Did you know this happened on this day in history

Did you know

Johannesburg is the richest city in Africa by GDP and private wealth. It is also the largest city in the world that is not situated near a significant source of water.

On this day in history, October 13

AD54 Roman emperor Claudius dies from poisoning. His stepson, Nero succeeds him.1307 Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be tortured to extract a “confession” of heresy.

1881 Adderly Street, in Cape Town, gets its first electric lights installed.

1867 The first recorded discovery of diamonds in the colonial period of South Africa, with the very first being the Eureka diamond. By 1871, more diamonds were found in the vicinity of the present-day Kimberley, leading to the establishment of De Beers Consolidated Mines under the leadership of Cecil John Rhodes. This was soon followed by the discovery of gold, which changed South Africa’s agrarian economy to an industrialised one.

1972 A plane en-route from Uruguay to Chile carrying the Old Christians Club rugby union team, crashes on a glacier in the Andes Mountains. Of the 45 onboard, 28 escape the crash, but only 16 survive the 2-month mountain ordeal, in which they are forced into cannibalism to survive. Their ordeal includes an avalanche, which kills 8 of them.

2010 All 33 miners trapped in a Chilean mine for 69 days underground, are rescued by an international recovery team – which includes South African expertise – who use a winch and a narrow borehole. The entire rescue is televised live and watched around the world.

2018 The oldest-known human remains from Poland, 115 000 years old, are found to be those of a Neanderthal child from Ciemna Cave, who was eaten by a large bird.

2021 Rumeysa Gelgi, 24, from Türkiye is confirmed as World’s tallest living woman by Guinness World Records at 215.16cm (7ft 0.7in).2021 Bow and arrow terrorist attack kills five and injuries two in Kongsberg, Norway.

2021 Star Trek star William Shatner, 90, becomes the oldest person to reach space on a 10-minute Blue Origin flight.

2023 Microsoft completes biggest buyout in gaming history, purchasing Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for $69bn.

2024 Elon Musk’s SpaceX completes the first recovery of a rocket as its Starship rocket booster is caught by a giant pair of mechanical arms in a test flight near Brownsville, Texas.