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.

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

On 6 February 1952, King George VI died, and Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II. The succession was immediate: the moment the King died, the Crown passed to his eldest daughter. The public proclamation that followed didn’t create the new monarch, it formally announced what had already become legally true. For Britain, it was a national rupture: mourning, black borders in newspapers, a sudden change in tone after the austerity of the post-war years. For Malta, still

The 5th of February marks the anniversary of the death of Dun Victor Grech. He died on 5 February 2025 at Mater Dei Hospital, aged 95. Grech was born on 19 October 1929 in Bormla and was ordained a priest on 17 March 1956. He served as Vice-Rector of the Seminary between 1956–1962 and Rector from 1962–1977, as well as the National Director for Vocations. During his years as rector, he helped establish a Maltese priests’ community in Brazil and worked with Mgr Dellaport on the

The year 2017 was a very particular year for Maltese politics. Today marks the anniversary of when Prime Minister Joseph Muscat brought a foreign delegation to Serkin in Rabat to eat pastizzi, like locals do. The images travelled: dignitaries in suits, no cutlery. It looked spontaneous. It wasn’t. It was soft power by design. A visual pitch for a country that wanted to believe that everything was “business as usual”. However, the backdrop matters. 2017 was not a calm year. Th

On 3 February 1995, a routine industrial operation at the Malta Drydocks turned into one of the island’s deadliest tragedies. The oil tanker Um El Faroud, already written off after years of service and damage, was being prepared for controlled demolition ahead of its planned sinking at sea. Instead, a powerful explosion ripped through the vessel, killing nine men, six dockyard workers and three Civil Protection firefighters, and injuring others nearby. The blast was immense.

Fifty years ago today, Malta signed a “Renewed Economic and Technical Co-operation Agreement” with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The agreement is a big clue to the kind of foreign policy Malta was trying to run in the 1970s. The agreement is listed by Malta’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs as “North Korea – Renewed Economic and Technical Co-operation Agreement”, signed on 30th January 1976 in Pyongyang. It is recorded as having entered into force on t

The 29th of January, marks the anniversary of the day Malta’s Parliament decriminalised consensual same-sex sexual activity in 1973. This was a legal change that, at the time, looked less like a “rights revolution” and more like an uncomfortable clean-up of an old morality law. Nevertheless, it marked the start of Malta's LGBT rights history What changed was simple but profound: the Criminal Code was amended so that private, consenting same-sex intimacy was no longer treated