ON THIS DAY FEBRUARY 19

1473 Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, Poland. Considered the founder of modern astronomy, he theorised that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the solar system.

1600 Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent and catastrophic eruption recorded, affecting the world’s climate – 1601 was the coldest year in six centuries, causing famine in Russia and the collapse of the German wine industry.

1884 More than 60 tornadoes strike the southern US and kill 800 people.

1896 Eighty people die and 500 are injured when a goods train and a train carrying dynamite collide in Braamfontein.

1900 British troops occupy Hlangwane,

Natal.

1906 Will Keith Kellogg and Charles D

Bolin found the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, now the multinational food manufacturer, Kellogg’s.

1910 ‘Typhoid Mary’ is freed from her first periods of forced isolation, but goes on to cause several further outbreaks of typhoid in the New York area – she is locked up for the rest of her life. An asymptomatic carrier of the disease, she never had symptoms.

1913 Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes – the shortest term.

1914 Four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff is sent by post on from Grangeville, Idaho, to her grandparents’ house 115km away (because it was the cheaper option) in the most famous ‘child in the post’ instance.

1942 Japanese warplanes attack Darwin, Australia, killing 243 people.

1945 Some 30 000 US Marines storm ashore on the island of Iwo Jima.

1945 About 980 Japanese soldiers, hiding in mangrove swamps to escape advancing British troops, are killed by saltwater crocodiles on Ramree Island, Burma.

1954 The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine.

1978 Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport over a hijacking, without permission. The Cypriot National Guard and police kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane.

1994 Gunmen kill 18 ANC supporters in KwaZulu-Natal.

2007 Blogging website Tumblr is founded. 2012 Forty-four people die in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Mexico.

2018 At least 17 people die when a pile of rubbish collapses in Maputo, Mozambique.