Events that ripple though time, some of which may tickle your fancy, or event your funny bone
624 Muhammad’s Muslim forces win a significant victory over the Meccan army.
1325 The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, which becomes Mexico City, is founded on a small island in Lake Texcoco.
1701 Khoisan loot more than 40 cattle from the settlers at the Cape.
1781 William Herschel discovers Uranus.
1881 Tsar Alexander II of Russia is assassinated by a thrown bomb.
1888 De Beers Consolidated is founded to exercise control over virtually all of the diamond production in South Africa.
1900 British forces under Lord Roberts capture Bloemfontein.
1900 In France, the length of the working day for women and children is reduced to 11 hours.
1938 In a process known as Anschluss, Austria is annexed into Nazi Germany.
1954 Viet Minh forces unleash a massive artillery barrage on the French to begin the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, the climactic battle of the First Indochina War.
1967 The airliner SAA Rietbok crashes off Kayser’s Beach, East London; 25 people die.
1988 Japan’s 53km Seikan Tunnel, the world’s longest railroad tunnel, is opened. It includes a 23km undersea section, 800 feet below the strait separating the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, and is designed to serve the Shinkansen, Japan’s high-speed bullet train.
1996 Sixteen primary school children and a teacher are shot dead by a suicidal killer in Dunblane, Scotland.
2012 Owing to the wealth of information on the internet, Encyclopaedia Britannica announces that it will no longer publish printed versions of its encyclopaedia.
2013 Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio takes the name Pope Francis as the papal conference elects him the 266th pope of the Catholic Church. He is the first Jesuit pope, and the first from outside Europe since the 8th century Syrian, Gregory III.
2020 Elite football in Britain, including England’s Premier League, the EFL, the Women’s Super League plus soccer in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is suspended because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
2020 Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates steps down from the company's board to focus on philanthropic activities.
2023 Vinyl records outsell CDs in the US for the first time since 1987 (41 million vinyl records vs 33 million CDs), according to new report.
