ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

534BC Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character onstage.

1174 Saladin enters Damascus, and adds it to his domain.

1900 Major-General Smith-Dorrien, leaving only the church standing, razes Dullstroom to the ground during the Anglo-Boer War.

1499 Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.

1882 The families who survived the Thirstland Trek and made it to Angola, are naturalised as Portuguese subjects.

1921 US President Warren G Harding signs Willis-Campbell Act (anti-beer bill) forbidding doctors prescribing beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.

1939 The British armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi is sunk by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. 1942 Japan bombs Port Darwin, Australia. 1946 The French cruiser Suffren shells the Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing 6 000.

1976 Apneist Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100m undersea without breathing equipment.

1977 Rhodesia attacks guerrilla bases in Mozambique, killing more than a thousand people.

1980 A series of earthquakes devastate southern Italy, killing 4 000 people.

1992 The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, is introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes off the Comoros, killing 125.

2004 Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu, delivering the second annual Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, issues a stern warning that black economic empowerment is benefiting only a small elite while South Africa is “sitting on a powder keg” of poverty.

2005 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf becomes president of Liberia – the first woman to lead an African country.

2006 Bombings in Sadr City, Iraq, kill at least 215 people and injure 257.

2017 Brazilian footballer Robinho sentenced to nine years in prison for rape in Italy. | The Historian