Earth gets a second moon.
Image: File
480BC The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeats Xerxes I’s Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis as the smaller Greek navy of about 370 triremes bottle up the Persian ships in the narrow waters of the strait at Salamis. Coming soon after the Battle of Thermopylae, Xerxes has to postpone his planned land offensives for a year – a delay that gives the Greek city-states time to unite against him.
1652 A group of whites at the Cape climb Table Mountain for the first time, with Khoi chief Autshumao (aka Harry) as their guide.
1911 Outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War, the first to feature aerial bombing.
1916 American oil tycoon John D Rockefeller becomes the world’s first billionaire.
1942 South African troops land at Tulearon (Toliara) on the south-west coast of Madagascar, to support the East African force based at Tananarive (Antananarivo).
1969 An earthquake, measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale, hits Tulbagh, Ceres and Wolseley, in the Cape, killing 11 people, leaving 1 000 homeless and destroying many historical buildings. At Tulbagh, seven people are killed.
1990 The YF-22, which later becomes the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, flies for the first time.
1999 Popular SA tenor and actor Gé Korsten, 71, commits suicide at his Wilderness home.
1969 Studying fossilised micro-organisms at Barberton, Mpumalanga, geologists find evidence of life on Earth as early as about 3.4 billion years ago.
2009 An 8.0 magnitude earthquake near the Samoan Islands causes a tsunami, that causes nearly 200 deaths.
2013 Forty-two people are killed by Boko Harem in a college attack in Gujba, Nigeria.
2021 A prison riot between rival drug cartels in a jail in Ecuador results in 116 deaths, with some decapitated.
2024 Earth acquires a temporary ‘mini-moon’, tiny asteroid, called 2024 PT5, of just 37 meters in width.
2024 Flooding and landslides in Nepal kill at least 148 people with more missing, submerging the capital, Kathmandu.
2024 New Zealand breaks the world record for the largest haka, with 6 531 people performing ‘Ka Mate’ at Eden Park, Auckland.