Did you know this happened?

Did You Know?

The size of the African continent may come as a surprise to those whose education has been mostly centred on the West. For instance, it encompasses almost 19 million square kilometres and is spread throughout all four hemispheres. Only Asia is bigger.

On this Day in History: October 21

1805 The Battle of Trafalgar takes place between the Royal Navy and the combined French and Spanish fleets. The British end the threat of Napoleon’s invasion of England, but the victory is bitter sweet as their leader and naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, is mortally wounded aboard his flagship, Victory.

1913 Transvaal women satyagrahis begin defiance activities, hawking without licenses in Vereeniging; they cross the Natal border and encourage the miners in Newcastle to strike.

1966 A mine dump collapses on the village of Aberfan, Wales, burying a school and killing 144 people, mostly schoolchildren.

1978 Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanishes in a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait, south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1983 The metre is given as the distance light travels in a vacuum in under a second.

2014 Sporting hero Oscar Pistorius is jailed for five years for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The term is later lengthened.

2019 Australia’s biggest newspapers blank out their front pages in protest against press restrictions.

2020 Pope Francis backs same-sex civil unions in an interview in the documentary film, Francesco.

2021 Actor Alec Baldwin shots and kills cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, and injures director Joel Souza with a prop gun in rehearsal on a film set at Bonanza Ranch in the US state of New Mexico.

2021 Syria’s government says it has executed 24 people for starting devastating wildfires in 2020 that killed three.

2024 Findings are published of a massive collision of Earth with a large meteorite, four times the size of Mt Everest, 3.26 billion years ago. It was so big it boiled the oceans and may have kickstarted early life.

2024 The ‘Great Cheese Robbery’: The sophisticated theft of 22 tons of wheels of rare, artisanal English Cheddar – worth about £300 000 – from a London dairy is reported to police. Every year, 4% of the world’s cheese supply goes missing, making it the most stolen food item on the planet. It’s not all petty shoplifting. It is seldom recovered.