ON THIS DAY, JUNE 5

1692 Jochem Willemse rescues most of the crew of the Hoogergeest when it is wrecked, together with the Goede Hoop and Oranje, near the mouth of the Salt River, in the Cape.

1752 The expedition of August Beutler, who left the Castle in the Cape in February, reaches the Keiskamma in the Eastern Cape.

1873 The name of De Beer’s New Rush is changed to Kimberley.

1873 Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar

closes the island’s great slave market.

1883 The first regularly scheduled Orient Express leaves Paris.

1916 Britain’s Lord Kitchener, who played a major role in the Anglo-Boer War, drowns when the SS Hampshire sinks after being hit by a German mine near the Orkney Islands.

1918 The Broederbond is founded in Johannesburg to advance the cultural traditions of Afrikaans.

1944 Bombers drop 5 000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1947 US Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe. It becomes known as the Marshall Plan.

1956 Elvis Presley introduces his new single,

Hound Dog, on TV, scandalising the audience with his suggestive hip movements.

1963 The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns amid a sex scandal with a prostitute who is also consorting with a member of the Russian embassy.

1967 Israel launches the Six-Day War.

1975 The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War 8 years before.

1981 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the first cases of Aids.

1998 Thulane ‘Sugarboy Malinga’ wins the WBF super-middleweight title.

2006 Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda seize Somalia’s capital, unifying the city for the first time in 16 years and posing a direct challenge to the UN-backed government.

2019 The average person ingests 50 000 pieces of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar amount, according to a study – the first of its kind – published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

| THE HISTORIAN