Today in history

1857: In what was a precursor of the impending mutiny, Mangal Pande, a young sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry at Barrackpore fired at the Sergeant Major of his regiment ? 1857: In what was a precursor of the impending mutiny, Mangal Pande, a young sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry at Barrackpore fired at the Sergeant Major of his regiment but was overpowered and subsequently executed.

• 1857: In what was a precursor of the impending mutiny, Mangal Pande, a young sepoy of the 34th Native Infantry at Barrackpore fired at the Sergeant Major of his regiment but was overpowered and subsequently executed.

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• 1869: Birth of Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), English architect known especially for his planning of New Delhi and his design of the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan).

• 1886: The first batch of Coca Cola was brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. John Pemberton had created the concoction as a cure for hangover, stomach ache and headache. He advertised it as a ‘brain tonic and intellectual beverage,’ and first sold it to the public a few weeks later on May 8. Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904, when Congress banned the drug.

• 1912: Captain Robert Falcon Scott wrote the last entry in his diary on his ill-fated second expedition to the South Pole. (“Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift…We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.”)