A warship explodes spectacularly during a devastating and deadly surprise attack on the US fleet in Hawai'i. The attack brought America into World War II, changing its outcome and potentially saving countless thousands of South African lives in the global conflict.
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The average person spends 6 months of their life waiting for red lights to turn green.
1703 The worst wind storm recorded in Great Britain, makes landfall, with wind gusts of up to 200kp/h. About 9 000 people die. The Royal Navy loses 13 ships and 1 500 sailors.
1767 Wax modeller Marie Tussaud is born in Bern, Switzerland. She establishes the famous Madame Tussaud’s waxworks in London in 1802.
1895 At the Battle at Amba Alagi, Abyssinia, the Ethiopians beat invading Italian armies.'
1900 English social worker Emily Hobhouse sets sail for South Africa, to investigate conditions in British concentration camps.
1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry.
1941 In an event of greater global significance than the more recent 9/11 attacks, the US is forced to join World War II when the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is attacked by Japanese aircraft in a surprise raid that lasts just over one hour and leaves many casualties and a great portion of the US fleet out of action. But the attack should not have been a surprise had the Americans taken notice of the many warning signs.
1949 Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his government flee to Taiwan.
1963 Instant replay on TV makes its debut during a football game in Philadelphia.
1972 Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to the moon, is launched. The crew takes the famous photograph that becomes known as, The Blue Marble.
1987 A Pacific Southwest Airlines passenger plane crashes in California, killing all 43 on board, after a passenger shoots his ex-boss and the pilots.
1995 One of the 20th Century’s major poets, Seamus Heaney wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
2017 Unrest breaks out in the West Bank and Gaza, schools are closed and a general strike takes place in response to America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
2020 Coca-Cola is named as the world’s worst plastic polluter with billions of plastic bottles and containers from its many products fouling the environment, particularly the oceans.
2024 More than 100 SAA pilots return to work after a crippling strike that won them a 9.47% pay increase.
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