ON THIS DAY MARCH 10
241 BC At the Battle of the Aegates, the Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end.
1762 French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son (who committed suicide), dies after being tortured by authorities – the event that inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
1876 Inventor Alexander Graham Bell makes the world’s first telephone call and says to his assistant: “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
1896 After Bob Fitzsimmons KOS the much larger Jim Corbett to win the world heavyweight championship in Carson
City, Nevada, he laconically mutters the memorable line first coined by fellow boxer Joe Walcott the year before: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
1906 A coal-dust explosion in northern France kills 1 099 miners.
1900 The British, under Lord Roberts, beat the Boers in the Battle of Driefontein.
1910 The Republic of China officially abolishes slavery.
1922 Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in
India, tried for sedition and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
1922 Angry striking white workers storm and occupy police stations, railway installations and mines on the Rand. They also attack Joburg’s main post office and power station in a mass protest that quickly turns into open rebellion against the state. Within four days, the revolt is crushed, but at the cost of 153 lives, 72 of them state forces; 534 people are injured.
1969 In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray admits to having assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King jr. 1970 With a team packed with the likes of Mike Proctor, Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow, Pollock brothers Graham and Peter, John Traicos and Lee Irvine, SA give the visiting Australia cricket team a 4-0 series drubbing.
1978 Percy Qoboza, the editor of the banned newspaper The World, is released from detention together with nine other black leaders who were seized during security raids in October 1976.