ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 14

1066 The Norman conquest of England begins with the Battle of Hastings. It ends with the death of Anglo- Saxon King Harold Godwinson and was a decisive Norman victory. After some skirmishes, William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, was crowned king on Christmas Day.

1639 The first official Governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel, who authorised the expansion of the early Dutch settlement beyond the skirts of Table Mountain, is born on a ship in the Indian Ocean en route to Mauritius. Widely known for his development of the wine industry, he was also the first Cape Governor to be of mixed race- origin – as was his son, Willem Adrian, the second governor – a fact largely unacknowledged by the Apartheid government.

1888 Louis le Prince films the first motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene.

1899 A young reporter, Winston Churchill, who would go on to distinguish himself on the political scene, leaves for South Africa to cover the Anglo- Boer War. Captured by the Boers, he was interrogated by Transvaal state attorney Jan Christiaan Smuts – a man he would come to regard as ‘ a fortifying influence’, and an equal, if not superior. 1913 The UK’S worst coal mining accident, the Senghenydd colliery disaster, kills 439. 1926 The children’s book, Winnie- the- Pooh, by AA Milne, is first published.

1931 Pretoria, established in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, who named it after his father, Andries – a Voortrekker hero from the Battle of Blood River, achieves city status. 1939 A German submarine sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow. 1944 Linked to a plot to kill Hitler, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide. 1957 At least 81 people die in the most devastating flood in Valencia, Spain.

1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis begins.

1947 Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to break the speed of sound.

2012 Felix Baumgartner jumps to Earth from a balloon in the stratosphere.

2017 A truck bombing in Somalia kills 358 people and injures more than 400 others. | THE HISTORIAN