ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 15
1793 Hated by the populace, Queen Marie Antoinette of France is tried and convicted in a swift trial in Paris.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on the island of St Helena to begin his exile.
1889 Queen Victoria issues a charter for the formation of the British South Africa Company to further the influence of the British Empire on the African continent.
1899 Siege of Kimberley by the Boers begins. 1917 Mata Hari – one of the most famous spies of the 20th century – is shaken awake in her prison cell. Her time had come. ‘I am ready,’ she says as she is led to face the firing squad, staring at them until the last after refusing a blindfold. Recently published family letters paint her as a mother who escaped an abusive marriage, and became a scapegoat for a war-torn France looking to distract the public from heavy casualties on the front lines.
1927 DF Malan is the first South African cabinet minister to travel by air. He leaves Cape Town at 6.30am and arrives in Johannesburg 10 hours later.
1932 Tata Airlines (later Air India) makes its first flight.
1951 A Dakota aircraft, Paardeberg, crashes on Ingeli Mountain near Kokstad, killing all 17 occupants.
1989 Eight people convicted in South Africa’s Rivonia Trial are released from prison.
1990 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for easing Cold War tensions and opening up his nation.
1993 Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk share the Nobel Peace Prize for ending apartheid and ushering in a non-racial democracy.
2017 About 500 wildfires occur in Portugal and northern Spain, fanned by winds from Hurricane Ophelia, killing at least 35 people. 2017 Actress Alyssa Milano’s tweet “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, write ‘me too’” prompts flood of replies across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
2019 A gunfight between Mexican security forces and armed civilians leaves 15 dead in Guerrero state, a day after 13 police were killed in a drug cartel ambush in Michoacán state. 2021 British MP Sir David Amess is stabbed to death at a meeting of constituents in Leigh-onSea, Essex, England. | THE HISTORIAN