ON THIS DAY JUNE 3

1839 In Humen, Chinese official Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a reason to start the First Opium War.

1899 The great WG Grace plays his last day of Test cricket, aged 50 years and 320 days. 1901 The Staatsmodelskool, built by President Paul Kruger, opens as the Pretoria Boys High School.

1934 Dr Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, is knighted.

1935 French liner SS Normandie sets an Atlantic crossing record of four days, three hours and 14 minutes on her maiden voyage. The modern Queen Mary II can do it in 5 days, but usually makes the crossing in 7.

1937 The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson. The former King Edward VIII of England, he relinquished his throne to do so. 1940 The last British soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk while French troops allow them to get away by forming a rear guard.

1940 Nazi official Franz Rademacher moots making Madagascar the “Jewish homeland”. 1946 The first bikini is displayed in Paris. 1962 Air France Flight 007 overshoots the runway and explodes in Paris, killing 130. 1973 A Tupolev Tu-144 crashes near Goussainville, France, killing 14 – the first crash of a supersonic passenger aircraft. 1984 A military offensive by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, in Amritsar, begins. It will cause more than 5 000 casualties.

2012 The Diamond Jubilee pageant of Britain’s Elizabeth II takes place on the River Thames to mark her 60 years on the throne. 2014 Hashim Amla becomes the first nonwhite captain of the Proteas.

2018 A dead whale is found with 7kg of plastic (80 pieces) in its stomach on a beach in Thailand.

2019 A Canadian government inquiry finds that the deaths of more than 1 000 indigenous women and girls who have been murdered or are missing over decades to be a ‘national genocide’.

2019 Jay-Z is named the world’s first billionaire rapper by Forbes magazine. | THE HISTORIAN