On this day, June 10

A selection of significant and interesting snippets of news, with an increasingly South African bent, through the ages

1692 Jochem Willemse rescues most of the crew of the Hoogergeest when it is wrecked, together with the Goede Hoop and Oranje, near the mouth of the Salt River, at the Cape.

1786 A dam collapses in China, sending a flood of water down the Dadu River, in Sichuan province, killing 100 000 people.

1829 The famous boat race between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge takes place on the Thames in London. Oxford won.

1898 US Marines land at Guantanamo, Cuba.

1903 The Serbian royal couple is assassinated. At nearly midnight, a group of army officers burst into the bed chambers of King Alexander and Queen Draga and find them hiding in a cupboard. The bodies are thrown out of a palace window, but, according to one story, Alexander clings to a railing until one of the assassins cuts his fingers off with a sword. Not surprisingly, the new king didn’t punish the killers, whose leader was a ruthless Serb nationalist, Captain Dragutin Dimitryevich. He heads a secret military society called the Unification or Death, or the Black Hand, which is instrumental in starting World War I.

1906 Poll tax rebel Bambatha, who fueled lawlessness in many districts of northern Natal, and his men are massacred by a large militia along the Mome stream near Nkandla forest.

1935 Dr Robert Smith has his last drink and forms Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio.

1967 Israel and Syria’s Six-Day War ends.

1977 The first Apple II computers are shipped.

1980 The ANC publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.

1982 Israeli troops reach Beirut’s outskirts.

1984 The US announces that, for the first time, one of their missiles has shot down an incoming missile in space, proving that the US is capable of a ‘Star Wars’ defence system. The truth, however is that it is largely an elaborate ruse, but one that rattles the Soviet Union which begins to see that it can’t win the arms race. Conceived by President Ronald Reagan and officially known as the Strategic Defence Initiative, Star Wars was based on the premise that American technology would produce space weapons to instantly pulverize any Soviet nuclear missiles launched at the US because, “we maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression,” Reagan said. Billions of dollars went into SDI, to develop space-based laser and particle-beam weapons and launchers for ballistic missile-destroying rockets. But Reagan’s idea in practice were unfeasible; the technology simply didn’t exist. But in theory they worked.

1990 British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton after a blowout causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit.

2020 After 34 years, Swedish prosecutors close the case on the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme, a controversial, sometimes divisive figure, saying the probable killer, Stig Engström, was dead. In the interim, many theories were floated, including that Apartheid South Africa was responsible.

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 20:45:44 GMTGreg Hutson

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