ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 23

42 BC Avenging Julius Caesar’s death, Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus’s army. Brutus commits suicide.

1295 The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France – against England – is signed in Paris.

1814 The first plastic surgery is performed, in England.

1838 The Voortrekkers decide to call the first planned town in Natal – up to that time called “Bosjesmansrand” (Bushmen Rand) because of the large numbers of starving Bushmen in the vicinity – Pietermaritzburg, in honour of the two deceased leaders, Piet Retief and Gerrit Maritz.

1880 Chief Mhlontlo (Mhlonthlo) lures Hamilton Hope (resident magistrate at Tsolo in the Eastern Cape) and his staff to Sulenkama where they are massacred, during a revolt against the British.

1911 First use of aircraft in war when an Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Italo-Turkish War.

1920 Twenty-four blacks, part of a crowd demonstrating outside Port Elizabeth’s Baakens Street Police Station, are shot. The shooting is followed by random acts of violence and arson in white suburbs.

1929 The Wall Street Crash, which leads to the Great Depression, occurs.

1942 The decisive second Battle of El Alamein (in the Western Desert), in which many SA soldiers took part, begins with a 1 000-gun barrage.

1944 The largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, begins off the Philippines.

1946 The UN General Assembly convenes for the first time, at Flushing, in Queens, New York City.

1964 Dutchman Anton Geesink stuns the Japanese and wins the Open gold medal in the first Olympic judo competition, thereby preventing a clean sweep of the gold medals by Games hosts Japan.

1983 A truck bomb in Beirut kills 241 US Marines. A French army barracks in Lebanon is bombed, killing 58 troops.

2015 Adele releases Hello, which becomes the first song to be downloaded more than a million times within its first week of release.

2018 World’s longest sea-crossing bridge, the Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai bridge – 55km – opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

2018 The world’s oldest intact shipwreck, an ancient Greek vessel 2 400 years old, found at bottom of the Black Sea by archaeologists.