Interesting and frightening events from South Africa and around the world that we can relate to
AD 41 Roman Emperor Caligula, known for his eccentricity and sadistic despotism, is assassinated by his disgruntled Praetorian Guards.
1679 King Charles II of England dissolves the Cavalier Parliament.
1848 James Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill, sparking the California Gold Rush.
1878 Cable communication is established between England and the Cape.
1899 Rubber heels for boots or shoes are patented by American Humphrey O’Sullivan.
1901 Emily Hobhouse says she found 2 000 women and children in shocking conditions in Bloemfontein’s concentration camp.
1908 Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell publishes Scouting for Boys as a manual for self-instruction in outdoor skills and self-improvement. The book becomes the inspiration for the Scout Movement.
1915 British battlecruisers engage the German fleet in the Battle of Dogger Bank – one of the main naval battles of World War I.
1924 The Russian city of St Petersburg is renamed Leningrad (changed back in 1991).
1939 Thirty thousand people are killed by an earthquake in Concepcion Chile.
1943 Adolf Hitler orders besieged German troops at Stalingrad to fight to the death.
1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two 2-4 megaton nuclear bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains buried in the ground.
1965 Winston Churchill dies. He had been Britain’s wartime prime minister whose leadership and defiant rhetoric had fortified the British during their long struggle against Hitler’s Germany. ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,’ he stated at the beginning of World War II.
1966 An Air India Boeing-707 crashes into Mont Blanc, France, killing 117 people.
1972 Japanese Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he has been since the end of World War II.
1984 Apple Computer unveils its revolutionary Macintosh personal computer.
2011 At least 35 die and 180 are injured in a bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.
2019 17 temperature records broken in South Australia, including highest ever recorded for capital Adelaide at 46.6C.
2019 The search for missing Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala is called off after rescuers fail to find his aircraft which disappeared from radar over English Channel 3 days earlier. The search resumes funded by soccer community donation. The wreckage of the plane is discovered on February 3.