Some of the more interesting things that happened on this day.
1847 Prominent American missionary Dr Newton Adams, after whom the Adams Mission, west of Amanzimtoti, in the Umlazi district south of Durban, is named, dies. His settlement, established in 1836, was destroyed by Dingaan, but rebuilt in 1839. Adams played a key role within the community by providing medical care as well as printing pamphlets in Zulu. In 1844 he was ordained a priest and frequently preached to up to 1 000 people. His school provided education to 100 pupils at a time and his medical skills were widely sought after. He became known among the Zulus as ‘the teacher with 3 coats’ because of his habit of changing his clothes (which included a white medical coat) to suit his different areas of work.
1920 The Wall Street bombing takes place when a bomb planted in a horse wagon explodes in front of the JP Morgan building in New York, killing 38 people and injuring 400.
1959 The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in New York City.
1963 Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. Singapore leaves soon afterwards.
1976 Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that falls into a reservoir in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.
1979 Eight people escape from East Germany to the West in a home-made hot-air balloon.
1992 Deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s trial ends in the US with him getting a 40-year prison sentence.
2012 Eight female civilians are killed by a Nato airstrike in Laghman, Afghanistan.
2015 Three million people die of air pollution each year, more than from malaria and HIV/Aids combined, the journal Nature reports.
2015 An 8.3 magnitude quake off the coast of Chile kills 15 people; another 1 million are evacuated.
2015 An oil tanker explosion kills 170 people in Maridi, South Sudan.
2017 The All Blacks rugby team hands South Africa their biggest Test match defeat in history, beating the Springboks, 57-0 in Albany, New Zealand. The stunned Boks bounce back and are world champions two years later.
2018 The cycling land speed record is broken by Denise Mueller-Korenek riding at 296.01km/h at Bonneville Salt Flats, in the US state of Utah.
2019 Guantánamo Bay is the world’s most expensive prison at $13 million per prisoner says The New York Times.
2019 Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo rebuffs UK prime minister Boris Johnson, who compared himself to Hulk, saying, ‘Johnson forgets that the Hulk only fights for the good of the world.’
2021 Britain’s Kew Gardens sets a world record for the largest living plant collection (16 900) on a single site.
2021 The earliest evidence for humans having made clothes is unearthed with the finding of 100 000-year-old bone tools in Morocco.