ON THIS DAY NOVEMBER 22

1497 In the teeth of a howling gale, Vasco da Gama’s little squadron of four ships rounds the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first recorded people to do so, while searching for a sea route to India. (It’s quite possible that the Phoenicians and Chinese did so earlier).

1718 Notorious pirate Blackbeard (Edward Teach) is killed off North Carolina.

1869 In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched. She is one of the last clippers built, and is the only one surviving. 1899 During the Anglo-boer War Battle of Willow Grange in KZN, two British soldiers and two burghers are knocked unconscious by lightning, while a burgher and six horses are killed near Brynbella, not far from Mooi River. 1900 Paul Kruger, exiled president of the Boer Republic, is given a rousing welcome when he lands in Marseilles, France.

1917 A German Zeppelin airship starts a flight from Bulgaria to Khartoum carrying muchneeded supplies to General von Lettow’s troops campaiging in East Africa.

1939 Gangsters Bugsy Siegel, Whitey Krakower, Frankie Carbo and Albert Tannenbaum kill Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg outside his apartment after he’d threatened to snitch on them.

1942 Adolf Hitler orders Rommel’s Afrika Korps to fight to the last man.

1942 General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the occupying German 6th Army is surrounded in Stalingrad. 1963 At 12.30pm, on Elm Street, Dallas, John F Kennedy’s motorcade slowly approaches a triple underpass. Shots ring out and he is struck in the back, then the head. He is rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where 15 doctors tried to save him, but at 1pm the 35th President of the US is pronounced dead. 1986 ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, 20, becomes the youngest heavyweight boxing champion. 1988 A submersible finds the black box of the SAA Boeing 747, Helderberg off Mauritius. 1995 Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery.

2017 Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia”, is convicted of genocide and jailed for life in The Hague. | THE HISTORIAN