ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 28
1420 Beijing is designated the Ming dynasty’s capital when the Forbidden City is completed. 1664 The Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot (Royal Marines) is formed. 1784 Farmer Lucas Meyer is the first to settle on the site of Grahamstown, in Eastern Cape. 1831 A blacksmith’s son, Michael Faraday, discovers electromagnetic induction. His inventions change the world and lead to many of the technologies in use today.
1860 Jigoro Kano, judo’s founder, is born. 1917 More than 400 market gardeners from the Springfield Flats (Tintown) area in Durban drown when the Umgeni River bursts its banks. The toll would have been higher if not for the bravery of the Padavatan Six.
1919 Victoria Cross holder John ‘Jack’ Sherwood-Kelly, born in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape. Well-decorated, four times wounded (twice gassed) and nine times mentioned in despatches, he is court-martialed for having publicly cricitised the North Russia campaign. Found guilty and severely reprimanded, he relinquished his commission, but was allowed to retain the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Pursued by a neglected wife and creditors, he is unsuccessful in many attempts to re-enter the army and even fails to obtain a place in the French Foreign Legion. Later, Kelly works for Bolivia Concessions, building roads and railways across Bolivia and he goes big-game hunting in Africa where he contracts malaria and dies. His VC hangs in the National Museum of Military History in Johannesburg.
1924 A miner finds an infant’s fossilised skull in a quarry in Taung. Paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart identifies the fossil as a new hominin species, Australopithecus africanus. 1954 The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to Ernest Hemingway. His economical and understated style has a strong influence on fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle brought him admiration from later generations.
2017 Car bomb attacks in Mogadishu, Somalia, kill at least 27. Extremist group al-Shabab claims responsibility.
2020 A coral reef 500m high, taller than the Empire State Building, discovered north of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.