Happy Birthday to Panama!

Women in Bulgarian traditional costumes. *Photo from Wikipedia September 22 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. The emergence of a unified Bulgarian state dates back to the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 681 AD, which dominated most of the Balkans and functioned as a cultural hub for Slavs during the Middle Ages. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State. The Treaty of San Stefano

View of Ljubljana, the capital and largest city of Slovenia. *Photo from Wikipedia December 26 is Independence and Unity Day of Slovenia, commemorates the official proclamation of the Slovenian independence referendum on December 26, 1990. Historically, the current territory of Slovenia was part of many different state formations, including the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, followed by the Habsburg Monarchy. In October 1918, the Slovenes exercised self-determination for the first time by co-founding the internationally unrecognized “State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs”, which merged that December with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and

The central business district of Tallinn, the capital and largest city of Estonia. *Photo from Wikipedia August 20 is Restoration of Independence Day, re-declaration of the independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991. Following centuries of successive Teutonic (The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem), Danish, Swedish, and Russian rule, Estonians experienced a national awakening that culminated in independence from the Russian Empire towards the end of World War I. In the aftermath of the war and the Russian revolutions, the Estonian Declaration of Independence was issued in February 1918. During World