Daily Enlightenment: Wisdom from Soyinka, Hippo Myths Busted, and Epic Moments in History!
Believe it or not, for an animal that spends most of its time in the water, hippos can't swim.
Image: Grok.ai
Quote of the day
The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism. | Wole Soyinka
Did you know?
Hippos can’t swim. Hippos really do have big bones, so big and dense, in fact, that they’re barely buoyant at all. They don’t swim and instead perform a slow-motion gallop on the riverbed or on the sea floor. In fact, hippos can even sleep underwater, thanks to a built-in reflex that allows them to bob up, take a breath, and sink back down without waking.
On this day in history, February 9
1841 Daniel Lindley, an American Presbyterian clergyman, is ordained as minister of the Voortrekkers’ Pietermaritzburg congregation.
1874 Langalibalele, chief of the AmaHlubi people, is tried by a British court, found guilty of treason, and banished to Robben Island. He is one of the first Black activists to mount an armed struggle and be banished to the prison.
1900 The Davis Cup – the premier men’s international tennis team event – is established.
1906 Martial law is proclaimed in Natal in response to the Bambatha Rebellion.
1916 The Cape Corps – 32 officers and 1 022 soldiers – leaves for East Africa under General Jan Smuts, commander of UK and South African troops in the East African campaign of World War I.
1934 The coldest day in New York city history, a bone-numbing −46.7°C.
1936 Lieutenant Tommy Rose arrives in Cape Town from England after a record-breaking flight that lasted three days, 17 hours and 38 minutes.
1940 South African double Nobel literature prize-winning author JM Coetzee is born.
1945 The British submarine HMS Venturer sinks U-864 off Norway in a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat.
1955 The fabric of the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown is torn apart as residents are forcefully removed and sent to Meadowlands, Soweto as part of the apartheid regime’s mad plan to keep the residential and business areas of cities and towns white. Blacks and coloureds were not allowed to live there, and could only be there during daylight hours if they had work to perform.
2002 Hundreds of Ethiopians line Addis Ababa’s streets to welcome the return of a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, looted from Ethiopia by British soldiers, 130 years before.
2014 Australian National University scientists discover the oldest star – 13.6 billion years old.
2022 Nearly four million bottles of beer are destroyed in large crackdown on alcohol in northern Nigerian state of Kano, where alcohol is prohibited under Sharia law.
2023 President Cyril Ramaphosa finally declares ‘a national state of disaster’ to respond to the country’s electricity crisis amid daily blackouts.
DAILY NEWS