Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
539BC Cyrus the Great (founder of the Persian Empire) enters the capital of Babylon and allows the Jews to return to their land.
1618 Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for ‘conspiring’ against James I of England.
1810 Sara ‘Saartjie’ Baartman allegedly signs a contract that allows her to be taken to England, and Ireland to work as a domestic servant, and be exhibited for entertainment purposes. The truth is that she was illiterate and unlikely to have understood any such contract. Instead she was treated like a circus animal and paraded before curious gawkers. She died in Europe, aged 26. Her remains were returned to South Africa in 2002.
1857 The monthly mail shipping line between England and the Cape Colony starts.
1873 The Natal colonial government organises an expeditionary force against rebellious AmaHlubi leader, Langalibalele. After first defeating the British, he is later captured and banished to Robben Island.
1863 Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.
1905 Hendrik Witbooi, chief of the Nama, dies after being fatally wounded in a skirmish with the Germans near Keetmanshoop.
1918 The German High Seas Fleet is incapacitated when sailors mutiny.
1944 Soviet and Romanian armies launch the Budapest Offensive against the Axis powers. The strategic goal is to advance closer to the southern border of Nazi Germany.
1957 Israel’s prime minister David Ben-Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a grenade explodes in Israel’s Knesset.
1969 The first computer-to-computer link is established – it is the precursor to the Internet.
1998 The space Shuttle Discovery blasts off with John Glenn, 77, on board. Hie is the oldest person to go into space. The former US senator was the first American to orbit, earth, in 1962 .
2004 Al Jazeera shows an Osama bin Laden video in which he claims responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
2020 Three people stabbed to death in church in Nice, France, in an terrorist attack, after President Emmanuel Macron’s defence of the right to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
2023 South Africa wake up to a massive hangover after the Springboks beat New Zealand by the narrowest of margins to win a record fourth and back-to-back Rugby World Cup title, 13-12, in Paris. Testament to how hard a route to the final Siya Kolisi’s men had, their quarter-final and semi-final victories against France and England respectively also came by way of a single point.