clockwise around the Mediterranean
- William McKinley (allthetropes.org)
William McKinley is mainly known nowadays as the President whose assassination resulted in the much-better-known Theodore Roosevelt coming into office. He is also one of the more famous victims of violence perpetrated in the name of Anarchism; a few short but eventful decades later, the radicals to really be afraid of would be communists instead. Much like James Garfield before him, technology was right there that probably would have saved him, but several decisions surrounding the operation didn’t work out for keeping him alive (the new “x-ray machine” being exhibited at the very expo where he was shot was too untested for doctors to trust it, and apparently they didn’t think to do the surgery under the brand-new electric lighting, nor could they use candles because ether was still the best anesthetic available at the time). Similarly, his assassination receives little attention in public memory compared to that of Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, despite serving longer than the latter.
- Croatia (Wikipedia)
Croatia (/kroʊˈeɪʃə/, kroh-AY-shə; Croatian: Hrvatska, pronounced [xř̩ʋaːtskaː]), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska), is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe. Its coast lies entirely on the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Italy to the west. Its capital and largest city, Zagreb, forms one of the country’s primary subdivisions, with twenty counties. Other major urban centers include Split, Rijeka and Osijek. The country spans 56,594 square kilometres (21,851 square miles), and has a population of nearly 3.9 million.