Like today ⚙️ 23the April
Events and persons that remained in history
and we must not forget
303 Saint George, patron of the Greek infantry and of England, was hanged by the Romans.
This Easter we have late _5 May, so the Georges, Giorgoi, Gogoi, Georgedes, Giorgitsides, Georgies & Giorgies, Georgoules, Giorgitses, Gitses, Gogoules etc. as the orthodox papadario decrees “if Easter is after April 23rd, then it is celebrated on the day after Easter, i.e. the Monday of Dikanissimos”
1564 According to the Julian calendar (May 3 with the Gregorian), perhaps the most important playwright of all time, the Englishman William Shakespeare, was born. On the same day, 52 years later, in 1616, the master dramatist died.
1821 Battle of Alamanna. The Greek revolutionary forces under Diovouniotis, Panourgias and Diakos face the superior Ottoman hordes of Omer Bryonis and Kiose Mehmet at the bridge of Alamana (Thermopylon area) and are defeated.
1827 The hero of the Greek revolution, George Karaiskakis, has died. He succumbed to the fatal wound he received the day before, on his feast day. Seconds before he expired, he expressed the belief that he was shot by a “friendly” hand.
1858 The German theoretical physicist Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, better known as Max Planck, the introducer of the quantum theory, is born. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918.
1882 The work of opening the Isthmus of Corinth begins. The project, carried out in stages from 1882 to 1893, employed a total of over 2,500 workers. Protests erupted in 1889 when the International Isthmus Company went bankrupt and hundreds of workers were out of work overnight. The government even sent a military detachment to the Isthmus to “prevent riots”.
1889 The writer Vassilis Rotas is born. Vassilis Rotas belongs to those spiritual people who put human dignity as the ruler of their lives, to those who dedicated themselves and fought for the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, to the all-human ideology that the KKE firmly and decisively teaches. He fought hard battles, supported values, served in the struggle for the interests of the working class, supporting in practice the social role of the artist.
1896 In New York, Americans watch a motion picture in a dark room for the first time.
1910 By order of the Council of Larisa Criminals, 25 farmers and farmwomen are referred to trial for the bloody events of the rebellion in Killeler.
1915 Rupert Brooke, English poet, died. (Born 3/8/1887)
1916 the distinguished painter, Yiannis Moralis, was born
1920 The Turkish National Council under Mustafa Kemal overthrows the government of the Sultan, Mehmet VI and promulgates a provisional constitution.
1933 The Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, is founded in Germany
1936 The American songwriter and singer, Roy Kelton Orbison (died 6-Dec-1988), with his complex song structure and dark emotional ballads, was born. His music was characterized as “operatic”, hence the nicknames “the Caruso of rock” and “the Big O”. He stood out from other rock singers in the way he performed: he stood still, wearing simple black clothes, which matched the dark sunglasses he wore to counter his shy character. On his sixth birthday his father gave him a guitar as a present and within a year, as he himself had declared, “he was done for anything else”. In his teens he started singing in a rockabilly and country music band, the ‘Wink Westerners’. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of his songs reached Billboard magazine’s ‘Top 40’. Orbison wrote or co-wrote most of the top 10 songs he performed, including “Only the Lonely” (1960), “Running Scared” (1961), “Crying ” (1961), “In Dreams” (1963) and “Oh, Pretty Woman” (1964).
In 1988, along with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, he formed the Traveling Wilburys (a supergroup), but died of a heart attack eight months later at his mother’s home in Hendersonville, Tennessee aged just 52 years old. A few weeks later his song ‘You Got It’ (1989) was released as a solo single and became his first US and UK top 10 in nearly a quarter of a century. His honors include induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989, a lifetime achievement Grammy Award and 5 other Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 37th on their list of the “Greatest Artists of All Time” and thirteenth on their list of the “Greatest Singers of All Time”. In 2002 Billboard magazine ranked him 74th on the top 600 recording artists.
1941 World War II: Greece signs an armistice with Germany. General Tsolakoglou signs the surrender of the Greek army to the Nazi troops who had invaded Greece on April 6. King George I and the government of Emmanuel Tsouderos move to Crete.
1944 The philo-Eamian mutiny of crews of the Greek fleet sailing in Cairo is suppressed in a bloody way by forces loyal to the exiled Greek government of Sophocles Venizelos.
1967 The Soyuz 1 spacecraft launches into orbit with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov aboard. He will be killed on his return to Earth when the ship crashes.
1973 The newspapers “Vradini” and “Thessaloniki” publish statements by Constantinos Karamanlis against the dictatorship and the authorities decide to confiscate their papers.
1985 The Coca Cola company announces that it will change its classic recipe for the preparation of the popular soft drink, which ultimately will not happen after strong reactions from consumers.
1990 Namibia becomes the 160th member of the U.N. and 50th member of the British Commonwealth.
1998 Konstantinos Karamanlis, founder of the New Democracy party, who served as Prime Minister and President of the Hellenic Republic, has died.
1999 In an act of supreme murderous paranoia, only a few hours from the official celebration in Washington of 50 years of NATO, the allies, and while the military invasion against Yugoslavia is in its thirtieth day, bomb the Serbian television building: 30 dead.
2010 Greece appeals to the support mechanism of the EU, the IMF and the ECB. Greece’s appeal to the mechanism is announced from Kastelorizo by the Prime Minister, George Papandreou.
PAME: Everyone on strike on May 1st, May Day is not a holiday!
