Category: Practice

1803 The Louisiana Purchase agreement was signed. It included all of six states: Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of eight more: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Louisiana. Nearly doubling the area of the country. The purchase was opposed by some Senators and Representatives whose names are now forgotten.

1935 Physicist Erwin published his famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, a paradox that illustrated the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. To observe is to alter.

1948 The first mass-produced Australian car, the Holden FX, rolled off the assembly line in Melbourne. The automobile industry has been a child of the tariff wall and thereafter a political football.

1949 Chang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist regime left mainland China for Taiwan and stayed. Kate’s mother once sold a pup to Madame Chang. True fact.

1972 Atari released Pong, the first commercially successful video game. More came.

1520 Ferdinand Magellan passed through the Tierra del Fuego to become the first European to enter the Pacific from the Atlantic. He had left Spain on 20 September. In the image below the Pacific Ocean is on the left and the Atlantic on the right.

1660 The Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge had its first meeting. Sir Christopher Wren, who was Gresham’s Professor of Astronomy gave the lecture. The audience was the scientific cream of Great Britain. The Royal warrant came two years later.

1814 ‘The Times of London’ was first printed by automatic, steam powered presses which reduced the price per number, making newspapers available to a mass audience.

1919 Lady Astor is elected the first woman in Parliament. She campaigned hard as a Conservative and was re-elected until 1945. She held the ethnic and racial prejudices of the time and place.

1956 Government of Canada paid the transportation costs to settle 37,565 Hungarian refugees in Canada, including the child pictured below. There followed English lessons and a clothing allowance.

1095 Pope Urban II called the First Crusade because “Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”) to liberate the Holy Land from the infidels. He was responding to false Fox News from Jerusalem about massacres of Christians. The aggression was Christian and battles have since continued.

1868 George Custer led a massacre of peaceful Cheyennes on the Washita River in Oklahoma. He had been suspended from duty for a year because of absence, carelessness, neglect, and incompetence. He made no effort to identify the Indians, respond to the white flag they showed, or the presence of numerous women and children. All were murdered at Custer’s command, though some troopers of the 7th Cavalry refused to participate, and Custer attempted to silence and punish them. Custer’s wife ensured it was reported as a great victory against the odds on the fact-free Fox News of the day. Pictured are some of Custer’s victims.

1895 Alfred Nobel made his last will and testament, pledging his enormous wealth toward the betterment of humanity through Nobel prizes.

1999 Labour Party leader Helen Clark became first women elected Prime Minister of New Zealand.

2006 Led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Clark, the Canadian House of Commons passed a resolution recognising Quebecois as a nation with a united Canada by a vote of 265 to 16. It seems largely symbolic, e.g., public parks in Quebec were re-named as nationale parcs rather than provincial parks. Quebec also got its own trade commissioners in French-speaking countries like Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Cote d’ivoire. In context it took the air out of a proposal for yet another sovereignty referendum in Quebec. How that sold in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia among Acadians and elsewhere among Franco-Canadiens would be question.

43 BC In the wake of Julius Caesar’s murder Octavian, Lepidus, and Antony form a triumvirate to rule Rome and its Empire. Ah huh. It lasted even shorter time than the first triumvirate.

1896 Alonzo Stagg’s University of Chicago football team went into a huddle before offensive plays. Other teams followed the example within days. The word ‘huddle’ came from Low German to Middle English and refers to animals and people crowding together against the weather.

1917 On the orders of Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes army officers raided the Queensland Government Printing Office in Brisbane and seized all copies of Hansard containing a speech by the Premier of Queensland, T. J. Ryan, against military conscription for the Great War in Europe. This was done just before the second referendum on conscription. Earlier newspaper censorship in Brisbane had kept Ryan’s speech from a public airing. So much for states’ rights.

1917 Five professional hockey teams in Canada signed an agreement to create the National Hockey League. One ambition was to raise civilian morale with diversion from the long lists of the dead, wounded, and missing from the Western Front.

1941 FDR signed a bill making the fourth Thursday in November Thanksgiving day. Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed that in 1863, but there was no legislation. Rather each year the president proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day. In 1939 that last Thursday was 30 November. The retail association claimed that such a late Thanksgiving eroded sales for Christmas and urged that it be pushed forward. The result was Franksgiving on the third Thursday in 1939 and in 1940. This change led to much confusion, contention, and distraction and became a political football. FDR reversed course and accepted the convention of the fourth Thursday with his usual wit and grace.

1789  Eora Aboriginal man Bennelong, a Koori, became an intermediary between the British and Aboriginal peoples. Michael Boddy’s play ‘Cradle of Hercules’ in the 1974 was my introduction to Bennelong. More recently we saw the Bangarra dance company interpret this relationship.
1867 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented TNT.

1952 Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mouse Trap’ opened to an audience of 450. It has since had 20,000 performances in London’s West End and ten million people have seen it to date among them us.

1980 France continued nuclear weapons testing at Mururoa atoll. The tests were in the atmosphere until direct action by members of the New Zealand government led France to go into underground tests. Thank you, Kiwis. Continued testing led to diplomatic tension in 1994, and we encountered a whiff of it when Kate handed an Australian passport to a French official in Nice. He stared at it, at her, and slowly — very slowly — clicked away at the screen and then leafed through a very large ring binder (looking for a reason to gum things up, I thought).

1992 The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to partition the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, beginning January 1, 1993. We have been to the Czech Republic, and perhaps will make it to Slovakia in 2019.

1639 Separately, Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree first recorded the observation of the transit of Venus. It was a major contribution to mapping the Solar system.

1642 Dutch sailor Abel Tasman landed on Van Dieman’s Land, now Tasmania. His name is also on the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.

1859 Charles Darwin published the ‘On the Origin of Species.’ A masterwork.

1947 The drooling monster HUAC ruled the Hollywood Ten in contempt of Congress. Several went to jail and at least one died there. The floor vote was 346 for and 17 against the citations. The Supreme Court later upheld the authority of Congress to so act. The ten were writers, directors, producers, and editors. It was a shot across the bows of the studios and interpreted in that way.

1995 In a referendum Irish voters accepted divorce 50.3 to 49.7, ending a 70 year proscription. In a total of 1.6 million voters the difference was 8,000 votes.

1227 The Spanish Christians drove the Muslim Moors out of Sevilla after a two-year siege. Been there. Those oranges perfume the air.

1644 John Milton published ‘Areopagitica,’ a polemical pamphlet advocating the freedom of the press at a time when there was none. Read some Milton but not this. Maybe I should.

1903 Enrico Caruso made his American debut in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto.’ Heard some recordings of ‘God’s voice,’ as Puccini said. Caruso in costume is pictured below.

1923 2SB Radio in Sydney went on the air for the Australian wireless broadcast from Philip Street. SB = Sydney Broadcasters. It broadcast Saint-Saens ‘Le Cygne.’ Still going but has become ABC 702. N.B. that wireless includes plenty of wires then as now.

1955 Great Britain transferred responsibility for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to Australia which with Christmas Island today constitute Australian Indian Ocean Territories closer to Sri Lanka and Indonesia than Canberra.

1497 Vasco de Gama (1460-1524) rounded the Cape of Good Hope bound for India. He was the first European to make this trip. Portuguese Empire in Asia began and then ended in East Timor in 1974. We saw replicas of his craft in the maritime museum in Lisbon. Yikes!

1928 Maurice Ravel’s ‘ Boléro’ was performed for the first time in Paris. the music remains instantly recognised. Commissioned by ex-patriate Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein; it was originally intended to be ballet and it was an instant success. It was soon used for dance.

1956 The Games of the XVI Olympiad began in Melbourne. Seventy-two countries sent 4,000 competitors with men outnumbering women 10 to 1. Because of Australia’s strict quarantine laws, the equestrian events were not staged in Melbourne, but rather five months earlier in Sweden.

1963 Jack was murdered.

2005 Angela Merkel became the Chancellor Germany and became a voice for calm, rationality, and the long view. She will be missed.

1620 Mayflower Compact established the principle of the consent of the governed at Cape Cod.

1789 Convict James Ruse received a land grant for an experimental farm in Parramatta. He was successful and got more land in 1791, and more. Now one of the best high schools in Australia is James Ruse Agricultural High School.

1920 Bloody Sunday in Dublin left 30 dead when the IRA clashed with British troops and Ulster police.

1934 Teenage Ella Fitzgerald sang at an amateur night at the Apollo Theatre. On a dare with girlfriends she had entered as a dancer. But when her number was called, she sang. In some Sy fy movie lost in the mists of my mind, one character swears that someone is an alien. The proof. No reaction to Ella Fitzgerald singing! Proof positive.

1988 Ethel Blondin-Andrew, a First Nations woman, was elected to the Canadian House of Commons, a graduate of the University of Alberta and a school teacher in the Western Arctic in the Northwest Territories. She was the first woman from the First Nations to enter parliament and served ten years.

1875 Henry James published ‘Roderick Hudson,’ his first novel. Not read this one, but have read The ‘Ambassadors,’ ‘The American,’ ‘The Bostonians,’ ‘The Princess Casamassima,’ ‘The Turn of the Screw,’ and ‘Washington Square.’ A master of fine detail but ever so orotund. What I remember is the dedication of the hall in ‘The Bostonians,’ the door opening (where there is no door) in ‘The Turn of the Screw,’ and a gentleman who is sitting down (when he should be standing) in ‘The Ambassadors.’

1914 US State Department required photographs on passports as shown below. I look like my picture. Gulp! Somewhere — lost to me now — Georg Hegel recommended pictures to go with travel papers in the 1820s.

1923 Garrett Morgan patented the three-position traffic signal with buffer between stop and go, making the transition safer. He was the child of two former slaves. This butter evolved into the amber light, which in some jurisdictions follows the red, and in others the green. In both cases it means ‘sped up!’

1945 Nuremberg Trials began with 24 individuals.

1985 Windows 1.0 was released two years late, and has continued in that manner. I left the PC world about ten years ago for the Mac World and will not go back.