Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
217BC Ambushed by African general and master tactician Hannibal, the Romans are defeated at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.
1842 Dick King returns by boat to Port Natal after a 10-day horse-ride to Grahamstown to fetch help in the fight against the Boers.
1916 The first Battle of the Somme begins, lasting five months and killing more than a million troops. Many South African soldiers die during the battle.
1982 Speedbird 9, a British Airways Boeing 747, flies into a cloud of volcanic ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung, causing the failure of all four engines. The flight deck manages to restart the engines and pilot Eric Moody makes an announcement to the passengers that was described as a masterpiece of understatement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.” Then after an emergency landing, they were unable to turn one of the engines off so everyone had to stay on board while firemen doused the engine enough to shut it down.
1995 Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the trophy after Pienaar leads the underdog Springboks to victory in the final of the Rugby World Cup. Mandela attends the game in a Springbok jersey in a powerful gesture of reconciliation because rugby was a cultural bastion of white Afrikaners, who were guardians of the apartheid system. Just before the match, spectators are electrified as a South African Airways Boeing 747 swoops low over Ellis Park with the words “GOOD LUCK BOKKE” on its underbelly.
1999 The Springboks beat England 44-21 in Paris in the World Cup quarter-finals, with Jannie de Beer setting a world record with five drop-goals, five penalties and two conversions.
2010 In the longest match in tennis history, American John Isner defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon after 11 hours, 5 minutes.
2018 Women get to drive in Saudi Arabia.
2021 Champlain Towers South, a 12-storey beachfront condominium in Miami collapses at 1.30am, killing 98 residents.