• 1499: Explorer and navigator Vasco da Gama arrives in Lisbon after completing his voyage to India around the Cape of Good Hope.
• 1844: Victoria West is founded under the name Victoria after Queen Victoria.
• 1879: Cetewayo (or Cetshwayo), last of the great Zulu kings, is captured by the British at the end of the Zulu wars.
• 1875: Maria Elizabeth Rothman (M.E.R.), South African author, is born in Swellendam, Cape.
• 1923: William (Bloke) Modisane, journalist, writer and actor is born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He died in 1986 in Dortmund, West Germany and is rated as one of the finest Black writers and intellectuals of the 20th century.
• 1960: Fathima Dada, publisher and Chief Executive of Maskew Miller Longman Education, is born in Pietermaritzburg.
• 1982: Geoffrey Walter Ashton Chubb (71), SA cricket player in five test matches, dies in East London.
• 1992: Test cricket debut of Muttiah Muralitharan, vs Australia at Colombo.
• 1995: Last day of Test Cricket for Richie Richardson.