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

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

By late February 1676, Malta was no longer dealing with a rumour, a “bad fever”, or a handful of suspicious deaths. It was dealing with a full-blown public health disaster, and the island’s administration under the Order of St John was being forced into decisions that were both brutally practical and politically explosive. They restricted movement, isolated the sick, policed the population, and kept a port economy functioning while the disease tore through the Grand Harbour t

The first meeting of the Malta National Assembly took place in 1919. On the 25 th  of February, representatives from across Maltese public life gathered in Valletta for the first sitting of the Assemblea Nazzjonali. This was a turning-point moment in Malta’s push for self-government. It wasn’t a parliament, and it wasn’t elected by universal suffrage (the right of everyone to vote). But it mattered because it turned a growing, angry, post-war mood into an organised national d

On 24 February 1957, Malta played its first international football match, hosting Austria at the Empire Stadium in Gżira. The match finished 3–2 to the visitors, but the scoreline never told the full story. Malta ended the afternoon with the crowd on its feet, a late surge that nearly produced a draw, and a sense that Maltese football had just crossed a line from “local competition” into something bigger. Malta didn’t suddenly wake up in 1957 with a national side, football ha

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