Australian Explorers
Tuesday, January 9, 1816. : Explorer James Kelly lands at Port Dalrymple, Tasmania, where he is arrested as a bushranger.
Captain James Kelly was born in Parramatta, New South Wales, in 1791. As a young man, he was inducted into the trades of sealer and sandalwood trader. At the age of 21, Kelly was enlisted to command the whaling fleet of Thomas William Birch of Hobart Town. In 1815, Kelly embarked on a journey to circumnavigate Tasmania in a whaleboat, with the view to exploring the commercial potential along the Tasmanian coast.
During Kelly’s first month spent exploring around Tasmania, he discovered a number of useful inlets and rivers. On 9 January 1816, Kelly and his men sailed into Port Dalrymple where they were initially believed to be bushrangers, and arrested accordingly. The mistake was soon rectified, the men’s food supplies were replenished, and they were given fresh clothing. The party continued south down the eastern coast, arriving in Hobart Town on 30 January 1816.
Australian History
Thursday, January 9, 1868. : The last ship to transport convicts to Western Australia docks at Fremantle.
The Swan River colony, established on Australia’s western coast in 1829, was begun as a free settlement. Captain Charles Fremantle declared the Swan River Colony for Britain on 2 May 1829. The first ships with free settlers to arrive were the Parmelia on June 1 and HMS Sulphur on June 8. Three merchant ships arrived 4-6 weeks later: the Calista on August 5, the St Leonard on August 6 and the Marquis of Anglesey on August 23. Although the population spread out in search of good land, mainly settling around the southwestern coastline at Bunbury, Augusta and Albany, the two original separate townsites of the colony developed slowly into the port city of Fremantle and the Western Australian capital city of Perth.
For the first fifteen years, the people of the colony were generally opposed to accepting convicts, although the idea was occasionally debated, especially by those who sought to employ convict labour for building projects. Serious lobbying for Western Australia to become a penal colony began in 1845 when the York Agricultural Society petitioned the Legislative Council to bring convicts out from England on the grounds that the colony’s economy was on the brink of collapse due to an extreme shortage of labour. Whilst later examination of the circumstances proves that there was no such shortage of labour in the colony, the petition found its way to the British Colonial Office, which in turn agreed to send out a small number of convicts to Swan River.
The first group of convicts to populate Fremantle arrived on 1 June 1850. Between 1850 and 1868, ultimately 9721 convicts were transported to Western Australia. The last convict ship to Western Australia, the Hougoumont, left Britain in 1867 and docked at Fremantle in Western Australia on 9 January 1868. It carried 108 passengers and 279 convicts.
Australian History
Wednesday, January 9, 2013. : A dust storm off Onslow, in the northwest of Australia, creates what looks like a huge red ocean wave.
Australia is the driest continent on Earth, apart from Antarctica, and dust storms are common in its interior. Dust storms have also been known to occur in coastal areas, particularly where the terrain is made up of extensive flat and featureless plains. The small town of Onslow, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia’s northwest, is one such area. Thunderstorms are not uncommon in the area, where monsoon moisture meets the heat of the land, giving rise to violent thunderstorms.
The summer of 2012-2013 had already been excessively hot, with temperatures averaging between minimums of 26 degrees Celsius and daily maximums of 37.8 degrees. The hottest day in January 2013 had reached 46.8 degrees. On 9 January 2013, a huge thunderstorm developed in the northwest of the state. At 7:30pm, winds were gusting to 102 kilometres per hour, while temperatures dropped suddenly, signifying air flowing out from the storm. As the storm broke, the gusting winds picked up tonnes of red dust, carrying it out to sea over the Indian Ocean. Passing over the Indian Ocean, with wind gusts increasing to 120 kilometres per hour, the storm dumped the red sand and dust in what looked like an enormous red wave towering over the surface and extending over a wide front. The spectacular photographs appeared around the world, a showcase of the amazing displays of nature in Australia.
World History
Tuesday, January 9, 1816. : The Davy safety lamp is first utilised in a coal mine, initially terrifying the miners who fear an explosion.
British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy was born at Penzance in Cornwall on 17 December 1778. Davy is renowned for his invention of the miner’s safety lamp. Mining explosions were frequently caused by firedamp or methane which was often ignited by the open flames of the lamps used by coal miners. Davy pioneered a method of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp’s flame, and so prevent the methane burning inside the lamp from passing out to the general atmosphere.
The Davy safety lamp was first used in an English coalmine on 9 January 1816. Reverend John Hodgson elected to take down a lamp, knowing it was safe, but not warning the coalminers of his intention. A miner, seeing the approaching light and knowing of the potential danger of explosions, yelled at him to put out the light, trembling with terror as the Reverend ignored the warning and came closer. It is unknown what the minister’s motivation was, but he later admitted that he had subjected the miner to undue terror.
Whilst Davy’s design had flaws of its own, the concept was taken up by other inventors who perfected it. The Davy safety lamp greatly reduced the number of mining accidents.
World History
Wednesday, January 9, 1861. : Mississippi becomes the second US state to secede from the Union, precipitating the American Civil War.
The first African slaves arrived in north America in 1526, and though the practice of slavery took many years to become popular, it thrived under British colonialism. On 1 January 1808 American Congress voted to ban further importation of slaves, but children of slaves automatically became slaves themselves. There was no legislation against the internal US slave trade, or against the involvement in the international slave trade and the outfitting of ships for that trade by US citizens.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was not in favour of abolition of slavery, but he opposed its expansion into new territories and states in the American West. It was this issue that led to the secession of the southern states to form the Confederate States of America, and ultimately also led to the Civil War. On 20 December 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede. The second state to secede was Mississippi, on 9 January 1861. Within a few weeks, five other states also seceded, collectively forming the Confederate States of America. When the Civil War erupted, another four states joined the Confederacy.
World History
Sunday, January 9, 1972. : Former ocean liner, the Queen Elizabeth, is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour.
The RMS Queen Elizabeth was a steam-powered ocean liner of the Cunard Steamship Company. The ship was named after Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI of the UK and queen consort at the time it was built. It was launched in Scotland on 27 September 1938, and initially used as a transport vehicle during World War II. In 1946, the ship left Southampton, England, on its first run across the Atlantic as a luxurious ocean liner. It was retired from service in 1968. Queen Elizabeth was the largest passenger steamship ever constructed and held the record for the largest passenger ship of any kind until being surpassed in 1996 by the Carnival Destiny.
In 1968, the Queen Elizabeth was sold to a group of US businessmen who planned to develop the ship into a hotel and tourist attraction. Generating huge debts and forced to close after being declared a fire hazard, it was sold in 1970 to C W Tung, a Taiwanese shipping tycoon, who intended to transform it into a mobile, floating university. Renamed the Seawise University, the ship was destroyed by fire on 9 January 1972, in Hong Kong harbour. The wreck sank to the bottom of the harbour, where it remains today.
World History
Tuesday, January 9, 2001. : A man being strangled by a python frees himself by biting the snake on the neck.
On 9 January 2001, Johannesburg newspaper “The Star” reported that a man had won his freedom from a fierce constricting rock python by biting it on the neck. 57 year old council worker Lucas Sibanda had been walking home along a narrow, tree-lined pathway when the python began heading for him. Sibanda froze in fear, allowing the snake to curl around him and begin constricting in its attempts to suffocate the victim. Realising there was nothing he could do, as the snake’s head reached his own, Sibanda bit it sharply on its neck, kicking and punching until the snake loosened itself. He then grabbed a stick to finish off the snake, taking it home as a trophy to show his family.