Friday, October 14
2005-10-14 07:17
Today is Friday, October 14, the 287th day of 2005. There are 78 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1066 - Normans under William the Conqueror defeat the English in the Battle of Hastings.
1529 - Turkish Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleyman II ends the first Turkish siege of Vienna.
1639 - Simon van der Stel, first governor of the Cape of Good Hope, as distinct from commander, is born in Mauritius. (Van der Stel was appointed commander of the Cape in 1679 and was promoted to the rank of governor in 1691 by the Dutch East India Company in recognition of his work.)
1806 - Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Prussians at Jena, and Saxons at Auerstadt.
1895 - The Pretoria-Durban rail service is inaugurated.
1898 - William Philip Schreiner, brother of author Olive Schreiner, becomes Premier of the Cape after Sir J Gordon Sprigg's ministry resigns.
1899 - The Siege of Kimberley by the Boers begins.
1912 - Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for the US presidency, is shot in the chest in Milwaukee. Despite the wound, he goes ahead with a scheduled speech.
1933 - Germany leaves disarmament conference and League of Nations.
1936 - Belgium renounces military alliance with France.
1939 - A German submarine sinks the British battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, with loss of 833 lives.
1944 - British and Greek troops liberate Athens from Germans; German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.
1947 - US Air Force Capt Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than sound as he tests a rocket-powered research plane over California.
1960 - The idea of a Peace Corps is first suggested by Democratic US presidential candidate John F Kennedy to an audience of students at the University of Michigan.
1964 - US civil rights leader Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1968 - The first live telecast from a manned US spacecraft is transmitted from Apollo 7.
1976 - A Watergate special prosecutor, announces he found no evidence to substantiate an informant's allegation that US President Gerald Ford had misused political contributions for his own benefit.
1982 - Vietnam turns over to US officials the remains of five Americans believed to have been murdered in Cambodia under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime.
1986 - Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1987 - Governor general Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau resigns after Fiji is declared a republic following two coups d'etats.
1987 - Transworld Oil Shipping, a major supplier of oil to South Africa, ends all oil shipments to the country because of the "economic, political and social environment" in South Africa.
1989 - Jordan officially launches its first national election campaign in 22 years.
1989 - More than 150 000 people take part in Cosatu-organised marches in 17 centres countrywide to protest against the Labour Relations Amendment Act.
1990 - Israeli government decides against cooperating with UN team investigating shooting deaths of 19 Palestinians at the Temple Mount.
1991 - Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wins Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve democracy in her homeland.
1992 - A judge in Rostov-on-Don, Russia convicts Andrei Chikatilo of the sex murders of 52 children and young women over a 12-year period. The horrific nature of the crimes makes Chikatilo one of the worst serial killers in history.
1993 - Conservative Party politician Clive Derby-Lewis and Polish immigrant Janusz Walus are convicted in the Rand Supreme Court of assassinating SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani earlier in the year.
1994 - Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres share the Nobel Peace Prize with PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
1997 - Dozens of protesters shouting "Clinton go home!" burn an effigy of US President Bill Clinton and throw manure on his limousine, marring an otherwise smooth visit to Brazil.
1998 - Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and a critic of the Nigerian government, returns to his homeland for the first time in four years and is greeted by jubilant crowds.
1999 - Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence and a symbol of Africa's hopes as it emerged from the shadow of colonial rule, dies at 77 of leukemia.
2000 - Alija Izetbegovic, who led the Bosnian Muslims through Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War 2, resigns from the Bosnian presidency, leaving power in a manner rare in the Balkans.
2002 - Britain suspends the Northern Ireland assembly, saying direct British rule was being introduced over the province because of "a loss of confidence on both sides of the community." It was the fourth suspension since December 1999.
2003 - John Allen Muhammad, one of two suspects in a series of October 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC area that killed 10 people and wounded three others, pleads not guilty to four murder charges as his trial proceedings begin in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Today's Birthdays:
Eamon de Valera, Irish statesman (1882-1975); Dwight D Eisenhower, US general and 34th US president (1890-1969); Roger Moore, British actor (1927--); Mobuto Sese Seko, Zairian dictator (1930-1997), Cliff Richard, British singer (1940--).
Thought For Today:
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness - Leo Tolstoy, Russian author (1828-1910).
- SAPA