16 Interesting/noteworthy and downright weird events we can relate to.
1356 Edward Balliol surrenders his claim to the Scottish throne to Edward III in exchange for an English pension.
1694 The Dageraad, with salvaged treasure from the Gouden Buis – which had run ashore at St Helena Bay – is wrecked on the reefs off Robben Island. Nine of the Dageraad’s 17 salvaged chests of silver coins are recovered.
1697 Notorious pirate Captain William Kidd is reported off Cape Town.
1835 Xhosa warriors overrun the Eastern Cape frontier.
1841 Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British.
1879 British troops under Lord Chelmsford pitch camp on the slopes of Isandlwana, where Zulu warriors attack them two days later.
1900 In the Battle of Tabanyama, on the Natal front of the Anglo-Boer War, a group of Indian stretcher bearers, among them the young Durban attorney Gandhi, becomes intermingled with fighting troops. Six are killed and 12 wounded in the crossfire. The battle continues for two more days.
1942 Nazi officials hold infamous Wannsee conference in Berlin to organise the “final solution” – the extermination of Europe’s Jews.
1944 The Royal Air Force drops 2 300 tons of bombs on Berlin, capital of Nazi Germany.
1945 Franklin D Roosevelt is sworn-in for an unprecedented (and never to be repeated) fourth term as US president.
1961 John F Kennedy becomes the 35th president of the US, and the second youngest man to take the office (after Theodore Roosevelt), and is also the first Catholic.
1981 Ronald Reagan is inaugurated the 40th President of the US. Twenty minutes later, Iran releases 52 American hostages.
1982 The drugged-up lead singer of heavy metal musician Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a living bat on stage at a concert in Des Moines, Iowa.
1986 Military coup in Lesotho.
2002 Photographs showing al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects shackled and masked are published by the United States military.
2022 19-year-old pilot Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.