Tom Kiradjieff and John Kiradjieff were Bulgarian American restaurateurs and Macedonian immigrants, credited for their creation of a regional specialty dish known as the Cincinnati chili. [1] [2] [3]
Tom Kiradjieff and John Kiradjieff were Bulgarian American restaurateurs and Macedonian immigrants, credited for their creation of a regional specialty dish known as the Cincinnati chili. [1] [2] [3]
The brothers were born in the town of Hrupishta, [4] in the Ottoman Empire, [note 2] [5] to Bulgarian parents. [6] [note 3] [7] [8] The town was annexed during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) by Greece. The partition of the Ottoman lands of the region of Macedonia between the Balkan nation-states resulted in the fact, that some of the Slavic speakers of Ottoman Macedonia emigrated to Bulgaria, or left the area. [9]
Athanas (Tom) was born in 1892. During the First World War, he was a soldier in the Bulgarian Army. In 1917 he was dismissed and moved to the Bulgarian capital Sofia, where he worked for a time as an accountant. [6] His little brother Ivan (John) born in 1895 had served also some time with the Bulgarian army. [4] In 1921 both emigrated to the United States.
They settled initially in New York, [10] but after selling hot dogs there for some time, the brothers followed their big brother Argir (Argie) to Cincinnati. Born in 1880, he was a cashier of the Bulgarian Exarchate Church-School Board in Hrupishta. [7] Argie had settled in Cincinnati by 1918, where he opened a grocery store. [11] In Cincinnati the brothers began to develop their own business. Tom got a job as a bank clerk and worked at night, cooking chili for the customers in his brother's place. It was at this time that Tom invented the regional specialty known as Cincinnati chili.
In 1922 they opened a hot dog stand located next to a burlesque theater called the Empress, which they named their business after. Tom and John returned to Bulgaria to find wives, while Argir went to his homeland for this purpose. Argir stayed there for several years, and when he came back, his two brothers were well established and provided him a job as a cashier. According to the journalist Vasil Stefanov, [note 4] in 1933 the Kiradjieff brothers were among the most successful Bulgarians in the city, owners of a large and modern restaurant in the city center. [12] [13]
Argir's wife did not adapt to America, and they moved back to Macedonia in the 1940s. [note 5] [4] [14] The Empress Chili grew to become a local chain. In 1959, the Kiradjieffs of Empress Chili, announced they be the first to come up with a new design for drive in, car-service. The last man who ran the family business was Tom's son Assen (Joe) Kiradjieff. Since the late 1950s, when his father's health sharply declined, Joe operated the Empress Chili. Tom died in 1960, while John had died in 1953. Later the Empress chain had a single surviving outlet. In 2009, 79-year-old Joe retired and sold the Empress Chili. [15]
The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, was a secret revolutionary society founded in the Ottoman territories in Europe, that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Krste Petkov Misirkov was a philologist, journalist, historian and ethnographer from the region of Macedonia.
Hristo Tatarchev was a Macedonian Bulgarian doctor, revolutionary and one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Tatarchev authored several political journalistic works between the First and Second World War. He is considered an ethnic Macedonian in the Macedonian historiography.
Petar Poparsov or Petar Pop Arsov was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, educator and one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO). He is regarded as an ethnic Macedonian by the historiography in North Macedonia.
Macedonian Americans are Americans of ethnic Macedonian heritage.
Kalochori, is a small rural village, part of the municipal unit of Kastoria, Kastoria regional unit, Greece. Kalochori is also located 14 kilometers away from the city of Kastoria and 14 kilometers away from the village of Nestorio. It was a part of the former municipal unit of Mesopotamia. The village has an elevation of 721 meters above sea level.
Ohrana were armed collaborationist detachments organized by the former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) structures, composed of Bulgarians in Nazi-occupied Greek Macedonia during World War II and led by officers of the Bulgarian Army. Bulgaria was interested in acquiring Thessalonica and Western Macedonia, under Italian and German occupation and hoped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time. The appearance of Greek partisans in those areas persuaded the Axis to allow the formation of these collaborationst detachments. However, during late 1944, when the Axis appeared to be losing the war, many Bulgarian Nazi collaborators, Ohrana members and VMRO regiment volunteers fled to the opposite camp by joining the newly founded communist SNOF. The organization managed to recruit initially 1,000 up to 3,000 armed men from the Slavophone community that lived in the western part of Greek Macedonia.
Idomeni or Eidomeni is a small village in Greece, near the border with North Macedonia. The village is located in the municipality of Paeonia, Kilkis regional unit of Central Macedonia (Greece).
Theodosius of Skopje was a Bulgarian religious figure from Macedonia who was also a scholar and translator of the Bulgarian language. He was initially involved in the struggle for an autonomous Bulgarian Church and later in his life, he became a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Although he was named Metropolitan Bishop of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Skopje, he is known for his failed attempt to establish a separate Macedonian Church as a restoration of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. Theodosius of Skopje is considered a Bulgarian in Bulgaria and an ethnic Macedonian in North Macedonia.
Petar Atsev was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, and a voyvoda of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMARO) for the region of Prilep. He worked as a Bulgarian teacher.
Lyalevo or Lyalyovo is a former village in southernmost western Bulgaria which ceased to exist in 1960. Lyalevo is known as the only village within the modern borders of Bulgaria that was inhabited by Greek Muslims (Vallahades).
Ilinden is a village in Hadzhidimovo Municipality, in Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria. It is located in a mountainous area, on the northern slopes the Stargach mountain. It is 14 kilometers southwest of Hadzidimovo Municipal Center and 18 kilometers southeast of Gotse Delchev. The climate is transitional Mediterranean with mountain influence with summer minimum and winter maximum of rainfall. The average annual rainfall is about 700 mm. The Mutnitsa River flows through the village. The soils are predominantly humus-carbonate.
Nova Lovcha is a village in Hadzhidimovo Municipality, in Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria.
Novo Leski is a village in Hadzhidimovo Municipality, in Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria.
Paril is a village in Hadzhidimovo Municipality, in Blagoevgrad Province, Bulgaria.
Selci is a village in Municipality of Struga, North Macedonia.
Spiro Kitinchev was a Macedonian Bulgarian writer, activist, and politician during the Second World War in Yugoslav Macedonia.
The Macedonian-Adrianople Social Democratic Group was a regional faction of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party in the Ottoman Empire. According to Macedonian historians, most of its activists were ethnic Macedonians.
Vasil Kozma Eshcoff was an emigrant from Ottoman Macedonia, known as a pioneer of the Coney Island hot dog in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was also briefly the second president of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization.
Due to the lack of original protocol documentation, and the fact its early organic statutes were not dated, the first statute of the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) is uncertain and is a subject to dispute among researchers. The dispute also includes its first name and ethnic character, as well as the authenticity, dating, validity, and authorship of its supposed first statute. Certain contradictions and inconsistencies exist in the testimonies of the founding and other early members of the Organization, which further complicates the solution of the problem. It is not yet clear whether the earliest statutory documents of the Organization have been discovered. Its earliest basic documents discovered for now, became known to the historical community during 1960s.