ON THIS DAY

IN HISTORY

1789 The women of Paris march to the royal palace Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, to demand bread and to have the king and his court moved to Paris.

1793 Christianity is disestablished in France. 1864 Most of Calcutta is destroyed by a cyclone in which about 60 000 die.

1869 A strong hurricane known as the Saxby Gale devastates the Bay of Fundy, in Canada. Incredibly, British naval officer Stephen

Martin Saxby, using astronomy, predicted the storm 10 months earlier.

1886 ZAR official Johann Rissik sends a plan for the surveying of a new town to surveyor JE de Villiers, remarking that the town’s name is to be Johannesburg.

1910 Portugal overthrows its monarchy, and becomes a republic.

1914 An aircraft successfully destroys another aircraft with gunfire for the first time.

1916 Adolf Hitler is wounded in the left thigh during the Battle of the Somme.

1942 Some 90 French-Jewish women are beaten to death by guards at Auschwitz.

1943 A US air raid on Wake Island sees 98 US prisoners executed in retaliation.

1945 Hollywood Black Friday: a strike by film set decorators turns into a bloody riot at the gates of Warner Brothers’ studios.

1965 A train accident at Effingham, Natal, claims the lives of 88 people.

1974 The Guildford pub bombing by the IRA leaves kills five people and injures 65.

1982 An unmanned rocket sled streaks to a speed of 9 851km/h at White Sands, New Mexico. (The current record – set in April 2003 – is 10 385.755km/h.)

1983 The leaders of six black homelands reject the tricameral constitution. Their statement is also signed by a number of black business and church leaders.

2000 Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to the resignation of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević. These demonstrations are often called the Bulldozer Revolution.

2013 In an all-Russian contest, Wladimir Klitschko beats Alexander Povetkin in an unanimous points decision in Moscow to retain his WBA, WBO, IBF and IBO heavyweight boxing belts.

2014 French driver Jules Bianchi collides with a recovery vehicle during Japanese Grand Prix. He dies two days later and is first F1 death in 21 years. The last was Ayrton Senna in 1994. | THE HISTORIAN