Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd became the first South Africans to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain.
Image: Pemba Sherpa
Your death will come on an ordinary day, in the middle of unfinished plans, and the world will continue without you. So live a little. | Franz Kafka
Pop corn was invented by the Aztec Indians.
1720 The ship, Le Grand St Antoine reaches Marseilles from the Levant, bringing with it Europe’s last major bubonic plague outbreak, which kills 100 000 people.
1842 Dick King, 29, and servant Ndongeni 16, swim their horses across Durban bay and sneak off along the Bluff and down the coast to Grahamstown, fording 120 rivers along the way, on an epic ride to seek relief for the besieged English settlers from the Boers.
1895 The aptly named playwright and poet Oscar Wilde is convicted of ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’ and sentenced to serve two years in prison.
1948 Polish war hero Witold Pilecki , sometimes called ‘one of the greatest wartime heroes’ – he got himself arrested so he could gather information on the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, is executed by the Communist authorities after a show trial in Warsaw.
1961 US President John F Kennedy says his goal is to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
1967 John Lennon takes delivery of an outlandish psychedelically painted Rolls Royce.
1977 The first of the hugely successful Star Wars movies is released.
1985 A cyclone kills 11 000 people in Bangladesh.
1989 Mass murderer, ‘Witwolf’ Barend Strydom receives eight death sentences for racial murders in Pretoria the previous year.
1994 Justice Richard Goldstone calls for a ‘truth commission’ on apartheid atrocities because ‘victims would not be able to forgive without openness’.
1996 Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd become the first South African team to conquer Mount Everest.
1996 The Blues win the inaugural Super 12 rugby title with a 45-21 victory over the Natal Sharks at Eden Park.
2002 A train crash in Tenga, Mozambique, kills 197 people.
2013 Yuichiro Miura of Japan becomes the oldest person to climb Mount Everest at 80.
2025 Formula 1 driver Lando Norris wins the Monaco Grand Prix for McLaren, the team’s first victory at the event since 2008.
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