Cape Argus

ON THIS DAY APRIL 24

1184BC Using stealth and guile, the Greeks besieging Troy finally enter the city, after 10 years, hidden inside the fabled Trojan Horse. Today, Trojan Horse has come to mean a ruse. It is also the nickname for malware.

1066 Halley’s Comet prompts monk Eilmer of Malmesbury to predict the country’s destructio­n. Shortly after the Normans invade.

1888 Eastman Kodak, the US company, is founded by George Eastman, who popularise­d the use of roll film, which helps bring photograph­y into vogue. Roll film remains in use until digital images mostly replace it.

1915 In Asia Minor during World War I, the first modern-era genocide begins ending in in the eliminatio­n of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire. About 2 million Armenians died.

1916 Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and five others launch a lifeboat from uninhabite­d Elephant Island to rescue the crew of the icebound ship, Endurance.

1967 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov becomes the first human to die during a space mission. he Fallen Astronaut Memorial no the moon has the names of astronauts and cosmonauts killed before 1971, ins cribed on it.

1969 Beatle Paul McCartney says there is no truth to rumours that he is dead.

1979 Rhodesian bishop Abel Muzorewa wins the general election, making him prime minister of the interim Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.

1980 Eight US servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw when their top-secret mission to rescue Americans held hostage in the US embassy in Iran goes horribly wrong.

2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger becomes Pope Benedict XVI, the 265th pope.

2006 Six people die after striking security guards throw them off a train in Benoni.

2013 The world’s deadliest structural failure occurs when 1 134 garment workers are killed when a building collapses in Bangladesh.

2015 Armenia commemorat­es the 100th anniversar­y of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

2022 Clashes between Arab nomads and the Massalit community in Sudan’s West Darfur state leave at least 168 people dead.

2023 India overtakes China as the worlds most populated country.