The Hong Kong Crown Colony was founded on January 26, 1841, when Britain's Union Flag was raised over Possession Point, a then unremarkable headland in southern China.Its new rulers in London weren't so impressed by their acquisition, with Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston famously denouncing it as a "barren rock with nary a house upon it" that would never "be a mart for trade." Hong Kong defied these expectations. By 1997, when sovereignty was handed over to China, the city had a population of more than 6.5 million people and a booming economy the envy of its neighbors. Twenty years later, Hong Kong has evolved again.
