ON THIS DAY, FEBRUARY 21

1784 The settlement and stronghold in Crimea called Akhtiar gains the name, Sevastopol, it bears today. The name in Greek means ‘magnificent’.

1797 Britain is invaded for the last time.

1803 Britain returns the Cape to the Netherlands.

1808 Without declaring war, Russian troops cross the Swedish border, beginning the Finnish War, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (Finland).

1850 Laden with prisoners, the ship Neptune returns to England from Simon’s Bay, where it had been anchored from September 1849. The 288 prisoners shackled aboard couldn’t go ashore because the burghers opposed a penal settlement, such as in Australia, in the Cape Colony.

1910 The legless fighter ace who fought in the Battle of Britain, Royal Air Force Group

Captain Sir Douglas Bader is born.

1917 The troopship SS Mendi collides with the RMS Darro near the Isle of Wright and sinks aking with her 616 Black South Africans, who were on their way to France to fight for the Allies. ‘Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do ... you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers ... Swazis, Pondos, Basotho ... so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies’, were reputed to be the last words of Rev Wauchope Dyobha, who went down with the ship.

1918 Australians chase Turkish troops out of Jericho, in Dutch Palestine.

1965 Activist Malcolm X is shot dead by

Nation of Islam followers in New York City.

1973 Israeli fighter jets down a Libyan passenger plane over the Sinai, killing 108.

1995 Steve Fossett lands in Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2019 The Lunar Library, a 30-million page digital library is launched on board Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander, with the aim of it being stored on the Moon. | THE HISTORIAN