Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
1829 Qwabe chief Nqetho forces the Rev JW Shepstone to abandon the Morley mission station. Nqetho is murdered in December of that year on orders from Zulu king Dingane.
1859 The steam clipper Royal Charter is wrecked on the Welsh coast with 459 dead.
1861 The Wild West’s famed Pony Express postal system ends after 19 months.
1863 A conference begins in Geneva to improve medical conditions on battlefields. It is the beginning of the Red Cross.
1881 The storied Gunfight at OK Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, takes place. On the one side stood the so-called forces of law and order: Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. By reputation these were power-hungry and ruthless men. Opposing them were the outlaws Billy and Ike Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. It lasts just 30 seconds, and about 30 shots are fired.
1916 Nurse Margaret Sanger is arrested for obscenity for having advocated birth control.
1918 Cecil Chubb donates the prehistoric monument, Stonehenge, to the British nation.
1918 Germany’s supreme commander General Eric Ludendorff resigns in protest at the unfair terms which the German government agreed to, thereby ending World War I.
1922 Gertrude Bell, a remarkable arabist and explorer who had a lot to do with the borders of the Middle East, is appointed Honorary Director of Antiquities in the Department of Antiquities in Baghdad, Iraq.
1950 Mother Teresa founds the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.
1976 Transkei gains independence, but it is not recognised outside of South Africa.
1977 The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Somalia. This is the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1988 Donald Trump bills Mike Tyson $2 million for 4 months’ advisory service.
2014 Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates captain Senzo Meyiwa is shot dead.
2020 Nasa announces that there is more water on the Moon than was previously thought, in sunlit as well as shadowed regions.
2021 A UN report says that current climate pledges put the world on course for a ‘catastrophic’ average 2.7°C temperature rise this century.
2022 The European Union’s tallest building is completed: the Varso Tower, a supertall skyscraper in Warsaw, Poland, at 310 metres high.
2022 Thousands of protesters in Saqez, Iran, defy security forces to mark 40-day Arba’een (period of mourning) for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who died in police custody for not wearing a hijab properly.