First skirmish of the Bambata Rebellion; Chernobyl evacuated; the government bans rock hit because of its Struggle use; Brits sink Argentinian cruiser; Messi sets record; and Leicester win EPL
1536 Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England, is arrested on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. The charges cost her her head and clears the way for King Henry VIII to remarry.
1611 The widely-used King James Version of the Bible is first published.
1863 Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson is shot by his sentries while on reconnaissance. He dies eight days later.
1906 Bambata Rebellion: Dundee-based troops under Captain Park Grey proceed to Nkandla, where the first skirmish takes place. Four Zulu rebels are killed.
1945 The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin.
1952 The world’s first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet, makes its maiden flight, taking off from London with 36 passengers, touching down in Johannesburg 18 hours later.
1957 Die Stem van Suid-Afrika (The Call of South Africa) is accepted as the country’s national anthem. Part of it is still in use.
1964 Two Viet Cong frogmen sink the escort carrier SUNS Card in Saigon harbour.
1980 The government bans Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall because it has been adopted by the ANC and others involved in the Struggle against Apartheid.
1982 The submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands War on the orders of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
1986 The city of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the nearby nuclear disaster.
1989 Hungary dismantles its part of the Iron Curtain, allowing East Germans to defect to the West.
2008 A cyclone kills more than 138 000 people in Myanmar.
2011 Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is killed by US Navy Seal commandos in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
2012 Barcelona striker Lionel Messi breaks the European goal-scoring record.
2014 Mudslides in Afghanistan kill up to 2 500 people.
2016 Rank outsiders Leicester City wins the English Premier League.
2018 The date for first humans in the Philippines is pushed back tenfold with the discovery of a rhino that was butchered 709 000 years ago.
2020 Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, the Icelandic actor who played Ser Gregor Clegane, aka “The Mountain” in Game of Thrones, sets a world deadlifting record of 501kg.
2023 The first non-invasive mind reader is developed at the University of Texas at Austin by combing functional magnetic resonance imaging with AI.
