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Events

Special days marked on this website, for November 8, 2025

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November 8 ns

October 26 os

We mark certain days of the year with ‘On This Day’ posts, recalling events associated with them.

Our events are grouped under two calendars. The Gregorian ‘New Style’ (NS) is the worldwide calendar first issued at Rome in 1582. On that calendar, today is November 8. The Julian ‘Old Style’ (OS), also issued at Rome but in 46 BC, was used in Roman Britain and then in England from Anglo-Saxon times until 1752. It is still used today by roughly 100 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. On that calendar, today is October 26.

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Today

The Winter Queen

Conspiracies and dynastic expectations swirled around James I’s daughter from the age of nine.

When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, he brought his family to London, including a seven-year-old daughter named Elizabeth. Just two years later, she was the unwitting focus of a traitorous plot to assassinate her father and put England back under the dominion of Continental Europe.

On This DayDecember 22 ns1 post

The Battle of the White Mountain (1620)

Today

Violet van der Elst

An eccentric, self-made businesswoman, who ‘made three fortunes and spent five’ in the campaign against the death penalty.

Violet van der Elst (1882-1966) was a highly eccentric self-made businesswoman from a working-class background, who arguably did more than anyone else to end the barbaric practice of capital punishment. Yet she died forgotten and all but penniless, having given all she had for her cause.

On This DayDecember 22 ns1 post

Royal Assent for the Abolition of the death penalty (1965)

Today

The Spy

In 1910, Constantine Zervakos, a young monk from the Greek island of Paros, found himself charged with espionage.

Until 1912, the city and port of Thessalonica was in the hands of the Muslim Turks, and any Greek, especially a Christian, took his life in his hands passing through. In 1910, a newly-minted monk of the Longovarda monastery on Paros got himself into very hot water.

On This DayDecember 9 os1 post

St Demetrius of Thessalonica

The Calendar below shows the year on the Roman (Gregorian or ‘New Style’) Calendar for 2025. Click on any date to see the events we have marked for it.

Roman Easter 2025: Sunday April 20

Old English Easter 2025: Sunday April 20

Christmas 2025: Thursday December 25

Old English Christmas 2025: Wednesday January 7, 2026