On March 18, 1913, King George I was assassinated in Thessaloniki. The assassination was carried out by the insane Alexandros Schinas. The reasons for the assassination remain unknown.
He was one of the longest-reigning and most successful kings of Greece from 1863 to 1913. George I was born a Danish prince in 1845 in Copenhagen under the name Christian Wilhelm Ferdinand Georg von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
He was elected King of Greece on March 30, 1863, after the overthrow of Otto. His reign coincided with the expansive expansion of the Greek state, restored in 1830 after four centuries of Ottoman rule. Limited to the Peloponnese, Attica, and Boeotia when he came to power, 40 years later Greece was twice as large.
In 1896, King George experienced a real triumph when Athens hosted the first restored modern Olympic Games. The Balkan War that broke out in the autumn of 1912 gave Greece the opportunity to seize southern Macedonia and Thessaloniki, but King George was unable to enjoy the success.