On this Day: The greatest explorer you've never heard of, and Apartheid police raid Lilliesleaf Farm
1405 Chinese Admiral Zheng He, with a large fleet of junks – some with nine masts – sets sail on the first of seven voyages to map the world. They visit almost all of the world long before Europeans and have an enormous effect on the civilisations outside of China, but little is made known of it in the West.
1895 The first automobile race, from Paris to Bordeaux (1 178km), takes place.
1899 Fiat, parent company of Ferrari, starts.
1915 The German cruiser Königsberg is scuttled in the Rufiji River, near Dar-es-Salam, after being cornered in dense mangroves by an English fleet. Durban pilot Denis Cutlerd uses his seaplane as a spotter for the gunners.
1924 Devout Scottish athlete Eric Liddell wins 400m gold at the Paris Olympics after refusing to run in a 100m heat as it was on a Sunday. A missionary in South-East Asia, he dies in 1945 in a Japanese concentration camp, where he had been mocked and forced to race the Japanese camp's champion, and beaten to ensure he didn't win. His story is told in the films Chariots of Fire and On Wings of Eagles.
1963 Security police raid Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, arresting the nucleus of the leadership of the ANC's armed wing.
1987 UN's international Day of Five Billion to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues. This leads to the UN recognising World Population Day annually on this day to enhance awareness of population issues, including their relations to the environment and development. Currently there are 8.23bn people on Earth.
1995 Srebrenica massacre (after UN peacekeepers deny 8 000 Mulslim civilians safety).2006 Mumbai bomb attacks kill 209 people.2010 Spain beats the Netherlands, 1-0 in the World Cup final in Johannesburg.
2019 The last VW Beetle leaves the factory, 80 years after the iconic car was first produced.
2021 Looting, vandalism and arson spreads from KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng. The police are overwhelmed and residents man blockades, preventing outsiders from entering suburbs.
2022 A study suggests that dogs can 'see' with their noses in the 'first documentation of a direct connection between the olfactory bulb and occipital lobe in any species'.
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