ON THIS DAY MARCH 9
1497 Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who upset the Church and its preachings because of his discoveries, makes his first recorded astronomical observation.
1562 Kissing in public – an act punishable by death – is banned in Naples. The city fathers were more concerned about public health than morality, but the law seemed to do little to prevent the spread of the plague, which ultimately claimed the lives of large swaths of Europe.
1765 After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son, who committed suicide.
1816 Five of the Slachter’s Nek rebels are hanged at Van Aardtspos. Four of the nooses broke and although the condemned men and public begged for mercy, the sentence was carried out using one rope. It is regarded as the beginning of Afrikaner struggle against British colonial rule.
1831 French Foreign Legion is founded. 1839 The Prussian government limits the work week for children to 51 hours.
1841 The US Supreme Court rules that the captive Africans who seized control of the Spanish schooner Amistad had been taken into slavery illegally.
1893 Congo cannibals kill thousands of Arabs during an uprising. 1916 Mexican General Pancho Villa invades US, attacking a town in New Mexico, which leaves 18 dead.
1922 General Jan Smuts declares martial law in the Transvaal.
1945 The first nocturnal incendiary attack on Tokyo, by 334 US B-29s, inflicts damage comparable to that inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later. 1953 A rusty 1.4kg shell, dating from 1901, explodes at a Johannesburg school, injuring more than 30 children and a schoolteacher. The shell was found by one of the pupils who brought it to school. 1965 £100 000 worth of gold that went missing on the Cape Town Castle is found near a ship’s engine room in Durban. 1974 Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda surrenders after fighting from the jungle and mountains in the Philippines, 29 years after World War II ended.
1998 Mozambican police arrest Robert McBride on charges of gunrunning.