ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 3

301 San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world’s oldest republic, is founded by Saint Marinus.

1260 The Mamluks defeat the Mongols in Palestine, marking the latter’s first real defeat and checking their advance from the east. 1752 The British Empire adopts the Gregorian Calendar, losing 11 days. People riot, believing the government had stolen 11 days of their lives. 1783 The Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain.

1841 Cape Governor Sir George Napier refuses to acknowledge the independence of Natalia, the short-lived Boer republic in what is today KwaZulu-Natal.

1916 The Allies turn back the Germans at the Battle of Verdun, on the Western Front.

1929 The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches an all-time high of 381.17, to be followed soon by the Great Crash of 1929. 1939 Britain declares war on Germany.

1939 Unity Mitford, English socialite and part of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle of friends, is so distraught about the outbreak of war between England and Germany that she shoots herself in the head. Allowed safe passage back to England, she never recovers from the extensive brain damage, dying in 1948 from meningitis related to the bullet in her brain. 1956 US Army tanks are deployed against racist demonstrators in Clinton, Tennessee. 1978 A Vickers Viscount airliner is shot down over Rhodesia by Zipra insurgents. Thirty-eight passengers and crew are killed on impact, 10 are shot by Zipra fighters, but 8 survive.

1988 About 50 000 Kurds are killed by Iraq. 1989 Thousands of blacks swim at South Africa’s ‘white’ beaches in a nationwide show of defiance.

2004 The Beslan school massacre ends with the deaths of 344 people.

2007 Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti, hailed as the greatest tenor of his generation, dies of cancer.

2020 MacKenzie Scott, former wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, becomes the world’s richest woman, worth $68 billion. She promises to give it all away, ‘until the safe is empty’, and has been making donations at a faster rate than any billionaire, donating $12.5 billion in less than two years. | THE HISTORIAN