1788 History. Sydney. Captain Arthur Phillip was impressed by what he described as “the confidence and manly behaviour” of the aborigines he met at an area he then called Manly Cove. There was once a small historical marker at the parkland near Fairlight Beach where his party rowed ashore. The precise place is now private property. I used to jog along that stretch.
1840 Auckland. History. The first permanent European settlement was established in Port Nicholson on Auckland Island, New Zealand. It was initially part of the Australian colony of New South Wales. It became a separate colony in 1841 and self-governing in 1852.
1899 Politics. Melbourne. Premiers of the six Australian colonies and their advisors met to discuss unification motivated by external threats and internal tariffs. New Zealand took part in some of the early discussions. Queensland and West Australia played the reluctant virgin now and again. Alfred Deakin was one of the intellectual leaders in these discussions. A biography of Deakin is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
1912 Florida. Engineering. The Florida East Coast Railway extension completed 128 miles of roadway and it lasted until 1935, when it was destroyed by a hurricane. It was replaced in 1938 by the Overseas Highway, built on the foundation of the old railroad bed. It has forty-two bridges connecting the Florida Keys to the mainland, at the time it was built it was the longest over water roadway.
1973 Washington DC. Politics. In Roe Versus Wade, the US Supreme Court affirmed an earlier ruling by a vote of 7-2 that medical procedures were private and guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and explicitly applied that judgement to abortion. The nation does not belong in the doctor’s consulting room, it might be said.
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