ON THIS DAY NOVEMBER 27

602 Western Roman Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his six sons being executed before he is beheaded. This sparks a 26-year war with Sassanid Persia, which leaves both empires vullnerable to a Muslim invasion. 1701 Anders Celsius is born in Sweden. He goes on to invent the commonly-used centigrade temperature scale.

1798 An eloquent speaker and writer later in life, Andries Pretorius, the Voortrekker leader after whom Pretoria is named, is born near Graaff-Reinet. Highly regarded by both the British and Black leaders, when Pretorius died in the Magaliesberg in July 1853, many of them visited to pay their respects.

1820 Renowned SA painter Thomas Baines is born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England.

1853 Wild West lawman Bat Masterson is born in Henryville, Quebec. He was also a gambler, saloon-keeper, and later became a news writer in New York.

1895 In Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize. He did so after reading a premature obituary which condemned him for arms sales profiteering. 1942 The French navy scuttles its fleet in Toulon to keep it out of Nazi hands.

1944 A Royal Air Force ammunition dump explosion in Staffordshire kills 70 people. 1960 Patrice Lumumba flees Leopoldville, Congo.

1967 French President Charles de Gaulle says ‘Non!’ to British entry to the European Common Market, for the second time.

1971 The Soviet Union’s Mars 2 orbiter malfunctions and crashes, but is the first manmade object to reach Mars’s surface.

1987 A man in Somerset, England, makes headlines when it becomes known that he has survived 7 suicide attempts.

1989 A Boeing 727 explodes in mid-air over Colombia, killing 110 people. Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel claims responsibility.

2005 The first partial human face transplant takes place.

2017 A North Korean “ghost” ship washes up on a Japanese beach with 8 skeletons on board – it is the fourth such boat to wash up in a month. | THE HISTORIAN