ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 11

1297 The Scots, led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray, defeat the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

1541 The Spanish settlement of Santiago, Chile, is destroyed by local warriors.

1773 US founding father Ben Franklin writes, “There never was a good war or bad peace.”

1792 French crown jewels stolen from a royal storehouse in Paris during the Reign of Terror.

1812 A Russian-American company establishes Fortress Ross – first Russian settlement on the west coast of North America (modern California).

1875 The first newspaper cartoon strip is published in the US.

1896 Johannesburg is named after Johann Friedrich Bernhard Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert.

1900 Transvaal president Paul Kruger crosses border on way to Lourenço Marques (Maputo). 1900 Martial law is declared in the Transvaal. 1906 Mahatma Gandhi coins the term “Satyagraha” to characterise the non-violence movement.

1914 Australia invades New Britain, in New Guinea, defeating a German contingent at the Battle of Bita Paka.

1919 US Marines invade Honduras.

1926 Spain leaves League of Nations because of Germany joining.

1930 An eruption of the Stromboli volcano in Sicily hurls 2-ton rocks up to 2 miles high.

1944 An RAF raid on Darmstadt, Germany, causes a firestorm that kills 11 500 people.

1946 The Natal Indian Congress declines an invitation to enable Indian community members to see the Royal family on their visit to Durban. 1950 Comic strip Beetle Bailey makes debut. 1950 Former prime minister General Jan Christiaan Smuts, 80, dies on his farm Doornkloof, near Pretoria.

1987 A shoot-out at Jean-Bertrand Aristides’ church in Haiti leaves 12 people dead.

2001 9/11, or the September 11 attacks – a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks – kills 2 996 people by using two hijacked airliners to bring down the World Trade Centre in New York City; a third crashes into The Pentagon near Washington; and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania after a fight-back by passengers.

2012 Fires at clothing factories in Pakistan kill 315 people.

2014 Olympian and Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is found not guilty of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (but is later found guilty of culpable homicide).

2015 A crane collapses on to a mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring 394.