On 21 February 2011, Malta suddenly found itself at the centre of one of the most dramatic early moments of the Libyan uprising. That afternoon, two Libyan Air Force fighter pilots flew their Mirage F1 jets to Malta and landed at Luqa, saying they had refused orders to bomb protesters in Libya. Maltese officials said the pilots told authorities they had been ordered to attack anti-government demonstrators, and one of them requested political asylum. The two pilots were report

On 20 February 1578, St John’s in Valletta was consecrated, a major milestone in the making of Malta’s new capital after the Great Siege. At the time, it was not yet a “co-cathedral” in the modern sense, but the conventual church of the Order of St John: the spiritual heart of the Knights inside the new fortified city they were building. The church had been commissioned by Grand Master Jean de la Cassière and designed by Girolamo Cassar, the same architect behind several of V

19 February 1962 marks Mabel Strickland's return to Parliament after the 1962 election. Her way back into Parliament was a comeback that mattered far beyond a single seat. In the 1962 election, Strickland led the Progressive Constitutionalist Party (PCP) and secured representation in a Parliament that expanded to 50 seats. The party’s result was modest in raw numbers, one seat on 4.84% of the vote, but politically it was a statement that Strickland was back in the room where

In early afternoon of 18 February 1956, in clear view of people on the ground, Malta's deadliest air crash took place. A four-engined British transport aircraft,  Avro York, had just departed from Luqa Airport. In mid-air, it began trailing smoke, drifted off its instructed turn, and then fell out of the sky. Within minutes, Malta had witnessed its worst aviation disaster, 50 lives lost on the outskirts of Żurrieq. The aircraft (registration G-ANSY) was not a commercial holid

Between 17 and 19 February 1962, Malta went to the polls in one of the most politically charged climates in its modern history, with the Labour Party still carrying the burden of l-Interdett, the Church’s sanction that turned a party preference into a question of sin, shame, and social exclusion. To understand why the 1962 election under the Interdict still stings in Malta’s memory, you need to grasp what the Interdett did to ordinary life. On 8 April 1961, Archbishop Michael

On 11 February 1823, the last day of Carnival, a tragedy unfolded in Valletta that remains one of the deadliest civilian disasters in Malta’s history. What was meant to be a charitable event for poor children ended in a fatal stampede inside the Convent of the Minori Osservanti, today known as Ta’ Ġieżu, near St Ursula Street. At the time, Malta was facing widespread poverty and food shortages. To keep children away from the disorder of Carnival and to offer some relief, it h

Malta’s coastal towers reveal how the Knights of St John defended the islands, from early forts to later watchtowers guarding the Mediterranean coastline.

Three of the Maltese internees, Formosa, Ganado and Cossai, together with Enrico Mizzi in front of the internment camp at Uganda If you think the PL–PN rivalry is fierce, strap in. During the Second World War, the Constitutionalist Party accused members of the Partito Nazionale of conspiring with Mussolini. Was Gerald Strickland onto something, or was this a calculated move to neutralise his main political rival, Enrico Mizzi? This episode remains one of the darkest chapters

The key sitting came on 9 February. In a charged Council session convened to rush through emergency powers, Sir Ugo Mifsud rose to oppose the measure as an assault on “fundamental rights” and a dangerous bending of constitutional limits in wartime. Partway through his speech he collapsed on the floor of the chamber. He never recovered, dying two days later. Despite the shock, the bill still went through, with George Borg Olivier the only member to vote against it. In 1942, de

In the first days of February 1942, Malta was being bombed, squeezed by shortages, and still haunted by the possibility of a successful invasion. In that siege mindset, the colonial administration decided to be more drastic. It stopped treating “pro-Italian” sentiment as just politics or culture and started treating it as a security problem. In this view, the most logical step would be to remove the ‘threat’ from the island altogether, an escalation from detention to exile. T