ON THIS DAY JANUARY 23
971 Using crossbows, Song dynasty troops soundly defeat a war elephant corps of the Southern Han at Shao, China.
1556 The deadliest earthquake in history kills up to 830 000 people in China’s Shaanxi province.
1795 After a charge across the frozen Zuiderzee, the French cavalry capture 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns, in a rare case of a battle between ships and cavalry.
1879 The overnight attack on Rorke’s Drift is repulsed at about 4am when the decimated Zulu regiments are withdrawn.
1897 Isaac Pitman dies. He was the founder of a form of shorthand that was a standard tool in the armoury of many a reporter, among others. 1900 At the Battle of Spioenkop, the Boers beat off a British attempt to break the Siege of Ladysmith.
1903 Colonel Arthur Alfred Lynch is found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death for leading the ‘Irish Commando’ alongside the Boers against British forces. The sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment.
1920 The Netherlands refuses to surrender exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Allies. The last Prussian king and German emperor lives at Huis Doorn, in the Netherlands, until his death in 1941. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler, although the German Chancellor and tyrant thought little of him. 1960 The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10 911m in the Pacific Ocean. The record stands until 2019 when French businessman Victor Vescovo pilots his submersible down to 10 927m in the Challenger Deep part of the Mariana Trench – where the previous record was set. There, Veriscovo, who uniquely has stood on the top of earth’s highest point, Mt Everest, and been to its deepest point, found both life and plastic trash.
1999 Sifiso Nkabinde, secretary-general of the UDM, is shot dead at Richmond, in KZN.
2002 US journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and murdered.
2018 Twelve camels are disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel beauty contest after their owners used botox on their lips. | THE HISTORIAN