An absolutely momentous day.
Image: ChatGPPT
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive.” | Marcus Aurelius
On average, you share your birthday with 9 million other people.
1870. Basutho King Moshoeshoe dies.
1900. British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejects peace overtures from Paul Kruger.
1918. ‘Spanish flu’ first reaches America and goes on to kill 500 000 people. South Africa was the fifth-hardest hit country in the world with deaths almost as high as those in the US, out of a global death toll of almost 22 million. It has been called “the single most devastating episode in South Africa’s demographic history.”
1985. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the USSR’s last leader. His glasnost and perestroika (restructuring) policies end the Cold War.
1994. The right-wing, white supremacist AWB group randomly kills 42 people in Bophuthatswana, and before the world’s press, two of their number are executed in retaliation by a Bophuthatswana policeman.
2004. Simultaneous explosions on rush-hour trains in Madrid, Spain, kill 192 people.
2011. An earthquake off Japan creates a tsunami that sweeps inland, killing about 16 000 people, causing damage along the North and South American coasts and breaking off icebergs in Antarctica, 13 000 km away. The waves surge over the seawalls at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, leading to radioactive leaks.
2020. The smallest dinosaur discovered is reported in the journal Nature. It is a skull preserved in a piece of amber, which is smaller than a fingertip. It was found in Myanmar.
2025. Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is arrested in Manila after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity over his ‘war on drugs’.
2025. Pakistan’s Jaffa Express train is hijacked by the Balochistan Liberation Army while travelling from Quetta to Peshawar. It results in a 30-hour siege and the deaths of more than 50 people.
2025. The World Air Quality Report identifies Byrnihat, India, as the world’s most polluted city, with Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and India the most polluted countries. Johannesburg, South Africa’s worst, is 95th, but still better than London, Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Rome and Paris.
DAILY NEWS