Sea of Devastation, Identical Twins Are Not Identical and The Fall of the Soviet Union: The Powerful Events That Shaped December 26

Did you know?

Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints. You can’t blame your crimes on your twin, after all. This is because environmental factors during development in the womb (umbilical cord length, position in the womb, and the rate of finger growth) affect your fingerprint.

On this day in history, December 26

1652 The leader of the first Dutch settlers, Jan van Riebeeck writes in his diary that the first two pounds of butter have been churned at the Cape.

1915 The German gunboat, the Kingani, is captured by the British on Lake Tanganyika. It is removed by portage through the dense jungles of the Belgian Congo.

1924 Oscar winning actress Judy Garland, aged 2½ and billed as Baby Frances, makes her show-business debut.

1943 The German battleship Scharnhorst sinks off Norway’s North Cape after a battle against the Royal Navy.

1944 Maverick US General George Patton’s Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded US forces at the Battle of the Bulge.

1948 Cardinal József Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy.

1948 The last Soviet troops are withdrawn from North Korea.

1975 The world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft, the Soviet Tu-144, goes into service.

1991 The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union, thus ending the Cold War.

1995 Spinner Paul Adams becomes South Africa’s youngest Test cricketer at 18 years and 340 days of age.

2000 Former Transkei prime minister Chief George Mzivubu Mathanzima dies at Frontier Hospital in Queenstown, aged 82.

2003 An earthquake shakes south-eastern Iran leaves more than 26 000 people dead and 30 000 injured.

2004 A magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra, Indonesia, creates an unbelievably deadly tsunami, causing catastrophic devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives. The world's deadliest natural disaster of modern times kills more than 230 000 people. The tsunami sweeps ashore in Hawai'i after crossing the Pacific and it hammers east Africa. Ocean level variance two to three meters outside normal cause Durban harbour, Africa's busiest general cargo port and home to the largest and busiest container terminal in the Southern Hemisphere, to be closed because of unusually strong surges across the entrance to the port. A boy dies after swimming in the Quinera River at Gonubie, close to East London; an adult died at the Blue Horizon Bay near Port Elizabeth, the furthest point from the epicenter of the earthquake where a tsunami-related death was reported (9 000km).

2006 Aged 40 years and 268 days, Teddy Sheringham scores for West Ham United in a 2-1 loss to Portsmouth to become the oldest goalscorer in Premier League history.

2009 Political activist, poet and academic Dennis Brutus, 81, dies in Cape Town.

2015 Floods in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay displace 150 000 people.

2018 American Colin O’Brady is the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unassisted.

2024 Israel airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen narrowly miss killing visiting WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the country's capita, Sana'a.

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