Anniversaries - March - General
1-MAR-1958: Against Pakistan at Sabina Park, Jamaica, Garfield Sobers turned his first Test hundred into 365 n.o.
2-MAR-1882: Queen Victoria escaped assassination by the insane Roderick McLean at Windsor Station.
3-MAR-1942: First operational flight of the Avro Lancaster when 44 Sqn laid mines in Heligoland Bight.
4-MAR-1461: King Henry VI was deposed - due to madness - by the Duke of York, who became King Edward IV.
5-MAR-1946: At Fulton, Missouri Churchill spoke of an ‘Iron Curtain’ descending across Europe.
6-MAR-1987: MV Herald of Free Enterprise capsized at Zeebrugge - 193 are killed.
Herald of Free Enterprise
Credit: Ships Monthly
6-MAR-1988: Three IRA operatives planning a car-bombing in Gibraltar were shot dead by the SAS.
7-MAR-1876: Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for his telephone.
8-MAR-2001: The wreckage of Donald Campbell’s Bluebird was raised from Coniston Water in the English Lakes.
Coniston Water - Bluebird is Recovered
Credit: BBC
9-MAR-1950: Timothy Evans was hanged for murdering his wife and baby child - murders that he did not commit.
10-MAR-1942: First operational bombing mission of the Avro Lancaster when aircraft from 44 Sqn joined a raid on Essen.
11-MAR-1702: Publication of England’s first daily newspaper - the Daily Courant.
12-MAR-1984: Arthur Scargill declares the Miner’s Strike.
14-MAR-1942: Anne Miller becomes the first patient to receive penicillin.
15-MAR-44BC: Julius Caesar murdered in Rome - in for him, in for him, they all had in for him.
16-MAR-1872: First FA Cup Final - Wanderers beat Royal Engineers 1-0 at Kennington Oval.
16-MAR-1988: UDA member Michael Stone killed three people at the funerals of the IRA unit killed in Gibraltar.
17-MAR-1968: Grosvenor Square, London a protest against the Vietnam War saw substantial violence.
18-MAR-1834: The six ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ were sentenced to transportation for forming a trade union.
19-MAR-1988: Corporals Derek Wood and David Howes were lynched when they took a wrong turning in Belfast and encountered the funerals of Michael Stone’s victims.
20-MAR-1974: Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips escaped kidnap by Ian Ball.
21-MAR-1556: Archbishop Thomas Cranmer - the last of the three Oxford Martyrs - was burned at the stake at Oxford.
The Oxford Martyrs: Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer Died Here
Credit: Unknown
22-MAR-1888: The Football League was established - the first champions were Preston North End.
23-MAR-1540: Waltham Abbey became the last monastery to be ‘dissolved’.
24-MAR-1953: Discovery of 8+ females murdered at 10 Rillington Place, Ladbroke Grove, London by John Christie.
25-MAR-1807: Oystermouth Railway - Swansea to Mumbles - became the world’s first passenger rail service.
26-MAR-1934: Driving tests are introduced in Britain.
27-MAR-1963: Beeching’s Axe - a report recommending huge cuts to Britain’s rail network is released.
28-MAR-1964: Pirate radio station Radio Caroline began broadcasting from MV Frederica, an old Danish ferry.
29-MAR-1461: Battle of Towton - the bloodiest battle ever fought in England saw Yorkists rout Lancastrians.
30-MAR-2002: HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother died at Windsor aged 101yrs.
31-MAR-1953: Arrest of John Christie for the Rillington Place murders - including those that Timothy Evans was hanged for. Christie lived downstairs from the Evans family, and was the chief witness against Evans