On 12 March 1967, Eugenio Borg the first Superior General of the Society of Christian Doctrine, better known as MUSEUM, died at St Luke’s Hospital. He was not a priest, but a layman, and that was exactly the point. In an era when Catholic teaching and religious leadership were still seen as the domain of clergy, Borg became one of the central figures in building a lay movement that would leave a deep mark on Maltese religious life. Borg was born in Senglea in 1886 and later m

On 11 March 1923, Agatha Barbara was born in Żabbar, the eldest daughter and second of nine children. Her rise was not from some elite or aristocratic background. She came from a large working family, was educated in state schools, and started out as a teacher during the Second World War. From that starting point, she would go on to become one of the most important figures in post-war Maltese politics. She entered politics in 1946 when she joined the Malta Labour Party. Malta

In the early hours of 10 March 2013, Malta learned the result of the 2013 Malta general election, one of the most decisive elections in the country’s modern political history. The Labour Party, led by Joseph Muscat, defeated the governing Nationalist Party under Lawrence Gonzi by 36,000 votes, securing a commanding parliamentary majority and ending fifteen years of Nationalist rule. Voting had taken place the day before, but the counting process started through the night at t

On 9 March 2008, the Maltese sat through the final count of the Malta 2008 general election, one of the most closely contested elections in the country’s political history. The voting itself had taken place on 8 March. Early celebrations from the Labour side on Sunday morning faded as it became clear that the narrow margin made it too early to call. After a long wait on Sunday, as the samples and first-count picture sharpened, the Nationalist Party’s win became clear. The fin

On this day in 1889, one of the Royal Navy’s major warships, HMS Sultan, ran aground on an uncharted rock off the south eastern coast of Comino, in the channel between Malta and Gozo. In this context “uncharted” means that the rock was not marked on the nautical maps sailors would be using. Sultan was not some small patrol craft or forgotten transport. It was a large Victorian ironclad, part of the British Mediterranean presence at a time when Malta was one of the empire’s mo

On 5 March 1764, in Ħaż Żebbuġ, Mikiel Anton Vassalli was born into a Malta that still belonged to the Order of St John. He would end up living through the collapse of that regime, the shock of the French occupation, and the early decades of British rule. In that turbulent mix, Vassalli became something rarer than a politician or a pamphleteer: a man obsessed with one blunt idea, that a people cannot really become a nation if their language is treated as unworthy of books, sc

Filfla is one of Malta’s smallest wild outposts, a stark, protected islet sitting quietly on the southern horizon, familiar to anyone who’s ever looked out from the cliffs. But on 4 March 1927, the water between Malta and Filfla became the final resting place of the island’s sitting Governor, General Sir Walter Norris Congreve. In line with his last request, he was buried at sea from HMS Chrysanthemum , in the channel off the south coast. Congreve was not a typical ceremonial

If you grew up assuming Malta only got an archbishop in the 20th century, you’re basically right, but also not. On 3 March 1797, Pope Pius VI issued a papal brief that gave the Bishop of Malta archiepiscopal dignity by attaching to the Maltese see a prestigious titular title, Archbishop of Rhodes. The first man to carry it was Vincenzo Labini, who from that point could be styled Archbishop of Rhodes and Bishop of Malta. That wording matters because it wasn’t the same thing as

On 2 March 1888, Malta was in the middle of an election that changed the mechanics of colonial government. For decades, the “Council of Government” had existed, but it was structurally stacked: officials and the Governor could ultimately block or outvote elected voices, especially on money. That frustration had been brewing for years, and it even surfaced in London as a live political problem, with MPs and peers openly describing Maltese anger at being treated like a classic

On 27 February 1955, Malta was in the middle of a three-day general election (26–28 February) that would end with Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party winning a clear majority, and with it, the mandate that would carry Mintoff into Castille as Prime Minister for the first time a couple of weeks later. He was sworn in on 11 March 1955. To understand why this moment mattered, you have to picture Malta in the mid-1950s: still a British colony, still shaped by the aftershocks of war, and e