Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
AD 70 Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Roman army is drawn into street fights with Jewish Zealots.
1807 Nicéphore Niépc awarded a patent by Napoleon for the Pyréolophore, the world’s first internal combustion engine.
1888 The Nieuwe Republiek, established in northern Natal on land given to burghers by King Dinizulu, is incorporated by the ZAR, and becomes the district of Vryheid.
1901 At Paardekop, near Vereeniging, General Jan Smuts and a small party are surprised in their sleep. His orderly is killed, but “Slim Jannie” as he would be later called by some, manages to get away by shouting orders in English and stealing away on bare feet.
1916 Three SA officers and 140 men march out of Delville Wood. Six days earlier, the strength of the 1st South African Brigade had been 3 433. In 1920 the SA government bought the wood and erected a monument.
1960 The Soviet Union recovers 2 dogs, the first living organisms to return from space.
1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are the first men to walk on the moon, in the Sea of Tranquility, watched live by 530 million people.
1973 Martial arts expert and actor Bruce Lee, 32, dies in Los Angeles from a brain edema possibly caused by a reaction to painkillers.
1975 India expels three reporters from The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and Newsweek because they refuse to sign a pledge to abide by government censorship
1989 Burma’s ruling junta puts opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
1992 Václav Havel resigns as Czechoslovakia’s president after Slovakia’s independence.
1999 Falun Gong is banned in China, and a large-scale crackdown is launched.
2000 Terrorist Carlos the Jackal sues France for torturing him. It does him no good. He ends up with three life sentences.
2002 Bartenders doing tricks start a fire in a nightclub in Lima, that kills 25 and injures 100.
2017 China formulates a plan against “foreign garbage”, banning 24 types of plastic and recyclable waste.
2022 A heatwave across Europe results in over 1000 deaths in Portugal and 500 in Spain,