On this day, April 12
The Union Jack flies over Church Square in Pretoria, the first Space Shuttle mission blasts off, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth, and Captain Phillips is freed
1606 Following James I of Scotland inheriting and uniting the English and Irish thrones, a new flag is unveiled – one that combines the St George’s Cross of England, Scotland’s St Andrew’s Cross and Ireland’s St Patrick’s Cross to form the Union Jack (jack being a naval term for flag).
1861 Fort Sumter in South Carolina is attacked, beginning the American Civil War.
1872 Jesse James’ gang robs a bank in Columbia, Kentucky, getting away with $1 500.
1877 British statesman Theopolis Shepstone annexes Transvaal for Britain and hoists the Union Jack in Church Square, Pretoria.
1901 Emily Hobhouse witnesses the clearing of Warrenton and the dispatch of people in open coal trucks to Kimberley, where only 25 tents are available for 240 people.
1930 Yorkshireman Wilfred Rhodes ends Test cricket career, which spanned 31 years, aged 52. His record for the most wickets taken (4 187) in a career still stands and he is one of only three players to bat in all 11 positions.
1945 Polio-sufferer, US President Franklin Roosevelt dies from a cerebral haemorrhage.
1945 The US Ninth Army crosses the Elbe River and reaches Tangermünde – only 80km from Berlin, but is not allowed to advance so that Russia’s Red Army can take the city.
1955 The polio vaccine is declared safe and effective. With the help of this vaccine, polio is eradicated from South Africa.
1958 Meetings of more than 10 Blacks are banned in South Africa’s major urban areas.
1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit the Earth.
1981 The first Space Shuttle mission blasts off.
2009 US Navy commandos shoot dead three Somali pirates, freeing their hostage, Captain Richard Phillips of the hijacked container ship Maersk Alabama. Unlike in the movie, Captain Phillips, and navy versions of the event, more than 3 shots were fired at the pirates. Evidence given during the trial of a fourth pirate is that the bodies had at least 19 bullet wounds. No-one was also able to say what happened to the $30 000 Phillips had given the pirates in a failed attempt to buy them off.
2014 Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang wins the prestigious London Marathon.
2022 An apparent terrorist attack on a New York subway injures 26 people, 10 of them by gunfire, with the suspect arrested a day later.
