ON THIS DAY, JUNE 1

4 000BC Approximate date of domestication of the horse on the Eurasian steppes near Dereivka, in central Ukraine.

1215 Beijing is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan.

1495 The first record of Scotch whisky appears. Friar John Cor is the distiller.

1773 The Jonge Thomas, a Dutch East India ship, is wrecked in a gale near Salt River mouth in Table Bay. Wolraad Woltemade, passing by on horseback, makes seven trips to the wreck and saves 14 people. On his eighth trip, he and his horse drown when frantic seamen pull them under the waves.

1824 Lord Charles Somerset, the governor of the Cape, is linked to Dr James Barry (who was allegedly a woman) in a scurrilous placard in the Heerengracht, Cape Town.

1845 A homing pigeon completes the 11 000km trip from Namibia to London, UK, in 55 days.

1879 The Prince Imperial of France, 22, the last of the Bonaparte dynasty, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War.

1900 The British army occupies Pretoria. 1908 John Krohn begins to walk the perimeter of the US, which takes 357 days.

1948 Engenas Barnabas Lekganyane (also called Enginasi or Ignatius), leader of the Zion Christian Church, is laid to rest in Moria, Pietersburg district.

1948 Israel and Arabs agree to a ceasefire. 1962 SS officer Adolf Eichmann is executed in Israel for war crimes.

1965 A coal mine explosion in Fukuoka, Japan, kills 236.

1999 Bloomberg reports that June 1 is the anniversary of text messages – with well over 8 trillion messages sent yearly.

2001 Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills several members of his family, including his father and mother.

2001 Nkosi Johnson, an HIV-positive pupil and activist, dies.

2002 Disgraced former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje is killed when the light plane he is in crashes into a mountain near George.

2009 An Air France plane disappears off Brazil. All 228 passengers and crew are presumed dead. | THE HISTORIAN