Australian Explorers
Saturday, January 16, 1909. : Australian geologists Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David become the first to reach the magnetic South Pole.
The South Pole is the southernmost point on the Earth where the earth’s axis of rotation intersects the surface. The Magnetic South Pole is the point nearest the geographic South Pole where the field lines of Earth’s magnetic field point directly into the ground. In the past century, the magnetic South Pole has shifted, due to movement in the Earth’s liquid core.
Australian geologists Professor Edgeworth David and Sir Douglas Mawson, together with naval surgeon Alistair Mackay, were the first to reach the magnetic South Pole on 16 January 1909. They were members of Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition. Having found the spot where Mawson’s compass pointed directly into the ground, the men raised the British flag and claimed the immediate surrounding Victoria Land for the British Crown.
The geographic South Pole was first reached by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen nearly three years later, on 14 December 1911.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 16, 1793. : Free settlement commences in Australia.
Australia was first officially settled by the First Fleet of convicts, which left England in May 1787 and arrived in Port Jackson on 26 January 1788. The First Fleet consisted of convicts, officers and marines, along with some of the officers’ and marines’ wives and children. The primary purpose of the first settlement in New South Wales was to serve as a penal colony and alleviate the overcrowding in English gaols, whilst staking Great Britain’s claim in the South Pacific. There were plans to expand the colony to include free settlement once it had begun the journey towards self-sufficiency.
During his tenure, Governor Arthur Phillip requested that the British authorities send free settlers with farming skills, but they did not arrive until after Phillip had departed for England at the end of 1792. The first group of completely free settlers to come to New South Wales arrived in Port Jackson on 16 January 1793. The ship ‘Bellona’ carried five men, two women and six children. This group included Thomas Rose and his family, Edward Powell, Thomas Webb, Frederick Meredith and Walter Brody. These people were the first free settlers to be given land grants at Liberty Plains, now Strathfield and Homebush, on 7 February that year.
Australian History
Monday, January 16, 1837. : The “Proclamation Establishment of Government in SA” is printed on South Australia’s first printing press.
Holdfast Bay in South Australia was the site of the earliest landings of pioneers to South Australia’s mainland. It was into this port that South Australia’s first printing press arrived in early November 1836. Robert Thomas and his family had travelled out from England, arriving in South Australia aboard the ship ‘The Africaine’. With him was South Australia’s first printing press, a Stanhope Invenit No. 200. Thomas, along with George Stevenson, Governor Hindmarsh’s private secretary, had been appointed Government Printers. Their first task was publishing the initial edition of the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register in England on 18 June 1836.
Although South Australia was officially proclaimed on 19 February 1836 in England, the proclamation was made on 28 December 1836. Governor Hindmarsh made the announcement at the Old Gum Tree, but the actual proclamation had not yet been printed. On 30 December, Thomas was given orders to prepare for the print run of the proclamation, so the following day, the Governor sent 10 men to assist with moving and preparing the press from where it had been unloaded. On 14 January 1837, the first 3 Acts of the new Executive Council of Government were printed, and two days later, on 16 January 1837, 150 more sheets were printed. This was the official “Proclamation Establishment of Government in SA”.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 16, 1889. : Cloncurry, Queensland, records Australia’s highest shade temperature to date.
Cloncurry is a town in northwest Queensland, Australia. The town, which lies about 770km west of Townsville, was built up around the copper deposits discovered in the area in 1867. As of 2003, the population of the shire of Cloncurry, including the town, was 3900. Cloncurry holds the record for the highest temperature in the shade recorded in Australia, at 53.1 °C (127.5 °F) on 16 January 1889.
However, this record was later removed from Australian records because the equipment used to measure it was unreliable, and it did not use the standardised Stevenson screen, which only became widespread in Australia from around 1910. According to Australian Bureau of Meteorology records, the highest temperature in Australia was officially recorded at Oodnadatta, South Australia, on 2 January 1960: 50.7 degrees Celsius.
World History
Saturday, January 16, 1362. : The city of Rungholt, Germany, is destroyed by a strong storm tide.
Rungholt was a rich city in Nordfriesland, northern Germany, situated on the island of Strand. On 16 January 1362, a storm tide in the North Sea swept through the island, submerging and subsequently destroying the city, thought to be the most populous settlement in the surrounding area. The storm tides that occur from time to time in the North sea are sometimes known as “grote Mandraenke”; the one that sank Rungholt was the first “grote Mandraenke”. Archaeological relics from the city were still being discovered in the Wadden Sea in the late twentieth century.
World History
Thursday, January 16, 1919. : Prohibition in the United States takes effect.
Prohibition in the United States generally refers to the time between 1920 and 1933 during which the Eighteenth Amendment was in place. The Eighteenth Amendment, forbidding the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes,” was passed by Congress and ratified on 16 January 1919. The ensuing Volstead Act, which made provisions for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment, was passed on 28 October 1919.
Prohibition failed to enforce sobriety, and the federal and state governments lost billions in tax revenue. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was passed, and on 5 December 1933 Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the required three-quarters majority of states’ approval. This ended national Prohibition; however, some individual states continued to uphold their own temperance laws. Mississippi, for example, was the last state to end Prohibition, doing so only in 1966.
Special Days
Monday, January 16, 2006. : Today is Appreciate a Dragon Day!
Whether dragons are real or only a myth has been the subject of many a debate over the years. The concept of fire-breathing, winged dragons has been perpetuated for centuries in countries such as China, India, Japan and Greece. Various sightings have continued into more modern times, whether real or imagined. For example, in 1449 two fire-breathing monsters were apparently seen battling each other near the village of Little Cornard, on the banks of the River Stour along the English county borders of Suffolk and Essex. Also in Suffolk, around the same time, witnesses described a huge monster with a crested head and enormous tail near Lake Bure, which was seen to devour a shepherd and numerous sheep. Similar creatures (or the same creature) have been described in Suffolk folklore.
Dragon aficionados say that a dragon assisted the Wright brothers in their famous flight of 1903. Amelia Earhart apparently disappeared after being captured by a lovestruck dragon. And Winston Churchill’s famous cigar was always lit by a tiny dragon…
Regardless of truth or legend, 16 January is Appreciate a Dragon Day. The day was gazetted in 2006 to promote literacy, a few years after “Dragonspell”, the first book in the series of Dragon Keeper Chronicles, was published.