From the first, brick-sized handset, the mobile phone has come along way since the cellphone was first introduced.
Image: https://www.cs.odu.edu/~tkennedy/cs300/development/Public/M01-HistoryOfPhones/index.html
The first hand-held mobile phone call was made in April 1973, in New York city.
1847 German emigrants leave Bremen for Natal, with many of them settling in what are today Pinetown and New Germany, not far from Durban.
1871 Sent out by a US newspaper to find the famed but missing explorer David Livingstone, journalist Henry Morton Stanley finds him at Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, after an 18-month hunt. Upon locating him, he utters the famous question, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
1942 ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning,’ says British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a speech about the decisive victory over Germany at El Alamein, Egypt, in North Africa. The battle marked the turn of the tide of World War II in the Western Hemisphere. Churchill would later say: ‘Before Alamein, we never had a victory – after Alamein we never had a defeat.’ Saffas played a critical role in the fighting, with the 1st South African Division leading the way and having to breach a minefield of more than half a million mines in ‘Operation Lightfoot’.
1991 South Africa, led by Clive Rice and featuring Jimmy Cook, Allan Donald, Andrew Hudson, Peter Kirsten, Adrian Kuiper, Kepler Wessels and Mandy Yachad, makes its return to international cricket with an ODI against India in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
2007 ¿Por qué no te callas? (Why don’t you shut up?) says Spain’s King Juan Carlos to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at a summit in Santiago, Chile, at which Chávez repeatedly interrupted the Spanish prime minister’s speech. It becomes an overnight sensation, gaining cult status as a ringtone; spawning a domain name; a contest; T-shirt sales; a TV programme; and YouTube videos.
2019 Iran announces the discovery of a vast oil field of about 53 million barrels of oil.
2023 Columbia begins a campaign to sterilise its hippos, the escaped ex-pets of legendary drug boss Pablo Escobar. From the original four hippos that escaped from Escobar’s country estate, about 130 now exist – the largest population outside Africa. One study estimated that by 2034 the hippos would number 1 400.
2023 The Beatles’ single Now and Then hits #1 on the British singles chart, a record 54 years after their last #1 single.
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