Short answers, pulled from the story.
German geographer August Zeune created the concept of the Balkan Peninsula in 1808. He mistakenly considered the mountain range to be the dominant system spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea.
The Balkans were inhabited since the Paleolithic period and served as the route by which farming spread from the Middle East to Europe during the 7th millennium BC. The Old Europe civilization peaked between 5000 and 3500 BC with the Kakanj culture appearing in Central Bosnia's town of Kakanj covering periods dated from 6795 to 4900 BC.
Adrianople fell to the Ottomans in 1362 becoming their capital. Bulgaria fell in 1396, Serbia disintegrated following the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and finally with the Siege of Smederevo in 1459, while Bosnia was taken in 1463 and Herzegovina in 1482.
World War I was sparked in the Balkans in 1914 when members of Young Bosnia assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. That caused a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia which led to World War I through existing chains of alliances.
North Macedonia joined NATO on the 27th of March 2020. This occurred after other former Yugoslav republics like Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia achieved internationally recognized sovereignty from the dissolution of Yugoslavia.