Born on this day

Monday, April 13, 1570. :   Guy Fawkes, conspirator in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, is born.

Guy Fawkes (later also known as Guido Fawkes) was born on 13 April 1570, in Stonegate, York, England. He embraced Catholicism while still in his teens, and later served for many years as a soldier gaining considerable expertise with explosives; both of these events were crucial to his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

From 1563, legislation evolved which demanded citizens recognise the King as Supreme Governor of the Church. Refusal to submit was punishable by death. The Gunpowder Plot was an attempt by a group of Catholic extremists to assassinate King James I of England, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in one hit by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening. A group of conspirators rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords and filled it with 2.5 tonnes of gunpowder. However, one of the conspirators, who feared for the life of fellow Catholics who would have been present at parliament during the opening, wrote a letter to Lord Monteagle. Monteagle, in turn, warned the authorities. Fawkes, who was supposed to have lit the fuse to explode the gunpowder, was arrested during a raid on the cellar early on the morning of 5 November 1605. Fawkes was tortured into revealing the names of his co-conspirators. Those who were not killed immediately were placed on trial, during which they were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in London. Climbing up to the hanging platform, Fawkes leapt off the ladder, breaking his neck and dying instantly.

November 5 came to be known as Guy Fawkes Day. At dusk, citizens across Britain light bonfires, set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, celebrating his failure to blow up Parliament and James I.

Australian History

Sunday, April 13, 1969. :   The last tram to operate in Brisbane, Australia, completes its final run.

A tram is a rail-borne vehicle, lighter than a train, for the transport of passengers. Brisbane, capital city of Queensland, Australia, once ran an extensive tram network. Brisbane’s first trams were drawn by horse and were introduced in 1885. Electric trams followed in 1897 and by the 1950s, the New Farm powerhouse and eight substations supported the city’s tramway network. However, as with several other Australian cities, buses began to gradually replace trams in Brisbane. The last tram to operate in Brisbane completed its final run on 13 April 1969. A single disused tramline runs through the suburb of Carina, a final legacy of this once popular form of transport.

Trams still run extensively in Melbourne, capital of Victoria, as its wide streets and geometric street pattern makes trams more practicable than in other cities. In Adelaide, capital of South Australia, one tramline operates, originating from the city centre and terminating at Glenelg, and some trams still run in the old goldrush city of Bendigo in rural Victoria.

World History

Friday, April 13, 1888. :   Alfred Nobel reads his own obituary, which inspires him to leave the legacy of the Nobel Prizes.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel, born in Stockholm in 21 October 1833, was a Swedish chemist, engineer armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. Although a dramatist and poet, he became famous for his advances in chemistry and physics, and by the time he died on 10 December 1896, he held over 350 patents and controlled factories and laboratories in 20 countries.

Eight years prior to his death, on 13 April 1888, Nobel opened the newspaper to discover an obituary to himself. Although it was his brother Ludwig who had actually died, the obituary described Alfred Nobel’s own achievements, believing it was he who had died. The obituary condemned Nobel for inventing dynamite, an explosive which caused the deaths of so many. It is said that this experience led Nobel to choose to leave a better legacy to the world after his death. On 27 November 1895 at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his enormously wealthy estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. Nobel died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 10 December 1896.

The Nobel Prize is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the world and includes a cash prize of nearly one million dollars. The fields for which the awards can be given are physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and toward the promotion of international peace. In 1968 the prize field was extended to include economic science.

World History

Friday, April 13, 1990. :   The Soviet government admits to the massacre of 5,000 Polish army officers in Katyn Forest, western Russia.

The Katyn Forest Massacre was a mass execution of Polish citizens by the Soviet Union in World War II. Between 3 April and 19 May 1940, about 22,000 Polish prisoners were rounded up and placed in internment camps, from where they were executed. Of these, nearly 5,000 Polish military reserve officers were taken to the Katyn Forest outside of Smolensk, where they were massacred and thrown into a mass grave. The incident was covered up until 1943, when the Germans announced that they had unearthed thousands of corpses in the Katyn Forest. This precipitated a rupture of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London. For years, the Soviet Union denied all responsibility for the massacres.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev promoted a policy of openness in its politics. On 13 April 1990, the government acknowledged that the NKVD had in fact committed the massacres and the subsequent cover-up, expressing “deep regret over the tragedy” and assessing it as “one of the worst Stalinist outrages”.

New Zealand History

Monday, April 13, 1964. :   A New Zealand shearer sets a new record for sheep-shearing.

New Zealand, like Australia, is known for having a higher population of sheep than people. Sheep were first introduced to the country by Reverend Samuel Marsden of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, when he arrived at Rangihoua at Oihi Bay in December 1814. By 1868, New Zealand had developed its own breed of sheep, the Corriedale.

Prior to the establishment of the World Sheep Shearing Records Committee in 1982, the world shearing record belonged to New Zealand shearer Colin Bosher. Bosher, of Awakino, Taranaki, sheared a record of 565 sheep in one day on 13 April 1964.