Australian History
Saturday, December 10, 1859. : Today is Proclamation Day, marking Queensland’s official separation from New South Wales.
When the First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788, the entire eastern half of Australia came under the name of New South Wales. The colony of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) was established in 1825, and Victoria (Port Phillip District) separated from New South Wales in 1851. The first settlement in what is now Queensland was established at Redcliffe in 1824, and later moved to Brisbane. The first free settlers moved to the area in 1838.
In 1859, Queen Victoria signed Letters Patent, which declared that Queensland was now a separate colony from New South Wales. Queenslanders celebrate June 6 every year as Queensland Day, the day which marks the birth of Queensland as a self-governing colony.
Queensland separated from New South Wales on 10 December 1859, and this has now come to be known as “Proclamation Day”. The western border was set at 141 degrees East. On this day, the new Queensland ensign, a light blue flag with a red St George’s cross, and union jack in its upper left-hand corner, was raised. On 1 January 1901, Queensland became one of the six founding States of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Australian History
Tuesday, December 10, 1878. : Bushranger Ned Kelly robs the Euroa bank.
Ned Kelly, Australia’s most famous bushranger, was born in December 1854 in Beveridge, Victoria. Kelly was twelve when his father died, and he was subsequently required to leave school to take on the new position as head of the family. Shortly after this, the Kellys moved to Glenrowan. As a teenager, Ned became involved in petty crimes, regularly targetting the wealthy landowners. He gradually progressed to crimes of increasing seriousness and violence, including bank robbery and murder, soon becoming a hunted man. Ned Kelly’s gang consisted of himself, his brother Dan, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.
One of Kelly’s more daring bank robberies was carried out on 10 December 1878. Kelly and his gang rode into the Victorian town of Euroa, where they robbed the National Bank of about 2000 pounds. As a result of this robbery, the reward for their capture was increased to 1000 pounds each.
Australian History
Wednesday, December 10, 1919. : Brothers Ross and Keith Smith win the Australian air race to fly from England to Australia in under 30 days.
The first powered flight in Australia was achieved by Harry Houdini while he was visiting Victoria, in 1910. 1912 saw the establishment of military aviation and the deployment of the Australian Flying Corps in World War I. In 1919, Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes announced the Federal Government was offering a £10,000 prize for the first Australian to fly from England to Australia in under 30 days.
Brothers Keith and Ross Smith were two of the competitors. Ross, born 4 December 1892 in Adelaide was first pilot, while his brother Keith, born on 20 December 1890, also in Adelaide, was navigator and co-pilot. Both men had served in World War I. Together with mechanics James ‘Jim’ Bennett and WH ‘Wally’ Shiers, they departed Hounslow, England on 12 November 1919 in a large Vickers Vimy bomber on a 18 250-kilometre marathon journey.
The route took them across the Middle East, India and south-east Asia. They headed first to Basra, Iraq then on to Delhi, India. From there they continued on to Singora in Thailand, Surabaya in East Java, Indonesia and finally, Timor, from where they made the final crossing to Australia. Flying conditions were harsh and hazardous, as it was cramped and freezing in the open cockpit, with low visibility. The aircraft had to land frequently for refuelling, repairs or due to bad weather, and landing strips were often poor quality. However, the aeroplane landed in Darwin at 3.50 pm on 10 December 1919, well within the time limit specified in the race conditions. In all, the men spent around 136 hours in the air on a journey that took 28 days, flying at an average 137 kilometres per hour. Of the six other contestants in the race, only one other aircraft completed the journey.
The four men shared equally in the prize money. The Smith brothers were knighted, while Shiers and Bennett were commissioned and awarded Bars to their Air Force Medals. In April 1922, while preparing for a record-breaking around the world flight, Ross Smith and Bennett were killed in a crash. Keith died of cancer in 1955, and Shiers died in 1968. The Vickers Vimy bomber used on this epic journey is on permanent display at Adelaide Airport.
World History
Friday, December 10, 1520. : German theologian and Christian reformer, Martin Luther, publicly burns a papal edict demanding he recant his doctrines.
Martin Luther was a German theologian and Augustinian monk whose teachings inspired the Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines of the Protestant churches in general, and the Lutheran church in particular. Luther openly questioned the teachings of the Roman Catholic church, in particular, the nature of penance, the authority of the pope and the usefulness of indulgences.
The Reformation of the church began on 31 October 1517, with Luther’s act of posting his Ninety-Five Theses, more fully known as the “Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences”, on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The document contained an attack on papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials. Controversy raged over the posting of the 95 Theses. Luther was excommunicated several years later from the Roman Catholic church for his attacks on the wealth and corruption of the papacy, and his belief that salvation would be granted on the basis of faith alone rather than by works.
On 10 December 1520, Luther publicly burned Pope Leo X’s bull “Exsurge Domine,” which demanded that Luther recant his heresies, including his doctrine of justification by faith alone. The following year, Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms. The Diet was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that occurred in Worms, Germany, from January to May in 1521. When an edict of the Diet called for Luther’s seizure, his friends took him for safekeeping to Wartburg, the castle of Elector Frederick III of Saxony. Here, Luther continued to write his prolific theological works, which greatly influenced the direction of the Protestant Reformation movement.
World History
Friday, December 10, 1582. : France adopts the Gregorian calendar.
The Gregorian calendar, widely adopted in the western world, was initially decreed by Pope Gregory XIII on 24 February 1582. The Gregorian calendar was first proposed by Aloysius Lilius because the mean year in the Julian Calendar was slightly long, causing the vernal equinox to slowly advance earlier in the calendar year.
On 5 October 1582, the Gregorian calendar was adopted for the first time by Catholic countries such as Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal. On 10 December 1582, France began using the Gregorian calendar.
Non-Catholic countries such as Scotland, Britain and the latter’s colonies still used the Julian calendar up until 1752, and some Asian countries were still using the Julian calendar up until the early twentieth century.
World History
Thursday, December 10, 1896. : Alfred Nobel, benefactor of the Nobel Prizes, dies, eight years after reading his own obituary.
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 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
Wednesday, December 10, 1997. : Environmentalist, Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill, commences living high in a redwood tree in California to prevent its destruction.
Julia “Butterfly” Hill is an American environmentalist who, at the age of 23, lived in a giant California Redwood tree to prevent it from being felled. Appalled by the destruction of the redwood forest in Humboldt County, California, Hill climbed into the 54-metre high, 1,000-year-old California Redwood tree nicknamed “Luna” on 10 December 1997. She lived there for 738 days, finally coming down on 18 December 1999. Her actions were designed to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting down the tree. She lived in a small 2m x 2.5m shelter that she had built with the help of volunteers.
Hill only agreed to come down out of “Luna” when the Pacific Lumber Company agreed to preserve all trees within a 3-acre buffer zone. In 1999, Hill and other activists founded the environmental organisation “Circle of Life”, which continues to work towards preserving the natural environment. Hill herself became the youngest person to be inducted into the Ecology Hall of Fame.