{"id":12065,"date":"2022-03-30T07:06:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T05:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=204370"},"modified":"2022-03-30T07:21:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T05:21:10","slug":"30-march-on-this-day-in-history","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/30-march-on-this-day-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"30 March: On this day in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 30 March 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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30 March 1282: Sicilians revolt against their French oppressors<\/h3>\n

A sunset prayer service turns into a mass riot, kicking off 20 years of war<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As the people of Sicily celebrated Easter in 1282, the mood was tense. For more than a decade, the island had been ruled by the French magnate Charles of Anjou, whose heavy taxes and Gallic hangers-on were much resented by the locals. After years of growing unrest, passions were running high; all that was needed was a spark.<\/p>\n

Giulio Piatti\u2019s depiction of the Sicilian Vespers, an uprising that took its name from the evening prayer service at which it began in Palermo, Sicily. The bloodshed that night led to a much longer campaign to overthrow the island\u2019s French rulers<\/p>\n

It was on Easter Monday, just before the evening Vespers service at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Palermo, that the moment came. As crowds gathered outside the church for the annual festival, a group of swaggering, tipsy French officials, with a man called Drouet particularly prominent, made overtures to some young Sicilian women. In the ensuing melee, one outraged husband plunged his knife into Drouet \u2013 and all hell broke loose.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the sound of the bells,\u201d wrote the great historian Steven Runciman, \u201cmessengers ran through the city calling on the men of Palermo to rise against the oppressor. At once the streets were filled with angry armed men, crying \u2018Death to the French\u2019\u2026 They poured into the inns frequented by the French and the houses where they dwelt, sparing neither man, woman nor child.\u201d Whenever they found a suspected Frenchmen, the mob demanded that he pronounce the local word ciciri, which outsiders invariably found difficult. Anyone who failed the test was killed.<\/p>\n

By the next morning, 2,000 people lay dead. The War of the Sicilian Vespers had begun; it would last for another 20 years. | Written by Dominic Sandbrook<\/strong><\/p>\n

30 March 1533<\/h3>\n

Thomas Cranmer was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in St Stephen\u2019s College in the palace of Westminster. Cranmer took the traditional oath of loyalty to the papacy but, in a hint of things to come, immediately followed this with a solemn protestation that his oath would not override the law of God and his loyalty to the king, or act to the hindrance of \u201creformation of the Christian religion, the government of the English church, or the prerogative of the crown or the well-being of the same commonwealth\u201d.<\/p>\n

30 March 1880<\/h3>\n

The Irish dramatist and socialist Sean O\u2019Casey was born to Protestant parents at 85 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin.<\/p>\n

30 March 1811<\/h3>\n

Birth in Gottingen, Saxony, of chemist Robert Bunsen. He made significant advances in the field of spectroscopy and codiscovered caesium and rubidium and gave his name to the Bunsen Burner.<\/p>\n

30 March 1848<\/h3>\n

An ice jam up-river causes Niagara Falls to stop flowing. Relics from the war of 1812 are found on the dry river bed.<\/p>\n

30 March 1867<\/h3>\n

The United States agrees to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.<\/p>\n

30 March 1912<\/h3>\n

The Oxford v Cambridge boat race<\/a> had to be abandoned after both boats sank. The race was restaged two days later and Oxford emerged victorious.<\/p>\n

30 March 1979<\/h3>\n

Shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Airey Neave is killed by a car bomb as he leaves a House of Commons car park. In 1942 he had become the first British POW to make a \u2018home run\u2019 from Colditz.<\/p>\n

Browse more On this day in history<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n