1371 Robert II becomes King of Scotland, beginning the Stuart dynasty. The FitzAlans – his ancestors – had held the office of High Steward of Scotland. Mary, Queen of Scots,one of Robert’s descendants, was brought up in France and adopted the French spelling of the name Stuart, since there was no ‘W’ in the French alphabet.
1630 Native American Indians introduce the pilgrims to popcorn.
1707 A young man on horseback races through the hamlet of Stellenbosch shouting ‘Victorie! Victorie!’ as news spread that the burghers had scored a resounding victory against Governor Adrian Willem van der Stel, with his VOC bosses in Amsterdam ruling in favour of the burghers and firmly establishing them as the sole suppliers of food in the Cape. Young Hendrik Biebouw and his friends staged a celebration in Stellenbosch. These festivities would have gone unnoticed, except for Biebouw’s identification of himself as an Afrikaner, 80 years before the burghers commonly used the term for themselves.
1857 A thatched roof church is inaugurated on the square in Pretoria, giving rise to the name, Church Square.
1911 A report is released in London about the disappearance of the SS Waratah between Durban and Cape Town with all 211 people on board, blaming a storm for its loss. Nonetheless, all sorts of theories endure about its true fate and its final resting place
1983 The notorious Broadway flop Moose Murders opens and closes on the same night. One of the reviewers, New Yorker art critic Brendan Gill, said that the play, ‘would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas’. Moose Murders is considered the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway failures are judged.
1983 Hindus kill 3 000 Muslims in Assam.
2002 The survivor of more than a dozen assassination attempts, Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, 67, is killed in a military ambush after leading his forces through almost 27 years of civil war. A charismatic figure, Savimbi had seemed forever clad in combat fatigues, a felt beret with four gold stars atop his head, a swagger stick in one hand and his trademark pearl-handled revolver ever-present at his hip. A tool of the Cold War, feted by the West and supported by the CIA and South Africa, he was a superb battlefield tactician, resourceful and wise. However, he struggled to adjust to the changing world order once the Soviet Union fell and, with the US wooing Angola for its oil, he became an embarrassment to US and South African interests. When the end came, Savimbi, who was shot 15 times, was killed together with 21 of his bodyguards, all with weapons in hand, on the banks of the Luvuei River in Moxico province.
2011 An earthquake strikes Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 181 people.
2018 Neanderthals not humans were the first artists on Earth, producing red cave paintings 65 000 years ago in Spain, according to new research, published in Science.