Sept 20 in History
1909 — King Edward VII of the United Kingdom proclaims that the Union of South Africa would be established on May 31 1910 in accordance with the South Africa Act 1909.
1934 — Sophia Loren, actress (“The Pride and the Passion”, “Marriage Italian Style”, “It started in Naples”), is born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Rome, Kingdom of Italy. Loren’s performance as Cesira in
“La Ciociara” (released in English as “Two Women”) earns her the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first actor or actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance. It also earns her seven other awards.
1946 — The first Cannes Film Festival opens, having been delayed seven years due to World War 2. On August 31 1939, the grand opening night gala of the (other) first festival took place with a private screening of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. The next day Germany invaded Poland, on September 3 England and France declared war on Germany and the festival is aborted.
1958 — Martin Luther King jnr is stabbed by Izola Curry, a deranged woman, during a book signing in Harlem, New York City. Dr Aubre De Lambert Maynard performs a successful operation on King, who had a letter opener embedded in his sternum. Curry is later found mentally incompetent.
1973 — In their “Battle of the Sexes” match, tennis star Billie Jean King, 29, beats 1930s and ’40s world No 1 Bobby Riggs, 55, 6-4 6-3 6-3 at the Houston Astrodome in Texas.
1973 — Jim Croce, 30, American folk and rock singer-songwriter (“Time in a Bottle”, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”, “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song”), dies in a plane crash near Natchitoches, Louisiana, just as he is beginning to capitalise on his success. Guitarist and songwriter Maury Muehleisen, 24, and four others also die when their plane crashes into a tree while taking off for a concert in Sherman, Texas.
1978 — Prime Minister John Vorster announces his resignation after 12 years in office.
1979 — In the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa (aka Bokass I), emperor of the selfproclaimed, one-party Central African Empire formed by Bokassa in 1976, is toppled in a French-backed coup and the republic is restored.
1980 — Spectacular Bid, ridden by Bill Shoemaker, runs a brilliant solo race in the Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, (covering the 1¼ mile in 2:02.42) after his three challengers dropped out in horse racing’s first walkover since 1949.
1989 — FW de Klerk is elected as the 7th and last State President of SA (until 1994).