Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
1338 The Battle of Arnemuiden is the first naval battle of the Hundred Years War and the first using artillery, as the English ship Christopher had three cannons.
1641 The sailing ship Merchant Royal, carrying more than £100 000 in gold (equivalent to more than £1 billion today), is lost at sea off Land’s End.
1838 Gerhardus Marthinus (Gert) Maritz, 41, Voortrekker leader, dies at Sooilaer, Natal.
1867 Anna (Sister Annie) Tempo, founder of the ‘Nanny House’ for destitute girls on the streets of Cape Town, is born in Cape Town. Her parents were ex- slaves from Mozambique.
1913 Frenchman Roland Garros, after whom the premier tennis stadium in France is named, becomes the first person to fly across the Mediterranean.
1980 Bob Marley plays what will be the last concert of his life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1983 Gulf Air Flight 771 is destroyed by a bomb, killing all 117 people on board.
1983 SA heavyweight champion Gerrie Coetzee wins the World Boxing Association title in the US, knocking out American Michael Dokes and becoming the first South African boxer to win a world heavyweight title.
1997 Armed men raid an Algerian village, shooting or stabbing to death at least 200 people and wounding another 100.
2004 More than 3 000 people die in Haiti after a hurricane causes flooding and mudslides.
2013 78 people are killed in a church suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan.
2018 Four gunmen open fire on Revolutionary Guard soldiers at a parade in Ahvaz, Iran, killing 25, including civilians.
2019 The 178-year-old British travel company Thomas Cook, well-used in South Africa, goes into liquidation, stranding 600 000 travellers worldwide, prompting the largest post-war repatriation effort by the British government
2019 A US police officer is fired after arresting two 6-year-olds at a school on charges of misdemeanour battery in Florida.
2019 World leaders are scolded by a teenager for not addressing climate change. Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, one of 15 children invited to address world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, says: ‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!’
2020 President Donald Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the US November election.
2021 Fossilised footprints 21 000 to 23 000 years old from White Sands, New Mexico indicate settlement by humans of North and South America earlier than was thought. | The Historian
2022 Tennis great Roger Federer plays his final professional match during the Laver Cup in London. He teams up with friend and rival Rafael Nadal, but they lose 6-4 6–7 (9/11) to Americans Jack Sock and Frances Tiafoe.