ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 2

1187 Saladin captures Jerusalem.

1492 King Henry VII invades France.

1836 After five years at sea, Charles Darwin returns to England aboard the HMS Beagle with his thinking about the origin of the species radically altered.

1869 Mohandas Gandhi is born in Porbandar, Gujarat, India. An Indian firm in the Transvaal offers him work and he arrives in Durban in 1893 to serve as legal counsel to a merchant. 1899 Christiaan de Wet, 45, and his eldest son, Kotie, are called up as ordinary burghers in the Heilbron commando. His sons Izak and Christiaan enlist as volunteers and the four report for duty in the coming Anglo-Boer War. Riding Fleur, the white Arab horse he bought for the war, De Wet, as a general, would go on to launch a guerrilla-style offensive for which he was to become legendary.

1904 German General Lothar von Trotha issues the extermination order for Nambia’s Herero people – the first genocide of the 20th century – in which 65 000 Herero and 100 000 Nama die.

1942 The converted liner Queen Mary, carrying thousands of US troops, slices the cruiser HMS Curacao in half, killing 337 men. 1971 A homing pigeon sets a record when it averages 133km/h in a 1 100km race in Australia.

1975 The Ulster Volunteer Force kills seven civilians in a series of attacks across Northern Ireland, but four of its members die after their bomb explodes unexpectedly.

1980 Muhammad “The Greatest” Ali,

38, comes out of retirement to challenge undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes. After being pounded unmercifully for 10 rounds, Ali’s corner throws in the towel.

2003 Secretive author JM Coetzee wins the Nobel prize for literature for his dark meditations on South Africa, colonialism and apartheid which have been acclaimed for reflecting the human condition.

2018 Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he is murdered. | THE HISTORIAN