Public kissing is punishable by death, the origins of the English-Afrikaans rift in South Africa, Congo cannibals kill thousands and a soldier finally surrenders 30 years after World War II ends. What else happened back in the day on March 9. Read on ...
1562 Kissing in public – an act punishable by death – is banned in Naples, but the law does little to prevent the spread of the plague, which claims many European lives.
1776 Adam Smith’s profoundly influential book, The Wealth of Nations, is published. It extols the benefits of the division of labour, competition, and trade and Smith advocates that by allowing individuals to freely pursue their own self-interest in a free market, without government regulation, nations will prosper.
1816 Five of the Slachter’s Nek rebels are hanged in public at Van Aardtspos on the Cape colony’s eastern frontier. They and others had rebelled against British rule a farmer was shot dead while resisting arrest after repeatedly mistreating labourers. Four of the nooses break and, despite please for mercy, the sentence is carried out using one rope. The rebellion and executions have acquired special significance as the beginning of an Afrikaner struggle against British colonial rule.
1831 The storied French Foreign Legion is founded to the strength of the French Army while also finding a use for the influx of refugees inundating France.
1839 The Prussian government limits the work week for children to just 51 hours.
1841 The US Supreme Court rules that the captive Africans who seized control of the ship Spanish schooner Amistad, had been taken into slavery illegally. The court ordered their immediate release and 35 of the survivors were returned to their homeland (the others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial).
1893 Congo cannibals kill thousands of Arabs during an uprising.
1916 Mexican general Pancho Villa – a key figure in the Mexican revolution – invades the US for reasons best know to himself, attacking a town in New Mexico.
1922 Martial law is declared in the Transvaal over the Rand Revolt.
1945 The first night bombing raid on Tokyo inflicts damage comparable to that inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs five months later.
1953 A rusty 1.4kg shell, dating from 1901, explodes in a Johannesburg playground, injuring more than 30 children and a teacher. It was found on a koppie near the school by one of the pupils, who brought it back to school.
1959 The hugely popular Barbie doll makes its debut.
1965 £100 000 worth of gold that went missing from the SS Cape Town Castle is found near the ship’s engine room while docked in Durban.
1974 Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda finally surrenders 29 years after the end of World War II. He had been hiding in the jungle and mountains of Lubang, a tiny island in the Philippines. The Japanese government declared him dead in 1959, but in reality, he was alive – committed to a secret mission that had instructed him to hold the island until the imperial army's return. He was convinced the whole time that the war had never ended.
1998 Mozambican police arrest Robert McBride on charges of gunrunning.
2006 Liquid water is discovered on the moon of Saturn.
2020 Italy says it is locking down the whole country due to a spike in Covid-19 cases with 10 040 cases and 630 deaths. South Africa and the rest of the world watch in amazement, not quite comprehending the severity of the nascent global pandemic as it begins to unfold, nor the hardships it will bring.