ON THIS DAY MARCH 18
1822 Dr James Barry (Margaret Ann Bulkley) is appointed medical inspector of the Cape Colony. During 10 years of work in the Cape, Barry effected significant changes, among them improvements to sanitation and water, improved conditions for enslaved people, prisoners and the mentally ill, and provision of a sanctuary for the leper population Wherever Barry served, improvements were made to sanitary conditions and the conditions and diet of both the common soldier and other underrepresented groups. Barry also performed the first successful Caesarean section in which mother and child survived; the child was christened James Barry Munnik in her honour, and the name was passed down, being borne by a later prime minister of South Africa, JBM Hertzog. Barry’s true identity remained a secret until her autopsy was performed.
1882 Six months after the storied Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, Marshall Morgan Earp, one of the legendary Earp brothers, is assassinated by a vengeful gunman while playing billiards in Tombstone, Arizona. Brother Wyatt takes the law into his own hands and extracts frontier justice. Before he died, Morgan whispered: “I can’t see a damned thing”. Wyatt said that they had promised each other to report visions of the next world when at the point of death. 1994 South Africa’s Goldstone Committee reveals existence of the secret police.
2000 Aid arrives in Mozambique where flooding leaves up to 700 people dead and destroys the homes of another 2 million.
2007 Bob Woolmer, 58, Pakistan’s cricket coach and Protea’s ex-coach, is found dead in his hotel room a few hours after Pakistan’s exit at the hands of Ireland in the Cricket World Cup. Former SA captain Clive Rice says Woolmer was murdered by organised crime groups, saying, ‘These mafia betting syndicates do not care who gets in their way’.
2019 Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi makes national radio address to the nation after Cyclone Idai, saying more than 1,000 people feared dead with 100 000 at risk.
2021 US President Joe Biden agrees Russian President Vladimir Putin is a ‘killer’ in ABC News interview. Putin responds “It takes one to know one” a day later.