August 25
Australian Explorers Monday, August 25, 1828. : Explorer Allan Cunningham discovers Cunningham’s Gap. Australian explorer Allan Cunningham was born in Wimbledon, England, on 13 July 1791. As a botanist who came to Australia suffering from tuberculosis, he found that Australia’s climate helped him regain some of his health, and he was anxious to discover more of the […]
August 21
Australian Explorers Monday, August 21, 1820. : Joseph Wild discovers the enigmatic Lake George, near Canberra. Lake George, in south-eastern New South Wales, Australia, and about a half hour’s drive from the nation’s capital of Canberra, has a basin about 25km long and 10km wide. The Lake is unusual in that it is renowned for emptying and […]
August 17
Australian Explorers Tuesday, August 17, 1813. : Matthew Flinders writes to Sir Joseph Banks, outlining his reasons for suggesting New Holland be called Australia, after Banks disapproves of the name. Australia was previously named New Holland by the Dutch sea explorers who landed on the western coast in the early 1600s. James Cook claimed the eastern coast […]
August 03
Born on this day Saturday, August 3, 1811. : Elisha Otis, inventor of the automatic safety brake for elevators, is born. Elisha Graves Otis was born in Halifax, Vermont, USA, on 3 August 1811. As a young man, circumstances caused Otis to change jobs many times. It was while he was working for a New York bed […]
August 12
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 […]
August 08
Australian Explorers Sunday, August 8, 1802. : Explorer Matthew Flinders discovers Port Curtis in Queensland, now the site of Gladstone. Matthew Flinders was an English sea explorer, and the first European to circumnavigate Australia. Between December 1801 and June 1803, Flinders charted the entire coastline of Australia. In July 1802, he undertook to survey the coast of […]
August 20
Australian Explorers Wednesday, August 20, 1794. : Henry Hacking leads one of the earliest expeditions to cross the Blue Mountains. When the First Fleet landed on Australian soil in 1788, the European settlers began almost immediately to explore the new land they now occupied. In the early months, Governor Arthur Phillip set out to explore Sydney Harbour […]
August 18
Australian History Friday, August 18, 1786. : The decision is made in England to colonise New South Wales with convicts from Britain’s overcrowded gaols. Conditions in England in the 18th century were tough: the industrial revolution had removed many people’s opportunities to earn an honest wage as simpler tasks were replaced by machine labour. As unemployment rose, […]
August 15
Born on this day Tuesday, August 15, 1769. : Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, is born. Napoléon Bonaparte was born Napoleone Buonaparte in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, was an attorney and Corsica’s representative to the court of Louis XVI of France in 1778, so Napoleon later adopted a more French form […]
August 26
Australian Explorers Friday, August 26, 1768. : James Cook departs Plymouth on the journey during which he sights the east coast of Australia. In 1768, Lieutenant James Cook was commissioned with the task of observing the transit of Venus across the sun from the vantage point of Tahiti. The transit occurs when the planet Venus passes directly […]