On This Day: Springbok glory, remarkable survival stories and world-changing events
That plane, those final, those hopes, those dreams . . .
Image: File
Thought for the day
No man has ever become a great leader on an eight-hour day. | Anton Rupert
Did you know?
42% of men and women 25% don’t wash their hands after using a public toilet.
On this day in history, June 24
1842 Dick King returns by boat to Port Natal after a 10-day horse ride to Grahamstown to fetch help in the fight against the Boers.
1982 Speedbird 9, a British Airways Boeing 747, flies into a cloud of volcanic ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung, causing the failure of all four engines. After some anxious moments, the engines are restarted. Pilot Eric Moody makes an announcement that has been described as a masterpiece of understatement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
1995 Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb Ellis Trophy after the underdog Springboks win the final of the Rugby World Cup. Madiba attends in a Bok jersey in a powerful gesture of reconciliation. An SAA Boeing 747 flies low over Ellis Park with ‘GOOD LUCK BOKKE’ painted on it.
1999 The Springboks beat England 44-21 in Paris in the World Cup quarter-finals. Flyhalf Jannie de Beer sets a world record with five drop goals, five penalties and two conversions.
2010 In tennis’s longest match, American John Isner defeats France’s Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon after 11 hours and five minutes.
2018 Women get to drive in Saudi Arabia.
2021 The Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, collapses in the early hours of the morning, killing 98 people while they sleep in one of the deadliest building failures in modern US history.
2022 The US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, eliminating the right to choose abortion.
2024 Sudan has the largest number of displaced children in the world after a year of civil war, with nearly four million facing acute malnutrition, according to the UN.
2024 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reaches a deal with the US, pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to the publication of classified military and diplomatic documents supplied to him in 2010 by US Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (later Chelsea Manning). Assange is allowed to go free after spending five years in a British prison following seven years of refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
DAILY NEWS
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