The battle of Bronkhorstspruit was the first major engagement of the First Boer War. It took place by the Bronkhorstspruit river near Bronkhorstspruit in Transvaal on 20 December 1880. Threatened by the growing numbers of militant Boers in the Pretoria region, the British recalled the 94th Regiment of Foot, which had several companies garrisoned in towns and villages across the wider area. The regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Robert Anstruther, led a 34-wagon column on a 188-mile (303 km) journey from Lydenburg to Pretoria. A Boer commando force, led by Francois Gerhardus Joubert, was ordered to stop the British. Anstruther's column was confronted by the Boers, who demanded that the British stop their march. Anstruther refused, and the Boers attacked. The British took heavy casualties and surrendered after about 15 minutes; their surviving men were captured. Anstruther was badly wounded and died of his injuries a few days later. (Full article...).
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bronkhorstspruit> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1984: Twelve-year-old Jonelle Matthews disappeared from her home in Greeley, Colorado; her body was not discovered until 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jonelle_Matthews> 1987: The deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history occurred when the MV Doña Paz sank after colliding with an oil tanker in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, resulting in an estimated 4,385 deaths. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Do%C3%B1a_Paz> 1995: American Airlines Flight 965 crashed into a mountain in Buga, Colombia, killing most of those on board. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_965> 2007: Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch was stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art before being recovered about three weeks later. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Suzanne_Bloch> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: gnisrap: (programming) The cognitive process of creating a mental model of a computer program by reading the code. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gnisrap> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: Corruption is a tree, whose branches areOf an immeasurable length: they spreadEv'rywhere; and the dew that drops from thenceHath infected some chairs and stools of authority. --John Fletcher <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Fletcher> _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe write to: [email protected] Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]
