Kon Tiki expedition ended, 1947
In the early 1940s, a Norwegian ethnographer called Thor Heyerdahl proposed that the peoples of Polynesia originated in the Americas rather than Asia. In order to test his theory, he…
First ascent of Mont Blanc, 1786
In the mid-eighteenth century the Swiss aristocrat and naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure became a regular visitor the French town of Chamonix, which sits at the foot of Mont Blanc, the…
First Scouting camp ended, 1907
In 1899 Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Baden-Powell published Aids to Scouting, a manual of reconnaissance skills based on his military experiences in South Africa. That same year, Baden-Powell commanded a force of…
Last steam-hauled mainline passenger train on British Railways, 1968
On 11th August 1968 a special train set off from Liverpool Lime Street station on a return trip to Carlisle. The train, known as the ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ because of…
Foundation stone of Royal Greenwich Observatory laid, 1675
On 4th March 1675, King Charles II issued a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as his ‘astronomical observator’ – a position later known as Astronomer Royal. The warrant detailed his…
The quagga became extinct, 1883
The quagga were an equine species, similar to the zebra but with stripes only on the head, neck and shoulders. They roamed the drier parts of South Africa between the…
First Jefferson Airplane gig, 1965
In the early 1960s, the singer Marty Buchwald signed to Challenge Records, which promoted him as a teen idol under the name of Marty Balin. Having failed to achieve any…
Cologne Cathedral completed, 1880
In 1164, Cologne’s Archbishop Rainald von Dassel brought the relics of the Magi to the city after the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, took them from Milan. These relics attracted…
Peterloo Massacre, 1819
In spite of victory, the Napoleonic Wars left Britain with chronic economic problems. The Government’s response, the Corn Laws, resulted in famine and unemployment, which only served to politicise the…
Indonesian independence declared, 1945
In the early sixteenth century, Portuguese explorers arrived in Indonesia seeking a source of spices that would break the monopoly of Muslim traders and their Venetian agents. Over the next…
Battle of Lower Sioux Agency, 1862
In 1851, the United States government signed a pair of treaties with the Dakota Sioux who ceded much of their land in the Minnesota Territory in return for goods and…
Tucson, Arizona founded, 1775
Hugh O’Connor was born in Dublin in 1732 into an aristocratic family. Like many contemporary Irish Catholics of the day, Hugh saw no future for himself in his homeland, which…
Buffalo Nine arrested, 1968
In the summer of 1968, a group of anti-war protesters centred on the University of Buffalo in New York State began to engage in draft resistance. Fearing arrest, a number…
Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, 1968
In January 1968, Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubček was previously leader of the party in Slovakia, where he had implemented a programme of…
Haitian Revolution, 1791
At the time of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the French territories on the island of Hispaniola, known as Saint-Domingue, produced forty per cent of the world’s sugar…
First man swam across the English Channel, 1875
Matthew Webb was born at Dawlish, Shropshire, on 18th January 1848 to a country doctor of the same name and his wife, Sarah. By the age of eight, Webb had…
British capture of Hong Kong, 1839
During the eighteenth century, the demand in Britain for Chinese luxury goods, such as porcelain, silk and tea, created an enormous trade deficit because the British lacked any profitable product…
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789
On 17th June 1789 the deputies from the third-estate along with some representatives of the first two estates of the realm – the clergy and the aristocracy – withdrew from…
The shortest war in history, 1896
On the 27th August 1896 the shortest war in history was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar. Three days earlier the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwain died, resulting in…
Tom Thumb beat a horse, 1830
In 1826, two Baltimore bankers, Philip E. Thomas and George Brown, visited England to investigate rail transportation systems. In the year since the Erie Canal opened, providing a new transportation…