On this Day - Friday, 12 March 2010

Feast Days

Feast day of St Alphege, St Bernard of Winchester, St Gregory, St Maximilian of Theveste, St Mura, St Paul Aurelian, St Theophanes, and St Pionius.

On This Day Over The Years

1710 Thomas Augustine Arne, composer who wrote the masque Alfred, which included the song Rule Britannia, was born in London.
1832 Capt Charles Boycott, despised English estate manager in Ireland, from whose name the word ‘boycott’ is taken, was born.
1890 Vaslav Nijinsky, great Russian dancer, was born in Kiev.
1930 Mahatma Gandhi began a campaign of civil disobedience in India.
1935 The 30mph speed limit was imposed in built-up areas in Britain.
1941 The original incident used in Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore occurred in the Hebrides when a cargo ship ran aground with her holds full of whisky.
Islanders hid the quarter of a million bottles from Customs officers.
1945 Young Jewish diarist Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Bergen concentration camp.
1969 Beatle Paul McCartney married photographer Linda Eastman, while George Harrison was arrested for illegal possession of cannabis.
1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said he would not allow a single inch of Arab land to remain under Israeli occupation.
1992 Mauritius broke its links with the British Crown, becoming a fully fledged republic but remaining a member of the Commonwealth.