Significant and interesting snippets of news with a South African angle, from this day in history
1305 Scottish rebel William Wallace is turned over to the English near Glasgow and taken to London to be tried, hanged, drawn and quartered.
1620 The Mayflower leaves England, carrying settlers, on its first attempt to reach North America, but is forced to dock in Dartmouth when its companion ship springs a leak.
1775 The San Carlos, a Spanish ship, is the first to enter San Francisco Bay.
1816 The British Admiralty dismisses Francis Ronalds’s invention of the electric telegraph as “wholly unnecessary”.
1858 Cyrus Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
1863 The Alabama captures the bark Sea Bride outside Table Bay. Built during the American Civil War to prey on the shipping of the Northern states, the Alabama’s captain and officers were Southerners, but her crew were British.
1914 The guns of the fort at Port Phillip Heads in Victoria, Australia, fire across the bows of the German steamer SS Pfalz, which is trying to leave the Port of Melbourne, unaware of the outbreak of war between Germany and the United Kingdom. As a result of the shots across the bows, the ship is detained. This is said to have been the first Allied shot of World War I.
1914 In Cleveland, Ohio, the world’s first electric traffic light is installed.
1926 Harry Houdini stays in a coffin under water for 1½ hours before escaping.
1943 During the Battle of Troina, Mount Etna erupts, sending ash kilometres into the sky.
1962 Nelson Mandela is captured near Cedara, KwaZulu-Natal, soon after his return from military training in Morocco. He doesn’t taste freedom for another 27 years.
1962 Sex kitten and actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead from an overdose of drugs.
1965 South Africa’s first atomic reactor, Safari I, opens at Pelindaba, near Pretoria.
1981 US President Ronald Reagan fires 11 360 air-traffic controllers who ignored his order to return to work.
2004 Locust swarms invade the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, stripping its trees bare.
2010 The Copiapó mining accident traps 33 Chilean miners 700m below ground for 69 days.
2017 New Zealand’s Canterbury Crusaders rugby team travels to Johannesburg and beat the Lions 25-17 at Ellis Park in the Super Rugby Final. The visitors lift the trophy for the eighth time.
2018 A vintage Junkers Ju-52 plane crashes near Flims, Switzerland, killing all 20 people on board.
2020 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lays the cornerstone for a new Hindu temple at Ayodhya Ram to replace a previous Muslim mosque
2021 FC Barcelona confirms record breaking Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi will leave the club because of Spanish La Liga regulations on player payments
2022 Volkswagen launches a prototype of its first flying car, an automated, electric passenger vehicle, nicknamed “Flying Tiger“. The German carmaker joins other automotive giants, including Hyundai, Toyota and Stellantis, with a stake in, what is expected to be, the lucrative eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) market.