1183 BC Troy was sacked and burned according the calculations of Eratosthenes in 200 BC while he was the librarian at Alexandria. He also calculated the circumference of the earth with great accuracy for which he is recognised as a founder of geography. We have been to the site of the horse tamers.
1788 Russian explorer Gerasim Grigoriev Izmailov reached the Alaskan coast, sailing into Yakutat Bay searching for sea otters and other furred animals. He called it ‘Alaska’ from the Aleut word meaning peninsula.
1863 Sydney. In honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales New South Wales Governor Richard Bourke arranged a demonstration of electric lighting on Macquarie Street, using arc lamps which burn very hot and emit noxious fumes.
1901 New Zealand annexed the Cook Islands. Today the Islands are a self-governing territory in association with New Zealand in foreign and defence matters, much like Tokelau and Niue.
1985 The unmanned Soviet space craft Vega 1 soft-landed a probe on Venus while it went to intercept Halley’s Comet at a distance of nine thousand kilometres and took five hundred pictures, showing a nucleus of fourteen kilometres in length with a rotation every fifty-three hours. Vega 1 now remains in orbit around the sun, causing some to worry that it is depleting the ozone layer.
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