Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history
1568 The dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, Alexander Nowell, endears himself to mankind by perfecting a way to bottle beer.
1923 The world-famous Hollywood sign is dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads Hollywoodland, but the four last letters are dropped in 1949.
1930 The first football World Cup competition begins in Uruguay. The hosts win it.
1963 The security police disclose the existence of an underground group, the Yu Chi Chan, said to include people trained in Peking and Algeria for sabotage in South Africa.
1968 Gary Player wins the second of his three British Open Golf titles, at Carnoustie.
1984 The last sitting of an all-white Parliament in South Africa
1986 South Africans, runner Zola Budd and swimmer Annette Cowley are banned from competing for Britain in the Commonwealth Games because of Britain’s refusal to support sanctions against South Africa.
1998 Bruwer Engelbrecht (75), former radio broadcaster who started broadcasting with Piet Pompies, dies of heart failure in Bellville.
2011 Mumbai is rocked by three bomb blasts which kill 26 people and injure 130.
2018 SA’s Kevin Anderson beats John Isner of the US, 7-6, 6-7, 6-7, 6-4, 26-24 in the longest (6 hours 36 min) Wimbledon semi-final.
2021 Widespread looting continues in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. The unrest follows the jailing of Jacob Zuma, fuelled by inflammatory messages on social media from certain political parties and individuals. The army is mobilised and deployed to hot spots to help the overwhelmed police restore order. Safety concerns spread like wildfire, with residents setting up access-control to suburbs to keep out marauding mobs. Food shortages abound because delivery trucks are unable to stock shops owing to risk of them being looted. By time the mayhem is over on July 17, 354 people have died, many killed by vigilantes using racial profiling, and over 200 malls have been burnt. The cost of the destruction is about R50 billion and a four-quarter economic growth streak is interrupted with the country’s GDP contracting 1.5% in the third quarter.