Portal:Gibraltar/Did you know/Archives

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Did you know

Did you know...

... that Olympic diver Millie Hudson, who attempted to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar in 1928, was a member of the Hammersmith Ladies Swimming Club along with Belle White, the first British diver to win an Olympic medal?
... that Gibraltar's National Day is celebrated every 10 September by releasing 30,000 red and white balloons (pictured) which represent the people of Gibraltar?
... that since 2006, a Gibraltarian no longer needs be a Member of Parliament to become Mayor of Gibraltar?
... that in 1704 Simón Susarte, a Spanish Gibraltarian goatherd, revealed a concealed path to the Spanish Army which led to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, so they could surprise the Anglo-Dutch troops based there?
... that Gibraltar's St. Michael's Cave, prepared as an emergency hospital during World War II, at present contains an auditorium and receives almost a million visitors a year?
... that Gibraltarian pop rock band Taxi is made up of three of Melon Diesel's former members and write songs in Spanish only despite their being British?
...that the Gibraltar Football Association had their UEFA membership application blocked by Spain due to their claim on the territory?
...that Horace Walpole called John Trumbull's oil-on-canvas The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar, 1789 "the finest picture [he] had ever seen painted on the northern side of the Alps"?
...that Mozart never finished his composition for voice and piano to celebrate the Great Siege of Gibraltar during the American Revolutionary War?
...that John Singleton Copley's oil-on-canvas The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782 is one of Britain’s largest oil paintings?
...that the Governor's residence in Gibraltar (pictured) is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a nun who was bricked up alive into a chamber wall?
...that Thomas William Bowlby (1818 – 1860), a Gibraltar-born correspondent for The Times was captured and imprisoned by the Tartar General Sengge Rinchen whilst on correspondence in Tongzhou, Beijing?
...that Operation Tracer was a top-secret WWII mission in which six men were to be buried alive inside the Rock of Gibraltar so that they could monitor enemy movements after the Rock's capture?
...that in 2006 Gibraltar was granted a new constitution, giving it a modern constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom?
...that news of the British victory in the Battle of Trafalgar was reported in the Gibraltar Chronicle a fortnight before it reached England?