ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 10

732 Charles Martel, king of the Franks and a founding figure of the Middle Ages and grandfather of Charlemagne, earns the name “Charles the Hammer” for his hammering defence that breaks the invading Moorish onslaught at the battle of Tours, sending them scurrying back to Spain.

1582 Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

1827 Queen mother Nandi dies of dysentery in her royal kraal at Mkinkini, halfway between modern Melmoth and the Umhlatuzi River. She was frantically mourned by Zulu king Shaka.

1893 Sir John Robinson, founder of this media group’s oldest newspaper, The Mercury, as prime minister forms Natal’s first ministry.

1899 The ultimatum of the ZAR to Britain expires and the road to war is inevitable.

1951 Virologist Max Theiler accepts the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing a vaccine against yellow fever, becoming the first African-born Nobel laureate.

1960 ANC president Albert Luthuli becomes the first African to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid. So far there have been 11 South African winners of Nobel prizes. Apart from Theiler and Luthuli, they are: Allan Cormack (Physiology or Medicine, 1979) for the development of CT scanning technology; Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 1982); Desmond Tutu (Peace, 1984); Nadine Gordimer (Literature, 1991); Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk (Peace, 1993); Sydney Brenner (Physiology or Medicine, 2002, for helping map the very fabric of human DNA); John Maxwell Coetzee (Literature, 2003); and Michael Levitt (Chemistry, 2013).

1961 The frigate HMS Leopard is sent from Cape Town to evacuate the population of the island of Tristan da Cunha.

1971 Sold, dismantled and moved to the US, London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City.

1975 Unlucky in love, Elizabeth Taylor marries for a sixth time, re-marrying Richard Burton in Botswana. In all, she tied the knot eight times.

2002 President Thabo Mbeki publicly opposes the provision of Aids drugs, arguing that they are dangerously toxic and questioning whether HIV or poverty is the true cause of Aids.

2015 Bomb blasts in Ankara, Turkey, kill at least 102 people and injure more than 400.

2017 A powerful storm lashes KZN, with Durban and its surrounds particularly hard hit. The strength of the wind was such that ships broke their moorings, with one, the MSC Ines, lodged across the harbour mouth. At least eight people lost their lives. | THE HISTORIAN