February 19, 2018
February 19
In 1984 the 14th Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo ended. This was the first time a Slovenian athlete won a Winter Olympic medal: Jure Franko ended second in the Olympic Giant Slalom race. The first time Slovenian athletes attended the Winter Olympics was in 1924, when cross-country skiers Zdenko Švigelj and Vladimir Kajzelj competed in Chamonix, France. The cradle of skiing, however, in these parts of the world are not the Alps but rather the Bloke plateau, where cross-country skiing historically presented the only available means of transportation between villages in high snow.
February 20
In 1634 Janez Krstnik Mayr was born in Bavaria. On request of the Carniolan nobility. in 1678 he extended his printing office in Salzburg to Ljubljana. This meant that printing services in the city were revived after almost a century of suppression due to the Counter-Reformation.
February 21
In 1933 the Ljubljana Skyscraper (Nebotičnik) with its café at the top two floors was completed, with an opening ceremony on this day. The structure, with its 13 stories and 70 metres in height, was designed by Vladimir Šubic, and was the highest building in Central Europe and in the Balkans at the time.
February 22
In 1942 the Italian occupation army begun enclosing the city of Ljubljana with barbed wire. The task was completed the following day, when a ban on leaving or entering the city without a special permit was issued. Ljubljana, the only fenced European city during WW2, effectively transformed into a prison camp, and was not liberated until May of 1945.
Photo: MGML archive
February 23
In 2008 the Slovenian liberal politician Janez Drnovšek died. Drnovšek served as tje President of Yugoslavia in 1989 -1990, Prime Minister of Slovenia (1992 - 2002) and President of Slovenia (2002 - 2007).
February 24
In 1903 Vladimir Bartol was born in Trst (Trieste). Bartol is the author of a 1938 novel called Alamut, which has been translated into 15 languages and among other things inspired the creation of the video game Assassin’s Creed.
February 25
In 1806 Friedrich Martin Joseph Welwitsch was born in Carinthia (Koroška). Welwitsch was one of the foundational explorers of the flora and fauna of Postojna cave, who later joined a scientific expedition to Angola, where he discovered a strange plant which was later named after him: Welwitschia mirabilis or short, welwitschia. Welwitschia is an ancient plant, also called a living fossil, one of the kind still living on Earth. It grows in a small territory of the Namibian and Angolan desert, and is also depicted in the Namibian coat of arms.
