Would you?
Image: File
Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. | George Addair
Your brain is better at solving problems when you explain them simply (the Feynman technique).
1429 French teenager Joan of Arc and her army arrive to relieve the Siege of Orléans.
1829 The freedom of the press is established at the Cape through the efforts of John Fairbairn, founder of the frequently banned South African Commercial Advertiser.
1835 Peace is established between the Cape government and the Xhosa under King Hintsa, ending the Sixth Frontier War.
1863 William Randolph Hearst, “the master of fake news”, who built the world’s largest newspaper and magazine business, is born. He fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer, birthing the age of yellow journalism, and said: “When the reader looks at Page 1, he says, ‘Gee-whiz’. When he turns to the second page, ‘Holy Moses’. And when he turns to the middle page, he says, ‘God Almighty’.” Hearst fuelled the 1898 Spanish-American War, sensationalising Spanish atrocities to sell newspapers. His New York Journal notoriously blamed Spain for the USS Maine sinking in Havana, and he sent artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to record the war. Remington cabled New York that there was no war to record. The response from Hearst was: “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
1902 A ceasefire between British and Boer forces fighting the Boer War is called so they can play a game of rugby at Okiep, 600km north of Cape Town.
1936 The enormous Jonker diamond, found on a farm near Pretoria, is cut in three.
1945 Realising that time is running out, Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler marries his long-time mistress Eva Braun in a bunker as the Soviet Red Army closes in on Berlin.
1990 Wrecking balls destroy the Berlin Wall.
1991 A cyclone in Bangladesh kills at least 138 000 people. Ten million are left homeless.
2011 Watched by millions worldwide, Britain’s Prince William marries Catherine Middleton.
2022 A six-storey building collapses in Changsha, China, killing 26 people. A survivor is rescued six days after the collapse.
2022 The world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge, the 632m-long Bach Long (White Dragon), opens at a mountain park in Vietnam.
2025 Severe storms in Western Pennsylvania leave 400 000 without power.
DAILY NEWS