On this day in history: Shortest test match in history, 1932

The shortest test in cricketing history in terms of minutes played and balls bowled took place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the 1932 South African tour of Australia. The South African captain, 'Jock' Cameron, won the toss and elected to bat as the clouds gathered. The South Africans only managed to score 36 before being bowled out just after the lunch break with Bert Ironmonger, who had been dropped for the previous test, taking five wickets for only six runs.

The Australian team [pictured] went out to bat without the great Donald Bradman who had badly twisted his ankle in the dressing room before the start of the match. Nevertheless, they managed to score 153 runs on a particularly sticky wicket. Alan Kippax was the top scorer, accumulating 42 runs before being caught by Syd Curnow. The first day's play ended with the South Africans on five runs for the cost of one wicket.

Rain prevented any play on the second day and continued during the rest day. Play finally resumed on the 15th February at 2:15. The South Africans continued to struggle with the wet pitch, being bowled out for only 45 runs with Ironmonger adding another seven wickets to his first innings haul. Australia won the match by an innings and 72 runs after only five and a half hours play in which only 656 balls were bowled.

The match scorecard is available at CricketArchive.

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On this day in history: First French nuclear explosive test, 1960

The French have a long association with nuclear research since the days of Marie Curie. In 1945 the French government created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) - the French Atomic Energy Commission - under the direction of the Nobel laureate Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Nevertheless, Joliot-Curie's communist sympathies resulted in him being removed from his position before the beginning of the nuclear power programme in the 1950s.

In 1956 a secret committee met to review the possible military applications for atomic energy. Work began on delivery systems for nuclear weapons, but another year passed before President René Coty authorised the creation of the Centre Saharien d'Expérimentations Militaires (C.S.E.M.) - a military research facility in what was then the French Sahara. In 1958 the newly installed President Charles de Gaulle gave the final authorisation for France to develop a nuclear bomb, only the fourth country to do so after the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

At 7.04am on 12th February 1960 the scientists at C.S.E.M. conducted their first nuclear explosive test, codenamed Gerboise Bleue ("blue jerboa" - a jerboa is desert rodent). The scientists had mounted the pure fission plutonium implosion device on a 105 meter high tower near Reganne in the desert of Tanezrouf (now in Algeria). The resultant explosion was the most powerful first nuclear test by any nation with a yield of seventy kilotons. They conducted two other tests of much smaller devices in April and December of that year codenamed Gerboise Blanche and Gerboise Rouge - making up the three colours of the tricolore. In April 1961 the scientists detonated the final bomb in the programme, Gerboise Verte.

Footage of the Gerboise Bleue fireball.

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On this day in history: Ecuador annexed the Galápagos Islands, 1832

The first European to set foot on the Galápagos Islands was the fourth Bishop of Panama, the Dominican Fray Tomás de Berlanga. In order to settle a territorial dispute between the conquistadors Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, Berlanga sailed to Peru but strong winds blew his ship off course. He arrived at the islands on 10th March 10 1535 before continuing his journey.

For over two centuries from Richard Hawkin's visit to the islands in 1593, the English pirates and privateers that preyed on Spanish bullion ships and settlements often used the archipelago to evade attack. One such privateer, Woodes Rogers, stopped at the islands to make repairs after having rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired Daniel Defoe's character Robinson Crusoe. The islands attracted a wide range of naturalists including the Italian nobleman Alessandro Malaspina, James Colnett and famously Charles Darwin.

On 12th February 1832, the newly independent Ecuador annexed the islands calling them the Archipelago of Ecuador. The islands initially served as a penal colony governed by General José de Villamil, who sent an exploratory commission there in the previous October. He then set up the Colonising society of the Archipelago of the Galápagos to exploit the lichens that grew there, which served as a dye. Artisans and farmers soon joined the convicts to colonise the islands.

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