Macedonia basketball team. *Photo from Wikipedia
September 8 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Macedonia from Yugoslavia in 1991.
In the late sixth century BCE the area was incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then annexed by the Kingdom of Macedonia in the fourth century BCE. The Romans conquered the region in the second century BCE and made it part of the much larger province of Macedonia.
Macedonia remained part of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and was often raided and settled by Slavic peoples beginning in the sixth century CE. Following centuries of contention between the Bulgarian and Byzantine empires, it gradually came under Ottoman dominion from the 14th century.
Between the late 19th and early 20th century, a distinct Macedonian identity emerged, although following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, the modern territory of Macedonia came under Serbian rule. In the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918) it became incorporated into the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which after the Second World War was re-established as a republic (1945) and which became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963.
Macedonia remained a constituent socialist republic within Yugoslavia until its peaceful secession in 1991.
Macedonia, officially the Republic of Macedonia, is a country in the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. A landlocked country, the Republic of Macedonia has borders with Kosovo to the northwest, Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, and Albania to the west.
It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. As a result of an ongoing dispute with Greece over the use of the name Macedonia, it was admitted under the provisional description “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (sometimes abbreviated as FYROM), a term that is also used by international organizations such as the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO.
*Reference: Wikipedia
