Voters go to the polls.
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Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future. | Jomo Kenyatta
Black on yellow are the 2 colours with the strongest impact.
1660 On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end.
1887 Xhosa Chief Sandile Mgolombane kaNgqika is killed in a skirmish with the Fingos. A son from the Great House of Ngqika, Sandile was defeated during the Seventh Frontier War (1846-47) and his territory was put under British command and called British Kaffraria. But his dissatisfaction with the appointment of British commissioners to rule the territory led to the Eighth Frontier War (1850-53). Sandile was deposed and a white man, Charles Brownlee, was appointed in his place as paramount chief.
1903 In a coup, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand organisation.
1914 The RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, killing 1 012.
1919 Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is confirmed by Arthur Eddington’s expedition to photograph a solar eclipse off West Africa.
1932 The Bonus Army, of World War I veterans, begins to assemble in Washington, DC to request their promised bonuses.
1935 The first flight of the highly advanced German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter.
1942 Bing Crosby records White Christmas, the world’s best-selling single (100 million copies sold). In second place is Elton John’s Candle in the Wind, followed by Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime.
2005 Hamilton Naki, a former gardener who became a laboratory assistant without any formal training and served alongside cardiac surgeon Christian Barnard, dies.
2019 The world’s smallest surviving baby – a girl – is discharged from hospital in San Diego after being born at 23 weeks weighing a mere 8.6 ounces (245 grams).
2022 A man disguised as an elderly disabled woman throws cake at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, in Paris. The painting is undamaged.
2024 Heatwave hits northern and central India with unconfirmed record temperature reading of 52.3 °C, later downgraded to 49 °C.
2024 South Africa hold its 7th democratic national and provincial elections.
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