Facts

1798: Ali Pasha with his son Mukhtar, after a fierce attack, occupy Preveza, which is defended by 1,000 Greeks and French under General La Salse. Ali promptly sends the Sultan four sacks of heads of French and Greek fighters. (The Battle of Nicopolis)

1923: A pro-monarchist military movement, under generals Leonardopoulos and Gargalides, is suppressed by Plastiras and Pagalos.

1940: Giacomo Puccini’s son inaugurates the new Athens opera at the Olympia Theater on Akadimias Street. Opening work, his father’s opera “Madama Butterfly”.

1950: The first Mundobasket begins in Buenos Aires. It will end on November 3, with the Argentine team as the winner.

1964: French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refuses the Nobel Prize for Literature, arguing that it would diminish the prestige of his writing.

1988: Andreas Papandreou returns from London, after the bypass operation, which he underwent at Harefield Hospital. As he descends from the stairs of the plane, with a nod he calls Dimitra Liani to him, formalizing their relationship.

Births

1917: Joan Fontaine, American-British actress. (Thu. 15/12/2013)

1919: Doris Lessing, English writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. (Died 17/11/2013)

1943: Catherine Deneuve, stage name of Catherine Dorleac, French actress.

1962: Renia Louizidou, Greek actress.

Deaths

1922: Andreas Karkavitsas, Greek prose writer, one of the three great representatives of ethnography, along with Alexandros Papadiamantis and Georgios Vizyinos and the par excellence representative of naturalism in modern Greek literature. (Born 12/3/1865)

1986: Albert von St.-György de Nagyrapolt, Hungarian physician, who discovered vitamin C and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1937. (Born 16/9/1893)

1990: Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher. (Born 16/10/1918)