Political theory and practice

1509 Venice (IT), Religion: Pope Julius II ex-communicated the state of Venice. The Venetian Senate kept this fact secret from its population and the word did not get out. When the geo-political situation changed, the Pope rescinded it. If one thing distinguished Venice, it is the ability to keep secrets, those masks are more than symbolic, as indicated in the books on Venice discussed elsewhere on this blog, as well as Donna Leon’s krimis.

1895 Colombo (SL), Technology: The World Transportation Commission visited Ceylon. The Commission was sponsored by the Field Museum in Chicago to gather information about foreign transportation systems, especially railroads. It included engineers, photographers, artists, and translators on a three-year tour. Below is a street shot from the Commission. We have been to the Field Museum.

1904 Canberra, Politics: The first Labor government in the world is sworn in. Thirty-seven year old Chris Watson was Prime Minister. This government lasted until August 1904. By the way, Watson was born in Valparaiso Chile. He was the stepson of Mr Watson. He is in the centre of the front row below with cabinet members. Watson is a Canberra suburb where I stayed once when in residence at ANU.

1971 Fremantle (WA), History: Relics and artefacts form the wreck of the Dutch trading ship Batavia (lost in 1629) were recovered. The Dutch government transferred all rights to its wrecks found in coastal waters to Australia, and these specimens are now in the Maritime Museum in Fremantle. We have been to this museum. The Batavia figures in Nicholas Hasluck’s intriguing novel ‘The Bellarmine Jug’ (1984).

1981 Palo Alto (CA), Technology. Xerox included a ball mouse as part of the 8010 Star Information System workstation. Eeek! The mouse entered the marketplace.

1336 Rousillion (FR), Tourism: Francesco Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux for the pleasure of the view from atop. That such travel might be recreation was novel. Once there he contemplated nature. He then wrote about the experience; he is sometimes called the first tourist. Many Tour de France riders have climbed Mont Ventoux while contemplating human frailty.

1890 Sydney, Literature: Banjo Paterson published ‘The Man from Snowy River.’ See the sun-baked ten dollar bill below. He also authored ‘Waltzing Matilda,’ which should be the national anthem instead of the snooze that is. Paterson seldom set foot outside Sydney but extolled the life of the bush.

1929 Karachi (India), Aviation: Two RAF officers completed the first non-stop flight from Cranwell Base in Lincolnshire taking just under 51 hours, covering 4,130 miles in a Long-Range Monoplane. It is slightly longer than Charles Lindberg’s route from New York City to Paris of the same time.

1939 Canberra, Politics: Robert Menzies became Prime Minister, and when he resigned in 1966 he was Australia’s long-serving prime minister.

1994 Pretoria (ZA), Politics: A free and multi-racial vote elected Nelson Mandela president of the Republic of South Africa.

1507 Sankt Didel (Germany), History: Cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann were the first to use the name America on their world map “Universalis Cosmographia” based on the voyages of Columbus and Vespucci. Their map also showed the Americas as separate from Asia. Sankt Didel is now and was before Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in the much contested Lorraine.

1719 London, Literature: Daniel Defoe published ‘Robinson Crusoe’ the full title of which is ‘The Life and strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, where-in all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.’ The novel has ruminations of humanity, equality, compassion, friendship, and empathy that are usually bleached out of it in the popular culture for a simple adventure. Below is a statue of Alexander Selkirk whose experiences inspired Defoe.

1896 Gawler (SA), Politics: Women voted! It was an election in the colony of South Australia. the legislation had passed in December 1894 and Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent in early 1895 in time for the next South Australian election. At the first reading of the legislation in 1894, while granting women the vote, the bill excluded women from serving in parliament. Hoping to sink the bill an outspoken opponent, one Ebenezer Ward, got that exclusion removed, and campaigned against the bill on the ridiculous but dreaded prospect of women voting other women into parliament! Too clever by half he was, because the bill passed.

1928 Nashville (TN), Society: Morris Frank with Alsatian guide dog Buddy began a publicity tour to promote the use of seeing eye dogs. Access to public facilities from parks to banks, hotels, restaurants, libraries, trains, buses, hardware stores, town halls, hospitals, and so on was until then denied to all animals. He also wanted to encourage the rearing and training of seeing eye dogs in the United States. He had imported Buddy from a speciality breeder in Switzerland who had trained Buddy for the work.

1954 Murray Hill (NJ), Technology: Daryl Chapin at Bell Labs demonstrated a solar battery made primary out of silicon, as in computer chips. He and his colleagues used the light from a flashlight to power a tiny windmill attached to the power cell. Shining the light on the cell caused the windmill to rotate as if by magic. We have a 4K set of solar panels on the roof.

1959 St Lambert (Quebec), Technology: The St Lawrence Seaway was opened. Queen Elizabeth II cut the ribbon, observed by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and President Dwight Eisenhower. It was a massive engineering project to allow contemporary ocean-going vessels to sail into the Great Lakes. Part of human cost is rendered in Anne Michaels’s ‘The Winter Vault” (2009). Her ‘Fugitive Pieces’ (1996) is unforgettable.

1184 BC Troy, History: This is the traditional date for the Greek infiltration of Troy and its subsequent destruction. The Iliad remains a remarkable book, the more so for its theme that the poet is greater than the warrior for without the poet, the exploits of the warrior would fade. We spent half-a-day tramping around the site. It was easy to see why the city on the hill dominated the vast plains around it.

1066 Hastings, History: The first recorded sighting of Halley’s Comet in England. Both the Normans and the English took it as an omen. It was bad for Harold and good for William, as it turned out. Only when Edmond Halley established the regularity of the Comet and worked back through historical records was this sighting linked to the eponymous comet.

1800 D.C., Education: Second President John Adams approved a Congressional appropriation to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of congress.” The first purchases were 740 volumes and three maps. One of its three buildings is named for President Adams. From this seed grew The Library of Congress, which I have visited several times to use the reading room and the vast collection. An anecdote about one visit is to be found on this blog dated 15 March 2010. Click away for amusement.

1955 Bandung (Indonesia), Politics: The Afro-Asian Conference ended. It had brought together representatives of twenty-nine non-aligned nations to discuss world events outside the context of Cold War which otherwise dominated international relations. Colonialism, trade barrier, racism, international finance, freedom of the seas, and a numbing litany of condemnations of the USA and USSR filled the agenda. Accordingly, These neutrals were viewed by both the USSR and the USA as enemies. Both were stimulated by the oddity of the People’s Republic of China in attendance as non-aligned. How many leaders can you identify in the picture below. Answers on application.

1990 Cape Canaveral (FL), Science: The Space Shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit.It is the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo’s telescope four hundred years earlier. Below is one of Hubble’s first shots, and it is still snapping away.

1500 Monte Pascoal (Brasil), History: Pedro Álvarez Cabral landed in Brazil, the first European to do so, and claimed it for Portugal.

1597 Berkshire (England), Theatre: The first performance of William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ for Queen Elizabeth several years before it was published. It is a comic version of Othello centring Sir John Falstaff who wants a wife, preferably a merry widow with enough money to pay his debts.

1920 Ankara, Politics: The Turkish Grand National Assembly organised and dominated by Kemal Atatürk convened to create a new country, Turkey, from the top down. Its first act was to depose Sultan Mehmed VI who is shown below going into exile. A biography of the philosopher-king Atatürk is discussed elsewhere on this blog.

1953 Jackson Hole, (WY), Cinema: ‘Shane’ was released. It was directed by the versatile George Stevens who coaxed memorable performances from the whole cast played out against the monumental indifference of the Grand Teton Mountains. No one forgets the drooling Jack Palance, Jean Arthur’s heartbreak, Van Heflin’s stoic endurance, the monosyllabic Alan Ladd, or the bewildered Brandon de Wilde’s last words, ’Shane, come back!’ A top ten entry in the Western Movie Hall of Fame.

2005 San Diego, Media: The first video was posted on You Tube by co-founder Jawed Karim. It ran for 18-seconds and featured him at the San Diego Zoo. By now it has been viewed more than 14 millions times.

1509 London, Politics: Henry VIII took the throne. Reduced to a player in a bedroom farce in the popular culture by people who cannot understand anything else, Henry was a consummate strategist and he had to be.

1529 Zaragoza (ES), Politics: Spain and Portugal agreed to the Treaty of Saragossa to divide the world between them. The Pope had brokered the arrangement to keep the peace among Christian nations against the Ottoman threat. When the dividing line was drawn around a globe it bisected the continent of Australia and centuries later that line became the border to Western Australia. See Leslie Marchant, ‘The Papal Line of Demarcation’ (Perth, 2008).

1876 St Petersburg, Music: Pytor Tchaikovsky completed the ballet ‘Swan Lake.’ It never gets old. We saw it most recently in St Petersburg.

1970 Madison (WI), Ecology: The first celebration of Earth Day. An estimated 20 million Americans took part in events related to it. Many events involved picking up trash and environmental education. The leading champion was Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who was instrumental in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the same year. It takes imagination to think of a senator today doing something this farsighted and constructive.

1983 ‘Stern’ magazine and Murdoch’s ‘Times of London’ announced the Hitler Diaries. Robert Harris’s deadpan telling of this blunder of the century is discussed elsewhere on this blog. The managers managed, all right, especially in shifting the blame away from themselves.

753 BC Rome, Mythology: This is the legendary date of the foundation of Rome by the brothers Romulus and Remus. In the first century BC the Roman Senate commissioned scholar Marcus Terentius Varro to determine the foundation date and he did.

1689 London, Politics: William III and Mary II were crowned joint sovereigns of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Bill was simultaneously the ruler of the Netherlands. He spent most of his reign(s) making war on Catholics in Belgium, France, Ireland, and Scotland.

1956 Memphis (TN), Music: Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ hit number one. His first hit song. Been to Graceland. Daniel Klein has written a series of charming krimis featuring Elvis. Try ‘Kill Me Tender’ (2002).

1960 Brasilia, Architecture: A new city built on a greenfield became the capital of Brazil. Planning had began in 1956. The temperature rarely drops below 30 degrees Centigrade in daylight hours on the plateau. In the Wikipedia entry architect Oscar Niemeyer is barely mentioned, yet he designed most of the public buildings that are so distinctive. The political purpose was to leave behind the squalor and corruption of Rio de Janeiro, to open up the interior, and to thrust Brasil into the forefront of urban modernity. One of the few, perhaps, the only place in South America I would like to see with my own eyes. There is a rollicking, mile-a-minute film partly set in Brasilia called ‘L’homme de Rio’ (1964).

1970 Hutt River (WA), Politics: North of Perth farmer Leonard Casley declared his property of 520 square kilometres a province and seceded from Western Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia. He designated himself His Royal Highness Prince Leonard of Hutt. He was incensed by Wheat Board quotas and decided to generate publicity. The media ate it with a spoon but seldom mentioned his purpose. There is a Wikipedia entry for those who want to know more.

1611 London, Theatre: Today was the first recorded performance of William Shakespeare’s Scottish play ‘Macbeth.’ Toil and trouble, indeed. Posed below are three Republican Senators.

1828 Timbuktu, Geography: René Caillé found and mapped Timbuktu to win a prize from the Société de Géographie. There were many legends about this place and other Europeans had tried to find and failed, many of them perished. For centuries Timbuktu had been an important way station for travellers and a repository for learning. A book about it is discussed elsewhere on this blog.

1862 Paris, Science: Louis Pasteur completed the first tests of using heat to kill bacteria. This research led to the realisation that germs caused infection, disproving a common belief that in spontaneous generation of disease. (Anti-vaxxers are still there despite a century of free pubic education.) Sterilisation, vaccines, disinfection, and antibiotics all came through the door Pasteur opened.

1902 Paris, Science: Marie and Pierre Curie isolated radioactive radium chloride from pitchblende. She carried specimens around in coat pockets and suffered the consequences.

1968 Ottawa, Politics: Joseph Phillippe Pierre Yves Eliot Trudeau became leader the Liberal Party and Prime Minister when the incumbent Lester Pearson resigned. Trudeau’s finest hour might have been a few weeks later on 24 June on St John the Baptist Day in Montréal. Watch this space.

1897 Boston, Sports: John McDermott (pictured below) won the first Marathon at Boston. Ten of the fifteen starters finished. John Graham had attended the 1896 Athens Olympics and that fired his imagination for long-distance, endurance running. Women officially joined the race in 1972, but a few stalwart women had raced earlier in disguise. Apart from the Olympics, it is the oldest continuous marathon race. In 2018 there were nearly 30,000 starters. I know a few who have done it and lived to tell the tale.

1934 Hollywood, Cinema: Five-year old Shirley Temple appeared in her first feature film, ‘Stand Up and Cheer’ and she stole the show singing and dancing and dimpling. The studio executives realised that and ten more followed in 1934. She had already appeared in dozens of shorts, usually uncredited in the previous two years. She quit the silver screen at age 29 after racking up 60 credits.

1982 Houston, Space: NASA named Sally Ride as its first female astronaut. She went into space twice on Challenger, as shown below. She had been selected from 8000 applicants (men and women). When Ride left NASA she became a professor of physics at the University of California.

1984 Advance Australia Fair began putting listeners to sleep as the national anthem, selected in a plebiscite. Forty-three percent of nitwits voted for it while 28% of the discerning citizens voted for Banjo Paterson’s ‘Waltzing Matilda.’

2011 Havana, Politics: Fidel Castro resigned as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of Cuba after forty-five years as El Jefe. Seen below in 1979 when he once again heaped abuse on what he called rich nations and then demanded their largess at the United Nations. Travellers tell me his picture is still everywhere in Havana.

1831 Sydney, Journalism: Australia’s oldest extant newspaper the ‘Sydney (Morning) Herald’ went on the streets. It succeeded beyond the expectations of the founders and they sold it to John Fairfax in 1846. It remained in the Fairfax family until an MBA took over. The word ‘Morning’ was added in 1842 to distinguish it from rivals that appeared later in the day.

1916 Paris, Literature: Edith Wharton was made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honour for her war work. After divorcing money bags she was in Paris on vacation when war came, and unlike many others, she stayed. Used some of the dosh to open a workroom for women to make clothing for soldiers. As the Germans neared, many fled but she stayed to house Belgian refugees. She began a letter writing campaign to raise money for hospitals. To raise the profile of the Great War in the United States she made a car trip to the front lines in 1915 with a photographer, leading to publication in ‘Scribner’s Magazine’ and later as a book. Her novels are exquisite observations of social life.

1924 New York City, Games: Simon & Schusters published the first book of crossword puzzles. Never have so many wasted so much time thanks to so few. Cruciverbalist, rejoice!

1936 Honolulu, Aviation: The Pan Am clipper began regular passenger flights between Honolulu and San Francisco. Charlie Chan was soon to be on board.

1969 Fredericton, Politics: New Brunswick enacted legislation to make the province bilingual, the first and only province to do so. About a third of the total population of 750,000 are Francophone who remained even after the expulsion of Acadians (Le grand Dérangement) in 1755 when 15,000 French settlers were forcibly removed to the southern United States, a story burned into my memory with ‘Evangeline’ by Henry Longfellow (whose name graced my primary school). It is an epic poem and that word ‘epic’ refers to endurance required of the auditor for there was no exit from the forest of words primeval, nor from the poem itself.