February 14 » British forces begin the Battle of the Tugela Heights in an effort to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.
April 5 » Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover a large cache of clay tablets with hieroglyphic writing in a script they call Linear B.
May 1 » The Scofield Mine disaster kills over 200 men in Scofield, Utah in what is to date the fifth-worst mining accident in United States history.
June 20 » Baron Eduard Toll, leader of the Russian Polar Expedition of 1900, departs Saint Petersburg in Russia on the explorer ship Zarya, never to return.
October 19 » Max Planck discovers Planck's law of black-body radiation.
December 19 » Hopetoun Blunder: The first Governor-General of Australia John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, appoints Sir William Lyne premier of the new state of New South Wales, but he is unable to persuade other colonial politicians to join his government and is forced to resign.
Day of death January 17, 1970
The temperature on January 17, 1970 was between -1.4 °C and 0.1 °C and averaged -0.8 °C. There was 0.1 mm of rain. The almost completely overcast was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the east-northeast. Source: KNMI
January 15 » Muammar Gaddafi is proclaimed premier of Libya.
March 26 » South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu implements a land reform program to solve the problem of land tenancy.
July 8 » Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.
August 26 » A new feminist movement leads a nationwide Women's Strike for Equality.
September 19 » Kostas Georgakis, a Greek student of geology, sets himself ablaze in Matteotti Square in Genoa, Italy, as a protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos.
November 13 » Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Gert Esterhuizen, "Family tree Eric Esterhuizen", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-eric-esterhuizen/I6510.php : accessed February 19, 2026), "Petrus Jacobus PRETORIUS (1900-1970)".
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