Paving the way for the end of the First Anglo-Boer War
(Transvaal War of Independence or First Transvaal War), a provisional
armistice was agreed upon by General Sir Evelyn Wood of the British
forces and Republican General J.P. Joubert
on 6 March 1881. This followed after the British forces were defeated
in several battles, including at Majuba. Peace negotiations started,
which led to an agreement reached on 23 March 1881. The preparation of a
treaty between the restored Republic and Britain was entrusted to the
Royal Commission, consisting of Wood, Sir Hercules Robinson and Judge
J.H. de Villiers, who was to determine the borders of the 'Transvaal
State'. The final end of the war was reached with the signing of the
Convention of Pretoria on 3 August 1881, recognising limited
independence of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR or Transvaal
Republic). The Volksraad accepted the provisions of the Convention with
reluctance, as it differed considerably from those agreed upon in March.
Source:
Potgieter, D.J. et al. (eds)(1970). Standard Encyclopaedia of
Southern Africa, Cape Town: NASOU, v. 1, p. 383 & v. 10, p. 611.
According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet
William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It
is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but
church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was
a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn.
Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April
23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years
before.
Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as
the 38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few surviving
details about the playwright's life. This dearth of biographical
information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble,
but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff.
The events of William Shakespeare's early life can only be gleaned from
official records, such as baptism and marriage records.
He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would
have studied Latin and read classical literature. He did not go to
university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his
senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter,
Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and Anne had
twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years
later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing
is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's
emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded
stories have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players,
becoming a schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in
1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him
on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three
parts of Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis
was Shakespeare's first published poem, and he dedicated it to the
young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton.In 1594, having
probably composed, among other plays, Richard III,The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew,
he became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which
became the King's Men after James I's ascension in 1603. The company
grew into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who
was its principal dramatist. It also had the finest actor of the day,
Richard Burbage, and the best theater, the Globe, which was located on
the Thames' south bank. Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his
retirement and often acted in small parts.
By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet,Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
That year, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, a testament to
his son's growing wealth and fame. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a
large house in Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great historical
series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre.
The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet. The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I,
who wanted to see another play that included the popular character
Falstaff. During the next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces
as Othello,King Lear,Macbeth, and The Tempest.
In 1609, his sonnets, probably written during the 1590s, were
published. The 154 sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of the
mutability of beauty and the transcendent power of love and art.
Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616. Today,
nearly 400 years later, his plays are performed and read more often and
in more nations than ever before. In a million words written over 20
years, he captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a
precision that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet
and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."
The first leg of the flight under Captain Eric Ray Smith from Johannesburg to JG Strijdom Airport, Windhoek, South West Africa was uneventful. An additional 46 passengers embarked in Windhoek, and some airfreight was unloaded and loaded.[2]
The aircraft was only 6 weeks old when it rolled for take-off from
Windhoek on runway 08 at 18:49 GMT (20:49 local time). It was a dark,
moonless night with few if any lights on the ground east of the runway;
the aircraft took off into what was described in the official report as a
"black hole".[3]
The aircraft initially climbed to an altitude of 650 feet (200 m) above
ground level, then levelled off after 30 seconds and started to
descend. Fifty seconds after take-off, it flew into the ground in flight configuration
at a speed of approximately 271 knots (502 km/h). The four engines,
which were the first parts of the aircraft to touch the ground, created
four gouges in the soil before the rest of the aircraft also hit the
ground and broke up. Two fires immediately broke out when fuel in the
wings ignited. Although the crash site was only 5.327 kilometres
(3.310 mi) from the end of the runway, emergency services took 40
minutes to reach the scene because of rugged terrain. Nine passengers
who were seated in the forward section of the fuselage initially
survived, but two died soon after the accident and another a few days
later, leaving a final death toll of 123 passengers and crew.[3]
Investigation
Accident
The investigation was complicated by the fact that the aircraft did not have a flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder;[4]
the devices became mandatory from 1 January 1968, but the airline's
inability to procure recorders meant that several SAA aircraft
including, ZS-EUW, did not yet have the equipment fitted.[3]
Captain Smith had 4,608 flying hours on the Boeing 707, but only one
hour on the new type 334C, which furthermore had been under instruction.[5]
The official investigation concluded that the aircraft and its four
engines were in working order—primary fault lay with the captain and
first officer, in that they "failed to maintain a safe airspeed and
altitude and a positive climb by not observing flight instruments during
take-off."[2] Secondary factors that may have contributed to the accident included:
The crew used a flap
retraction sequence from the 707-B series which removed flaps in larger
increments than desirable for that stage of the flight, leading to a
loss of lift at 600 feet (180 m) above ground level.
The drum-type altimeter fitted to the aircraft, was notoriously difficult for pilots to read;[6][7] the pilots may have misread their altitude by 1000 feet.
Paving the way for the end of the First Anglo-Boer War
(Transvaal War of Independence or First Transvaal War), a provisional
armistice was agreed upon by General Sir Evelyn Wood of the British
forces and Republican General J.P. Joubert
on 6 March 1881. This followed after the British forces were defeated
in several battles, including at Majuba. Peace negotiations started,
which led to an agreement reached on 23 March 1881. The preparation of a
treaty between the restored Republic and Britain was entrusted to the
Royal Commission, consisting of Wood, Sir Hercules Robinson and Judge
J.H. de Villiers, who was to determine the borders of the 'Transvaal
State'. The final end of the war was reached with the signing of the
Convention of Pretoria on 3 August 1881, recognising limited
independence of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR or Transvaal
Republic). The Volksraad accepted the provisions of the Convention with
reluctance, as it differed considerably from those agreed upon in March.
