ON THIS DAY
Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire.
Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the “telephone”.
General Koos de la Rey defeats and captures General Methuen and 870 soldiers in the Battle of Tweebosch, in the Western Transvaal. It was the last important battle won by the Boer forces and also the biggest defeat suffered by the British in the conflict.
Günther Prien and the crew of German submarine U-47, one of the most successful U-boats of World War II, disappear without a trace.
At Woeste Hoeve, near Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, the German occupiers execute 250 of the hamlet’s inhabitants as reprisals after Dutch resistance had fighters shot dead the Nazi chief of police, SS General Hanns Rauter, the day before.
UN troops led by General Matthew Ridgway begin Operation Ripoper – an assault against Chinese forces during the Korean War.
Decorated World War II veteran Job Masego, who, almost single-handedly, sank a German supply boat while a prisoner of war after the capture of Tobruk, dies in Springs, Gauteng, after being run over by a train. A street and a school in Kwa Thema and a naval vessel were named in his honour.
Nelson Mandela rejects demands by white right-wingers for a separate homeland for them.
Frans “Domkrag” Erasmus, 38, a Springbok prop from Eastern Province, is killed in a car accident, 100m from the place where his wife was killed in an accident on February 10 that year.
Zimbabwe seizes a plane carrying 64 mercenaries and military equipment. Simon Mann, of the mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes, is arrested along with five others on the tarmac, after the Zimbabwean authorities have been tipped off by the SA government.
The British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected.
Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova reveals failed drug test for meldonium at Australian Open in January, subsequently suspended for 15 months
Poachers strike a European zoo for the first time in history killing a 4-year-old white rhino for its horn in Thoiry zoo.