ON THIS DAY
The Goths lay siege to Rome.
Mt Etna in Italy erupts, kills 15 000. England’s first national daily, The Daily Courant, begins publishing.
Unhappy with the terms of a treaty, Māoris chop down the British flagpole for a fourth time and drive settlers out of Kororareka, New Zealand.
King Moshoeshoe, founder of the Basotho nation, dies.
British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejects peace overtures from Paul Kruger.
Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, is captured by British troops. A brutally efficient murderer, he introduced the pesticide Zyklon B, containing hydrogen cyanide, into the killing process. Under his watch, Auschwitz became the most efficiently murderous instrument of the Final Solution and the Holocaust’s most potent symbol. During his time there, around 3.5 million people died in captivity. He was hung in the camp.
A US bomber accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on to a family home in South Carolina, creating a crater 23m across and injuring six people. Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft.
More than 130 hostages held in Washington, DC, by Hanafi Muslims are set free after ambassadors from three Islamic nations join negotiations.
Hundreds of Kosovo’s University of Pristina students protest for political rights, which leads to the Kosovo War and independence from Yugoslavia.
Pakistan successfully conducts a cold test of a nuclear weapon.
Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as the seventh and last leader of the USSR. His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) help end the Cold War.
Responding to a request by Chief Lucas Mangope for help restoring control in Bophuthatswana, the right-wing AWB randomly kills 42 people and, before the world’s press, two of them are executed by a Bophuthatswana policeman.
Explosions on rush-hour trains in Madrid, Spain, kill 192 people.
At least 21 people are killed by mudslides in and around São Paulo, Brazil.
China’s National People’s Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, which will allow Xi Jinping presidency for life.