Australian History
Friday, April 12, 1895. : The Spotswood Sewer Disaster occurs in Melbourne, killing 6.
Westgate Memorial Park located in Spotswood, Melbourne, Australia, is a tribute to some of the Australian workers who have lost their lives in work-related accidents. The Memorial Park opened on 15 October 2004, and is particularly dedicated to those who were killed and injured in the collapse of the Westgate Bridge, Melbourne, and the Spotswood Sewer disaster.
The construction of the Melbourne Sewer system, begun in 1892, was a huge civil engineering undertaking. Its design involved a network of gravitational sewers which would bring sewerage from throughout Melbourne to a central pumping station at Spotswood. From there, it would be pumped to a treatment plant at Werribee, on the western side of Port Phillip Bay.
In order to tunnel underneath the Yarra River, a special Gateshead tunnelling shield was imported from Britain. The shield incorporated a sharp steel lip on the leading edge of a 3.4m wide tunnelling cylinder, designed to cut into the rock as the shield moved forwards. Because the tunnel was below the water level of the river, pumps were employed to continually drain water from the work area. Eventually, an airlock consisting of two 1.5m thick brick walls set 4.5m apart in the tunnel, each with a thick steel door containing a small glass peephole, was constructed to reduce the water flow through the tunnel.
By Good Friday, 12 April 1895, construction of the tunnel had almost reached the centre of the river, where it was just 3.3m below the riverbed. Around 8:00pm that evening, water burst through the tunnel at the leading edge of the Gateshead Shield. Five men working the nightshift and an engineer were all drowned as water swamped the workings. All men were local residents. Their deaths are commemorated in a monument which was unveiled on 18 October 1996, and is now incorporated into the Westgate Memorial Park.
Australian History
Friday, April 12, 1929. : Missing aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith is located, but would-be rescuers Bobby Hitchcock and Keith Anderson die in the process.
Charles Edward Kingsford Smith, nicknamed ‘Smithy’, was born on 9 February 1897 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Passionately interested in flying and mechanics from an early age, he became one of Australia’s best-known aviators.
Late in March 1929, Charles Kingsford-Smith, Charles Ulm and their crew departed from Sydney in the ‘Southern Cross’ to fly across Australia. A day later, they transmitted the radio message, “We are about to make a forced landing in bad country”. No further word was heard, and the worst was feared. A rescue mission was mounted, but no trace could be found of the aircraft or her crew.
On April 4th, aviator Keith Anderson and his mechanic, Bobby Hitchcock, departed Sydney in the aircraft ‘Kookaburra’ on a privately sponsored search. Preparation of the Kookaburra was inadequate, as the craft had no radio, little food and water, and a limited tool kit. It also carried 180 kilograms of excess weight in fuel. Anderson ignored a telegram from the Department of Civil Aviation advising against continuing with the flight. Further engine trouble caused a forced landing 128 km from Wave Hill, and damage from the landing prevented Anderson from taking off. Navigational problems had caused the Kookaburra to be east of its proposed course, and rescue parties were unable to locate the machine.
On 12 April 1929, the missing ‘Southern Cross’ was located, to the relief of the nation. The crew had waited unhurt, though with limited supplies, on mud flats near the Glenelg River in Western Australia’s north-west. However, Hitchcock and Anderson were still missing. The Kookaburra and its crew were not found until April 21st, when Captain Lester Brain, piloting a Qantas aircraft, spotted the wreck in the Tanami Desert and dropped water. A ground crew reached the plane eight days later, to find the crew had all died of starvation and thirst. The bodies were initially buried in the desert, but eventually returned for proper funeral services. Costs of recovering the Kookaburra proved too prohibitive, and it was not until Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith located the aircraft in 1977 that plans were made for its retrieval. The remains of the plane were set up on permanent display at Alice Springs in 1982.
World History
Friday, April 12, 1861. : The US civil war begins.
The US civil war began over the issue of slavery. The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1526, and though the practice of slavery took many years to become popular, it thrived under British colonialism. On 1 January 1808 American Congress voted to ban further importation of slaves, but children of slaves automatically became slaves themselves. There was no legislation against the internal US slave trade, or against the involvement in the international slave trade and the outfitting of ships for that trade by US citizens.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was not in favour of abolition of slavery, but he opposed its expansion into new territories and states in the American West. It was this issue that led to the secession of the southern states to form the Confederate States of America, and ultimately also led to the Civil War. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor had caused tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months, as the Union could not allow it to fall into the hands of the Confederacy, and it was a stronghold which the latter wished to capture. When Confederates fired on the fort on 12 April 1861, it signalled the beginning of the US civil war.
World History
Wednesday, April 12, 1961. : Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to be launched into space.
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in Klushino near Gzhatsk, which was later renamed Gagarin in his honour. Flying light aircraft became a hobby for him until he entered military flight training at the Orenburg Pilot’s School in 1955. In 1960 Gagarin was selected for the Soviet space program, where he was subjected to a punishing series of experiments designed to test his physical and psychological endurance, as well as training relating to the upcoming flight. He excelled in all areas, and his height of only 157cm made him an ideal choice as the first to launch into space.
Gagarin was launched into space in Vostok 3KA-2, or Vostok 1, on 12 April 1961. Soviet authorities did not expect him to survive the descent back through Earth’s atmosphere, so in-flight, he was promoted from Senior Lieutenant to Major. Gagarin did survive, and he became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely to promote the Soviet achievement.
Gagarin died on 27 March 1968 when he was killed in a crash of a MiG-15 on a routine training flight near Kirzhach, together with his instructor. A 1986 inquest suggested that the turbulence from an Su-11 interceptor aeroplane using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin’s plane to go out of control. Weather conditions were also poor at the time.
World History
Sunday, April 12, 1981. : Space Shuttle Columbia, the world’s first reusable space vehicle, is launched into space.
Space Shuttle Columbia, the world’s first reusable space vehicle, was the first space shuttle in NASA’s orbital fleet. Columbia was named after the Boston-based sloop Columbia, captained by American Robert Gray, which explored the Pacific Northwest and became the first American vessel to circumnavigate the world. Space Shuttle Columbia’s first mission launched on 12 April 1981 and lasted until April 14, during which it orbited the Earth 36 times. The mission commander was John W Young, with pilot Robert Crippen.
On its final mission, the craft was carrying the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, and the first female astronaut of Indian birth, Kalpana Chawla. Other crew members on the final flight included Rick Husband (commander), Willie McCool (pilot), Michael P Anderson, Laurel Clark, and David M Brown. Columbia re-entered the atmosphere after a 16-day scientific mission on the morning of 1 February 2003. It disintegrated 16 minutes before it was due to land at Cape Canaveral in Florida, killing all the astronauts on board. Subsequent investigations indicated that a breach of the shuttle’s heat shield on take-off caused it to break up on re-entry.
World History
Monday, April 12, 2010. : Nine people are killed in Italy as a mudslide knocks a train from its tracks.
The town of Merano, Italy is a town in the province of Bolzano-Bozen, a region known for its spa resorts. The town lies in a valley surrounded by tall mountains at the far northern end of Italy, on the Austrian border.
On the morning of 12 April 2010, a small diesel train was travelling along one of the region’s newest rail lines, the Val Vensota line, when it was knocked from its tracks by a mudslide. The derailment occurred in a gorge and rescuers were forced to use cables to secure the train when its front carriage was left hanging over the river Adige. A broken irrigation pipe was believed to have caused the landslide, and resulted in mud flowing into one of the carriages, killing nine of the passengers and injuring another 28.
World History
Sunday, April 12, 2020. : British comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor dies, a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor was born in Buxton, Derbyshire, England on 17 July 1940. After being expelled from primary school before he even turned 6, Brooke-Taylor was schooled at Thorn Leigh Pre-Preparatory School, followed by Holm Leigh Preparatory School and Winchester College. Following his education, he spent just over a year as a teacher. He then returned to university, studying economics and politics at Pembroke College, Cambridge before reading law. Here, his contemporaries included John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Jonathan Lynn, and became involved in the Cambridge University Footlights Club, an amateur theatrical club, and the Pembroke College drama society, the Pembroke Players.
Brooke-Taylor continued his association with John Cleese, Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden through in BBC Radio comedy show “I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again” from 1963 through to 1970. Midway through this series, Brooke-Taylor also worked with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman when he became a writer/performer on the television comedy series “At Last the 1948 Show”. From the 1960s through to 2015 he continued to work on numerous other television productions with a variety of both comedians and more “serious” actors. However, he is arguably best known for “The Goodies” with Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden. “The Goodies” featured a combination of situation comedy, slapstick, songs and surreal sketches. It ran from 1970 to 1982 and, with its unique humour, was very popular in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Between 1979 and 1982, Brooke-Taylor held the office of Lord Rector after being elected by the students of the University of St Andrews. He took the role of representing the students seriously, chairing the University Court and presiding over the General Council in the absence of the Chancellor. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2011.
On 12 April 2020, Tim Brooke-Taylor died of complications as a result of contracting the coronavirus during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was 79 years old.