On March 6

On this day in ...
... 1480, Spain ratified the Treaty of Alcáçovas, which had been concluded in that Portuguese town on September 4 of the previous year. Thus entered into force this bilateral agreement, by which Portugal gave up its claim to the Castillian throne and to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. In exchange, Spain "recognized the Portuguese primacy in Azores islands as well the North and West African coasts."

... 1944 (65 years ago today), at Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, Kiri Te Kanawa was born. Of Maori ancestry, she was adopted by an Irishwoman and a Maori man. In 1965, having won 2 singing contests, the soprano "was accepted without audition to study at the London Opera Centre." As is evident from the Nozze de Figaro aria below, she became an international operatic star -- a genuine diva. In sang a solo at the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles to Princess Diana. In 1982 Queen Elizabeth II named Te Kanawa a Dame of the British Empire. (photo credit)

(Prior March 6 posts are here and here.)

On July 31

On this day in ...

... 1998 (10 years ago today), Britain announced that it would ban the use of landmines unconditionally. Legislation passed a month earlier "after public pressure to do so" -- would have permitted "British troops to deploy mines in 'exceptional circumstances.'" On this day, however, that exception was removed. This paved the way for British ratification, on this same day, of the 1997 treaty banning landmines; that is, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Britain's action came a month before the 1st anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, a vocal advocate of the treaty.

... 1811, Janie Currie Blaikie Hoge was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A welfare worker, fundraiser, and wartime nurse, she worked to recruit other nurses to care for wounded Union troops during the Civil War. Hoge wrote of her work in The Boys in Blue (1867) (left). Following the war, she helped to establish the Evanston College for Ladies. Among the leaders of the college was temperance advocate and suffragist Frances E.C. Willard; when the institution merged with Northwestern University, Willard became dean of the university's Women's College.

On January 15, ...

... 1953, following a course set in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia the year before, authorities in East Germany launched a "purge of senior officials accused of plotting against the state and spying for 'imperialistic' powers." Eventually the arrests and detentions would extend "to all political parties, trade unions, youth organisations, women's and pensioners' groups."
... 1997, British politicians reacted angrily to Princess Diana's call for an international landmine ban during her visit to Angola. One Conservative leader said:

We all know landmines and other weapons are vicious and nasty. The question is how best to negotiate so they are not used in future.
The government's policy on this has been an extremely careful one and the statements made by the Princess of Wales have not been in line with that policy.

Diana (above) died in a car crash in Paris in August. Within a year Britain ratified the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, the treaty, adopted in 1997 in Ottawa, Canada, that bans landmines. Today that Convention, which entered into force in 1999, has 156 states parties; among those not party to the treaty are the United States, Russia and China.