April 12 in History

1877 — The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal as part of a wider scheme to unify the subcontinent under British rule.

1911 — French aviator Pierre Prier (chief instructor at the Blériot flying school in Hendon, England) completes the first nonstop flight between London (Hendon) and Paris (Issy-les-Moulineaux) in three hours and 56 minutes in a Blériot monoplane.

1955 — The Salk Vaccine — the first effective polio vaccine developed in 1952 by Dr Jonas Salk and a team at the University of Pittsburgh — is declared safe and effective.

1961 — Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut, becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform a manned orbital flight, thus giving the Russians an early victory in the Cold War Space Race. His capsule, Vostok 1 (guided entirely from the ground), orbits Earth once before making a safe landing.

1969 — Lucas Radebe, soccer player, is born in Soweto. He represents SA in 70 matches (19922003) — winner of the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations and SA captain at the World Cup in 1998 and 2002. 1973 — King Sobhuza II of Swaziland repeals the constitution and dissolves parliament, making himself absolute ruler. Political parties are banned and a state of emergency is declared.

1975 — Joséphine Baker, 68, US-French revue artist (Folies-Bergère), dies of a cerebral haemorrhage alone in her apartment in Paris, France.

1980 — Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe stages a coup d’état in Liberia. Doe, a high school dropout, and a few soldiers kill President William Tolbert and a dozen of his ministers. Doe becomes one of Liberia’s most brutal dictators. He is overthrown, captured and tortured to death on September 9 1990, at age 39. 1981 — The first space shuttle, Columbia, carrying astronauts Robert L Crippen and John W Young, blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on its first test flight. It returns on April 14, 54.5 hours later, having orbited Earth 36 times.

1981 — Joe (Brown Bomber) Louis, 66, heavyweight world champion boxer (1937-49), dies of cardiac arrest in Desert Springs Hospital near Las Vegas. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery under a waiver by President Ronald Reagan.

1988 — Alan Stewart Paton, 85, South African author (“Cry, the Beloved Country”, 1948) and antiapartheid activist, dies in Durban. He co-founded and served as president of the Liberal Party (1953-68). 1992 — Chad le Clos, Olympic, world and Commonwealth Games champion swimmer, is born in Durban.