Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
1098 Knights of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosu, who could have sent the crusaders packing with their tsils between their legs had he not wasted time at Edessa.
1389 The Ottomans defeat the Serbian army in the Battle of Kosovo, opening the way to conquer south-east Europe.
1360 Muhammed VI kills his brother-in-law to become King of Granada.
1794 Allen Frances Gardiner, one of the founders of Port Natal, is born in England. His last post was in the desolate Tierra del Fuego, where he and 6 companions die of starvation.
1820 The tomato is publicly eaten by Colonel Robert Gibbon in Salem, New Jersey. For years the nightshade family member fruit was considered poisonous in England and its colonies.
1833 Basutoland opens to missionaries.
1846 Willem Eduard Bok, sub-editor of De Volksstem, is born in the Netherlands. Boksburg was named after him.
1880 Wounded Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is captured. His last words before he was hanged: “Such is life”.
1914 The Archduke of Austria and his wife are killed in Sarajevo. Their assassination was the start of World War I.
1919 The Treaty of Versailles is signed. It is the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers.
1926 Germany’s Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merge their firms, forming Mercedes Benz.
1950 Tens of thousands of communist sympathisers are butchered in South Korea.
1971 Roman Catholic priest Cosmos Desmond is placed under house arrest because of his stance on Apartheid.
1997 The Bite Fight: ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson (the baddest man on the planet) is being dominated again by world champion Evander Holyfield in their rematch bout. Tyson’s rage and thirst for revenge dominates him and he bites off part of Holyfield’s ear.
2018 A Neolithic wooden trackway, 2 300 years old, is found in England.
2021 AirCar, a prototype flying car capable of flying 1 000km at height of 2 500m, completes a 35-minute test flight between Nitra and Bratislava airports in Slovakia. | The Historian