Person report

★04 Sep 1800
French Revolutionary Wars: Facing starvation and a death rate of 100 soldiers a day due to a two-year siege, the French garrison in Valletta, Malta, surrendered to the British.

★20 Jul 1807
French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce received a patent for their Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines.

★18 Nov 1809
Napoleonic Wars: In the Bay of Bengal, a French frigate squadron captured three East Indiamen mainly carrying recruits for the Indian Army.

★27 Dec 1831
Charles Darwin left Plymouth, England, aboard HMS Beagle on the expedition to South America that would make his name as a naturalist.

★01 Oct 1832
The first political gathering of colonists in Mexican Texas convened to seek reforms from the Mexican government in hopes of quelling the widespread belief that settlers in Texas wished to secede from Mexico.

★28 Feb 1844
A gun on USS Princeton exploded while the warship was on a Potomac River cruise, killing six people and injuring twenty others.

★07 Oct 1849
American writer Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances at Washington Medical College four days after being found on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, in a delirious and incoherent state.

★05 Aug 1864
American Civil War: Rear Admiral David Farragut successfully led the Union fleet through a mine field to victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay.

★06 Nov 1868
Red Cloud, a leader of the Oglala Lakota Native American tribe, signed the second Treaty of Fort Laramie, ending his war and establishing the Great Sioux Reservation.

★24 Dec 1871
Aida, one of Giuseppe Verdi's most popular operas, made its debut in Cairo, Egypt.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.