On March 29, 1849, Lord Dalhousie declared the conquest of the Punjab. Henry Miers Elliot, his foreign secretary, came in Lahore to acquire the signatures of the members of the Council of Regency and the minor monarch, Maharaja Duleep Singh. In a darbar convened in the Lahore Fort, with British forces on his right and his hapless Sardars on his left, the youthful Duleep Singh signed the paper that stripped him of his throne and country. There were various reasons for the Sikh loss. Following the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the administration of the Sikh Empire became disorganised. The East India Company, on the other side, had assembled an overwhelming army against them, comprising Bengal, Maratha, Rajput, and Jat men.
Related On This Day
Anupam Roy was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, in 1982, and is an Indian vocalist, writer, composer, and playback singer.
In 1867, the United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000, or about 2 cents per acre.
Vincent van Gogh, a Dutch artist, painter, and Expressionism pioneer, was born in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands, in 1853.
Project Tiger, a tiger conservation initiative, is begun in India's Jim Corbett National Park in 1973.
Isaac Newton, an English scientist and astronomer, died in London in 1727 at the age of 84.
Guru Har Krishan, the eighth of the ten Sikh Gurus, died in 1664. He was also one of the youngest gurus, having become a guru at the age of five.
Marvin Gaye, an American soul singer-songwriter, was shot to death by his father, Marvin Gay, Sr., after a domestic altercation in Los Angeles in 1984, at the age of 44.
Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the East India Company's government in India in 1857, sparking the lengthy Indian Rebellion of 1857. It is often referred to as the "First War of Independence."