ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1476 Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Dracula) defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1811 Richard Philip (Dick) King, pioneer settler who travelled nearly 1 000km on horseback in 10 days to seek help saving the garrison in Durban from the Boers, is born.

1860 The Belvedere arrives in the Durban harbour with 318 Indian labourers, the second group to arrive to work on the sugar plantations.

1914 The battleship HMS Bulwark explodes at Sheerness Harbour, England; 788 die.

1916 US President Woodrow Wilson declares that ‘The business of neutrality is over. The nature of modern war leaves no state untouched’.

1922 Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3 000 years.

1939 Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates an incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later.

1965 At the Hammaguir launch facility in the Algerian Sahara, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1, on board.

1967 A cloud burst over Lisbon kills about 450 in the floods that follow.

1983 Some 6 800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from a vault at Heathrow Airport. Most of the majority of the gold has never been recovered.

1984 Cyril Ramaphosa, lawyer and general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, is arrested in Lebowa, for organising or planning to take part in a meeting in Namakgale.

1994 The Springboks beat Wales 20-12 in Cardiff.

2003 The Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.

2006 The last international rugby match before demolition of Dublin’s famous Lansdowne Road Stadium is Ireland’s 6117 win over the Pacific Islanders.

2008 Ten co-ordinated attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists kill 164 and injure more than 250 people in Mumbai, India.

2011 Nato forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani checkpoint in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others. | The Historian