🇨🇾 Cyprus
Ohi Day, whose name means "No" in Greek, commemorates Greece's rejection of an Italian ultimatum on October 28, 1940. Italian forces invaded within hours, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The day is observed as a public holiday in Cyprus, in Greece, and by Greek communities around the world.
Ohi Day falls on October 28 every year and is an official public holiday in Cyprus. It is also marked in Greece and by Greek-speaking communities abroad. In Greece, the central event is a military parade in Thessaloniki attended by the President, while schoolchildren parade in Athens and other towns and flags fly from public and private buildings. Special church services are held on the day, since the Church of Greece celebrates the feast of the Protection of the Theotokos on the same date.
Shortly after 3 a.m. on October 28, 1940, Italy's ambassador in Athens delivered Mussolini's ultimatum to Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas, demanding passage for Axis forces. Metaxas answered in French, "Alors, c'est la guerre" ("Then it is war"), and Italian troops attacked from Albania at 5:30 a.m. The Greek army halted the invasion and pushed back into southern Albania. The short word "No" became the popular emblem of that defiance, a symbol of national dignity and resistance to occupation, even though Metaxas himself never used it.
The Greek government declared October 28 a national holiday in 1944, calling it comparable to March 25, the anniversary of the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Together the two dates form the pillars of Greece's patriotic calendar, one recalling the founding of the modern state and the other its stand in the Second World War.
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