ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 5
1661 Nicolas Fouquet, King Louis XIV’s Superintendent of Finances is arrested by D’Artagnan, captain of the king’s musketeers. 1666 The Great Fire of London ends, leaving 13 200 houses destroyed and 8 people dead. 1698 Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great imposes a tax on beards.
1847 Wild West legend Jesse James is born in Centerville, Missouri. Following the American Civil War, Jesse and his brother Frank form a group of outlaws, robbing banks, trains, stagecoaches and stores. A member of his gang shoots Jesse, 34, in the back of the head and claims the reward. Killer, Robert Ford, is killed by a shotgun blast 10 years later. His killer dies while trying to shoot a policeman (you live by the gun, you die by the gun).
1851 Allen Francis Gardiner, a missionary in Port Natal during the reign of Dingane, and later in Chile, New Guinea and Patagonia, dies of starvation, together with six companions in Tierra del Fuego, South America.
1889 The modern bra is patented.
1960 Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) wins gold at the Olympic Games in Rome.
1970 Jochen Rindt becomes the only driver to posthumously win the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship.
1972 Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic Team are killed by the Palestinian Liberation Army’s Black September faction.
1997 Mother Teresa, 87, dies in Calcutta after a life spent aiding the sick and poor.
2010 Canterbury earthquake: a 7.1 magnitude earthquake strikes New Zealand’s South Island, causing widespread damage and power outages. The damage cost up to $40 billion and many in the South African insurance industry were flown out to help with claims. 2016 Mother Teresa canonized by Pope Francis, making her a saint.
2018 Amazon becomes America’s second trillion-dollar company after Apple.
2019 SA women march to parliament in protest about gender-based violence after a month in which 30 died by their spouse’s hand. 2019 Erramatti Mangamma, 74, becomes the world’s oldest living mother when she gives birth to twins in Hyderabad, India. | THE HISTORIAN