6 September

A lot to do with ships today - then also some birthdays and a random few other historical events from all over the world

In 1522 One of the five ships that set out in Ferdinand Magellan's trip around the world made it back to Spain. Only 15 of the original 265 men that set out survived. Magellan himself had been killed by local inhabitants of the Philippines.

In 1907, the luxury liner Lusitania left London for New York on her maiden voyage.




The photograph left shows RMS Windsor Castle departing Cape Town for the last time on 6 September 1977. On the horizon left can be seen the SAN type 12 frigate SAS President Pretorius, waiting to intercept Windsor Castle. Out in the bay a shot was fired across the bow of Windsor Castle and she hove to, then a ‘boarding party’ from PP presented a commemorative plaque to the Captain of Windsor Castle and she was ‘allowed’ to continue her voyage. A fitting tribute to the end of an era.  (This information thanks to my friend Graham Sonnenberg's friend Tony Jones.  They count among those who dig up wonderful bits of information about Cape Town and its history.)


In 1901, the US President William McKinley was shot and  killed in Buffalo, New York by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. 

In 1966, there was another assassination: South Africa's  Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, regarded  by many as the father of apartheid, was stabbed to death on 6 September in House of Assembly, in Cape Town, by a parliamentary messenger, Dimitrios Tsafendas.  Five years earlier, on 9 April 1961 there had been another attempt on his life when, at the Rand Easter Show, in Johannesburg, he had been shot twice in the face by David Beresford Pratt.

The date is also important in South African history for another reason: on this day in 1939, South Africa declared war on Germany under its new government led by Genl Jan Smuts (leader of the United Party). The previous day, Prime Minister JBM Hertzog resigned after his motion to remain neutral in the war was defeated by 80 votes to 67 (he reconciled with Daniel F Malan (Herenigde Nasionale Party) to become leader of the opposition.  

Two years later, in Germany on 6 September 1941, the head of the Secret Police in Germany ordered all Jews over 6 years old to wear a yellow star of David on their coats together with the word Jude (Jew).  Their movements without police permission were also curtailed.

Still in the 1940s, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was inaugurated in Amsterdam on 6 September 1948.  Four years later (1952), across the channel, there was the Farnborough
Air Show Disaster when a De Havilland 110 fighter aircraft disintegrated after breaking the sound barrier.  Thirty spectators at the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire died and 63 were injured. 

Princess Diana's funeral took place on this day in 1997.  The procession which taking her coffin to Westminster Abbey was watched by over a million people along the route and approximately 2.5 billion people around the world on TV.  Afterwards a private ceremony was held  and she was laid to rest on an island in the heart of her family estate at Althorp. 

A decade later, the famous Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti the Italian operatic tenor died at the age of 71 after suffering from pancreatic cancer. He became a world-wide celebrity beyond the world of opera when he sang   among others Puccini's "Nessun dorma" from Turandot came to Pavarotti at the 1990 World Cup in Italy - as one of The Three Tenors with Spanish singers Plácido Domingo and José Carreras - in their  first concert together held on the eve of the tournament's final match. His final performance in an opera was at the Metropolitan Opera in March 2004.

Quite a few classical music composers were born on this day.  To mention just a few:  Austrian composer Anton Diabelli in Mattsee and the  English music publisher, organist and composer Vincent Novello in London (both in 1781),  and Ferdinand B Hummel (1855).  In 1791 this day saw the first performance of  Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito in Prague.

It was also the birthday of  John James Richard Macleod (1876), the Scottish physician who shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Frederick Banting for the discovery of insulin. I mention this specifically, because the Macleods are the clan from which I come on my mother's side.  Which also brings me to the fact that today is also the birthday of my beloved late aunt and godmother Betsy, who taught me a lot about being my own person.