ON THIS DAY NOVEMBER 19

address in less than two minutes. His words come to symbolise the definition of democracy. 1872 Mpande kasenzangakhona, Zulu king and half-brother of Shaka and Dingane, dies at his kraal, Nodwengu, in Zululand. He comes to power after overthrowing Dingane in 1840. 1941 During a mutually destructive engagement between the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and a modified German merchant ship, Kormoran, the ships blow each other out of the water off Western Australia.

All 645 Australians and 77 German seamen are killed. Sydney is the largest Allied warship lost with all hands during World War II. Her sinking is met with astonishment, but overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then the loss of two British capital ships near Singapore. 1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to visit Israel. 1978 In Jonestown, Guyana, the biggest mass suicide occurs when Rev Jim Jones and 900 cult followers drink cyanide-laced fruit juice. 1981 Civil rights attorney Griffiths Mxenge is found stabbed in Umlazi, Durban.

1984 Explosions at a petrol facility in Mexico City kill about 500 people.

1985 US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for first time. 2017 Oumuamua first detected by scientists – 400 metres long and reddish – the first known interstellar object in our solar system of possible alien origin. | THE HISTORIAN