14 juni

A poor pilgrim who said Saint Andrew had shown him in visions where it lay dug up a spearhead under the floor of the cathedral of Saint Peter. Many doubted it, but the starving army took heart.

John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew a converted Vickers Vimy bomber from Newfoundland to Ireland in about 16 hours, through fog and sleet, and landed nose-down in a bog near Clifden. The Daily Mail paid £10,000 and both were knighted within the week.

A young social worker at Baragwanath Hospital, the first black woman in the post, from Bizana in Pondoland, where they married. He was on bail in the Treason Trial and needed a court’s leave to travel. Their daughters Zenani and Zindziswa were born in 1959 and 1960.

He mediated in Burundi’s civil war, raised money for schools and clinics, and campaigned on HIV and AIDS, which his successor’s government was slow to treat. In 2004, at eighty-five, he retired from public life: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

He led a Government of National Unity that included the National Party until 1996, and left the daily running of government more and more to Mbeki. He had said he would serve one term, and did.

Named at Daewoo’s Okpo yard, the first of Maersk’s Triple-E class, for “economy of scale, energy efficiency and environmentally improved”, carried 18,270 TEU at slow speed on twin engines.

The first World Cup with video referees. Holders Germany lost to South Korea and went out in the group, the third holders in a row to do so, after Italy and Spain.