ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 8

1714 A deadly riot breaks out in Alkmaar in the Netherlands in the wake of a beer tax.

1737 A cyclone causes 40-foot waves that kill 300 000 people in Calcutta, India.

1918 American soldier Alvin York singlehandedly attacks a German machine-gun nest, killing at least 25 Germans and capturing 132 more in France’s Argonne Forest.

1944 The biggest and most spectacular mutiny and escape attempt in Auschwitz occurs when Jews set one of the crematoria on fire and attack SS soldiers. Some of the prisoners cut through the fence and reach the outside, but are hunted down and killed. About 250 Jews died fighting.

1945 The microwave oven is patented.

1967 Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are surrounded and captured in Bolivia by the country’s soldiers. A TV documentary, My Enemy’s Enemy, alleges that Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie advised and possibly helped the CIA orchestrate Guevara’s capture.

1978 Australia’s Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 511.09 km/h. 1993 Acting on bad intelligence, army special forces raid an Mthatha home, killing five youths, including two 12-year-olds, in their beds.

1993 The UN lifts all mandatory sanctions against South Africa, paving the way for the country’s re-admission to the organisation. 1999 The Khoi and San National Language Body is officially launched in Upington. Its aim is to promote and develop the languages. 2001 A Cessna and a Scandinavian Airlines jetliner collide in heavy fog during take-off from Milan, Italy, killing 118 people.

2004 Kenyan Wangari Maathai becomes the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. 2005 A strong earthquake in Kashmir kills 86 000 people and injures another 75 000. More than 2.8 million are left homeless.

2018 A UN report says the planet will warm by 1.5ºc by 2040 with dire results.

2019 The FBI says Samuel Little is the US’S worst serial killer, with 93 confessed murders. | THE HISTORIAN