The storied Orient Express sets off; Henry Ford brings in a 32-hour work week; 'The King’ scandalises music; Six-day War begins; first cases of Aids reported; and too much plastic in our bodies
1752 An expedition of August Beutler, who left the Castle in the Cape in February, reaches the Keiskamma in the Eastern Cape.
1873 The name of De Beer’s New Rush is changed to Kimberley.
1873 Under pressure from Britain, Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar closes the island’s great slave market.
1883 The first regularly scheduled run of the fabled Orient Express train leaves Paris.
1916 Britain’s Lord Kitchener, who played a major role in the Anglo-Boer War, drowns when the SS Hampshire sinks after hitting a German mine near the Orkney Islands.
1918 The Broederbond is founded in Johannesburg to advance the cultural traditions of Afrikaans.
1937 Henry Ford initiates a 32-hour work week.
1941 World War II: At least 4 000 people who are hiding in a tunnel die after a Japanese air attack on the Chinese city of Chongqing
1944 Allied bombers drop 5 000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day, the invasion of Nazi-held Europe.
1947 US Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to rebuild war-torn Europe. It becomes known as the Marshall Plan.
1956 A young Elvis Presley, the ‘King of Rock ‘n Roll’, introduces his new single, Hound Dog, on TV, scandalising the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
1963 The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns amid a sex scandal with a prostitute, who is also seeing a member of the Russian embassy.
1967 Israel launches the Six-Day War with devastating pre-emptive strikes against Egypt, who with its allies, Syria and Jordan, were preparing to capture Israel, which was seen by the Arab world as an illegitimate state. In those six days, Israel defeated three Arab armies, gained territory four times its original size, and became the pre-eminent military power in the region. The war transformed Israel from a nation that perceived itself as fighting for survival into an occupier and regional powerhouse.
1975 The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War, 8 years before.
1981 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the first cases of Aids.
1998 South Africa’s Thulane ‘Sugarboy’ Malinga wins the WBF super-middleweight boxing title.
2006 Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda seize Somalia’s capital, unifying the city for the first time in 16 years.
2019 The average person ingests 50 000 pieces of microplastic a year and inhales a similar amount, according to a study – the first of its kind – published in the journal, Environmental Science and Technology.