On This Day in History: Blood River, Cape Town Jazz Festival & Quantum Breakthroughs

Did you know?

South Africa hosts the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, one of the largest jazz festivals in Africa.

On this day in history, December 9

1838 464 Voortrekkers and 200 servants, led by Andries Pretorius and Sarel Celliers, circle their wagons to form a laager and make a solemn promise: Should they be victorious against the 25 000 to 30 000 Zulu warriors massing against them, they and their descendants will dedicate the day of the battle to the glory of God. This is repeated nightly until the Battle of Blood River, on the banks of the Ncome River. The back story is that the trekkers felt they had to defend themselves after the betrayal and murder Voortrekker leader Piet Retief and his entourage in Dingaan’s kraal after signing a peace treaty. Ten days later, impis kill all the Voortrekker inhabitants of the Weenen/Bloukrans area.

1900 Russia’s czar rejects President Paul Kruger’s plea for aid against Britain. Still, many Russians volunteer to fight with the Boers.

1968 Douglas Engelbart gives ‘The Mother of All Demos’, unveiling the computer mouse, hypertext and graphical user interface (GUI).

1979 Smallpox, which killed 300-500 million people in the 1990s, is eradicated by vaccine, making it the first of only two diseases made extinct (rinderpest in 2011 being the other).

1992 As part of Operation Restore Hope, US Marines storm ashore in Somalia, only to be met on the beach by television cameras.

1995 South Africa’s Francois ‘the White Buffalo’ Botha becomes world champion by winning the IBF heavyweight boxing title.

2019 A volcano on New Zealand’s White erupts, creating a hell on Earth for 47 tourists. But for the quick thinking of two of the tour guides, no-one would have survived the hellish scenario which kills 16 people on the island and 8 in hospital. Many of the survivors are very badly burned.

2021 Over 40 camels are disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival beauty contest after Botox injections and other cosmetic enhancements were used to give them fully lips, among other things.

2024 Google unveils a quantum computer, capable of performing a mathematical calculation in 5 minutes that the best supercomputers could not do in less than 10 septillion years (10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000, or one million trillion).

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