Cyber Outsider

Fremantle Prison is a former Australian prison and World Heritage Site in Fremantle, Western Australia. The 15-acre site includes the prison cellblocks, gatehouse, perimeter walls, cottages, and tunnels. Constructed between 1851 and 1859 using convict labour, the prison was initially used for convicts transported from Britain, but was transferred to the colonial government in 1886 for use for locally-sentenced prisoners. Decades of prisoner discontent, culminating in a 1988 riot that saw guards taken hostage and a fire cause $1.8 million worth of damage, led to the prison being closed in 1991. Since then, Fremantle Prison has been conserved as a heritage and tourism site, and various restoration works have been undertaken.

On this day: 1853 – The first passenger line of what would become Indian Railways, the state-owned railway company of India, opened between Bombay and Thane. 1912 – American Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. 1947 – American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first described the post-World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "cold war". 2003 – The Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens, admitting ten new member states, including several countries of the former Eastern Bloc, into the European Union. 2007 – In one of the deadliest shooting incidents in United States history, a gunman killed 32 people and wounded over 20 more before committing suicide at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. (source: Wikipedia)