ON THIS DAY

JUNE 24

217 BC Ambushed by Hannibal, the Romans are heavily defeated at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.

843 Vikings destroy Nantes.

1314 The Battle of Bannockburn ends with a decisive victory by Robert the Bruce’s Scottish forces and Scotland regains its independence from England.

1374 An outbreak of St John’s Dance causes people in Aachen, Germany, to hallucinate, jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse.

1842 Dick King returns by boat to Natal after his epic 10-day horse-ride to Grahamstown.

1901 A young Pablo Picasso, 19, opens his first exhibition in Paris.

1916 The first Battle of the Somme begins, lasting five months and killing more than a million troops over a mere 125 square miles. Many SA troops died. 1948 The USSR starts the Berlin Blockade. 1949 The first television western,

Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC. 1978 Twelve missionaries are murdered in Rhodesia.

1982 A British Airways plane flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up from Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.

1992 Mafia boss John Gotti begins life sentence in jail for murder.

1995 Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb-Ellis Trophy for leading the Springboks to victory in the Rugby World Cup in an iconic post-apartheid moment.

1999 The Springboks beat England 44-21 in Paris in the World Cup quarterfinals, with Jannie de Beer setting a new world record with five drop-goals, five penalties and two conversions.

2010 The longest tennis match, between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut lasts 11 hours, 5 minutes over 3 days. 2012 Lonesome George, the last of

Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, dies.

2013 Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of power and having sex with an underage prostitute.

2016 British Prime Minister David Cameron resigns after the UK votes to leave the EU.

2018 Women drive for the first time in Saudi Arabia after ban is lifted.