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Day: December 21, 2016
What is your country’s fireworks day?
Greece: Easter. The tradition involves celebratory gunfire in the churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. The modern manifestation of that is fireworks being let off in the packed churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. Both in Greece/Cyprus, and in the diaspora. The news each year reports people being injured (or killed) as a result; my sister has […]
What does your hometown look like?
Which hometown, Launceston in Tasmania, where I was born; Sitia in Crete, where I grew up; Melbourne in Victoria where I live? Melbourne feels most like home, but there will be others to do a photo essay. So I’ll do Sitia. I’ve already posted a bit about it at Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is […]
Was Napoleon Greek?
http://www.mani.org.gr/en/history/napoleon.htm Andrew Baird’s block on me means I cannot reply to commenters to his answer, either. So, Bill Killernic: Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes was the person who circulated the notion that Napoleon was Greek. She claimed that Napoleon had proposed to her mother, Panoria Stephanopoli, a Corsican Greek. Her claims are often repeated by […]