Rapping all the way to the bank; the bikini is unveiled; Hashim Amla makes cricket history; and findings of genocide in Canada.
1839 In Humen, Chinese official Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a reason to start the First Opium War.
1899 The great WG Grace plays his last day of Test cricket, aged 50 years and 320 days.
1901 The Staatsmodelskool, built by President Paul Kruger, opens as the Pretoria Boys High School.
1934 Dr Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, is knighted.
1935 The French liner SS Normandie sets an Atlantic crossing record of four days, three hours and 14 minutes on her maiden voyage. The modern Queen Mary II can do it in 5 days, but usually makes the crossing in 7.
1937 King Edward VIII of Great Britain marries US divorcee Wallis Simpson, but the scandal forces him to give up the throne to do so.
1940 The last British soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk while French troops allow them to get away by forming a rear guard.
1940 Nazi official Franz Rademacher moots making Madagascar the “Jewish homeland”.
1946 The first bikini is displayed in Paris.
1962 Air France Flight 007 overshoots the runway and explodes in Paris, killing 130.
1973 The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, sometimes referred to as Concordski, disintegrates in mid-air at the Paris Air Show. 14 people died. It is the first crash of a supersonic passenger aircraft.
1984 A military offensive by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar, begins. It will cause more than 5 000 casualties.
2014 Hashim Amla becomes the first non-white captain of the Proteas.
2018 A dead whale is found with 7kg of plastic in its stomach on a beach in Thailand.
2019 A Canadian government inquiry finds that the deaths of more than 1 000 indigenous women and girls, who were murdered or went missing and never found, to be ‘genocide’.
2019 Jay-Z is named the world’s first billionaire rapper by Forbes Magazine.