Julius Rosenberg 30 March

In 1951, An American electrical engineer Julius Rosenberg, 33, and his 35-year-old wife, Ethel were found guilty by New York’s Federal Court of passing atomic secrets to the Russians. In pronouncing guilty verdicts, Judge Kaufman, presiding over the trial, said: "That citizens should lend themselves to the destruction of their own country by the most destructive weapon known is so shocking that I cannot find words to describe the loathsome offence."
Also on this day in 1042, Edward the Confessor became King. Edward was the son of King Ethelred II (the Unready) and Emma, the daughter of Richard II of Normandy. Much of his reign was peaceful and prosperous. Skirmishes with the Scots and Welsh were only occasional - something of a new turn of events.

A surprising thing about the 30th of March throughout history is that apart from the odd war, occasional beheadings, famines, plagues, invasions, commencement of Crusades, the death of Robin Hood and the birth of William Shakespeare, nothing much happened for 649 years until, in order to break the monotony, George I, Elector of Hanover became the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain as a result of the Act of Settlement of 1701. George I did a great deal of skirmishing with the Scots in order to suppress the Jacobite rebellion. On the other hand, George I declined various invitations to skirmish with the Welsh. Into each life some rain must fall.

Torrey Canyon 29 March

In 1967 bombing raids began on the stranded oil tanker the ‘Torrey Canyon’. The RAF and the Royal Navy dropped 62,000lbs of bombs, 5,200 gallons of petrol, 11 rockets and large quantities of napalm onto the ship. Despite direct hits, and a towering inferno of flames and smoke as the oil slick began to burn, the tanker refused to sink. The mission was called off for the day when particularly high spring tides put out the flames. A disappointed statement from the Home Office said "We have been informed officially that the fire in the wreckage of the Torrey Canyon is out. We cannot say at this stage what the next step will be." Bombing continued into the next day before the Torrey Canyon finally sank. The oil slick was finally dispersed by favourable weather, but not before 70 miles of Cornish beaches were seriously contaminated and tens of thousands of seabirds killed. The environmental disaster was made far worse by the heavy use of detergent to disperse the slick. A report into the effect on the marine environment found that the detergent killed far more marine life than the oil.
Also, in 1971, Charles Manson and three members of his hippy cult were sentenced to death in Los Angeles. They had been found guilty of the August 1969 murders of seven people and one unborn child.
Finally, in 1912, Robert Falcon Scott wrote his final entry in his diary: ‘We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.’ Their bodies were left beneath a cairn of ice and a cross of skis and are still there, buried beneath the snow and ice.

Death of Queen Elizabeth 1 24 March

Today is the anniversary of the Death of Queen Elizabeth 1. who, in 1603 ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree’. passed away. The crown passed to the Protestant King James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England. Spookily, only 350 years later in 1953, Her Majesty Queen Mary, while sleeping peacefully, died at twenty minutes past ten o’clock."

1815 Corn Law 23 March

This week is the anniversary of the passing of the 1815 Corn Law. As you will all recall from endless school history lessons, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, legislation was introduced to regulate the import of cereals in an attempt to maintain an adequate supply for consumers while providing a secure price for the producers. Cereals could not be imported into Britain until the domestic price reached eighty shillings a quarter. This price meant that cereals and bread were more expensive than they needed to be and this caused considerable agitation and resulted, in a number of areas, in the ‘Reading of the Riot Act’. My, how times change.