Nov 25 in History

1667 — A deadly earthquake with its epicentre close to the city of Shamakhi, Azerbaijan, (then part of Safavid Iran) kills 80,000 people.

1787 — Franz Xaver Gruber, Austrian primary school teacher, organist and composer (music for “Silent Night”), is born in Unterweizburg.

1834 — Delmonico’s, one of NYC’s finest restaurants, provides a meal of soup, steak, half a pie and coffee for 12 cents.

1839 — A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 17m storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa. The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.

1844 — Karl Friedrich Benz, pioneer of early motor cars, is born in Mühlburg, Karlsruhe, Germany. His 1885 Benz Patent Motorcar is considered the first practical automobile. He receives a patent for the car on January 29 1886.

1914 — Joe DiMaggio, US baseball star, is born in Martinez, California. He plays his entire 13-year Major League Baseball career for the New York Yankees. Considered one of the greatest players of all time, he is best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 - July 16 1941), a record that still stands. He is also remembered for his nine-month marriage in 1954 and lifelong devotion to Marilyn Monroe.

1917 — German and Askari forces defeat a small Portuguese army at Ngomano in Portuguese East Africa during the East African Campaign of WW1. 1945 — Stanley Bongani Nkosi, SA artist who builds an art gallery in Katlehong in 1982, is born in Newcastle, Natal.

1952 — Agatha Christie’s murder mystery “The Mousetrap” opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. On March 25 1974 it moves, uninterrupted, to the larger St Martin’s Theatre where it celebrates 27,500 performances on September 18 2018.

1963 — Assassinated (on November 22) US President John F Kennedy, 46, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington D.C., on his son John F jnr’s third birthday. In Fort Worth, Texas, JFK’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, who was shot dead the day before by Jack Ruby, is buried at Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park.

1970 — Yukio Mishima (penname for Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director and nationalist Kimikate Hiraoka), 45, invades the Self Defence Force headquarters in Tokyo and commits seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) after failing to inspire soldiers to stage a coup d’état to restore the emperor’s power. He is beheaded by a member of Tatenokai, his own private militia group.