A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy in the Anglican Church. The sermon was delivered on March 31, 1717, to George I of Great Britain, with the text being John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and from that Hoadly deduced, supposedly at the request of the king himself, that there was no Biblical justification for any church government of any sort.
March 31, 1979 is remembered in the Maltese calendar as Freedom Day (Maltese: Jum il-Ħelsien). This is the anniversary of the withdrawal of British troops and the Royal Navy from Malta. On taking power in 1971, the Labour Government indicated it wanted to re-negotiate the lease agreement with the United Kingdom. Following protracted and sometimes tense talks, a new agreement was signed whereby the lease was extended till the end of March 1979 at a vastly increased rent. On March 31, 1979 the last British Forces left Malta. For the first time in millennia, Malta was no longer a military base of a foreign power and it became independent de facto as well as de jure.