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- Agriculturalist Jethro Tull, 1674
- Painter Vincent Willem van Gogh, 1853
- 4th President of Malta Vincent "Ċensu" Tabone, 1913
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Vincent "Ċensu" Tabone (born 30 March 1913 in Victoria, Gozo) is a Maltese political figure. He was the fourth President of Malta.
Dr. Tabone is the son of Niccolò and Elisa Tabone. He was the youngest of ten children. His paternal grandmother, Giuseppina De Gaetani, had settled in Valletta, Malta, in the mid 19th century from Riposto, Sicily. His father Niccolò was one of the first Maltese doctors to read pathology and surgery in the United Kingdom, and served as a District Medical Officer in various parts of Gozo. Life on Gozo for the Tabone family was relatively quiet, and pastoral. They lived in Victoria and summered at a villeġġatura in Marsalforn. Tabone's childhood was deeply affected by the sudden death of his father in October 1922, at the age of 59. Two years later, at the age of 11, he was shipped off to Malta, where he became a boarder at St. Aloysius College, a Jesuit school. He entered the University of Malta in 1930, where he graduated as a pharmacist in 1933 and as a Doctor of Medicine in 1937.
During World War II Tabone served as a Regimental Medical Officer and general duty officer with the Royal Malta Artillery, and later as trainee ophthalmic specialist stationed at the Military Hospital, Mtarfa. In the early days of the War, he narrowly escaped with his life when a bomb fell in St.Elmo fort and demolished a substantial part of the army barracks in which he was posted. In 1946, he obtained a diploma in Ophthalmology from the University of Oxford, followed by a diploma in Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was a clinical assistant at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
In 1948, Tabone was entrusted with the supervision of a campaign to treat trachoma using sulfonamide tablets and drops. Through his efforts, the disease was virtually eliminated from the Island of Gozo. He helped launch similar campaigns in Taiwan, Indonesia and Iraq under the auspices of the World Health Organization, and subsequently served as a member and consultant of the WHO's International Panel of Trachoma Experts.
He served
on the Council of the University of
Malta,
and between 1957 and 1960 he was a faculty member of the Board of
Medicine, and a lecturer in Clinical Ophthalmology in the Department of
Surgery. He helped found the Medical Association of Malta in 1954 and
is at present its Honorary President.
For many years, even as he served as a Member of Parliament, Tabone
maintained his medical practice in Sliema. Dr.
Tabone was nominated to the Nationalist
Party Executive
Committee in 1961, served as the party's Secretary General from 1962 to
1972, and as Deputy Leader from 24 June 1972 to 9 January 1977. He was
first elected to Parliament in 1966, and subsequently served as a
Member of Parliament for the Sliema, St. Julian's, Msida,
and Gzira areas
for 23 years. During his long political career, he also served as the
Minister of Labour, Employment and Welfare between 1966 and 1971, and
as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1987 and 1989. As Minister of
Labour, Employment and Welfare, Tabone was responsible for the
emigration portfolio, at a time when emigration from Malta to the Dominions of
the British Empire and
to the United States was at an all time high. In 1968,
Tabone brought a motion before the United Nations calling
for an action plan in regard to the World's ageing population. In 1988,
he brought a further motion before the U.N., calling for the World's
climate to be declared the common heritage of mankind.