3 de febrero

A storm had driven his two caravels south, out of sight of land, and when they turned north the coast ran east: they had rounded Africa without seeing it. On the way home Dias saw the cape and, the chronicler Barros says, named it the Cape of Storms.

The viceroy Francisco de Almeida, avenging his son's death, destroyed a Mamluk and Gujarati fleet with ship-borne cannon. It gave Portugal command of the Arabian Sea for a century.

At a routine sale in a Haarlem tavern, for the first time nobody would bid. Within days prices had collapsed in every town where bulbs changed hands.

The British prime minister told both houses of the South African Parliament: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.” Seventeen African colonies became independent that year. Verwoerd replied…

The first soft landing on another world, and the first pictures from its surface. At Jodrell Bank, astronomers listening in recognised a newspaper fax signal, borrowed a machine from the Daily Express and published the pictures before Moscow did.

The first soft landing on another world, in the Ocean of Storms. Its pictures proved the surface would hold a lander. Jodrell Bank in England picked up the signal, saw it was in a standard newspaper fax format, and the British press printed the first panorama before Moscow did.

The first Winter Games outside Europe and North America. Japan swept the medals on the normal hill, its first Winter gold.

It began with Sergei Krikalev, the first cosmonaut to fly on an American spacecraft, on STS-60. Nine shuttle dockings followed, and seven American astronauts lived aboard Mir, practice for building a station together.

Promulgated by King Mohammed VI this day after Parliament passed it unanimously. The Moudawana made husband and wife jointly responsible for the family, raised women’s marriage age from 15 to 18, put polygamy and repudiation under a judge, and let a wife divorce for “discord”.