The Old Gaol
While we know Grahamstown today as the City of Saints or Makhanda, it was founded as a frontier military outpost by Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham, where martial law ruled and punishments were harsh.
Anyone sentenced to flogging or hanging was led, shackled, from the Old Gaol in Balfour Street to the parade ground, now the university's front garden, where a crowd would gather to see the sentence carried out. The last person to swing there was Henry Nicholls in 1862. Many have seen him doing the dead man's walk along the path where the gallows once stood.
The First Dinosaur Fossil Found
The first dinosaur fossil found outside Europe was unearthed by Dr Guybon Atherstone in 1845, between Makhanda and Port Elizabeth. It was that of a stegosaurus dinosaur and only in 1981 was it finally named Paranthodon africanus.
By David Bristow