900 kill themselves by drinking cyanide-laced fruit juice

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South Africa is one of the few countries to have three capital cities, each hosting a separate segment of the government. Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, Cape Town the legislative capital and eat of parliament. Pretoria is the administrative capital.

On this day in history, November 19

1581 Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich dies after being attacked by his father, Ivan the Terrible.

1703 The Man in the Iron Mask, a prisoner of Louis XIV in the Bastille prison in Paris, dies. He may have been Count Matthioli, who had double-crossed Louis XIV, or the king’s brother.

1824 Flooding of the Russian Neva River in St Petersburg kills 10 000 people.

1863 US President Abraham Lincoln delivers the 272-word Gettysburg Address, in which he movingly reminds a war-weary public why they have to win the Civil War. Famed orator Edward Everett precedes Lincoln and drones on for two hours. Lincoln then delivers his address in less than two minutes. His words come to symbolise the definition of democracy.

1872 Mpande kaSenzangakhona, Zulu king and half-brother of Shaka and Dingane, dies at his kraal, Nodwengu, in Zululand. He came to power after overthrowing Dingane in 1840.

1941 During a mutually destructive engagement between the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and a modified German merchant ship, Kormoran, the ships sink each other off Western Australia, with the loss of all 645 Australians and 77 German seamen. The Sydney was the largest Allied warship lost with all hands during World War II. Her sinking is met with astonishment, but is overshadowed by the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1978 In Jonestown, Guyana, the biggest mass suicide occurs when Rev Jim Jones and 900 cult followers drink cyanide-laced fruit juice.

1981 Civil rights attorney Griffiths Mxenge is found stabbed in Umlazi, Durban.

1985 Arch enemies, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

2006 The innovative video game console, the Nintendo Wii is released in North America.

2017 Oumuamua is first detected by scientists, 400-metres long and reddish, it is the first known interstellar object in our solar system and is of possible alien origin.

2020 An inquiry finds credible evidence that elite Australian troops murdered 39 Afghan civilians.

2023 Novak Đoković of Serbia wins a record seventh ATP World Tour Final, beating Italian Jannik Sinner 6-3, 6-3 in Turin, Italy.

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