Hello rockylizard

Re 1908 - The first successful Australian transcontinental motor car journey is completed.

I have seen that car at the Birdwood Museum, in South Australia, and read the story on the placard

I can only "dips my lid" to the Gentlemen who drove it on that journey

They were the true believers, who did not need any roads

Tony Bev wrote:

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Hello rockylizard

Re 1908 - The first successful Australian transcontinental motor car journey is completed.

I have seen that car at the Birdwood Museum, in South Australia, and read the story on the placard

I can only "dips my lid" to the Gentlemen who drove it on that journey

They were the true believers, who did not need any roads

---

 Hi, A few years ago now I read a book written by a Doctor about his trip with his young wife, they were from Hamilton, Brisbane they drove there Willys Whippett 1920's something around Australia following the bullock tracks once leaving the major towns, spending days waiting for WA rivers to stop flooding, all sorts minor dramas. They were so game, a few drums of extra fuel, a couple of spare tyres and not much more.

I tried to googgle the name of the book without success, how I got hold of the book a very close friend brought a similar model Willys Whippet car while looking for parts at a swap meet come across this batted old book.

I am not saying they were the first or claiming to be but I am sure they went where people had not seen a motor car before. I must find the book and reread it, well it would be 20 years since I read it.

As always I enjoy reading History Today.

Gday...

1820  -             Joseph Wild discovers the enigmatic Lake George, near Canberra.

Lake George, in south-eastern New South Wales, Australia, and about a half hour's drive from the nation's capital of Canberra, has a basin about 25km long and 10km wide. The Lake is unusual in that it is renowned for emptying and filling on a cyclic basis, and the fact that it is often the site of a mirage which makes it appear full when it is actually empty. As it is a long, shallow lake (average depth of 1m) with a very small catchment, high evaporation rates and an ability for strong winds to blow the water back on itself explain the mysterious filling and drying episodes on both short term (hours) and long term (years) time scales that people have observed over the years. There is also a direct correlation between drought and the emptying of the lake.

Little-known Australian explorer Joseph Wild is credited with discovering Lake George on 21 August 1820. Wild was an ex-convict, sentenced on 21 August 1793 in Chester for shooting a rabbit on another's property, and transported in 1797. He received a ticket-of-leave in 1810 and conditional pardon in January 1813. After being appointed first Constable of the Five Islands District, now Illawarra, in 1815, Wild undertook several expeditions into the interior of New South Wales with pastoralist Charles Throsby. Wild and Throsby were the first Europeans to explore the area that became the Australian Capital Territory.

The lake was named for King George III by European explorers. In the local indigenous language, its name was Werriwa, originally spelt Weereewa in the journals of the explorers who noted the name and its meaning of "bad water". The lake is exceptionally salty; when it is full, the lake is one of the saltiest bodies of water in inland NSW.

1842  -             Hobart Town, the main settlement in Van Diemen's Land, is proclaimed a city.

Hobart is the capital city of Tasmania, Australia, and is the second oldest city in Australia, with Sydney being the oldest. It is Australia's twelfth largest city. Hobart also serves as the home port for both Australian and French Antarctic operations.

The city began as a penal colony at Risdon Cove on the Derwent River in 1803 to offset British concerns over the presence of French explorers. A year later it was moved to its current location at Sullivan's Cove. The name Hobart Town was adopted by the settlement in June 1804, after Lord Hobart the Colonial Secretary. The colony of Van Diemens Land was proclaimed a separate colony from New South Wales, with its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council, in December 1825. Hobart Town was proclaimed a city on 21 August 1842, and was renamed as Hobart in 1875.

1862  -             Explorer John McDouall Stuart suffers blindness from scurvy during his return journey from successfully crossing Australia.

John McDouall Stuart was a Scottish-born explorer who was determined to cross Australia from south to north. Stuart led a total of six expeditions into Australia's interior, with five of them being attempts to be the first to cross the continent from south to north, commencing from Adelaide. He succeeded on his fifth attempt, reaching the northern waters at Chambers Bay in July 1862.

The return journey of 3,400km is considered one of the great survival stories of Australian exploration. While the crossing was successful, years of arduous expeditions had taken their toll on Stuart, and his health had deteriorated badly. The constant blinding glare from the desert sun combined with advanced scurvy to produce almost total blindness. On 21 August 1862, Stuart wrote, "I am now quite incapable of taking observations at night." He could no longer ride, and was carried back 960 kilometres between two horses on a stretcher mounted between two long poles. He arrived, sick but triumphant, in Adelaide on 21 January 1863. He never fully recovered from the exertions of his journeys, and died only three and a half years later, truly a hero in the eyes of Australians.

1990  -             The announcement is made that the Australian 1 cent and 2 cent coins will be withdrawn from circulation.

Decimal currency was first introduced in Australia on 14 February 1966. Replacing pounds, shillings and pence, the new currency was made up of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent coins, and paper banknotes of $1, $2, $10 and $20 denominations, followed by the introduction of the $5 note in 1967. The education campaign to help the public make the transition featured a "Dollar Bill" cartoon character and jingles which were seen on billboards, television and radio advertisements. The Dollar Bill Decimal Currency Jingle, with lyrics written by Ted Roberts, was sung to the tune of Click go the Shears.

All coins had the Queens effigy on one side. On the reverse side, the one cent coin had a representation of a feather tailed glider, and the two cent coin showed a representation of a frilled lizard, both of which were designed and sculpted by Stuart Devlin. Composition of the two coins was 97% copper 2.5% zinc 0.5% tin.

On 21 August 1990, Federal Treasurer Paul Keating announced in his Budget Speech that the one and two cent coins would be withdrawn from circulation as of February 1992. The Press Release that accompanied the announcement stated "1c and 2c coins will continue to be legal tender: they can still be used to purchase goods and can be deposited with financial institutions in the normal manner". Inflation and the cost of minting of the coins were cited as reasons for their withdrawal.

1986  -             A cloud of lethal volcanic gas kills over 1700 in Cameroon, West Africa.

Lake Nyos is a volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon, about 1800m across and 208m deep. It was formed in a maar, a crater caused by the explosion which results when a lava flow interacts violently with groundwater. Lake Nyos is one of only three lakes in the world known to be saturated with carbon dioxide; the source of the gas is a magma chamber beneath the lake, which allows the gas to seep up through the lake bed.

On the night of 21 August 1986, a cloud of carbon dioxide escaped suddenly. Being heavier than the surrounding air, it sank to the ground and rolled in a wave several tens of metres deep across the surrounding countryside. The breathable air was displaced, suffocating around 1700 people and 3000 cattle within 20 km of the lake. Investigations have never determined what was the catalyst to the sudden outgassing.

Cheers - John

Gday...

1770  -             James Cook takes possession of the eastern coast of "New Holland".

Captain James Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers. However, he was the first to sight and map the eastern coastline. Cook's ship, the 'Endeavour', departed Plymouth, England, in August 1768. After completing the objective of his mission, which was to observe the transit of Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti, Cook continued on his mission to find out more about Terra Australis Incognita, the great unknown south land. He first came across New Zealand, which had already been discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642. He spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, he set sail east.

In mid-April 1770, officer of the watch, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks, sighted land and alerted Captain Cook. Cook made out low sandhills which he named Point Hicks, although he did not yet know whether they formed part of an island or a continent. Point Hicks lies on the far southeastern corner of the Australian continent, and Cook chose to fly before unfavourable winds up the eastern coast.

Cook went on to chart the east coast of what was then known as New Holland, mapping numerous inlets and bays as he headed north. On 22 August 1770, at Possession Island in Torres Strait, Cook claimed the eastern coast of the continent for Great Britain under the name of New South Wales. The territory he claimed included "the whole eastern coast, from latitude 38 degrees S to this place, latitude 10.5 degrees S, in right of His Majesty King George the Third. This essentially meant just the eastern parts of what are now New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Cook recorded the following:

"Notwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of His Majesty taken possession of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English Coulers and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took possession of the whole Eastern Coast by the name New South Wales, together with all the Bays, Harbours Rivers and Islands situate upon the said coast, after which we fired three Volleys of small Arms which were Answered by the like number from the Ship."

1847  -             John Forrest, Australian explorer and the first Premier of Western Australia, is born.

John Forrest was born on 22 August 1847, near Bunbury in Western Australia. Between the years of 1869 to 1874, Forrest led three expeditions, two of them with his brother Alexander, to explore the uncharted areas of Western Australia. In 1869, he led the search for Ludwig Leichhardt's party which had gone missing on their trek across Australia from east to west, a search which was unsuccessful. In 1870, he surveyed the route which Edward Eyre had taken in 1840-41 from Adelaide to Albany, across the Great Australian Bight.

In 1883, Forrest was awarded the positions of surveyor-general and commissioner of crown lands, which, by virtue of the power and prestige they represented, accorded him a seat on the colony's Executive Council. He was also nominated to the Western Australian Legislative Council. After the colony became self-governing in 1890, Forrest was elected unopposed to the seat of Bunbury in the Legislative Assembly. On 22 December 1890, he was appointed as the first Premier of Western Australia.

1864  -             The International Red Cross is founded.

The Red Cross is an international organization that cares for the wounded, sick, and homeless in wartime. On 22 August 1864, twelve nations adopted the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field. This agreement called for medical personnel to remain neutral, giving aid to the sick and wounded during war, regardless of the country or allied group from which they came. It also proposed the use of an international emblem to mark medical personnel and supplies. The emblem chosen was a red cross on a white background.

The Red Cross was originally known as the International Red Cross, as it encompassed branches all over the world. In 1986, the name "Red Cross" was changed to the "International Movement of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent" in order to cover also numerous Arab branches.

1872  -             Giles begins his first expedition into the Australian desert.

Ernest Giles was born William Ernest Powell Giles on 7 July 1835 in England. He emigrated to Australia in 1850 and was employed at various cattle and sheep stations, allowing him to develop good bush skills.

Giles made several expeditions in the Australian desert. The first expedition departed from Chambers Pillar on 22 August 1872 and resulted in the discovery of an unusual oasis in the desert, the Glen of Palms, now called Palm Valley. Also on this journey, Giles named Gosse's Range, now called Gosse's Bluff. He discovered Lake Amadeus, a huge saltpan in central Australia, which he named after the King of Spain, and he first sighted Mount Olga, which he named after the king's wife. Giles arrived back at Charlotte Waters from his first expedition on 1 December 1872.

1872  -             The Northern and Southern sections of the Overland Telegraph Line, crossing the Australian continent, are joined.

The Overland Telegraph Line was a major feat of engineering, which connected Australia to the rest of world via a single wire. The motivation for building the Overland Telegraph Line came from the fact that a submarine cable already reached from England to Java, and the British-Australian Telegraph Company was prepared to lay a submarine cable from Java to Darwin. It remained only to connect Darwin to the rest of Australia.

It was logical for the line to connect first with Adelaide, as Adelaide was the closest point linking to the major centres of Melbourne and Sydney. Thanks to the influence of Charles Todd, superintendent of telegraphs and government astronomer in South Australia, the South Australian government agreed to build a 3200 kilometre overland telegraph line connecting Darwin with Port Augusta. The Line would closely follow the route charted by explorer John McDouall Stuart on his final expedition in 1862.

Begun in 1870, the Overland Telegraph Line was completed in 1872. It was an exceptional feat, carried out in searing heat through the Australian desert, and six men lost their lives during the construction. The northern and southern sections were joined on 22 August 1872, finally bringing Australia into telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.

1917  -             Stockman Jim Darcy dies, causing a chain of events that eventually leads to the founding of Australias Flying Doctor Service.

James Darcy, more commonly known as Jim, was a stockman at Ruby Plains, a pastoral and cattle station about 70 km south of Halls Creek in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Late in June 1917, Darcy was thrown from his horse while mustering stock, and suffered serious internal injuries. Halls Creek was an agonising twelve-hour buggy ride away, but the only person with any medical experience in town was the postmaster, Fred Tuckett, who had minimal training in first aid. Tuckett telegraphed through to a surgeon in Perth, Dr Joe Holland. The doctor diagnosed a ruptured bladder, so Tuckett followed Hollands instructions for surgery via telegraph, and successfully completed the operation, using just the simple tools he had. Although the operation was successful, complications set in after a couple of weeks. Dr Holland undertook a 3 700 km journey by cattle boat, horse and buggy, and by foot, to reach the patient, but Darcy died shortly before Holland arrived.

Jim Darcys death occurred on 22 August 1917. He was buried at Halls Creek. His grave is marked by a plain headstone which reads simply Sacred to the Memory of James Darcy, who died at Halls Creek, August 22nd 1917, Aged 29 years. R.I.P.

The case caught the attention of John Flynn, a Presbyterian minister who had become aware of the need for better medical care for the people who lived far from major settlements. Although Flynn had established numerous bush hospitals in the Australian outback, he had an even greater vision: that of a medical service utilising the emerging technology of radio and aircraft to bring assistance to people in remote areas. Thanks to assistance from various benefactors and other visionaries, in May 1928 Flynns vision was realised when the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service was established at Cloncurry, in western Queensland. The service succeeded, and in 1942 was renamed the Flying Doctor Service. Queen Elizabeth II approved the prefix "Royal" in 1955 following her visit to Australia. The Royal Flying Doctor Service, or RFDS, is still an integral part of Australia today, providing essential medical services to people living in remote areas.

Cheers - John

Gday...

1617  -             The first one-way streets are opened in London.

Long before the invention of the automobile, traffic congestion and chaos was a problem in London, England. On 23 August 1617, an Act of Common Council was passed to regulate the "disorder and rude behaviour of Carmen, Draymen and others using Cartes." Seventeen narrow lanes were identified as requiring regulation to control congestion, and hence created as one-way streets.

1836  -             William Hobson, later the first Governor of New Zealand, arrives in New South Wales, Australia.

William Hobson was born on 26 September in either 1792 or 1793 in Waterford, Ireland. Hobsons career in the Royal Navy began before he was ten years old, when he joined the frigate La Virginie with the rank of volunteer, second class. Initially serving in the Napoleonic Wars, he steadily worked his way up through the naval ranks until he was promoted to Commander in May 1824.

In 1836, Hobson received a commission from Lord Auckland to serve in the East Indies on the HMS Rattlesnake. During this time, he was detached from the command and ordered to New South Wales to serve under Governor Richard Bourke. The Rattlesnake arrived in Port Jackson, New South Wales on 23 August 1836.

Hobson was sent to Port Phillip, where his first task was to assist in surveying the harbour and laying out the streets of Melbourne, as a new colony was being established on the southern coast. Upon completing this task, he was almost immediately dispatched to the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, where James Busby, the British Resident, had communicated his fears about unrest between the Mori and the Pakeha, or European settlers. As Resident, Busby recognised the sovereignty of the Mori people. Once in New Zealand, Hobson recommended a treaty with the Mori, imposition of British Law and establishing British sovereignty over the islands. Hobson later went on to become the first Governor of New Zealand and was instrumental in establishing the Treaty of Waitangi.

1899  -             The first ship-to-shore wireless message is received.

Wireless technology is largely attributed to Guglielmo Marconi, who was born in Italy in 1874. Marconi developed the wireless telegraphy system, which came to be known as "radio", demonstrating the transmission and reception of Morse Code-based radio signals over a distance of 2 or more kilometres on Salisbury Plain in England in 1896. Marconi made the first wireless transmission across a body of water in May 1897 from Lavernock Point, South Wales to Flat Holm Island.

The technology was soon implemented by defence forces. On 23 August 1899, US Lightship no. 70 San Francisco announced the arrival of the US Army troopship Sherman with the words, "Sherman is sighted". The lightship relayed the message via wireless telegraphy, which later came to be known as "radio". It was the first use of wireless by the US Coast Guard, and within a maritime context. The method used sparks to send out intermittent radio waves and code messages. It was a method which remained in use through the World War I, until more modern technology was developed.

1912  -             American actor, dancer and singer, Gene Kelly, is born.

Gene Kelly was born Eugene Curran Kelly on 23 August 1912, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was an actor, singer and dancer, choreographing much of his own and others' performances. Kelly was the first American to choreograph and stage a ballet in the Paris Opera. Two of his more memorable scenes show him singing and dancing in the rain in the film "Singin' in the Rain", and dancing on roller skates in It's Always Fair Weather.

In 1951, Kelly was awarded a special Academy Award in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer". In 1985, he was given the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Gene Kelly died in 1996.

1990  -             Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein provokes outrage when he appears on television with western hostages.

On 2 August 1990, 100,000 Iraqi troops backed by 300 tanks invaded Kuwait, in the Persian Gulf. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had amassed weaponry which was then deployed for the invasion. The United Nations acted immediately to implement economic sanctions against Iraq, and called for Iraq to withdraw. On 7 August 1990, US troops moved into Saudi Arabia to protect Saudi oil fields.

Hundreds of foreigners were held in Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. On 23 August 1990, Saddam Hussein appeared on television with a group of westerners, mostly British. He informed them they had been detained to prevent war and said that Iraq wanted to see they were safe. The move provoked outrage among western nations. It did not prevent war. In January of the following year, a coalition force of armies from 34 nations, led by the United States, set out to free Kuwait. The Gulf War lasted around 6 weeks, and resulted in a decisive victory for the coalition forces.

2001  -             A French stuntman hangs from the statue of Liberty for half an hour when a stunt goes wrong.

In the history of the Statue of Liberty in New York, three people have jumped or fallen from the statue.

The first person to jump off the Statue of Liberty was steeplejack Frederick R Law who, in 1912, gained permission to leap from the observation platform which surrounds the torch of the statue. He parachuted safely down.

The second leap may have been suicide, or it may have been an accident. In May 1923, a man named Ralph Gleason ascended to the crown where he climbed out of one of the crown's windows. A witness reported that he seemed to change his mind and turn around to re-enter the window, when he slipped and fell to his death.

The final attempt by anyone to leap from the Statue of Liberty occurred on 23 August 2001. Thierry Devaux was a French stuntman who intended to parasail into the statue, then bungee jump off the top. The initial part of his stunt worked, but when he bungee-jumped from the torch, his bungee cord became entangled in the torch, where he hung for half an hour. Eventually, Devaux was arrested by the police and charged with four misdemeanours, including trespassing.

Cheers- John

Gday...

79  -     The ancient city of Pompeii is destroyed as Mt Vesuvius erupts.

The ancient city of Pompeii lay southeast of Naples, Italy. It lay in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, the only active volcano on the European mainland, and its inhabitants were used to rumblings and tremors from the volcano. The city was severely damaged by an earthquake in AD 62, and sometime early in AD 79 wells dried up throughout the city. No-one heeded the warning. On August 24 AD 79, Pompeii and the neighbouring city of Herculaneum were buried under a pyroclastic flow, a cloud of superheated gas, ash, and rock erupting from the volcano. Being a popular summer holiday spot, it is estimated that there were about 20,000 inhabitants in Pompeii at the time of the eruption.

Immediately following the eruption, those who had not been killed by falling rocks quickly packed to flee. However, clouds of poison gas rolled into the city. Those who were outside died instantly from the gas, while people who were still in their houses died from lack of oxygen. After hundreds of years of lying buried, Herculaneum was rediscovered in 1738, and Pompeii in 1748.

1759  -             William Wilberforce, the man largely responsible for the abolition of the slave trade, is born.

William Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759 in Hull, Britain. He studied at Cambridge University where he befriended England's future prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. In 1780, Wilberforce became member of parliament for Hull, later representing Yorkshire. During his twenties, Wilberforce became a Christian, and his motivation for social reforms was largely a by-product of his active and practical Christianity. He was strongly influenced by former slave-trader John Newton, then the leading evangelical Anglican clergyman of the day and Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London.

In 1787, Wilberforce became leader of the parliamentary campaign of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Between 1789 and 1806, he attempted to pass numerous parliamentary bills against the slave trade, but was unsuccessful each time, as many of the members of parliament stood to profit from their own indirect involvement in the trade.

In 1806, a change of tactics was suggested by maritime lawyer James Stephen. This involved introducing a bill to ban British subjects from aiding or participating in the slave trade to the French colonies, It was a smart move, as the majority of the ships were flying American flags, though manned by British crews and sailing out of Liverpool. The Foreign Slave Trade Act was quickly passed and the tactic proved successful. The new legislation effectively prohibited two-thirds of the British slave trade. In the long run, many MPs who had benefited from the slave trade lost their financial support, and ultimately their position in parliament. This opened the way for a further attempt to pass an Abolition bill.

Further support from Abolitionists enabled the final passing of an Abolition Bill on 23 February 1807. As tributes were made to Wilberforce, who had laboured for the cause during the preceding twenty years, the bill was carried by 283 votes to 16. The Slave Trade Act received the royal assent on 25 March 1807. This Act did not free those who were already slaves; it was not until 1833 that an act was passed giving freedom to all slaves in the British empire.

Despite ill health, Wilberforce continued to campaign for social reform, including the improvement of factory conditions in Britain. He was instrumental in the development of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1802. He also worked to develop the Association for the Better Observance of Sunday, the aim of which was to provide all children with regular education in reading, personal hygiene and religion. He was closely involved with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was also instrumental in encouraging Christian missionaries to go to India. Wilberforce died on 29 July 1833, shortly after the act to free slaves in the British empire passed through the House of Commons. He was buried near his friend, former Prime Minister William Pitt, in Westminster Abbey.

1872  -             Queensland's borders are extended to include Thursday Island and the Torres Strait islands.

Thursday Island is the administrative and commercial centre of the Torres Strait Islands. It is situated 39 km north of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, in Torres Strait. The island is populated by the Melanesian Torres Strait Islanders, who named the island Waiben, believed to mean 'dry place', due to the scarcity of fresh water on the island. The island has an area of about 3 km² and an estimated population of 3,500.

On 24 August 1872, the borders of the state of Queensland were extended a further 100km from the coastline. This allowed for the inclusion of Thursday Island and the Torres Strait islands within Queensland's borders. An administrative centre for the Torres Strait Islands was set up on Thursday Island by the Queensland Government in 1877, and a township gradually developed. A thriving pearling industry began in 1885 and swelled the population with workers from Asian countries, including Japan, Malaya and India, whilst South Pacific islanders were also brought in to work in the industry. Whilst pearling is no longer a major industry there, the population retains the influence of these other cultures.

In the 1970s, Papua New Guinea sought to include the Torres Strait Islands within its borders. The Torres Strait Islanders maintained that they were Australians, and after considerable diplomatic discussions, all of the Torres Strait, including Thursday Island, remained as part of Australia.

1879  -             Explorer Alexander Forrest's expedition through northwest Australia is threatened with starvation.

Alexander Forrest was born on 22 September 1849 at Picton in Western Australia. He gained much of his exploring experience from working with his brother John, but was an established explorer in his own right.

In 1879 Alexander led an expedition from the DeGrey River, up the coast to Beagle Bay, then inland into the area now known as the Kimberley. He discovered good country and the Fitzroy River, but when he came across another river in the east, a shortage of food forced the men to keep moving, rather than explore the river more closely. By 24 August 1879, the future of the expedition was threatened by an increasingly desperate shortage of rations. With only 27kg of flour remaining, and most of the horses killed for food, Forrest's only solution was to push 160km east to the Overland Telegraph Line, where they were able to receive necessary food and water.

1909  -             Workers start pouring the concrete for the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal is a ship canal about 82km in length, linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans via the Caribbean Sea through central America. It was built by the United States between 1904 and 1914 on territory leased from Panama. A canal through Nicaragua was initially preferred by the US, but the Panama site was chosen after a French company acquired the rights to the canal from another bankrupted French company. An American representative of the French company, William Nelson Cromwell, persuaded the United States to take up the Panama route. On 24 August 1909, workers began actually pouring the first concrete for the canal at a lock site at Gatun. The Panama Canal uses locks to raise and lower ships.

1995  -             Windows 95 is released by the Microsoft Corporation.

Windows 95 is a computer operating system released on 24 August 1995. It was the first 32-bit Windows operating system, combining Microsoft's MS-DOS and Windows products. The advantages of Windows 95 on previous products was that it enhanced networking, included preemptive multitasking, which allowed programs to be timeshared together more effectively than its predecessor, Windows 3.1, and it expanded memory capabilities. A number of updated editions of Windows have superseded Windows 95, and thus, Microsoft ended its support for Windows 95 as of 31 December 2002.

Cheers - John

1995.....Gee Rocky, Microsoft have gone backwards cos they are running with Windows 10 now  

Hello rockylizard
Another good read so thanks for that

Re 79 - The ancient city of Pompeii is destroyed as Mt Vesuvius erupts.

I saw a documentary once (can not think of the name).
They have found graffiti, written on the walls, some of it was, err very rude, especially the stuff written on the wall of a house of ill repute

So nothing is new, except that they never had spray cans

Gday...

1828  -             Explorer Allan Cunningham discovers Cunningham's Gap.

Australian explorer Allan Cunningham was born in Wimbledon, England, on 13 July 1791. As a botanist who came to Australia suffering from tuberculosis, he found that Australia's climate helped him regain some of his health, and he was anxious to discover more of the country he came to love. Initially, he explored as part of John Oxley's expeditions to follow the Lachlan and Macquarie Rivers in 1817.

In 1827 Allan Cunningham discovered the rich grazing and pastureland of the Darling Downs. The following year, he sailed to Moreton Bay to find a way to connect his discoveries of the Darling Downs and inland rivers with the Brisbane River and the new settlement there. Cunningham set out from Ipswich in August, and after travelling for several days, he climbed Mount Mitchell. It was from here that he sighted Cunningham's Gap and the pastoral country that lay beyond, on 25 August 1828.

The discovery of Cunningham's Gap meant that graziers and farmers of the Darling Downs no longer needed to send their products overland to Sydney and markets. Instead, they could now travel the less arduous way of coastal shipping.

1853  -             Francis Cadell launches Australia's first paddlesteamer, the 'Lady Augusta', from Goolwa.

In 1828-9, Captain Charles Sturt became the first explorer to follow the course of the Murray River down to its mouth at Lake Alexandrina in South Australia. In doing so, he opened up the possibilities for a new means of transporting goods and passengers through inland NSW to the southern coast.

In 1851, the South Australian Government offered 2,000 pounds reward to the first two steamships to reach the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers. 31-year-old Scottish shipbuilder, Francis Cadell, had the 32m iron paddlesteamer, 'Lady Augusta', built in Sydney with 2x20hp steam engines. He departed Goolwa on 25 August 1853, travelling 2,200km upstream, reaching Swan Hill on September 17. Cadell's competitor, William Randell, built his own 17m paddlesteamer 'Mary Ann' at Gumeracha and Mannum, with a single 8hp engine and a square boiler. Randell reached Swan Hill several hours behind Cadell, after the two had raced neck-and-neck most of the way.

Cadell went on to carry cargo mostly along the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers; the small Murray River town of Cadell in South Australia now bears his name. Randell plied his trade along the Murray-Darling system. The town of Mannum grew up around his boat-yards and docks at his Reedy Creek station.

1909  -             Long Bay Gaol in Sydney is opened.

Long Bay Correctional Centre is located at Malabar, about 12 kilometres south of Sydney, New South Wales. It is Australias only prison to have been planned from the start with separate prisons for men and women. It was also the first prison in New South Wales to focus on rehabilitating inmates, rather than punishing them. The site was chosen in accordance with the tenets of 1770s English prison reformer John Howard, who believed jails should be positioned away from settled areas and preferably on the rise of a hill, where they would be subject to the full force of the wind. The entire plan for the gaol was based on new and different ideals in reform, such as the 'restricted association' advocated by William Frederick Neitenstein, comptroller-general of prisons from 1896 to 1909. 'restricted association' limited contact between different groups of prisoners to avoid long-term prisoners from having a corrupting influence on young or first-time offenders.

Construction on the female reformatory began in 1901, and this was the first section to be opened. The official opening occurred on 25 August 1909. The male penitentiary opened five years later, in 1914. In 1969, the women were transferred to a new facility at Silverwater. The old womens reformatory was initially converted into a training centre, then later used for minimum security inmates.

1944  -             Paris is freed after four years of German occupation.

The liberation of Paris during WWII occurred at the end of the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from 6 June 1944 to 25 August 1944. Twelve Allied nations provided units that participated in the largest sea borne invasion in history. Three million troops crossed the English Channel from England to Normandy in occupied France. The Allied assault on the coast of Normandy was carried out under the code name of Operation Overlord, and its ultimate aim was the liberation of western Europe and the invasion of Germany.

The battle of Normandy culminated in the liberation of Paris, which occurred after General Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered on 25 August 1944 after many days of fighting between the Resistance and the German occupiers. The French 2nd Armoured Division under General Philippe Leclerc was the first Allied force to enter the city, and was hailed with great cheers by the Parisians.

1967  -             A sniper shoots and kills the leader of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell.

George Lincoln Rockwell was born on 9 March 1918, in Bloomington, central Illinois. He formed the American Nazi Party in 1959, originally under the name of the World Union of Free Enterprise and National Socialists. He freely expounded his Hitler-like views, such as that all blacks should be deported to Africa and all Jewish people should be dispossessed and sterilised.

On 25 August 1967, Rockwell was reversing his car at the carpark of the Dominion Hills shopping centre in Arlington, Virginia. Two shots were fired from a nearby rooftop, through the windscreen of Rockwell's car, hitting him in the head and chest and killing him instantly. A few minutes later, 29-year-old John Patler, a 'captain' in the American Nazi party, was arrested. Patler was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

1989  -             Space probe 'Voyager 2' transmits the first ever pictures of Neptune.

The Voyager programme was originally part of NASA's 'Mariner' programme. It involved sending unmanned space probes to Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 2 having the capability to continue on to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 was launched on 20 August 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Twelve years later, on 25 August 1989, the spacecraft sent back the first close-up pictures of Neptune and its satellite planets before it left the solar system. It was the first, and so far the only, probe to visit Uranus and Neptune. As of April 2006, Voyager 2 was at 52.51° declination and 19.775 h Right Ascension (the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system), placing it in the constellation Telescopium. The spacecraft is expected to continue transmitting into the 2030s.

Cheers - John

Im pretty sure that the voyager 2 program has continually run on the Foxtel Hits channel ever since maybe over the years they have put in some new adds but I guess something has to justify the yearly price increaseby the way wasn't it a coincidence that Al discovered a gap that had the same name as him.

Gday...

1768  -             James Cook departs Plymouth on the journey during which he sights the east coast of Australia.

In 1768, Lieutenant James Cook was commissioned with the task of observing the transit of Venus across the sun from the vantage point of Tahiti. The transit occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, and its unlit side can be seen as a small black circle moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur in pairs, eight years apart, approximately once every 120 years. This expedition was originally commissioned by the Royal Society of London as a scientific mission. However, when the British Admiralty became aware of Cooks expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, he was assigned secret orders to find the Great South Land, a Land of great extent that was believed to exist in the Southern hemisphere.

Cook's ship, HM Bark Endeavour, departed England, on 26 August 1768. On board were 71 crew, 12 marines, 11 scientists and their servants, 17 sheep, a small herd of cattle, poultry including four ducks and five chickens, a boar, a sow and her piglets, three cats, Joseph Banks's greyhounds and one goat. Cook reached Tahiti in time for his crew and scientists to set up their instrumentation necessary to observe and report on the transit, which occurred on 3 June 1769.

After observing the transit of Venus, Cook opened his secret orders in which he was instructed to search for Terra Australis Incognita. It was shortly after observing the transit of Venus that Cook came across New Zealand, which had already been discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642. He spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, he set sail west for New Holland, which he was later to name New South Wales. Although Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers, he became the first to sight and map the eastern coastline.

1818  -             Explorers John Oxley and George Evans discover the fertile Liverpool Plains in New South Wales.

John Oxley (1785?-1828) was an English naval officer who, shortly after arriving in Australia in 1802, was made Surveyor-General of the New South Wales colony. George Evans was Deputy Surveyor-General, and went on numerous expeditions, both in his own right and accompanying Oxley.

In 1818, Oxley and Evans set off from Bathurst with 15 men to follow the Macquarie River. The previous year they had encountered many obstacles while attempting to follow the flooded Lachlan River, so this time they were prepared, having taken along boats. However, numerous shallow marshes, thick forests and areas of quicksand forced them to abandon their boats and any hope of making further progress in that direction. Turning east, on 26 August 1818 they climbed a hill and saw before them rich, fertile plains which they named the Liverpool Plains after Lord Liverpool, the British Prime Minister. This countryside is now some of the richest in New South Wales.

1835  -             Governor Bourke declares John Batman's treaty with Aborigines, which enabled the founding of Melbourne, to be invalid.

John Batman was born in Parramatta, Sydney, in 1801. As a native born Australian, Batman was interested in opening up new pastureland and promoting the growth of the colonies. He applied for land in the Westernport Bay area of southern Australia, now Victoria, but was not granted any. In May 1835, he led a syndicate calling themselves the 'Port Phillip Association' to explore Port Phillip Bay, looking for suitable sites for a settlement. He claimed to have signed a 'treaty' with the Aborigines, giving him free access to almost 250,000 hectares of land.

On 26 August 1835, Governor Bourke declared Batman's treaties invalid, that he was not legally renting the land, and issued a proclamation warning off him and his syndicate as trespassers on crown land. Despite the attempts at government intervention, the foundling settlement of Melbourne remained, and flourished.

Batman's place in Australian history is unique for several reasons. He was the only 19th century white to acknowledge that Aborigines owned land. He set out to undertake an annual rental for what was then a reasonable amount of food and goods, rather than buy it from them for a pittance. Further, he is the only native-born Australian to have founded a state capital city.

1867  -             Work resumes on the Burke and Wills memorial project in Ballarat, with the laying of a second foundation stone.

The Burke and Wills expedition was the most expensive and well-equipped exploration venture of the 1800s. Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills left Melbourne in August 1860 on a journey that was intended to bring fame and prestige to Victoria: being the first to cross Australia from south to north and back again. They set out with preparations, supplies and equipment costing almost 5,000 pounds, to the accolades of thousands of Victorians. However, through a series of miscommunications and poor choices by Burke, who had no exploring experience, the expedition ended with the tragic deaths of both Burke and Wills, as well as that of two other men.

Burke and Wills both died in late June 1861. A rescue party led by Alfred Howitt was despatched from Melbourne around this time, and when the party reached Cooper Creek in September, they found that John King was the only surviving member of the small expedition group of four who made the trek to the Gulf of Carpentaria. King had been cared for by local Aborigines, and although in poor health, he was able to return to Melbourne and eventually explain what had happened before a Commission of Enquiry.

Many communities in Victoria sought to commemorate Burke and Wills in the aftermath of the tragedy. In December 1861, the Councils of Eastern and Western Ballarat met to discuss a memorial. An ornate clock tower to the value of £1000 was proposed by architect Canute Andersen. However, by the end of 1862, only £370 had been raised. The initial foundation stone was laid by Sir Henry Barkly at the corner of Sturt and Lydiard Streets. Unfortunately, council debt forced the suspension of further work and the foundation remained incomplete.

In March 1866, the Western Municipal Council sought to complete the project. On 26 August 1867 a second foundation stone was laid. At the same time, a time capsule was removed, refurbished with new items, then reburied. By 4 November, the monument - not a lavish clock tower, but a fountain - was finished.

The time capsule was recovered 150 years later, still containing several gold and silver coins, other memoranda, and a copy of the Tribune newspaper, dated 36 August 1867.

1883  -             The first of four major volcanic explosions occurs on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa.

Krakatoa, or Krakatau, is a volcano near the Indonesian island of Rakata in western Indonesia, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. After being inactive for almost 200 years, rumblings were heard from the Krakatoan volcano early in 1883. On 26 August 1883, Krakatoa erupted with an explosion that was heard over 4000 km away. This would be the equivalent of an explosion in Sydney being heard in Perth. Fine ashes from the eruption were carried by upper level winds as far away as New York City and debris was scattered across the Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar, whilst volcanic dust blown into the upper atmosphere would affect the earth's weather for several years. More destruction was yet to come.

2001  -             A Norwegian cargo vessel responds to a request for help from Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) Australia regarding a boatload of illegal immigrants, sparking the infamous Tampa affair.

In 1992, Australias Labor Government under Prime Minister Paul Keating established a policy of mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals, more commonly known as illegal immigrants. Australia remained committed to accepting genuine refugees but the policy was designed to dissuade those determined to circumvent legal avenues. After John Howard and the Coalition Government gained power in 1996, the issue of illegal immigration gradually gained prominence as the numbers of immigrants seeking asylum illegally by boats increased. It became particularly controversial following the Tampa incident.

The MV Tampa was a Norwegian cargo vessel travelling in international waters of the Sunda Strait off the north Australian coast in 2001. Australias Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) had for some time been aware that a fishing vessel Palapa 1, carrying over 400 Afghans seeking asylum, was in distress. Under international law, immigrants must be taken to the nearest port for medical attention. The port at Christmas Island was not large enough to receive the Tampa, which meant that the next closest port was Merak in Indonesia; however, the Indonesian authorities did not respond. On 26 August 2001, the MV Tampa heeded a request for assistance from the RCC to rescue the passengers aboard the sinking fishing vessel. After rescuing the refugees, many of the refugees became aggressive and agitated, demanding to be taken to Christmas Island. Captain Arne Rinnan of the Tampa attempted to comply but the ship was refused entry into Australian waters. Instead, the government sent members of the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) to render the necessary medical assistance.

The incident ultimately led to the establishment of the Pacific Solution, under which asylum seekers were transported to centres in the Pacific Ocean for offshore processing, rather than on the Australian mainland. Detention centres were built in the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru and Papua New Guineas Manus Island, while Australias territory of Christmas Island and thousands of other coastal islands were excised from Australia's migration zone, meaning that asylum seekers who did not reach the Australian mainland could not automatically apply for refugee status. Australia received international condemnation for its refusal to allow entry of the vessel, which was eventually accepted in New Zealand. However, during the remainder of Prime Minister John Howards time in office, numbers of illegal boat arrivals did drop dramatically.

Cheers - John

Hello rockylizard

2001 - A Norwegian cargo vessel responds to a request for help from Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) Australia regarding a boatload of illegal immigrants, sparking the infamous Tampa affair.

My Dad was a merchant seaman in his younger days
He said that it was the code of the sea, to assist others in distress, and to take them to the nearest port along your original route

It appeared to me at the time that the rescued people demanded to be taken to Christmas Island.
I would have been as happy as Larry, to have been rescued

Gday...

1861  -             Francis Gregory, lesser-known explorer in Western Australia, discovers the De Grey River.

Francis Thomas Gregory was born at Farnsfield, Nottingham, England, on 19 October 1821 and came to Western Australia in 1829. He was the younger brother of Augustus Gregory, who explored areas of northern Australia in the mid 1800s. As a staff surveyor, Francis Gregory explored extensively throughout northwest Australia.

In 1860 Gregory visited London and was put in charge of an expedition to explore the north-west coast, near the site of present-day Dampier. The British government made a grant of £3350 towards the expenses. Gregory departed Fremantle on 23 April 1861. Travelling north, Gregory discovered the Maitland, Fortescue and Hardey Rivers. Towards the end of July, the party moved eastwards, discovering good pastoral country. Gregory continued east, to discover the De Grey River on 27 August 1861, which he named after one of his sponsors, Lord De Grey. It was from the De Grey River that many expeditions later departed to explore further eastwards.

1883  -             Three more volcanic explosions occur on Krakatoa, bringing the death toll to around 36,000.

Krakatoa, or Krakatau, is a volcano near the Indonesian island of Rakata in western Indonesia, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. After a history of violent explosions, it lay dormant for almost 200 years. Rumblings began in May, 1883. Then on August 26, the first major explosion was heard. On 27 August 1883, three further eruptions followed. It was the fourth explosion which caused the most devastation.

The northern two-thirds of the island was obliterated by the explosion. This was followed by the collapse of the unsupported volcanic chambers which formed the huge underwater caldera. The explosion, together with the collapse of the volcano, generated gigantic tsunami waves, some reaching 40m in height above sea level. These caused great destruction, wiping out hundreds of villages and towns along the nearby coasts of Java and Sumatra, and killing over 36,000 people. The waves were so huge and powerful that the steamship Berouw was carried 3km inland and deposited 10m above sea level, killing its 28 crew. New islands were formed from the outpouring of ash, rock and lava. Further eruptions at the volcano since 1927 have built a new island, called Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatoa).

1908  -             Australian cricketing legend, Sir Donald Bradman, is born.

Donald George Bradman was born on 27 August 1908 in Cootamundra, New South Wales, Australia. One of Australia's most popular sporting heroes, he is often regarded as the greatest batsman of all time. The Bradman Museum and Bradman Oval are located in the New South Wales town of Bowral, where Bradman grew up, spending many an hour practising his cricket using a stump and a golf ball. Bradman developed his legendary split-second speed and accuracy by practising hitting into a water tank on a brick stand behind the Bradman home: when hit into the curved brick stand, the ball would rebound at high speed and varying angles. Bradman's batting average of 99.94 from his 52 Tests was nearly double the average of any other player before or since.

Bradman was drafted in grade cricket in Sydney at the age of 18. Within a year he was representing New South Wales and within three he had made his Test debut. In the English summer of 1930 he scored 974 runs over the course of the five Ashes tests, the highest individual total in any test series. Even at almost forty years of age - most players today are retired by their mid-thirties - Bradman returned to play cricket after World War II. On 12 June 1948, he scored 138 in the First Test Cricket at Trent Bridge. In his farewell 1948 tour of England the team he led, dubbed "The Invincibles", went undefeated throughout the tour, a feat unmatched to date.

Bradman was awarded a knighthood in 1949 and a Companion of the Order of Australia, the country's highest civil honour, in 1979. In 1996, he was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame as one of the ten inaugural members. After his retirement, he remained heavily involved in cricket administration, serving as a selector for the national team for nearly 30 years. Sir Donald Bradman died on 25 February 2001.

1970  -             The Southern hairy-nosed wombat is adopted as the official faunal emblem of South Australia.

Australia is known for its fascinating and unique marsupials, among them the wombat. There are three species of wombats: the Common wombat; the Northern hairy-nosed wombat; and the Southern hairy-nosed wombat, sometimes just called the Hairy-nosed or Plains wombat. Closely related to koalas, wombats have a backward-facing pouch.

Wombats are found in the semi-arid open countryside of South Australia, where they dig burrows up to two metres in length to shelter in. They are found on the Eyre Peninsula, in the Gawler Ranges and the Nullarbor Plain, and some colonies are known to exist in isolated places on the Yorke Peninsula and the west bank of the Murray River. Once common, the Southern hairy-nosed wombat is now listed as endangered. Farmers are a threat to wombats because they regard the animals as pests as they dig under fences and cultivated land, and rabbits will also use their burrows. Dogs and vehicles are also a threat to wombats.

The Southern hairy-nosed wombat was adopted as the faunal emblem of South Australia on 27 August 1970.

1979  -             Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is killed in a bomb blast in Ireland.

Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was born on 25 June 1900. He was a British admiral and statesman, serving in the navy during both World Wars. On 27 August 1979, whilst enjoying his usual summer holiday in Mullaghmore, County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland, he was killed by a bomb planted in his boat in Donegal Bay. Also killed were one of his grandsons, Nicholas, 14, and 15 year old Paul Maxwell, a local boat-boy. The IRA claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The next day, 82-year-old Dowager Lady Brabourne, who had been another passenger on the boat, also died. A few hours later, 18 soldiers were also killed in two explosions near Warrenpoint close to the border with the Irish Republic. Thomas McMahon, 31, who had been detained by police on suspicion of driving a stolen car two hours before the bomb went off, was later convicted of the murders. Lord Mountbatten was buried in a state funeral on 5 September 1979.

2003  -             Mars looms large in the skies of Earth as its orbit brings it closer to Earth than it has been in the last 60,000 years.

On 27 August 2003, Mars closed the distance between itself and Earth as it swung through its elliptical orbit and came within close range of Earth. The Red planet, so called because of its rich Iron ore deposits visible even to the naked eye, was only 34 million miles of Earth. Interestingly, the event passed virtually unnoticed by the public, and there were no repeats of the mayhem caused by HG Wells in his famous Mars invasion script, "The War of the Worlds".

However the Harvard Center for Astrophysics (CfA) offered a week of Mars events (Mars Fever Week), including a viewing of Mars at its Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Mass.

Interestingly, it will only be a short 284 years before Mars next swings this close, but Mars does often swing close to Earth, cosmically speaking. The most recent close pass to this one was in 1924.

Cheers - John

Hello rockylizard

Another good read, so thanks for that

Re 1908 - Australian cricketing legend, Sir Donald Bradman, is born.

When I was a boy in the early fifties, Sir Donald Bradman was just as famous in England, as he was in Australia
We would play cricket with a dustbin as the stumps.
The two boys who were going to be captain would toss a coin, to see if they would represent, either Don Bradman or Len Hutton.
They would then pick the rest of us, to be in either the Bradman or Hutton teams

The Bradman museum in Bowral had always been on my bucket list.
Although I enjoyed the experience, I thought that it did not do justice to the man

Gday...

1877  -             Charles Stewart Rolls, one of the founders of the Rolls-Royce Ltd automobile company, is born.

Charles Stewart Rolls was born in Berkeley Square, London, on 27 August 1877. In 1902 he became a motor dealer and on 4 May 1904 met up with engineer Sir Frederick Henry Royce. Royce had started an electrical and mechanical business in 1884 and made his first car, a "Royce", in his Manchester factory in 1904. In 1906, Rolls merged his firm with that of engineer Royce to become a co-founder of the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm.

Rolls was also a pioneer aviator and was the second person in Britain to be licensed to fly by the Royal Aero Club. In 1910, he became the first man to fly across the English Channel and back nonstop. On 12 July 1910, he also became the first British pilot to die in a flying accident when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off near Bournemouth.

1894  -             Paddlesteamer, the "Rodney", is burnt by unionist shearers in protest at it being used as a strike breaker.

During the 19th century, shearers in Australia endured meagre wages and poor working conditions. This led to the formation of the Australian Shearers Union which, by 1890, had tens of thousands of members. January to May 1891 saw the Great Shearers' Strike, marked by violent and destructive clashes between shearers and troopers. The end of the strike in May 1891 was not the end of industrial action.

Falling overseas wool prices in 1894 forced the proposal by the Pastoralists Association to cut the shearing rate by 12.5%. A new strike began. The "Rodney" was a large paddlesteamer, built at Echuca in 1875. The 32 metre vessel, one of the finest, most powerful steamers on the river, was vital to the transport of goods and passengers along the Murray-Darling River system.

On 28 August 1894, the Rodney was transporting non-union labour upstream to the shearing shed at Tolarno Station on the Darling River. It was also hauling a barge carrying goods and supplies for the stations enroute. As it reached a woodpile two miles above Moorara Station, it was boarded by 150 striking shearers who removed the passengers, then proceeded to soak the Rodney in kerosene and set it alight. The paddlesteamer was irreparably damaged after being burnt to the waterline.

Today, the remains of the Rodney can still be seen, lying low down in the riverbed near Polia Station, about 40 kilometres north of the town of Pooncarie, 107 kilometres south of Menindee and around 100 kilometres north of Wentworth. The site remains of historical significance, an indication of the ferocity of the shearers' dispute. In 1994, the destruction of this noble vessel was commemorated in an event which attracted over 700 people from the sparsely-populated surrounds.

1941  -             Party dissension causes Robert Menzies to resign as Prime Minister.

Robert Gordon Menzies was born in the Victorian town of Jeparit on 20 December 1894. In 1928 he entered politics after being elected to Victorias Legislative Council for East Yarra. After six years in Victorian state politics as Attorney-General and Minister for Railways (192834), he was elected to federal parliament as member for Kooyong. On April 18, 1939, he was elected leader of the United Australia Party following the death of Joseph Lyons eleven days earlier, and became Prime Minister on 26 April 1939.

On 28 August 1941, party dissension led Menzies to resign as Prime Minister. However, after forming the Liberal Party of Australia from the remnants of the UAP in 1944, Menzies regrouped to become Prime Minister for the second time on 19 December 1949 when the new Liberal Party, in coalition with the Country Party, beat Labor. He then remained as Prime Minister for another 16 years, a record which has not been broken in Australian politics. He retired in 1966, and died in 1978.

1963  -             Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I have a dream" speech.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He became a Baptist minister, and African American civil rights activist. In his fight for civil rights, he organised and led marches for desegregation, fair hiring, the right of African Americans to vote, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted later into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Prior to this, King delivered a powerful speech outlining his dream for racial harmony. He spoke of his dream for freedom before a 250,000-strong crowd of civil rights protesters at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Perhaps the most famous segment of his speech included the words, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character."

Martin Luther King's life was tragically cut short when he was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on 4 April 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. But while King's life was taken from him prematurely, his legacy lives on in the equal rights now enjoyed by millions of African-Americans in the USA.

1996  -             The final divorce decree is granted to Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

When Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married, it was classed as a fairytale wedding. Charles, 32, and Diana, 20, were married at St Paul's Cathedral in a ceremony attended live by 3500 guests, and viewed by a television audience of 750 million. Difficulties within the royal marriage were reported within a few years, in 1985. Fifteen years after the "fairytale wedding", the marriage ended in divorce. Diana agreed to relinquish the title of "her royal highness," to be known in the future as Diana, Princess of Wales.

Cheers - John

Gday...

28  -     John the Baptist is beheaded in the first century.

John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus, and grew up to live the life of a hermit in the desert of Judea, wearing only animal skins, eating wild honey and locusts. As the prophet who prepared the way for the coming of Jesus, John called on the people to repent. In accordance with his name, he baptised people in the Jordan River, but told of One who was coming who would baptise, not with water but with the Holy Spirit.

Around AD 30, he was imprisoned by the king Herod Antipas, whom he had reproved for having sexual relations with Herodias, the wife of Herod's brother Philip. Matthew 14:3-12 relates the story of how on Herod's birthday, Salome, the daughter of Herodias, danced for Herod. She pleased Herod so much that he promised her whatever she asked for. At her mother's instigation she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Thus, John the Baptist was beheaded. According to tradition, this took place on or around 29 August AD 30.

70  -     Romans begin their destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple.

The original city of Jerusalem was in the southeastern part of present day Jerusalem, situated on a ridge with two mounds. The Temple was built on the northern mound called Ophel, close to the Gihon Spring ( see 2 Chronicles 33:14). The first Temple had already been destroyed hundreds of years earlier when the forces of Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem. They carried away to Babylon the best of the people of Judah, plundered treasures of gold, silver and bronze, including all the articles of the temple, slaughtered the people, burned the Temple and palaces and broke down the walls.

The second Temple was destroyed at the culmination of the Jewish-Roman wars. The emperor Titus, in AD 70, held some respect for holy sites, and did not want to destroy the Temple. However, as the Jews fortified themselves within the Temple walls, the Roman soldiers defied Titus's orders and took the Temple area until all that was left was the Holy of Holies, with the cloisters surrounding it. Once Roman soldiers set fire to these outer rooms, on 29 August AD 70, there was no hope of saving the Temple. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple, ensuring that not one stone stood upon another, and the Temple mount was completely levelled.

1817  -             Explorers Oxley and Evans return to Bathurst after unsuccessfully following the Lachlan River.

John Oxley (1785?-1828) was an English naval officer who, shortly after arriving in Australia in 1802, was made Surveyor-General of the New South Wales colony. George Evans was Deputy Surveyor-General, and went on numerous expeditions, both in his own right and accompanying Oxley.

George Evans had discovered the Lachlan River in 1815, so in 1817, Oxley set out to determine its course with Evans as his second-in-command, in the first large-scale exploring expedition in Australian history. Along the way, the progress of Oxley's party was frequently stopped by marshes as it was a flood year. He was unable to continue with either horses or boats, as the flooding hid snags and dangerous obstacles lurking just below the surface. Oxley departed from what he called "the immense marshes of this desolate and barren country" and headed south-west in search of further rivers. Oxley's party stopped just fifty kilometres short of the Murrumbidgee River, ironically because of lack of water. After describing the countryside in numerous negative terms, Oxley abandoned his southward trek and returned to the upper reaches of the Lachlan where the river channel was again lost amongst floods and swampland. This led Oxley to the conclusion that the interior of NSW was largely marshland and unsuitable for settlement. Early in July, Oxley declared what is now valuable pastureland around the Lachlan River to be "forever uninhabitable, and useless for the purposes of civilised man".

On 29 August 1817, Oxley and Evans arrived back in Bathurst from this expedition. Despite his disappointment at the results of following the Lachlan River, Oxley was able to report on fertile country he had discovered around an area he called Wellington Valley, and to which he returned for further exploration the following year.

1866  -             The first cog railway in the world is demonstrated at Mount Washington in northeast USA.

The cog railway deploys a system of toothed cog gears and rack rails in order to climb steep gradients. The first cog railway was developed by Sylvester Marsh of New Hampshire, USA, amid scorn and derision for his ideas. He persisted and, using oxen to haul the materials he needed for 50km to the base of Mount Washington in the northeast of the US, he gradually built his innovative railway.

"Peppersass" was the first mountain climbing cog railway engine in the world. Fitted with special tilted boilers, it was used to build the railway and later carry passengers. The first demonstration of the viability of the cog railway was carried out by Marsh on 29 August 1866. "Peppersass" successfully pushed a car loaded with passengers up the short distance and back down again. The demonstration was considered a success, and the necessary funds were allocated to build the Mount Washington Cog Railway. It was completed three years later on 3 July 1869. Cog railways have since been implemented all over the world in Alpine areas - even within Australia.

1907  -             The Quebec Bridge collapses, killing 75.

The Quebec Bridge, which crosses the lower Saint Lawrence River, Canada, is the largest cantilever bridge in the world. Each cantilever spans 177m, and the total length of the bridge is 987m.

Construction on the bridge began in 1903, but miscalculations in planning meant that the actual weight of the bridge exceeded its carrying capacity. As the bridge neared completion in 1907, engineers noticed the structural problems but did not recognise the severity of the situation. The consulting engineer ordered all work to be halted on August 27, but work continued anyway. On 29 August 1907, the south arm and part of the central section of the bridge collapsed into the river in a matter of seconds. Of the 86 workers on the bridge at the time, 75 were killed.

A second collapse during construction in 1916 killed another 11 people. The bridge was finally completed in 1919.

1941  -             Arthur Fadden, the second of five men who served as Australian Prime Minister during World War II, is sworn into office.

At the time that World War II began, Australia's Prime Minister was Robert Menzies. It was Menzies who made the announcement in September 1939 that Australia was at war with Germany. However, party dissension led Menzies to resign as Prime Minister in August 1941.

Menzies' successor was Arthur Fadden. Fadden was born in Ingham, Queensland in 1895, and first entered politics as an alderman for Townsville in the State Parliament. After losing Townsville in 1935, and declaring his exit from politics permanently, he then won the Federal seat of Darling Downs in 1936. Fadden was one of five Country Party members included when Menzies reshuffled his Cabinet to form a coalition government with the Country Party in March 1939. He was given the portfolios of Air and Civil Aviation when three Country Party ministers were killed in an aeroplane crash in August 1940. He rose to the position of Deputy Leader of the Country Party and, following a leadership crisis within the party, was officially elected leader of the Country Party in March 1941. During this time, he also served as Deputy Prime Minister while Menzies was overseas for four months.

Soon after Menzies' return from overseas, party dissension caused him to resign. A joint United Australia Party - Country Party meeting resulted in Arthur Fadden being elected Prime Minister, and he was sworn in to office on 29 August 1941. However, in the federal election five weeks later, the coalition government lost majority support in the House of Representatives, and John Curtin became Prime Minister.

1958  -             Singer-songwriter Michael Jackson is born.

Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana on 29 August 1958, to a large family. Jacksons father Joseph saw the potential of his children, creating a musical group which young Michael joined when he was just five years old. Soon, he became the lead vocalist in the group, which later became known as the Jackson 5. After a slow start with Steeltown Records, in 1968 Motown founder Berry Gordy signed them to his label.

When he was thirteen, Michael Jackson launched his solo career, whilst continuing his association with the Jackson 5. His solo career soared, and during the next few decades, he had seventeen Number One singles in the United States, four of which were as a member of the Jackson 5, and sold more than 780,000,000 worldwide. He won 13 Grammy Awards, as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His 26 American Music Awards gave him recognition as Artist of the Century. Known as the King of Pop, Michael Jackson was also recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful entertainer of all time. He died in Los Angeles, California, on 25 June 2009, aged 50.

Cheers - John

Hello rockylizard

Re 1958 - Singer-songwriter Michael Jackson is born

No disrespect intended
Another person who had surrounded himself with "Yes Men," and then thinking that his abnormal actions, were the norm, as no one told him to stop doing, what he was doing

Tony Bev wrote:

---

Hello rockylizard

Re 1958 - Singer-songwriter Michael Jackson is born

No disrespect intended
Another person who had surrounded himself with "Yes Men," and then thinking that his abnormal actions, were the norm, as no one told him to stop doing, what he was doing

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Gday...

Understand your comment Tony ... and although I am not a Michael fan - I think that, while the very latter part of his life may fall within your description, Michael's "life" was 'influenced', 'impacted', 'determined', 'created' ('ruined'?) by those with 'blood ties' rather than "yes men"

Cheers - John

Gday...

30  -     Cleopatra, famous Queen in ancient Egypt, dies after allowing herself to be bitten by a poisonous snake.

Cleopatra, the famous Queen in ancient Egypt, was born in 69 BC in Alexandria. Although she was the third daughter in line to her father Ptolemy XII, she came to the throne after her two elder sisters died, and after the death of her father. She was considered to be an intelligent, charismatic and shrewd politician.

Cleopatra met Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony) in 42 BC and began a love affair with him which eventually led to her own death. When Antony's wife Fulvia died in 40 BC, he married the leader Octavian's sister Octavia, but chose to settle in Alexandria as the acknowledged lover of Cleopatra. In 32 BC, Octavian declared war on Antony and Cleopatra. The senate deprived Antony of his powers, and the Romans supported Octavian. When Octavian's forces defeated Antony and Cleopatra in the naval battle at Actium, they fled to Egypt. Fearing they would be found, Marc Antony committed suicide. Cleopatra was jailed, and though well treated, wished to commit suicide by poisoning herself with snakebite, as this was said to secure the victim immortality. She arranged for an asp, a small, poisonous cobra, to be hidden in her meal: she and her two maids were bitten, and subsequently died, on 30 August 30 BC.

1853  -             The last ship to carry convicts directly from Ireland to Australia arrives in Fremantle.

Transportation of convicts to Australia began when the first ship departed Portsmouth, England, in May 1787, and ended on 9 January 1868, when the last convict ship left Britain in 1867 and arrived in Australia on 10 January 1868. This ship, the "Hougoumont", brought its final cargo of 269 convicts to Western Australia, as New South Wales had abolished transportation of convicts in 1840. During its transportation era, Australia received 160,000 convicts.

Ireland ceased transportation of convicts to Australia earlier than England. The final convict-carrying ship direct from Ireland arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia, on 30 August 1853. The ship that made the final voyage of transportation was the 'Phoebe Dunbar'. It left Kingstown, near Dublin, Ireland, on 2 June 1853, and carried 93 passengers and 295 convicts, although eight men died at sea, one died in the harbour and one in the Convict Establishment Hospital. The passengers were made up entirely of pensioner guards and their families.

1906  -             The first drivers licence in Australia is issued in South Australia.

The first petrol-driven car in Australia is believed to have been developed by Harry A Tarrant in 1897. Tarrant went on take over the Ford dealer and assembler franchise in Australia in 1909. The automobile industry developed quickly in Australia, as it did in many other countries, with cars edging out horses and carriages on the roads.

With the increased number of automobiles came the need for more rules and controls. In 1888, Karl Benz became the first man, worldwide, to obtain written permission to drive his automobile on public roads after citizens in Mannheim complained about the noise and smell from his vehicle. In 1903, Prussia became the first European state to make a drivers licence compulsory, and it was soon followed by other European nations.

South Australia was the first Australian state to pass a Motor traffic Regulation Act, doing so in 1904. This was followed by the first drivers licence in Australia, issued on 30 August 1906.  [ed: but did they give him a caravan towing test including the criticality of a WDH??.]

The proud owner was William Hargreaves, who held the position of government analyst and chief inspector of explosives in South Australia.

Trained as a chemist, Hargreaves had an interest in vehicles and fuel sources, and examined the feasibility of alternative fuel sources during World War I and II, even powering his own automobile on a mixture of molasses and petrol as World War I came to a close.

2001  -             Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Miloevi is charged with genocide.

Slobodan Miloevi, born 20 August 1941, was the President of Serbia and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during a time of growing nationalism. Communist governments throughout eastern Europe had collapsed in the early 1990s, and many smaller countries which had been incorporated into Yugoslavia were demanding their autonomy. Whilst Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Slovenia embraced their independence, Serbia and Montenegro chose to stay on in the federation.

As a fiercely nationalistic Serb, Miloevi initiated aggressive attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo, during which over half of the province's Albanian population fled and several thousand people died. A NATO campaign of air strikes (Operation Allied Force) eventually forced Miloevi to back down.

In June 2001, Miloevi was handed over to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal and taken to The Hague to be tried for war crimes allegedly committed during his rule. On 30 August 2001, Miloevi was told he would be charged with genocide, the most serious of all war crimes. Later, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. His trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Miloevi defending himself while refusing to recognise the legality of the court's jurisdiction.

Miloevi was found dead in his cell on 11 March 2006 in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre in The Hague.

Cheers - John

Hello rockylizard

I hear what you say about Michael, I also was not a fan of his.
It was just a pity that he did not realise that he was going along the path of self destruction

Re 1906 - The first drivers licence in Australia is issued in South Australia

I have no idea what happened in Australia, but in England during WW2 and for a few years afterwards.
The drivers licence test was suspended

When it was reintroduced people like my father who owned a motor vehicle, went to their local police station, showed proof of ownership, and walked out with a drivers licence.

Technically he had never had a driver test, but he also never had an accident
We joked that when other motorist saw him coming, they got out of his way

Gday...

12  -     Gaius Caesar (Caligula), third Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, is born.

Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was born in Antium on 31 August AD 12. As the third Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he ruled from AD 37 to 41. Gaius Caesar gained his nickname of Caligula when, as a young child, he became the mascot of his father's army. His father, Agrippina, would put a miniature soldier costume on young Gaius, and he was soon given his nickname of "Caligula", meaning "Little Boots" in Latin, after the small boots he wore as part of his costume.

Caligula gained favour with the Emperor Tiberius so he was a natural successor upon the latter's death in AD 37. Tiberius had made his grandson, Tiberius Gemellus, joint heir, but the Roman Senate annulled Tiberius' will and proclaimed Caligula emperor. Gemellus was very young and therefore no obstacle to Caligula's ambitions, and Caligula had him killed soon after becoming Emperor.

Caligula was a shrewd and popular leader early in his reign, but sickness (possibly encephalitis) changed the direction of his reign to one of insanity and delusional actions. Finally, in AD 41, he was assassinated by several members of his own Praetorian Guard.

1933  -             The township of Stuart in the Northern Territory is renamed Alice Springs.

The city of Alice Springs is located 1524 km from Darwin and 293 km north of the South Australian border. It is the second largest city in the Northern Territory, with a population of over 25 000.

In 1862, explorer John McDougall Stuart's fifth expedition succeeded in finding a route through the Centre of Australia to the north coast and back, navigating and mapping the country for white settlement. The construction of the Overland Telegraph Line from Adelaide to Darwin was completed in 1872, making it viable for pastoralists to take up leases in the Red Centre. The springs after which the town was named were discovered on 11 March 1871 by the team building the Overland Telegraph Line. They lie to the north-east of the town and were named after the wife of Charles Todd, the man instrumental in securing the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line for South Australia. Surveyors William Whitfield Mills and John Ross both claim credit for the discovery of the springs.

Alice Springs was the name given to the telegraph repeater station which operated from 1872 to 1932. The actual town, originally surveyed in 1888, was 3km south of the telegraph station. Until the early 1930s, the official name of the town was Stuart. However, this created confusion for administrators in Adelaide, so on 31 August 1933 the township of Stuart was officially gazetted Alice Springs.

1939  -             Germany prepares to invade Poland.

As tensions escalated in the lead-up to WWII, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler refused to bow to pressure from Britain and France. At midday on 31 August, 1939, Hitler signed an order to attack Poland, and German forces move to the frontier. They staged an attack by Poland, dressing Nazi S.S. troops in Polish uniforms and leaving behind dead German prisoners in Polish uniforms as evidence of the 'Polish attack'. Using this as propaganda served to pave the way for Germany to invade Poland the next day. Within a few days, Britain declared war on Germany.      

1997  -             Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed in a car crash in Paris.

On 31 August 1997, Britain lost a much-loved public figure when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car crash in Paris. Diana Spencer came from an aristocratic family with royal Stuart ancestry. Born on 1 July 1961, she was a descendant of King Charles II of England through two of his illegitimate sons: Henry Fitzroy, 1st Duke of Grafton, son by Barbara Villiers, 1st Duchess of Cleveland and Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond and Lennox, son by Louise de Kérouaille, 1st Duchess of Portsmouth. Diana married heir to the throne, Prince Charles, on 29 July 1981, and produced two sons, William and Harry.

Diana was actively involved in a variety of charity work. Among her most notable achievements were her assistance in the campaign against landmines, a cause which won the Nobel Prize in 1997 in tribute, and helping to decrease discrimination against victims of AIDS.

Diana divorced Prince Charles, on 28 August 1996. She and her male companion, Dodi Al Fayed, son of Harrods owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, had just departed the Ritz Hotel in Paris. It appeared that Diana's car was being pursued at high speed by photographers on motorbikes when it hit a pillar and smashed into a wall in a tunnel under the Place de l'Alma in the centre of the city.

While Dodi Al Fayed and the chauffeur were killed immediately, the princess and her bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, were cut from the wreckage and taken to hospital. The Princess died at 0300 BST, after surgeons worked for several hours to try to save her life. Mr Rees-Jones, the only one wearing his seatbelt, was the sole survivor. Blood tests on the driver, Henri Paul, showed that he had a large amount of drugs and alcohol in his system at the time of the crash.

Diana's funeral was held on 6 September 1997. She was buried with a set of rosary beads, a gift she received from Mother Teresa, who died the week after Diana. Her grave is on an island in the grounds of Althorp Park, her family home.

Cheers - John

Gday...

1653  -             This is the official date of the birth of German Baroque composer and organist Johann Pachelbel.

Whilst the exact date of Johann Pachelbel's birth in Nuremberg, Germany, is not known, he was baptised on 1 September 1653, and thus this date is also regarded as his official birthday. He was a Baroque composer, organist and teacher who composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque.

Pachelbel is perhaps best known for his Canon in D. His style had some influence on the musical compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach whose older brother, Johann Christoph, was tutored by Pachelbel. As well as the well-known Canon and church hymn settings and variations, Pachelbel wrote numerous cantatas for the Lutheran church and chamber sonatas for various instruments, especially the violin. Pachelbel died on 3 March 1706.

1846  -             A camel shoots explorer John Horrocks.

John Ainsworth Horrocks, born in Lancashire in 1818, was the first to employ camels as an aid to exploration. Nine camels were imported from the Canary islands in 1840, but by 1846, only one still survived. This one, a bad-tempered beast by the name of Harry, accompanied Horrocks on an expedition north-west of Horrocks' station at Penwortham near Clare, SA. On 1 September 1846, Horrocks stopped near Lake Dutton to shoot a bird to add to his collection of specimens. In the letter Horrocks wrote whilst he awaited help, he recorded the following events:

"My gun being loaded with slugs in one barrel and ball in the other, I stopped the camel to get at the shot belt, which I could not get without his lying down."

"Whilst Mr. Gill was unfastening it, I was screwing the ramrod into the wad over the slugs, standing close alongside of the camel. At this moment the camel gave a lurch to one side, and caught his pack in the **** of my gun, which discharged the barrel I was unloading, the contents of which first took off the middle fingers of my right hand between the second and third joints, and entered my left cheek by my lower jaw, knocking out a row of teeth from my upper jaw."

One of Horrocks' men walked 113 km through the night to obtain help, and Horrocks was then conveyed home. A doctor was unable to do anything for his injuries, which had become infected, and Horrocks died three weeks later, on September 23. Harry the camel was taken out and shot.

1859  -             The first recorded solar flare is observed.

Solar flares are violent explosion in the Sun's atmosphere with energy equivalent to millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs. They occur when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released.

The first solar flare recorded in astronomical history occurred on 1 September 1859. It was observed by Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson, who were independently observing sunspots at the time. They each noticed an intensely bright, white light which lasted for about 5 minutes. The scientists also noticed a magnetic disturbance recorded at the same time as the white flare. This was also the first time a solar flare was noted to have directly influenced the environment around the Earth.

1951  -             The ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States is signed.

ANZUS stands for the "Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty". The treaty signalled a military alliance between the three nations, with Australia and the United States indicating their cooperation on defence matters in the Pacific region. It was signed on 1 September 1951, and went into effect on 29 April 1952.

The Treaty developed as a result of the cooperation between Australia, New Zealand and the US in the Pacific arena during World War II. By 1951, the US wished to allow for Japan's rearmament as a result of the Korean War breaking out, including a provision that Japan grant the United States the territorial means for it to establish a military presence in the Far East. However, Australia remained wary of the country which had threatened Pacific security during the war. Australia and New Zealand only agreed to Japan's rearmament when Australia and New Zealand's proposal for a three-way security treaty was accepted by the United States. The treaty specifically stated the intention of the three signatories to work to strengthen and maintain peace in the Pacific Area, including Japan. Most recently, the treaty was invoked in Australia following the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001.

Due to tension between New Zealand and the US over nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered ships of the US Navy visiting New Zealand ports in 1984, New Zealand no longer participates to any extent in ANZUS. However, the treaty is still current between New Zealand and Australia, and the US and Australia.

1985  -             American undersea explorer, Dr Robert Ballard, locates the wreck of the Titanic.

At the time of its launch, the RMS Titanic, also known as the SS Titanic, was the largest passenger steamship in the world. On its maiden voyage, the "unsinkable" Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40pm, ship's time, on Sunday evening, 14 April 1912, with a loss of 1,517 lives. For years, divers sought to locate its wreckage, but it was 73 years before success in this venture was achieved by Dr Robert Ballard.

Robert Duane Ballard, born on 30 June 1942, was educated as a marine geologist and geophysicist. He joined the Navy in 1967, working on undersea projects which included undersea mapping. Using sonar, Ballard located the Titanic about 3,600 metres deep in the North Atlantic Ocean on 1 September 1985. A year later he was able to return and view the wreck up close in a submersible vehicle, using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) called JASON. Ballard's skill has also enabled him to find wrecks such as that of the German battleship Bismarck, the USS Yorktown (CV-5), and PT-109, the boat once commanded by John F. Kennedy.

1988  -             The Golden Wattle is officially proclaimed as the floral emblem of Australia.

Prior to the federation of Australia's states, interest in the concept of a national symbol began to increase. The Golden Wattle gained favour with Australians after 1908, when noted ornithologist Archibald James Campbell proposed that the wattle become the national flower. Campbell was also instrumental in advocating a National Wattle Day, an idea that was taken up by several states in subsequent years.

The wattle is by no means limited to Australia, and grows prolifically on several other continents. In 1911, the South Australian "Evening Post" reported that South Africa intended to use the wattle in its official emblems, and suggested the alternative Waratah be used as the national flower as its strength, beauty and colour represented health, firmness, endurance and independence. The wattle was incorporated into the Australian coat of arms in 1912. However, both the waratah and the wattle were used to decorate the golden trowels used by Governor General Lord Denman, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher and the Minister for Home Affairs, King O'Malley, for the laying of the foundation stones for Canberra in March 1913.

The Golden wattle continued to gain prominence as the national symbol through the years, but was not officially proclaimed Australia's national floral emblem. This only occurred on 1 September 1988, at a ceremony held at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, to mark Australia's bicentenary. The Minister for Home Affairs, Robert Ray, formally announced the adoption of the Golden wattle as Australia's national flower, and Mrs Hazel Hawke, wife of Prime Minister Robert Hawke, planted a Golden Wattle. Four years later, 1 September was formally declared 'National Wattle Day'.

1992  -             Today is Australia's "National Wattle Day".

Wattle trees are of the genus Acacia, in the Mimosa family, and common throughout Australia, where there are over 600 different species. Varying in size, they may grow as low shrubs, or tall trees. Remarkably adaptable, they grow from rainforest areas to coastal heaths and remote, parched desert country. Wattle seeds grow in pods which need heat to release them and to stimulate germination. The shape of the pods vary, to coiled, looped and twisted. The seeds have a very hard outer covering.

The golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha) was officially gazetted as Australia's national floral emblem in 1988. Found only in the southern states, this species also features on the Australian coat of arms. Wattle Day is a relatively new and, in many areas unknown, celebration. Although first proposed by ornithologist Archibald Campbell in 1908, the concept was not taken up until after Australia's bicentenary. In 1992, 1 September every year was declared National Wattle Day throughout Australia. The purpose of National Wattle Day is to essentially promote all things Australian.

There remains some controversy over whether Wattle Day should be on 1 September or earlier, on 1 August. In 1916, New South Wales changed its day of celebration to 1 August as the popular Cootamundra wattle flowered earlier, and the Red Cross wished to use it to aid their fund raising for the war effort. Since then, some Australians have suggested the earlier date would be preferable, as more popular wattle varieties flower in July-August. As it stands, however, National Wattle Day remains gazetted for 1 September.

Cheers - John

Gday...

459  -   St Simeon Stylites, first and most famous of the "pillar-sitting hermits", dies.

St Simeon Stylites the Elder was a monk who gained renown for spending 36 years sitting atop a 20 metre pillar. He was an ascetic who, from the time he entered the monastery at age 16, devoted himself to austere living, denying himself any earthly pleasures.

St Simeon was unable to function as one of a community of monks, and was forced to leave the monastery. After this, he isolated himself in a hut at Tell-Neschin. Here, he completed the first of over two dozen seasons of Lent whereby he did not eat or drink for the entire six weeks. He was also given to standing for as long as he was able to, hour after hour. After three years he elected to leave the hut, he went out into the desert where he found a high, rocky platform. After awhile he became something of a novelty for other pilgrims who sought him out for his wisdom and prayers. Wishing to isolate himself further from human contact, Simeon had a 3 metre high pillar built topped by a metre-wide platform, with only a railing for security. Over the ensuing years, this was replaced by successively higher pillars until his final pillar reached some 20 metres in height. All these pillars were left out in the elements, with no recorded shelter of any description.

Here, Simeon spent the remainder of his life, continuing his seclusion and fasting every Lent. He did not isolate himself completely, allowing individuals to seek his counsel via a means of a high ladder placed against the pillar. Occasionally he preached to the crowds that gathered, and he wrote numerous letters, the texts of which have survived through the years.

St Simeon Stylites died on 2 September 459 A.D. In his honour, a church was built consisting of four basilicas built out from an octagonal court, with Simeon's column in the the middle. The remains of this structure still stand about 60 km from Aleppo, Syria, and are known as Qal 'at Sim 'ân, or the mansion of Simeon. Following his death, a tradition of pillar-hermits arose, continuing for many generations.           

1666  -             The Great Fire of London begins.

The Great Fire of London was one of the biggest calamities in the history of London. It destroyed 13,200 houses and 89 churches, rendered 100,000 people homeless, and destroyed dozens of significant buildings including halls, prisons, bridges and government buildings. It began on 2 September 1666 in Pudding Lane at the house of Thomas Farynor, a baker to King Charles II; it is surmised that Farynor forgot to completely extinguish his oven the previous night. Smouldering embers from the oven ignited some nearby firewood, which in turn set alight the house. Strong winds fanned the flames to nearby buildings, many of which were of highly combustible materials such as timber, pitch and straw. The close proximity of so many buildings to one another also fed the fire.

By the time the fire was spent, 5 days later, an area of 2.5km by 0.8km lay in ashes; 150 hectares inside the city walls and 25 hectares outside. Six people were recorded as killed, but the true death toll is not known. The Great Fire did have one redeeming feature: it cleansed the city of the Great Plague which had claimed over 17,000 lives.

1840  -             Eyre names Mt Hopeless in South Australia in despair at the seemingly never-ending salt lakes.

Edward John Eyre was born on 5 August 1815, in Hornsea, Yorkshire. After coming to Australia, he gained valuable bush skills whilst droving cattle overland through Victoria. Eager to explore further, Eyre set his sights on finding a route through the Australian continent from south to north.

Eyre left Adelaide in June 1840 to explore north towards the centre of Australia. He encountered salt lake after salt lake: each time he attempted to go around a salt lake, he found his way barred by yet another. This led to Eyre's theory that Adelaide was surrounded by a vast horseshoe-shaped salt lake. By sheer bad luck, Eyre was unable to locate any of the breaks between the numerous salt-lakes which encircled the area, but by no means prevented access through to Australia's interior. It was another 18 years before other explorers disproved his theory.

On 2 September 1840, Eyre climbed and named a peak which gave him a vista of shimmering salt lakes in every direction. His feelings were certainly reflected in the naming of "Mt Hopeless".

1922  -             Henry Lawson, one of Australia's best known writers, dies.

Henry Lawson was born on 17 June 1867, on the Grenfell goldfields in New South Wales. He became one of Australia's best-known fiction writers of the colonial period. Most of his works dwelt on the Australian bush, accurately depicting the difficult conditions of life on dry, dusty outback stations and in bush towns. Unlike his contemporary, A.B. "Banjo" Paterson, he did not romanticise life in the bush, and any humour he displayed tended to be dry and sardonic, rather than like Paterson's larrikin wit.

Lawson gained a loyal following when the Bulletin started to publish his stories and poems in 1888. However, he never really recovered from his childhood hardships and rejection from his peers, and in his later years became an alcoholic. He died at home alone on 2 September 1922. He was given a state funeral which was attended by the Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes, and his brother-in-law, Jack Lang, the Premier of New South Wales. Thousands of citizens who had learned to relate to his writing also paid their respects at his funeral.

1945  -             Japan signs an unconditional surrender, officially ending WWII.

Japan, a major antagonist in WWII, had suffered catastrophic losses following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and conventional attacks upon other major cities, such as the firebombing of Tokyo. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria debilitated the only significant forces the Japanese still had left. The USA had captured the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, bringing the Japanese homeland within range of naval and air attack. Hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, and millions more were casualties or refugees of war.

Japan surrendered on 14 August 1945, on the day known as Victory in the Pacific Day in Australia, and Victory over Japan Day elsewhere. The official surrender papers were signed on 2 September 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, in the presence of 50 Allied generals and other officials.

1984  -             Seven people are killed, including an innocent 14-year-old girl, in rival biker gang wars in Sydney, Australia.

The shootings in Sydney on Father's Day, 2 September 1984, became known as the "Milperra Massacre". Two rival biker gangs, the Bandidos and the Comancheros, had a showdown in the car park of the Viking Tavern in Milperra, a western suburb of Sydney. The instigator of the violence was William "Jock" Ross, the "supreme commander" of the Comancheros, who made the choice to go to Milperra, in force and armed with guns, knives and baseball bats. In the ensuing gun battle, six bikers and a fourteen-year old girl were killed. The girl was selling raffle tickets outside the pub when the violence started.

Following the court case, in which forty-three people were charged with seven counts of murder, William Ross received a life sentence. Other members of the Comancheros gang received life sentences and 16 Bandidos served 14 years for manslaughter.

Cheers - John

Gday...

1855  -             All property of the Sydney Railway Company is transferred to the New South Wales government.

The Sydney Railway Company, established for the purpose of constructing the first railway line, was incorporated on 10 October 1849. Work began on the first railway line from Sydney to Parramatta, a distance of 22km, early in July 1850.

Almost from the very beginning, the Sydney Railway Company experienced numerous obstacles and setbacks. Land required to complete the Sydney-Parramatta line became too expensive to purchase, and the company was already experiencing financial difficulties. Furthermore, the goldrush resulted in a shortage of labour as men left their jobs in droves in the hope of striking it rich. There was a shortage of timber and iron, too, as business owners took their goods to the goldfields. There, they established very profitable trading outposts where men were willing to pay more, being unwilling to travel back to the cities for supplies.

Due to the many difficulties, the construction of the Sydney to Parramatta railway line was put on hold until taken over by the New South Wales colonial government. All property owned by the Sydney Railway Company was handed over to the New South Wales government on 3 September 1855. This allowed for further development of the Sydney suburban rail network.

1894  -             The Cambus Wallace runs aground off Stradbroke Island in southern Queensland in the first of two events which cause the island to be broken into North and South.

North Stradbroke and South Stradbroke are two islands located in Moreton Bay, off southeast Queensland. In the late 1800s, the two islands were still one, joined by a narrow neck of sand known as Jumpinpin, approximately 100m wide. That changed due to a series of events between 1894 and 1896.

The Cambus Wallace was a 75 m iron hulled steamer weighing around 1 650 tonnes, carrying a load of whiskey and dynamite. It ran aground off Jumpinpin in the early morning of 3 September 1894. The ship began to break apart, six crew members were drowned, and much of the cargo was washed up on the sand. During the cleanup afterwards, the explosives were piled in a hollow between the sand dunes and detonated, blowing several craters in the sand and destabilising the dune structure in an explosion that was heard as far away as Cleveland. Over the next two years, natural forces continued to erode the seaward side of the bar. During Autumn 1896, the gale-force winds of a late-season cyclone caused the final breakthrough, creating a passage through Stradbroke Island. By 1898, the passage had increased from about 6 metres to 1500 m in width, although the depositing of sand over time has reduced that.

The breakthrough changed the nature of the southern Moreton Bay area permanently. Tidal inundation increased erosion on farmland around the mouth of the Logan River, and farmers were forced to dig canals to prevent land loss, while the oyster industry was heavily affected. Jumpinpin Channel is now a well-used fishing and boating channel, though still precarious to negotiate.

1901  -             The Australian flag is flown for the first time.

Following the proclamation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901, the Commonwealth government held a design competition for a new national flag. There were 32,000 entries in the competition, and most featured the Union Jack, the Southern Cross, or native animals.

Five almost identical entries were selected to share the 200 pound prize. The entries belonged to Ivor Evans, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy from Melbourne; Leslie John Hawkins, a teenager apprenticed to an optician from Sydney; Egbert John Nuttall, an architect from Melbourne; Annie Dorrington, an artist from Perth; and William Stevens, a ships officer from Auckland, New Zealand. On 3 September 1901, the new Australian flag flew for the first time from the top of the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. The flag was simplified, and approved by King Edward VII in 1902.

1939  -             Australian Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies, announces that Australia is at war with Germany.

Robert Gordon Menzies entered politics in 1928 after being elected to Victorias Legislative Council for East Yarra. After six years in Victorian state politics as Attorney-General and Minister for Railways (192834), he was elected to federal parliament as member for Kooyong. In 1938, Menzies unsuccessfully challenged Lyons for the leadership of the United Australia Party. After he was defeated, Menzies resigned as a minister and as Deputy leader of the UAP. In April 1939, however, he was elected leader of the party following the death of Joseph Lyons, and became Prime Minister on 26 April 1939, entering into a tumultuous situation on the world stage.

Following increased aggression by Hitler's forces and the German invasion of Poland, Great Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. Without consulting Cabinet, not all of whom shared his views, Menzies immediately announced Australia's support of Britain. The Australian government sent Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aircrews and a number of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) ships to fight for Britain, as well as raising a volunteer force, the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF). In the speech he made on 3 September 1939 Robert Gordon Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, announced:

"Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement."

1976  -             U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 lands on Mars to take the first close-up photographs of the planet's surface.

Each Viking mission to Mars consisted of an orbiter and a lander. Viking 1 was the first to arrive on the surface of Mars, on 20 July 1976, making history as the first time a robotic spacecraft touched down on the planet. Viking 2 was launched on 9 September 1975 and entered the orbit of Mars on 7 August 1976. The Viking 2 Lander touched down at Utopia Planitia a month later, on 3 September 1976.

The Viking landers contained instruments for examining the physical and magnetic properties of the soil and for analysing the atmosphere and weather patterns of Mars. They transmitted images of the surface, took surface samples and analysed them for composition and signs of life, and deployed seismometers. The Viking 2 Lander operated on the surface for 1,281 Mars days and ended communications on 11 April 1980 when its batteries failed.

2004  -             A siege in a Russian school ends, leaving 335 dead, mostly children.

The siege at Beslan's School Number One, in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, began during a celebration marking the first day of the school year. On the morning of 1 September 2004, a group of masked men and women stormed into the school, opening fire in the courtyard where staff, students and parents had gathered. Over one thousand people were herded into the sweltering gym as hostages, and children used as human shields in windows. The hostages were given no food or water after the first day. Unidentified security sources claimed that the hostage-taking was the work of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who had al Qaeda support. The attackers are alleged to have demanded the release of fighters seized in nearby Ingushetia in June during a raid.

Two days later, on 3 September 2004, Russian commandos stormed the building in a bungled rescue attempt. Militant Chechens set off bombs or fired as children ran to escape, and one woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the middle of the crowded gym. When the dust finally settled after the siege, 335 were confirmed dead, mostly children, and another 180 were listed as missing. The Russian government, whilst blaming foreign enemies for the attack, admitted mistakes had been made during the rescue attempt.

Cheers - John

Thanks for that info John - re Jumpinin - I never knew where it was, and didn't know about North and South Straddy once being joined - just goes to show, never too old to learn something new.

Good stuff rockylizard - I actually started my apprenticeship overhauling locos with the old NSWGR just before they became the PTCNSW (Public Transport Commission of NSW) some 120 odd years later. Wouldn't have a clue what they call themselves these days I know that there are a few new players operating in NSW specially hauling coal to the port here in Newcastle.

Gday...

1873  -             Colonel Warburton captures an Aboriginal woman with the intent of forcing her to reveal the whereabouts of native wells.

Peter Egerton Warburton was born on 15 August 1813, at Northwich, Cheshire. He joined the navy at the tender age of 12 and served for many years in India before retiring in 1853. He then came to Australia, whereupon he was appointed to command the Police Forces of the Colony of South Australia, an office he held until 1867. It was during this time that he developed his love of exploring.

Warburton's goal was to complete the first crossing of the central Australian continent from east to west. In 1872 he was selected by Sir Thomas Elder, a Member of the Legislative Council, to lead an expedition in an attempt to find a route from central Australia to Perth, and to report on what sort of country lay in between. Warburton's expedition was the first in Australia to use only camels, and no horses at all. Travelling through the desert was hard-going, and scarcity of water was huge problem. Warburton was notorious for capturing Aboriginal women hoping to force them to reveal where native wells were located. On 30 August 1873, Warburton captured one young native girl, but she escaped by gnawing through the thick hair rope used to secure her to a tree. On 4 September 1873, Warburton recorded the following:

"A howling hideous old hag was captured, and worried by the former escape, we secured this old witch by tying her thumbs behind her back, and haltering her by the neck to a tree; during which time we had to watch her by turns, or she would have got away also."

In the end, the old woman was released, as she was clearly leading the party away from native wells.

1923  -             The first American airship, the USS Shenandoah, makes its maiden flight.

The 'Shenandoah' was the first rigid airship to be designed and built by the United States Navy, and was the first of four such airships. It was 207m long, had a range of over 8,000km, and the speed capability of just over 100kph. The 'Shenandoah' was assembled between 1922 and 1923 at Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA.

The 'Shenandoah' made its maiden voyage on 4 September 1923. It was considered safer than other airships of the time, as it was the first rigid airship to use helium rather than hydrogen. However, on 2 September 1925, 'Shenandoah' launched from Lakehurst on a flight to the Midwest for training and to test a new mooring mast at Dearborn, Michigan. There were 39 sailors on board. The next day, the 'Shenandoah' was torn apart in a violent storm over Sharon, Ohio, killing fourteen of the men on board.

1957  -             The Ford Motor Company introduces the ill-fated Edsel.

The Ford Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, the only son of the company's founder, Henry Ford. It was introduced in response to market research which indicated that car owners wanted greater horsepower, unique body design, and wrap-around windshields. It took five years for the car to move from mere conception to driveable reality.

By the time the Edsel was ready to be released on the US market amid considerable publicity on "E Day", 4 September 1957, the country was in a recession and consumers were turning to smaller, more economical models. The Edsel ran for three models over three years, and only 110,847 Edsels were produced before Ford announced on 19 November 1959 that it was discontinuing the model. $350 million was lost by the company on the venture.

1957  -             The governor of Arkansas, USA, orders National Guardsmen to prevent black students from attending an all-white school.

Civil rights for African-Americans was becoming a prominent issue in the 1950s. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court had granted African-Americans the right to an equal education. On the morning of 4 September 1957, 9 black students were due to enroll in the previously segregated Little Rock Central High School. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, rallied 270 armed National Guardsmen to prevent the nine students from entering the school.

President Eisenhower deliberated with the governor and the mayor of Little Rock for 18 days. During this time, there were many scenes of racial hatred and prejudice shown by the white community in Little Rock, and the fear grew that the tensions would escalate into violence. Eisenhower was forced to send in 1,100 paratroopers to establish law and order, and he federalised the Arkansas National Guard. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he felt this was the only way to establish law and order, although it went against his desire to avoid using armed forces to enforce desegregation.

For the entire school year, the federalised National Guard remained as a peace-keeping force, and to protect the African-American students. Rather than accept desegregation in schools, Faubus closed all Little Rock schools for the 1958-59 school year. It is a sad indictment on the society of the time that Faubus was re-elected as governor for another four terms.

2006  -             Australian icon, Steve Irwin, is killed by a stingray.

Stephen Robert "Steve" Irwin was born on 22 February 1962 in Essendon, Melbourne, Victoria. He moved to Queensland when he was still a child, where his parents developed and ran the Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park. For his sixth birthday, young Steve received his greatest wish - his very own 3.6m long scrub python for a pet.

Steve grew up learning how to catch and care for crocodiles. He used his skills to assist the Queensland Government's East Coast Crocodile Management program, which involved, among other ventures, catching North Queensland crocodiles. In 1991, Irwin took over the running of the reptile park, which was later renamed "Australia Zoo".

As a passionate environmentalist, Irwin became known for the television program "The Crocodile Hunter", an unconventional wildlife documentary series which he hosted with his wife Terri Irwin. Irwin's outgoing personality, energetic vitality and outrageous antics in the series made him an international celebrity. He also starred in Animal Planet documentaries, including The Croc Files, The Crocodile Hunter Diaries, and New Breed Vets.

Australia lost one of its most popular icons and ambassadors in the early afternoon of 4 September 2006. Steve Irwin was filming an underwater documentary off the Great Barrier Reef, when he was fatally pierced in the heart by a stingray barb. He is survived by his wife Terri, daughter Bindi, born in 1998 and son Robert (Bob), born in 2004. The family intends to continue Steve's remarkable legacy of caring for a variety of wildlife, and raising environmental awareness across the world.

Cheers - John

Hello rockylizard

Another good read as usual, so thanks for that

2006 - Australian icon, Steve Irwin, is killed by a stingray

RIP, a tragic loss, but he died doing what he liked to do

Thanks Rockylizard for the memories my wife and I were at the Australia Zoo in 2006 watching the live animal show when they announced that Steve was away filming on the reef, when we arrived back home a few days later it came over the news that he had been killed . This was a bit painful for us as Steve in our minds had become a friend even though we had never met him (he did walk past us once at the Sydney's old Ansett terminal). The reason that we felt that he was a friend was because when were living in Mozambique in 2003/4 his show each week was a touch of home in a place where people were lucky to have ever heard of Australia - probably a little bit of a cure at times for homesickness.

In his early days he was actually better known and more liked in other parts of the world - people back here thought that he was just faking that vibrant personality but later learnt that's how he was actually in real life.  RIP from both of us Crocodile Hunter.