Zululand annexed; do you really trust your government; sex kitten’s riveting performance; a reason why the world has an obesity crisis; and the most expensive car
1499 Catherine of Aragon, 12, is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales, 13.
1536 The Queen of England, Anne Boleyn, and second wife of Henry VIII, is beheaded on trumped up charges of infedlity and incest, Boleyn had failed to become the obedient wife the king expected and ignore his infidelities This smart, aggressive woman stirred passionate emotions in all who knew her – no less so, Henry VIII, who first begged for her love and then condemned her to death for failing to produce a male heir. Ironically, her daughter, Elizabeth, becomes one of England’s greatest rulers.
1743 French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin develops the centigrade temperature scale.
1887 Britain’s Natal governor, Sir Arthur Havelock annexes Zululand.
1890 Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh is born.
1953 The nuclear bomb ‘Dirty Harry’ explodes over Nevada, leaving a coating of radioactive dust on valleys and towns downwind in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and wreaking a terrible toll as cancer rate start to increase. (It was one of 100 tests above ground, that, despite official denials, turned swathes of the desert radioactive, and raised the question: how much should you trust your government? Shot downwind a year later, near the town of St George where the fallout was reportedly heavy, the film The Conqueror allegedly killed its star, John Wayne, leading lady Susan Hayward, director Dick Powell and dozens of others – of the 220 film crew members, 91 (41% of the crew) developed cancer, while 46 (20.91%) died from it. Claudia Peterson, a ‘Downwinder’ activist and resident, who lost many relatives, had an epiphany when visiting families in Kazakhstan where the USSR did its testing: ‘I was afraid of these people my whole childhood and then discovered they weren’t monsters. It was our governments that were killing us’.
1962 Sex kitten actress and performer Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of Happy Birthday steals the limelight at a party for US President John F Kennedy.
1998 Voortrekkerhoogte is renamed Thaba Tshwane.
2016 EgyptAir flight MS804 goes missing over the Mediterranean on route Paris to Cairo.
2018 Watched by a television audience of 1.9 billion people, Britain’s Prince Harry marries actress Meghan Markle in Windsor, making her a member of the British royal family. Harry’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth II confers upon them the titles of Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
2020 Greenhouse gas emissions dropped 17% worldwide in April 2020 when the world was in lockdown, a study published in Nature Climate Change says.
2022 Obesogen (endocrine-disrupting chemicals coming from environmental pollutions and which affect the hormones that regulate and control weigh) has a significant effect in contributing to the obesity crisis and, alarmingly, can be passed down through the generations according to major new study.
2022 Mercedes confirms the sale of world's most expensive car – a 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR coupe – one of only two in existence – for an eye-watering €135 million. Its price tag far outdoes the €11 million paid by soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo for Bugatti’s one-off La Voiture Noire.