ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 13

1224 Francis of Assisi is afflicted with stigmata after a vision praying on Mount Verna.

1795 Britain seizes the Dutch Cape Colony to prevent its use by the Batavian Republic.

1812 The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow.

1830 The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens; and British MP William Huskisson becomes the first widely reported railway passenger fatality when he is struck and killed by the locomotive, Rocket.

1851 The 136-ton George Henri Harrison is wrecked at Plettenberg Bay.

1892 The railway line between Cape Town and Johannesburg is completed. The first train arrives after a journey lasting 2 days, 14 hours and 43 minutes.

1910 The first general election in the Union of South Africa takes place. General Louis Botha becomes first Prime Minister.

1914 Boer leader General Koos de la Rey is shot dead at a roadblock, set up to catch a gangster, near Langlaagte, Johannesburg.

1916 Tanks are used in action for the first time, at the Battle of the Somme. They dramatically change the way how battles are fought.

1935 Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag bearing the swastika.

1940 The Battle of Britain reaches its climax. 1950 US Marines storm ashore at Inchon during the Korean War.

1959 Soviet space mission Luna-2 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon and the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body.

1971 The first Greenpeace ship sets sail to protest against nuclear testing on Amchitka Island.

1977 The death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko while he was in police custody is announced

1997 Mother Teresa, the nun who captured the world’s attention with her selfless devotion to the poor, is buried in Calcutta

2004 Morocco recalls its ambassador to South Africa after Pretoria formally recognised the pro-independence government in the annexed Moroccan territory of Western Sahara.

2014 T. B. Joshua’s The Synagogue Church of All Nations collapses in Nigeria, collapses killing 116 people, including 84 South Africans.

2018 Nearly 40% of all female suicides in the world occur in India, according to a report published in the medical journal, The Lancet. | THE HISTORIAN