Independent on Saturday

ON THIS DAY MAY 28

1431 French liberation heroine Joan of Arc is accused of relapsing into heresy by donning male clothing, providing justification for her English captors to burn her at the stake.

1709 The Dutch East India ship, the Nagel, catches fire and is wrecked at Saldanha Bay. 1874 The first group of Dorsland trekkers leaves Pretoria for south-west Angola. (They had to traverse vast, arid areas which lent the trek its name). Of the 3 000 that started the trip, about 300 survived.

1889 Édouard and André Michelin start the Michelin tyre company.

1900 Paul Kruger, the Boer Republic’s third president, flees Pretoria and goes to Watervalboven to evade the advancing British. 1918 The Armenian National Council declares Armenia independent from the Russian Empire.

1936 Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication, in which he set out the theoretical basis for modern computers. 1942 The Germans murder 1 800 Czechs as retaliation for the assassination of top Nazi Reinhard Heydrich the previous day.

1948 DF Malan is elected prime minister of South Africa. He goes on to implement the policy of apartheid.

1951 The hugely popular radio programme Crazy People (The Goon Show) premieres on the BBC. It was created by Spike Milligan. 1958 Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, reinforced by Frank Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero. 1963 A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal hits Chittagong, Bangladesh, and destroys a million houses and kills 22 000.

1988 Anti-apartheid Afrikaners led by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert meet the ANC in Frankfurt to discuss post-apartheid South Africa.

1999 In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper goes back on display.

2016 Harambe, a gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo, is shot after dragging a 3-year-old boy who had slipped into the primate’s enclosure. The child survived.

2018 Coco-Cola launches its first alcoholic drink, Lemon-Do, in Japan. | THE HISTORIAN

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2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

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