ON THIS DAY

Four thousand defenders of the Lithuanian hill-fort Pilėnai commit mass suicide rather than be captured by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades.

Pope Pius V excommunicates England’s protestant Queen Elizabeth I and absolves her subjects from allegiance to the crown.

Colonel William Tate, a disgruntled Irishman, and his 1 000 – 1 500 soldiers surrender after the last invasion of Britain.

George Christopher Cato, Natal pioneer and first mayor of Durban, is born in London – he comes from a Huguenot family, originally named Caton.

Samuel Colt patents first multi-shot revolving-cylinder revolver, enabling a firearm to be fired multiple times.

Californian miners discover the Calaveras Skull – human remains that supposedly indicated that man, mastodons, and elephants had co-existed.

The great diamond rush to Grootfontein, near Lichtenburg, starts.

Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship, allowing him to run for Reichspräsident.

Turkey declares war on Germany. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounces his ruthless predecessor, Joseph Stalin.

Cassius Clay, who later converts to Islam and becomes Muhammad Ali, TKOs Sonny Liston in 7 rounds for his first world heavyweight championship title.

Archbishop Owen McCann of Cape Town becomes SA’s first cardinal.

A ruptured oil pipeline explodes and the 1 800ºC blaze, which roars through the Brazilian swampland shantytown of Cubatao, is so fierce that it incinerates bone and enamel, making a final toll almost impossible to verify. At least 500 people died, possibly 700.

More than 100 000 people attend a rally in Durban addressed by Nelson Mandela, who urges his followers to end the factional warfare that has taken more than 2 500 lives in the last five years in the Natal region.

Soldiers of the Bangladesh Rifles mutiny at their headquarters in Pilkhana, Dhaka, Bangladesh, resulting in 74 deaths, including 57 army officials.

Fifty students are killed in a Boko Haram attack on a college in Buni, Nigeria.

At least 310 people are killed in avalanches in north-eastern Afghanistan.