said they will not end a general strike now concluding
its sixth week.
(AP, 2/27/09)
2009 Mar 4, Union leaders on
the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe agreed to suspend a
44-day-old general strike as most of their demands continue to be
met.
(AP, 3/4/09)
Guam
A 210 square mile island of the
Marianas.
See Marianas (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands).
Haida
A native tribe of the northwest coast of the
American continent.
(NH, 3/97, p.42)
Hatti
1300BC A middle-east empire of this time.
(MT, 3/96, p.3)
Hispaniola
An island in the West Indies
comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
(WUD, 1994, p.673)
1496 Mar 10, Christopher
Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he
left Hispaniola for Spain.
(AP, 3/10/98)
1515 By this year the Taino
Indians were practically annihilated in clashes with the Spanish.
(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A10)
Hmong
The Hmong are one of 54 ethnic
groups in Viet Nam.
(SFEM, 6/9/96, p.9)
2300BC The Hmong people lived on the central
plains of China. They gradually moved to the mountains of Indochina
and Burma and then to Laos and Thailand.
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.2)
1950s The Hmong had no written
language until Christian missionaries began to show them increased
attention.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.7)
1960s The CIA recruited these
tribal people, farmers from the highlands of Laos, to help fight the
Viet Cong.
(SFC, 5/26/96, p.C-8)
1975-1980 A third of the Hmong people were killed
when the US withdrew from Laos.
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.2)
1992 The Hmong began living at
the Tham Krabok Buddhist monastery after monk traveled into the
mountains to free 2,000 Hmong from opium addiction.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A10)
1995 Thailand announced that it
would close all of its refugee camps. This would force the 4,500
Hmong remaining in those camps to either go to the US or return to
Laos.
(SFC, 5/26/96, p.C-8)
1996 May 26, About 3,000 Hmong
from refugee camps in Thailand are expected to arrive to the San
Joaquin Valley in California where 65,000 are already living.
(SFC, 5/26/96, p.C-8)
1996 Jun, Dia Cha wrote “Dia’s
Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey to Freedom.”
(SFC, 6/9/96, DB p.2)
1997 Jun, In this year 25,000
Hmong lived in Laos, 18,000 in Thailand and 140,000 in the US with
some 48,500 in the San Joaquin Valley of Calif. A clan of 15,000
lived at the Tham Krabok Buddhist monastery north of Bangkok.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A8)
1997 Anne Fadiman wrote “The
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American
Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures.” It was about the Hmong
in Merced, Ca.
(SFEC,12/14/97, BR p.4)
Hottentots
1905 Oct 29, Hottentot chief
Hendrik Witbooi was fatally injured.
(MC, 10/29/01)
Huastecs
A native Mexican tribe that
lived north of the Aztecs. Their fertility goddess was named
Tlazolteotl, and was adopted by the Aztecs.
(NH, 4/97, p.25)
Huns
434-453 Attila the Hun was known in western Europe
as the "Scourge of God." Attila was the king of the Huns from 434 to
453 and one of the greatest of the barbarian rulers to assail the
Roman Empire.
(HNQ, 12/19/98)
451AD Jun 20, Roman and
Barbarian warriors halted Attila’s army at the Catalaunian Plains in
eastern France. Attila the Hun was defeated by a combined Roman and
Visigothic army. The Huns moved south into Italy but were defeated
again.
(V.D.-H.K.p.88) (HN, 6/20/98)
451 Apr 7, Attila's Huns
plundered Metz.
(MC, 4/7/02)
452AD Jun 8, Italy was invaded
by Attila the Hun.
(HN, 6/8/98)
452AD Attila the Hun died.
(V.D.-H.K.p.88)
Igbo
At Ebo landing on St. Simons
Island off the coast of Georgia, it is rumored that the ghosts of
Igbo tribesman captured in West Africa and transported there to
become plantation slaves still roam the shores.
(SFC, 4/28/96, p.T-7)
Inuit
1948 James Houston, Canadian
author, flew into the Arctic Circle and spent 14 years with Inuit
people. In 1996 he published “Confessions of an Igloo Dweller,
Memories of the Old Arctic.”
(SFC, 9/1/96, BR p.4)
1995 Oct. These people of
Northern Quebec have about 4,300 eligible voters to voice their
opinion on whether to remain a part of Canada.
(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-16)
1999 April 1, In recognition
of Inuit land claims, a huge chunk of the Canadian Northwest
Territories' Central Keewatin and Baffin Region will become Nunavut
Territory.
(CAM, Nov.Dec. '95, p.28)
Isle of Man
Known in its Celtic language of Manx as Ellan Vannin. The island in
the middle of the Irish Sea is 220 sq. miles with a population of
70,000. It is not part of the United Kingdom but the queen of
England is the feudal Lord of Man.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.T3)
979 The Isle of Man parliament,
the Tynwald Court, was established.
(SSFC, 8/13/06, p.G5)
1907 On the Isle of Man the
motorbike race for the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, was started.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.T13)
1973 Aug 3, A flash fire killed
51 at amusement park on the Isle of Man, UK.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1974 Ned Mandrell, the last
native speaker of Manx, died. The Goidelic language, similar to
Irish and Scots Gaelic, was once spoken on the Isle of Man.
(Econ, 10/25/08,
p.72)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language)
Jersey
Jersey is a 45-square-mile (118-square-km) British Crown dependency
with a population of 90,000, off the coast of France. Its capital is
St Heliare.
(AP, 8/15/11)
1600-1603 Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) governed
Jersey, a British Channel Island.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.59)
1940 The German occupiers of
Jersey set a maximum tax rate of 20%. The low tax rate later
attracted the bank deposits of British expatriates.
(Econ, 2/24/07, SR p.5)
1969 Oct 1, The Channel Islands
of Guernsey & Jersey begin issuing their own postage stamps.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_postage_in_Great_Britain)
1986 On the Channel Island of
Jersey the Haut de la Garenne children's home closed down.
(Econ, 3/1/08, p.58)
2004 On the Channel Island of
Jersey a 19-year-old man originally from Northern Ireland tried to
rape, then kicked to death, a 35-year-old nurse outside her home. It
was the first murder here since the 1970s.
(AP, 8/15/11)
2008 Feb 23, Police on the
Channel Island of Jersey found a child's buried remains at Haut de
la Garenne, a former children's home. They soon widened their search
for bodies to six more sites in and around the home.
(AFP, 2/25/08)(Econ, 3/1/08, p.58)
2009 Sep 21, Gordon Wateridge
(78), a carer at the former Haut de la Garenne children’s home
during the 1970s on the Channel island of Jersey, was jailed for two
years for sexually assaulting teenage girls there.
(AFP, 9/21/09)
2009 The population of
Britain’s Channel Island of Jersey was about 92,000, with 13,000
people employed in financial services.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.59)
2011 Aug 14, In Jersey a Polish
man (30) 6 people in a frenzied stabbing spree, the deadliest crime
in memory on the Channel Island. Damian Rzeszowski is suspected of
stabbing to death his wife Izabela Rzeszowska (30) their two
children, Kinga (5) and Kacper (2) in a flat in the capital St
Helier. He is also suspected of killing his wife's father Marek
Garstka (56) and her friend Marta Dominika De La Haye (34) and
five-year-old daughter Julia Frances.
(AP, 8/15/11)(AFP, 8/25/11)
Jurchens
c1000 A group of Asian people
neighboring to China.
(NH, 9/97, p.14)
Kaliningrad, aka Koenigsberg, Königsberg
1712 King Frederick I of
Prussia presented his amber room, made as a gift by German artisans
in 1701, to Peter the Great [1716]. Catherine the Great later added
four marble panels from Florence, that were inlaid with precious
stones. It was moved to Konigsberg in 1945 and then lost during WW
II. One of the marble panels turned up in Bremen in 1997.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A16)(SFC, 4/30/98, p.E6)(WSJ,
1/20/00, p.A20)
1716 Prussian King
Friedrich Wilhelm I gave the Czar of Russia an elaborately carved
amber chamber. In exchange, he received his wish: 55 very tall
Russian soldiers. German troops dismantled it in 1941 and took it to
Koenigsburg where it disappeared. In 1979 the Soviet government
initiated a reconstruction, which was unveiled in 2003. [see 1701,
1712]
(AP, 5/13/03)
1941 The amber room in St.
Petersburg was dismantled by German officers and shipped to
Konigsberg for safekeeping. The Allied bombing in 1945 was thought
to have destroyed the work.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A16)
1945 Jan 30, Nazi SS guards
shot down an estimated 4,000 Jewish prisoners on the Baltic coast at
Palmnicken, Kaliningrad. The town was later renamed by the Russians
to Yantarny. Some 7,000 prisoners had been marched 25 miles from
Koenigsberg to a vacant lock factory at Palmnicken where they were
mowed down with machine guns. The prisoners had been vacated from a
network of 30 camps that made up Poland's Stutthoff concentration
camp. 90% of the Jews were women from Lithuania and Hungary.
(SFC, 1/31/00, p.C1)
1945 The Red Army took
Koenigsberg, dynamited the city and killed or expelled the German
population. They renamed it Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin, the
Soviet figurehead president.
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.7S)
2001 Jan 4, It was reported
that Russia had moved nuclear warheads into storage areas at its
Kaliningrad naval base over the past year. Russia called the charges
a dangerous joke.
(SFC, 1/4/01, p.A8)(SFC, 1/5/01, p.A20)
2002 Jul 10, In the Russian
Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad a man was killed when a sign with an
offensive slogan exploded as he tried to remove it from a park.
(AP, 7/10/02)
Kalmykia
1993 Residents of the Kalmykia
Region elected Kirsan Ilyumzhinov after her promised every citizen
$100 if he won.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.A10)
1994 The single independent
newspaper of Kalmykia, Sovyetskaya Kalmykia, was shut down
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.A12)
1998 Jun 8, Larisa Yudina (53),
an independent journalist in Kalmykia, was found dead in a pond with
a fractured skull and multiple stab wounds. She had pursued
investigations of corruption of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the president of
Kalmykia. The murder was called a political killing. Two aides of
Ilyumzhinov were later arrested by the police and confessed to the
killing.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A10)(SFC, 6/17/98, p.C2)
1998 Sep, Kalmykia hosted the
33rd Chess Olympiad in its newly built $30 million Chess city.
Although some players refused to go over a 1000 showed up. The
semi-autonomous republic of Russia had a population of 320,000 and
is located on the Caspian Sea. Its capital was Elista and its
president was Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A1)
2002 Oct 20, Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov, incumbent president of the Russian region of Kalmykia
since 1993, led all vote-getters in a re-election bid. Ilyumzhinov,
a millionaire and president of the international chess federation
FIDE, led the field of 11 candidates with 47.6 percent of the
vote.
(AP, 10/21/02)
Karelia
3.0-1.9 Billion BP The Saamo-Karelian structural
zone in the north-east of the Baltic shield evolved in this time and
contains highly metamorphosed rocks and granites.
(DD-EVTT, p.144)
1937-1938 Several hundred Americans were arrested
in Karelia, near the Finnish border during the Stalin purges.
Several thousand Americans and Canadians had moved there to help
develop the Soviet timber industry.
(SFEC, 12/22/96, BR p.7)(SFC, 7/17/97,
p.A10)(SFEC,11/9/97, p.A12)
Kassites
1600BC The Kassites, a non-Semitic people,
conquered most of Mesopotamia with the help of light chariot
warfare.
(http://eawc, p.3)
1595BC The Hittites captured Babylon and
retreated. They left the city open to Kassite domination which
lasted about 300 years. The Kassites maintained the
Sumerian/Babylonian culture without innovations of their own.
(http://eawc, p.4)
1250BC By this time the Assyrians committed
themselves to conquering the Kassite Empire to the south.
(http://eawc, p.4)
Khazaria
1395 Tamerlane burnt Astrakhan
to the ground. Astrakhan is situated in the Volga Delta, a fertile
area that formerly contained the capitals of Khazaria and the Golden
Horde. Astrakhan itself was first mentioned by travelers in the
early 13th century as Xacitarxan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrakhan)
1500-1600 The Kalmyk people, descendants from the
Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, settled in the lowlands between the
Volga and Don rivers (Khazaria) with their livestock.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.A12)
Khitans
c1000 A group of Asian people
neighboring to China.
(NH, 9/97, p.14)
Kiribati
1798 Edmund Fanning, an
American explorer, 1st charted Tabuaeran coral atoll (part of the
Gilbert Islands). Fanning Island Plantations Ltd. owned the island
through the 1800s and exported coconuts.
(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.C22)
1892-1937 The Gilbert Islands (Kiribati Islands)
were amalgamated as British possessions.
(WSJ, 1/22/96, p.A-1)
1940 British soldiers found
bones on Gardner Island, later renamed Nikumaroro Island, in
Kiribati that they suspected might be the remains of Amelia Earhart.
A report identifying the remains as those of a male was forwarded to
England but not to America. In 1998 the bones were identified as
belonging to a woman about 5 foot 7, of northern European
extraction.
(SFC, 12/2/98, p.A4)
1942 Aug 17, Marine Raiders
attacked Makin Island (Kiribati) in the Gilbert Islands from two
submarines. [see Aug 18]
(HN, 8/17/98)
1942 Aug 18, Carlson's Raiders
landed on Makin (Kiribati) in the Gilbert islands and killed 350
Japanese. [see Aug 17]
(MC, 8/18/02)
1956 The British administrator
of the Gilbert Islands put a levy on the export of phosphates (bird
manure) used in fertilizer. By 2007 the money set aside had
developed into the Kiribati Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund, a
$250 million investment portfolio that had grown to 9 times the
atoll’s GDP. State-owned investments later developed around the
world and became recognized as sovereign wealth funds.
(Econ, 5/26/07, p.79)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1979 Jul 12, The Gilbert
Islands gained independence from Britain and became a nation, the
Archipelago of Kiribati. It is a chain of 35 islands that sprawls
1,860 miles from east to west. Fanning Island was renamed to
Tabuaeran.
(www.worldstatesmen.org/Kiribati.htm)(SFC,
7/1/97, p.A9)(SSFC, 4/21/02, p.C22)
1994 Te Buroro Tito was elected
president of Kiribati.
(WSJ, 1/22/96, p.A-1)
1995 Jan 1, Teburoro Tito, the
incoming president of Kiribati, moved the International Date Line a
thousand miles east around Kiribati to allow all of its 33 atolls to
be line the same time zone. Thus the atoll of Kirimati never
experienced Dec 31, 1994.
(SSFC, 12/17/06, p.G5)
1996 Kiribati moved a section
of the date line so that its boundaries would all share the same
day.
(WSJ, 1/22/96, p.A-1)
1999 Mar 6, It was reported
that state of emergency had been declared after a prolonged drought
nearly exhausted the underground fresh water supply of the 81,000
inhabitants.
(SFC, 3/6/99, p.A8)
1999 Jun 18, Kiribati reported
that the islands of Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea were swallowed by the
Pacific Ocean.
(SFC, 6/18/99, p.A14)
2001 Jul, Kiribati joined the
United Nations. The population was 94,149.
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.A13)
2003 Nov 29, China said it
broke diplomatic relations with Kiribati after the tiny Pacific
island nation opened ties with rival Taiwan.
(AP, 11/29/03)
2006 Mar 28, President Anote
Tong of the Republic of Kiribati announced the formation of the
world's third-largest marine reserve at the 8th UN conference on the
Convention on Biological Diversity under way this week in Brazil.
(Reuters, 3/28/06)
2007 Kiribati decided to turn
half of its waters in the uninhabited Phoenix Islands into a
160,000-square-mile-reserve.
(SFC, 4/11/09, p.A3)
2010 Aug 2, UNESCO added 6
sites located in Brazil, China, Mexico, France's Reunion Island and
the South Pacific nation of Kiribati to World Heritage status.
(AP, 8/2/10)
Kiwayu
One of the spice islands off
the coast of Kenya. The other is Lamu.
(USA Today, 5/14/96, p.6D)
Koguryo
37BCE-448CE The Koguryo kingdom straddled what is now North Korea
and part of South Korea and the northeastern Chinese region of
Manchuria. It spread Buddhism throughout the region.
(AP, 2/1/04)
Kongo
1400s Kongo’s king, the
Mani-Kongo, ruled six provinces and about two million people. The
capital of the Kongo is Mbanza, built on a fertile plateau 100 miles
east of the coast and 50 miles south of the Congo River in southwest
Africa.
(ATC, p.150)
1482 Captain Diego Cao sailed
south along the African coast and landed at the mouth of the Zaire
(Congo) River. He left four servants and took four Africans hostage
back to his king, John, in Portugal. This was the first European
encounter with the vast kingdom of the Kongo.
(ATC, p.149)
Kosovo (see Serbia)
A province of Serbia, capital
is Pristina, with a population of nearly 2 million people who are
mostly Albanian Muslims. The province was granted independent status
by Tito.
1989 Milosevic of Serbia
revoked the independent status of Kosovo.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A13)
Kuban
1932-1933 Stalin imposed terror and famine on the
Ukraine, Kuban and Kazakhstan that was carried out be Lazar
Kaganovich.
(WSJ, 2/14/96, p.A-15)
Kurile Islands
A chain of island in the
northwest Pacific between Hokaido and the Kamchatka Peninsula.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.A8)
1875 Russia recognized Japan's
control over the 4 southernmost Kurile Islands.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.A8)
1998 Nov, Prime Minister Keizo
Obuchi of Japan in a summit with Pres. Yeltsin agreed to give Russia
close to $1 billion with $100 earmarked for the Kuriles.
(SFC, 1/19/99, p.A8)
Kush
1500BC By this time the kingdom of Kush was
established south of Egypt. The Kushites were dark-complexioned
Negroids.
(http://eawc, p.4)
Ladakh
A country west of Bhutan that
was absorbed into British India during colonial times.
(WSJ, 3/6/97, p.A1)
1820 Sep, William Moorcroft,
East India Co. head of 5,000 acre horse farm at Pusa, India, arrived
in Ladakh, while enroute to Bukhara, Uzbekistan, to trade for
horses. He spent 2 years here before continuing his journey.
(ON, 1/02, p.5)
Lamu
One of the spice islands off
the coast of Kenya. The other is Kiwayu. It has the feel of a
medieval Arabic trading village.
(USA Today, 5/14/96, p.6D)
Leeward Islands
A group of islands in the North Lesser Antilles
of the West Indies extending from Puerto Rico SE to Martinique. A
former British colony in the E West Indies consisting of Antigua,
Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, and the British
Virgin Islands.
(WUD, 1994, p.817)
1493 Nov 11, Columbus
discovered Saba, North Leeward Islands.
(WUD, 1994 p.1257)(MC, 11/11/01)
1958-1962 The West Indies Federation was comprised
of British territorial islands in the West Indies that included
Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, along with the Windward and
Leeward Island colonies.
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
1997 Jun 18, It was reported
that Japan was paying 5 Caribbean nations extensive aid and
investment in order to gain support to block protections for
endangered species. Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent, St.
Lucia and Dominica were all reported to have been bribed.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A8)
2006 Jun 16, The Int’l. Whaling
Commission met in St. Kitts.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.15)
2008 The population of St.
Kitts stood at about 40,000.
(Econ, 2/2/08, p.46)
2010 Aug 30, Hurricane Earl
lashed the northeastern Caribbean with heavy rain and strong winds,
causing flooding in low-lying parts of the Leeward Islands as it
rapidly intensified into a major Category 4 storm taking a path
projected to menace the United States. Earl passed just north of the
British Virgin Islands in the afternoon. By nighttime, the hurricane
was pulling away from the Caribbean, but heavy downpours still
threatened to cause flash floods and mudslides in Puerto Rico and
the Virgin Islands by drenching already saturated ground.
(AP, 8/30/10)(AP, 8/31/10)
Liguria
1797 A republic in NW Italy
that was set up by Napoleon.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1805 Liguria was incorporated
into France.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1814 The Kingdom of Sardinia
was united with the Kingdom of Liguria.
(WUD, 1994, p.830)
1849 Mar 23, Battle of Novara
(King Charles Albert of Sardinia vs. Italian republic). Austria’s
Gen. Radetzky (83) crushed the Piedmontese forces. Charles Albert
abdicated and was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel II, who
reigned until 1861.
(PCh, 1992, p.449)(SS, 3/23/02)
Lombardy
A region and former kingdom of
northern Italy initially settled by an ancient Germanic tribe.
(WUD, 1994, p.843)
1524 Chevalier Bayard,
commander of French forces in Lombardy, was killed and the French
were driven out.
(TL-MB, p.12)
Lord Howe Island
450 miles east of Sidney Australia.
www.compuserve.com.au/lordhowe/island.htm
1833 The first settlers came to
Lord Howe Island.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.69)
1875 All land on Lord Howe was
declared Crown Land. No ownership was allowed but leases were
granted in perpetuity.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.69)
1982 UNESCO declared Lord Howe
Island a World Heritage Site.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.69)
Lusitania
In Roman times the area of
Portugal was a Roman province named Lusitania.
(WUD, 1994, p.854)
Lycia
540BC The population of Xanthos
in Lycia (later Turkey) committed mass suicide rather than face
slavery under invading armies.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, p.T5)
Lydia
2,000BC The Hittites lived around what is now
Cappadocia, Turkey. They mixed with the already-settled Hatti and
were followed by the Lydians, Phrygians, Byzantines, Romans and
Greeks.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.T14)
585BC May 25, The first known
prediction of a solar eclipse was made [by Thales]. A historically
registered eclipse occurred during the savage war between the
Lydians and the Medians. The event caused both sides to stop
military action and sign for peace. The date of the eclipse
coincides with the date in Oppolzer’s tables published in 1887.
(SCTS, p.27)(HN, 5/25/98)
585BC May 28, A solar eclipse,
predicted by Thales of Miletus, interrupted a battle [a
Persian-Lydian battle] outside of Sardis in western Turkey between
the Medes and Lydians. The battle ended in a draw. [see May 25]
(HN, 5/28/98)(HN, 5/28/99)
560-546BC The rule of Croesus. The first coins
were produced in Lydia under the rule of Croesus. It was a kingdom
in western Turkey. Croesus made a treaty with the Spartans and
attacked Persia and was defeated.
(SFEC, 1/19/96, Parade p.5)(WUD, 1994,
p.345)(WSJ, 11/11/99, p.A24)
546BC The Persians destroyed
Egypt’s alliance with the Chaldeans, Lydia and Sparta by first
capturing Lydia then the Chaldaeans.
(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty26.html)
484-420BC Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans
were Lydians who had immigrated to Italy from Asia Minor. But modern
scholars believe the Etruscans evolved from an indigenous population
of Iron Age farmers of the Villanovan culture.
(NG, 6/1988, p.710)
Macao
1834 Jul 15, Lord Napier of
England arrived at Macao, China as the first chief superintendent of
trade.
(HN, 7/15/98)
1849 Aug 22, The Portuguese
governor of Macao, China, was assassinated because of his
anti-Chinese policies.
(HN, 8/22/98)
1866 Nov 12, Sun Yat-Sen
(d.1925), Chinese statesman and revolutionary leader, was born
(trad) to a Christian peasant near Macao. He attended an Anglican
grammar school in Hawaii, and went on to graduate from Hong Kong
School of Medicine in 1892.
(HFA, '96, p.18)(AP, 6/22/97)(HNQ, 6/3/98)
1987 Apr 13, Portugal signed an
agreement to return Macau to China in 1999.
(MC, 4/13/02)
Maoris
1350 Maori ancestors arrived at
New Zealand on seven legendary canoes from Hawaiki, the
mother-island of the east Polynesians.
(NG, Aug., 1974, C. McCarry, p.196)
Maronites
A group of people in Lebanon.
They number about 1.3 million. Their declining numbers and civil war
ended a long time political and economic dominance.
(WSJ, 9/5/96, p.A8)
Marquesas Islands
Ten rugged French Polynesian
islands 3,500 from the US coast. Of the 12 islands of the Marquesan
archipelago, only 6 were inhabited in 2000.
(WSJ, 4/6/00, p.A20)
1596 The Marquesas Islands were
visited by a Spanish ship.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T5)
1774 Captain Cook dropped
anchor at the islands.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1791 The Islands were
officially discovered. Over a 30 year period western diseases
ravaged the populace and only about 2,000 of 100,000 people
survived.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1842 France claimed the
Marquesas Islands.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1898 Missionaries forbade the
natives to tattoo their bodies.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)
1901 Paul Gauguin left Tahiti
for the Marquesas and arrived at Hiva Oa.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T1,6)
1903 May 8, Paul Gauguin
(b.1848), French born painter, died at his home on the Marquesas
Islands. He was buried at Atuona on Hiva Oa Island.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.C9)
1978 Oct 9, Jacques Brel,
Belgian cabaret singer, died at 49. He was buried at Atuona on the
Marquesas Island of Hiva Oa.
(MC, 10/9/01)(SSFC, 10/11/03, p.C9)
1999 Dec 28, Many tourists
showed up for the 5th of the Marquesas Arts Festivals. The
Aranui cargo ship made stops at the Marquesas.
(WSJ, 4/6/00, p.A20)
2002 Survivor 4 was filmed on
Nuku Hiva, the largest of the 12 Marquesa Islands.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.C9)
Mauretania
Mauretania is a part of the historical Ancient Libyan land in North
Africa. It corresponds to present day Morocco and a part of western
Algeria.
Mauritania is named after the ancient Berber Kingdom of Mauretania,
which later became a province of the Roman Empire, even though the
modern state covers a territory far to the southwest of the old
kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritania)
49BC Mauretania (now northern
Morocco and Algeria) became a client kingdom of Rome.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.22)
40AD Mauretania was divided
into the provinces of Tingitana and Caesariensis.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.22)
439AD The Vandals took Carthage
and quickly conquered all the coastal lands of Algeria and Tunisia.
Egypt and the Libyan coast remained in Roman hands.
(Enc. of Africa, 1976, p.168)
c439 In Mauretania (now
northern Morocco and Algeria) Roman rule ceased in the mid 5th
century when barbarian incursions forced the legions to withdraw.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.)
Media
An ancient country in W. Asia, south of the
Caspian Sea, that now corresponds with NW Iran. Its capital was
Ecbatana.
(WUD, 1994, p.890)
3,0000BCE Urartu existed in eastern Anatolia
starting about his time until it was defeated and destroyed by the
Medes.
(http://www.atmg.org/ArmenianFAQ.html#q6)
700-600BCE A migration of the Cimmerians
and Scythians took place in the seventh century BC. These were
nomadic tribes from the Russian steppes, who made their way round
the eastern end of the Caucasus, burst through into the Moghan
plains and the basin of Lake Urmia, and terrorized Western Asia for
several generations, till they were broken by the power of the Medes
and absorbed in the native population. It was they who made an end
of the Kingdom of Urartu, and the language they brought with them
was probably an Indo-European dialect answering to the basic element
in modern Armenian.
(http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/bryce2.htm)
614BC The Babylonians
(particularly, the Chaldeans) with the help of the Medes, who
occupied what is today Iran, began a campaign to destroy the
Assyrians.
(http://eawc, p.8)
585BC May 25, The first known
prediction of a solar eclipse was made [by Thales]. A historically
registered eclipse occurred during the savage war between the
Lydians and the Medians. The event caused both sides to stop
military action and sign for peace. The date of the eclipse
coincides with the date in Oppolzer’s tables published in 1887.
(SCTS, p.27)(HN, 5/25/98)
MENA
1995 Middle East / North Africa
economic region. It represents a proposed trading
block that stretches from Morocco to Oman.
(WSJ, 10/27/95, p.A-1)
Mercosur
A South American Common
market.
(WSJ, 2/14/97, p.A9)
1991 Brazil implemented a
common external tariff with its Mercosur partners, Argentina,
Uruguay, and Paraguay.
(USA Today, OW, 4/22/96, p.5)
1994 The Mercosur Customs Union
was created among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
(WSJ, 12/20/95, p.A-10)
1996 Bolivia joined Mercosur,
the Southern Cone Common Market, as an associated member.
(WSJ, 2/14/97, p.A9)
Midianites
c1200BC The father-in-law of Moses was a
Midianite.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.11)
Midway Islands
1867 Aug 28, The US occupied
the Midway Islands in Pacific.
(SFEC, 3/29/98, Z1 p.8)(MC, 8/28/01)
1899 Jan 17, US took possession
of Wake Island in Pacific.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1903 Jul 3, The first cable
across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam
and Manila. Teddy Roosevelt placed the atoll of Midway Island under
Navy supervision. The Commercial Pacific Cable Co. (later AT&T)
set cable across the Pacific via Midway Island and the first around
the world message was sent. The message took 9 minutes to circle the
globe.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.T5)(HN, 7/3/98)
1906 The Commercial Pacific
Cable Co. (later AT&T) planted ironwood trees on Midway Island
after setting cable across the Pacific.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.T5)
1934 A hotel was built on
Midway Island to service the Pan Am Clipper.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.T5)
1935 Mar 27, The steamer North
Haven departed San Francisco with 2 prefabricated hotels and other
supplies to establish bases on Wake and Guam Islands in the Marianas
to support Pan Am flights.
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.32)
1941 Dec 14, U.S. Marines made
a stand in battle for Wake Island.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1941 Dec 23, US Marines and
Navy defenders on Wake Island capitulated to a second Japanese
invasion. In 1995 Brig. Gen. John F. Kinney co-wrote “Wake Island
Pilot: A World War II Memoir.”
(AP, 12/23/97)(HN, 12/23/00)(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B5)
1942 May 2, Admiral Chester J.
Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese would attack Midway Island,
visited the island to review its readiness.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1942 Jun 2, The American
aircraft carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown moved into their
battle positions for the Battle of Midway.
(HN, 6/2/99)
1969 Jun 8, Pres. Nixon held a
clandestine meeting with South Vietnam Pres. Thieu at Midway Island
in an effort to end the war.
(SFEC, 7/20/97,
p.T5)(http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/gallery.php)
Minaro
A people who speak Tibetan and
live on the Dansar plain, a high plateau between India and Pakistan.
They still preserve some stone-age customs.
(SFC, 11/25/96, p.A3)
Mixtec
An indigenous Indian people
from the area around Oaxaca, Mexico. Every March 1 they observe the
Viko Ndute, or Festival of Water, wherein they serve food and drink
to the Earth so that she will produce.
(SFC, 5/6/96, p.A-11)
1000AD The Mixtecs took over the area around Monte
Alban in the now Mexican state of Oaxaca.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.T-8)
Minoans
2200-1600 The Minoans built Akrotiri. The town had
2-3 story houses with toilets and had a central drainage system.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T6)
2000-1600BC The Middle Minoan period. Middle
Minoan I finds polychrome decoration in pottery with elaborate
geometrical patterns; we also discover interesting attempts to
picture natural forms, such as goats and beetles. There then follows
some great catastrophe. Middle Minoan II includes the period of the
great palace of Phaestos and the first palace of Knossos. This
period also includes the magnificent polychrome pottery called
Kamares ware. Another catastrophe occurs. The second great palace of
Knossos was built and begins the Middle Minoan III. It was
distinguished by an intense realism in art, speaking clearly of a
rapid deterioration in taste. Pictographic writing was clearly
developed, with a hieratic or cursive script derived from it,
adapted for writing with pen and ink.
(R.M.-P.H.C.p.17)
2000-1500BC The Minoan civilization, named after
the Cretan ruler Minos, reached its height with central power in
Knossos on the isle of Crete. The culture was apparently more
female-oriented and peaceful than others of the time.
(http://eawc, p.2)
1700BC Knossos was first destroyed by an
earthquake.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A8)
c1520 The volcanic island of
Thera, later known as Santorini, blew up. [[see 1645BC, 1500BC,
1470BC and 1400-1300 for alternate dates]
1500 The explosion of Thira
(Santorini) released energy equal to 200,000 H-bombs. [see 1645BC
and 1470BC]
(NH, 5/96, p.3)
1500BC Akrotiri on Santorini was flooded and
covered by pumice and volcanic ash. The 30,000 inhabitants probably
had advanced warning because no skeletons have been found.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T6)
1470BC The volcano Thera, or Santorini, erupted in
the Mediterranean. It may correspond to the ninth plague of Egypt
recorded in Exodus as the “darkness over Egypt.” [see 1645BC and
1500BC for alternate date]
(NOHY, 3/90, p.129)
c1450BC The eruption of the volcano on Santorini
Island triggered earthquakes and tidal waves that may have destroyed
most of the Minoan cities and palaces. [see 1470BC]
(SFEC, 8/17/97, p.T11)
1899 Sir Arthur Evans
discovered the center of Minoan civilization on the island of Crete.
He erected a house overlooking the excavations and named it Villa
Ariadne after the daughter of King Minos. As he unearthed a mound at
Knossos he rebuilt parts of a 3,500 year-old palace in modernist
style. In 2009 Cathy Gere authored “Knossos and the Prophets of
Modernism.”
(WSJ, 6/26/98, p.W9)(WSJ, 2/8/02, p.AW9)(Econ,
5/16/09, p.91)
Moldavia
Bessarabia is a region in Moldavia.
(WUD, 1994, p.)
1546 The Turks occupied
Moldavia.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.17)
1546-1568 Alexandru Lapuseanu, ruler of Moldavia,
outlawed divorce and imposed the death penalty on anyone who started
such legal proceedings.
(SFC, 6/2/96, Zone 1p.2)
1723 Dimitrie Cantemir
(b.1673), 2-time Prince of Moldavia (1693 & 1710-1711), died
near Kharkov, Ukraine. He was born in what is now Romania and became
a prolific man of letters with talents as a philosopher, historian,
composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer.
Between 1687 and 1710 he lived in forced exile in Istanbul, where he
learned Turkish and studied the history of the Ottoman Empire at the
Patriarchate's Greek Academy, where he also composed music.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrie_Cantemir)(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.104)
1939 Aug 23, German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Commissar for Foreign
Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression, the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Secret protocols, made public years later,
were added that assigned Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia (a
region in Moldavia) to be within the Soviet sphere of influence.
Poland was partitioned along the rivers Narev, Vistula and San.
Germany retained Lithuania enlarged by the inclusion of Vilnius.
Just days after the signing, Germany invaded Poland, and by the end
of September, both powers had claimed sections of Poland. World War
II and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union were just around the
corner.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A16)(DrEE, 9/28/96, p.3)(DrEE,
10/26/96, p.4)(AP, 8/23/97)(HNPD, 8/22/98)
1991 Aug 27, Moldavia declared
independence from USSR.
(MC, 8/28/01)
Molucca Islands (Spice Islands)
31,000BC In the northern Moluccas humans were
visiting the coastal caves of Golo and Wetef on Gebe Island at this
time.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.21)
1512 Portuguese explorers
discovered the Celebes and found nutmeg trees in the Moluccas. This
began an 84-year monopoly of the nutmeg and mace trades.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.10)
1942 Feb 9, Japanese troops
landed near Makassar, South Celebes.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1975 Dec 14, Six South Moluccan
extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a
train near the Dutch town of Beilen.
(AP, 12/14/00)
1977 Jun 11, A 20-day hostage
drama in the Netherlands ended as Dutch marines stormed a train and
a school held by South Moluccan extremists. Six gunmen and two
hostages on the train were killed.
(AP, 6/11/97)
1999 Dec 2-4, In Indonesia
3-days of violence in the Maluku Islands (Moluccas) left 31 people
dead. Violence that began a year ago had left 700 dead.
(SFC, 12/6/99, p.A14)
2000 Jun 19, In Indonesia
sectarian fighting killed as many as 161 people in the Maluku
Islands, also known as the Moluccas or Spice Islands. Thousands of
Muslims attacked Christians in the village of Duma.
(WSJ, 6/20/00, p.A1)(SFC, 6/21/00, p.A13)
Montserrat
Travel Docs: http://www.traveldocs.com/ms/index.htm
A 39 sq. mile island in the
Caribbean central Leeward Islands in the E. West Indies,
whose capital is Plymouth. [It
also refers to a mountain in NE Spain, NW of Barcelona and the site
of the Montserrat Monastery.]
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A12)
1493 Columbus named Montserrat
after the monastery near Barcelona. He did not bother to land on the
island.
(NH, Jul, p.20)
1632 The British colonized
Montserrat. Irish Catholics, who fled religious persecution or had
served out their time as indentured servants in the British West
Indies, began settling in Montserrat.
(NH, Jul, p.20)(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.F2)
1768 Mar 17, A failed slave
uprising took place on Montserrat on St. Patrick’s Day.
(SSFC, 2/5/06, p.F2)
1960 Montserrat was established
as a British colony.
(WUD, 1994, p.928)
1995 Jul, A volcano reawakened
in southern Montserrat and threatened the 12,000 people on the 7 by
11 mile island. Officials evacuated 5,000 people from the southern
end after the volcano began spewing ash and rock.
(SFC, 4/4/96, p.A-9)
1996 May 18 During the week a
series of eruption from the volcano in the Soufriere Hills sent a
plume of ash and rock soaring 3,000 feet..
(SFC, 5/18/96, p.A-9)
1996 Sep 17, The Soufriere
Hills volcano erupted for 48 minutes.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T11)
1997 Jun 25, The Soufriere
Hills volcano spewed rock and hot ash and killed 6 people while 17
were reported missing.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A12)
1997 Aug 4, Superheated rock
from the Soufriere Hills volcano flowed into the abandoned capital
of Plymouth.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A9)
1997 Aug 22, On Montserrat
voluntary evacuation of the islanders was begun. Two-thirds of the
12,000 inhabitants fled the island. It was expected that much of the
island would not be habitable for 20 years after the eruptions
ceased.
(SFC, 8/23/97, p.A12)
1999 Jul, The Soufriere Hills
volcano exploded.
(SFC, 7/24/99, p.A8)
2003 Jul 15, Montserrat's
governor declared the Caribbean island a disaster zone, days after a
volcanic eruption spewed clouds of rock and ash over the British
territory.
(AP, 7/16/03)
Moravia
A region in the East Czech
Republic. A former province of Austria. Moravians formed a Christian
denomination that descended from the Bohemian Brethren that
held that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.
Moravian is also a dialect of Czech spoken in Moravia.
(WUD, 1994, p.930)
1528 Jacob Hutter (d.1536),
Anabaptist evangelist from South Tyrol, founded a "community of
love," whose members shared everything. They settled in Moravia due
to the religious tolerance there.
(TL-MB, 1988,
p.13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Hutter)
1592-1670 The Moravian prelate Jan Komensky wrote
in Latin and German and was offered the presidency of Harvard.
(WSJ, 11/18/96, p.A10)
1772 Dec 22, A Moravian
missionary constructed the 1st schoolhouse west of Allegheny.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1774 Dec 18, Empress Maria
Theresa expelled Jews from Prague, Bohemia and Moravia.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1906 Apr 28, Kurt Gödel
(d.1978), Austrian mathematician, was born in the Moravian city of
Brno. Godel later developed his incompleteness theorem showing that
within any logical system, no matter how rigidly structured, there
are always questions that cannot be answered with certainty,
contradictions that may be discovered, and errors that may lurk.
(V.D.-H.K.p.340)(SFC, 6/14/05, p.D2)
Mycenae
1300 A Levantine city-state.
(MT, 3/96, p.3)
Nauru
CIA Factbook:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nr.html
A Pacific island republic of about 8 square miles
near the equator and west of the Gilbert Islands. The population in
2003 was about 12,000.
(WUD, 1994, p.953)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.A4)
1968 Nauru gained independence
from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1998 Nov 15, Nauru registered
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There remained 3 years worth of
phosphate to be mined on the island which grappled with 3 major
crises: rising water from world-wide global warming, a 3rd year of
draught, and a $100 million investment fund that was put into the
Asian real-estate market.
(WSJ, 11/16/98, p.B7C)
1998 Transpacific Development
signed an exclusive "confidential agreement" with Nauru to establish
an investment program for foreign investors to become investors in
the economy and citizens of the Republic of Nauru.
(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.A4)
2001 Aug 31, Ministers of New
Zealand and Nauru announced that they would take the Afghanistan
asylum seekers stranded in Australian waters.
(SFC, 9/1/01, p.A6)
2002 US Sec. of State Colin
Powell sent a letter to Nauru condemning the sale of passports.
(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.A4)
2003 Mar 9, Nauru's
Pres. Bernard Dowiyogo (57), known as a pragmatic leader of the
environmentally devastated South Pacific island, died in Washington
DC. He signed an executive order as he lay dying, at the behest of
US officials, ending the Nauru offshore banking system and its
economic-citizenship program.
(AP, 3/10/03)(WSJ, 5/16/03, p.A4)
2008 Jan 8, Nauru’s foreign
minister said Australia's plans to close a much-criticized detention
center for asylum seekers on Nauru will devastate its economy.
(AFP, 1/8/08)
2008 Feb 8, Australia's widely
criticized "Pacific Solution" policy of holding asylum seekers on
remote islands ended when the last detainees flew out of Nauru to
live in Australia.
(AFP, 2/8/08)
2009 Dec 15, The tiny Pacific
island of Nauru recognized the rebel Black Sea region of Abkhazia,
throwing its weight behind a Russian drive to win international
recognition for Georgia's breakaway territories.
(Reuters, 12/15/09)
Navarre
A former kingdom in SW France
and Northern Spain.
(WUD, 1994, p.953)
1540 Ruffs as accordion-style
collars was a fashion brought to Europe from India and popularized
by the queen of Navarre.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R40)
Netherlands Antilles
The Netherlands Antilles, previously known as the Netherlands West
Indies or Dutch Antilles/West Indies, is part of the Lesser Antilles
and consists of two groups of islands in the Caribbean Sea:
Curaçao and Bonaire, just off the Venezuelan coast, and Sint
Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten, located southeast of the Virgin
Islands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Antilles)
The Dutch island of Bonaire is 50 miles off the coast of Venezuela.
It has a lush band of reef surrounding the island. The capital is
Kralendijk. The Dutch side of St. Martin, called St. Maarten, is
part of the Netherland Antilles.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)(SFEC, 2/16/96, p.T6)
Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao of the Netherland Antilles are located
off of Venezuela. ABC Islands.
(Hem., 12/96, p.28)
1493 Nov 11, The island of St.
Martin was sighted and named by Columbus, though the explorer never
landed there. The Dutch and French agreed to divide control of the
island in 1648, but often clashed over where the border should be
until a final pact in 1817.
(AP,
9/18/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted
Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
1648 The island of St. Martin
in the Lesser Antilles was divided between the French and Dutch. The
southern half went to the Dutch as Sint Maarten, while the northern
half, Saint Martin, became part of the French department of
Guadeloupe. Legend has it that a Dutchman and a Frenchman stood back
to back at the center of the island and paced of their shares. The
Dutchman stopped often to drink beer and was left with the smaller
share.
(NH, 10/96, p.60) (SFEC, 2/16/96, p.T6)
1793 The courthouse at the St.
Maarten Dutch capital of Philipsburg was built.
(SFEC, 2/16/96, p.T7)
1795 Aug 25, Curacao slaves
opponents returned to St Christopher.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1804 Jan 31, British
vice-admiral William Bligh (of HMS Bounty infamy) fleet reached
Curacao (Antilles).
(MC, 1/31/02)
1832 Dec 25, Charles Darwin
celebrated Christmas in St. Martin at Cape Receiver.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1937 Mar 1, Governor Wouters
inaugurated a radio station on the Dutch Antilles.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1942 Feb 16, German submarines
attacked an Aruba oil refinery and sank the tanker Pedernales.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C11)
1952 May 29, A 2nd Round
Conference between Dutch Antilles and Suriname ended.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1954 Dec 15, With the
proclamation of the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the
Netherlands Antilles attained equal status with the Netherlands
proper and Suriname in the overarching Kingdom of the Netherlands.
(SSFC, 10/9/11,
p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura%C3%A7ao_and_Dependencies)
1960s Turtles became legally
protected in the mid 60s.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)
1971 Bonaire, Netherland
Antilles, outlawed spearfishing off the island.
(SFEC, 10/6/96,
T8)(www.geographia.com/bonaire/bondiv01.htm)
1979 A Marine Park was
legislated to protect everything living or dead from the high tide
mark to a depth of 200 feet.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)
1984 The Hilma Hooker, a 235
ton freighter, sank off the coast.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)
1992 The Marine Park
established an annual $10 park entrance fee to make it
self-supporting.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)
2002 Aug 31, The justice
minister of the Netherlands Antilles said Colombian assassins are
behind a series of execution-style slayings in Curacao, which has
seen drug seizures soar in recent years. There have been 28 killings
since the beginning of the year.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2003 May 23, The Democratic
Party in the Dutch Caribbean territory of St. Maarten won
legislative elections, winning support for its platform of working
with the regional government before seeking independence from the
Netherlands.
(AP, 5/24/03)
2006 Jan 27, Five Caribbean
islands held their last parliamentary elections as members of a
unified Netherlands Antilles. Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, Saba
and St. Eustatius have set a target date of July 1, 2007 for
breaking off to form their own governments.
(AP, 1/27/06)
2006 Nov 2, In St. Maarten 4
French nationals were convicted of beating two gay American tourists
on Guadelupe and were sentenced to between six months and six years
in prison.
(AP, 11/2/06)
2007 Jul 20, On the Caribbean
island of St. Maarten Georgia state athletes Randy Newton and Bryan
Kilgore were killed. Michael Registe was later accused of the
murders and faced extradition.
(SSFC, 7/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Jan 19, Some 25 people,
most of them Haitians, were aboard an overloaded boat that was
illegally traveling the 100-mile (160-kilometer) passage from the
Dutch territory of St. Maarten to the British Virgin Islands. They
were apparently island-hopping in hopes of eventually reaching US
shores when the boat hit a reef, pitching passengers into the ocean.
13 migrants were rescued by a passing fishing boat. In September 4
men, two Sri Lankans and two residents of St. Kitts, were convicted
and sentenced to prison terms ranging up to 2 1/2 years for
organizing the doomed sea voyage from St. Maarten.
(AP, 1/21/09)(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 25, On the Dutch
Caribbean island of Curacao James Hogan (49), a US diplomat, was
reported missing by his wife. On Oct 1 authorities confirmed that
DNA on bloody clothes found along Baya Beach matched with Hogan.
Curacao, the headquarters of the Netherlands Antilles government,
lies about 40 miles (65km) off Venezuela's coast.
(AP, 10/2/09)
2009 Nov 2, The Netherlands
Antilles launched an amnesty program that would provide residence
and working papers for thousands of illegal immigrants. An estimated
70,000 immigrants lived in the 5 Dutch islands without valid papers
or work permits.
(SFC, 11/5/09, p.A2)
2010 Sep 17, In St. Maarten two
major parties expected to dominate the election of 15 parliamentary
representatives who will lead the Dutch territory when it becomes an
autonomous country next month. St. Maarten and Curacao will become
countries within the Dutch kingdom when the Netherlands Antilles are
dissolved Oct. 10. The islands of Saba, St. Eustatius and Bonaire
will become special Dutch municipalities and respond directly to the
Dutch government.
(AP, 9/17/10)
2010 Oct 10, Curacao, St
Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius were scheduled to go their
own ways. The former Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curacao and St.
Maarten became autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the
Netherlands in a change of constitutional status dissolving the
Netherlands Antilles.
(Econ, 5/1/10, p.38)(Reuters, 10/10/10)
2010 St. Maarten has about
40,000 citizens on its 13 square mile (34 square km) territory, the
southern third of an island shared with French-ruled St. Martin. It
is the smallest land mass in the world to be divided between two
sovereign nations.
(AP, 9/18/10)
New Guinea see Papua
Nieu
A Polynesian island.
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1997 Nov, Nieu began to
register internet domain web sites with its country-code letters .nu
after Tonga’s success.
(WSJ, 12/8/97, p.B21E)
1998 Nov 15, Nauru and Niue
registered to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (WSJ, 11/16/98,
p.B7C)
2011 Apr 5, The Pacific nation
of Niue has printed unusual commemorative stamps for Britain's royal
wedding: an image of Prince William and Kate Middleton with
perforations that split the couple down the middle.
(AP, 4/5/11)
Norfolk Island
A 3 by 5 mile volcanic outcrop
halfway between New Caledonia and New Zealand.
www.australia.com
1774 Captain Cook discovered
Norfolk Island and dubbed it "paradise" in his log. The British
later turned it into a penal colony and resettled the inhabitants of
Pitcairn island there in 1856.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.66)
1856 Jun 8, The British
resettled 194 people from Pitcairn Island onto Norfolk Island.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.66)
2002 Mar 31, On Norfolk Island
Glenn McNeill (24) of New Zealand hit Janelle Patton (29) with his
car and later stabbed her "just to make sure she was dead." McNeill
was arrested in 2006 based on DNA evidence. In 2007 McNeill told
police he had been smoking cannabis when he hit Patton.
(AFP, 2/7/07)
Numidia
see Algeria
Nung
A people that originated in
China’s Guangxi province bordering on Vietnam. They were first
recruited by the French to fight Ho Chi Minh’s Communist guerrillas
during the first Indochina War. After the French defeat at Dien Bien
Phu they moved south and settled around Binh Thuan
province.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A10)
1964 American Green Beret units
in Vietnam formed several all-Nung units.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A10)
1973 Many of the Nung joined
the South Vietnamese army after American ground forces were
withdrawn.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A10)
1990-91 The Nung made their way to Hong Kong as
boat people.
(SFC, 6/18/97, p.A10)
Nyasaland [see Malawi]
Orange
A small principality of western Europe
1564 Dec 31, Willem of Orange
demanded freedom of conscience and religion.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1577 Sep 23, William of Orange
made his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1585 Elizabeth extended her
protection to The Netherlands against Spain to avenge the murder of
William of Orange.
(TL-MB, p.24)
1650 Nov 4, William III, Prince
of Orange and King of England, was born. [see Nov 14]
(HN, 11/4/98)
1660-1731 Daniel Defoe, English novelist and
political journalist. He was born as Daniel Foe and became a
successful merchant in woolen goods. For a time he was jailed due to
his debts. He became a supporter of William of Orange and wrote over
500 publications on his behalf. Some regard him as the father of
modern journalism. Among other works he wrote "Robinson Crusoe,"
"Moll Flanders," "General Histories of the Robberies and Murders of
the Most Notorious Pirates," "A Tour of the Whole Island of Great
Britain," and “Journal of the Plague Year.” In 1999 Richard
West published "Daniel Defoe: The Life and Strange Surprising
Adventures."
(WUD, 1994, p.379)(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A12)
1667 Jun 18, The Dutch fleet
sailed up the Thames and threatened London. They burned 3 ships and
captured the English flagship in what came to be called the Glorious
Revolution, in which William of Orange replaced James Stuart.
(HN, 6/18/98)(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1677 Nov 4, William and Mary
were married in England. William of Orange married his cousin Mary
(daughter to James, Duke of York and the same James II who fled in
1688).
(HN, 11/4/98)(HNQ, 12/28/00)
1688 Dec 10, King James II fled
London as "Glorious Revolution" replaced him with King William (of
Orange) and Queen Mary. [see Dec 11]
(MC, 12/10/01)
1688 Dec 11, James II abdicated
the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.
(HN, 12/11/98)
Ostrogoths
493 Mar 3, Ostrogothen King
Theodorik the Great beat Odoacer.
(SC, 3/3/02)
526 Aug 30, Theodorik the Great
(72), King of Ostrogoths, died of dysentery. He was succeeded by his
grandson Athalaric (10), who reigned until 534 with his mother
Amalasuntha as regent.
(PC, 1992, p.54)
535 Apr 30, Amalaswintha, queen
of Ostrogothen, was murdered.
(MC, 4/30/02)
Palau
1944 Mar 30, The U.S. fleet
attacked Palau, near the Philippines.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1994 Palau became an
independent nation.
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A1)
2007 Aug 7, Administers in
Vienna said that the mid-Pacific nation of Palau has ratified the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, bringing to 139 the number of
countries that have fully endorsed the pact. The treaty, which bans
all nuclear explosions, will not enter into force until it has been
ratified by 44 states listed in an annex that participated in a 1996
disarmament conference and have nuclear power or research reactors.
Only 34 of the 44 countries have both signed and ratified the pact.
The holdouts are China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran,
Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and the United States.
(AP, 8/7/07)
2009 Jun 10, Palau agreed to
accept 17 Chinese Muslims who have languished in legal limbo at
Guantanamo Bay. President Johnson Toribiong said the decision of
Palau, one of a handful of countries that does not recognize China
and maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, was "a humanitarian
gesture" intended to help the detainees restart their lives.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Sep 9, Lawyers said 3
Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay formally accepted an
offer to take up new lives in the Pacific island nation of Palau and
could be moved there as early as next month.
(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 25, Palau announced to
the UN General Assembly that it is creating a shark and ray
sanctuary over some 240,000 square miles around its coastline. Palau
had just one boat to patrol the protected waters. Some 20,000 people
populated the 190-square mile archipelago.
(SFC, 9/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Nov 1, In Palau 6 Chinese
Muslims, ethnic Uighers, newly released from Guantanamo Bay, traded
life behind bars for rooms with ocean view in the tiny Pacific
nation, which agreed to a US request to resettle them.
(AP, 11/1/09)
Palmyra Atoll
A cluster of coral islets
1,052 miles south of Hawaii.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
1802 An American captain of the
ship Palmyra blew ashore and named the atoll Palmyra after his ship.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
1862 Two New Zealanders, who
married Hawaiian women, obtained a deed to Palmyra Atoll from King
Kamehameha V.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
1898 Palmyra was excluded from
the annexation of Hawaii to the US.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
1922 A family of Honolulu
roofing contractors, the Fullard-Leos, purchased Palmyra for
$70,000.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
1938 A feud began between the
Fullard-Leos and the US Navy, which built an airstrip on Palmyra and
used it as a base during WW II.
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
2000 May, The Nature
Conservancy agreed to buy Palmyra Atoll for use as a nature preserve
(SFC, 5/4/00, p.A9)
Olmec
1200-400BC The Olmecs built impressive cities and
established trade routes throughout Mesoamerica, that included
settlements at La Venta and Tres Zapotes.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, p.T12)
1400-400BC The earliest known civilization of
Mesoamerica. It profoundly influenced the subsequent civilizations
of the Maya and Aztec. They inhabited the Gulf Coast region of what
is now Mexico and Central America. Objects of their culture are
being exhibited at Princeton Univ. and will move to Houston in
April.
(WSJ, 1/16/96, p. A-16)
1200-300BC The Olmec people ruled southern Mexico
and northern Central America.
(WSJ, 7/2/96, p.A12)
Palau
A former US trust territory of 8 inhabited
islands.
1944 Mar 30, The U.S. fleet
attacked Palau, near the Philippines.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1994 Palau became an
independent nation.
(WSJ, 7/31/97, p.A1)
Parthia
An ancient country in west
Asia southeast of the Caspian Sea.
(WUD, 1994, p.1051)
250BC A finely burnished red
pottery was introduced by the Parthians into northern Oman.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.53)
226AD The Iranians conquered
the Parthians.
(WUD, 1994, p.1051)
Phoenicians
c1500BC Linguistic evidence shows that the
Canaanites (now more commonly known as the Phoenicians) were
non-Jewish Semites whose language was almost identical with Hebrew.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.12)(L.C.-W.P.p.87-89)(WSJ,
4/17/97, p.A20)
900BC-700BC In 2008 archeologists found
pottery in Tyre, Lebanon, that was used by Phoenicians during this
period.
(AP, 11/12/08)
2008 Oct 30, Scientists
reported that 1 in 17 men living on the coasts of North Africa and
southern europe may have a Phoenician direct male line ancestor.
Evidence was based on Y-chromosomes collected in Cyprus, Malta,
Morocco, the West Bank, Syria and Tunisia.
(SFC, 10/31/08, p.A14)
Philistines
Called the Peleset by the Egyptians, the Philistines ruled over a
five city-state federation known as the Pentapolis. They ruled as a
military aristocracy over a predominately Canaanite population. The
five capitals were Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron.
(HNQ, 5/6/99)
Phrygia
An ancient country in central
and NW Asia Minor, later Turkey.
(WUD, 1994, p.1086)
The classic myth of Cybele,
goddess of fertility, and her love for the young mortal, Atys,
formed the basis for the 18th century opera by Lully and Quinault.
The myth was set in Phrygia. According to classical myths, priests
of the cult of Cybele were required to perform self-castration.
(PNM, 1/25/98, p.5)
2,000BC The Hittites lived around what is now
Cappadocia, Turkey. They mixed with the already-settled Hatti and
were followed by the Lydians, Phrygians, Byzantines, Romans and
Greeks.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.T14)
738-696 King Midas ruled over this period
according to Eusebios.
(AM, 7/01, p.33)
c700BC Nomadic Kimmerians attacked Phrygia. Strabo
later reported that Midas committed suicide at the time of the
Kimmerian invasion.
(AM, 7/01, p.33)
c700BC A Phrygian king, possibly Midas, ruled into
his 60s and was buried in what came to be called the Tumulus Midas
Mound at Gordion (later central Turkey). Midas was linked with the
worship of the goddess Matar.
(AM, 7/01, p.27)
301 BC The generals of Alexander the Great fought
the Battle of Ipsus in Phrygia that resulted in the division of the
Greek Empire into 4 divisions ruled by Seleucus, Lysimachus,
Cassander and Ptolemy. Greek cities revolted against Macedonian rule
but to no avail.
(http://eawc, p.13)
156CE Montanus of Phrygia
(central Asia Minor) pronounced himself to be the incarnation of the
Holy Spirit and that the New Jerusalem was about to come crashing
down and land in Phrygia. His followers were called Montanists.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.34)
Picts
They drank a heather ale and
fought the Romans in Scotland.
(Hem., 8/96, p.113)
Pitcairn Island
Part of the Cook Islands
1790 Fletcher Christian and the
mutineers of the HMS Bounty settled at Pitcairn Island.
(WUD, 1994, p.1097)(SFC, 6/12/97, p.A14)
1808 The American whaling ship
Topaz found one of the bounty mutineers living on Pitcairn Island
among many women and children. The other men had all died mostly in
conflict over the Tahitian women.
(ON, 3/04, p.11)
1856 Jun 8, The British
resettled 194 people from Pitcairn Island onto Norfolk Island.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.66)
2004 Oct 24, Six men on
Pitcairn Island were convicted of charges ranging from rape to
indecent assault following trials that exposed a culture of sexual
abuse.
(AP, 10/25/04)
2006 Oct 30, In London 6 men
from remote Pitcairn Island lost their final appeal against their
convictions for a string of sex attacks dating back 40 years.
(AP, 10/30/06)
Polynesia (See French Polynesia)
One of 3 principal divisions of Oceania,
comprising those island groups in the Pacific lying E. of Melanesia
and Micronesia and extending from the Hawaiian Islands S. to New
Zealand.
(WUD, 1994, p.1115)
1905 Feb 8, A cyclone hit
Tahiti and adjacent islands killing some 10,000 people.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1947 Aug 7, The balsa
wood raft Kon-Tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 4,300 miles
across the Pacific Ocean, crashed into a reef in a Polynesian
archipelago. [see Apr 28]
(AP, 8/7/97)
1976 May 1, Kawika Kapahulehua
(d.2007 at 76), leading a 15-man crew on a double-hulled canoe with
sails, departed Hawaii to Tahiti. Organizer and anthropologist Ben
Finney wanted to prove the trip was possible. They reached Tahiti
after 34 days despite issues of ethnicity raised by part of the
crew. Mau Piailug (1932-2010), Micronesian master navigator, steered
the Hokule’a (Star of Gladness) by the stars, the feel of the wind
and the look of the sea.
(SFC, 5/28/07, p.D3)(Econ, 7/24/10, p.84)
Pontus
80sBC Mithridates, ruler of
Pontus in the north of Asia Minor, made war on Rome and overran much
of Asia Minor and parts of Greece. The Athenians joined Mithridates
and was consequently besieged by the Roman Gen’l. Sulla.
(WSJ, 12/26/97, p.A7)
Puntland
1998 Abdulahhi Yusuf (Yussuf)
was elected by elders in Puntland. Yusuf was later challenged by
Jama Ali Jama.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A7)
2001 Nov 25, Ethiopia sent
troops into the northeastern Somali region of Puntland to help Col.
Abdullahi Yussuf (Yusuf) regain power. Yussuf was overthrown Aug 26
after his 3-year term ended. On Nov 21 Yussuf launched an attack on
Garoweh, the capital of Puntland and said it was to crush Islamic
terrorists.
(SFC, 11/26/01, p.A11)(WSJ, 11/28/01, p.A10)
2005 Aug 31, Some 200 Somalis
and Ethiopians left Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region in two
boats. Smugglers making the illegal crossing from Somalia to Yemen
forced passengers into the Red Sea at gunpoint 10 miles from the
Yemeni coastline, leaving at least 57 dead and about 100 missing.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2006 Nov 20, Gen. Addeh Museh,
the president of the semiautonomous region of Puntland, said he will
rule according to Islamic law, a surprising move in a relatively
stable area that has resisted the spread of Islamic militants who
control most of southern Somalia.
(AP, 11/20/06)
2008 Oct 29, In northern
Somalia 5 suicide car bombs attacks killed 28 people in Hargeisa,
the capital of Somaliland, and in Bosasso, Puntland. Somali
authorities arrested Cleric Sheik Mohamed Ismail in connection with
the attacks.
(AP, 10/30/08)(SFC, 10/30/08, p.A4)
2009 Nov 11, In Somalia gunmen
in Bossaso killed High Court Judge Mohamed Abdi Aware, a top judge
who had sentenced many pirates and human traffickers to long jail
terms. 3 men were arrested the next day over the killing. Puntland
legislator Ibrahim Ilmi Warsame was also shot dead as he sat in a
restaurant with friends.
(AP, 11/12/09)
2011 Sep 2, Puntland soldiers
raided neighborhoods searching for gunmen linked to Al
Qaeda-inspired Shebab militants. At least 21 people were killed and
31 others wounded in two days of heavy fighting on the border of
Somalia proper and the breakaway state of Puntland.
(AFP, 9/2/11)
Quebec
Lucien Bouchard, a separatist
leader, sought the job of Premier of the Province.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-1,7)
Rangiroa
The largest atoll in the
Polynesian chain of atolls called the Tuamotu Islands near Tahiti.
It means “extended sky” and the entire island of Tahiti would fit
inside its central lagoon, whose entry pass has astonishing
snorkeling.
(USA Today, 5/14/96, p.6D)
Reunion
A French island in the Indian Ocean.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.8)
http://www.africanet.com/africanet/country/reunion/home.htm
1999 Jul, The Piton de la
Fournaise (Fiery Peak) volcano erupted.
(SFC, 7/24/99, p.A8)
2007 Apr 2, Piton de la
Fournaise (French: "Peak of the Furnace"), a shield volcano on the
eastern side of Reunion island (a French territory) in the Indian
Ocean, began an 11-day eruption. Hundreds of deep water fish were
found dead following the eruptions.
(SFC, 4/14/07,
p.B6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piton_de_la_Fournaise)
2007 May 12, Waves reaching 36
feet high thrashed France's Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean,
leaving two fishermen missing and flooding homes and hotels.
(AP, 5/13/07)
2008 Mar 28, Mohamed Bacar, the
rebel leader of the Comoros island of Anjouan, arrived in Reunion to
an uncertain future, two days after his ouster by Comoran and
African Union forces.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2009 Mar 5, Protests spread
from two French possessions in the Caribbean to the island of
Reunion in the Indian Ocean, where about 15,000 people demonstrated
in different cities against high prices.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2010 Aug 2, UNESCO added 6
sites located in Brazil, China, Mexico, France's Reunion Island and
the South Pacific nation of Kiribati to World Heritage status.
(AP, 8/2/10)
Ruthenia
A former province in East
Slovakia whose people speak a dialect of Ukrainian. The Ruthenians
are a group of people spread out over the Carpathian Mountains of
Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary. The rare metallic
element ruthenium was named after the region where it was
discovered.
(NH, 12/96, p.71)
1596 Ruthenian members of an
Orthodox religious group entered into communion with the Roman
Catholic Church and became the Uniate Church of the Little Russians.
(WUD, 1994, p.1256)
1997 About 140,000 Ruthenians
currently live in Slovakia.
(NH, 12/96, p.71)
Saarland
1925 Jan 10, France-Saarland
formed.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1935 Mar 7, Saar was
incorporated into Germany.
(MC, 3/7/02)
Saba
A volcanic spec in the
Netherland Antilles. It has a marine park and four tiny villages.
(USA Today, 5/14/96, p.6D)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted
Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
Saint-Pierre et Miquelon
1889 Aug 24, Auguste Neal, a
convicted murderer, was executed in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon,
becoming the first and only person to be executed by guillotine in
North America. The device was specially shipped from Martinique for
the execution.
(SSFC, 11/16/08, p.E5)
Saipan
1999 Jan 13, Lawyers filed suit
against major garment retailers for inhumane working conditions for
thousands of Asian women on Saipan, a US commonwealth island.
(SFC, 1/14/99, p.A1)
2002 Mar 2, Gap Inc. was
reported in opposition to a proposed $8.75 settlement on conditions
in the garment industry of Saipan.
(SFC, 3/2/02, p.B1)
2002 Sep 26, Gap Inc, 6 other
US firms and 23 local manufacturers settled a class-action lawsuit
over alleged sweatshop abuses on Saipan. The deal created a $20
million fund for back wages and a monitoring system.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.A1)
Sakhalin Island
The island belongs to Russia
and is just northwest of the Japanese Islands.
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
1974 Since 1974 the Japanese
have been exploring energy deposits here.
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
1996 May 16, Three consortia
formed in the past decade are poised to begin drilling here.
Estimates say the potential is for 2 billion barrels of oil and
trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-11)
Samnites
600-290BCE The Samnites, an Oscan-speaking people,
controlled the area of south central Italy during this period.
(AM, 3/04, p.36)
Sanjak
A province of Yugoslavia
between Serbia and Bosnia northwest of Kosova. It has 350,000 people
of whom most are Muslim. It was historically part of the Ottoman
Empire
19th cent Late, Sanjak was occupied by
Austro-Hungarian troops.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A13)
1996 Aug 5, The Muslim National
Council of Sanjak desired recognition as an autonomous region within
the Yugoslav federation.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A13)
San Marino
A small republic in East Italy and the oldest independent country in
Europe. It measures 24 square miles.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.C4)(WSJ, 1/16/06, p.A1)
301 San Marino traced its roots
to this time and later claimed to be the world’s oldest republic. It
was founded by stonecutter Marinus of Arbe.
(WSJ, 1/16/06, p.A1)(SSFC, 12/19/10, p.M2)
1849 Jul 31, Garibaldi asked
San Marino for asylum from Austrian forces. San Marino brokered for
Garibaldi’s surrender to Austrian forces. Garibaldi and his wife
escaped, and made their way to Ravenna. Anita Garibaldi died
enroute. Garibaldi managed to reach safety in the Kingdom of
Sardinia.
(ON, 10/06, p.7)
1978 Jul 17, In San Marino a
Communist-Socialist coalition became Western Europe’s only communist
led government.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)
2004 Dec 19, Renata Tebaldi
(82), opera singer, died in San Marino.
(AP, 12/19/05)
2005 Jun, San Marino set up a
central bank with supervisory powers.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.74)
2006 Sep, San Marino approved
new regulations on fund management.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.74)
2010 The population of San
Marino was about 30,000.
(SSFC, 12/19/10, p.M2)
Sark Island
One of the Channel Islands between Britain and
France. The island of Brecqhou is governed by Sark.
1565 Sark, one of the Channel
Islands, was colonized. The hereditary ruler of Sark was granted the
5 square miles of land by Queen Elizabeth I.
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.B8)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.60)
1993 The British brothers David
and Frederick Barclay paid $3.5 million for the Brecqhou, and
Channel Island considered as part of the fiefdom of Sark.
(WSJ, 10/11/05, p.A1)
1999 The Chief Pleas, 52
unelected rulers of Sark, voted to change the law governing the
transfer of property to permit women to inherit land.
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.B8)
2006 Mar 8, Legislators of
Sark, a tiny self-governing island in the English Channel, voted to
swap its feudal government for democracy. After around 450 years of
rule almost exclusively by landowners, the smallest independent
state in the British commonwealth will allow each of the 600
residents to stand for election.
(AP, 3/8/06)
2007 Jul 4, Sark ended its
feudal era as the Chief Pleas agreed to limit land owners to 12
seats and raised commoners’ share to 16 seats.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.60)
2008 Apr 10, The West's last
remaining feudal system came to an end after the Privy Council
endorsed a vote by locals on the tiny Channel Island of Sark to
change the way they are governed.
(Reuters, 4/10/08)
2008 Dec 10, Sark, the English
Channel Island that let only landowners vote for 450 years, held the
first parliamentary election in its history.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 12, Sir David Barclay
and his twin brother, Sir Frederick Barclay, abruptly closed their
businesses on the Channel Island of Sark and shut off the flow of
investment after their candidates for the island's first elected
parliament were largely rejected by voters. Only two of the nine
candidates backed by the brothers won seats in the legislature. Nine
of the 12 candidates they had denounced as "dangerous to Sark's
future" were elected.
(AP, 12/12/08)
Sarmatians
600-200BC A nomadic tribe that occupied a homeland
that stretched from Russia’s Don and Volga rivers east to the Ural
mountain foothills. The held a sun-worshipping belief system and
buried useful objects with their dead for the journey in the unknown
afterlife.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A5)
400BC By this time the
Sarmatians were occupying outposts of the Roman empire in the
Balkans.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A5)
100-0BC A Roman fortified citadel was built about
this time in Moldova. It may have protected a town occupied by a
late-era Sarmatian king.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A5)
Saulteaux
A native American Indian
tribe. In Saskatchewan, Canada, a new system is being tried on
Indian prison inmates. The Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge is being used
as a culture based court and prison program for native peoples.
(SFC, 5/14/96, A-10)
Savoy
Region in southeast France
adjacent to the Swiss-Italian border.
(WUD, 1994 p.1272)
1323 Oct 16, Amadeus V the
Great, count of Flanders and Savoy, died at 74.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1683 Sep 12, A combined
Austrian and Polish army defeated the Ottoman Turks at Kahlenberg
and lifted the siege on Vienna, Austria. Prince Eugene of Savoy
helped repel an invasion of Vienna, Austria, by Turkish forces.
Marco d'Aviano, sent by Pope Innocent XI to unite the outnumbered
Christian troops, spurred them to victory. The Turks left behind
sacks of coffee which the Christians found too bitter, so they
sweetened it with honey and milk and named the drink cappuccino
after the Capuchin order of monks to which d'Aviano belonged. An
Austrian baker created a crescent-shaped roll, the Kipfel, to
celebrate the victory. Empress Maria Theresa later took it to France
where it became the croissant. In 2006 John Stoye authored “The
Siege of Vienna.”
(Hem., Dec. '95, p.69)(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-16)(HN,
9/12/98)(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.A1)(Reuters, 4/28/03)(WSJ, 6/3/03, p.D5)
(WSJ, 12/6/06, p.D12)
1720 Sardinia was handed over
to Piedmont's Savoy Kingdom.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.T5)
1743 Sep 13, England, Austria
& Savoye-Sardinia signed the Treaty of Worms.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1860 Savoy was ceded to France.
(WUD, 1994 p.1272)
Saxony
919 May 12, Duke Henry of Saxon
became King Henry I of Eastern Europe.
(MC, 5/12/02)
991 Aug 11, Danes under Olaf
Tryggvesson killed Ealdorman Brihtnoth and defeated the Saxons at
Maldon.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1016 Oct 18, Danes defeated the
Saxons at Battle of Assandun (Ashingdon).
(MC, 10/18/01)
1066 Oct 14, King Harold and
his Anglo-Saxon army locked into a massive shield wall and faced
Duke William, William the Conqueror, and his mounted knights near
the town of Hastings, Battle of Hastings. Duke William planned a
three point attack plan that included a)heavy archery b)attack by
foot soldiers c)attack by mounted knights at any weak point of
defense. The bloody battle gave the name Sen Lac Hill to the battle
site. The Normans won out after Harold was killed by a fluke arrow.
(TLC, Battles That Changed the World,
6/25/95)(AP, 10/14/97)
1066 Edith Svanneshals was the
beautiful mistress of the ill-starred Harold Godwinsson, king of the
Anglo-Saxons and loser at Hastings. No picture of her exists, but
her last name means "swan's throat."
(EHC, 5/12/98)
1316-1390 Albert of Saxony (aka Albertuccio or
little Al), German Scholastic philosopher and physicist.
(NH, 5/97, p.59)
1370 Apr 11, Frederick I
the Warlike, elector of Saxony, was born.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1500s Holland and Saxony began
to protect the rights of inventors to their creations.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1521 Apr 17, Under the
protection of Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, Luther first
appeared before Charles V and the Imperial Diet. Martin Luther was
excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
(NH, 9/96, p.18)(HN, 4/17/98)
1526 Feb 27, Saxony and Hesse
formed the League of Gotha, a league of Protestant princes.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1554 Mar 3, Johan Frederik de
Greatmoedige (50), ruler of Saxon (1532-47), died.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1588 A volume of funeral
orations for Duke August of Saxony and his wife was published.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.93)
1632 Apr 15, Swedish and Saxon
army beat Earl Tilly.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1638 Mar 3, Duke Bernard van
Saksen-Weimar occupied Rheinfelden.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1670 May 12, August II
(d.1733), the Strong One, King of Poland (355 children) and elector
of Saxony, was born.
(MC, 5/12/02)(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)
1700 Feb 22, Augustus II
with the help of the Saxon army attacked Swedish controlled Riga.
This began the Northern War (1700-1721).
(LHC, 2/22/03)
1709 Augustus the Strong, King
of Poland and Elector of Saxony, had ordered alchemist Johann
Friedrich Bottger to re-create the formula for oriental porcelain.
Bottger was imprisoned and joined physicist Ehrenfried Walther von
Tschirnhaus in a search for the formula. Tschirnhaus died but
Bottger discovered the formula in this year. within 2 years a
factory was established in Meissen’s Albrechtsburg and Meissenware
became Europe’s first hard-paste porcelain.
(Hem, 6/96, p.111)(SSFC, 4/25/04, p.D12)
1745 Jun 4, Frederick the Great
of Prussia defeated the Austrians & Saxons.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1756-1763 The Seven Years War. France and Great
Britain clashed both in Europe and in North America. In 2000
"Crucible of War" by Fred Anderson was published. France, Russia,
Austria, Saxony, Sweden and Spain stood against Britain, Prussia and
Hanover. Britain financed Prussia to block France in Europe while
her manpower was occupied in America.
(V.D.-H.K.p.223)(SFC, 7/7/96, BR p.7)(WSJ,
2/10/00, p.A16)
1797 May 18, Frederik Augustus
II, King of Saxon (1836-54), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1865 May 25, Frederick Augustus
III, King of Saxon (1904-18), was born.
(SC, 5/25/02)
Scythians
A tribe that roamed the
Black Sea area at the time of the Greeks. They drank mare's milk,
seemed lawless, had no polis, but were able to defeat the Persians.
They are described in a book by Neal Ascherson: “Black Sea.” In the
Gluck opera “Iphigenie en Tauride,” savage Scythian captors force
Iphigenie and her followers to perform human sacrifice.
(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-8)(WSJ, 10/22/97, p.A20)
Scythian tombs lie near
Chersonesos, now on the edge of Sevastopol.
(SFC,12/19/97, p.F6)
800-300BCE The Scythians dominated the vast lands
stretching from Siberia to the Black Sea. Those who roamed what
later became Kazakstan and southern Siberia were known as the Saka.
(AM, 5/01, p.32)
700-600BCE A migration of the Cimmerians
and Scythians took place in the seventh century BC. These were
nomadic tribes from the Russian steppes, who made their way round
the eastern end of the Caucasus, burst through into the Moghan
plains and the basin of Lake Urmia, and terrorized Western Asia for
several generations, till they were broken by the power of the Medes
and absorbed in the native population. It was they who made an end
of the Kingdom of Urartu, and the language they brought with them
was probably an Indo-European dialect answering to the basic element
in modern Armenian.
(http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/bryce2.htm)
600-500BC The nomadic Scythians bordered the
Hallstatt Culture in the East. They introduced to the Celts the
custom of wearing trousers.
(NGM, 5/77)
521-486 The Persians under Darius fought the
Scythians in a series of battles.
(AM, 5/01, p.33)
519BC Darius of Persia attacked the Scythians
east of the Caspian Sea and a few years later conquered the Indus
Valley.
(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty27.html)
513BC Darius, after subduing
eastern Thrace and the Getae, crossed the Danube River into European
Scythia, but the Scythian nomads devastated the country as they
retreated from him, and he was forced, for lack of supplies, to
abandon the campaign.
(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty27.html)
486-465BC Xerxes I ruled over Persia from India to
the lands below the Caspian and Black seas, to the east coast of the
Mediterranean including Egypt and Thrace. Its great cities Sardis,
Ninevah, Babylon, and Susa were joined by the Royal Road. East of
Susa was Persopolis, a vast religious monument. To the north of
Persia were the Scythians. [2nd source says 485-465]
(V.D.-H.K.p.49)(http://eawc, p.11)
c480BCE Herodotus said marijuana was cultivated in
Scythia and Thrace, where inhabitants intoxicated themselves by
breathing the vapors given off when the plant was roasted on
white-hot stones.
(WSJ, 2/8/05, p.D7)
450BC Herodotus journeyed to
the Scythian lands north of the Black Sea and heard tales of women
who were fierce killers of men. He named these women “Amazons,” from
a Greek word meaning without one breast. Legend had it that one
breast was removed in order to carry quivers of arrows more
conveniently.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A1,5)
400-300BC The Greek writer Ephorus referred to the
Celts, Scythians, Persians and Libyans as the four great barbarian
peoples in the known world.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.11)
c556AD Dionysius Exiguus, Scythian monk, died. He
devised the current system of reckoning the Christian era.
(WUD, 1994, p.405)
Sealand
1968 Roy Bates, retired British
army major, landed on the island of Sealand, a WW II military
fortress 6 miles off the coast of England, and declared it a
sovereign nation, the Principality of Sealand.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.A4)
2000 Jun 5, Computer rebels
planned to launch a data haven, an independent colony in cyberspace,
based on the island of Sealand, a WW II military fortress 6 miles
off the coast of England. Their Havenco Co. was incorporated in
Anguilla.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.A4)
Seborga
The 5-square mile principality is located in
northwest Italy, twenty minutes from the Mediterranean north of
Bordighera.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.T1)
954 The Count of Ventimiglia
ceded Seborga to the monks who elected their abbot as sovereign
prince.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.T5)
1118 Seborga became the
provenance of nine Knight Templars returning from the crusades.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.T7)
1729 Seborga was consolidated
by sale within the Principality of Piedmont.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.T7)
1995 Aug 20, A plebiscite
declared the independence of Seborga by a vote of 304 to 4. Giorgio
Carbone was elected as Prince-for-Life Georgio I.
(SFEC, 3/30/97, p.T6)
Shetland Islands
Sikkim
A state in NE India between
Nepal and Bhutan 2,745 sq km. The capital is Gangtok.
(WUD, 1994, p.1326)
1644 The beginning of a 330
year dynasty.
(WSJ, 3/6/97, p.A1)
1974 Sikkim lost its Buddhist
ruler and was annexed by India. This ended a 330 year dynasty.
(WSJ, 3/6/97, p.A1)
Silesia
Region in Central Europe
between Czechoslovakia, Germany and Poland.
(WUD, 1994 p.1326)
1267 Feb 9, Synod of Breslau
ordered Jews of Silesia to wear special caps.
(MC, 2/9/02)
Sogdiana
Sogdiana was a province of ancient Persia between
the Oxus and Jaxartes Rivers, later known as Uzbekistan. The extinct
Iranian language of Sogdiana was spoken.
(WUD, 1994, p.1264,1353)
355[356]BC Birth of Alexander the Great (d.323BC).
Alexander III married a barbarian princess, Roxana, the daughter of
the Bactrian chief Oxyartes. Alexander also married the daughter of
Darius, whom he defeated in 333, and a Sogdian princess while
staying firmly attached to his comrade, Hephaistion.
(V.D.-H.K.p.68)(Hem., 2/97, p.116)(WSJ, 5/15/98,
p.W11)
Songhai
1464 Under the guidance of
Sunni Ali, the Songhai begin conquering their neighbors and expand
their kingdom. Goa becomes the capital of the Songhai empire. When
Sunni Ali died rule was passed to his son, a non-Muslim.
(ATC, p.121)
~1490s Muslims of the Songhai Empire in West
Africa supported Askia Muhammad-mad, who overthrew Sunni Ali’s son,
and declared Islam the state religion. Songhai grew and expanded to
become the greatest trade empire of West Africa.
(ATC, p.121)
c1580 The Songhai controlled
West Africa’s wealthiest empire.
(ATC, p.122 )
North Ossetia
1992 A bloody conflict took
place between Ingushetia and North Ossetia that left hundreds dead
and forced 30,000 Ingush to flee their homes.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.A3)
1999 Mar 19, In Russia at least
56 people were killed in an explosion in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia,
at an outdoor bazaar. This was 2 days following a blast in
neighboring Ingushetia that destroyed 2 homes. The Federal Security
Service put the death toll at 63 with 104 injured.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.A3)(SFEC, 3/21/99, p.A20)(AP,
3/19/02)
1999 Sep 28, In Chechnya 8
people were killed when a schoolhouse was bombed on the 6th day of
Russian air attacks. Some 60,000 people had reportedly fled to the
neighboring regions of Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and
Stavropol.
(SFC, 9/29/99, p.A12)
2000 Jul 9, A bomb attack at a
food market in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia left 5 people dead.
Another bomb in a department store at the port of Rostov-on-Don on
the Black Sea left 2 people dead.
(SFC, 7/10/00, p.A9)
2002 Sep 20, In southern Russia
a collapsing glacier triggered an avalanche of ice and mud, burying
the village of Nizhny Karmadon in the southern republic of North
Ossetia, and killing as many as 100 people.
(AP, 9/21/02)
2004 Sep 1, In Beslan, Russia,
more than a dozen militants wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a
school in North Ossetia, a region bordering Chechnya, taking hostage
some 300 people, half of them children. They threatening to blow up
the building if police storm it and at least eight people were
killed.
(AP, 9/1/04)(SFC, 9/2/04, p.A1)
2004 Sep 2, In Beslan, Russia,
camouflage-clad commandos carried crying babies away from a school
where gunmen holding hundreds of hostages freed at least 26 women
and children.
(AP, 9/2/04)
2004 Sep 3, Commandos stormed a
school in southern Russia and battled Chechen separatist rebels
holding hundreds of hostages, as crying children, some naked and
covered in blood, fled through explosions and gunfire. Over 330
people, including 155 children, were killed in the violence that
ended a hostage standoff with militants in Beslan, Russia. 31 of 32
hostage takers were killed. 6 Chechens and 4 Ingush were identified
among the hostage takers. In 2006 a woman died from her injuries in
Beslan bringing the total deaths to 334.
(SFC, 9/4/04, p.A1)(SFC, 9/7/04, p.A3)(WSJ,
9/10/04, p.A1)(AP, 12/9/07)
2005 Nov 29, A panel in North
Ossetia investigating last year's bloody school hostage siege in the
southern Russian town of Beslan blamed the authorities for botching
the rescue efforts and urged them to punish the culprits.
(AP, 11/29/05)
2006 Feb 13, In North Ossetia 6
women whose relatives were victims of the 2004 Beslan school hostage
seizure were on hunger strike for a fifth day, protesting what they
say are efforts by authorities to prematurely end the trial of the
only alleged remaining attacker.
(AP, 2/13/06)
2006 Sep 11, In southern Russia
a military helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Vladikavkaz, the
provincial capital of the republic of North Ossetia, killing at
least 10 servicemen and injuring another four.
(AP, 9/11/06)
2006 A Georgian undercover
agent made contact with a Russian seller of uranium in North
Ossetia. The seller was arrested when they met in Tbilisi with 3.5
ounces of enriched uranium, which made it weapons grade material.
(SFC, 1/25/07, p.A18)
2007 Nov 22, A passenger bus
caught fire and exploded in southern Russia, killing at least five
people and wounding 12. Investigators in North Ossetia said
terrorism was the likely cause.
(AP, 11/23/07)
2008 Nov 6, An suspected
suicide explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in Vladikavkaz,
the capital of Russia's North Ossetia province, killing 12 people.
(AP, 11/6/08)(Reuters, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 26, In North Ossetia
Vitaly Karayev, the mayor of Vladikavkaz, was shot and killed in the
latest violence to hit a region. The next day An obscure Islamic
group claimed responsibility for the assassination of a mayor in
Russia's troubled North Caucasus, saying he had sanctioned
persecution of Islamic women.
(AP, 11/26/08)(AP, 11/27/08)
Southern Africa Development Committee
A 12-member regional group.
(SFC, 2/10/97, p.A8)
Spratly Islands
A group of 60-200 reefs and
islets in the South China Sea that are claimed in whole or in part
by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
(SFC, 9/20/96, p.A16)(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A11)
1999 Jan 15, China asserted its
sovereignty over the potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands and
rejected a Philippine proposal to discuss the disputed islands.
(SFC, 1/16/99, p.A11)
St. Helena
1806 Oct 17, Napoleon Bonaparte
arrived at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he
had been banished by the Allies. [Napoleon did not go to St. Helena
until 1815]
(HN, 10/17/98)
1815 Mar 20, Napoleon Bonaparte
entered Paris, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule. He had escaped
from his imprisonment on the island of Elba off the coast of
Tuscany. He gathered his veterans and marched on Paris. At Waterloo,
Belgium, he met the Duke of Wellington, commander of the allied
anti-French forces and was resoundingly defeated. Napoleon was then
imprisoned on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. In
1997 Gregor Dallas published: “The Final Act: The Roads to
Waterloo.” The book includes a good account of the Congress of
Vienna.
(AP, 3/20/97)(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(SFEC,11/2/97, Par
p.10) (HN, 3/20/98)
1815 Aug 8, Napoleon Bonaparte
set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the
remainder of his days in exile.
(AP, 8/8/97)
1815 Oct 17, Napoleon arrived
in St. Helena.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1821 May 5, Napoleon Bonaparte
died in exile on the island of St. Helena. They poisoned him by
putting arsenic in his food. Napoleon died by slow poisoning at the
hands of his companion Charles Tristan de Montholon on the island of
St. Helena. Scottish pathologist Dr. Hamilton Smith later used
Napoleon’s hair to determine that arsenic had been administered
about 40 times from 1820-1821.
(V.D.-H.K.p.232)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR
p.9)(SFEC, 8/16/98, Z1 p.8)
St. Kilda, Scotland
An island more than 100 miles
west of the Scottish Highlands. It was inhabited for more than a
1000 years by a hardy race of Scots.
1930 The island was evacuated.
Only the birds stayed behind: puffins, gannets, fulmars, guillemots,
kittiwakes, razorbills, gulls, and great skuas. The Soay sheep also
remained, a type that was kept by Bronze-age farmers.
(WSJ, 9/11/96, p.A20)
St. Martin (St Maarten)
See Netherland Antilles
Sulawesi
An Indonesian island west of
Borneo, famed for its indigenous cultural life with a Dutch colonial
overlay.
(USA Today, 5/14/96, p.6D)
The Toadja of Sulawesi use
ancestral bones for talismans.
(NH, 6/97, p.14)
Sunda Islands
The Greater Sundas are in the
Malay Archipelago and include Borneo, Sumatra, Java and the Celebes.
The lesser Sundas extend east
from Java to Timor. The 75-sq. ml. Komodo Island is part of the
Lesser Sundas and home of the Komodo dragon. A sultan from Bima on
Sumbawa Island first sent prisoners and families to Komodo about a
century ago.
(WSJ, 6/6/96, p.A12)
1815 April, Mount Tambora,
Indonesia, in the Java Sea erupted. One-third of the 13,000 foot
mountain was blasted into the air. 100,000 people were killed and
the whole planet was shrouded in a debris of sulfuric droplets. Mt.
Tambora on Sumbawa Island erupted.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.41)(WUD, 1994, p.1423)
1942 Mar 1, Japanese troops
landed on Java in the Pacific.
(HN, 3/1/98)
Tahiti
See French Polynesia, Cook Islands
1789 Sep, Fletcher Henderson
left Tahiti with the Bounty with a light crew. 16 men were left
abandoned.
(ON, 3/04, p.9)
1880 Jun 29, France annexed
Tahiti.
(HN, 6/29/98)
Taino Indians
Native Indians of Hispaniola
which now includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
(WUD, 1994, p.673)
1515 By this year the Taino
Indians were practically annihilated in clashes with the Spanish.
(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A10)
Tanguts
c1000 A group of Asian people
neighboring to China.
(NH, 9/97, p.14)
Tarahumara
An Indian tribe inhabiting the
Copper Canyon region in northwestern Mexico. They number about
45,000.
(SFC, 5/19/96, T-1)
Tasmania
41000BC The skull of a giant kangaroo dating to
this time was found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged
northwest of Tasmania in 2000. Scientists used the skull to argue
that that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other
very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.
(AP, 8/12/08)
38,000BCE-1996 Scientists in Australia said that
they found a shrub in Tasmania that began growing 40,000 years ago.
Dubbed "King’s Holly," the plant clones itself and now covers 2
secluded river gullies in the remote southwest.
(SFC, 10/26/96, p.A17)
1642 Nov 24, Abel Janszoon
Tasman (d.1659) discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).
(MC, 11/24/01)
1659 Oct 10, Able Janszoon
Tasman, navigator, died at about 56. He discovered Tasmania.
(WUD, 1994 p.1455)(MC, 10/10/01)
1804 Oct 9, Hobart, Tasmania,
was founded.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1804 Soldiers fired on an
aboriginal hunting party on Tasmania and killed some 50 people. Some
were salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities.
(WSJ, 8/2100, p.A1)
1830-1877 Some 12,500 convicts were locked in
Tasmania during this period.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E6)
1836 Feb 17, HMS Beagle and
Charles Darwin left Tasmania.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1856 Australia's Van Dieman's
Island was renamed Tasmania.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.37)
1941 Tasmania enacted a law to
protect the Tasmanian devil.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E6)
1979 John Chapman and John
Siseman published their 1st edition of “Cradle Mountain Lake St.
Clair,” a hiking guide of Tasmania’s Overland Track.
(www.john.chapman.name/pub-cr.html)
1996 Apr 28, A lone gunman,
Martin Bryant, killed 35 tourists visiting a colonial prison on the
Australian island of Tasmania. He was later sentenced to 35 life
terms in prison.
(WSJ, 4/29/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A22)
1997 The Tasmanian parliament
repealed its anti-gay laws.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E6)
2002 Dec 20, Grote Reber
(90), a pioneer of radio astronomy died in Tasmania. He followed up
Karl Jansky's 1933 announcement of the discovery of radio waves from
space and in his spare time in 1937 built a 30-foot antenna dish,
the 1st radio telescope, in his back yard in Wheaton, Ill., and
managed to pick up signals two years later.
(AP, 12/25/02)
2003 Jim Bacon, head of the
Labor Party government of Tasmania, appointed Richard Butler, former
UN arms inspector, as governor.
(Econ, 1/17/04, p.37)
2004 Nicholas Shakespeare
authored “In Tasmania,” a look at characters in the last 200 years
of Tasmania.
(Econ, 11/27/04, p.86)
2005 Jun 22, It was reported
that bee keepers in Tasmania were in conflict with loggers due to
the loss of leatherwood trees.
(WSJ, 6/22/05, p.A1)
2006 Nicholas Shakespeare
authored “In Tasmania,” an account of his life there since 1999.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.P8)
2006 Oct 18, Australia’s
Tasmania state unveiled an historic five million dollar (3.8 million
dollars US) compensation package for Aborigines forcibly taken from
their families as children.
(AFP, 10/18/06)
Thrace
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9659/welcome.htm
The Thracians lived in what is now Bulgaria and parts of modern
Greece, Romania, Macedonia, and Turkey between 4,000 B.C. and the
8th century A.D., when they were assimilated by the invading Slavs.
(AP, 7/16/07)
According to Herodotus the Thracians worshipped Artemis, Dionysus,
Ares, and Hermes.
(SFEM, 8/9/98, p.45)
5000BC The Thracian village of Nebet Tepe, later
Plovdid, Bulgaria, dated to about this time. It was redeveloped by
the Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Bulgars and Turks.
(SSFC, 7/16/06, p.G4)
4000BC Skilled goldsmiths [proto-Thracians] lived
in the area of Varna on the Black Sea [later Bulgaria].
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T3)(SFEC, 8/2/98, DB p.22)
2100BC-2000BC Some 15,000 tiny Golden rings,
estimated at 4,100 to 4,200 years old, were found in 2005 near
Dabene, Bulgaria. They were attributed to proto-Thracians, ancestors
of the Thracians, who lived in the area until they were assimilated
by invading Slavs in the 8th century.
(SFC, 8/17/05, p.A2)
513BC Darius, after subduing
eastern Thrace and the Getae, crossed the Danube River into European
Scythia, but the Scythian nomads devastated the country as they
retreated from him, and he was forced, for lack of supplies, to
abandon the campaign.
(www.crystalinks.com/dynasty27.html)
486-465BC Xerxes I ruled over Persia from India to
the lands below the Caspian and Black seas, to the east coast of the
Mediterranean including Egypt and Thrace. Its great cities Sardis,
Ninevah, Babylon, and Susa were joined by the Royal Road. East of
Susa was Persopolis, a vast religious monument. To the north of
Persia were the Scythians. [2nd source says 485-465]
(V.D.-H.K.p.49)(http://eawc, p.11)
c480BC Herodotus said marijuana was cultivated in
Scythia and Thrace, where inhabitants intoxicated themselves by
breathing the vapors given off when the plant was roasted on
white-hot stones.
(WSJ, 2/8/05, p.D7)
400BC In 2007 a 2,400-year-old
golden mask that once belonged to a Thracian king was unearthed in a
timber-lined tomb in southeastern Bulgaria.
(AP, 7/17/07)
279BC The Celts plundered the
shrine at Delphi and then retreated north to Thrace. The Thracians
later routed the intruders.
(NGM, 5/77)
457 Feb 7, A Thracian officer
by the name of Leo was proclaimed as emperor of the East by the army
general, Aspar, on the death of the Emperor Marcian.
(HN, 2/7/99)
700-800 Invading Slavs assimilated the Thracians
in the area of modern Bulgaria and parts of Greece, Romania,
Macedonia and Turkey.
(SFC, 8/17/05, p.A2)
1913 Jun 24, Greece and Serbia
annulled their alliance with Bulgaria following border disputes over
Macedonia and Thrace.
(HN, 6/24/98)
Tocharians
c1000BC An Indo-European group of people moved
east to live in what later became Xinjiang province of western
China. They left well-preserved Caucasian mummies of this age and
1,300 year old texts written in an unknown Indo European tongue.
Some evidence showed that they had come from the steppes north of
the Black and Caspian seas as the area filled with Iranian
immigrants. They settled in the Tarim Basin on the edges of the
Taklimakan Desert. They area has also been named Inner Asia, Chinese
Turkestan and East Turkestan. The Uighers of Xinjiang sometimes show
physical features that reflects Tocharian blood.
(SFC, 2/27/98, p.A2)
Tokelau
2010 Apr 14, The 3-island
territory of Tokelau declared itself a whale sanctuary, adding a
huge patch of sea to the total protected area of more than 7 million
square miles that is off limits to hunting in the Pacific Ocean.
About 1,500 people live in Tokelau, a UN protectorate that remains a
colony of New Zealand and lies about 300 miles (500 km) north of
Samoa.
(AP, 4/14/10)
2011 Oct 5, The US coast Guard
said it is bringing 36,000 gallons of drinking water to Tokelau
1,500 residents, who were suffering from a severe drought.
(SFC, 10/6/11, p.A2)
2011 Tuvalu experienced severe
drought as La Nina settled over the region depriving the area of
substantial rainfall for 6 months. Tuvalu and Tokelau declared a
state of emergency.
(SFC, 10/15/11, p.A4)
Transjordan
See Jordan
1923 May 25, Britain recognized
Transjordan with Abdullah as its leader.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1946 Mar 22, The British
mandate in Transjordan came to an end. Britain signed a treaty
granting independence to Jordan.
(AP, 3/22/97)(HN, 3/22/97)
1946 May 25, Transjordan (now
Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, King
Abdullah Ibn Ul-Hussein.
(AP, 5/25/97)
1948 May 15, Hours after
declaring its independence, the new state of Israel was attacked by
Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. The first president of
the State of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, took office with the founding
of the nation. David Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first prime minister.
Weizmann, born in Russia in 1874, taught chemistry in England and as
a leading Zionist influenced Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917
favoring a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Weizmann settled in
Palestine in 1934 and served as president of Israel from 1948 until
his death in 1952.
(AP, 5/15/97)(HNQ, 6/19/99)
1948 May 24, Ariel Sharon, then
called Arik Scheinerman, was wounded at the battle of Latrun while
securing Jerusalem for Jews in the 1st Arab-Israeli War.
(WSJ, 10/13/00, p.A15)(Econ, 12/16/06,
p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latrun)
1948-1968 The old city of East Jerusalem was under
Jordanian control. Transjordan was given to a client Arab family,
the Hashenites (led by King Hussein’s grandfather), and was run out
of Mecca by the Saudis.
(WSJ, 4/9/97, p.A14)
Transvaal
1883 Apr 16, Paul Kruger was
chosen president of Transvaal.
(MC, 4/16/02)
Tripoli
Tripoli was a Barbary State of
North Africa and then a province of Turkey before it became part of
Libya.
(WUD, 1994, p.1516)
1289 Apr 29, Qala'un, the
Sultan of Egypt, captured Tripoli.
(HN, 4/29/98)
1798 Nov 4, Congress agreed to
pay a yearly tribute to Tripoli, considering it the only way to
protect U.S. shipping.
(HN, 11/4/98)
1801 Jun 10, The North African
state of Tripoli declared war on the United States in a dispute over
safe passage of merchant vessels through the Mediterranean. Tripoli
declared war on the U.S. for refusing to pay tribute.
(AP, 6/10/97)(HN, 6/10/98)
1804 Feb 16, Lt. Stephen
Decatur attacked the Tripoli pirates who burned the USS
Philadelphia. Captain Stephen Decatur, commanding the USS United
States, had dismasted the 35-gun Macedonian off the Canary Islands
and, after spending two weeks restoring the prize to sailing
condition, brought her back to New York after a return voyage of
nearly 4,000 miles.
(AP, 2/16/98)(HN, 2/16/98)
1805 Apr 27, A force led by
U.S. Marines captured the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.
(AP, 4/27/97)
1805 Jun 4, Tripoli was forced
to conclude peace with U.S. after conflict over tribute.
(HN, 6/4/98)
Tristan da Cunha
A group of 3 volcanic islands in the S. Pacific belonging to Great
Britain
(WUD, 1994 p.1516)
1816 Aug 14, Great Britain
annexed Tristan da Cunha.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1961 Oct 1, A believed extinct
volcano erupted in Tristan da Cunha.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1961 Oct 9, Volcano eruptions
continued on Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic. [see Oct 1]
(MC, 10/9/01)
2008 The population of Tristan
da Cunha, the most remote settlement in the world, stood at 269.
Access to the outside world required a 6-7 day ocean voyage.
(Econ, 6/7/08, TQ p.28)
2011 Mar 16, The
Malta-registered MS Olivia was grounded on Nightingale Island in the
Tristan da Cunha chain. All 22 crew were rescued by 17th March. The
ship broke in two and some 20,000 penguins became coated in oil.
There was a risk rats from the ship could come ashore and eat the
chicks and eggs of native seabirds.
(AP, 3/22/11)(www.tristandc.com/newsmsoliva.php)
Troy
2500BCE Troy II, the second oldest discernible
settlement on the site of the mound of Hissarlik in northwest
Turkey, a good 1200 years before the estimated date of the Trojan
War.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.49)
2450BCE The Troy treasure discovered by Heinrich
Schliemann in 1873 was dated to a Bronze Age Troy of about this
time.
(SFC, 4/16/96, p.A-9)
1700-1250 Troy VI, the bronze age settlement of
the site of the Trojan War. The inhabitants probably spoke Luvian,
an Indo-European language related to Hittite.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.49-50)
1250-1000BCE Troy VIIa, another discernible era on
the site of the Trojan War. Evidence shows that Troy V was destroyed
by fire and that Troy VI saw the establishment of an entirely new
principality. An earthquake hit the thriving city of 5-6 thousand
people, but after the crisis, the same people returned and repaired
the city. The renovated Troy VIIa lasted some seventy years and was
then destroyed by a conflagration.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.49-50)
1225-1175 Earthquakes during this period toppled
some city-states and centers of trade and scholarship in the Middle
East. Jericho, Jerusalem, Knossos and Troy were all hit.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A8)(SSFC, 12/17/00, p.A19)
1200BCE Homer’s Troy dates to around this time.
(SFC, 4/16/96, p.A-9)
1184 BCE Jun 11, Greeks finally captured Troy.
[see 1150BCE]
(SC, 6/11/02)
1150BCE Troy fell. Estimated date for the
beginning of the Aeneid. [see 1275-1240BCE]
(V.D.-H.K.p.60)
c1000BCE Troy at Hissarlik in northwest Turkey was
destroyed by fire and abandoned.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.50)
Tuaregs
Berber nomads of the Sahara.
They are camel breeders, desert guides, toll collectors, bandits and
opportunists. A community of some 1.5 million people, the Tuaregs
have traditionally lived in Niger, Mali, Algeria, Libya and Burkina
Faso. The Tuareg rebellions shook Mali and Niger in the 1990s and
early 2000s, with a resurgence between 2006 and 2009, which caused
tens of thousands of Tuaregs to take refuge in Libya.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, BR p.5)
2011 Aug 26, Mali's most
radical Tuareg rebel chief Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, who never agreed to
disarm, died in an accident.
(AFP, 8/27/11)
2011 Aug 28, Security sources
said hundreds of armed Tuaregs from Mali and Niger who fought for
toppled Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi have started to return to their
home nations.
(AFP, 8/28/11)
2011 Sep 5, In Libya rebels
reportedly arrested Khalid Kaim, Gadhafi's deputy foreign minister
in Tripoli. A large convoy of Gadhafi loyalists rolled into the
central Niger town of Agadez. At the head of the convoy was Tuareg
rebel leader Rissa ag Boula.
(AP, 9/6/11)
Tuva
A republic of the Russian Federation whose capital is Kyzyl.
It is just north of Mongolia. It has about 300,000 people, a quarter
of whom are nomads. Tuva is about the size of North Dakota.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
1921-1944 The Soviets allowed Tuva to call itself
independent. Tuvan stamps are issued by Moscow in odds shapes and
they became collector's items.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
1944 The Soviet Union annexed
Tuva and closed the region to the outside world.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
1993 The Constitution begins by
declaring Tuva's right to secede from the Russian Federation.
(WSJ, 11/29/95, p.A-1,4)
1995 The Russian Republic of
Tuva is noted for its considerable natural resources of gold,
mercury, lead-zinc, nickel-cobalt, and coal reserves. There are also
8000 rivers and streams for potential hydro-electric power.
(WSJ, 12/15/95, p.A-19)
1995 The American club Friends
of Tuva helped to take Paul Pena, a blind blues musician and
self-taught throat-singer, to Tuva for a singing contest. The trip
was later chronicled in the 1999 film, Genghis Blues.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
1996 The Tuvan ensemble,
Huun-Huur-Tu, toured the US and demonstrated their art of throat
singing.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, DB p.9)
1999 The film "Genghis Blues"
premiered at Sundance. It won the audience award for best
documentary. It was directed by Roko and Adrian Belic and was about
Paul Pena (1950-2005), a blind bluesman, who journeyed to Tuva in
1995 to compete in a throat-singing competition.
(SFEC, 4/11/99, DB p.35)(SFC, 10/4/05, p.B5)
2006 Theodore Levin authored
“Where Rivers and Mountains Sing,” a look at the music of Tuva and
how throat-singing has infiltrated popular culture around the world.
(WSJ, 4/1/06, p.A5)
Tuvalu
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
Uighurs (Uygurs)
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China
comprises one-sixth of China in area. The Uighurs of the region are
Turkic-speaking descendants of the Huns.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A8)
2,000BC For as many as 4,000 years, the salty sand
of the Taklimakan Desert in China held well-preserved mummies
wearing colorful robes, boots, stockings and hats. The people were
Caucasian not Asian. The bodies have been exhumed from the Tarim
Basin of Xinjiang province since the late 1970s.
(SFC, 5/6/96, p.C-1)(NG, 3/96)
356-323BC The Uighur people have a myth that
Alexander the Great during his conquests ordered his 11 doctors to
create a remedy for all sick people and that as a result pilaf was
invented.
(SFC, 8/14/96, zz-1 p.2)
800-900 The Uygur, a Turkic people, fled the
Mongolian steppe and settled in Xinjiang.
(NG, Feb, 04, p.12)
1000-1100 From Kashgar, China, Mahmud of Kashgar
recorded a similar story but substituted tutmach (noodles) for
pilaf.
(SFC, 8/14/96, zz-1 p.2)
1933 The short-lived Republic
of East Turkestan was proclaimed in Kashgar.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A8,9)
1944 The short-lived Republic
of East Turkestan was proclaimed to exist in Ili in northern
Kashgar.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A8,9)
1944-1949 The Uighers held the free Republic of
East Turkestan until Chinese Communists seized power.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.5A)
1980 A mummy titled the “Beauty
of Kiruran,” was found in the Taklimakan Desert in China. The
Uighurs have been the majority population of this area for centuries
and speak a Turkic language.
(SFC, 5/6/96, p.C-1)
1997 Feb 5-6, The Uighers
rioted in the province of Xinjiang and reports of deaths varied from
4-300. The fighting was said to have begun after the public
execution of 30 young Muslims. Residents said Muslims attacked and
killed ethnic Chinese before police quashed the revolt.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.5A) (USAT, 2/12/97, p.8A) (WSJ,
2/11/96, p.A1)
1997 Feb 25, In Urumqi, capital
of Xinjiang province, Muslim Uigher separatists set bombs that
killed 2 and wounded 27.
(SFC, 2/26/97, p.A8)
2004 Apr, Uighurs met at a
conference in Germany to unite behind Erkin Alptekin, son of a
pre-1949 president of independent Xinjiang.
(Econ, 8/28/04, p.38)
2008 Apr 10, In China a police
spokesman said authorities have detained 45 East Turkestan
"terrorist" suspects (Uighurs), and foiled plots to carry out
suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing
Olympics.
(Reuters, 4/10/08)
United Arab Republic (UAR)
1219 Nov 5, The port of
Damietta (in the Nile delta of Egypt) fell to the Crusaders after a
siege.
(WUD, 1994, p.365)(HN, 11/5/98)
1958 Feb 1, Syria and Egypt
formed the United Arab Republic. Most Syrians resented the merger,
which was led by the radical Baath (Arab Socialist Resurrection)
party.
(WUD, 1994, p.1555)(HNQ, 6/5/98)
1961 Syria withdrew from the
UAR following a coup.
(WUD, 1994, p.1555)(HNQ, 6/5/98)
1961-1971 UAR was the official name of Egypt over
this period.
(WUD, 1994, p.1555)
Vandals
406 Dec 31, Godagisel, king of
the Vandals, died in battle as some 80,000 Vandals attacked over the
Rhine at Mainz.
(MC, 12/31/01)
439 The Vandals took Carthage
and quickly conquered all the coastal lands of Algeria and Tunisia.
Egypt and the Libyan coast remained in Roman hands.
(Enc. of Africa, 1976, p.168)
523 May 6, Thrasamunde, king of
Vandals (496-523), died.
(MC,
5/6/02)(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15268b.htm)
Vanuatu
A South Pacific nation of over 80 islands formerly known as the New
Hebrides.
(SSFC, 12/18/05, p.F8)
The capital is Port-Vila.
(Sm, 2/06, p.72)
1300BC The Lapita people took once again to the
open seas about this time, pushing east past the Solomon Islands to
the Bismarck archipelago and beyond to Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa.
Theses Southeast Asian peoples had headed south from Taiwan to Papua
New Guinea and as far as the main Solomon islands, where they
stopped some 40,000 years ago.
(AFP, 11/9/10)
1000BC A cemetery containing the remains of 25
Lapita people in Teouma, Vanuatu, dated to about this time.
(Arch, 1/06, p.11)
1774 Jul 17, Capt Cook arrived
at New Hebrides (Vanuatu).
(MC, 7/17/02)(Sm, 2/06, p.73)
1938-1939 John Frum, a ghostly American, promised
in the late 1930s to bring planeloads of cargo from the US to Tanna
Island in Vanuatu. Natives of Tanna, in a classic example of a
“cargo cult,” later celebrated Feb 15 as John Frum Day.
(Sm, 2/06, p.75)
1971 Australia joined with New
Zealand and 14 independent of self-governing island nations to form
the South Pacific Forum. The name was changed in 2000 to Pacific
Islands Forum. Member states include: Australia, the Cook Islands,
the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall
Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Since 2006,
associate members territories are New Caledonia and French
Polynesia.
(Econ, 10/20/07,
p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)
1980 Jul 30, The Pacific island
of Vanuatu gained independence from Britain.
(SFC, 7/1/97,
p.A9)(www.worldstatesmen.org/Vanuatu.html)
1996 Sep 30, Parliament passed
a vote of no confidence in prime Minister Maxime Carlot.
(SFC, 10/1/96, p.A14)
1999 Nov 27, In Vanuatu a
tsunami generated by a 7.1 earthquake killed 8 people on Pentecost
Island. 2 people were missing and thousands feared injured and
homeless. The quake was centered 54 miles north of the capital Port
Vila.
(SFC, 11/27/99, p.A15)(SFEC, 11/28/99, p.A12)
2004 Nov 10, The Pacific island
of Vanuatu withdrew a Nov 3 communique signed in Taipei to establish
ties with Taiwan, handing Beijing a diplomatic victory over its arch
rival.
(AP, 11/11/04)
2005 Dec 8, An erupting volcano
on the remote South Pacific island of Vanuatu burst into spectacular
life shooting steam and toxic gases 9,845 feet into the sky.
(AP, 12/08/05)
2006 Jul 11, The tiny nation of
Vanuatu, one of the "happy isles of Oceania," has topped a new
index, the UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), that measures
quality of life against environmental impact, with industrial
countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, faring badly.
(Reuters, 7/11/06)
2010 Dec 2, Vanuatu PM Edward
Natapei was replaced by deputy premier Sato Kilman following a vote
of no confidence in the nation’s Parliament.
(SFC, 12/3/10, p.A2)
Vikings
700-800 Vikings began arriving to the Orkney
Islands.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T3)
793 Jun 8, Vikings raided the
Northumbrian coast in England. Corfe served as a center of West
Saxon resistance to Viking invaders.
(HN, 6/8/98)
795 Vikings first raided
Ireland.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.T8)
800-900 In France monks moved inland from the
Loire valley to escape the depredations of the Vikings and revived
the making of Chablis wine with Chardonnay grapes.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)
800-900 The Vikings brought ponies to Iceland.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A9)
802 Vikings stage their 1st
raid of Iona (Scotland).
(AM, 7/01, p.50)
804 Vikings returned to Iona
and killed 68 of the monastic community.
(AM, 7/01, p.50)
840 Vikings settled in Ireland.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.T8)
842 Vikings attacked the Irish
monastery at Clonmacnoise from bases in Ireland.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.T8)
c853 The Baltic shoreline
Curonians repulsed Danish Viking attempts at subjugation. King Olaf
led Swedish Vikings in retaliation and overcame the towns of Seeburg
and Apuole (Apulia).
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anskar.html#lifeans
(TB-Com, 10/11/00)
874 Vikings from Norway began
to survey Iceland. The monks withdrew to Ireland. The
40,000-square-mile island situated 500 miles northwest of Scotland
was first settled by Norwegians.
(NH, 6/96, p.53)(HNQ, 4/28/00)
995-1030 Olaf Haraldsson, aka Saint Olaf, the
patron saint of Norway. He was king from 1016-1029. He and a crew of
Vikings attacked London and pulled down the London Bridge with
ropes. This is remembered in the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is
falling down...”
(WUD, 1994, p.1002)(SFC, 8/23/97, p.E3)
Volcano Islands
Iwo Jima is one of the 2 Volcano Islands in the
North Pacific, south of Japan.
1944 Jul 4, The Japanese made
their first kamikaze (god wind) attack on a US fleet near Iwo Jima.
There is little evidence that these hits were more than accidental
collisions or last-minute decisions by pilots in doomed aircraft, of
the kind likely to happen in intense sea-air battles [see Oct 21].
(Maggio)(WSJ, 9/10/02,
p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze)
1944 Dec 8, The U.S. conducted
the longest most effective air raid of the Pacific island of Iwo
Jima.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1945 Feb 19, About 60,000
[75,000] US marines went ashore at Iwo Jima, an 8-sq. mile island of
rock, volcanic ash and black sand. During World War II, some 30,000
U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima, where they began a month-long
battle to seize control of the island from Japanese forces. The
36-day battle took the lives of 7,000 Americans and about 20,000 of
22,000 Japanese defenders.
(SFC, 6/19/96, p.A20)(HN, 2/19/98)(AP,
2/19/98)(SFC, 9/21/00, p.C6)
1945 Feb 23, During World War
II, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they
raised the American flag. The carnage on the 8-sq.-mile island
continued for another 31 days.
(AP, 2/23/98)(SFC, 9/21/00, p.C6)
1945 Mar 16, During World War
II, the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean was declared secured
by the Allies. The U.S. defeated Japan at Iwo Jima. Small pockets of
Japanese resistance still exist.
(AP, 3/16/97)(HN, 3/16/99)
1945 Mar 26, Japanese
resistance ended on Iwo Jima.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 27, Iwo Jima was
occupied, after 22,000 Japanese and 6,000 US killed.
(MC, 3/27/02)
Wake Island
See Midway Island
1898 Jul 4, A US flag was
hoisted over Wake Island during the Spanish-American War.
(Maggio, 98)
1899 Jan 17, US took possession
of Wake Island in Pacific.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1941 Dec 11, A Japanese
invasion fleet attacked Wake Island, which was defended by 439 US
marines, 75 sailors and 6 soldiers. The defenders sank 4 Japanese
ships, damaged 8 and destroyed a submarine.
(SFC, 12/12/01, p.A2)
1941 Dec 23, During World War
II, U.S. Marines and Navy defenders on Wake Island capitulated to a
second Japanese invasion.
(AP, 12/23/97)(HN, 12/23/00)
1943 Oct 7, Approximately 100
U.S. prisoners of war remaining on Wake Island were executed by the
Japanese.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1945 Sep 4, US regained
possession of Wake Island from Japan. The American flag was raised
on Wake Island after surrender ceremonies there.
(HN, 9/4/98)(MC, 9/4/01)
1950 Oct 15, President Harry
Truman met with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss
U.N. progress in the Korean War.
(HN, 10/15/98)
Wallachia
A former principality in SE
Europe, north of the Danube.
(WUD, 1994, p.1606)
1400-1500 In Romania Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the
Impaler, the son of Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon), was a 15th
century gruesome Wallachian nobleman. Dracula means son of the
dragon. He punished disobedient subjects and “unchaste” women by
impaling them on sharpened logs, often dining amid the victims as
they died. The family name changed to Kretzulesco and grew in
stature with members upgraded to princes and princesses.
(WSJ, 10/30/97, p.A20)
1861 Wallachia united with
Moldavia to form Rumania whose capital is Bucharest.
(WUD, 1994, p.1606)
Wallis and Futuna Islands
1842 The French declared a
protectorate over the Wallis and Futuna Islands. They had been
discovered by the Dutch and the British in the 17th and 18th
centuries. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a
French overseas territory.
(www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/wf.html)
1959 Lavalua Tomasi Kulimoetoke
(41) became king of Wallis and Futuna Islands. The 2 Pacific islands
between Hawaii and New Zealand, are about 2,800 miles southwest of
Honolulu. The islands have a total area about 1 1/2 times the size
of Washington D.C. and a population of about 15,000.
(AP, 9/23/05)
1961 Jul, A French law
guaranteed populations in France's overseas territories free
exercise of their religion and respect for their beliefs and customs
as long as they are not contrary to general principles of law.
(AP, 9/23/05)
2005 Reformers on Wallis and
Futuna Islands sought to put a new king in place.
(AP, 9/23/05)
West Indies
An archipelago in the North Atlantic between
North and South America comprising the Greater Antilles, the Lesser
Antilles, and the Bahamas.
1629 Oct 13, Dutch West Indies
Co. granted religious freedom in West Indies.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1780 A deadly hurricane hit the
Windward and Leeward Islands and 20-22,000 people were killed.
(SFC, 11/30/98, p.A2)
1793 Dec 23, Thomas Jefferson
warned of slave revolts in West Indies.
(MC, 12/23/01)
1833 Aug 23, The British
Parliament ordered the abolition of slavery in its colonies by Aug
1, 1834. This would free some 700,000 slaves, including those in the
West Indies. The Imperial Emancipation Act also allowed blacks to
enjoy greater equality under the law in Canada as opposed to the US.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992,
p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1834 Aug 1, In the West Indies
slaves were emancipated.
(NH, 7/98, p.29)
1958 Jan 3, The British
created the West Indies Federation with Lord Hailes as governor
general. The federation lasted to 1962. It included Barbados,
Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago and the Windward and Leeward Islands.
(HN, 1/3/99)(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
1958-1962 The West Indies Federation was comprised
of British territorial islands in the West Indies that included
Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, along with the Windward and
Leeward Island colonies.
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
1967-1981 The group of territorial islands in the
West Indies in association with the United Kingdom. The original
members included Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St.
Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and adjacent islands.
All the member islands became independent except Anguilla.
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
1975 Jun 21, The West Indies,
captained by Clive Lloyd won the first World Cup Cricket series,
beating Australia by 17 runs at Lords.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Cricket_World_Cup)
1992 Oct 8, West Indian poet
Derek Walcott was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.
(AP, 10/8/97)
West Irian
1963 The western part of the
island of New Guinea became a province of Indonesia. It was formerly
a Dutch territory called West New Guinea, Dutch New Guinea or
Netherlands New Guinea.
(WUD, 1994, p.1623)
World Trade Organization
1994 Founded as the successor
to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, a relatively weak
regulator of int’l. trade. Under the system a complaint is referred
to a panel of experts who debate it and render a decision. The
losing nation must then change its practices or offer compensation
to the injured nations. Members who refuse to comply can be
subjected to trade retaliation, such as tariffs to their exports.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A9)
1996 Oct 16, The EU began its
campaign against the US Helms-Burton Act by asking the WTO to set up
a panel to resolve differences over the law.
(SFC, 10/17/96, A9)
Yanomani
A native tribe of the Amazon forest of Venezuela
and Brazil. Some 22,000 Yanomani live in about 300 villages spread
over 70,000 sq. miles.
(NH, 3/97, p.44)(SFC, 11/16/00, p.A19)
c1947 The first contact with
outsiders occurred.
(NH, 3/97, p.46)
1967 At least 30 Indians died
from a measles epidemic that hit Yanomani villages at least one year
before researchers administered the Edmonston B vaccine.
(SFC, 11/16/00, p.A19)
1968 In Venezuela researchers,
Napoleon Chagnon and James V. Neel, reportedly inoculated thousands
of Yanomami Indians with a measles vaccine. In 2000 the
controversial book “Darkness in El Dorado” Patrick Tierney
blamed the researchers for a major epidemic that killed hundreds of
Indians. [see 1967]
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A4)
1970s-1998 Brazilian Gold miners worked in the
Yanomani reservation near Venezuela and introduced disease that cut
the Indian population by more than half.
(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)
1996 “Spirit of the Rainforest:
A Yanamama Shaman’s Story” by Mark A. Ritchie was published.
(NH, 3/97, p.67)
1997 Nov, The Brazilian
government began to force gold miners to leave the Yanomani Indian
reservation where the population was much reduced by disease.
(WSJ, 1/15/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 17, It was reported
that a 3-month-old fire was raging out of control in the state of
Roraima, home of the Yanomani Indians.
(SFC, 3/17/98, p.B2)
Yoruba
A West African people who
speak the Kwa language. Yorubaland was a former kingdom in West
Africa, now a region of southwest Nigeria.
(WUD, 1994, p.1656)
1875?-1958 Yoruba sculptor Olowe. He carved a
lintel in a sacrifice motif of grisly elegance: birds plucking the
eyes from human faces.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.4)
Zaire
See Congo
Zanzibar see Tanzania
Zapotecs
1000AD The Zapotecs founded and ruled the
archeological site of Monte Alban in the Mexican state of Oaxaca for
more than a millennium until about this time when the Mixtecs took
over.
(SFC, 5/5/96, p.T-8)
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