Portal:Gibraltar/Did you know/Archives



Did you know...


 * ... 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?