On this day, the idea of establishing The Bengal Club, or the Calcutta United Service Club, as it was originally intended to be called, was discussed for the first time at an informal meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall. Lieutenant-Colonel John Finch presided over the meeting and became the first president of the club, which started in 1827.

According to H.R. Panckridge, who wrote a short history of the club, Finch is supposed to have told the gathering that if London clubs had proved beneficial, so would a similar club in Calcutta, where “nothing like a respectable hotel or coffeehouse has ever existed”. Finch had added that “those who constitute the society of Calcutta have no place where they can spend an idle half hour agreeably”.

The Bengal Club is one of the most eminent social clubs in India. It changed its address many times, finally moving into the building that was once the residence of Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose 1835 minute shaped the Indian education policy.

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