South Africans on top of the world; ‘Tumbledown Dick’ earns his name; another Dick’s ride to fame; ‘I dream of a man on the Moon; justice for Witwolf’s victims; and call or a TRC
1659 In an abrupt fall from power, Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England, earning the nickname ‘Tumbledown Dick’.
1720 The ship, Le Grand St Antoine reaches Marseilles, France, from the Levant, bringing with it Europe’s last major bubonic plague outbreak, which kills 100 000 people.
1842 Dick King, 29, and servant Ndongeni 16, swim their horses across Durban bay and sneak off along the Bluff and down the coast to Grahamstown, fording 120 rivers along the way, on an epic ride to seek relief from the Boers for the besieged English settlers.
1895 The aptly named playwright and poet Oscar Wilde is convicted of ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’ and sentenced to serve two years in prison.
1932 Disney character Goofy, aka Dippy Dawg, first appears in Mickey’s Revue.
1948 Polish war hero Witold Pilecki , sometimes called ‘one of the greatest wartime heroes’ – he got himself arrested so he could gather information on the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, is executed by the Communist authorities after a show-trial in Warsaw.
1953 The US conducts its only nuclear artillery test in Nevada.
1961 US President John F Kennedy says his goal is to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
1967 John Lennon takes delivery of an outlandish psychedelically painted Rolls Royce.
1977 The first of the hugely successful Star Wars movies is released.
1985 A cyclone kills 11 000 people in Bangladesh.
1989 Mass murderer, ‘Witwolf’ Barend Strydom receives eight death sentences for racial murders he committed in the streets of Pretoria the previous year.
1994 Justice Richard Goldstone calls for a ‘truth commission’ on apartheid atrocities because ‘victims would not be able to forgive without openness’.
1996 Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd become the first South African team to conquer Mount Everest.
1996 The Blues win the inaugural Super 12 rugby title with a 45-21 victory over the Natal Sharks at Eden Park. | The Historian