Ever wonder why we refer to bugs in the system. Well here's the answer.
Image: BBC Science
9AD Six Germanic tribes annihilate three of the seemingly invincible Roman legions in the depths of the Teutoburg Forest. To the outside world, the legions ‘disappeared’, mystifying the Roman Emperor and senate.
1087 William the Conqueror dies. William Rufus, his third son, succeeds him as King of England, taking the title William II. He dies in an apparent hunting ‘accident’ in 1100.
1868 Born near Mkhuzi in KZN, and a lieutenant of Shaka, Mzilikazi, the founder the Matabele Kingdom dies at his capital, KwaBulawayo (the place of slaughter).
1873 Xhosa hero Jongumsobomvu Maqoma, a commander of Xhosa forces during the Cape Frontier Wars, dies of old age and poor treatment on Robben Island.
1947 The first case of a computer bug is recorded when a moth lodges in the relay of a computer at Harvard University. Ever since it’s been common to refer to a bug in the system.
1983 The former golden boy of tennis, Lithuanian lion Vitas Gerulaitis, one of the most charismatic figures to wield a racquet, bets his house – and wins – that Martina Navratilova can’t beat the 100th-ranked male tennis player. It was Gerulaitis, who in 1979 quipped after finally beating Jimmy Connors: “And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.”
2001 Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the rebel Northern Alliance, is assassinated by two al-Qaeda suicide bombers using explosives hidden in a camera while pretending to interview him, on behalf of the Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
2015 Queen Elizabeth II becomes Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
2019 Nigeria says it will repatriate 600 people from South Africa after two people killed in wave of xenophobic violence in Johannesburg.
2019 Australia experiences its earliest and most severe start to the fire season after fighting dozens of bush fires in Queensland and New South Wales.
2024 Award-winning US actor James Earl Jones, who played Rev Stephen Kumalo in the 1995 film adaptation of the book by South Africa’s Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country, dies, aged 93.
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