ON THIS DAY MAY 25

1659 In an abrupt fall from power, Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England, earning the nickname “Tumbledown Dick”.

1720 The ship, Le Grand St Antoine, reaches Marseilles, bringing with it Europe’s last major plague outbreak.

1842 Dick King, 29, and his servant, Ndongeni, 16, swim their horses across Durban harbour and sneak off along the Bluff and down the coast for Grahamstown, fording 120 rivers along the way on an epic ride to seek help against the Boers.

1895 The aptly named playwright and poet Oscar Wilde is convicted of ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’ and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

1932 Goofy, aka Dippy Dawg, first appears in Mickey’s Revue.

1948 Polish war hero Witold Pilecki, sometimes called ‘one of the greatest wartime heroes’ – he got himself arrested so he could gather first-hand information on the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz – is executed by the communist authorities after a show trial in Warsaw.

1953 The US conducts its only nuclear artillery test in Nevada.

1961 US President John F Kennedy says his goal is to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

1967 John Lennon takes delivery of a psychedelically painted Rolls Royce.

1977 The first of the hugely successful Star

Wars movies is released.

1985 A cyclone kills 11 000 people in Bangladesh.

1989 Witwolf Barend Strydom receives eight death sentences for racial murders in Pretoria the previous year.

1994 Justice Richard Goldstone calls for a ‘truth commission’ on apartheid atrocities because ‘victims would not be able to forgive without openness’.

1996 Ian Woodall and Cathy O’dowd become the first official South African team to conquer Mount Everest.

1996 The Blues win the inaugural Super 12 Rugby title with a 45-21 victory over the Natal Sharks at Eden Park. | THE HISTORIAN