A selection of significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, on this day over the ages
1772 French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, after whom South Africa’s most southerly part, Marion Island is named, and 25 of his men are killed by the Maori in New Zealand.
1817 The earliest form of bicycle, nicknamed “the dandy horse”, appears. (A dandy was a man overly concerned with his appearance.)
1923 Harry Houdini escapes from a straight jacket while suspended upside down.
1940 General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division streaks through France, reaching the coast and capturing 13 000 Allied troops along the way. The division moved so fast that they often didn’t know exactly where they were, had to ask the locals, whose territory they were invading, for directions and earned the moniker, Gespensterdivision (Ghost Division).
1942 Anne Frank gets her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam.
1963 June 12 is Pretoria’s coldest day in 108 years, with a high of 7.5ºC and a low of -3.6ºC.
1964 The Rivonia treason trial ends and Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Andrew Mlangeni & Elias Motsoaledi are jailed for life.
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first of the highly successful Indiana Jones films, premières.
1987 Speaking at the Berlin Wall, US president Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’.
1991 Sri Lanka’s Army massacre 152 Tamils.
1993 US gunships destroy four of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid’s arms depots, a week after 23 Pakistani UN peacekeepers were killed.
1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman are killed outside her husband, OJ Simpson’s, Los Angeles home.
2012 A coroner’s report finally rules that a dingo killed baby Azaria, absolving the child’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain, who was wrongfully convicted in one of Australia’s most publicised murder trials, even though she swore she had seen a dingo leave the tent that her 9-week-old daughter had been sleeping in. It also cost her her marriage.
2015 Zimbabwe dumps its currency, offering an exchange of US$1 for Z$35 quadrillion.
2016 A gunman, claiming allegiance to Islamic State, opens fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49, injuring 53.
2020 African American Rayshard Brooks is shot dead in drive-through carpark in Atlanta leading to further protests at police violence and the resignation of city's police chief. The outrage is global.