Republic of macedonia

Republic of Macedonia is a country in the central Balkan Peninsula in Southeastern Europe. The country declared independence in 1991, and it became a member of the United Nations in 1993. The country's capital is Skopje. It has more than 50 lakes and sixteen mountains higher than 2,000 m (6,562 ft). Macedonia is a member of the UN and the Council of Europe. Since December 2005 it has also been a candidate for joining the European Union and has applied for NATO membership.
In antiquity, in 336 BC Philip II of Macedon conquered Upper Macedonia, which now lie within the Republic of Macedonia. Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered the remainder of the region and incorporated it in his empire. In the medieval period the present-day Republic of Macedonia was under the Byzantine control. By the 9th century through the evangelizing work of the Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples, the people of the territory converted to Christianity. Macedonia has a significant number of preserved Byzantine fresco paintings, mainly from the period between the 11th and 16th centuries. In the 14th century it became part of the Serbian Empire and a few decades later it came under the Ottoman control under whose rule it was to remain for five centuries. The uprising and the forming of the Krushevo Republic are considered the corner-stone and forerunners to the ultimate establishment of the Republic of Macedonia.
Following the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the wider region of Macedonia was divided between the Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During World War II, Macedonia was divided between Bulgaria and Italian-occupied Albania in 1941. In 1944 the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) proclaimed the People's Republic of Macedonia as part of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 8th September, 1991 a referendum was held establishing its independence from Yugoslavia, under the name of the Republic of Macedonia. It became a member of the UN in 1993 under the provisional name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) because Greece vociferously protested Macedonia's right to the name.

http://www.macedoniancities.com/index.asp
http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/ConciseMacedonia/timeline.html
http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/ConciseMacedonia/ShortHistory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Macedonia