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Black Sea: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/pages/B/L/BlackSea.htm

The Bosporus is 17 miles long and only 700 yards wide at some points.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)
In ancient times Greeks and Romans colonized the areas around the Black Sea, which the Romans named Pontus Euxinus. The Black Sea is an inland body of water between Asia Minor and Europe, today bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia.

1.75Mil BC    Homo erectus remains and stone tools of this time were later found on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. The tools were similar to ones in China dating at 1.66 million.
    (Arch, 1/05, p.12)

5600 BC    About this time the Mediterranean Sea, swollen be melted glaciers, breached a natural dam that separated it from the fresh water lake later known as the Black Sea. Sea water from the Mediterranean poured in for as long as 2 years. An ancient coastline with this date was verified in 1999. [see 2348BC]
    (SFC, 9/28/99, p.A14)(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C6)(SFC, 9/13/00, p.A7)

5500 BC    The remains of a c7,500 year-old building was found 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea by archeologists in 1999.
    (SFC, 9/13/00, p.A7)

2348 BC    Jul 17, Biblical date for Noah’s landing on Mt. Ararat. “My Bible also revealed that Noah came ashore on Mt. Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month, 2348BC.” In 1999 William Ryan and Walter Pitman authored "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event That Changed History." They demonstrate how the rising Mediterranean broke through a natural dam in the Bosporus Strait and flooded a freshwater lake that expanded into the Black Sea.
    (NG, Nov. 1985, edit., p.559)(NH, 12/98, p.13)

1347        Oct, Sailors carrying plague from Genoa arrived in Messina, Sicily. Plague had broken out earlier among the troops of the Kipchak Khan, who was besieging the Black Sea port of Kaffa. He catapulted dead bodies over the city walls. When Italian trading vessels in the harbor returned to Genoa, the carried the plague to Europe. The plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, appears in several varieties: bubonic (which involves swelling of the lymph glands), pneumonic (which involves the lungs) and septicemia (which involves severe infection in the bloodstream).
    (SFEM, 10/12/97, p.31)(HNQ, 1/20/01)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B4)

1444        Nov 10, In the Battle at Varna on the Black Sea, Sultan Murad II beat the Crusaders.
    (MC, 11/10/01)

1914        Aug 3, German Admiral Souchon, commander of the battle cruisers Goeben and Breslau, received an unexpected change in his orders. After attacking the Algerian coast he was no longer to sail west to the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, he was now ordered to turn around and sail east to Turkey. His new mission was to persuade the neutral Turkish government to enter the war on the side of Germany. The 2 ships were sold to Turkey and Souchon was made commander of the Turkish navy. He took the ships into the Black Sea, where he bombarded the Russian cities of Odessa, Sebastopol and Novorossiysk without the knowledge or consent of the Turkish government.
    (http://www.worldwar1.com/sfgb.htm)(ON, Dec, 1995)

1936        Turkey signed a treaty by which it agreed not to interfere with transit through the Bosporus.
    (SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)

1972        The jellyfish population in the Black Sea exploded following the completion of a dam in a section of the Danube that runs between Serbia and Romania.
    (WSJ, 11/27/07, p.A14)

1982        The jellyfish-like creature, Mnemiopsis leidyi, arrived in Black Sea, probably in the ballast water of a cargo ship, and began to devastate the ecology of the almost closed ecosystem.
    (SFEC,12/797, p.A22)

1992        Turkey’s Pres. Turgut Ozal (d.1993) envisioned the Black Sea as a zone of peace and cooperation. This led to the formation of the Istanbul-based organization for Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).
    (Econ, 5/28/05, p.54)

1992        A Lebanese vessel sank in the Bosporus with a cargo of 13,000 sheep and goats.
    (SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)

1994        An oil tanker collided with another vessel in the Bosporus and 28 seamen died. A 15,000-ton oil spillage also resulted that burst into a spectacular fire.
    (SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)

1996        A Black Sea Action Plan was signed by all six coastal nations: Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. It was to improve sewage control, develop conservation strategies and study a possible special environmental fund.
    (SFEC,12/797, p.A22)

1997        Nov 10, A report on the Black Sea told of the disappearance of 20 0f 26 commercial fish species since 1970. Industry, agriculture and fishing practices caused a collapse of the Black Sea ecosystem in the late 1980s. The Monk seal was reported near extinction, dolphins and porpoises were reported down to 250,000 from 1 million in the 1970s, and blue mussels were in serious decline due to pollution.
    (SFEC,11/10/97, p.A12)(SFEC,12/797, p.A22)

2001        Jan 26, The 198-foot vessel Pamyat Merkuriya sank in the Black Sea and at least 14 people were killed. The ship was enroute to Yevpatoria, Ukraine, from Istanbul.
    (SFC, 1/30/01, p.A11)

2001        Oct 4, A chartered Russian Tupelov-154 airplane crashed in to the Black Sea and all 78 people aboard were killed. The Sibir Airlines jet was bound to Novosibirsk from Tel Aviv. An accidental missile strike from Ukrainian military forces was suspected but denied by Ukraine officials. Pres. Putin said terrorists might have been responsible. Later evidence indicated that flight 1812 was hit by an S-200 missile. On Oct 12 Ukraine and Russia acknowledged that an errant missile was the probable cause. In 2003 Ukraine agreed to pay $200,000 for each Israeli killed.
    (SFC, 10/6/01, p.A11)(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.A1)(www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/100501crash.shtml)

2006        Feb 14, A senior Russian official said Russia will not pay more to base its Black Sea Fleet in a Ukrainian port, rebuffing Ukrainian demands and setting the stage for the latest dispute between the ex-Soviet neighbors.
    (AP, 2/14/06)

2007        Nov 11, A severe storm broke the Volganeft-139, a small Russian oil tanker, in two in the Strait of Kerch, spilling at least 560,000 gallons of fuel into the strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. A Russian official said it was an "environmental disaster." 8 seamen were left missing. Two freighters nearby also sank under 18-foot waves in storm. As many as 10 ships sank or ran aground in the area.
    (AP, 11/11/07)(Reuters, 11/12/07)(SFC, 11/12/07, p.A15)

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