Real people, real stories – more than just dates and boring facts
1349 The Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and burned alive.
1822 Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese king, João VI, beginning the Brazilian independence process.
1945 US soldiers led by General Douglas MacArthur invade the Philippines.
1951 The global peacekeeping body, the UN, which replaced the League of Nations in 1945, opens its headquarters in New York.
1954 A bone-numbing Greenland record of -66°C is recorded at Northice Station.
1967 Former Springbok skipper Gary Teichmann is born in Gwelo, Zimbabwe. He showed his leadership qualities when was appointed captain of the Natal Sharks by Ian McIntosh to replace Andy Aitken at the back of the scrum after Aitken decamped for Western Province. Spectators watching the match in which Teichmann made his debut wondered who the new guy. By the time the match was over, he was hot property, so much so that he went on to captain the Springboks 36 times out of the 42 games he played for them and led them on a record winning streak of 17 consecutive Tests. His humility and fair play earned him wide respect throughout the rugby world.
1980 Sixty-three men are beheaded by the sword in Saudi Arabia for an attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in November.
1986 A limpet mine explodes and damages a substation in Jacobs, Durban. Later a second one explodes and kills a policeman and injures others, as well as two electrical workers who arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
1996 First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the helicopter airfield and a civilian hospital in the city of Kizlyar, in neighbouring Dagestan, which turns into a hostage crisis involving thousands of civilians.
2007 Apple CEO Steve Jobs publicly unveils the original iPhone.
2011 Iran Air Flight 277 crashes near Urmia, Iran, in icy conditions, killing 77 people.
2015 The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation at a Jewish market in Vincennes.
2015 A mass poisoning at a funeral in Mozambique involving beer that was contaminated with plant-based bacteria, leaves 75 people dead and more than 230 other people ill.
2019 Car manufacture Hyundai unveils a model of a proposed walking car, for first responders, in Las Vegas.