Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Minoan civilization flourished on Crete from around 2700 to 1420 BC, centered on palace complexes including Knossos, Malia, Zakros, and Phaistos. It produced two writing systems, Linear A and Linear B, and maintained trade networks reaching Cyprus, Canaan, and Egypt. The Mycenaean civilization from mainland Greece absorbed the Minoans in 1420 BC.
Crete's union with Greece was formally recognized internationally on the 1st of December 1913. The island had been an autonomous Cretan State under nominal Ottoman suzerainty since December 1898, when Prince George of Greece arrived as High Commissioner. The Cretan deputies had unilaterally declared union in 1908, but international recognition came five years later.
In November 1866, a large Ottoman force besieged the Arkadi Monastery, which was serving as headquarters of the Cretan uprising. Over 700 women and children had taken refuge inside alongside 259 defenders. When the Ottomans broke through, the monastery's abbot ordered the detonation of gunpowder barrels; most of those inside died rather than surrender.
The Battle of Crete began in May 1941 when Germany launched a large airborne invasion. The initial 11-day battle left more than 11,000 soldiers and civilians killed or wounded. The ferocity of the Allied and civilian Cretan resistance led Adolf Hitler to forbid further large-scale paratrooper operations for the rest of the war.
Daskalogiannis was a wealthy shipowner from the Sfakia region of western Crete who led an uprising against Ottoman rule during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, after being promised Russian naval support that never arrived. On the 17th of June 1771, he was publicly tortured, skinned alive, and beaten to death, enduring the ordeal in complete silence. Chania's international airport bears his name in his memory.
El Greco, born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in Heraklion in 1541, and the writer Nikos Kazantzakis, born in Heraklion in 1883 and nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, are among the most internationally recognized figures from Crete. The poet Odysseas Elytis, born in Heraklion in 1911, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, born in Chania Prefecture in 1864, served as Prime Minister of Greece from 1910 to 1933.