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The switchover to decimal currency on February 15th 1971 ended centuries of tradition and it wasn’t an easy transition for the British people with many refusing to adopt the new money. Previously there were 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound, but now it was 100 pennies to the pound. A huge national campaign was launched to help millions of people and thousands of businesses to adapt. Families were confused, coin machines were obsolete and cashiers were retrained. Even the world famous London store, Harrods, employed ‘Decimal Penny Assistants” to assist confused customers with the new coins!

The transition to decimalisation took five years of planning. February 15th was chosen as it was thought to be a quiet time for banks and shops who were closed for 5 days ahead of the big day to allow cheques to be cleared and accounts to be converted. Don’t forget that this was before computers so the whole thing was done manually! Even though the new currency had arrived, the old stuff was still legal in banks and stayed around for a long time. 

On February 11th 1990, the most famous prisoner in the world was freed after 27 years. The majority of his sentence was in the brutal Robben Island Prison and in a cell with no bed and not even the most basic of plumbing. Upon his release, Nelson Mandela would live for a further 13 years making a colossal impact on the world.

He was jailed in 1964 for resisting the vicious apartheid system in his native South Africa that denied black people even the most basic rights. Throughout Mandela’s years in jail, a global campaign to free him was gaining momentum. When he was finally let out, President FW de Klerk took a huge personal risk, opening the door for an election that gave every South African the vote. It would ultimately lead to Mandela’s party gaining power and him becoming president of a united South Africa. The turnout that day was unprecedented and the emotional scenes were shown across the world as people, who previously had no voice, were able to cast a vote for freedom and equality. 

Throughout the five years of his presidency, Nelson Mandela led an anxious and previously divided country with grace, forgiveness and dignity continually resisting calls for retribution from his own supporters against those who had wronged them. The South Africa of today is a not without its problems, of course, but the remarkable ‘Rainbow Nation’ shines as a beacon of hope and reconciliation in a troubled World. Many church leaders have spoken of Mandela’s deep personal faith in the God of the Bible. Some of them visited him in prison and told of the times they prayed together in his cell as well as in his later years as president. A life-long friend was with him the day he died and emotionally recounted seeing his face light up moments before he passed away when he spoke the words of the blessing that the great man loved so much: 

The Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a gunman on this day, 75 years ago. There’s so many stories about the iconic statesman who rose from the brutal scars of abuse to become a man with an almost god-like reputation among the Indian people and a fearless champion of the ‘untouchables’ often being seen in some of India’s worst slums. Gandhi insisted on living a humble life in contrast to other heads of state, wearing simple clothes, travelling third class and staying in basic accommodation.

Gandhi believed he was living without the need for security guards but in reality they were everywhere dressed as slum dwellers. The train carriages he travelled in, were only attached to the engine unit, so he was actually travelling solo with just a guard onboard. Not really a budget option, more like a very expensive one. Many obstacles were overcome to allow such a powerful man as him to be so accessible. After he died, one of his closest aides was quizzed about the way Mahatmas Gandhi had lived. The answer was very interesting “You have no idea what it took to keep that old man in poverty!”

C.S. Lewis died on November 23rd 1963 but his passing went almost unnoticed as the world was rocked by the violent and shocking assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the very same day in Dallas, Texas. Clive Staples Lewis grew up surrounded by books at the dawn of the twentieth century. As a teenager, he ditched the Christian influences of his upbringing and became well known as an atheist. Soon afterwards he enlisted in the British Army and experienced the horror, squalor and disease of trench warfare on the Western Front. As the war came to an end, he picked up his love for literature and began studying at the world renowned Oxford University. It was here that he established himself as a writer but still sometime before he would pen the series of books for which he would become one of the most famous authors of all time.

While studying at Oxford, C.S. Lewis met another up and coming literary genius by the name of J.R.R. Tolkien the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a man of faith and during some of their regular Tuesday morning gatherings at the back of a pub in Oxford, the conversations turned to God, the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. Within a short space of time, Lewis’s hard line atheist position was coming under serious threat and in 1929, he committed his future to following Jesus as a Christian. It was to alter the entire course of his life and he would become one the greatest and most respected defenders of Jesus Christ, his teachings and the Gospel. C.S. Lewis boldly took on many of the big topics relating to the human struggle but it was his creation of a seven book series that made him the icon he is today, The Chronicles of Narnia.

The Gettysburg Address was delivered by Abraham Lincoln on November 19th 1863 during the American Civil War. He’d been inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States of American 5 weeks before the start of the war and was assassinated 4 years later just 6 days after it ended. Abraham Lincoln proposed to make sweeping changes including the abolition of slavery. Because the southern states relied on slaves, they resisted and established a confederacy against the north, loyal to the President. Their refusal to bow, fanned the flames of war. The South adopted the, now highly inflammatory, Confederate Flag and half a million men marched beneath it and died for the cause.

160 odd years after the American Civil War that flag is still a symbol of independence and resistance to the rule of law. Slavery and rebellion were, perhaps, the two issue that formed the basis of the American Civil War and also Lincoln’s famous speech at Gettysburg that asserted that all men are created by God free and equal. Justice and equality were the two hallmarks that ultimately ended the conflict and, with it, dealt a deathblow to the evils of the slave trade. The Battle Hymn of the Republic is still sung throughout the world – “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, His truth is marching on”