ON THIS DAY JANUARY 30

1647 The Scots agree to sell the exiled King Charles I, who had lost the English civil war, to England’s parliament for £400.

1649 King Charles I of England is beheaded. On his execution he insisted on wearing an extra shirt because he did not want shivers of cold to be misinterpreted as those of fear.

1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, is ritually executed two years after his death – and on the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I – on the orders of King Charles II. Cromwell and two others are dug up from interrment at Westminster Abbey and ‘executed’ – despite already being dead – for regicide. Hanged in chains before being beheaded, the bodies, or what was left of them, were thrown into common graves, and their heads were placed on spikes above Westminster Hall. During a storm in 1685 – five years later – Cromwell’s head reportedly fell from the spike and was thrown to the ground. It has since been through numerous hands, in various private and museum collections before being buried at Cambridge University.

1703 The forty-seven rōnin avenge the death of their master in Japan.

1883 The Ashes Test series comes about when the England team is presented with the ashes of a bail after playing Australia in Sydney.

1945 The Wilhelm Gustloff, full of German refugees, is torpedoed in the Baltic by a Soviet submarine, killing 9 500 people.

1948 Mohandas Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.

1959 The MS Hans Hedtoft, said to be the safest ship afloat and ‘unsinkable’, strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sinks, with the loss of all 95 aboard.s

1981 Twenty-four people are killed in Operation Beanbag – an attack by the South African army on the ANC and PAC in Maputo. 1982 Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program called “Elk Cloner”. 1984 Stander gang member Patrick Mccall is killed by police in Houghton, Johannesburg. 2020 The World Health Organization declares Covid-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. | THE HISTORIAN