From Mandela and Buthelezi agreeing to meet to work out a framework for peace as the end of Apartheid draws near, to cannibalism and a truly grotesque murder, here are 13 interesting events we can relate to
1895 Brassmen attack the Royal Niger Company’s station at Akassa, West Africa, and kill and eat 43 captives. Christian chiefs of Brass and their allies refuse to give up their prisoners or join in the cannibal feast.
1916 Paris is bombed by German zeppelins.
1940 Three trains in Osaka, Japan, collide and explode, killing 181 people.
1959 ‘The Great Smog’ hits London; many die of chest and lung-related illnesses.
1978 Sweden outlaws aerosol sprays due to their harmful effect on the ozone layer, becoming the first nation to enact such a ban.
1985 In a surprising move, Oxford University refuses to award Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher an honorary degree – it’s believed the nay vote was influenced by a large turn-out of scientific and medical dons, who rarely took part in academic debates, but were roused to do so by government cuts on their research.
1991 ANC deputy president Nelson Mandela and IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi meet after 30 years. They issue a statement on a joint peace strategy, the Royal Hotel Minute.
2006 A US 39c stamp is released featuring Hattie McDaniel in the dress she wore in 1940 when she became the first African-American actress to win an Oscar.
1980 The Rubik’s Cube – the best selling toy of all time – makes its international debut.
2006 India’s Irfan Pathan is the first bowler to take a Test cricket hat-trick in the opening over.
2015 Malaysia declares the disappearance of missing flight MH370, which went missing in March 2014, to have been an accident.
2018 Toronto landscaper, and part-time mall Santa, Bruce McArthur appears in court on eight counts of first-degree murder. Police had gone to his home to arrest him, having found the remains of five men in pot plants. There they found a ninth victim, naked and tied to the bed, but alive.
2021 Nigerian farmers win a landmark case against the oil company Shell in the Court of Appeal at the Hague, in the Netherlands. Shell is found to held liable for oil spills and ordered to clean-up the Delta region where the livelihoods of indigenous communities were destroyed by pollution from the giant multinational.