ON THIS DAY MAY 21

1403 Henry of Castile sends envoys to the feared Mongol warlord Timur to discuss an alliance against the Ottomans.

1703 Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe

– second only to The Bible in its number of translations – is jailed.

1737 A gale wrecks nine ships in Table Bay; 208 people die as a result.

1758 Mary Campbell, 10, is abducted in Pennsylvania during the French-indian War. She is returned 6½ years later.

1792 Japan’s Mount Unzen erupts and a resulting tsunami kills 14 500 people.

1871 Troops invade the Paris Commune – 20 000 communards will die.

1903 The first Chinese labourers leave for the Witwatersrand gold mines.

1904 The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) is founded.

1927 Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic.

1932 Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

1936 Sada Abe is arrested wandering around Tokyo with her dead lover’s genitals in her handbag.

1936 London hosts a conference on the protection of elephants and rhinos.

1981 Reggae icon Bob Marley receives a Jamaican state funeral.

1982 British troops land on the Falklands. 1985 A special forces team is ambushed in northern Angola. Two recces are killed and Captain Wynand du Toit is taken captive.

1991 Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi assassinated by a suicide bomber. 1996 The Lake Victoria ferry MV Bukoba sinks; nearly 1 000 people die.

2004 Stanislav Petrov gets the World Citizen Award for averting a nuclear holocaust in 1983 after guessing that the Russian early warning system was faulty, and not launching Russian missiles against a supposed American strike. 2018 A teenager who started a California fire is ordered to pay $36.6 million (R522m).

2019 Nepalese Sherpa Kami Rita sets a new record for summits of Mt Everest – 24. | THE HISTORIAN