Mike the Headless Chicken, aka "Miracle Mike" was an American chicken that lived for 18 months after a failed slaughter attempt in 1945. When Mike did not die after being struck with an axe, farmer Lloyd Olsen instead decided to care for the bird. He fed it a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper, and gave it small grains of corn. After nearly 2 years of nationwide fame, Mike choked to death on a corn kernel in 1947. Once his fame had been established, Mike began a career of touring sideshows in the company of such other anomalies. He was also photographed for dozens of magazines and papers, and was featured in Time and Life magazines. Mike was put on display to the public for an admission cost of 25 cents (equivalent to $3 in 2023). At the height of his popularity, the chicken's owner earned $4,500 per month (equivalent to $59,000 in 2023); Mike was valued at $10,000 (equivalent to $131,100 in 2023).
Image: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuOqcInoHkC/?img_index=3
1802 Frans Bresler, landdros of Graaff-Reinet, confers with Lieutenant-Governor Francis Dundas in Algoa Bay about withdrawing British troops from the Cape’s eastern frontier.
1888 Fire breaks on the mail ship Pembroke Castle while docked in Cape Town harbour. The blaze kills 10 people.
1901 The youngest Boer commandant, Piet van der Merwe, 19, and 23 burgers are killed at Driefontein, in the Cape Colony.
1914 Parliament decides that South Africa will enter World War I alongside England.
1942 The South African Army, Navy and Air Force are involved in invading Madagascar to deny Axis powers access to deep-water ports.
1944 While planning the capture of the bridge at Arnhem, as part of Operation Market Garden during the liberation of Europe, British Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning memorably says to his boss, Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery: ‘But, sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far’, giving rise to the expression, ‘a bridge too far’.
1945 Mike the Headless Chicken is decapitated in Fruita, Colorado; incredibly he survives for 18 months before choking to death, but becomes something of a celebrity.
1948 Pretoria accepts 83 German war orphans.
1977 Hamida Djandoubi is the last person to be executed by guillotine in France.
2008 The Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the biggest scientific experiment in history, is powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.
2015 A discovery of a new human-like species, Homo Naledi, is announced by a team of female archaeologists after being found deep in Gauteng’s Rising Star Cave system.
2022 António Guterres calls for global help for flood-ravaged Pakistan where 33 million people are displaced.
2023 The collapse of two dams after heavy rain floods the city of Derna, Libya, cutting it off completely and leaving more than 4 000 people dead and 8 000 missing.
2024 The rare and ornate 14th-century Shem Tov Bible, combining Jewish, Christian, and Islamic artistic traditions, completed by Rabbi Shem Tov Ibn Gaon in Soria, Spain in 1312, sells on auction for $6.9 million.
DAILY NEWS