Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
1862 Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
1879 The Zululand capital of Ulundi is captured by British troops and burned to the ground, ending the Zulu War and forcing King Cetshwayo to flee.
1894 The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B Dole.
1905 Boers protest that the new electorate laws favour English-speakers, and are an example of how Boers are discriminated against.
1913 Fighting breaks out as a riotous crowd on the Johannesburg market square is confronted by police and mounted soldiers during the first miners’ strike.
1918 Bolshevik rebels kill the ruler of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
1934 Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design that would be used in the atomic bomb.
1943 The Battle of Kursk, the largest full-scale battle in history and the world’s largest tank battle, continues in the village of Prokhorovka, between Russian and German forces. The Soviets will win the Battle of Kursk and end Hitler’s dream of conquering Russia.
1959 Four matches are played to mark the start of professional soccer in southern Africa.
1961 On its maiden voyage, the Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 suffers a loss of coolant to its reactor. The crew are able to effect repairs, but 22 go on to die of radiation poisoning.
1976 Israeli commandos make an audacious raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda, rescuing all but four of the passengers and crew of an Air France jetliner seized by Palestinian terrorists.
1989 An unmanned Russian Mig-23 crashes in Bellegem-Kooigem, Belgium, killing one person on the ground. The pilot ejected over an hour earlier near Kołobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying on autopilot for about 900km before running out of fuel.
2001 In a world-record fee for a soccer goalkeeper, Juventus signed Parma's Gianluigi Buffon in a £32.5 million deal.
2019 The biggest seaweed bloom in the world, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, stretches from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico after rapid growth of algae.
2021 Researchers reveal there are 14 living descendants of the great Renaissance Italian artist and genius Leonardo da Vinci.