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Did you know ...

• the ancient Athenian sacred ships included a galley which was believed to be the ship that carried Theseus to Crete to face the Minotaur?
• the Kri-kri is a type of wild goat once common around the Mediterranean but now restricted to a few parts of the island of Crete in Greece?
• the building of the Archaeological Museum of Chania in Crete was once the main church of a Franciscan monastery and survived a major earthquake in 1595?
• the island of Pseira, off the coast of Crete, has an archaeological history from the end of the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age, with Minoan ruins being the most studied?
• the oldest written constitution of a Greek city was discovered in an inscription at Dreros in Crete?
• the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 was sparked by a Minoan rebellion?
• the great earthquake in 365 CE destroyed nearly all towns in Crete?
• Daskalogiannis was an 18th-century Cretan rebel skinned alive by Ottoman rulers?
• Salvia fruticosa or Greek sage (pictured) was depicted on a 1400-BCE Minoan fresco on the island of Crete, and is still grown and used widely today?
• a failed Cretan revolt of 1828, led by Hatzimichalis Dalianis, is the basis for the local legend of the ghost army of the Drosoulites?
• in 1944 British agents kidnapped a German general on the German occupied island of Crete?
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera seria Idomeneo is set on the island of Crete following the Trojan War?