History

It was on Sunday, April 27, 1941, when German troops entered Athens. The capital's residents remained stubbornly locked up in their homes. The hoisting of the Nazi swastika flag on the Acropolis marked the beginning of the German Occupation. Soon,...

Pope Zachary (Zacharias in Greek and Latin) was the last ethnically Greek pope, serving as the head of the Roman Church. Zachary reigned from 741 to 752 AD during a tumultuous period of change and uncertainty in papal history. Despite...

Greek strongman Gust Lessis first found fame after moving to the US in 1919. There, he performed feats of incredible strength before audiences at Brighton Beach and was soon discovered by two New York photographers. Unfortunately, Lessis met a...

The ghost village of Levissi (known today as Kayaköy) was once a bustling Greek village on the slopes of a hill in the district of Fethiye, Turkey, almost opposite the island of Rhodes. Greeks of the 5,000-year-old village were ethnically...

Slavery in Ancient Greece was acceptable and common, as in most organized societies of the time, yet with differences between city states

During the Gallipoli campaign in World War I, the Greek island of Lemnos played a significant role as a staging area and base of operations for the Allied forces, including the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Lemnos was...

One of the shortest recorded wars in history which lasted between 38 and 45 minutes was fought in 1896 between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar, located off the coast of the African mainland. The immediate cause of the war was...

ANZAC Day is a day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and suffering of all those...

Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in 323 BC, suddenly leaving his vast empire without a leader. Sensing a chance to break free of the not-so-popular autocratic rule of Macedon, Athens, along with other Greek states, rallied in revolt. The...

Sumerian civilization appears to have been established in southern Mesopotamia around 4000 BC, while some historians place it as far back as 5000 BC. Established in the Fertile Crescent between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in modern-day Iraq, Sumer was...

Craco, a ghost town in Italy, located in the province of Matera about twenty-five miles inland from the Gulf of Taranto, was once inhabited by Greeks. The medieval village of Craco in Magna Graecia is typical of the hill towns of...

Determining which year in human history was the worst to be alive is subjective and there are many contenders for the top post. Among them 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic that claimed the lives of millions of people and shut...

The Armenian Genocide, the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923, is commemorated on April 24th every year. The Armenian Genocide was...

After the tremendously successful reign of Basil II, the eleventh century signaled a turn of fortunes in a far more negative direction for the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, marked by military defeats and decline. However, George Maniakes, a Byzantine general,...

In the turbulent years following the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, a number of newly-born Latin and Byzantine Greek states emerged. These states were established to fill the power vacuum left by the shattered and...