Born on this day
Thursday, November 7, 1867. : Polish scientist Marie Curie is born.
Marie Curie was born Maria Sklodowska on 7 November 1867, in Warsaw, Poland. She was unique for being one of the most celebrated scientists of all time, achieving her outstanding reputation at a time when her field was dominated almost exclusively by men. Working with her husband, Pierre Curie, her experiments on uranium minerals led to the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium in 1898. In 1903 they shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Henri Becquerel. Curie became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne University when she took over her husband’s position as professor after his death in 1906.
Marie Curie was awarded a second Nobel prize in 1911, for chemistry, for her work on radium and its compounds. She was then offered the position of Director of the Laboratory of Radioactivity at the Curie Institute of Radium, established jointly by the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute, for research on radioactivity and for radium therapy. Marie Curie died in 1934 from the effects of prolonged exposure to radioactivity.
Australian History
Thursday, November 7, 1861. : The first Melbourne Cup is run.
The Melbourne Cup is the major annual thoroughbred horse race in Australia. Sometimes referred to as “the race that stops a nation”, it is run at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne on the first Tuesday of November each year.
The first Melbourne Cup was run on 7 November 1861, and was attended by a crowd of around 4000. The race was won by Archer out of a field of 17 horses. Legend states that Archer had been walked from Nowra in NSW to the Cup in Melbourne, a distance of around 885 kilometres. However, shipping documents discovered many years later cast doubts upon that popular claim.
By the year 2000, attendance at the racing carnival was up to 120,000. Originally run over a distance of two miles, in 1972 the race was converted to 3200 metres, which is just short of two miles by 18.69 metres, or 61.30 feet.
Australian History
Tuesday, November 7, 1911. : Australia’s Federal Parliament selects the site for the Royal Australian Naval College.
From the time that Australia was first colonised in 1788, up until 1859, Australia’s naval defence depended on detachments from the Royal Navy in Sydney. A separate British naval station was established in Australia in 1859, while a Royal Navy squadron, paid for and mainatined by Australia, was maintained in Australian waters through to 1913.
In 1909, the decision was made to establish an Australian Fleet Unit. The first ships comprising this fleet arrived in Australian waters during November of 1910. These Commonwealth Naval Forces became the Royal Australian Navy on 10 July 1911, following the granting of this title by King George V.
On 7 November 1911, the Federal Parliament of Australia selected Captain’s Point, Jervis Bay, as the site of the future Royal Australian Naval College. As the Australian Capital Territory was inland, it was determined that the national seat of government needed access to the ocean, so the Jervis Bay Territory was surrendered by New South Wales to the Commonwealth in 1915 under the “Jervis Bay Territory Acceptance Act 1915”.
World History
Thursday, November 7, 1872. : The ‘Mary Celeste’ sets sail, only to be mysteriously abandoned at sea, with no sign of its crew ever found.
The Mary Celeste was a ship found abandoned off the coast of Portugal in 1872. Originally named ‘The Amazon’ when it was first built in Nova Scotia in 1861, the 103-foot, 282-ton brigantine was renamed the ‘Mary Celeste’ in 1869 after changing hands several times.
On 7 November 1872, under the command of Captain Benjamin Briggs, the ship set sail from New York to Genoa, Italy. A month later, on December 4, it was found adrift and abandoned, yet its cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol was intact. None of the Mary Celeste’s crew or passengers was ever found. Theories have abounded as to what happened. The most logical was that the ship was hit by a seaquake, common in the Azores, where the ship would have been at that time. Evidence indicated that the quake had dislodged some of the alcohol barrels, dumping almost 500 gallons of raw alcohol into the bilge. The galley stove shook so violently that it was lifted up from its chocks, perhaps even sending sparks and embers flying. This, mixed with the alcohol fumes, possibly caused the crew and passengers to fear for their safety. They may have taken to the lifeboats, but were unable to catch up to the brig when the quaking subsided. Regardless of the theories, the mystery endures as to why the ‘Mary Celeste’ was abandoned.