Lord Byron dies of a fever in Greece, in Missolonghi, at the age of thirty-six

Britain, France and Russia, supporting Greek independence, defeat the Turkish and Egyptian fleets at Navarino

Greece wins independence, with the 17-year-old Otto of Bavaria as king

Don Pacifico's house in Athens is burnt by an anti-Semitic crowd, provoking an international incident

The island of Corfu is ceded by Britain to the kingdom of Greece

A secret revolutionary group (Union and Progress, later known as the Young Turks) is formed in Salonika in the Ottoman empire

The first modern Olympic Games, organized by Pierre de Coubertin, are held in Athens

Constantine Cavafy prints fourteen of his poems in a pamphlet for private distribution

Constantine Cavafy prints a few more of his poems to add to the fourteen privately printed in 1904

An Albanian uprising against the Ottoman empire is so successful that the Albanians are able to capture Skopje in Macedonia

The Treaty of Bucharest assigns to Greece nearly all the Greek-speaking regions in the Balkans and Mediterranean

French and British troops land at Salonika and push north to relieve Serbia

Greece joins the Allies by declaring war on Bulgaria

The Allies, with Serb troops in the vanguard, press north from Salonika into Serbia

A collection of Constantine Cavafy's poems is published in Alexandria in an undated edition

Italian troops cross the Albanian border in the hope of a blitzkrieg against Greece

Greek soprano Maria Callas sings her first Tosca, in the opera house in Athens

German troops move on from Yugoslavia into Greece, driving a small British force from the mainland across the sea to Crete

German forces evict the British from the island of Crete after a week-long battle

Hitler orders a massacre at Lidice, a village near Prague, in retaliation for the death of Heydrich

Athens is liberated and the Greek government-in-exile returns, with George Papandreou at its head

Civil war breaks out in Greece between rival groups of partisans resisting demobilization

George Grivas leads a guerrilla movement, EOKA, fighting for Cyprus's independence from Britain and union with Greece

Archaeologists at Olympia excavate the workshop of the Greek classical sculptor Phidias

Maria Callas gives her last performance, as Tosca at Covent Garden in London