Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history This video grab shows President Nelson Mandela holding the hand of his bride, Graca Machel, after their wedding in Pretoria. Picture: AFP
Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
64AD The Great Fire of Rome begins under the Emperor Nero. It destroys 70% of the city, but he never did fiddle while Rome burnt. That was made up.
1743 The first half-page newspaper advert is published, in the NY Weekly Journal.
1914 Mohandas Gandhi, after successfully leading campaigns of Passive Resistance in this country, leaves Cape Town for India.
1918 Rholihlahla Mandela is born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, Transkei. The world comes to know him as Nelson Mandela.
1915 The Second Battle of Isonzo, between the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies, begins. The slaughter sees 80 000 casualties.
1925 Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf. The first title was the more catchy Four and a Half Years Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.
1926 Author and journalist Herman Charles Bosman (Herman Malan) shoots and kills his stepbrother David Russell during a quarrel.
1936 The Spanish Civil War begins.
1938 Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan arrives in Ireland – he left New York for California.
1968 Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.
1976 Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics.
1988 Abu Nidal terrorists kill 9 people on a cruise ship.
1992 A picture of Les Horribles Cernettes (The Horrible CERN Girls – an all-female parody pop group) is taken, it becomes the first photo posted to the World Wide Web.
1997 SA’s diminutive boxer ‘Baby Jake’ Matlala wins the IBA world junior flyweight title.
1996 At the Battle of Mullaitivu, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam capture a Sri Lankan Army base, killing over 1 200 soldiers.
1998 President Nelson Mandela marries Graça Machel on his 80th birthday.
1999 SA breaststroke swimmer Penny Heyns sets the first two of four world records in two days in southern California.
2010 The first international UN Mandela Day.
2018 Elon Musk apologises for calling a British cave diver in Thai rescue, “pedo guy” after criticism and a fall in Tesla stock price.
2019 One of world’s earliest mosques, at 1 200 years old, is discovered by archaeologists in Israel’s Negev Desert.
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