On this day: Opium War ended with Treaty of Nanking

On this day in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking was signed, ending the Opium War between China and UK, which gained Hong Kong. Picture: Getty

1756: Frederick II of Prussia invaded Saxony, marking start of Seven Years War in which Holland and Sweden decided to remain neutral.

1782: The 100-gun battleship HMS Royal George sank while at anchor at Spithead, with the loss of more than 900 lives, including Admiral Richard Kempenfelt.

1797: Battle of Tranent. A demonstration against conscription under the Militia Act was broken up by the Cinque Ports Dragoons and the East Lothian Yeomanry with the deaths of 12 participants.

1831: Michael Faraday demonstrated the production of electricity from magnetism with the first transformer.

1833: Factory Act was passed, regulating the employment of children.

1842: The Treaty of Nanking was signed, ending the Opium War (1839-42) between China and Britain and ceding Hong Kong to Britain.

1885: The first motorcycle was patented, built by Gottlieb Daimler in Cannstatt, Germany.

1895: The Rugby League was formed at a meeting in the George Hotel in Huddersfield, with 21 representatives of the leading Lancashire and Yorkshire rugby union clubs.

1897: “Chop-suey” (meaning “various things”) was devised by a New York chef to appeal to Chinese and American tastes.

1903: Russia’s finance minister, Count Witte, was dismissed, which was taken as a victory for group favouring Russian expansion in Manchuria and Korea.

1904: The third Olympic Games opened at St Louis, Missouri.

1909: First air race took place at Reims, France. It was won by Glenn Curtiss.

1929: Graf Zeppelin airship completed its tour of the world.

1930: St Kilda was evacuated on “economic” grounds.

1953: USSR exploded a hydrogen bomb.

1960: Jordan’s premier, Hazza al-Majali, was assassinated.

1965: American astronauts L Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad made safe landing in the Atlantic after record eight-day orbit around Earth.

1966: The last live performance by the Beatles took place in Candlestick Park, San Francisco.

1988: Two Soviets and one Afghan blasted off from a Central Asian space centre to join cosmonauts seeking an endurance record aboard an orbiting Soviet space station.

1990: The Birmingham Six, jailed in 1975 for the pub bombings that killed 21 people, had their cases considered by the Court of Appeal for the third time. They were eventually released.

1994: Israel struck an outline deal with the PLO on self-government for Palestinians on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho.

2003: Alastair Campbell resigned as prime minister Tony Blair’s director of communications in the wake of the death of the government’s chief weapons inspector, Doctor David Kelly, and the row with the BBC over the war in Iraq.

2005: Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, causing massive flooding and thousands of deaths. Martial law was declared amid reports of looting and rapes, and president George Bush came under fire over the slowness of the relief operation.

2010: Five years on from Hurricane Katrina, US president Barack Obama pledged to continue to help residents in their bid to rebuild New Orleans and the stricken Gulf of Mexico coast.

BIRTHDAYS

Eddi Reader MBE, Glasgow-born singer, 55; Rebecca De Mornay, actress, 55; Matt Duncan, rugby player and broadcaster, 55; Liz Fraser, singer (the Cocteau Twins), 51; William Friedkin, film director, producer and screenwriter, 79; Elliott Gould, actor, 76; Lenny Henry CBE, comedian and actor, 56; Joyce McMillan, journalist and theatre critic, 62; Ian Mosey, British golfer, 63; Frank Roy, Labour MP, 56; Joel Schumacher, film director, 75.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1619 Jean Baptiste Colbert, founder of French navy; 1632 John Locke, philosopher; 1809 Oliver Wendell Holmes, author; 1862 Count Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian poet and dramatist; 1870 Jean Ingres, French artist; 1871 Jack Butler Yeats, Irish landscape artist; 1905 Jack Teagarden, jazz musician and bandleader; 1915 Ingrid Bergman, Swedish actress; 1920 Charlie Parker, jazz alto-saxophonist; 1947 James Hunt, racing driver and commentator; 1914 Derek Guyler, actor; 1958 Michael Jackson, pop singer.

Deaths: 1847 William Simson, painter; 1877 Brigham Young, leader of Mormons; 1904 Arthur Melville, painter; 1930 Rev William Spooner, scholar and originator of spoonerisms; 1975 Éamon de Valera, Irish prime minister and president; 1987 Lee Marvin, actor; 1989 Sir Peter Scott, naturalist and conservationist; 2009 Simon Dee, television interviewer; 2013 Cliff Morgan, Welsh rugby player and broadcaster.