On this day
1788: The first consignment of convicts from England arrived in Australia, at Sydney Cove.
1828: The Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister.
1841: Hong Kong was proclaimed British sovereign territory.
1871: The Rugby Football Union was founded.
1885: General Charles Gordon, British commander and Governor of the Sudan, was killed by a spear while besieged at Khartoum.
1905: The world’s largest diamond was found at the Premier Mines in Pretoria, South Africa. The Cullinan Diamond weighed more than 1.25lb.
1907: “Foul language” caused a riot in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on the first night of JM Synge’s The Playboy Of The Western World.
1947: Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden was killed in an air crash near Copenhagen.
1965: Hindi was made the official language of India.
1972: The musical Godspell had its first London performance.
1993: Vaclav Havel became the first president of the new Czech Republic. 2009: James Cameron’s Avatar became the top-grossing film of all time, beating his 1997 movie Titanic.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: By this day, the number of people in the UK tested
for the novel coronavirus just tipped 50 - with little idea of what was to come.