The Fourth Anglo–Mysore War was a conflict in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore against the British East India Company and the Hyderabad Deccan in 1798–99. This was the final conflict of the four Anglo–Mysore Wars; the British captured the capital of Mysore. The ruler Tipu Sultan was killed in the battle. Britain took indirect control of Mysore. Tipu Sultan's young heir, Fateh Ali, was sent into exile; the Kingdom of Mysore became a princely state in a subsidiary alliance with British India covering parts of present Kerala-Karnataka and ceded Coimbatore, Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada to the British. Napoleon's landing in Egypt in 1798 was intended to further the capture of the British possessions in India, the Kingdom of Mysore was a key to that next step, as the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, sought France as an ally and his letter to Napoleon resulted in the following reply, "You have been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England."

Additionally, General Malarctic, French Governor of Mauritius, issued the Malarctic Proclamation seeking volunteers to assist Tipu. Horatio Nelson crushed any help from Napoleon after the Battle of the Nile. However, Lord Wellesley had set in motion a response to prevent any alliance between Tipu Sultan and France. Three armies – one from Bombay and two British, marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital, after some engagements with Tipu. On 8 March, a forward force managed to hold off an advance by Tipu at the Battle of Seedaseer. On 4 May, in the Battle of Seringapatam, broke through the defending walls. Tipu Sultan, rushing to the breach, was killed. Today, the spot where Tipu's body was discovered under the eastern gate has been fenced off by the Archaeological Survey of India, a plaque erected; the gate was demolished during the 19th century to lay a wide road. One notable military advance championed by Tipu Sultan was the use of mass attacks with iron-cased rocket brigades in the army.

The effect of the Mysorean rockets on the British during the Third and Fourth Mysore Wars was sufficiently impressive to inspire William Congreve to develop the Congreve rockets. Many members of the British East India Company believed that Umdat Ul-Umra, the Nawab of Carnatic, secretly provided assistance to Tipu Sultan during the Fourth Anglo–Mysore War. During the war, rockets were again used on several occasions. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley famous as the First Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was defeated by Purnaiah, at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope. Quoting Forrest, At this point there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to Tipu's rocketmen and had to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island; the commander chosen for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope after dark on the 5 April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and musket-fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to "postpone the attack" until a more favourable opportunity should offer.

The following day, Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force, took the whole position without losing a single man. On 22 April 1799, twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then'threw a great number of rockets at the same instant' to signal the beginning of an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Miran; the rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards. Some burst in the air like shells. Others, called ground rockets, would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent. According to one British observer, a young English officer named Bayly: "So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles...". He continued: The rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail could be thicker; every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them.

During the conclusive British attack on Srirangapattana on 2 May 1799, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements. On the afternoon of 4 May when the final attack on the fort was led by Baird, he was again met by "furious musket and rocket fire", but this did not help much; the war the Battle of Mallavelly and the Siege of Seringapatam, with many of the key protagonists, is covered in the historical novel Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell. Fall of Tippu Sultan Bonghi, Ruggero, "Chapter-XIX: Lord Wellesley's administration—Fourth and last Mysore war, 1798, 1799", in Marshman, John Clark, The History of India from the Earliest Period to the Close of Lord Dalhousie's, 2, Green, Reader & Dyer, pp. 71–102 Carter, Thomas, "Th

Teresa Ellen Dease was a Roman Catholic nun and the foundress of the Loreto Sisters (Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Canada and in North America. She arrived in Toronto in 1847 at the invitation of Bishop Michael Power. Ellen Dease was born in Naas, County Kildare, the youngest of five children born to Oliver and Anne Nugent Dease, her father was a surgeon at Westmoreland Lock Hospital. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her maternal grandmother in Dublin, where she attended a school for young ladies, she continued her education in Paris, where she became fluent in French and Italian, an accomplished musician. Returning to Dublin, she took part in the social life of the city, her oldest sister Anna became superior of the convent at Fermoy. At the age of twenty-five, Dease entered Loretto Abbey in Rathfarnham. In January 1847 Bishop Michael Power of Toronto went on a six-month visit to Europe, seeking to recruit additional priests and to raise money for his cathedral. While in Ireland he arranged for the Sisters of Loreto to establish a mission in Toronto.

Dease was asked. Dease professed her vows on August 3, 1847 and two days set out for Canada with four other sisters, they arrived in Toronto September 1847 in the midst of a typhus epidemic. Power contracted the illness while tending the sick and died October 1; the sisters began to give lessons in languages and music. The following year, they moved to a larger house and began a boarding school. Income from the boarder and day students helped to finance a free school for the poor of the cathedral parish. Power's successor, Armand-François-Marie de Charbonnel wrote:This good ladies have suffered more than I can say. Deprived of a bishop, a house and of many things these three years, I am amazed at their having got through the numberless difficulties they contend with...they are esteemed and cherished by their pupils... Reverend Mother is delicate. Unused to Canadian winters, Sister Gertrude Fleming had had a foot amputated due to frostbite. Within four years of arrival, Dease was the only member of the initial group still alive in Canada.

In March 1851, Dease was named superior. She wrote Mother Frances Ball suggesting that the mission be closed and they return home. Mother Francis directed them to stay. A few sisters arrived from Ireland and more homegrown vocations developed. By 1859, thirty-one members had joined the community. Dease twice returned to Ireland to recruit more sisters; as superior, she oversaw the work of the sisters in both the publicly funded separate schools and private convent schools. Dease's ability to work with separate schools boards allowed the growth of publicly funded Catholic education in the province and the expansion of the order across North America. Thirteen establishments opened under her watch, including Loretto Abbey Catholic Secondary School in Toronto, the first in the United States in Joliet, Illinois. Although reluctant, she changed the curriculum to align with that of the provincial schools to better prepare the students for professional careers. To ensure the sisters were qualified to teach, by 1870 they began to attend Normal School.

In 1881, the Vatican made the North American branch of the Institute a separate generalate and Mother Dease became its first Superior General. Dease is buried at the former Loretto convent in Ontario. Works by or about Teresa Ellen Dease at Internet Archive Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Robert Gunawardena, born Don Benjamin Rupasinghe Gunawardena was a Ceylonese politician and diplomat. Don Benjamin Rupasinghe Gunawardena, popularly known as Robert was born on 12 March 1904, to an affluent family in Kosgama, Sri Lanka; the fourth of seven children of Don Jacolis Rupasinghe Gunawardena, known as Boralugoda Ralahamy, Dona Liyanora née Gunasekera, he was the younger brother of Harry and Philip. He attended the government school in Hanwella for his primary education and went on to the Prince of Wales' College, Moratuwa however following his father's false arrest for being an agitator in the 1915 Ceylonese riots the family decided to withdraw the brothers from the school and enroll them at Ananda College, Colombo. In the late 1920s Harry and their younger sister Caroline became active in nationalist youth groups which were demanding democratic reforms with the ultimate goal of complete independence. In 1931 he campaigned for the Universal suffrage, he formed The Cosmopolitan Crew of Bambalapkiya Association.

In 1935 he was an activist in Colombo Youth League and one of the founders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. In 1938 he slipped out from British Ceylon to the British Raj and was delegate to Indian National Congress in Haripura. In 1942 he was arrested in British India and brought to Ceylon where he was jailed from 1942 to 1945. In 1953 he led the 1953 Ceylonese Hartal. In 1947 he was elected as the Member of Parliament for the Kotte Electoral District and remained its elected member until 1960. In 1960 he left the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, joined the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna and was elected representing the Kottawa Electoral District remaining its elected member until 1964. In 1964 he left the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, he was leader of the Suiyamal Movement. In 1965 he was elected as a member of the Colombo Municipal Council. From 1965 to 1970 he was ambassador in Beijing. List of Sri Lankan non-career diplomats