Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history Derailed railway tankers full of crude oil in downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec. Picture: ANA archives
Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
1348 Pope Clement VI issues a papal bull protecting the Jews, who are accused of causing the Black Death plague.
1699 Pirate William Kidd is caught in Boston.
1885 Louis Pasteur successfully tests an anti-rabies vaccine.
1916 Second-Lieutenant William Brown of the 1st SA Infantry is killed in the Battle of the Somme and becomes the first South African officer killed in France during World War I.
1917 Arabian troops led by ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and Auda ibu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt.
1937 Renowned writer Bessie Head is born in Pietermaritzburg. Her foster parents rejected her because she was too black and she was raised in an Anglican mission orphanage.
1943 On the second day of the Battle of Kursk, 25 000 Germans are killed.
1947 The ubiquitous AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union. It is the most commonly used firearm in the world.
1957 John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers, at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the hit band, the Beatles.
1963 Robert McBride, the ANC member who blew up Magoo’s Bar, in Durban, and later became Ekurhuleni metro police chief, is born in Durban’s Addington Hospital.
1967 Nigerian forces invade Biafra, starting the Nigerian Civil War, which claims 600 000 lives. Another 1 million die of starvation.
1988 The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires; 170 oil workers are killed.
1998 Thirteen people die when a bridge under construction over the Marite River, in Mpumalanga, collapses.
2013 A Boeing 777 crashes at San Francisco International Airport, killing three and injuring 181 of the 307 people on board.
2013 14 people are killed after a train runs over a rickshaw in Sheikhupura, Pakistan.
2013 An unattended, out-of-control oil train derails in Canada and explodes, killing 47 people. More than 30 buildings in Lac-Mégantic’s town centre were destroyed, and all but three of the 39 remaining buildings have to be demolished due to petroleum contamination.
2018 Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosário of Mozambique sacks the board of Lam Airlines after he is left stranded when a plane runs out of fuel.
2022 Dramatic day in British politics as more than 40 government ministers and aides withdraw their support from prime minister Boris Johnson and resign, a 24 hour record.