April 17

Events

• 1768: 500 Greeks set sail from Gibraltar, along with 900 others, to colonise New Smyrna, Florida.
• 1897: The Greek Army, under Brig. Gen. Konstantinos Smolenskis, defeats the Turks at Velestino. This was the only Greek victory in the Greco-Turkish War (1897).
• 1944: Communist resistance group ELAS attack and annihilate EKKA, a republican resistance group. EKKA leader, Dimitrios Psaros, is captured and executed.
• 1957: Archbishop Makarios III receives a hero's welcome in Athens upon his return from the Seychelles where he had been exiled by the British.
• 1961: PM Constantine Karamanlis visits Washington, DC and meets with US President John F. Kennedy.
• 1984: Turkey exchanges ambassadors with the self-proclaimed "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus"
• 1994: Andreas Papandreou is re-elected party leader of PASOK.

Sports

• 2001: Marousi win the Saporta Cup after defeating Chalon 74-72. Vangelis Vourtzoumis becomes the first Greek player to win three European basketball trophies with three different clubs: Cup-Winners Cup in 1993 with Aris; Champions' Cup in 1996 with Panathinaikos and Saporta Cup with Marousi in 2001.

Births

• 1910: Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza, politician, writer
• 1935: Theodoros Angelopoulos, producer

Deaths

• 1944: Dimitrios Psaros, resistance leader
• 1974: Sotiris Spatharis, master of the "shadow theatre" (Karagiozis)
• 1985: Takis Miliadis, comic
• 2003: Yiannis Latsis, shipowner
• 2010: Anna Kalouta, stage and screen actress.
• 2011: Nikos Papazoglou, singer-songwriter, music producer
• 2012: Dimitris Mitropanos, popular singer