Birth of a great explorer, horror in the air over the Pacific, bootleg hooch kills many and all-out war explodes in Ukraine – these are some of the things that happened back in the day on February 24
1304 Muslim Berber-Moroccan scholar, jurist and explorer Ibn Battuta is born in Tangier, Morocco. At the age of 21 he goes on pilgrimage to Mecca and discovers that he likes travelling and meeting new people so much that he spends the next 30 years traversing vast swathes of Asia, Africa and Europe. The travels of Marco Polo pale in comparison to the exploits of Battuta, who had at least six wives during his lifetime – two in Egypt and four in the Maldives. Of the women he met in the Maldives he said: ‘Marriage is easy on these islands.’
1821 Julius Gottlieb Jeppe, founder of the Jeppe and Ford Estate Company that planned the first Johannesburg suburbs, is born in Rostock, Germany.
1917 Germany’s plan to get Mexican help in World War I is exposed when the US ambassador to the UK is given the Zimmermann Telegram. In it, Germany pledges the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if it declares war on the US.
1938 Du Pont begins the commercial production of nylon toothbrush bristles. Before that they were made of boar bristles – stiff, coarse hairs taken from the back of a hog’s neck and attached to handles made of bone or bamboo. A far cry from today’s toothbrushes.
1989 A US Boeing 747 loses parts of its roof over the Pacific and nine passengers are sucked out of the plane to their deaths.
1991 Ground troops cross the Saudi Arabian border and enter Iraq, beginning the ground phase of the war after Iraq ignored a 24-hour deadline for its troops to vacate Kuwait.
1996 Two civilian planes are shot down over international waters by the Cuban Air Force.
2008 Fidel Castro retires as Cuban president after nearly 50 years because of ill health.
2019 At least 133 people die and another 200 are treated in hospital after drinking toxic bootleg alcohol in Golaghat, India.
2022 After 8 years of provocation by Ukraine and its Western backers and fighting in the east of the country, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announces that he is sending in the troops in a ‘special military operation’ to ‘demilitarise’ Ukraine. Moments after his announcement, Russia launches a full-scale pre-dawn invasion by land, air and sea, with bombings in several cities amid international condemnation.