Source of fools’ gold; the Cape declares independence; Kruger Park comes into being; SA goes it alone; deadly earthquakes; and couples encouraged to have more children.
1578 Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England, to Canada, where he mines fools’ gold thinking it the real thing. When it was later discovered that it was merely worthless Iron Pyrite – or fools gold – it was salvaged for use in road metalling. It was only 20 years later – in 1605 – that the first telling of the fable of Dick Whittington And His Cat was written down, in which the boy set out for London, where he’d heard of streets paved with gold.
1836 HMS Beagle, carrying a young naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin, anchors in Simon’s Bay, near the Cape of Good Hope.
1902 The Treaty of Unity is signed ending the Boer War, and Britain annexes the Transvaal.
1910 The Cape of Good Hope becomes part of Union of South Africa, which declares its independence from the United Kingdom.
1916 The Battle of Jutland begins. Militarily inconclusive, it was, nonetheless, a strategic British victory – the German fleet were to remain bottled up in port and only put to sea again to surrender.
1926 The Kruger National Park is established as South Africa’s first national park.
1935 A 7.7 magnitude earthquake destroys Quetta in Balochistan, British India (now Pakistan) killing about 40 000 people
1941 A Luftwaffe air raid over Dublin, in neutral Ireland, claims 38 lives.
1961 The Union of South Africa becomes a republic and leaves the Commonwealth.
1970 An earthquake off Peru kills 60-70 000 people and triggers an avalanche that alone claimed the lives of about 20 000 people, making it the deadliest avalanche and the worst natural disaster in the history of Peru.
1991 A treaty ends Angola’s 16-year civil war.
2005 Mark Felt, former high-ranking FBI official is revealed as “Deep Throat”, a secretive undercover source during Watergate investigations, in a Vanity Fair article. The exposed government cover-up brought down US president Richard Nixon, who famously told the nation, “I am not a crook”.
2010 Gaza Flotilla raid: Israeli Shayetet 13 commandos board ships trying to break blockade of Gaza. During a violent confrontation aboard MV Mavi Marmara, 9 activists are killed and several activists and soldiers injured.
2012 Egypt ends a 31-year state of emergency.
2021 China says it will allow married couples to have three children, in effort to boost falling birthrates.