Podcast in English
Text size
Bulgarian National Radio © 2024 All Rights Reserved

Bulgaria marks 165 years since birth of Bulgarian Revival Period heroine Rayna Knyaginya

Photo: Library

On January 18, 1856 Rayna Popgeorgieva was born in the town of Panagyurishte. Known by the nickname "Rayna Knyaginya" (Rayna the Princess), she was a Bulgarian teacher and a midwife who sewed the main insurgent flag of the Panagyurishte Revolutionary District of the April Uprising and waved it along with emblematic revolutionary leader Georgi Benkovski. The revolutionary commissioned her to make a flag with the inscription "Freedom or Death" when she was 20 years old. 

After the April Uprising which was brutally crushed by the Ottomans, she was captured by the Turks and subjected to severe torture, but after the intervention of European diplomats, she was released and sent to study medicine in Moscow. 

She had five sons, four of whom became officers in the Bulgarian Army.



Последвайте ни и в Google News Showcase, за да научите най-важното от деня!
Listen to the daily news from Bulgaria presented in "Bulgaria Today" podcast, available in Spotify.

More from category

On Archangel All Souls' Day believers honour the dead and give alms

There are three special days on the calendar of the Bulgarian Orthodox church, on which believers pray to God and give alms to honour the memory of their dear departed. The three All Souls’ Days always fall on the Saturdays before Meat..

published on 11/2/24 4:30 AM

The secret mission of a Zeppelin L 59 or how Yambol went down in history with a world record

One frosty November morning in 1917, as World War I was raging, a Zeppelin L 59 took off from the air base near Yambol bound for Tanzania. The purpose of the flight was to deliver ammunition and materials to the German military units in a remote..

updated on 11/1/24 11:32 AM
Aleksandar Balan (1859-1959)

Bulgaria marks 165 years since the birth of prominent linguist Aleksandar Balan

October 27 marks the 165th anniversary of the birth of Academician Aleksandar Teodorov-Balan, who was the first theorist of the Bulgarian literary language, phonetics and grammar.  He was born was born in 1859 in the village of Kubey, Bessarabia...

published on 10/27/24 4:19 PM