A Portuguese explorer plants South Africa’s oldest monument, Gandhi sets off on salt march, bombs explode in Mumbai, and off with their heads – mass execution in Saudi Arabia
1455 Enea Silvio Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II) writes a letter to a cardinal he works for, referring to the bible printed a year before that had such neat lettering that the cardinal would be able to read it without glasses. It is the first record of the Gutenberg Bible.
1488 Portuguese navigator Bartholomew Diaz erects his first padrao (stone cross) at Kwaaihoek, at Kenton on Sea, near the mouth of the Bushman’s River, eastern Cape. It is SA’s oldest monument, and was one of three stone crosses he raised along southern Africa.
1815 Cornelis Moll, founder of the first Natal newspaper, De Natalier, is born as the 24th child of a Cape Town family. He had 11 children. The oldest paper still in existence in South Africa is Gqeberha’s Herald (founded 1845). Independent stable newspapers: The Mercury (1852); Argus (1857); Cape Times (1876); Daily News (1878); The Star (1887); Saturday Star (1889); Pretoria News (1898); Weekend Argus (1911); Sunday Tribune (1935); Post (1955); Sunday Independent (1995); Independent on Saturday (1998); Isolezwe (2003).
1881 Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world’s first black international football player and captain.
1912 Juliette Gordon founds the Girl Guides, a world-wide organisation active also in SA.
1930 Mahatma Gandhi begins the Salt March in protest at Britain’s monopoly on salt in India.
1993 Several bombs explode in Mumbai, killing about 300 and injuring hundreds.
1993 Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi begins a 2½ week speech to the KwaZulu legislative assembly, averaging nearly 2½ hours a day – a world record. His speech writer, paid by the word, once submitted a letter to the Daily News, whose chief sub-editor, Bob Cooper, measured it as stretching from the works department, to the editors’ office on the next floor, and back. (That was when the paper was house in the city centre. Not surprisingly, it was too long to use.
2011 Japan declares a state of emergency because of the failure of the cooling system at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the subsequent triple melt down of reactors. Although not as bad as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union (which leaked 10 times more radiation), 200 000 people are evacuated. In 2018, one worker, who had been in charge of measuring radiation at the Japanese plant, had died of lung cancer caused by radiation exposure. There have been more than 2 000 disaster-related deaths, mostly from suicide, stress and interruption of medical care. The area around Fukushima is a no-go area until at least 2041 and there is also a 30km no-fly zone around it. Other countries quickly started switching off their nuclear plants, but since the Ukraine-Russia war, European countries are restarting them.
2019 More than 3 000 ISIS fighters have surrendered amid the battle for last ISIS stronghold in Baghouz, Syria.
2021 Researchers say the world has likely reached the ‘peak twin’ with 1.6 million twins born each year – more than ever.
2022 Saudi Arabia executes 81 criminals, the country’s largest known mass execution in modern times. | The Historian