ON THIS DAY

SEPTEMBER 12

490 BC Traditional date of the Battle of Marathon, where a small Athenian force defeats the Persian Empire. (According to legend, the messenger Pheidippides ran 42.2km, in intense heat, to Athens to tell of the victory. Exhausted, he exclaimed, ‘Nike!’ (Victory!) and promptly dropped dead. And that’s where the name of the sports brand and the name of the foot race come from.)

1933 Leó Szilárd, waiting in his car for a red light, figures out the nuclear chain reaction.

1941 The first Soviet vessels carrying humanitarian aid for the residents of the besieged Leningrad cross frozen Lake Ladoga establishing the “Road of Life”.

1943 Il Duce, Benito Mussolini is rescued from house arrest by German commandos.

1958 Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments.

1959 Bonanza premières, the first regularly scheduled TV programme presented in colour. When TV is introduced in South Africa, it is one of the first series on the small screen.

1974 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, “Messiah” of the Rastafari movement, is deposed in a coup. 1977 Steve Biko is murdered.

2003 The UN lifts sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the Lockerbie bombing.

2003 In Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers.

2005 The bodies of more than 40 patients are found in a flooded hospital in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

2009 South Africa wins its third Tri-Nations Rugby Series title, beating New Zealand, 32-29.

2018 The oldest known human drawing – 73 000 years old – is discovered in Blombos Cave (300km east of Cape Town), according to the journal, Nature. | The Historian