Australian History

Friday, December 31, 1790. :   Enough barley is harvested in the penal colony of New South Wales to alleviate impending starvation.

The First Fleet, containing the officers and convicts who would first settle Australia, arrived in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788. The colony’s Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, immediately determined that there was insufficient fresh water, an absence of usable timber, poor quality soil and no safe harbour at Botany Bay. Thus, the fleet was moved to Port Jackson, arriving on 26 January 1788.

The penal colony of New South Wales struggled, but managed to survive largely through the efforts of Governor Phillip. He was a practical man who had suggested that convicts with experience in farming, building and crafts be included in the First Fleet, but his proposal was rejected. Phillip faced many obstacles in his attempts to establish the new colony. The convicts were not skilled in farming, and unwilling to work hard in the intense heat and humidity of Australia. British farming methods, seeds and implements were unsuitable for use in the different climate and soil, and the colony faced near-starvation in its first two years. On 31 December 1790, twenty-five bushels of barley were successfully harvested. This went a long way towards alleviating food shortages. The colony finally succeeded in developing a solid foundation, agriculturally and economically, thanks to the perseverance of Captain Arthur Phillip.

Australian History

Thursday, December 31, 1914. :   The second convoy of AIF troops departs Albany, Western Australia, to fight in World War I.

Australia’s involvement in World War I began in earnest in early August 1914 when Australian Prime Minister Joseph Cook pledged support, offering Britain 20 000 troops, and stating that “…when the Empire is at war, so also is Australia.” Cook’s offer was accepted by the British government, which requested that the troops be sent “as soon as possible”. At this time, Australia had a population of approximately 4 million, meaning that the defence forces could draw from a pool of around 820 000 men of ‘fighting age’, i.e., 19-38. By the end of 1914, 50 000 eligible men who met the minimum height requirement of 5 feet 6 inches, or 168cm, had joined up, while thousands more were turned away on medical grounds. The first convoy of ANZACs, or Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, departed from King George Sound, Albany in Western Australia on the first day of November 1914.

The second contingent of troops departed Albany on 31 December 1914. Following training in Egypt and the Middle East, many of these troops were among those who landed in Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.

Australian History

Thursday, December 31, 1964. :   Donald Campbell breaks the world water speed record.

Donald Malcolm Campbell was born on 23 March 1921 in Horley, Surrey, England. He became the only person to ever break both the world land speed and water speed records in the same year. He broke the land speed record in July 1964 on a Lake Eyre salt flat in northern South Australia, with a speed of 648.72 km per hour.

Campbell set seven world water-speed records between 1955 and 1964. The first was at Lake Ullswater on 23 July 1955, where he set a record of 325 km per hour. He continued to break records until the culmination of his attempts, on 31 December 1964 at Dumbleyung Lake, Western Australia, when he reached 444.71 km per hour in his jet-powered boat, Bluebird. Prior to this, he had attempted to break the record at several other locations around Australia, including Lake Bonney, South Australia, where the weather had proved too unpredictable. Campbell’s initial attempt at Lake Dumbleyung was thwarted by wild ducks which could not fly away because they were moulting. Winds then whipped up 61cm waves on the lake, preventing any attempt from being made. Campbell was about to move to another lake south of Perth when the weather suddenly calmed, allowing the attempt to be made at Dumbleyung.

Campbell was killed three years later while attempting to break his record yet again, this time on Lake Coniston, Cumbria. Just before his Bluebird K7 broke the record, travelling at more than 483 km per hour, the boat’s nose lifted and it was catapulted 15m into the air. Campbell was killed instantly as the boat hit the water and disintegrated. His body was not recovered from the wreckage at the bottom of the lake for another 34 years.

World History

Sunday, December 31, 1600. :   Queen Elizabeth I grants a Royal Charter to the Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies, later the East India Company.

The East India Company was an early English company formed for the purpose of developing trade with the East Indies. Not to be confused with the Dutch East India Company, the EIC was established as Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies after being granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600. The charter gave the company a monopoly on trade with the East Indies, specifically, all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. This was to safeguard the profits of the 125 initial shareholders and the Governor, Sir Thomas Smythe.

The first four ships of the East India Company departed England less than two months later, under the command of James Lancaster, and returned in 1603, having successfully traded for pepper. During the ensuing years, Lancaster established a factory in the city of Bantam on the island of Java. At first, the English company faced considerable opposition from the Dutch-based United East India Company, which prevented the East India Company from obtaining other spices such as cloves, nutmeg and mace from the Bandas and Moluccas Islands in eastern Indonesia. However, after the British moved into India, establishing a profitable factory in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal, the East India Company found itself in a position of greater power, which eventually consolidated its success in the Pacific arena.

World History

Monday, December 31, 1696. :   King William III introduces the window tax, causing many people to brick over their windows.

Travelling through parts of the United Kingdom today, numerous buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries with bricked-up window-spaces may be observed. This was a direct result of the window tax, introduced by King William III on 31 December 1696.

The window tax was a glass tax designed to impact on the wealthy who resided in larger houses with many windows. The people of England opposed income tax on the basis that it was an intrusion into one’s privacy. The window tax was intended to circumvent this invasion of privacy. Initially, the tax involved a flat-rate house tax of 2 shillings per house and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten windows. Properties with ten to twenty windows paid a total of four shillings, and those above twenty windows paid eight shillings.

The tax was unpopular as residents saw it as a tax on light and air. In order to avoid paying, many bricked over their windows, whilst the extremely wealthy ostentatiously included even more windows on their properties, as a public display of their wealth. The window tax was repealed in 1851 and replaced by House Duty.

World History

Tuesday, December 31, 1918. :   The performance of Beethoven’s Ninth by German POWs spawns a Japanese tradition of playing the symphony for New Year’s celebrations.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a brilliant and passionate composer of the Classical-Romantic era. His talent was recognised when he was very young, but only began to develop fully after he moved to Vienna in 1792 and studied under Joseph Haydn. This marked his “Early” composing career, when he tended to write music in the style of his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart.

Beethoven’s “Middle” period of composing began shortly after he was beset with deafness. His music of this period tended towards large-scale works expressing heroism and struggle, and included six symphonies, commencing with the “Eroica”, and including the rich and penetrating Fifth Symphony.

The “Late” period of Beethoven’s career encompassed the final eleven years of his life, and his compositions reflected his personal expression in their depth and intensity. Among the works of this period are the Ninth Symphony.

During World War I, the Japanese were treated for the first time to a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. In the Spring of 1918, German prisoners-of-war in the Bando POW camp in Tokushima prefecture performed the symphony using an improvised orchestra playing instruments they had partly made themselves. Following their rendition, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became very popular in Japan. Since that time, the performance of the Ninth has gradually developed into an annual New Year’s tradition. Indeed, the world standard of 72 minutes of playing time for CDs was set in Japan in 1970, to ensure the entire symphony could be recorded on a single CD.

World History

Sunday, December 31, 1995. :   The final new Calvin and Hobbs comic strip is drawn.

Calvin and Hobbes is a cartoon strip by cartoonist Bill Watterson. It features a six-year-old boy, Calvin, whose mischievous nature is the bane of everyone around him, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, which only Calvin sees as real and alive. The characters are named after 16th-century French Reformation theologian John Calvin, and Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher from the 17th century.

Watterson began drawing cartoons as a sideline while working in advertising. After experiencing numerous rejections for his work, Watterson was encouraged by some interest shown in one of his minor characters who was the younger brother of the main subject: this character became Calvin. The strip was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate, and first published on 18 November 1985.

Calvin and Hobbes enjoyed an immensely successful run, earning Watterson the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society, in the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year category, in both 1986 and 1988. He was also awarded the Humor Comic Strip Award for 1988. Despite his success, Watterson reached the point where he felt he could not develop the strip or the characters according to syndicate constraints any further and, fearing a stalemate, ended Calvin and Hobbes on a high, with the final cartoon being published on 31 December 1995. Many newspapers around the world continue to run the strip as a weekly feature. Watterson has never accepted any merchandising deals for his comic strip, feeling it would “cheapen” it. Because Calvin and Hobbes items are so rare, in 2012 an original 1986 comic strip by Watterson was sold for a record-breaking price of $203,150.

World History

Friday, December 31, 1999. :   Millennium celebrations are held around the world.

A millennium is a period of one thousand years. Because the Western calendar lacks a year numbered zero and begins instead with the year 1, there are two main viewpoints about naming millennia: whether each one begins on the year ending in ‘000’ (e.g., the years 1000 and 2000) or whether the new millennium commences with the year ending in 001 (e.g., 1001, 2001). Australian Prime Minister John Howard made a point in favour of celebrating the millennium at the end of 2001, and was named “the party pooper of the century” by local newspapers.

Regardless of the semantic debate, the majority of millennium celebrations around the world were held on the evening of 31 December 1999. Celebrations began at 1000 GMT as the Chatham Islands, Tonga, Fiji and Kiribati experienced the new millennium first. The millennium arrived last of all in Samoa, 25 hours after arriving in Greenwich.