History Today: From Tamerlane to the Arab Spring Extraordinary Events You Didn’t Know Happened Today

Did you know?

The shortest war in history was between Britain and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. It lasted 38 minutes.

On  this day in history, December 17

1398 Feared Mongol warlord Timur (Tamerlane) captures and sacks Delhi, defeating Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud’s armies by setting camels loaded with hay alight and charging them at the Sultans armoured elephants.

1652 Johan Anthoniszoon ‘Jan’ van Riebeeck, reports the first comet discovered from South Africa. Similarly to many other charted comets, it has not returned to earth’s view.

1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first powered, controlled airplane flights.

1919 Es’kia (Ezekiel) Mphahlele, doyen of African letters, is born in Marabastad, Pretoria. Nominated in 1968 for a Nobel literature prize, he wrote a series of stories published in Drum magazine. The Lesane Stories helped consolidate the short story tradition in South African literature that stands among the best in the world.

1939 The much feared battleship and German raider Admiral Graf Spee, which had broken free of the British naval blockade of Europe to create havoc in the Atlantic shipping lanes, is scuttled off Montevideo.

1959 On The Beach – a terrifying tale of nuclear holocaust – is the first film to première on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

1961 The Niteroi Circus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil catches fire after a disgruntled employee sets fire to the big top. About 320 people die.

2010 Street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, which becomes a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and Arab Spring against autocratic regimes.

2014 103-year-old Gus Andreone records the 8th ace of his career in Florida. He is the oldest golfer to record a hole-in-one.

2017 French sailor François Gabart sets a round-the-world record for fastest solo navigation of the globe (42 days and 16 hours).

2018 A poacher, who killed hundreds of deer in Missouri, US, is sentenced to watch Bambi repeatedly during his jail term of one year.

2019 China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, enters naval service.

2024 Russian general Igor Kirillov, head of the country’s chemical weapons, is assassinated by a bomb in an electric scooter in Moscow. Ukraine takes responsibility.

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