9 April

1770 Kurnell (NSW), History: Captain James Cook charted Botany Bay and landed for water near where the marker shown below.

1808 Amsterdam, Politics: Napoleon made his brother Louis king of Les Pays Bas, Belgium and the Netherland, and this king took as his palace the Town Hall on the Damn Square. We have been there and seen Atlas shrug. He figures in the video postcard we made in Mokum.

1860 Paris, Technology: Édouard-Léon de Martinville made the earliest documented sound recording, singing the folk song ‘Au clair de la lune.’ In 1857 he had patented the phonautograph. The vibration spoken into a horn moved a quill bristle over a soft wax drum making a visual representation of the voice. N.B. it did not allow the sound to be played back.

1895 Allegheny (PA), Science: Astronomer James Keeler proved by a spectrographic analysis that the rings of Saturn are made up of particles and are not solid, as many had previously believed. Earlier theorists had reached this conclusion and Keeler provided the empirical evidence for confirmation.

1939 DC, Racism: Arturo Toscanini said Marian Anderson’s was the voice of the century. She had been contracted to sing at Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), which managed the hall, voided the contract when it was realised that Anderson was black. In reaction Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Anderson give a free, open air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial which attracted an Easter Sunday audience of 75,000. In the lower left quadrant in front of the piano is Anderson. One of the songs was ‘Let Freedom Ring.’ Her two sons earned combat badges in World War II. In 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower asked her to sing at the White House for the diplomatic corps. (PS My mother was long a stalwart of the local DAR branch but I doubt she knew of this shameful act. A stalwart is by definition is someone who does all the work, gets none of the credit, and makes no complaint.)