Also in August 1829
2nd: Heavy rain in the Cairngorms area of Scotland continues into the next day, provoking the Muckle Spate, a great flood that devastates much of Strathspey. In addition to flooding, homes are lost and many bridges washed away. The event is remembered in a poem of the same name by David Grant, written circa 1851.
3rd: Rossini’s last opera William Tell is performed for the first time at Salle Le Peletier by the Paris Opéra. Though the work is well received, not least by Rossini’s fellow composers, it is performed relatively rarely in the following years, partly because of its length and technical challenges but also due to Italian censors taking a dim view of its revolutionary plot.
9th: In Pennsylvania, the very first run is made by a steam locomotive in the US.
The Stourbridge Lion is named after the Worcestershire town it was built in before being shipped to New York in May 1829. The train performs well in its first test but is never used for its intended commercial purpose. 12th: Lieutenant-governor James Stirling, Captain of British ship Parmelia, is appointed to organise the settlement of a colony around mouth of Swan River in Australia. To honour the birthday of George IV, Stirling chooses to officially declare the foundation of Perth as the capital of the colony on this date. The settlement gets its name from the Scottish birthplace of Sir George Murray, British Secretary of State for the Colonies.
25th: Five months after his inauguration, US president Andrew Jackson tries to persuade Mexico to sell Texas, an area that he believes was wrongly ceded by the US in the Florida Treaty ten years earlier. His offers, which range up to $5m depending on where the border is drawn, are all refused.