ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 7

1492 Christopher Columbus changes course and misses Florida. If he hadn’t altered direction, he would have been the acknowledged discoverer of mainland America, not Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the continents are named.

1571 Battle of Lepanto: The Holy League of southern European nations destroy Ottoman fleet in significant loss off Western Greece. The battle marked the last time oar propelled ships did battle, and, more importantly, thwarted Ottoman plans for conquering Europe and converting it to Islam.

1940 The Mccollum memo proposes bringing the US into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the US.

1965 Charles Linster does 6 006 consecutive push- ups. His record doesn’t last – in 1993 Charles Servizio does 46 001 in 24 hours. 1979 Ferrari’s Jody Scheckter becomes the first South African to win the Formula One World Drivers Championship.

1983 The Steenberg Estate, originally Zwaanswyk, is declared a national monument. It has known its share of gutsy women through the years; as a lone widow of 22, Catharina Ras, the first owner of “the Farm below the stone Mountain”, boarded a ship just 10 years after the arrival in South Africa of Jan van Riebeeck. She made the perilous journey from Lubeck on the Baltic Coast of Germany to the furthest tip of Africa. What she found when she arrived was no land of milk and honey. Instead, it was a fierce, wild place; 20 years and five husbands later, the fiercely independent Ras convinced Cape Governor Simon van der Stel to grant her the mandate “to cultivate, to plough, to sow and also to possess” a 25- morgen portion of land at the foot of “Steenberg” ( Table Mountain) – and thus was born the first farm in the Constantia Valley.

1985 PLO terrorists seize the ill- fated Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro.

2001 The US invasion of Afghanistan starts with an air assault and covert operations. 2008 An asteroid impacts the Earth over Sudan – it is the first time an asteroid impact is detected before its entry into earth’s atmosphere.