BACK IN THE DAY
MARCH 25
1199 England’s King Richard I (the legendary Richard the Lionheart) is hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt in France. The wound becomes gangrenous and the king dies, aged 41. Legend has it that the bolt was fired by a boy seeking revenge for his family’s death. 1609 The Dutch East India Company orders Henry Hudson to try again to find a northwestern sea route to India.
1658 Slavery begins in the Cape with the arrival of the Amersfoort in Table Bay. Onboard are 170 slaves taken from a Portuguese ship. 1807 The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act is passed by the British Parliament. It outlaws the slave trade within the British Empire. Any British captain who was caught transporting slaves was fined £100 for every slave on board. However, many captains simply tossed their human cargo overboard to avoid fines. (Slavery itself was only abolished by an act of parliament in 1833.)
1835 Durban pioneer Captain Allen Gardiner establishes the first educational institution in Natal when a school for Black children opens its doors on the Berea.
1919 US President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations becomes a reality. 1965 Martin Luther King jr and activists complete their 4-day, 80km march from Selma to the capital, Montgomery, Alabama.
1990 The first of more than 100 persons to die during the “Seven Day’s War”, is murdered outside Pietermaritzburg. About 30 000 people flee and 3 000 houses are burned. 1998 US President Bill Clinton acknowledges that the US and the world failed to protect Rwandans from the 1994 campaign of genocide that killed half a million.
2018 Australian cricket captain Steve Smith gets a one-match ban after admitting his team tampered with the ball in the third Test against South Africa.
2019 Nasa cancels a planned historic allfemale spacewalk because it doesn’t have enough spacesuits to fit women.
2019 A British Airways flight from London mistakenly flies to Edinburgh, Scotland, instead of to Düsseldorf, Germany, when the wrong flight plan is submitted. | THE HISTORIAN