Looking back in time

Ibn Battuta begins travels, leaving home in Tangiers to travel to Mecca (gone 24 years).

King Ferdinand of Austria subjects himself on Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.

First preserved entry in the journal of Adam Tas, an early Cape Dutch “free burger”.

Liberator of South America, Simón Bolívar, proclaimed dictator of Gran Colombia, union of independent nations in Latin America.

Voortrekker leader Andries Potgieter obtains territory between the Vet and Vaal rivers from Makwana, in exchange for cattle.

Deadliest German air raid on London of World War I kills 162 people.

US Post Office says children cannot be sent by parcel post, after instances in which children weighing less than 50lbs, because it was cheaper than other ways to travel.

Another black day for Britain in World War II as it loses 230 tanks to Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert.

Indian Passive Resistance campaign, led by YM Dadoo and Dr GM Naicker, against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, enacted by the Smuts government, begins. Group Areas Act implemented. Rand Daily Mail senior reporter Benjamin Pogrund jailed for eight days for refusing to divulge the source of a story. He said an alleged plot was a joke, which the government had taken seriously. He was released on appeal.

Nelson Mandela arrives on Robben Island to begin his sentence.

Robert Sobukwe, the former leader of the banned PAC, although still under a banning order, is admitted as an attorney in Kimberley.

Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central solar system

US president President Reagan condemns South Africa’s state of emergency.

A Boeing 767 sets a non-stop commercial flight distance record, from Seattle to Nairobi.

Twenty Somalis are killed, 50 wounded when Pakistani peacekeepers fire on a demonstration in Mogadishu.

Regional peace summit in Durban at which Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini urges his subjects to stop killing each other.

South Africa’s Nuno Gomes sets record for world’s deepest scuba dive, 318m. Ahmed Gabr holds the current record, also set in the Red Sea, after bettering Gomes’ mark with a dive of 332m in 2014. Gomes, the world cave diving record holder (282m in Boesmansgat, set in 1996) spent 12 hours, 20 minutes on the dive. The descent took 14 minutes.

South and North Korean leaders meet in an historic summit, initiated by South Korea’s President Kim Dae-jung, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.