ON THIS DAY
MARCH 15
44BC Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome – a turning point in world history.
Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, is slain by Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, while the two are feasting together.
Diocesan College School (aka Bishop’s) is founded by Bishop Robert Gray in Rondebosch, Cape Town, with six pupils.
Six US and German warships are sunk by a typhoon in Apia harbour, Samoa, 200 die.
British premier Lord Salisbury rejects US President William McKinley’s offer to mediate in the Anglo-Boer War.
Talaat Pasha, the chief architect of the Armenian Genocide, is assassinated in Berlin by a 23-year-old Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian.
Welsh-born miner Samuel Long, 31, is arrested after an artillery bombardment ends the Rand Revolt – at the cost of 200 lives. President Jan Smuts crushed the rebellion with 20 000 troops, artillery, tanks and bombers. His actions caused a political backlash, and in the 1924 elections his South African Party lost to a National Party and Labour Party coalition, which drafted laws to recognise white trade unions and reinforce the colour bar. “Taffy” Long – one of SA’s greatest working-class martyrs – was arrested, charged with murder. Many thought him innocent, but in the tensions of the time he was an Engelsman who had, allegedly, killed an Afrikaner. After two trials, he was found guilty and hanged.
In Réunion, 1 870mm of rain falls in 24 hours, setting a new world record.
The first internet domain name (symbolics.com) is registered.
Angola releases the bodies of two South African commandos killed in a raid in Cabinda in 1985. In exchange, 12 captured MPLA soldiers are repatriated.
The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (the Two Plus Four Agreement) comes into effect, with the four occupying military powers renouncing all rights they held, allowing a divided Germany to reunite.
Beginning of the Syrian Civil War.