It’s Father’s Day, here is a selection of significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, on this day over the ages
The first Father’s Day service occurred in Fairmont, West Virginia, on July 5, 1908, after hundreds of men died in the worst mining accident in US history. Grace Golden Clayton, the daughter of a dedicated minister, proposed a service to honour all fathers, especially those who had died. Although it was not accepted then, in 1909 Sonora Smart Dodd, who along with her five brothers was raised by her father, after attending a Mother's Day church service, convinced the Spokane Ministerial Association to celebrate Father's Day worldwide. There are other origins of of the day too: There is a customary day for the celebration of fatherhood in the Catholic Europe which dates back to at least 1508, while for centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Church appointed the second Sunday before Nativity as the Sunday of the Forefathers to commemorate the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, starting with Adam and emphasising the patriarch Abraham, to whom God said, ‘In thy seed shall all the nations of the Earth be blessed’.
In addition to Father's Day, International Men's Day is celebrated in many countries on 19 November in honour of both men and boys.
860 Rus Vikings attack Constantinople.
1178 Five monks at Canterbury report something exploding on the moon shortly after sunset (only known observation).
1264 The Parliament of Ireland meets at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.
1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under the Duke of Wellington and allied Prussian troops.
1940 Winston Churchill delivers his ‘this was their finest hour’ speech during the dark days of the Battle of Britain, urging perseverance in the face of adversity.
1942 Eric Nessler of France stays aloft in a glider for 38h21m.
1959 Louisiana Governor Earl Long is committed to a state mental hospital. He has the hospital’s director fired and is then found to be ‘sane’.
1977 Space Shuttle test model “Enterprise” carries a crew aloft for 1st time, it was fixed to a modified Boeing 747.
1980 Indian “human computer” Shakuntala Devi sets a world record by mentally multiplying two random 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds; She correctly answered that 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 = 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.
1981 The Aids epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco, California.
1991 Mud storm in Antofagasta Chile, kills 80.
1995 All Black Jonah Lomu scores the try of the Rugby World Cup, running over South African-born fullback Mike Catt in New Zealand’s 45-29 defeat of England.