1996 - Penny Heyns thrust South Africa into the limelight at Olympic swimming for the first time since the 1950s with a world record at the Atlanta Games. The 21-year-old Heyns produced a storming swim in the women’s 100 metres breaststroke heats to shave 0.44 second off her own world best and move confidently towards South Africa’s first title in the pool since 1952. “I know that it would mean a great deal to South Africa if I won the gold. It would be an enormous thing for swimming back home,” said Heyns. She set the previous world record of 1:07.46 at the South African championships in Durban in March, 1996 seemed to take in her stride. In the pool, she was in control of her heat from the moment she hit the water, to a time of one minute 7.02 seconds.
Other important events
1820 - Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted announces his discovery that an electrical current creates a magnetic field.
1831 - Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg is crowned the first king of newly independent Belgium.
1836 - The first Canadian railroad opens, running between Laprairie and St John, Quebec.
1904 - The Trans-Siberian railway is finally completed.
1940 - Soviet Union annexes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
1960 - Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka becomes the world’s first woman Prime Minister.
1962 - Indian and Chinese troops clash in two disputed areas of Kashmir.
1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr blast off from the Moon and head back to Earth after first lunar landing.
1970 - After 11 years, the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt is completed.
1974 - US announces ceasefire agreement between Greece and Turkey in war on Cyprus
1973 - France explodes nuclear device over South Pacific island despite worldwide protests.
1975 - Soviet Soyuz spacecraft lands safely in Soviet Central Asia after its rendezvous in space with the American Apollo craft.
1980 - Salah Al Deen Al Bitar, former premier of the United Arab Republic, is assassinated in Paris.
1986 - A car bomb goes off outside the world headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
1987 - Bernard Hinault becomes the third man to win five Tours de France.
1989 - A Philippine Airlines jet overshoots the runway and ploughs through a busy highway near Manila, killing eight people.
2003 - Jenny Thompson of the US becomes the most bemedalled woman swimmer in World Championships history.
2005 - China revalues its currency after US pressure.
2008 - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is arrested for war crimes after a 12-year manhunt.
2011 - The space shuttle programme comes to an end after 30 years as Atlantis lands at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
