ON THIS DAY JANUARY 28

1393 King Charles VI of France is nearly killed when several dancers’ costumes catch fire during a ball.

1671 Welsh pirate Henry Morgan captures Panama City from its Spanish defenders. 1754 Sir Horace Walpole coins the word “serendipity”, in a letter to a friend.

1846 The Battle of Aliwal, India, is won by British troops commanded by Sir Harry Smith. Both he and his wife, Juana Maria de Los Dolores de León, had towns named after them (Harrismith, Ladysmith and Ladismith. Aliwal North and Smithfield also mark Smith’s connection with South Africa).

1881 The Boers beat the numerically superior British in the battle of Laing’s Nek.

1887 The world’s largest snowflakes are reported in Montana. They were 38cm wide and 20cm thick.

1896 Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), four times the limit.

1933 The name “Pakistan” – an acronym, for Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Indus and Sind, with the “Tan” representing Baluchistan – is coined and used to push for a Muslim homeland in South Asia.

1942 Five power stations are blown up in an attempt to destabilise the Rand gold mines. 1984 Tropical Storm Domoina makes landfall in southern Mozambique. It causes 214 deaths and some of the most severe flooding recorded in the region. It claimed a combined 242 lives across Madagascar, Mozambique, Eswatini and South Africa and left thousands homeless.

1986 The space shuttle Challenger blows up 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, who was to have been the first teacher in space. 2006 The roof of one of the buildings at the Katowice International Fair in Poland, collapses due to the weight of snow, killing 65 people and injuring more than 170.

2012 The death toll from bombing attacks in Kano, Nigeria, reaches 185.

2018 Seven survivors from a missing Kiribati ferry, carrying 100 people, are rescued after a week at sea. | THE HISTORIAN