GREEK WARS
In the 5th century BC the vast Persian Empire attempted to conquer Greece. If the Persians had succeeded, they would have set up local tyrants, called satraps, to rule Greece and would have crushed the first stirrings of democracy in Europe.
The survival of Greek culture and political ideals depended on the ability of the small, disunited Greek city-states to band together and defend themselves against Persia's overwhelming strength. The struggle, known in Western history as the Persian Wars, or Greco-Persian Wars, lasted 20 years--from 499 to 479 BC.
Persia already numbered among its conquests the Greek cities of Ionia in Asia Minor, where Greek civilization first flourished. The Persian Wars began when some of these cities revolted against Darius I, Persia's king, in 499 BC.
Athens sent 20 ships to aid the Ionians. Before the Persians crushed the revolt, the Greeks burned Sardis, capital of Lydia. Angered, Darius determined to conquer Athens and extend his empire westward beyond the Aegean Sea.
In 492 BC Darius gathered together a great military force and sent 600 ships across the Hellespont. A sudden storm wrecked half his fleet when it was rounding rocky Mount Athos on the Macedonian coast. Two years later Darius dispatched a new battle fleet of 600 triremes. This time his powerful galleys crossed the Aegean Sea without mishap and arrived safely off Attica, the part of Greece that surrounds the city.
Taking advantage of the Balkan crisis arising out of the integration of Eastern Rumelia with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Greeks of Crete started their activities in 1885. They wanted Crete annexed to Greece and, if not, the scope of the Halepa Convention widened. Greece made an attempt to capture Bulgaria citing that it wanted to keep the balance against Bulgaria and started to incite the Ottoman Greeks in the island to rebel.
Cretan Ottoman Greeks said that the Halepa Convention was not implemented well; so they rebelled again in 1888 and started carrying out attacks on the Turks opposing the annexation of the island to Greece.
TROJAN WARS
When newly constructed, Troy was attacked and captured by Herakles (Hercules), Telamon (brother of Peleus and therefore the uncle of Achilles; father of Telamonian Ajax and Teucros), and Peleus (son of Aeacus and father of Achilles), as a punishment for the fact that Laomedon had not given Hercules a promised reward of immortal horses for rescuing Laomedon's daughter Hesione. Telamon killed Laomedon and took Hesione as a concubine. The gods Apollo and Poseidon, during a time when they were being punished by having to work among men, built the city of Troy for Priam's father, Laomedon. They invited the mortal man Aeacus (the son of Zeus and Aegina and grandfather of Achilles) to help them, since destiny had decreed that Troy would one day be captured in a place built by human hands. Priam, King of Troy and son of Laomedon, had a son from his wife Hekabe (or Hecuba), who dreamed that she had given birth to a flaming torch.At the peak of production in the late 1960s, the Trojan Boat Company boasted a payroll of 700 employees in plants at Lancaster, Pa., Elkton Maryland, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Smithville in Ontario, Canada. The company was turning out an average of 4,000 boats a year, handsome cruisers ranging in lengths from 24-footers to the 52-foot Trojan-Shepherd.
Its salad days were short. In just 25 years from the first to the last wood boat, Trojan had captured a world-wide market-a fraternity of owners from all walks of life, united by two factors: Trojan's clean lines and quality workmanship