Sir Robert Menzies speaks at the laying of the National Library of Australia’s foundation stone in Canberra on the 31st of March, 1966. The library was opened by Prime Minister John Gorton on the 15th of August, 1968.
Monthly Archives: March 2019
On this Day: British Royalty on the Front
30th March 1918: Britain’s King George V, escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Reginald B. Rickman, inspects troops who survived the Battle of Bullecourt the previous year. The photograph was taken in Hermin, France in the final year of the First World War.
Part of the bigger Second Battle of Arras between the German and British Empires, the conflict claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties.
On this day: Victorian Children
This Victorian illustration was created by Englishwoman Kate Greenaway, and is dated the 26th of March, 1891.
Greenaway, who was born in London in 1846, was an internationally successful creator of children’s books and a painter of many watercolours.
The artist died in London in 1901.
On this day: Ballet in France
Dancers of the ballet company of the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse in France, onstage on the 20th of March, 1968.
Prisoners of War in The Mikado
The comic opera The Mikado, created by Englishmen Gilbert & Sullivan, premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London on the 14th of March, 1885.
This painting depicts the show being performed in the Ruhleben internment camp west of Berlin in Germany in 1916. British prisoners, interned during the First World War, staged the show from memory.
The painting is by Anglo-Dutch artist Nico Jungmann, who was interned at Ruhleben because he was a naturalised British citizen.
On this day: the death of Granny Smith
Maria Ann Smith – known as Granny Smith – the creator of the green “Granny Smith” apple, died in the colony of New South Wales, Australia on the 9th of March, 1870.
In 1868 Smith was handed a box of French crab apples from Tasmania at a market in Sydney. After she used them for baking, she discovered a seed in the discarded peels had sprouted in a compost heap. She continued to tend it in its place near a creek.
After her death the property’s new owner marketed the fruit as “Granny Smith”.
Smith married in England, having eight children (who survived early childhood) before emigrating to Australia in 1838.
On this day: a future Queen arrives in Britain
Princess Alexandra of Denmark, the future Queen of the United Kingdom, is depicted in this painting by Henry Nelson O’Neil arriving in England on the 7th of March, 1863.
Alexandra travelled to Gravesend in Kent, England by royal yacht to marry Prince Albert Edward, the future King Edward VII.
The royal couple married three days later, on the 10th.
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