'AI is sentient', and Nelson Mandela arrives on Robben Island to begin his prison sentence – On This Day In History

1325 Ibn Battuta, 21, leaves Tangiers for Mecca. Instead of 16 months, he is gone 24 years, marries several times, does the Hajj repeatedly, and his wander-lust takes him to most of the Islamic world as well other lands and is the first to mention China’s Great Wall.

1381 Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt ends in the burning of the Savoy Palace, the grandest of houses and site of the Savoy Hotel.

1525 Rather than stay celibate, rebel German priest and reformer Martin Luther marries.

1838 Andries Potgieter gets all the land between the Vet and Vaal rivers from Bataung captain Makwana for cattle.

1900 German minister to China, Baron von Kettler beats two young Boxers with his walking stick; leading to riots.

1920 The US Post Office bans children from being sent by parcel post.

1942 Desert battles claim 230 British tanks.

1944 A German tank commander destroys 14 British tanks, 15 personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns in the space of 15 minutes.

1950 Parliament adopts the Groups Area Act, which would cause much hardship.

1961 Rand Daily Mail reporter Benjamin Pogrund is jailed for refusing to give up the source of his story – a hoax the government believed.

1964 Nelson Mandela arrives on Robben Island to begin his life sentence.

1983 Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the Solar System.

2000 Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Ağca, the gunman who tried to kill the pope in 1981.

2005 South Africa’s Nuno Gomes sets a world record for the deepest free dive, 318.25m.

2012 Bombings across Iraq kill at least 93.

2018 Volkswagen is fined €1 billion for lying about emissions from its diesel vehicles, saying they were lower than they were.

2018 A raccoon climbs a 23-story building in St Paul, Minnesota, becoming an internet sensation.

2022 A Google engineer claims one of its AI systems, Lamda, might have a sentient mind, causing the company to place him on leave.

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