How Madiba was captured and a 'redneck prank'
After 68 hellish days underground, one of the trapped Chilean miners is rescued, after a massive international effort, through a narrow shaft in a specially designed cage from deep underground.
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On this day in history: August 5
1863 The Confederate raider Alabama captures the bark Sea Bride off Table Bay. Built during the American Civil War to prey on the shipping of the Northern states, the Alabama’s officers were Southerners, her crew British.
1914 The guns of the fort at Port Phillip Heads in Victoria, Australia, fire across the bows of the German steamer SS Pfalz, which is trying to leave the Port of Melbourne, unaware of the outbreak of war between Germany and the United Kingdom. As a result of the shots across the bows, the ship is detained. This is said to have been the first Allied shot of World War I.
1962 Nelson Mandela is captured near Cedara, KwaZulu-Natal, soon after his return from military training in Morocco. He doesn’t taste freedom for another 27 years.
1962 Sex kitten and actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead from an overdose of drugs.
1965 South Africa’s first atomic reactor, Safari I, opens at Pelindaba, near Pretoria.
1981 US President Ronald Reagan fires 11 360 air-traffic controllers who ignored his order to return to work.
2004 Locust swarms invade the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, stripping its trees bare.
2010 A mining accident in Chile traps 33 miners 700m below ground for 68 days.
2017 New Zealand’s Crusaders travel to Johannesburg and beat the Lions 25-17 in the Super Rugby Final, in their eighth victory.
2018 A vintage Junkers Ju-52 plane crashes in Switzerland, killing all 20 people on board.
2020 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lays the cornerstone for a Hindu temple in Ayodhya to replace a previous Muslim mosque.
2022 Volkswagen launches a prototype of its first flying car, an automated, electric passenger vehicle, nicknamed “Flying Tiger“. The German carmaker joins other automotive giants, including Hyundai, Toyota and Stellantis, with a stake in, what is expected to be, the lucrative eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) market.
2024 In an interview, then Independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy jr clears up a long-standing mystery when he admits he and drunk friends put a roadkill bear cub next to a bicycle as a ‘redneck prank’ in New York’s Central Park 10 years previously.
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