ON THIS DAY, AUGUST 12

1480 Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam.

1779 Johannes Jacobus Janse (Lang Hans) van Rensburg, leader of one of the early Voortrekker treks, is born at the Sundays River, Cape Colony. His entire trek of 51 people is massacred in 1836 at Inhambane (Mozambique) by a Zulu impi, except for his two children who are saved by a Zulu warrior. 1871 Tiyo Soga, missionary and the first ordained black minister, who published a Xhosa translation of the first part of The Pilgrim’s Progress and was a member of the board for the revising of the Xhosa Bible, dies at Butterworth, in the Eastern Cape.

1873 Author and poet Cornelis Jacob Langenhoven, who penned Die Stem is born in Ladismith in the Cape.

1883 The last quagga, a zebra subspecies, dies at a zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Once found in great numbers, the quagga – whose name is derived from the Khoikhoi word for zebra and is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the quagga’s call – was hunted to extinction.

1918 The Allies defeat the Germans at the Battle of Amiens – the last great battle on the Western Front.

1930 Clarence Birdseye gets a patent for a method for quick freezing food. 1945 Emperor Hirohito tells his nation that Japan must surrender to the Allies.

1953 An earthquake in the Mediterranean’s Ionian islands kills 435 people.

1976 This day saw R2 million worth of damage in 36 hours of fighting. Langa and Guguletu residents stop employees leaving for work. Young children request donations of petrol from cars to make petrol bombs.

1977 The Space Shuttle Enterprise first flies. 1981 IBM’s Personal Computer is released.

2000 The Russian submarine Kursk explodes in the Barents Sea, killing her 118-man crew.

2006 It is announced that poet Professor Mazizi Kunene, well known for his epic poem, Emperor Shaka the Great, has died in Durban at the age of 76, after a long illness.

2015 Two explosions kill 173 people and injure nearly 800 more in Tianjin, China.

| THE HISTORIAN