Australian History
Tuesday, January 19, 1790. : The second fleet of convicts sets sail from England to New South Wales.
The First Fleet of convicts, which established the colony of New South Wales, arrived in Port Jackson on 26 January 1788. The Second Fleet left England with a cargo of 1026 convicts, bound for New South Wales, on 19 January 1790. The Fleet comprised six ships: Justinian, Lady Juliana, Surprize, Neptune, Scarborough and Guardian, although the latter struck ice and was unable to complete the voyage.
The Second Fleet became notorious for its cruelty to the mostly female convicts. The convicts were limited to a starvation diet, despite the provision of adequate foods, and hundreds of them succumbed to scurvy, fever and dysentery. 267 died during the voyage, compared to the loss of between 30 and 40 convicts on the First Fleet voyage under Captain Arthur Phillip. When they disembarked, marks of cruelty were evident in the injuries shown on the convicts. The condition of the convicts led to public outcry in England, and although attempts were made to bring the perpetrators of the cruelty to justice, the crew members responsible were never prosecuted.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 19, 1887. : The first express train runs between Melbourne and Adelaide as the two cities are linked by rail.
Railways were first established in Victoria in 1854, when Australia’s first steam train ran from Flinders Street to Port Melbourne. Victoria was quick to expand its rail services to outlying centres such as the goldfields. In order to continue interstate to South Australia, only the link between Dimboola and Serviceton awaited completion. In 1882, an Act was passed in South Australia authorising the construction of that state’s portion of the line, extending from Nairne to the border, a distance of approximately 260 kilometres. The first express train departed Spencer Street at 4.05pm on 19 January 1887. It consisted of one American Boudoir car, a composite bogie carriage, a luggage van, sleeper and a van with smoking carriage attached.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 19, 1955. : The board game ‘Scrabble’ makes its debut in Australia and the UK.
Scrabble is a board game in which up to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a 15×15 square game board. The game was created by architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1938, as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko (from “lexicography”, meaning the process of writing, editing, or compiling a dictionary). Originally called Criss-Crosswords, it was not a success. In 1948, lawyer James Brunot bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. He made a few minor adjustments, simplified the rules and changed the name to Scrabble. After selling the game to Macy’s department store, demand soared, making Scrabble the popular game it is today. J W Spear & Sons began selling the game in Australia and the UK on 19 January 1955.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 19, 1966. : Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, resigns.
Robert Gordon Menzies was born in the Victorian town of Jeparit on 20 December 1894. In 1928 he entered politics after being elected to Victoria’s Legislative Council for East Yarra. After six years in Victorian state politics as Attorney-General and Minister for Railways (1928–34), he was elected to federal parliament as Member for Kooyong. On 18 April 1939, he was elected leader of the United Australia Party following the death of Joseph Lyons eleven days earlier, and became Prime Minister on 26 April 1939.
On 28 August 1941, party dissension led Menzies to resign as Prime Minister. However, after forming the Liberal Party of Australia from the remnants of the UAP in 1944, Menzies regrouped to become Prime Minister for the second time on 19 December 1949 when the new Liberal Party, in coalition with the Country Party, beat Labor. He then remained as Prime Minister for another 16 years, a record which has not been broken in Australian politics. Menzies retired on 19 January 1966, and was succeeded by Harold Holt.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 19, 1966. : A farmer in Tully, far north Queensland, reports finding a ‘flying saucer nest’.
Tully is a sugar town in far north Queensland with a population of around 4500. It is best known for vying with nearby Babinda for the “Golden Gumboot”, awarded to the town with the highest rainfall. In 1966, it became known for something quite different – the centre of UFO sightings.
On the morning of 19 January 1966, a banana farmer by the name of George Pedley was near Horseshoe Lagoon, near Tully. As he approached the lagoon, he reported hearing a loud hissing sound, louder than the tractor he was driving. He then saw a round, grey object “some 25 feet across and 9 feet high” rise out of the swamp and hover above the treetops. It then rose quickly, rotating at high speed, and took off, disappearing within a few seconds.
When Pedley reached the swamp itself, he noticed a round area which had been cleared of the reeds that were there earlier, and in which the water current was turning slowly. He reported the strange occurrence to the property owner, Albert Pennisi, who recalled how his dog had been barking uncontrollably earlier that morning. When the men returned to the lagoon, they found a circular mass of reeds, clear underneath, with the lagoon bed cleared of roots. The area measured around 30 feet in diameter. Subsequent investigations by visitors attracted by the media reports uncovered up to half a dozen other, smaller nests.
The most likely explanation of the phenomenon came from the RAAF, who theorised that a “willy willy”, a type of Australian whirlwind, flattened the reeds and sucked them up, forming what appeared to be a “flying saucer”, before moving off and dissipating elsewhere.
World History
Sunday, January 19, 1986. : The first known computer virus for PCs is released.
A computer virus is a program that is able to replicate itself and spread from computer to computer, usually without detection. The first known computer virus on the PC platform was a boot sector virus nicknamed ‘Brain’, after the company in which the idea was conceived. As a boot sector virus, it infected the first sector of floppy disks as they were inserted into an infected computer. Its main effect was to change the volume label of the disk to read “©Brain”. It spread via floppy disks, as the Internet did not exist in its current form when ‘Brain’ was first developed.
‘Brain’ was created by the brothers Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi in Lahore, Pakistan. It was initially released on 19 January 1986, but not finalised until September of that year. The virus was designed as an experiment to explore the security issues of the Operating System the Farooq Alvi brothers were using for their software. The virus did not destroy data, but detected if there was available space in the floppy disk to accommodate the virus. Encoded within the virus was the address of the company, as well as the names, addresses and phone numbers of the Farooq Alvi Brothers. Consequently, the brothers received phone calls whenever the virus was detected, and they were able to detect how piracy had spread their software and, with it, the virus.
In a 2011 interview with Mikko Hypponen of FSecure, the Farooq Alvi Brothers revealed they never meant the virus for harm. While they do not regret their experiment, they regret the harm that modern viruses do, and regard the programming of such viruses as criminal activity.