ON THIS DAY

330 Byzantium becomes the capital of the Roman Empire. Renamed Nova Roma during a dedication ceremony, it is more popularly referred to as Constantinople. 868 A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book.

1310 Philip IV of France has 54 members of the Knights Templar burnt at the stake, ostensibly for heresy.

1800 French naturalist Jean-baptiste Lamarck gives a lecture in Paris outlining his theories of evolution.

1891 Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia (later Nicholas II) suffers a critical head injury in a sword attack by a Japanese policeman in a failed assassination attempt.

1903 General Louis Botha lays the corner stone of the Dutch Reformed church in Bosman street, Pretoria. 1915 General Louis Botha, leading the South African troops allied with Britain, enters undefended Windhoek, the capital of German South West Africa, and marches north in pursuit of the retreating German forces.

1924 Daimler-motoren-gesellschaft and Benz & Cie begin their first joint venture (later merge into Mercedes-benz).

1927 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the home of the Oscars, is founded. 1943 American troops invade the Aleutian Islands in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces.

1945 Off Okinawa, the aircraft carrier

USS Bunker Hill is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of its crew. Badly damaged, it returns to the US under its own power. 1960 In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli agents capture fugitive Nazi war criminial Adolf Eichmann.

1997 Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov, becoming the first computer to beat a

world-champion chess player.

1997 At the deadline for applications for amnesty to the TRC almost 8 000 applications have been received.

2012 Chinese scientists break world record by transferring photons over 97km using quantum teleportation.

2015 A record price is paid for a work of art on auction when Picasso’s

The Women of Algiers sells for

$179.3 million at Christies in New York.

| The Historian