Today, Saturday March 2, marks the anniversary of the official liberation of the eastern Aegean island of Samos, the date when two Hellenic Navy vessels landed on the already semi-autonomous isle in 1913.
Samos had been governed as a tributary of the Ottoman empire since 1834, with a Christian of Greek descent chosen as a “prince” to govern the island.
Nevertheless, the residents of the historic and verdant island had never dampened their aspirations to join the modern Greek state. The Greeks of Samos participated in the Greek War of Independence from the very beginning, in 1821, and fought off three attempted invasions by the Ottoman Turks.