101 BCE Battle of Vercellae: the Roman army under Gaius Marius defeats the Cimbri in Cisalpine Gaul – ending the Celto-Germanic threat on Italy’s border – with up to 160 000 Cimbri killed.
1502 Christopher Columbus lands in the Bay Islands, Honduras, during his fourth voyage.
1626 An earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills 10 000 people.
1858 Explorer John Hanning Speke, while searching for the source of the Nile, discovers and names Lake Victoria. It is the world’s largest tropical lake and the second-largest by surface area (amazingly, 80% of its volume comes from rain water).
1869 The Charles, the world’s first oil tanker, leaves US for Europe with 7 000 barrels of oil.
1870 The diggers on the diamond fields between the Vaal and the Harts Rivers proclaim Klipdrift a republic, with Stafford Parker as first (and only) president.
1891 The SA rugby team plays for the first time against a team from the British Isles (the British & Irish Lions) and loses 0-4 in Port Elizabeth.
1900 General Marthinus Prinsloo surrenders to the British in the Brandwater Basin, near Clarens. Some generals refuse to surrender and escape via Golden Gate with about 1 500 men.
1930 Uruguay wins the first Fifa World Cup.
1935 The first Penguin book is published, starting the paperback revolution.
1945 Japanese submarine I-58 sinks the USS Indianapolis – which ferried the atomic bomb – killing 883 seamen. Most die over four days, a great many being killed by sharks.
1966 England beat West Germany to win the World Cup after extra time at Wembley.
1969 An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 fighter collide over Morioka, Japan, killing 162 people.
1975 Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of a Detroit restaurant, never to be seen or heard from again.
2003 In Mexico, the last “old style” Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line.
2018 British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt mistakenly calls his Chinese-born wife “Japanese” in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing. - THE HISTORIAN
The Independent on Saturday