ON THIS DAY

1204 Constantinople falls to the

Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire. 1613 Samuel Argall captures Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father. 1796 First elephant arrives in US from India.

1816 The first mail boat from London, The Eclipse, arrives in Table Bay after a voyage of 114 days.

1838 Voortrekker leader Louis Trichardt reaches Lourenço Marques (Maputo) after setting out from the Zoutpansberg in August of the previous year.

1846 Xhosa tribesmen attack British forces at Burn’s Hill in the Amatola, in the War of the Axe.

1909 Sir Donald Currie, the shipping magnate and donor of the Currie Cup sporting trophy, dies in Sidmouth, Devon, England.

1943 Nazis discover the mass grave of Polish officers near in a forest Katyn. It causes a diplomatic rift between the Polish government-in-exile in London with the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility. It is later proven that the Soviets executed the Poles and that Josef Stalin signed their death warrant.

1953 CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control programme, Project Mkultra.

1960 The US launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system. 1970 An oxygen tank on the Apollo 13 moon flight explodes, endangering the crew and causing major damage. The crew radios: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” The mission is aborted and the world holds its breath as the crippled spacecraft limps back to Earth.

1997 Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament. 2017 The US drops the largest ever nonnuclear weapon on Afghanistan. Called the GBU/43 or Massive Ordnance Air Blast (Moab) it’s more commonly called “Mother of all bombs”. | The Historian