A Hong Kong truck driver was arrested for smuggling firearms into China when he entered Shenzhen in 2001, and put on trial despite the guns being fake. Eight months later he was still awaiting a verdict.

A teenaged British army wife went on hunger strike in Singapore in 1962 in protest at the housing provided for the family. A move to Hong Kong, and a flat in Chungking Mansions, delighted her.

A fishing trawler exploded and sank in Hong Kong, in 1977, when marine police were inspecting the boat. Three officers were killed and 10 injured, in the blast, caused by an LPG canister in the hold.

The classic cars Hong Kong owners drove to Guangzhou, China, in 1986, were a novelty at a time when hardly anyone there owned a car. Enthusiasts cheered wildly as sports cars were put through their paces.

British sculptor Henry Moore’s life and work was celebrated in an exhibition in Hong Kong in 1986, opened by the Duchess of Kent, and an extensive catalogue published in Chinese and English in 1987.

At 19, Philip Au-yeung won a scholarship, in a contest open to all Hong Kong residents, to study fashion in New York. Upon his return, he criticised Hong Kong fashion’s lack of individuality.

Ship brokers warned potential buyers off sinking their money into the Trump Princess when the future US president tried to offload in Hong Kong the yacht he’d bought from the Sultan of Brunei in 1987.

A triple-decker Cheung Chau ferry and a Macau hydrofoil collided in Hong Kong waters at night in 1977, sinking the ferry and injuring at least 21, in a accident blamed on human negligence.

The bridge, which linked Tsing Yi with Pillar Island and the New Territories, was opened in 1974 by Hong Kong Governor Murray MacLehose, who promised more such infrastructure in the future.

In February 1964, four armed men kidnapped Vee Meng Shaw – the son of Hong Kong film mogul Run Run Shaw – and his driver. Freed after nearly 12 days, he said he had been kept blindfolded the whole time.

Disaster struck a Lunar New Year parade in Tsim Sha Tsui in February 1997 when a float whose driver was apparently overcome by carbon monoxide ran into the crowd, killing a British tourist and injuring others.

A fight between 14K and Wo Shing Wo triads in Hong Kong in 1975 left a 18-year-old man dead. A man was killed the next night in a revenge attack. A teenager was sentenced to death for the first murder.

With fish supplies in Hong Kong waters severely depleted in the 1990s, an attempt was started to save the marine environment and boost dwindling fish stocks, starting with artificial reefs.

In 1959, a Spanish crew imitating mariners during the days of ancient China sailed a junk boat from Hong Kong to Barcelona, becoming the first people to sail a Chinese junk into the Mediterranean.

Stabbed 16 times, doused in boiling oil, his head wrapped in plastic – yet a jealous wife pleaded not guilty to murdering her husband. At the third attempt, a jury concluded the case, finding her guilty.

In 1963, gunshots rang out in Central, Hong Kong, when a police officer fired at an armed robber who’d turned his gun on him. In court the suspect, a former Chinese solider, unexpectedly pleaded guilty.

When Hong Kong Governor Sir Anthony Grantham retired in 1958, he and his wife Lady Grantham sailed away from the city as thousands lined the both sides of Victoria Harbour to bid farewell.

At a Christmas concert at the Hongkong Hotel in 1948, a subdued choir of schoolchildren singing carols before Hong Kong’s then-governor had their ‘cloak of shyness’ lifted when the audience joined in.

Work on one of Hong Kong’s most Instagram-friendly places, the rainbow-coloured Choi Hung Estate, was approved in 1960. Governor Sir Robert Black called it ‘something of incalculable importance’.

Following the disappearance of 15 Hong Kong recreational sailors in 1969, it was learned they were being held by Chinese authorities. All were released within weeks bar the two Americans among them.

In 2002, a wealthy businessman was shot dead while eating breakfast at Hong Kong’s Luk Yu Tea House. The trail led to a former TV actor, who was jailed for life for paying triads to carry out the hit.

Accused of living beyond his means and of taking bribes, a Hong Kong civil servant claimed some of his money had come from his wife, who had a passion for gambling – and who had disappeared.

Assassins in motorcycle helmets gunned down Andely Chan, known as the ‘Tiger of Wan Chai’, and two associates outside a Macau hotel in November 1993. Unusually, two women bystanders were injured.

60 years ago, a woman’s body was found in a village well in Hong Kong. A hawker claimed to have seen a man drop what looked like a corpse there, and her partner was charged with her murder.

In October, 1962, at the height of the Cold War, Mexican then-president Adolfo Lopez Mateos landed at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, where he refused to talk to the press about the ‘build-up’ in Cuba.

A Hong Kong branch of DBS bank, being renovated in 2004, sent old safe deposit boxes to an industrial crusher, but 83 still contained customers’ items. The contents couldn’t be rescued and the bank had to pay out millions.

Hong Kong won its first Asian Games gold medal in 1986, when 34-year-old accountant and bowler Catherine Che – known as ‘The Cat’ – won the women’s singles tenpin bowling event.

It had been years since couturiers regularly showed seasonal collections in Hong Kong when, in 1986, leading Australian designers George Gross and Harry Watt put on a charity fashion show called Made in Australia.

A Danish container ship ran aground in 1977, releasing crude bunker oil that left 110 tonnes of fish dead. Lamma Island fish farmers were later compensated for their losses.

A Hong Kong restaurant and mahjong club was firebombed in 1990 after refusing to pay local gangsters. Six men, including two shareholders in the King Ford Moon Restaurant and Mahjong Club, were killed.