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The Action of 13 January 1797 was a small naval battle fought between a French ship of the line and two British frigates off the coast of Brittany during the French Revolutionary Wars. The action is notable for its outcome: the frigates successfully outmanoeuvred the much larger French vessel and drove it on shore in heavy seas, resulting in the death of over 900 of the 1,300 persons aboard. One of the British frigates was also lost in the engagement, running onto a sandbank after failing to escape a lee shore. The French ship Droits de l'Homme had been part of the Expédition d'Irlande, a disastrous attempt by a French expeditionary force to invade Ireland. During the operation, the French fleet was beset by poor co-ordination and extremely violent weather, eventually being compelled to return to France without landing a single soldier ashore. Two British frigates, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Amazon, had been ordered to patrol the seas off Ushant in an attempt to intercept the returning French force and sighted Droits de l'Homme on the afternoon of 13 January. The damage the more nimble British vessels inflicted on the French ship was so severe that as the winds increased, the French crew lost control and Droits de l'Homme was swept onto a sandbar and destroyed. (more...)

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February 6: Waitangi Day in New Zealand (1840)

• 1819 – British official Stamford Raffles (pictured) signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, establishing Singapore as a new trading post for the British East India Company.
• 1840 – The British and the Māori signed the Treaty of Waitangi, considered as the founding document of New Zealand.
• 1862 – Union forces earned one of their first important victories in the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Henry in western Tennessee.
• 1934 – In an attempted coup d'état against the French Third Republic, far right leagues demonstrated on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
• 1952 – Elizabeth II ascended to the thrones of the United Kingdom and six other British Commonwealth countries upon the death of her father, George VI.
• 1958 – British European Airways Flight 609, carrying the Manchester United football club, a number of their fans and journalists covering the team, crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany, killing eight players and 15 others.

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