Disaster struck the Furtze Hill Wood Mine in Devon when at the beginning of the morning shift miners broke into the shafts of an old disused pit.  Tons of water accumulated in the old workings instantly flooded the section.  Two boys were able to scramble to safety when one miner named Michael Yeo warned them and then turned back for his companions.  Yeo and the other seven miners working in the section all drowned. (By John Osborne)

During the brutal putting down of the October 1865 insurrection in Jamaica, Colonel Thomas Hobbs had commanded British troops at Monklands that destroyed houses and summarily executed more than a dozen black Jamaicans by firing squad.  Reportedly a cultured and sensitive man, his guilt and the criticism he had received at the hands of the subsequent Royal Commission had unhinged his mind and he was being returned home escorted by medical personnel, his wife, and three children.  Aboard the island ferry steamer Tyne off the coast of Haiti, however, he slipped away, threw himself overboard, and drowned.  (By John Osborne) 

At Caterham Junction on the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway in England, a large passenger train collided with stationary freight cars around ten o'clock in the evening.  Several passenger cariages went down an embankment with the result that two passengers and one railroad man were crushed and killed while many others were injured.  The dark night further increased both the terror of the incident and the difficulty in recovering the trapped and injured.  (By John Osborne)

On the southern outscirts of London, a new stretch of track on the Mitcham and Sutton line through a cutting on Mitcham Common had required the construction of a brick road bridge spanning it.  Cracks in the structure of the almost completed bridge had appeared and on this day it collapsed as workers were attempting to repair it.  Six men were killed when buried under a hundred ton of bricks.  (By John Osborne) 

A fire broke out around noon on the East and West India Docks in eastern London and quickly spread in a warehouse filled with jute. The new Metropolitan Fire Brigade, communicating by telegraph, quickly assemble nine fire engines and more than sixty firefighters and bring the fire under control in two hours.  The building was destroyed but the contents largely saved.  No injuries were reported.  (By John Osborne)

The brand-new British ironclad warship, H.M.S. Northumberland, had been completed at the Millwall Works on the Thames, and with most of her armor attached, weighed 9000 tons. Never had a ship this heavy been launched stern on, usually such heavy vessels had been rolled broadside into the water.  After three postponements and ninety minutes of innovative technological effort, the massive warship was successful launched.  (By John Osborne)

The famous annual boat race between crews from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, held on the Thames from Putney to Mortlake, was won for the sixth year running by the Oxford boat. Because of tidal conditions, the race was run earlier in the year than usual and had to start before eight in the morning.  After a close contest, the Oxford crew finished fifteen seconds ahead of their rivals. (By John Osborne) 

Queen Victoria instituted the Albert Medal, named for her late husband, to recognise acts of outstanding civilian bravery in the rescue of people in peril on the sea. The following year, the award was divided into two classes and in 1877 extended to saving life on land.  The award was replaced by the George Cross in 1949.  The first award went to Devon farmer who saved four men from the sea that same month.  (By John Osborne)