The famous ‘OXI’ Metaxa on the 28th October 1940 against the Italian diplomat Grazi marked the beginning of the heroic resistance of the Greeks against the Axis powers.
Around the same date in 1912, the Hellenic Army Commander-in-Chief Crown Prince Constantine entered Salonica, after the Ottomans signed the protocol surrendering Thessaloniki to the advancing Greek army on 26th October 1912, anticipating the advancement of the Bulgarian army which had arrived outside the city.
At 1822, on the 28th October again, Konstantinos Kanaris torched the flagship of the Turkish fleet, managing in this way to deteriorate the Ottoman morale.
Lastly, on the 28th October 312 A.D., Constantine I defeated the superior forces of his rival Maxentius at the battle of Milvian Bridge on the bank of Tiber, while just the night before Constantine had see a vision in the sky of a cross with the words written on it Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα”, usually translated into Latin as “in hoc sign vines”. Constantine’s victory gave him total control of the Western Roman Empire paving the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion for the Roman Empire and ultimately for Europe
It is almost as if an invinsible historical line connects the Byzantine-Hellenic Revolution, the Balkan Wars and World War II in a bizarre fashion, in an almost mysterious way, where the epicentre of it all is and at the centre of it all relates to this specific date.
Long live Greece!
Many happy returns to all the Greeks.
Michalis Diakantonis, General Director of the Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy