ON THIS DAY SEPTEMBER 21

1192 Returning from the Holy Land, England’s King Richard the Lion Heart is captured and held for ransom for £100 000 in silver. Warming the English throne, John, Richard’s brother, makes a counter-offer of £80 000 to keep Richard locked up. Eventually freed, Richard sends word to his little brother, saying: “Look to yourself, the devil is loose.”

1780 Benedict Arnold, whose name is synonymous with treachery, gives the British the plans to the stronghold of West Point during the American Revolutionary War.

1915 Cecil Chubb buys the English prehistoric monument Stonehenge for £6 600 as a present for his wife. It ends up being donated to the British government.

1921 An explosion at a fertiliser plant in Oppau, Germany, kills 500-600 people.

1934 A large typhoon surges ashore in Japan, killing more than 3 000 people.

1937 Bloemfontein-born JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit is published.

1942 Terence Ronald is born in Durban.

2003 The Galileo spacecraft is destroyed by sending it into Jupiter’s crushing atmosphere. 2004 Work on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai, aka the Burj Khalifa, begins.

2004 Catherine Labuschagne, 25, makes history when she becomes the first female fighter pilot to fly a Gripen, during the African Aerospace and Defence Air Show at the Waterkloof Air Force base, outside Pretoria. 2008 Recalled from office by the Jacob Zuma-led ANC, president Thabo Mbeki resigns, effective from September 25. He is replaced by his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe.

2013 Al-Shabaab militants attack a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 67 people.

2016 A Caltech study finds that Australian Aboriginals are the earth’s oldest civilisation. 2017 Discovery of the first brainless animal that sleeps, the jellyfish Cassiopea, according to research published in Current Biology.

| THE HISTORIAN