ON THIS DAY, APRIL 29

1429 Joan of Arc and her French forces arrive to relieve the Siege of Orléans.

1587 Sir Frances Drake sails into Cadiz and sinks the Spanish fleet, and then boasts of “singeing the King of Spain’s beard”.

1715 Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed sees Uranus for the sixth time.

1829 The freedom of the press is established at the Cape through the efforts of John Fairbairn, founder of oft-banned

South African Commercial Advertiser.

1864 Battle of Gate Pa (Pukehinahina):

1 700 British troops suffer their worst defeat of the New Zealand Wars at the hands of 230 entrenched Maori warriors in Tauranga.

1835 Peace is established between the Cape government and the Xhosa under King Hintsa, ending the Sixth Frontier War.

1863 William Randolph Hearst, sometimes called ‘the master of fake news’, and who built the world’s largest newspaper and magazine business, is born. He fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer, birthing the age of yellow journalism, and believed: “When the reader looks at Page 1 , he says, ‘Gee-whiz’. When he turns to the second page, he says, ‘Holy Moses’. And when he turns to the middle page, he says, ‘God Almighty’.”

1902 A ceasefire is called to allow for a rugby match between the British and Boer forces at Okiep, in Namaqualand.

1936 The enormous Jonker diamond – found on a farm near Pretoria – is cut in three.

1944 British agent Nancy Wake, the Gestapo’s most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison with the Maquis resistance outfit.

1990 Wrecking cranes began demolishing the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

1991 A cyclone in Bangladesh kills at least 138 000 people; 10 million are left homeless.

1995 The world’s longest sausage, at 46km, is made in Kitchener, Ontario.

2011 Watched by millions around the world, Prince William marries Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey.

2020 A 1.6km-wide asteroid passes within 3.9 million miles of Earth. | THE HISTORIAN