What is the Veld of South Africa? An open grazing area of southern Africa. It is the term applied to grassy plateaus of the Republic of South Africa and of Zimbabwe.
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy. Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine.
Speculations on the causes of the human inferno called Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) include poltergeist activity, ball lightening, vampires, psychic disorders, magnetic storms, microwaves, and the wrath of God. During the mid-nineteenth century, a common belief was that alcoholism was a cause of SHC.