- Herodotus
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: "Hērodotos Halikarnāsseus") was a Greek historian from Ionia who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC-ca. 425 BC) and is regarded as the "Father of History". He is almost exclusively known for writing "The Histories", …
- Charles King
Charles King is Ion Raţiu Associate Professor of Romanian Studies, Associate Professor of International Affairs, and Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, where he also serves as Chairman of the Faculty of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is the author of two books, "The Black Sea: A History" (Oxford University Press, 2004) and "The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture" (Hoover Institution Press, …
- Anaximander
Anaximander (Ancient Greek: "'"') (c. 610 BCE-c. 546 BCE) was a pre-Socratic philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He joined the Milesian school where he received the teachings of its master Thales. He succeeded him and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and Pythagoras amongst his pupils. Little of his life and work is known today.
- Jordanes
Iordanis, known in English as Jordanes (also Jordanis or even Iornandes, 'bold as a boar'), was a 6th century bureaucrat of the Eastern Roman Empire, who turned his hand to history late in life. Though he wrote a history of Rome "(Romana"), the book most of interest to us now are the manuscripts the source of "De origine actibusque Getarum" ("The Origin and Deeds of the Goths"), or "Getica", …
- Michael Shields
Michael Shields (born 21 September, 1987 in Liverpool, England) is a football fan who gained notoriety when, on May 30, 2005, he was arrested in the Black Sea resort of Golden Sands, Bulgaria after a violent city brawl during which a Bulgarian citizen was nearly killed. He was later found guilty, in a Bulgarian court, of the attempted murder of a young local barman, Martin Georgiev. Michael Shields has launched two appeals against his conviction, in 2005 and 2006, …
- Afrika
Sergei Bugaev (also known as Afrika) (born 1966) is a Russian artist. He was born in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea, and in the early 1980s moved to St. Petersburg, where he met and became friends with leaders of the art scene there, such as the painter Timur Novikov and musician Boris Grebenshchikov. Shortly thereafter he adopted the artistic moniker "Afrika" and began working as an artist himself.
- Burebista
Burebista, the greatest king of Dacia, ruled between 82 BC and 44 BC. He unified the Thracian population from Hercynia (today's Moravia) in the west, to the Bug River in the east, and from the northern Carpathians to Dionysopolis, choosing his capital (called Argedava or Sargedava) near Costeşti in the Orăştie hills of southwestern Romania: see Dacian Fortresses of the Orăştie Mountains. The spiritual center of the kingdom was called Kogaion (or "Kagaion", …
- Grigore Antipa
Grigore Antipa was a Romanian Darwinist biologist who studied the fauna of the Danube Delta and the Black Sea. Between 1892 and 1944 he was the director of the Bucharest Natural History Museum, which now bears his name. Additionally, Antipa was a specialist in zoology, ichthyology, ecology and oceanography, and was a university professor. He was elected a member of the Romanian Academy in 1910 and was also a member of several foreign academies.
- Benjamin
A Khazar ruler (probably the bek), mentioned in the Schechter Text and the Khazar Correspondence. Benjamin was the son of the Khazar ruler Menahem (Khazar) and probably reigned in the late ninth and early tenth centuries CE. The only extant account of Benjamin's reign comes from the Schechter Text, whose anonymous author reported a war between Benjamin's Khazars and a coalition of five nations: 'SY, TWRQY, 'BM, and PYYNYL, who were instigated and aided by MQDWN.
- Constanţa
Constanţa is the largest Romanian seaport on the Black Sea, the largest city in Dobruja and the capital of Constanţa County. It is also one of the biggest cities in Romania.
- Anacharsis
Anacharsis was a Scythian philosopher who travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea to Athens in the early 6th century BCE and made a great impression as a forthright, outspoken "barbarian," apparently a forerunner of the Skeptics and Cynics, though none of his authentic works have survived. Anacharsis was half Greek and the son of a Scythian chief, from a mixed Hellenistic culture, apparently in the region of the Cimmerian Bosporus.
- Tsonko Tsonev
Tsonko Zdravkov Tsonev (born 3 June 1967) is the current mayor of Kavarna, a town on the Black Sea coast of Dobrich Province, Bulgaria. An avid hard rock and heavy metal fan, Tsonev is notable for turning Kavarna into the "rock capital of Bulgaria", regularly organizing major rock concerts in the town. For his contributions to Kavarna and Bulgaria, he was named the 2005 Man of the Year by the Club M magazine.
- Mesut Yılmaz
Ahmet Mesut Yılmaz (graduated from İstanbul Lisesi in 1966) is the former leader of "Anavatan Partisi" (ANAP, the Motherland Party) and was the Turkish prime minister in the 1990s. Mesut Yılmaz was a rising star in the Motherland Party of Turgut Özal, representing the Black Sea province of Rize in the parliament and serving as tourism minister in Ozal's cabinet. Upon Özal's election to the presidency in 1989, …
- Seuthes III
Seuthes III was a king of the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace from ca. 330 BC to ca. 300 BC, at first tributary to Alexander the Great. Athens had formed an alliance with Odrysian King Cetriporis of Thrace and Illyrians against Philip II of Macedonia in 358 BC. Philip II defeated the coalition in 353 BC and waged his first campaign against the Thrace in 347-346 BC. He conquered southern Thrace in 341 BC. He founded Philippopolis (Plovdiv), …
- Georgi Iliev
Georgi Andreev Iliev (July 22, 1966 – August 25, 2005) was a Bulgarian businessman, best known for his ownership of a top Bulgarian football team, Lokomotiv Plovdiv. In his early years he won several wrestling competitions and a few gold medals, but had to stop his sports career because of a criminal conviction in his involvement in a a group rape. Upon his release from prison he became something of a small-time criminal.
- Diophantus
Diophantus, son of Asclepiodorus, of Sinope, was a general in the service of Mithridates VI of Pontus. Diophantus was active in Mithridates' campaigns in the Bosporan Kingdom and elsewhere around the Black Sea, although their chronology is disputed. An inscription found during the excavations in Chersonesos glorifies Diophantus as "the first foreign invader to conquer the Scythians".
- Sitalces
Sitalces (reigned 431 - 424 BC) was one of the great kings of the Thracian Odrysian state. He was the son of Teres, and on the sudden death of his father in 431 BC Sitalces succeeded to the throne. Sitalko increased his kingdom by successful wars, and soon the Odrysian state of Thrace comprised the whole territory from Abdera in the south to the mouths of the Danube in the north, and from Black Sea in the east to the sources of the Struma in the west.
- Isaac Taylor
Isaac Taylor (1829-1901), son of Isaac Taylor, was a philologist, toponymist, and Anglican canon of York (from 1885). Though he wrote several inflammatory theological pamphlets, such as "The Liturgy and the Dissenters" (1860) and "Leaves from an Egyptian Notebook" (1888), he is chiefly remembered today for his archaeological and philological studies, which include "Words and Places" (1864), "Etruscan Researches" (1874), …
- Mustafa Suphi
Mustafa Suphi was a Turkish communist leader (1883 in Giresun-29 January 1921, on the Black Sea).
- Algirdas
Algirdas,, b. ca. 1296, d. end of May, 1377, was a monarch of medieval Lithuania. He ruled the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1345 – 1377, which chiefly meant monarch of Lithuanians and Ruthenians. With a help of his brother Kestutis, who defended western border of Duchy he created a vast empire stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea and reaching within 50 miles of Moscow.
- Peter Simon Pallas
Peter Simon Pallas was a German zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia. Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of a Professor of Surgery. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. In 1760, he moved to the University of Leiden and passed his doctor's degree at the age of nineteen. He travelled throughout the Netherlands and to London, …
- Samuel Baker
Sir Samuel White Baker (8 June 1821 - 30 December, 1893) was an English explorer.
- Hyde Parker
Hyde Parker was a British Vice-Admiral started to serve in the Napoleonic Wars and appointed First Sea Lord of the Admiralty in 1852. He was the son of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and grandson of Sir Hyde Parker, 5th Baronet His son, Hyde Parker IV, was a captain in the Black Sea during the Crimean War and was killed on 8 July 1854 when storming a Russian fort at Sulina.
- Philetaerus
Philetaerus was the founder of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon in Anatolia. He was born in Tieum, a small town on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia between Bithynia to the west and Paphlagonia to the east. His father was Attalus (perhaps from Macedon) and his mother Boa was Paphlagonian. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, Philetaerus became embroiled in the struggle for supremacy, …
- Afanasy Nikitin
Afanasy Nikitin was a Russian traveler and writer and the first European to document his visit to India. He described his trip in a narrative known as the "Voyage Beyond the Three Seas". In 1955, the local authorities of Tver erected a bronze monument to Afanasy Nikitin on the shores of the Volga River. In 1466, Nikitin left his hometown of Tver on a commercial trip to India. He traveled down the Volga River, reached Derbent, …
- David Komnenos
David Komnenos (c. 1184 - 1214), joint ruler of Trebizond, was the second son of Manuel Komnenos (born 1145) and of Rusudan, daughter of George III of Georgia. He was a grandson of the Emperor Andronikos I. Andronikos was dethroned and killed in 1185; his son Manuel was blinded and may well have died; at any rate he disappears from the historical record. He left two children, the Caesars Alexios and David.
- Fatih Akyel
Fatih Akyel is a Turkish football player. He currently plays defender for Gençlerbirliği in the Turkcell Super League. He came up through the youth ranks of Galatasaray to become a part of the team that won the UEFA Cup and the European Super Cup in 2000 assisting Mario Jardel for the game winner againsr Real Madrid. He also played for Mallorca, Fenerbahçe, Bochum and Salonika.
- Robert Stuart
Major Robert Stuart was an officer of the British Army and veteran of the Crimean War. After the war, he was appointed Vice-Consul at Volos and later Consul at Janina and Consul-General in various locations. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
- Abba Kovner
Abba Kovner (1918-1987) was a Lithuanian Jewish Hebrew poet, writer, and partisan leader. He was a cousin of the Israeli Communist Party leader Meir Vilner He was born in the Crimean Black Sea port city of Sevastopol but soon moved with his family to Vilnius, Lithuania, where he grew up and was educated at the secondary Hebrew academy of Vilna and school of the arts.
- Tolga Seyhan
Tolga Seyhan is a Turkish footballer playing for the club Shakhtar Donetsk. He was born in Giresun, a city on the Black Sea. Tolga started out his career as a striker at Giresun Şafakspor. He continued in this position for a number of years and at several clubs including Sivasspor, Düzcespor and Çanakkale Dardanelspor. It was here that he was originally moved to defence, and he took it in his stride as he made the position of central defence his own.
- Giovanni De' Marignolli
Giovanni de' Marignolli, a notable traveller to the Far East in the 14th century, born probably before 1290, and sprung from a noble family in Florence. The family is long extinct, but a street near the cathedral (Via de' Cerretani) formerly bore the name of the Marignolli. In 1338 there arrived at Avignon, where Benedict XII held his court, an embassy from the great khan of Cathay (the Mongol-Chinese emperor), bearing letters to the pontiff from the khan himself, …
- Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (September 20, 1778-January 13, 1852) served as a naval officer of the Russian Empire and commanded the second Russian expedition to circumnavigate the globe. During this expedition Bellingshausen became one of three Europeans to first see the continent of Antarctica.
- Viktor Rumpelmayer
Viktor Rumpelmayer was a 19th-century Austro-Hungarian architect, whose style was a combination of French and Italian influences and the Viennese trends characteristic for the period. He is regarded as one of the most eminent architects of his time. Born in Preßburg, Austria-Hungary (today Bratislava, Slovakia), Rumpelmayer worked not only in his home country, but also in Bulgaria, …
- Sergey Gorshkov
Sergey Georgyevich Gorshkov (b. Podolsk, February 6 1910 - d. May 13 1988) was a Soviet naval officer during the Cold War who oversaw the expansion of the Soviet Navy into a global force. Gorshkov joined the Soviet Navy in 1927, graduated from Frunze Naval College in 1931, and gained command of surface boats in the Black Sea in 1932. During World War II he distinguished himself in landings on the Kerch Peninsula and commanded a destroyer squadron at the end of the war.
- Tony Jannus
Antony Habersack Jannus, more familiarly known as Tony Jannus (1889-1916), was an early American pilot who piloted the first flight of the St Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line on January 1, 1914. This was the first scheduled commercial airline flight in the United States, and the first such flight anywhere in the world to use a heavier-than-air aircraft. Born in Washington, D.C., he did his flight training at the College Park Airport in nearby Maryland in 1910.
- Gustav Radde
Gustav Ferdinand Richard Radde (November 27, 1831 - March 2, 1903) was a German naturalist and explorer. Radde was born in Danzig, the son of a schoolmaster. He had little formal education, and began a career as an apothecary. He became increasingly interested in natural history, and in 1852 he gave up his career and spent two years in the Crimea with the botanist Christian von Steven, collecting both plants and animals.
- Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants.
- Eugene Platon
Eugene Platon is an international yachtsman, participant of a number of world class sailing events, including the most prestigious Volvo Ocean Race (formerly the Whitbread Round the World Race). In 1989/90, he was a key member (watch leader) of team "Fazisi" the only Soviet Union entry to the Whitbread Round the World Race.
- Mstislav Of Chernigov
Mstislav of Chernigov, or Mstislav the Bold, was the earliest attested ruler of Chernigov (Chernihiv). He was Vladimir the Great's son, probably by Rogneda of Polotsk, although his exact position in the family has been disputed. It is not clear, for instance, whether Yaroslav the Wise was his younger or elder brother. He was about 10 years old, when his father baptised himself and his family.
- Horia Agarici
Captain Horia Agarici was a Romanian aviator and World War II flying ace. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Agarici lived much of his youth in Iaşi, then attended flying schools in Bucharest (1931-1933) and Tecuci (1933-1934), becoming a bomber pilot in the Romanian Air Force. In 1937, after undergoing training in Buzău, he was assigned to the 1st Fighter Flotilla. After Romania's entry into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany ("see Romania during World War II"), …