Sept 6 in History

1910 — Gerard Bhengu, SA artist, is born at the Mariannhill Mission Station, Centocow, Natal.

1939 — SA joins World War 2. Gen JBM Hertzog, prime minister in the unity government between the National Party and Gen Jan Smuts’s South African Party as the United Party (UP), sought to keep SA neutral. The UP deposed him in favour of Smuts on September 4. Two days later Smuts declares SA at war with Germany and the Axis.

1941 — Monica Mason, ballet dancer, teacher and artistic director of the Royal Ballet, is born in Joburg. 1945 — Bhekisani Manyoni, SA artist, is born in Greytown, Natal.

1958 — The Aula auditorium of the University of Pretoria opens with a ceremony that includes a performance by famed soprano Mimi Coertse.

1965 — India retaliates after Pakistan’s Operation Grand Slam, resulting in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. A cease fire is reached on September 23 and a peace agreement is signed on January 10 1966.

1966 — Prime Minister Dr HF (Hendrik Frensch) Verwoerd is assassinated shortly after entering the House of Assembly in Cape Town at 2.15pm. A parliamentary messenger, Dimitri Tsafendas, stabs him four times in the neck and chest before being subdued by members of the Assembly. Four doctors (all members of Parliament) rush to Verwoerd’s aid and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He is pronounced dead on arrival at Groote Schuur Hospital. 1968 — Swaziland gains independence from Britain. 1970 — Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) members hijack four planes bound for NYC and one for London. Flights from Frankfurt, Zürich and Bahrain (hijacked on the 9th by a PFLP sympathiser) are forced to land at Dawson’s Field near Zarqa in Jordan; a fourth (from Amsterdam) is diverted to Cairo; the fifth hijacking (from Amsterdam) is foiled, Patrick Argüello is shot dead, Leila Khaled is subdued and handed over to British authorities. Most of the

310 hostages are freed on September 11, but the

PFLP detain 40 of them. A swift Jordanian victory (known as Black September in Jordan) in Palestiniancontrolled areas enables a September 30 deal for the release of the hostages in exchange for Khaled and six PFLP members held in Switzerland and Germany. 1976 — Soviet air defence forces pilot Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 fighter jet at Hakodate in Japan and requests political asylum in the US, which is granted. 1983 — The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 with air-to-air missiles on September 1 (killing the 269 people on board), stating that its operatives didn’t know it was a civilian aircraft when it reportedly violated Soviet airspace.