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Serbian Nemanja Petrovic has promoted himself from panhandler to street performer. Tired of being ignored, he’s figured out a successful system of begging from just one inspired moment of frustration.
As an act of protest the 42-year-old tossed his cap and shoes down on the street with a hand-written sign saying ‘Invisible Beggar’ while he busied himself elsewhere and let off some steam.
Once he had calmed down the cheeky beggar went back to his gear and discovered he had got far more than he had bargained for: ‘When I returned I was astonished to find a crowd and my cap was full of money,’ he explained.
‘Now I just put down the sign, a pair of shoes as a prop and wait for the donations to roll in while I have a coffee over the road,’ he added.
In 1809, the Ottoman Empire wanted to warn the Serbian people not to attempt any more foolish rebellion*, so it created this macabre monument:
Serbian forces dug new trenches under the local command of the Duke, Stevan Sindjelic. Since there was such a great defensive strategy
between the Serbian leaders, Sinjelic found himself unprepared. He realized the situation was hopeless, so he blew up the ammunition store with his own pistol.Afterwards, Turkish commander, Hurshid Pasha, ordered the decapitation of all the Serbian bodies, even erecting a monument using the heads as building material. The tower itself was 10 feet high, contained 952 skulls, and was topped with the head of Sindjalic himself.
During the later part of the 19th century, the skulls were removed, both as macabre souvenirs of battle and proper burials. In 1892, there were only 50 left on the tower and a chapel was built over top to preserve what little remained.
Link | More at Atlas Obscura and Wikipedia (Photo: Wikimedia/Freerspska.org)
*note: the warning didn’t exactly work. A few years later in 1815, Serbia rebelled again and that time, achieved semi- and then full-independence.
The Bridge of Love in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, is a place where young women traditionally go to affirm their ardor for their lovers. A woman will write the name of her beloved on the lock, attach it to the railing, and then toss the key into the river. From a travel website:
If not for the padlocks that cover its railings, you might not even notice the Bridge of Love in the center of Banja. Though it is just one of 15 bridges in Vrnjacka Banja this bridge with a sad story has become the symbol of the city.
Locals tell the story of Relja and Nada, two young lovers who would meet here every night before WWI. Once the war broke out, Relja, who was an officer in the Royal Army, went off to war and never came back. He moved to Greece, married, and forgot all about Nada. Heartbroken, Nada waited for him on the Bridge of Love until her dying day. To avoid reliving Nada’s bitter love story, local love struck girls started coming to the bridge every night to secretly “lock up” their boyfriends’ hearts with padlocks. They did this with the hope of holding on their love for all eternity.
Link via Dumage via Digg | Photo: TrekEarth user bacasha75
Iraq’s missing Air Force jets have been traced to Serbia, where they are mostly in pieces. They have been cannibalized, parted out, or left to deteriorate over he past twenty years.
Iraqi officials said they found the planes in the process of trying to trace what Saddam, the former dictator, did with the country’s military assets. The 19 planes, all Soviet-built, were sent in 1989 to a Yugoslav maintenance plant in Zagreb, in what is now Croatia, but never got the overhauls they needed.
In 1991, when the Croatian war for independence broke out, the jets were transported to Serbia in parts. And there they remained.
A delegation from Iraq will go to Belgrade to negotiate the return of the jets, but they are unlikely to help Iraq rebuild its air defenses. The Iraqi Air Force currently has no jets. Link -via Fark
