Australian History
Tuesday, August 12, 1806. : Captain Philip Gidley King, third Governor of New South Wales, is succeeded by Captain William Bligh.
Philip Gidley King, born in England in 1758, came as one of Captain Arthur Phillip’s officers with the First Fleet of convicts to Australia. After the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in January 1788, King was appointed Superintendent and Commandant of the proposed settlement at Norfolk Island. He led a party of fifteen convicts and seven free men to take control of the island and prepare for its commercial development. The island proved to be crucial, developing as a farm and supplying Sydney with grain and vegetables during the early years of the colony’s near starvation.
Although Governor Arthur Phillip recommended King as his successor in 1795, that position went to Captain John Hunter. However, King then succeeded Hunter in September 1800 to become the third Governor of New South Wales. As Governor, he sought to place controls on the corrupt liquor trade, which had developed as the New South Wales Corps began importing large quantities of rum as a means of controlling the convict population. It was a particularly lucrative trade, and despite King’s attempts at prohibition, trafficking in both imported and home-distilled rum continued, even among the highest colonial officials. It was King’s discouragement with the NSW Corps, and the open hostilities with them that led him to resign in 1804. However, his successor, William Bligh, did not arrive in the colony until 1806. King ended his term as Governor on 12 August 1806.
Despite the enormous difficulties King faced, he was a man of initiative and vision. He regarded the indigenous Australians “the real Proprietors of the Soil”. He did much to build and develop the colony, improving the quality and quantity of the government’s sheep and cattle herds; he established the first coal-mines; he encouraged the growth of a variety of crops; and he assisted the development of the whaling and sealing industries. King sent out exploration missions to try to cross the impassable barrier of the Blue Mountains, and established a colony in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). He also established the first official colonial newspaper, the Sydney Gazette.
Australian History
Wednesday, August 12, 1829. : The city of Perth, Western Australia, is founded.
The first official landing of a European on the north-western coast of Australia occurred when Dutch captain Dirk Hartog landed near Cape Inscription in 1616. Although further Dutch sightings of Australia followed as the route became more popular and the land became known as “New Holland”, the Dutch saw no value in the dry and barren country.
Although the northwest was forbidding and inhospitable, the southwestern corner held more promise. Dutch sea-captain Willem de Vlamingh named the Swan River in 1697 because of the black swans he saw in abundance there while exploring the area. The name remained for the early years of British settlement.
The city of Perth, capital of Western Australia, grew up around the Swan River, and was therefore originally known as the Swan River Colony, proclaimed thus in June 1829, under the command of Captain James Stirling. The city itself started out as a free colony that year with the arrival of around 100 pioneer men, women and children on the barque Parmelia, escorted by military personnel aboard the HMS Sulphur. The name of Perth was suggested by Sir George Murray, Secretary of State for the Colonies and War in 1829. The settlement of the Swan River Colony/Perth was founded with the ceremonial cutting down of a she oak tree, by Mrs Helen Dance, on a site close to the present Town Hall, on 12 August 1829. Mrs Dance was the third choice for the ceremony: Captain Stirling’s wife had just had a baby while the wife of Mr John Roe, second in command, was pregnant. Mrs Dance was the wife of the Commander of HMS Sulphur.
World History
Sunday, August 12, 1883. : The last known specimen of the Quagga, a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, dies in captivity in Amsterdam.
The Quagga is a recently extinct subspecies of the Plains Zebra. Unlike other zebras, with their full-body black and white stripes, the quagga was striped only on the front part of its body, with its hindquarters a solid, darker brown rather than white. This creature once roamed Cape Province and parts of South Africa in great numbers, inhabiting the Karoo and southern Free State of South Africa. Because it was seen by the settlers as competition for the grazing of their livestock, the quagga was hunted to extinction by the 1870s.
The last known specimen died in an Amsterdam Zoo on 12 August 1883. However, since then, a breeding-back programme has commenced to attempt to retrieve the genes that create the distinctive striped pattern of the quagga, through selective breeding of the southern Plains Zebras.
World History
Friday, August 12, 1977. : The space shuttle ‘Enterprise’, named after the Star Trek space module, passes its first solo flight test.
The space shuttle, or shuttle orbiter, was intended to be a reusable space-travelling vehicle. Initially, the space shuttle did not use rockets, but rode on the back of a Boeing 747, being tested first on the ground, then in a series of eight “captive flight tests” in the air. On 12 August 1977, Enterprise took off on the back of a 747, separating from the 747 at an altitude of 24,100 feet. It flew alone for more than five minutes before landing on a dry lake bed. Approximately 65,000 people watched the flight and landing.
When the prototype was developed, thousands of fans of the science fiction series “Star Trek” wrote to NASA requesting that it be called ‘Enterprise’, rather than the originally-planned ‘Constitution’. Appropriately, the ‘Enterprise’ of Star Trek fame had itself had been named after historical maritime vessels. Many of the cast of the original series, together with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, were present at the dedication ceremony, which featured the Star Trek theme music. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, a mural in Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s office depicts this Space Shuttle as one of the starship’s own namesakes. The shuttle also features in the opening credits of the series Star Trek: Enterprise. Even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine later pictured a model of the International Space Station with the Space Shuttle Enterprise docked with it. However, the ‘Enterprise’ was only ever designed as a test vehicle, being constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, so it has never actually travelled between Earth and space. It now sits on display in the Smithsonian Institute.
World History
Monday, August 12, 1985. : Over 500 are killed as a Japanese jumbo jet crashes into a mountain 112km from Tokyo.
On 12 August 1985, Japan Airlines flight 123 took off at 6:12 PM, bound from Tokyo International Airport, Tokyo, to Osaka International Airport, Itami, Hyogo. 10 minutes into the flight, the pilot told air traffic control that he planned to return to make an emergency landing, as a door at the rear of the plane was damaged. Two minutes later, the pilot lost control of the aircraft, crashing it first into Mount Osutaka and then into Mount Takahamagara in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. All 15 crew were killed, as were 505 passengers out of 509 aboard the aircraft.
The aircraft had been in a tailstrike accident 7 years earlier. Investigations into the 1985 crash revealed that the subsequent repair to the aircraft’s rear bulkhead had been faulty, and joining two bits of fuselage had left the section up to 70% less resistant to decompression. Several people who were employed by the Boeing company in Japan at the time of the repair committed suicide, unable to bear the ramifications of what had happened.
World History
Saturday, August 12, 2000. : The Russian submarine ‘Kursk’ explodes and sinks in the Barents Sea, killing 118 men.
The ‘Kursk’ was launched in 1994. It was 155 metres long and four storeys high, with a double hull that theoretically made it unsinkable. It was on an exercise of firing dummy torpedoes at a battlecruiser on the morning of 12 August 2000, when an explosion ripped through the first two of nine compartments. The explosion was probably caused by explosive propellant seeping through rust in the torpedo casing when the submarine fired its torpedoes. The hydrogen peroxide propellant reacted with copper and brass in the tube from which the torpedo was fired, causing a chemical explosion.
It was standard practice to leave open the watertight door isolating the torpedo room from the rest of the submarine, and this facilitated the spread of the explosion before the captain had time to send a distress signal. As the ‘Kursk’ hit the seabed, more on-board torpedoes exploded, registering 1.5 on the Richter scale. The torpedo explosion blasted a two-metre-square hole in the hull and ripped open the third and fourth compartments, which caused water to pour in, killing all within those compartments. 118 men died in the tragedy. There were no survivors.
Special Days
Sunday, August 12, 2012. : Today is World Elephant Day.
Elephants are the world’s largest land animal. There are two species of elephants in the world, African and Asian, with the African being the larger of the two. African elephants can reach a height of 3m at the shoulder and weigh over 6000 kg. African and Asian elephants are distinguishable by the shape and size of their ears: African elephants have larger ears that are roughly in the shape of the African continent. African elephants also have two “fingers” at the end of their trunk which enable them to pick up objects, whereas Asian elephants have a single finger.
Poaching of elephant tusks for the ivory trade has led to around 90% of African elephants being wiped out in the last hundred years. The population of Asian elephants has also declined by around 50%. Besides poaching, habitat loss and conflict between humans and elephants together with mistreatment of elephants in captivity, have contributed to decreased populations.
Many wildlife organisations around the world continue to work to maintain and preserve elephant numbers. Conservation methods include preserving wild elephant habitats; improved treatment of elephants in captivity, together with reintroducing rehabilitated elephants into protected sanctuaries; and more effectively enforcing policies against illegal poaching and the ivory trade. On 12 August 2012, World Elephant Day was launched to raise awareness of the need to protect these magnificent mammals before they are hunted to extinction. It has become a day on which people are encouraged to support efforts to help ensure the survival of elephants, as well as celebrate elephants for the unique and beautiful creatures that they are.