ON THIS DAY JULY 7

1456 A retrial verdict acquits Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.

1501 João da Nova, a Portuguese navigator on his way to India, finds letters and a document in a shoe hanging from a milkwood tree at Mossel Bay. 1520 Battle of Otumba Mexico: Hernán Cortés and the Tlaxcalans defeat a numerically superior Aztec force.

1802 Comic book The Wasp is published in Hudson, New York, criticising Republican politicians.

1911 Wimbledon women’s tennis: Dorothea Chambers becomes first player not to concede a game in a Wimbledon tennis final, beating Dora Boothby 6-0, 6-0.

1928 Described as the greatest thing in the baking industry since bread was wrapped, sliced bread is sold for the first time, in Missouri.

1941 US forces land in Iceland to forestall a Nazi invasion.

1952 The liner SS United States crosses the Atlantic in a record time of 82:40.

1985 Boris Becker (17) of West Germany beats Kevin Curren of SA at Wimbledon and becomes the youngest tennis champion.

1973 Seventy eight people drown as a flash flood sweeps a bus into a river in India.

1981 England cricket captain Ian Botham resigns after a dismal no wins in 12 matches under his reign, and losing the 2nd Test against Australia at Lord’s.

1986 After more than 20 years of government banning, Winnie Mandela is freed of all stateordered restrictions.

1996 Nelson Mandela steps down as the country’s president.

1992 In SA’S first ever Fifa-sanctioned match, Bafana Bafana beats Cameroon 1-0 in an international friendly in Durban, the first international game in more than three decades.

2003 US President George W Bush’s administration acknowledges for the first time that Bush relied on faulty intelligence when he claimed in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa – part of its argument for invading Iraq.

2005 Co-ordinated terrorist bomb blasts strike London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour, killing 52 people and injuring 700. |