On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

29 August

🇮🇳 In India

1612 The naval Battle of Swally, also known as Battle of Suvali, took place off the coast of Suvali (anglicised to Swally) a village near the Surat city (now in Gujarat, India) and was a victory for four English East India Company galleons over four Portuguese galleons.

1887 Jivraj Narayan Mehta, Indian politician and the first Chief Minister of Gujarat, was born. He had served briefly as Mahatma Gandhi's personal doctor.

1905

Hockey wizard Major Dhyanchand was born. National Sports Day of India is celebrated on his birth anniversary.

1931 Kabui Naga spiritual leader and political activist from Manipur, British India, Haipou Jadonang Malangmei, who laid the foundation of the powerful Naga movement, died.

1947 B.R. Ambedkar is appointed chairman of the drafting committee for the Indian constitution.

1998 Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar honoured with Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award.

2001 58th Venice Film Festival: "Monsoon Wedding" directed by Mira Nair wins Golden Lion.

🌎 Elsewhere

1831 Michael Faraday demonstrates first electric transformer.

1838 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm announce their intention to publish a German Dictionary, eventually completed in 1961, after 123 years.

1842 China signed the Treaty of Nanjing, providing for the cession of Hong Kong to Great Britain.

1883 Seismic sea waves created by Krakatoa eruption create a rise in English Channel 32 hours after explosion.

1885 Gottlieb Daimler receives German patent for a motorcycle.

1893 American businessman and inventor Whitcomb L. Judson was granted a U.S. patent for a “clasp locker,” which evolved into the modern zipper.

1923 Richard Attenborough, the Oscar-winning director for the film Gandhi, was born.

1929 German airship Graf Zeppelin ends a round-the-world flight.

1931 William Archibald Spooner, English priest and author, died. He was most notable for his absent-mindedness, and for supposedly mixing up the syllables in a spoken phrase, with unintentionally comic effect ("You have hissed all my mystery lectures"). Such phrases became known as spoonerisms, and are often used humorously. Many spoonerisms have been invented and attributed to Spooner.

1945 British liberate Hong Kong from Japan.

1949 USSR performs its first nuclear test at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR.

1958 Michael Jackson, American singer, songwriter, and dancer, was born.

1965 Astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad complete 120 Earth orbits in Gemini 5.

1997 Netflix was founded by American entrepreneurs Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph; originally a video-rental company, it later expanded into video streaming and production.

2009 Cristiano Ronaldo makes his debut for Real Madrid, scoring a penalty in their 3-2 win over Deportivo La Coruña.

2021 The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb (known in the West as Joe-1); it was a direct copy of the Fat Man bomb used by the U.S. military on Nagasaki during World War II.

⭐ Significance

India celebrates National Sports Day on August 29, the birth anniversary of hockey hero Major Dhyan Chand. In 2012, the day was declared India's National Sports Day. Major Dhyan Chand was a legend in Indian and international hockey.

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