Asparuh was а ruler of Bulgars in the second half of the 7th century and is credited with the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire in 681.
Boris I, venerated as Saint Boris I (Mihail) the Baptizer, was the ruler (knyaz) of the First Bulgarian Empire from 852 to 889. Despite a number of military setbacks, the reign of Boris I was marked with significant events that shaped Bulgarian and European history. With the Christianization of Bulgaria in 864, paganism was abolished. A skillful diplomat, Boris I successfully exploited the conflict between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Papacy to secure an autocephalous Bulgarian Church, thus dealing with the nobility's concerns about Byzantine interference in Bulgaria's internal affairs.
John the Exarch was a medieval Bulgarian scholar, writer and translator, one of the most important men of letters working at the Preslav Literary School at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. He was active during the reign of Boris I and his son Simeon I. His most famous work is the compilation Shestodnev that consists of both translations of earlier Byzantine authors and original writings. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized him and his memory is honoured on the 13 August [O.S. 31 July]. In a manuscripts of the Gospels, held in the National Library of Serbia, an alternative date is given, namely — 13 February [O.S. 31 January].
Boris, Borys or Barys is a male name of Bulgar origin. It is most commonly used in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and other countries in Eastern Europe. It is also used in Greece and countries that speak Germanic, Baltic and Romance languages. The spelling variant Borys is more common in Poland.
The Battle of Ongal took place in the summer of 680 in the Ongal area, an unspecified location in and around the Danube Delta near the Peuce Island, present-day Tulcea County, Romania. It was fought between the Bulgars, who had recently invaded the Balkans, and the Byzantine Empire, which ultimately lost the battle. The battle was crucial for the creation of the First Bulgarian Empire.
The Battle of Spercheios took place in 997 AD, on the shores of the Spercheios river near the city of Lamia in central Greece. It was fought between a Bulgarian army led by Tsar Samuil, which in the previous year had penetrated south into Greece, and a Byzantine army under the command of General Nikephoros Ouranos. The Byzantine victory virtually destroyed the Bulgarian army, and ended its raids in the southern Balkans and Greece. The major historical source on the battle comes from Greek historian John Skylitzes whose Synopsis of Histories contains a biography of the then-reigning Byzantine emperor, Basil II.
Hristo Batandzhiev was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary, one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.
In Bulgarian historiography, the Bulgarian lands across the Danube, also called Transdanubian Bulgaria, refer to territories under the control of the Bulgarian Empire north of the Danube. These territories today cover the territory of Romania and Moldova, eastern Hungary, Vojvodina in Serbia and Budjak in Ukraine.
Capital punishment in Bulgaria was abolished on December 12, 1998 with the last execution, that of attempted saboteur Georgi Alinski, having been carried out on November 4, 1989. The Parliament of Bulgaria had introduced a moratorium on executions on July 7, 1990 and Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights came into force on October 1, 1999.
The battle of Bitola took place near the town of Bitola, in Bulgarian territory, between a Bulgarian army under the command of the voivode Ivats and a Byzantine army led by the strategos George Gonitsiates. It was one of the last open battles between the First Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire. The Bulgarians were victorious and the Byzantine Emperor Basil II had to retreat from the Bulgarian capital Ohrid, whose outer walls were by that time already breached by the Bulgarians. However, the Bulgarian victory only postponed the fall of Bulgaria to Byzantine rule in 1018.
The Bulgarians in Italy are one of the sizable communities of the Bulgarian diaspora in Western Europe. There are about 120,000 Bulgarians in Italy according to the Bulgarian government. There are Bulgarian Orthodox parishes in Rome and Milan. Major centres of Bulgarian migration are Milan, Bologna, Florence and Torino.
Georgi Valkovich Cholakov was a Bulgarian physician, diplomat and conservative politician. Among the leading surgeons in the Ottoman Empire, Valkovich became one of the leaders of the Conservative Party after the Liberation of Bulgaria in 1878. During Stefan Stambolov's government (1887–1894), he was a Bulgarian diplomatic deputy in Constantinople (Istanbul), where he was murdered by political opponents.
Prespa was a medieval town, situated in the homonymous area in south-western Macedonia. It was a residence and burial place of the Bulgarian emperor Samuel and according to some sources capital of the First Bulgarian Empire and seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in the last decades of the 10th century.
Plamen Aleksandrov Panayotov is a Bulgarian politician and academic who served as deputy Prime Minister in charge of European integration in the Sakskoburggotski cabinet between 2003 and 2005.
The Library of Veliko Tarnovo is the third largest library in Bulgaria.
Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) was a Bulgarian scholar who worked mainly in the field of Bulgarian history. He is considered to be the founder of the fringe theory on the autochthonous origin of the Bulgarian people, exhibited for the first time in a comprehensive form in 1910 in his capital work "The Origins of Bulgarians and the Origin of the Bulgarian State and the Bulgarian Church". Gancho Tsenov was translating sources from Bulgarian, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish and Russian.
Ivan Shishmanov was a Bulgarian writer, ethnographer, politician and diplomat. He served as Ambassador of Bulgaria to the Ukrainian State and the Ukrainian People's Republic.
The First Battle of Caribrod took place during the Serbo–Bulgarian War on November 2, 1885 (O.S.) between the Royal Serbian Army and Bulgarian Army around Caribrod, today Dimitrovgrad, Serbia.
Nina Vankova Nikolova is a Bulgarian climatologist, and a professor at Sofia University.
Miliana Vasileva Kaimakamova is a Bulgarian medieval historian, whose work on Bulgarian medieval historiography is foundational to the discipline. She is Professor of History at Sofia University.
