ON THIS DAY
1199 King Richard I (the Lionheart) of England dies of an infected arrow wound. 1652 Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp that becomes Cape Town.
1722 Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, ends a much-hated tax beard tax, which had been introduced to bring Russian society in line with Western Europe. The police were allowed to forcibly and publicly shave those who refused to pay the tax, which varied, depending on one’s status.
1874 Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen buys the section of the farm Lang Leegte – on which the main gold reef of the Witwatersrand was discovered – for £100. 1889 George Eastman begins selling his Kodak flexible rolled film for the first time. 1896 The first of the modern Olympic Games begins in Athens.
1900 General Lord Methuen buries Combat-general De Villebois-mareuil with full military honours; 1 500 men of the Loyal North Lancashires form the guard of honour. 1903 The Kishinev pogrom in Bessarabia forces tens of thousands of Jews to flee. 1917 The US declares war on Germany, which turn the tide of World War I.
1938 Teflon is invented.
1941 The SA Brigade enters Addis Ababa, taking it from the Italian occupiers.
1945 Japan launches a massive kamikaze attack on the US battle fleet at Okinawa. 1959 Robert Sobukwe leaves the ANC to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). 1965 Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite, is launched.
1966 Recognised by The Guinness Book of Records as the world’s greatest longdistance swimmer, Mihir Sen swims the Palk Strait between Sri Lanka and India.
1974 ABBA wins the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo, launching their international career.
1980 The ubiquitous Post It Notes (stickies) introduced.
1992 The Human Rights Commission says that violence has reached unprecedented levels with 437 persons killed in March, because “of forces working to destabilise the peace process”.
1994 The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi die in a plane crash in Rwanda, setting off the slaughter of 500 000 Rwandans, over the next three months. 1994 Rockwell B-1B Lancer bombers break 11 world speed records.
2017 The US fires 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria. | The Historian