ON THIS DAY
AD 69 The Roman Senate declares Vespasian the emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors (Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian).
1913 The first crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) is printed in the New York World.
1914 About 2 800 African miners strike at the Van Rhyn Deep mines in a bid to redress some of their grievances.
1598 Battle of Curalaba: the Mapuche people led by Pelentaru revolt and inflict a major defeat on Spanish troops in Chile.
1866 Fetterman Massacre: Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans kill 81 US Army soldiers in the worst military disaster suffered by the US Army on the Great Plains.
1898 French Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium.
1910 An explosion in a coal mine in Hulton, England, kills 344 miners.
1933 Fox Films signs Shirley Temple, aged 5, to a studio contract.
1963 “Bloody Christmas” begins in Cyprus, resulting in the displacement of more than 25 000 Turkish Cypriots and the destruction of more than 100 villages.
1967 Louis Washkansky, the first man to have a human-to-human heart transplant, dies in Cape Town.
1979 The Lancaster House Agreement, an independence agreement for Rhodesia, is signed by Lord Carrington, Sir Ian Gilmour, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Bishop Abel Muzorewa and SC Mundawarara.
1982 At the end of a 44-day inquest into the death in detention of the trade union leader, Neil Aggett, the magistrate finds no one was to blame.
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 is destroyed by a bomb, which kills all 258 people on board, over Lockerbie, Scotland.
1988 First flight of Antonov An-225 Mriya, the largest aircraft in the world.
1989 New Zealand is the first country to set a formal inflation target (0-2%) for how much prices should rise each year. Most developed countries adopted similar targets.
1990 Cricketing brothers Steve and Mark Waugh score 464 runs for New South Wales against Western Australia.
2012 This day was the end-date of a 5 126-year cycle in the Mayan calendar, leading to widespread expectations of a cataclysmic event. |