Macedonia was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the Argead dynasty, followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, it originated on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula. Before the 4th century BC, it was a small kingdom outside of the area dominated by the city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia. During the reign of the Argead king Philip II (359–336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and the Thracians' Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy, and defeated Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea. His son Alexander the Great, commanding the whole of Greece, destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered as far as the Indus River.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_%28ancient_kingdom%29
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1794:
French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre established the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being
1940:
A three-day debate began in the British House of Commons, which resulted in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain being replaced by Winston Churchill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Debate
1960:
Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union was holding American pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose spy plane had been shot down six days earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident
2010:
A draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome was published, demonstrating that today's modern humans have Neanderthal ancestors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
calumny: 1. (countable) A false accusation or charge brought to tarnish another's reputation or standing. 2. (uncountable) Falsifications or misrepresentations intended to disparage or discredit another. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calumny
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries. --David Hume https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Hume