02-07-2025
On this day: Iconic and influential writer Ernest Hemmingway, author of The Old Man and The Sea, shoots himself
Thai boys smile as a medic treats scratches on one of the children trapped inside a cave in northern Thailand.
1839 The slave ship the Amistad (which ironically means 'Friendship' in Spanish) leaves Havana under the cover of nightfall to avoid British antislavery patrols. Before dawn her cargo of men, women and children break or pick the locks on their chains, climb up to the main deck, head for the sadistic cook and bludgeon him to death in his sleep. After overpowering the rest of their captors they rely on two of them to steer a course back to Sierra Leone, unaware of the treacherous ordeal that lies ahead.
1901 Outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rob a train of $40 000 at Wagner, Montana.
1937 Pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are last heard from over the Pacific Ocean.
1960 Wimbledon Women's Tennis: Defending champion Maria Bueno of Brazil beats South Africa's Sandra Reynolds 8-6, 6-0.
1961 Nobel Prize-winning author, adventurer, war correspondent, bullfighter, drinker and all-round macho man, Ernest Hemmingway commits suicide at his home in Idaho, shooting himself with a shotgun. His father, grandfather, brother, sister, and granddaughter all killed themselves. He is best known for The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Old Man and The Sea.
1962 The first Walmart store opens in Rogers, Arkansas. The global firm, through its subsidiary Massmart, owns Game, Makro, Builders Warehouse and CBW.
1990 About 1 400 Muslim pilgrims die in a stampede in a tunnel at Mecca.
2002 Steve Fossett becomes the first to fly solo, nonstop, around the world in a balloon.
2010 A tanker truck explosion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo kills at least 230 people.
2016 A suicide bombing in Baghdad kills 341.
2018 British divers discover 12 boys and their football coach alive in Tham Luang Nang Non cave, Thailand, where they had been trapped for nine days by monsoon flooding.
2021 India's official Covid-19 death toll passes 400 000, amid expert speculation that over one million have died.
2022 Earliest evidence for the use of opium is found in burials at Tel Yehud, ancient Canaan (now Israel), dating from the 14th century BC.
DAILY NEWS
