Konstantinos Ladas was enjoying his coffee in a café in Lixouri, in August 1953, when a 7.2-magnitude earthquake “hit” Kefalonia. The earthquakes of 1953 are considered the most devastating in the history of Modern Greece and completely leveled the cities of Argostoli, Lixouri, and Zakynthos, with over 455 victims.
Istorima is the largest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.