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)
2137BC The Akkadian empire collapsed. It had ruled present-day Iraq from about 2350 BC to 2150 BC.
(NY Times, 11/9/22)
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)
1927 Archaeologists working at the ancient city of Ur excavated a stone disc bearing the name Enheduanna, (written with a starburst symbol) and image, and identifying her as the daughter of the king Sargon of Akkad, the wife of the moon god Nanna, and a priestess. The Mesopotamian priestess, dead for more than 4,000 years, was the first individually named author in human history. Her work celebrated the gods and the power of the Akkadian empire, which ruled present-day Iraq from about 2350 B.C. to 2150 B.C, and included her abuse at the hands of a corrupt priest — the first reference to sexual harassment in world literature.
(NY Times, 11/9/22)
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 and Nicobar Islands
The aboriginal people in these 572 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)(Econ, 9/13/14, p.46)
Port Blair is the capital of the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar islands. The islands stretched for 750km above the entrance to the Malacca Strait.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.46)
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)
2012 Jan 11, India's Tribal Affairs Minister V. Kishore Chandra Deo said an investigation had been ordered as rights campaigners and politicians condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists reportedly in exchange for food on India's Andaman Islands.
(AFP, 1/11/12)
2014 The population of the India-owned Andaman Islands was about 400,000.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.48)
2018 Nov 21, Indian police officer Vijay Singh said seven fishermen have been arrested for facilitating a visit by American John Allen Chau to North Sentinel Island, where he was apparently killed. North Sentinel is in the Andaman Islands, a group of islands at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. Chau had reached the vicinity of the island on Nov. 16, before transferring to a canoe. His body was spotted the following day by the fishermen on their return.
(AP, 11/21/18)
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)
2015 Mar 13, In Andorra Joan Pau Miquel Prats of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) was arrested on suspicion of money laundering following US allegations that funds were laundered for groups from China, Russia and Venezuela.
(AP, 3/14/15)
2015 Mar 16, Andorra imposed withdrawal limits for clients of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), a bank accused of money laundering. Spain's central bank said that Banco de Madrid SA, a unit of the Andorran bank, needs bankruptcy protection granted by a judge following a "sharp deterioration" of its finances with large withdrawals of clients' funds.
(AP, 3/16/15)
2015 Mar, FinCEN, an arm of the US Treasury, labelled Banca Privada d’Andorra a primary money laundering concern. This effectively shut the bank out of America’s financial system.
(Econ, 6/6/15, p.57)
Anguilla
An island in the British West Indies. Its population in 2013 was about 15,000.
(Google)(Econ, 3/23/13, p.39)
2013 Anguilla was the smallest of the 209 members of FIFA, the governing body of soccer. Its national team ranked 206th.
(Econ, 3/23/13, p.39)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
2017 Sep 7, Hurricane Irma inflicted "severe and in places critical" damage to the British overseas territory of Anguilla with one death reported. The British Virgin islands also suffered "severe damage.
(AP, 9/7/17)
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)
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.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)(AP, 9/18/10)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
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)
2017 Sep 6, Category Five hurricane Irma slammed into the French Caribbean islands after making landfall in Barbuda, packing ferocious winds and causing major flooding in low-lying areas. After making landfall in Barbuda, part of the twin island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the hurricane swept on to French-run Saint Barthelemy, also known as St Barts, and Saint Martin, an island divided between France and the Netherlands. In Barbuda, a 2-year-old child was killed as a family tried to escape a damaged home during the storm.
(AFP, 9/6/17) (AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Sep 7, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Franc Info that at least eight people died and another 23 were injured when Hurricane Irma walloped the French Caribbean island territories of St. Martin and St. Barthelemy.
(AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Sep 8, Hurricane Irma menaced Cuba and the Bahamas as it drove toward Florida after lashing the Caribbean with devastating winds and torrential rain The death toll from Irma increased to 20 with four more deaths reported in the British Virgin Islands. The other lives lost include nine on the French Caribbean islands of St. Martin and St. Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, and one each on the islands of Anguilla, Barbuda and the Dutch side of St. Martin.
(Reuters, 9/8/17)(AP, 9/8/17)
2017 Sep 9, A French public reinsurance body said the cost of Hurricane Irma, described as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, is at least 1.2 billion euros ($1.44 billion) in Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy. 10 people had been reported dead on the two islands.
(Reuters, 9/9/17)
2017 Nov 24, Dutch Saint Martin's PM William Marlin announced his resignation after a spat with The Netherlands over aid following a devastating hurricane that hit the Caribbean island.
(AFP, 11/25/17)
2018 Jan 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the shutdown of all air and maritime traffic with the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire for the next 72 hours. He accused island leaders of being complicit in the illegal trafficking of goods and resources.
(AP, 1/5/18)
2018 Jan 9, Venezuelan officials extended the ban on air and maritime ties with Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, three nearby Dutch Caribbean islands, citing smuggling claims.
(AP, 1/9/18)
2020 Dec 10, In the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin a French female tourist (38) died after having her leg torn off in a shark attack in Orient Bay.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A2)
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. Some 20 million birds are believed to have lived on the island. By 2000 the number of birds was down to a few hundred thousand due to cats.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.160)(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.9)
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)
2013 Sep 9, Chilean press reported that the US has spied on communications from Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Uruguay from the island of Ascension according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
(SSFC, 9/15/13, p.A6)
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)
1808 In the Azores the volcanic fissure of Manadas on Sao Jorge island erupted.
(Reuters, 3/22/22)
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)
2022 Mar 21, Around 1,100 small earthquakes rattled Sao Jorge, one of Portugal's mid-Atlantic volcanic Azores islands in less than 48 hours, prompting authorities to activate an emergency plan as experts assess what they have described as a "seismic crisis".
(Reuters, 3/22/22)
2022 Mar 26, It was reported that about 1,250 people left the Azores' island of Sao Jorge, home to around 8,400 people, on March 23 and March 24 alone.
(Reuters, 3/26/22)
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)
Bonaire
ABC Islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao of the Netherland Antilles are located off of Venezuela. [see Netherland Antilles]
(Hem., 12/96, p.28)
1971 Bonaire, Netherland Antilles, outlawed spearfishing off the island.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)(www.geographia.com/bonaire/bondiv01.htm)
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)
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)
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)
2018 Jan 9, Venezuelan officials extended the ban on air and maritime ties with Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, three nearby Dutch Caribbean islands, citing smuggling claims.
(AP, 1/9/18)
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
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)
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)
Faroe Islands
700-800 Vikings settled the Faeroe Islands in the 8th century replacing Irish settlers. In 1948 the group of 18 islands, located between Britain and Iceland, became an autonomous region of Denmark.
(SSFC, 7/29/07, p.G8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroe_Islands)
1397 Jun 17, The Union of Kalmar united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway under one monarch. The alliance grew out of the dynastic ties of the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in response to rising German influence in the Baltic. The Kalmar Union is a historiographical term meaning a series of personal unions (1397–1523) that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway (with Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, prior to their annexation by Scotland in 1471, Shetland and Orkney), and Sweden (including Finland) under a single monarch.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union)
1946 Faroe islanders voted narrowly for independence from Denmark. The
Danish government rejected the referendum and dissolved the islands’ parliament.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.41)
1948 The Faroe Islands won home rule, but Denmark still controlled the currency, foreign affairs and some of the courts.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.41)
1996 Aug 3, In Denmark a Gulfstream jet crashed and killed Copenhagen’s top military officer and 8 others as it approached a Faroe Islands airstrip.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A1)
2019 Aug 31, The Faroe Islands held elections. The opposition People's Party won the general election as the ruling Social Democratic Party lost its position as the biggest party in the parliament. The Faeroe Islands is an 18-island rocky, volcanic archipelago that is home to 49,000 people of which 20,000 live in Torshavn, the capital.
(AP, 9/1/19)
2021 Sep 12, The slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins, part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber, reignited a debate on the small Faeroe Islands, a semi-independent and part of the Danish realm.
(AP, 9/14/21)
2021 Sep 16, The Faeroese government said that it will review the way hunts of Atlantic white-sided dolphins are carried out following the release of gruesome video footage showing the mass killing on Sept. 12 of nearly 1,500 sea mammals.
(AP, 9/16/21)
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)
2012 May 16, In French Guiana an Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched two Asian telecoms satellites into orbit from the Kourou space center. It placed into orbit two geostationary satellites, the JCSAT-13 for the Japanese SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, and the VINASAT-2 of the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group.
(AFP, 5/16/12)
2014 Apr 3, The European Space Agency launched its Sentinel 1A satellite on a Russian Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. It was the first of six satellites for a new system designed to better monitor climate change, environmental disasters and catastrophes like floods, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
(AP, 4/3/14)(SFC, 4/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Jul 10, Arianespace launched a rocket from French Guiana carrying four satellites that will help provide Internet and mobile connectivity to people in nearly 180 countries.
(AP, 7/11/14)
2015 Jun 23, The European Space Agency (ESA) launched overnight the second phase of a 4.3-billion-euro ($4.91-billion) program to deploy new-generation satellites to monitor environmental damage and aid disaster relief operations. Sentinel-2A was hoisted by a lightweight Vega rocket from ESA's base in Kourou, French Guiana.
(AFP, 6/23/15)
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)
2020 May 11, There are now 107 coronavirus cases in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, including about 50 crew members still aboard the Celebrity Flora, a luxury ship operated by a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises. The islands' first four cases were diagnosed in late March, all believed to have come from Guayaquil before travel was cut off. Tourism has ground to a halt and an economic crisis has left many of the 30,000 residents jobless.
(AP, 5/11/20)
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)
1643 Dec 25, Captain William Mynors of the Royal Mary, a British East India Company vessel, named Christmas Island when he sailed past it on Christmas Day. Sovereignty of the island was transferred to Australia in 1957.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Island)
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 US forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese. Makin Atoll, part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, was the first central Pacific island to be reconquered by the Allies. More than 900 US marines and 30 sailors were killed in the battle for Tarawa.
(AP, 11/23/97)(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)(SFC, 12/16/19, p.A6)
1944 Jan 21, A US B-24 bomber that crashed shortly after taking off from an airfield on the Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Seven of the 10-member crew were killed including Staff Sgt. Jack Busch, of Kenmore, near Buffalo, NY. In 2019 the remains of Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Vincent J. Rogers Jr. were accounted for.
(AP, 4/2/19)
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)
1763 Feb 10, Britain, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Paris ending the French-Indian War. France ceded Canada to England and gave up all her territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered islands. France retained the sugar colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
(HN, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/08)(SSFC, 7/6/14, p.L5)
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)
2014 Jan 15, It was reported that some 200 cases of chikungunya, a debilitating sickness due to a mosquito-borne virus, have been diagnosed in St. Martin, and that the virus has spread to St. Maarten. New cases were also confirmed in Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2017 Sep 5, Irma strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category Five hurricane, meteorologists warned, sparking alarm and flooding alerts as it barreled towards the Caribbean. It was expected to make landfall along the string of French islands including Guadeloupe late today before heading to Haiti and Florida.
(AFP, 9/5/17)
2017 Sep 19, Hurricane Maria left at least one person dead on Guadeloupe.
(SFC, 9/20/17 p.A4)
2021 Aug 11, France said it will strengthen lockdown rules in the overseas territory of Guadeloupe to rein in the spread of COVID-19, as spikes in infections in its Caribbean islands overwhelm hospitals.
(Reuters, 8/11/21)
2021 Nov 19, Authorities imposed a curfew on the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe following five days of civil unrest over COVID-19 protocols that have seen barricades burned in the streets and firefighters and doctors walk out on strike.
(Reuters, 11/19/21)
2021 Nov 21, The French overseas territory of Guadeloupe was hit by a third night of looting and rioting amid protests against COVID-19 measures, with gunmen shooting at police and firefighters.
(Reuters, 11/21/21)
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)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
Jersey and Guernsey
Jersey is a 45-square-mile (118-square-km) British Crown dependency, 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)
1813 Thomas De La Rue (1793-1866) launched a newspaper in Guernsey. He moved to London in 1821 and established a printing firm. It grew to become the world’s largest commercial banknote printer.
(Econ, 8/11/12, p.50)(http://lunaticg.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-is-thomas-de-la-rue.html)
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 stabbed to death his wife Izabela Rzeszowska (30) their two children, Kinga (5) and Kacper (2) in a flat in the capital St Helier. He also killed his wife's father Marek Garstka (56) and her friend Marta Dominika De La Haye (34) and five-year-old daughter Julia Frances. On Aug 24, 2012, Rzeszowski was convicted of manslaughter. On Oct 29, 2012, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for each murder with the sentences to run concurrently.
(AP, 8/15/11)(AFP, 8/25/11)(AP, 8/28/12)(AP, 10/29/12)
2012 The population of Jersey, a British Crown dependency off the coast of France, was about 98,000.
(Econ, 2/25/12, p.70)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
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)
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)
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)
640BC The 1st coins were minted in Lydia (later part of Turkey) about this time, and featured face to face heads of a bull and lion.
(SSFC, 12/3/00, WB p.2)(Econ, 2/25/12, SRp.4)
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)
420BC Pissuthnes, satrap of Lydia, revolted against the Persian king Darius II. The Persian soldier and statesman Tissaphernes a grandson of Hydarnes, was sent by Darius II to Lydia to arrest and execute Pissuthnes. Tissaphernes became satrap of Lydia in 415 BC and continue to fight Amorges, son of Pissuthnes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_%28satrapy%29)
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)
Macquarie Island
Macquarie Island lies in the southwest corner of the Pacific Ocean, about half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1810 Jul 11, The Australian-Briton Frederick Hasselborough discovered the uninhabited Macquarie island, half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, accidentally when looking for new sealing grounds. The island took its name after Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1820 Cats were introduce to Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica. Rabbits were introduced in 1878. The eradication of cats led to an epidemic of rabbits, which devastated the native vegetation.
(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.10)
1978 Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, became a Tasmanian State Reserve.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1997 Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, became a World Heritage Site.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
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)
410BC Darius II, ruler of Persia, quelled a revolt in Media but lost control of Egypt.
(http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Darius_II_Nothus,_423-404_BCE)
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 4, The first cable across the Pacific Ocean, spliced between San Fancisco Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila, allowed Pres. Teddy Roosevelt to send the first around the world message. It took 9 minutes to circle the globe. Roosevelt had placed the atoll of Midway Island under Navy supervision. The Commercial Pacific Cable Co. (later AT&T) set the cable across the Pacific via Midway Island.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Pacific_Cable_Company)(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.T5)
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)
1942 Jun 4, The Battle of Midway began. It was Japan’s first major defeat in World War II. Four Japanese carriers were lost. The carrier USS Yorktown was hit by 3 Japanese bombs and put on tow to Pearl Harbor. It was torpedoed three days later and sank in waters 16,650 deep. The Yorktown was found in 1998 by a team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had also found the Titanic and the Bismarck. The story of the Battle of Midway was told by Walter Lord in "Incredible Victory." In 2005 Alvin Kernan authored “The Unknown Battle of Midway."
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A3)(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.C1)(WSJ, 11/29/05, p.D8)
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)
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)
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.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)(AP, 9/18/10)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
1636 The Caribbean island of St. Eustatius was colonized by the Dutch. It became an important transit port for the regional trade in sugar and slaves from West Africa.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A4)
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)
2012 Jan 21, Dutch sailor Laura Dekker (16) set foot aboard a dock in St. Maarten, ending a yearlong voyage aboard a sailboat named "Guppy" that apparently made her the youngest person ever to sail alone around the globe. She had set out from St. Maarten on Jan. 20, 2011.
(AP, 1/21/12)
2013 Dec, Chikungunya fever, a mosquito-born virus common in Africa and Asia, was first detected in the Caribbean region on St. Martin and soon spread across across the region and onto South and Central America.
(Econ, 5/10/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 15, It was reported that some 200 cases of chikungunya, a debilitating sickness due to a mosquito-borne virus, have been diagnosed in St. Martin, and that the virus has spread to St. Maarten. New cases were also confirmed in Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2017 Sep 6, Category Five hurricane Irma slammed into the French Caribbean islands after making landfall in Barbuda, packing ferocious winds and causing major flooding in low-lying areas. After making landfall in Barbuda, part of the twin island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the hurricane swept on to French-run Saint Barthelemy, also known as St Barts, and Saint Martin, an island divided between France and the Netherlands. In Barbuda, a 2-year-old child was killed as a family tried to escape a damaged home during the storm.
(AFP, 9/6/17) (AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Nov 24, Dutch Saint Martin's PM William Marlin announced his resignation after a spat with The Netherlands over aid following a devastating hurricane that hit the Caribbean island.
(AFP, 11/25/17)
2018 Jan 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the shutdown of all air and maritime traffic with the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire for the next 72 hours. He accused island leaders of being complicit in the illegal trafficking of goods and resources.
(AP, 1/5/18)
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. In 2011 Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa became associate members.
(Econ, 10/20/07, p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)(Econ., 2/13/21, p.41)
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)
2013 Nov 7, China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang said China will provide a concessionary loan of up to $1 billion to Pacific island nations to support construction projects in a part of the world where Beijing and Taiwan compete for influence. He made the announcement at a forum with Pacific island nations in Guangzhou at a meeting attended by representatives from Micronesia, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue and Fiji.
(Reuters, 11/8/13)
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)
1979 Norfolk Island, settled in 1856 by the descendants of Fletcher Christian and other Bounty mutineers, began governing itself.
(AFP, 3/19/15)
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)
2015 Mar 19, Australia said it would introduce legislation next week to scrap the parliament of Norfolk Island, which was effectively bankrupt, and temporarily replace it by an advisory council before local government elections in 2016.
(AFP, 3/19/15)
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 over 1100 people, many 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)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis)
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. Ultimately 334 people, including 186 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)
2020 Apr 20, Hundreds of people protested against regional authorities in southern Russia over what they said were restrictive and unnecessary coronavirus measures. The Republic of North Ossetia, where the protest took place, has officially registered only 145 cases and two deaths.
(Reuters, 4/20/20)
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)
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)
2013 The Pitcairn Islands, home to 65 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, hoped to establish a marine protected area of some 830,000 square km in its exclusive economic zone.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.50)
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)
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)
2012 Aug 2, It was reported that France planned to offer financial incentives to French fishermen for hunting bull sharks, a threatened shark species, following recent attacks on people off the coast of Reunion.
(SFC, 8/2/12, p.A4)
2015 Jul 29, Plane debris was found washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and was believed to be part of a Boeing 777, potentially the biggest breakthrough in the search for Flight MH370, missing since March 8, 2014.
(Reuters, 7/31/15)
2018 Nov 21, The French government said thirty police officers have been injured in five days of protests over rising living costs on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. Roads across the volcanic island of 850,000 people off southeast Africa remained blocked by demonstrators, causing petrol stations to run low on fuel, and schools were closed for fear of violence.
(AP, 11/21/18)
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)
2015 Aug 6, Residents of Saipan were without water and electricity and were rationing gasoline four days after Typhoon Soudelor hit the most populated island in the US territory of the Northern Marianas.
(AP, 8/6/15)
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)
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)
486BC-465BC Xerxes the Great (b.519BC), king of Persia, ruled Egypt as the 3rd king of the 27th Dynasty. His rule extended from India to the lands below the Caspian and Black seas, to the east coast of the Mediterranean including Egypt and Thrace. Persia’s 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.
(V.D.-H.K.p.49)(eawc, p.11)(http://tinyurl.com/d2gayf)
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 )
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. 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
1769 Jun 3, British navigator, Captain James Cook, British astronomer Charles Green and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander observed and recorded a transit of Venus across the sun on the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world.
(http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/past-transits/1769-june-3/)
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 Feb 20, Hobart, Tasmania, was founded as a penal colony.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart)
1804 Australian 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 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)
2006 Nicholas Shakespeare authored “In Tasmania," an account of his life there since 1999.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.P8)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's most pristine environments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2008 May 19, In Australia the Tasmania state government said the Tasmanian devil will be listed as an endangered species this week as a result of a deadly and disfiguring cancer outbreak. Animal rights activists said Australian authorities have started the controversial killing of about 400 kangaroos on the outskirts of Australia's capital of Canberra.
(AFP, 5/19/08)(AP, 5/19/08)
2009 Mar 2, In southern Australia rescuers used jet skis, backhoes and human muscle to save dozens of whales and dolphins stranded on Naracoopa Beach on Tasmania state's King Island. Rescuers refloated 54 whales and five bottlenose dolphins. A total of 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded the previous evening.
(AP, 3/2/09)(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Jun 30, In Australia 2 men were charged with the murder of a female student from China who went missing June 25 after a night out in Tasmania. Stavros Papadopoulos and Daniel Joseph Williams, both 21 and from Hobart, were remanded in custody after a brief appearance before a magistrate. Accountancy student Zhang Yu (26) was last seen alive outside a Hobart city center pub. Police later found her body in the Tyenna river west of Hobart. In 2010 Papadopoulos was sentenced to life in prison. Accomplice Daniel Jo Williams was sentenced to 10 years in jail on a charge of manslaughter.
(AP, 6/30/09)(AFP, 6/30/10)
2009 Oct 20, Australian officials said a leech found at a crime scene in 2001 led police to a man who admitted robbing an elderly woman. The leech dropped off Peter Cannon as he and an accomplice tied a 71-year-old woman to a chair in her remote home in the Tasmanian woods on Sept. 28, 2001.
(AP, 10/20/09)
2010 Jan 1, It was reported that Australian researchers have cracked the genetic origin of the deadly cancer that is threatening to wipe out Tasmanian devils, raising hopes that the animal's future is safe.
(AFP, 1/1/10)
2010 Sep 16, Australian scientists said they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the cancer-hit Tasmanian devil by mapping the species' genome for the first time.
(AFP, 9/16/10)
2011 Jan 24, Lara Giddings took over as premier Australia’s island state of Tasmania.
(Econ, 2/12/11, p.49)
2011 Mar 17, In Australia a pod of long-finned pilot whales beached themselves at Bruny Island, south of the Tasmanian state capital Hobart. 21 whales died but 11 were saved.
(AP, 3/18/11)
2011 Nov 12, In Australia 22 sperm whales and 2 minke whales died after getting stranded near Ocean Beach, Tasmania. Rescuers over the next 2 days saved two huge sperm whales stranded at Macquarie Harbor. Another died and a 4th remained stranded as weather worsened.
(AFP, 11/14/11)(AP, 11/15/11)
2012 Aug 3, In Australia Tasmania Zoo owner Dick Warren said 9 birds, including an endangered swift parrot, had their heads smashed in or ripped off and more than 60 animals were missing after vandals went on the rampage.
(AFP, 8/4/12)
2012 In Tasmania loggers and environmentalists signed the Tasmanian Forests Agreement, following a 30-year war, that secured timber supplies and protected native forests.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.43)
2013 Jan 7, In Australia officials searched for bodies among the charred ruins of more than 100 homes and other buildings destroyed by wildfires in the island state of Tasmania. Around 100 residents remained unaccounted for, three days after the fires broke out.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Nov 1, In Tasmania int’l. negotiations ended after China, Russia and Ukraine scuttled plans to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antarctica. The sanctuary plans were led by the Antarctic Ocean Alliance which campaigns for protecting the Antarctic seas. For the sanctuary proposals to pass, they needed backing from all 200 delegates from 25 member countries, many of which have conflicting interests.
(Reuters, 11/1/13)(SFC, 11/2/13, p.A2)
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.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha)
1961 Oct 10, On Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic the eruption of Queen Mary's Peak forced the evacuation of the entire population of 264 individuals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha)
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)
2020 Nov 16, It was reported that Tristan de Cunha is creating a marine protection zone to safeguard endangered rockhopper penguins.
(SFC, 11/15/20, p.A2)
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)
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)
1968 Jun 26, The national flag of Japan, the hinomaru, was raised atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima symbolizing the return of the central Pacific island to Japan.
(SSFC, 6/24/18, DB p.54)
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.
1627 Barbados was uninhabited as the first English settlers arrived. Sugarcane fields later began to cover the island, a 14 x 21 mile stack of coral terraces.
(NH, 12/96, p.35)(Econ, 6/16/12, p.91)(http://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/Barbados/history/)
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. Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds in compensation for freeing their slaves.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992, p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)(SFC, 2/28/13, p.A2)
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, Derek Walcott (1930-2013), West Indies born poet (Saint Lucia), was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1997 his collection of poems "The Bounty" was published. In 2014 an anthology of his poetry was published.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, BR p.1)(AP, 10/8/97)(Econ, 3/20/10, p.94)(Econ, 4/26/14, p.81)
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)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Return to home
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)
2137BC The Akkadian empire collapsed. It had ruled present-day Iraq from about 2350 BC to 2150 BC.
(NY Times, 11/9/22)
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)
1927 Archaeologists working at the ancient city of Ur excavated a stone disc bearing the name Enheduanna, (written with a starburst symbol) and image, and identifying her as the daughter of the king Sargon of Akkad, the wife of the moon god Nanna, and a priestess. The Mesopotamian priestess, dead for more than 4,000 years, was the first individually named author in human history. Her work celebrated the gods and the power of the Akkadian empire, which ruled present-day Iraq from about 2350 B.C. to 2150 B.C, and included her abuse at the hands of a corrupt priest — the first reference to sexual harassment in world literature.
(NY Times, 11/9/22)
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 and Nicobar Islands
The aboriginal people in these 572 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)(Econ, 9/13/14, p.46)
Port Blair is the capital of the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar islands. The islands stretched for 750km above the entrance to the Malacca Strait.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.46)
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)
2012 Jan 11, India's Tribal Affairs Minister V. Kishore Chandra Deo said an investigation had been ordered as rights campaigners and politicians condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists reportedly in exchange for food on India's Andaman Islands.
(AFP, 1/11/12)
2014 The population of the India-owned Andaman Islands was about 400,000.
(Econ, 9/13/14, p.48)
2018 Nov 21, Indian police officer Vijay Singh said seven fishermen have been arrested for facilitating a visit by American John Allen Chau to North Sentinel Island, where he was apparently killed. North Sentinel is in the Andaman Islands, a group of islands at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. Chau had reached the vicinity of the island on Nov. 16, before transferring to a canoe. His body was spotted the following day by the fishermen on their return.
(AP, 11/21/18)
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)
2015 Mar 13, In Andorra Joan Pau Miquel Prats of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) was arrested on suspicion of money laundering following US allegations that funds were laundered for groups from China, Russia and Venezuela.
(AP, 3/14/15)
2015 Mar 16, Andorra imposed withdrawal limits for clients of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), a bank accused of money laundering. Spain's central bank said that Banco de Madrid SA, a unit of the Andorran bank, needs bankruptcy protection granted by a judge following a "sharp deterioration" of its finances with large withdrawals of clients' funds.
(AP, 3/16/15)
2015 Mar, FinCEN, an arm of the US Treasury, labelled Banca Privada d’Andorra a primary money laundering concern. This effectively shut the bank out of America’s financial system.
(Econ, 6/6/15, p.57)
Anguilla
An island in the British West Indies. Its population in 2013 was about 15,000.
(Google)(Econ, 3/23/13, p.39)
2013 Anguilla was the smallest of the 209 members of FIFA, the governing body of soccer. Its national team ranked 206th.
(Econ, 3/23/13, p.39)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
2017 Sep 7, Hurricane Irma inflicted "severe and in places critical" damage to the British overseas territory of Anguilla with one death reported. The British Virgin islands also suffered "severe damage.
(AP, 9/7/17)
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)
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.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)(AP, 9/18/10)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
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)
2017 Sep 6, Category Five hurricane Irma slammed into the French Caribbean islands after making landfall in Barbuda, packing ferocious winds and causing major flooding in low-lying areas. After making landfall in Barbuda, part of the twin island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the hurricane swept on to French-run Saint Barthelemy, also known as St Barts, and Saint Martin, an island divided between France and the Netherlands. In Barbuda, a 2-year-old child was killed as a family tried to escape a damaged home during the storm.
(AFP, 9/6/17) (AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Sep 7, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Franc Info that at least eight people died and another 23 were injured when Hurricane Irma walloped the French Caribbean island territories of St. Martin and St. Barthelemy.
(AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Sep 8, Hurricane Irma menaced Cuba and the Bahamas as it drove toward Florida after lashing the Caribbean with devastating winds and torrential rain The death toll from Irma increased to 20 with four more deaths reported in the British Virgin Islands. The other lives lost include nine on the French Caribbean islands of St. Martin and St. Barts, four in the US Virgin Islands, and one each on the islands of Anguilla, Barbuda and the Dutch side of St. Martin.
(Reuters, 9/8/17)(AP, 9/8/17)
2017 Sep 9, A French public reinsurance body said the cost of Hurricane Irma, described as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, is at least 1.2 billion euros ($1.44 billion) in Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy. 10 people had been reported dead on the two islands.
(Reuters, 9/9/17)
2017 Nov 24, Dutch Saint Martin's PM William Marlin announced his resignation after a spat with The Netherlands over aid following a devastating hurricane that hit the Caribbean island.
(AFP, 11/25/17)
2018 Jan 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the shutdown of all air and maritime traffic with the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire for the next 72 hours. He accused island leaders of being complicit in the illegal trafficking of goods and resources.
(AP, 1/5/18)
2018 Jan 9, Venezuelan officials extended the ban on air and maritime ties with Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, three nearby Dutch Caribbean islands, citing smuggling claims.
(AP, 1/9/18)
2020 Dec 10, In the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin a French female tourist (38) died after having her leg torn off in a shark attack in Orient Bay.
(SFC, 12/12/20, p.A2)
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. Some 20 million birds are believed to have lived on the island. By 2000 the number of birds was down to a few hundred thousand due to cats.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island)(Econ, 12/18/10, p.160)(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.9)
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)
2013 Sep 9, Chilean press reported that the US has spied on communications from Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Uruguay from the island of Ascension according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
(SSFC, 9/15/13, p.A6)
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)
1808 In the Azores the volcanic fissure of Manadas on Sao Jorge island erupted.
(Reuters, 3/22/22)
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)
2022 Mar 21, Around 1,100 small earthquakes rattled Sao Jorge, one of Portugal's mid-Atlantic volcanic Azores islands in less than 48 hours, prompting authorities to activate an emergency plan as experts assess what they have described as a "seismic crisis".
(Reuters, 3/22/22)
2022 Mar 26, It was reported that about 1,250 people left the Azores' island of Sao Jorge, home to around 8,400 people, on March 23 and March 24 alone.
(Reuters, 3/26/22)
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)
Bonaire
ABC Islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao of the Netherland Antilles are located off of Venezuela. [see Netherland Antilles]
(Hem., 12/96, p.28)
1971 Bonaire, Netherland Antilles, outlawed spearfishing off the island.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T8)(www.geographia.com/bonaire/bondiv01.htm)
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)
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)
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)
2018 Jan 9, Venezuelan officials extended the ban on air and maritime ties with Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, three nearby Dutch Caribbean islands, citing smuggling claims.
(AP, 1/9/18)
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
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)
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)
Faroe Islands
700-800 Vikings settled the Faeroe Islands in the 8th century replacing Irish settlers. In 1948 the group of 18 islands, located between Britain and Iceland, became an autonomous region of Denmark.
(SSFC, 7/29/07, p.G8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroe_Islands)
1397 Jun 17, The Union of Kalmar united Denmark, Sweden, and Norway under one monarch. The alliance grew out of the dynastic ties of the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in response to rising German influence in the Baltic. The Kalmar Union is a historiographical term meaning a series of personal unions (1397–1523) that united the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway (with Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, prior to their annexation by Scotland in 1471, Shetland and Orkney), and Sweden (including Finland) under a single monarch.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union)
1946 Faroe islanders voted narrowly for independence from Denmark. The
Danish government rejected the referendum and dissolved the islands’ parliament.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.41)
1948 The Faroe Islands won home rule, but Denmark still controlled the currency, foreign affairs and some of the courts.
(Econ, 8/12/17, p.41)
1996 Aug 3, In Denmark a Gulfstream jet crashed and killed Copenhagen’s top military officer and 8 others as it approached a Faroe Islands airstrip.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A1)
2019 Aug 31, The Faroe Islands held elections. The opposition People's Party won the general election as the ruling Social Democratic Party lost its position as the biggest party in the parliament. The Faeroe Islands is an 18-island rocky, volcanic archipelago that is home to 49,000 people of which 20,000 live in Torshavn, the capital.
(AP, 9/1/19)
2021 Sep 12, The slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins, part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber, reignited a debate on the small Faeroe Islands, a semi-independent and part of the Danish realm.
(AP, 9/14/21)
2021 Sep 16, The Faeroese government said that it will review the way hunts of Atlantic white-sided dolphins are carried out following the release of gruesome video footage showing the mass killing on Sept. 12 of nearly 1,500 sea mammals.
(AP, 9/16/21)
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)
2012 May 16, In French Guiana an Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched two Asian telecoms satellites into orbit from the Kourou space center. It placed into orbit two geostationary satellites, the JCSAT-13 for the Japanese SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, and the VINASAT-2 of the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group.
(AFP, 5/16/12)
2014 Apr 3, The European Space Agency launched its Sentinel 1A satellite on a Russian Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. It was the first of six satellites for a new system designed to better monitor climate change, environmental disasters and catastrophes like floods, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
(AP, 4/3/14)(SFC, 4/5/14, p.A2)
2014 Jul 10, Arianespace launched a rocket from French Guiana carrying four satellites that will help provide Internet and mobile connectivity to people in nearly 180 countries.
(AP, 7/11/14)
2015 Jun 23, The European Space Agency (ESA) launched overnight the second phase of a 4.3-billion-euro ($4.91-billion) program to deploy new-generation satellites to monitor environmental damage and aid disaster relief operations. Sentinel-2A was hoisted by a lightweight Vega rocket from ESA's base in Kourou, French Guiana.
(AFP, 6/23/15)
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)
2020 May 11, There are now 107 coronavirus cases in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, including about 50 crew members still aboard the Celebrity Flora, a luxury ship operated by a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises. The islands' first four cases were diagnosed in late March, all believed to have come from Guayaquil before travel was cut off. Tourism has ground to a halt and an economic crisis has left many of the 30,000 residents jobless.
(AP, 5/11/20)
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)
1643 Dec 25, Captain William Mynors of the Royal Mary, a British East India Company vessel, named Christmas Island when he sailed past it on Christmas Day. Sovereignty of the island was transferred to Australia in 1957.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Island)
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 US forces seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese. Makin Atoll, part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, was the first central Pacific island to be reconquered by the Allies. More than 900 US marines and 30 sailors were killed in the battle for Tarawa.
(AP, 11/23/97)(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)(SFC, 12/16/19, p.A6)
1944 Jan 21, A US B-24 bomber that crashed shortly after taking off from an airfield on the Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Seven of the 10-member crew were killed including Staff Sgt. Jack Busch, of Kenmore, near Buffalo, NY. In 2019 the remains of Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Vincent J. Rogers Jr. were accounted for.
(AP, 4/2/19)
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)
1763 Feb 10, Britain, Spain and France signed the Treaty of Paris ending the French-Indian War. France ceded Canada to England and gave up all her territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered islands. France retained the sugar colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
(HN, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/08)(SSFC, 7/6/14, p.L5)
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)
2014 Jan 15, It was reported that some 200 cases of chikungunya, a debilitating sickness due to a mosquito-borne virus, have been diagnosed in St. Martin, and that the virus has spread to St. Maarten. New cases were also confirmed in Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2017 Sep 5, Irma strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category Five hurricane, meteorologists warned, sparking alarm and flooding alerts as it barreled towards the Caribbean. It was expected to make landfall along the string of French islands including Guadeloupe late today before heading to Haiti and Florida.
(AFP, 9/5/17)
2017 Sep 19, Hurricane Maria left at least one person dead on Guadeloupe.
(SFC, 9/20/17 p.A4)
2021 Aug 11, France said it will strengthen lockdown rules in the overseas territory of Guadeloupe to rein in the spread of COVID-19, as spikes in infections in its Caribbean islands overwhelm hospitals.
(Reuters, 8/11/21)
2021 Nov 19, Authorities imposed a curfew on the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe following five days of civil unrest over COVID-19 protocols that have seen barricades burned in the streets and firefighters and doctors walk out on strike.
(Reuters, 11/19/21)
2021 Nov 21, The French overseas territory of Guadeloupe was hit by a third night of looting and rioting amid protests against COVID-19 measures, with gunmen shooting at police and firefighters.
(Reuters, 11/21/21)
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)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
Jersey and Guernsey
Jersey is a 45-square-mile (118-square-km) British Crown dependency, 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)
1813 Thomas De La Rue (1793-1866) launched a newspaper in Guernsey. He moved to London in 1821 and established a printing firm. It grew to become the world’s largest commercial banknote printer.
(Econ, 8/11/12, p.50)(http://lunaticg.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-is-thomas-de-la-rue.html)
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 stabbed to death his wife Izabela Rzeszowska (30) their two children, Kinga (5) and Kacper (2) in a flat in the capital St Helier. He also killed his wife's father Marek Garstka (56) and her friend Marta Dominika De La Haye (34) and five-year-old daughter Julia Frances. On Aug 24, 2012, Rzeszowski was convicted of manslaughter. On Oct 29, 2012, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for each murder with the sentences to run concurrently.
(AP, 8/15/11)(AFP, 8/25/11)(AP, 8/28/12)(AP, 10/29/12)
2012 The population of Jersey, a British Crown dependency off the coast of France, was about 98,000.
(Econ, 2/25/12, p.70)
2013 Jun 15, Britain clinched a deal with its major offshore tax havens on Saturday that will see 10 British overseas territories and crown dependencies sign up to international protocols on information sharing. Those included were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Reuters, 6/15/13)
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)
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)
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)
640BC The 1st coins were minted in Lydia (later part of Turkey) about this time, and featured face to face heads of a bull and lion.
(SSFC, 12/3/00, WB p.2)(Econ, 2/25/12, SRp.4)
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)
420BC Pissuthnes, satrap of Lydia, revolted against the Persian king Darius II. The Persian soldier and statesman Tissaphernes a grandson of Hydarnes, was sent by Darius II to Lydia to arrest and execute Pissuthnes. Tissaphernes became satrap of Lydia in 415 BC and continue to fight Amorges, son of Pissuthnes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_%28satrapy%29)
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)
Macquarie Island
Macquarie Island lies in the southwest corner of the Pacific Ocean, about half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1810 Jul 11, The Australian-Briton Frederick Hasselborough discovered the uninhabited Macquarie island, half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, accidentally when looking for new sealing grounds. The island took its name after Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1820 Cats were introduce to Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica. Rabbits were introduced in 1878. The eradication of cats led to an epidemic of rabbits, which devastated the native vegetation.
(Econ, 9/14/13, SR p.10)
1978 Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, became a Tasmanian State Reserve.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
1997 Macquarie Island, located half-way between New Zealand and Antarctica, became a World Heritage Site.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island)
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)
410BC Darius II, ruler of Persia, quelled a revolt in Media but lost control of Egypt.
(http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Darius_II_Nothus,_423-404_BCE)
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 4, The first cable across the Pacific Ocean, spliced between San Fancisco Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila, allowed Pres. Teddy Roosevelt to send the first around the world message. It took 9 minutes to circle the globe. Roosevelt had placed the atoll of Midway Island under Navy supervision. The Commercial Pacific Cable Co. (later AT&T) set the cable across the Pacific via Midway Island.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Pacific_Cable_Company)(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.T5)
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)
1942 Jun 4, The Battle of Midway began. It was Japan’s first major defeat in World War II. Four Japanese carriers were lost. The carrier USS Yorktown was hit by 3 Japanese bombs and put on tow to Pearl Harbor. It was torpedoed three days later and sank in waters 16,650 deep. The Yorktown was found in 1998 by a team led by oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had also found the Titanic and the Bismarck. The story of the Battle of Midway was told by Walter Lord in "Incredible Victory." In 2005 Alvin Kernan authored “The Unknown Battle of Midway."
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A3)(SFEC, 6/4/00, p.C1)(WSJ, 11/29/05, p.D8)
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)
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)
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.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin)(AP, 9/18/10)
1493 Nov 13, Columbus sighted Saba, North Leeward Islands (Netherland Antilles).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba)
1636 The Caribbean island of St. Eustatius was colonized by the Dutch. It became an important transit port for the regional trade in sugar and slaves from West Africa.
(SFC, 6/2/21, p.A4)
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)
2012 Jan 21, Dutch sailor Laura Dekker (16) set foot aboard a dock in St. Maarten, ending a yearlong voyage aboard a sailboat named "Guppy" that apparently made her the youngest person ever to sail alone around the globe. She had set out from St. Maarten on Jan. 20, 2011.
(AP, 1/21/12)
2013 Dec, Chikungunya fever, a mosquito-born virus common in Africa and Asia, was first detected in the Caribbean region on St. Martin and soon spread across across the region and onto South and Central America.
(Econ, 5/10/14, p.35)
2014 Jan 15, It was reported that some 200 cases of chikungunya, a debilitating sickness due to a mosquito-borne virus, have been diagnosed in St. Martin, and that the virus has spread to St. Maarten. New cases were also confirmed in Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy.
(SFC, 1/15/14, p.A2)
2017 Sep 6, Category Five hurricane Irma slammed into the French Caribbean islands after making landfall in Barbuda, packing ferocious winds and causing major flooding in low-lying areas. After making landfall in Barbuda, part of the twin island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the hurricane swept on to French-run Saint Barthelemy, also known as St Barts, and Saint Martin, an island divided between France and the Netherlands. In Barbuda, a 2-year-old child was killed as a family tried to escape a damaged home during the storm.
(AFP, 9/6/17) (AP, 9/7/17)
2017 Nov 24, Dutch Saint Martin's PM William Marlin announced his resignation after a spat with The Netherlands over aid following a devastating hurricane that hit the Caribbean island.
(AFP, 11/25/17)
2018 Jan 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the shutdown of all air and maritime traffic with the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire for the next 72 hours. He accused island leaders of being complicit in the illegal trafficking of goods and resources.
(AP, 1/5/18)
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. In 2011 Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa became associate members.
(Econ, 10/20/07, p.61)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islands_Forum)(Econ., 2/13/21, p.41)
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)
2013 Nov 7, China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang said China will provide a concessionary loan of up to $1 billion to Pacific island nations to support construction projects in a part of the world where Beijing and Taiwan compete for influence. He made the announcement at a forum with Pacific island nations in Guangzhou at a meeting attended by representatives from Micronesia, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue and Fiji.
(Reuters, 11/8/13)
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)
1979 Norfolk Island, settled in 1856 by the descendants of Fletcher Christian and other Bounty mutineers, began governing itself.
(AFP, 3/19/15)
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)
2015 Mar 19, Australia said it would introduce legislation next week to scrap the parliament of Norfolk Island, which was effectively bankrupt, and temporarily replace it by an advisory council before local government elections in 2016.
(AFP, 3/19/15)
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 over 1100 people, many 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)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis)
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. Ultimately 334 people, including 186 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)
2020 Apr 20, Hundreds of people protested against regional authorities in southern Russia over what they said were restrictive and unnecessary coronavirus measures. The Republic of North Ossetia, where the protest took place, has officially registered only 145 cases and two deaths.
(Reuters, 4/20/20)
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)
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)
2013 The Pitcairn Islands, home to 65 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, hoped to establish a marine protected area of some 830,000 square km in its exclusive economic zone.
(Econ, 10/26/13, p.50)
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)
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)
2012 Aug 2, It was reported that France planned to offer financial incentives to French fishermen for hunting bull sharks, a threatened shark species, following recent attacks on people off the coast of Reunion.
(SFC, 8/2/12, p.A4)
2015 Jul 29, Plane debris was found washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean and was believed to be part of a Boeing 777, potentially the biggest breakthrough in the search for Flight MH370, missing since March 8, 2014.
(Reuters, 7/31/15)
2018 Nov 21, The French government said thirty police officers have been injured in five days of protests over rising living costs on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. Roads across the volcanic island of 850,000 people off southeast Africa remained blocked by demonstrators, causing petrol stations to run low on fuel, and schools were closed for fear of violence.
(AP, 11/21/18)
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)
2015 Aug 6, Residents of Saipan were without water and electricity and were rationing gasoline four days after Typhoon Soudelor hit the most populated island in the US territory of the Northern Marianas.
(AP, 8/6/15)
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)
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)
486BC-465BC Xerxes the Great (b.519BC), king of Persia, ruled Egypt as the 3rd king of the 27th Dynasty. His rule extended from India to the lands below the Caspian and Black seas, to the east coast of the Mediterranean including Egypt and Thrace. Persia’s 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.
(V.D.-H.K.p.49)(eawc, p.11)(http://tinyurl.com/d2gayf)
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 )
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. 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
1769 Jun 3, British navigator, Captain James Cook, British astronomer Charles Green and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander observed and recorded a transit of Venus across the sun on the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world.
(http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/past-transits/1769-june-3/)
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 Feb 20, Hobart, Tasmania, was founded as a penal colony.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart)
1804 Australian 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 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)
2006 Nicholas Shakespeare authored “In Tasmania," an account of his life there since 1999.
(WSJ, 8/5/06, p.P8)
2007 Oct 4, The Australian government approved plans for a controversial multi-billion-dollar pulp mill in Tasmania despite objections it could ruin one of the country's most pristine environments.
(AFP, 10/4/07)
2008 May 19, In Australia the Tasmania state government said the Tasmanian devil will be listed as an endangered species this week as a result of a deadly and disfiguring cancer outbreak. Animal rights activists said Australian authorities have started the controversial killing of about 400 kangaroos on the outskirts of Australia's capital of Canberra.
(AFP, 5/19/08)(AP, 5/19/08)
2009 Mar 2, In southern Australia rescuers used jet skis, backhoes and human muscle to save dozens of whales and dolphins stranded on Naracoopa Beach on Tasmania state's King Island. Rescuers refloated 54 whales and five bottlenose dolphins. A total of 194 pilot whales and seven dolphins became stranded the previous evening.
(AP, 3/2/09)(AP, 3/3/09)
2009 Jun 30, In Australia 2 men were charged with the murder of a female student from China who went missing June 25 after a night out in Tasmania. Stavros Papadopoulos and Daniel Joseph Williams, both 21 and from Hobart, were remanded in custody after a brief appearance before a magistrate. Accountancy student Zhang Yu (26) was last seen alive outside a Hobart city center pub. Police later found her body in the Tyenna river west of Hobart. In 2010 Papadopoulos was sentenced to life in prison. Accomplice Daniel Jo Williams was sentenced to 10 years in jail on a charge of manslaughter.
(AP, 6/30/09)(AFP, 6/30/10)
2009 Oct 20, Australian officials said a leech found at a crime scene in 2001 led police to a man who admitted robbing an elderly woman. The leech dropped off Peter Cannon as he and an accomplice tied a 71-year-old woman to a chair in her remote home in the Tasmanian woods on Sept. 28, 2001.
(AP, 10/20/09)
2010 Jan 1, It was reported that Australian researchers have cracked the genetic origin of the deadly cancer that is threatening to wipe out Tasmanian devils, raising hopes that the animal's future is safe.
(AFP, 1/1/10)
2010 Sep 16, Australian scientists said they had made a breakthrough in the fight to save the cancer-hit Tasmanian devil by mapping the species' genome for the first time.
(AFP, 9/16/10)
2011 Jan 24, Lara Giddings took over as premier Australia’s island state of Tasmania.
(Econ, 2/12/11, p.49)
2011 Mar 17, In Australia a pod of long-finned pilot whales beached themselves at Bruny Island, south of the Tasmanian state capital Hobart. 21 whales died but 11 were saved.
(AP, 3/18/11)
2011 Nov 12, In Australia 22 sperm whales and 2 minke whales died after getting stranded near Ocean Beach, Tasmania. Rescuers over the next 2 days saved two huge sperm whales stranded at Macquarie Harbor. Another died and a 4th remained stranded as weather worsened.
(AFP, 11/14/11)(AP, 11/15/11)
2012 Aug 3, In Australia Tasmania Zoo owner Dick Warren said 9 birds, including an endangered swift parrot, had their heads smashed in or ripped off and more than 60 animals were missing after vandals went on the rampage.
(AFP, 8/4/12)
2012 In Tasmania loggers and environmentalists signed the Tasmanian Forests Agreement, following a 30-year war, that secured timber supplies and protected native forests.
(Econ, 3/22/14, p.43)
2013 Jan 7, In Australia officials searched for bodies among the charred ruins of more than 100 homes and other buildings destroyed by wildfires in the island state of Tasmania. Around 100 residents remained unaccounted for, three days after the fires broke out.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Nov 1, In Tasmania int’l. negotiations ended after China, Russia and Ukraine scuttled plans to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antarctica. The sanctuary plans were led by the Antarctic Ocean Alliance which campaigns for protecting the Antarctic seas. For the sanctuary proposals to pass, they needed backing from all 200 delegates from 25 member countries, many of which have conflicting interests.
(Reuters, 11/1/13)(SFC, 11/2/13, p.A2)
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.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha)
1961 Oct 10, On Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic the eruption of Queen Mary's Peak forced the evacuation of the entire population of 264 individuals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha)
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)
2020 Nov 16, It was reported that Tristan de Cunha is creating a marine protection zone to safeguard endangered rockhopper penguins.
(SFC, 11/15/20, p.A2)
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)
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)
1968 Jun 26, The national flag of Japan, the hinomaru, was raised atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima symbolizing the return of the central Pacific island to Japan.
(SSFC, 6/24/18, DB p.54)
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.
1627 Barbados was uninhabited as the first English settlers arrived. Sugarcane fields later began to cover the island, a 14 x 21 mile stack of coral terraces.
(NH, 12/96, p.35)(Econ, 6/16/12, p.91)(http://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/Barbados/history/)
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. Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds in compensation for freeing their slaves.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992, p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)(SFC, 2/28/13, p.A2)
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, Derek Walcott (1930-2013), West Indies born poet (Saint Lucia), was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1997 his collection of poems "The Bounty" was published. In 2014 an anthology of his poetry was published.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, BR p.1)(AP, 10/8/97)(Econ, 3/20/10, p.94)(Econ, 4/26/14, p.81)
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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