Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
1066 The Norman conquest of England begins with the Battle of Hastings, in which Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson is killed in a decisive Norman victory, leaving the way open for the rest of England to fall to the Normans.
1639 The first official Governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel, who authorised the expansion of the early Dutch settlement beyond the skirts of Table Mountain, is born on a ship in the Indian Ocean en route to Mauritius. Widely known for his development of the wine industry, he was also the first Cape governor of mixed race-origin – as was his son, Willem Adrian, the second governor – a fact ignored by the Apartheid government.
1888 Louis le Prince films the first motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene, in Leeds, England.
1899 A young reporter, Winston Churchill, who would go on to distinguish himself on the political scene, leaves for South Africa to cover the Anglo-Boer War. Captured by the Boers, he was interrogated by Transvaal state attorney Jan Christiaan Smuts – a man he would come to regard as ‘a fortifying influence’, and an equal, if not superior.
1926 The children’s book, Winnie-the-Pooh, by AA Milne, is first published.
1931 Pretoria, established in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius, who named it after his father, Andries – a Voortrekker hero from the Battle of Blood River – achieves city status.
1939 A German submarine sneaks into the ‘impregnable’ British naval base at Scapa Flow and sinks the battleship HMS Royal Oak.
1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis begins.
1947 US test pilot Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to break the sound barrier.
2012 Daredevil Felix Baumgartner parachutes to Earth from a balloon in the stratosphere.
2017 A truck bombing in Somalia kills 358 people and injures more than 400 others.
2018 Afghan batsman Hazratullah Zazai becomes only the 6th cricketer to hit 6-sixes in an over when he scores 62 from 17 balls in the Afghanistan Premier League. Four more have since achieved the feat. South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs was the first to do so in an international match. The 10 are: Sir Gary Sobers (Nottinghamshire v Glamorgan, 1968); Ravi Shastri (Bombay v Baroda, 1985); Herschelle Gibbs (South Africa v Netherlands, 2007); Yuvraj Singh (India v England, 2007); Ross Whitely (Worcestershire Rapid v Yorkshire Vikings, 2017); Hazratullah Zazai (Kabul Zwanan v Balkh Legends, 2018); Leo Carter (Canterbury Kings v Northern Knights, 2020); Kieron Pollard (West Indies v Sri Lanka, 2021); Thisara Perera (Sri Lanka Army v Bloomfield Cricket, 2021); and Jaskaran Malhotra (USA v Papua New Guinea, 2021).
2019 Hundreds of forest fires break out in western Lebanon, killing three people and prompting calls for international help.
2020 A copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio sells for a record $9.98 million at auction in New York.
2021 A record £18.5 million for a Banksy artwork is paid for Love is in the Bin, which was famously shredded on purchase in 2018.
2022 A coal mine explosion in Amasra, northern Turkey, kills 41 miners and injures another 11.