General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
OCTOBER 29TH:
On this day in 1969, Eleni Menegaki, the Greek TV presenter and actress, was born in Athens. Mostly known for her TV hosting duties on a number of shows including MEGA Banca, ‘Proinos Kafes’, ‘Kafes me tin Eleni’, Menegaki has grown to be extremely popular throughout Greece. In 2010, Forbes ranked her as the second-most powerful and influential celebrity in Greece and top-ranked female. Menegaki was married to television program manager Giannis Latsios from 2001 to 2010, with whom she had three children. In 2015, she welcomed a daughter with businessman Mateo Pantzopoulos.
OCTOBER 30TH:
On this day in 1930, Turkey and Greece signed a treaty of friendship – also known as the Treaty of Ankara. This treaty affirmed the boundaries between Turkey and Greece, settled the property claims of repatriated populations, and established naval parity in the eastern Mediterranean. The rapprochement was due particularly to the efforts of Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to normalize the historically problematic relations between the two countries. Both leaders recognized the need for peace resulted in more friendly relations – Venizelos even nominated Ataturk for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934. The Ankara Treaty also influenced Turkey’s accession to the League of Nations (1932) and the establishment of the Balkan Pact (1934), in which Greece and Turkey joined Yugoslavia and Romania in a treaty of mutual assistance. Turkish-Greek relations continued without any major conflict until the Cyprus Crisis in 1954. In 1964, Turkish Prime Minister Ismet Inonu renounced the 1930 Treaty and took actions against the Greek minority of Turkey.
NOVEMBER 2ND:
On this day in 1911, Odysseas Elytis (ne Odysseus Alepoudelis), the Greek poet, was born in Heraklion on the island of Crete. Elytis was the son of a prosperous family from Lesbos, but he abandoned his family name as a young man in order to dissociate his writing from his family’s soap business. Frank J. Prial of the New York Times explained that the poet’s pseudonymous name was actually “a composite made up of elements of ‘Ellas’, the Greek word for Greece; ‘elpida’, the word for hope; ‘eleftheria’, the word for freedom, and ‘Eleni’, the name of a figure that, in Greek mythology, personifies beauty and sensuality.” Elytis first became interested in poetry around the age of seventeen. At the same time he discovered surrealism, a school of thought just emerging in France. He began publishing verse in the 1930s – notably in Nea Grammata. This magazine was a prime vehicle for the Generation of the 30s, an influential social circle that included George Seferis, who in 1963 became Greece’s first Nobel Laureate, winning for for literature.
When Nazi Germany occupied Greece in 1941, Elytis fought against the Italians in Albania. He became something of a bard among young Greeks – who considered his poems anthems to the cause of freedom. During and after the Greek Civil War, he lapsed into literary silence for almost 15 years – returning to print in 1959 with a long poem in which the speaker explores the essence of his being as well as the identity of his country and people. This poem, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, became immensely popular and helped Elytis win the Nobel prize in 1979.
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
CLOSTER, NJ – The well-attended Greek Independence Day Celebration in Closter, NJ, took place on March 25, beginning with the Flag Raising Ceremony at Ruckman Park in Closter.
ATHENS - Historic member of PASOK and passionate advocate of the recognition of Pontian Greek genocide Michalis Charalambidis died on Wednesday aged 73.
ATHENS - While the New Democracy government denied audio files from the 2023 head-on train crash in Tempe which killed 57 had been tampered with, five managers at the state-run OSE railways agency reportedly had access to them.
FAIRVIEW, NJ – The Greek Cypriots of New Jersey under the auspices of the Federation of Cypriot American Organizations, the Consulate General of the Republic of Cyprus in New York and Consul General of Cyprus Michalis Firillas will commemorate the 69th Anniversary of the EOKA Liberation Struggle of Cyprus from British Colonial Rule 1955-1959, with a memorial service at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Ascension, 101 Anderson Avenue in Fairview, NJ, on Sunday, March 31.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A fundraiser for President Joe Biden on Thursday in New York City that also stars Barack Obama and Bill Clinton is raising a whopping $25 million, setting a record for the biggest haul for a political event, his campaign said.