If you asked my wife, she'd tell you that I'm not real good at marking anniversaries and in the blogosphere anniversaries are rare events anyway. Blogs by the millions apparently begin and don't last the year, most of them never noticed by much of anyone. Six of us launched Cliopatria just over five months ago, in early December 2003. Sadly, we lost a founding member early on, but Jonathan Dresner soon joined Tim Burke, Oscar Chamberlain, Ken Heineman, KC Johnson and me for the long haul. In time, Ophelia Benson, Wilson Moses, Tom Palaima, Michael Tinkler and, most recently, Hugo Schwyzer, joined us. We're not quite ready to meet Crooked Timber, Liberty & Power, or The Volokh Conspiracy on the soccer field, but there are some interesting invitations to join us outstanding, including some fairly heavy hitters.

So, if we're not ready to open the champaign for an anniversary or field a soccer team, Cliopatria takes note of surpassing several milestones. Yesterday, for example, we certainly had our 50,000th hit sometime about noon. Given the inefficiency of freeby site meters, I'm quite sure that doesn't include all of the 49,000 times I've clocked in here. Last Friday, we had our first reader from Nepal. Though heavily concentrated in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, our readers also come from China, Khyrgystan, Latvia, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe. Almost a month ago, Cliopatria had her first off-spring, Time Travel is Easy, which is posted from the UK and Japan.

Over half of our readers are referred to us by our host, History News Network and, to it, we are grateful. We are also indebted to many other blogs: the too rare link from Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit; more commonly Tim Burke's Easily Distracted, Hugo Schwyzer's Hugo Schwyzer (well, what else should he call his personal blog? he's abandoned the narcissistic picture, at least), Michael Tinkler's Cranky Professor, Ophelia Benson's Butterflies and Wheels, Crooked Timber, Brian Ulrich's Brian's Study Breaks, the sorely missed Invisible Adjunct, my snarky friend Chun the Unavoidable (how did the word"heartwarming" get into the title of his latest post?), Ed Cohn's Gnostical Turpitude, Abu Aardvark, John Holbro and Belle Waring's Examined Life (Welcome to the world, Violet Mai Holbro!), Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass, Baraita, Adam Kotsko's The Weblog (what kind of a name is that for a weblog?), Tim Lambert's Deltoid (did anyone say"John Lott"?) and many others.

Some things in the blogosphere remain a mystery:
Why is Hugo Schwyzer Yahoo's reigning expert on Lara Roxx? Or,
Why does Cliopatria outrank all other sites in a Google search for"bondage+blog"?
But, while I've got you tied up, let's talk a little history.