A selection of significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, on this day over the ages
1464 French King Louis XI forms postal service.
1610 Samuel de Champlain and his French army defeat the Mohawk people at the Battle of Sorel in New France, present day Sorel-Tracy, Quebec.
1829 Sir Robert Peel introduces the Metropolitan Police Act into Parliament to establish a unified police force for London. London policemen have since been known as Bobbies, in acknowledgement of Sir Robert.
1910 Father’s Day is celebrated for the first time, in Spokane, Washington.
1913 The Natives Land Act is passed in South Africa: confining blacks to hopelessly overcrowded reserves and depriving them of the right to buy land outside the reserves.
1917 The British Royal Family, which has had strong German ties, renounces its German names and titles and instead adopts Windsor.
1921 Turks and Christians of Palestine sign a friendship treaty against Jews.
1932 Hailstones kill 200 people in Hunan Province, China.
1941 Soviet anthropologist Michael Gerasimov opens the tomb of Timurid Empire founder Timur and allegedly finds the inscription that whoever opens the tomb shall “unleash an invader more terrible than I”. Three days later Germany invades Russia.
1944 Five of the “The Magnificent Eleven” photos taken by Robert Capa during the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach, Normandy first published in Life Magazine.
1963 Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, returns to Earth
1981 The heaviest known orange – a 2.5kg monster – is exhibited in Nelspruit (Mbombela).
1982 The body of “God’s Banker”, Roberto Calvi is found hanging from a London bridge.
1991 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar surrenders to police.
2017 The first full genetic study of cats reveals they were domesticated 9 000 years ago and are descended from one species – the African wildcat.
2018 England smash the highest score (481/6) in ODI cricket history in a 242-run defeat of Australia (239) at Trent Bridge.
2019 UN says over 70 million people in the world are displaced, asylum seekers or refugees around the world, their highest-ever number in 70 years.