Born on this day
Saturday, March 6, 1475. : Michelangelo, Renaissance sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, is born.
Michelangelo was born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni on 6 March 1475 near Tuscany, Italy. Young Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later lived with a sculptor and his wife in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Initially studying in linguistics, Michelangelo went against his father’s wishes and took up an apprenticeship in painting with Domenico Ghirlandaio and in sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni.
Ghirlandaio was so impressed with his young protege that he recommended him to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the ruler of the Florentine republic and a great patron of the arts. After demonstrating his mastery of sculpture in such works as the Pietý (1498) and David (1504), he was commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the chief consecrated space in the Vatican. Michelangelo spent four years painting the epic ceiling frescoes, depicting detailed Biblical scenes. There are nine panels devoted to biblical world history, the most famous of which is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are stretching toward each other. Michelangelo’s frescoes on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome were first shown to the public on 1 November 1512. Other famous frescoes of Michelangelo include The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo was also a skilled architect, designing the Dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the Laurentian Library in Florence at the church of San Lorenzo, transforming the Campidoglio and completing the Palazzo Farnese, considered the most beautiful palace of Rome, after the death of its previous designer, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
Michelangelo died on 18 February 1564, aged 88.
Born on this day
Saturday, March 6, 1937. : Russian Valentina Tereshkova, who would become the first woman in space, is born.
Valentina Tereshkova was born in a small village in the Yaroslavl Oblast in western Russia on 6 March 1937. She was interested in parachuting and flight from a young age, and made her first jump when she was 22, on 21 May 1959. Although a humble textile-factory assembly worker by trade, it was her expertise in parachute jumping that resulted in her selection as a cosmonaut.
Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and the only woman to ever fly solo in space. She was the fifth Russian cosmonaut to go into the Earth’s orbit when her spaceship Vostok VI was launched on 16 June 1963. She completed 49 orbits of the Earth in two days, 22 hours and fifty minutes. Even though there were plans for further female flights, it was 19 years before the second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space.
Australian History
Thursday, March 6, 1788. : Lieutenant Philip Gidley King establishes the first settlement on Norfolk Island.
Norfolk Island is a small island with an area of just under 35 square kilometres. It lies approximately 1500 km east of Brisbane and 1700 km northeast of Sydney. Along with two neighbouring islands, Phillip Island and Nepean Island, it forms one of Australia’s external territories.
The first European to discover Norfolk was Captain Cook, on 10 October 1774. Cook’s reports of tall, straight trees (Norfolk pines) and flax-like plants piqued the interest of Britain, whose Royal Navy was dependent on flax for sails and hemp for ropes from Baltic Sea ports. Norfolk Island promised a ready supply of these items, and its tall pines could be utilised as ships’ masts. Thus, Governor Arthur Phillip, Captain of the First Fleet to New South Wales, was ordered to also colonise Norfolk Island, before the French could take it.
Within a few weeks of the First Fleet arriving at Port Jackson in January 1788, Governor Phillip ordered Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to lead a party of fifteen convicts and seven free men to take control of the island and prepare for its commercial development. They arrived on 6 March 1788, and King raised the British flag to claim the island. The settlement established at the landing point on the southern coast of the island was named Sydney Bay, but shortly afterwards changed to avoid confusion with Sydney in New South Wales. It was subsequently named “King’s Town” after King, and is now known as Kingston.
Due to the softness of the Norfolk pine wood, the trees proved unsuitable to use as masts. The flax industry also proved to be unviable, and the island developed as a farm, supplying Sydney with grain and vegetables during the early years of the colony’s near starvation. More convicts were sent, and many chose to remain after they had served their sentences. By 1792, four years after its initial settlement, the population was over 1000.
Although the penal colony was the first of three distinct settlements at different times on Norfolk Island, the day of King’s landing is still commemorated every year as “Foundation Day”, and observed as a public holiday.
World History
Friday, March 6, 1987. : 193 are killed as a car ferry, the ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’, capsizes just outside Zeebrugge, Belgium, enroute to England.
M/S Herald of Free Enterprise was a car and passenger ferry which worked the English Channel ferry routes between Dover and Calais, and Dover and Zeebrugge. In the early evening of 6 March 1987, as the ferry departed the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on its way to Dover, England, it capsized in calm conditions and shallow water. The ferry had a crew of 80 and carried 459 passengers, 81 cars, 3 buses, and 47 trucks. It capsized in about 90 seconds after leaving the harbour, causing many people to be trapped inside. 193 died, many succumbing to hypothermia in the freezing waters of the channel.
Investigations later revealed that the ferry left port with her bow doors open and the extra ballast still in her tanks. Due to the crew’s failure to close the bow door, water began flowing onto the car deck and the vessel quickly became unstable. The captain turned rapidly to starboard, causing the ferry to capsize onto a sandbar rather than in deeper waters. As a result of this tragedy and a second ferry disaster when the Estonia sank in 1994 with the loss of 850 lives, new safety measures were implemented in 1999, such as the installation of cameras so the crew can see from the bridge whether or not the doors have been closed before sailing.
World History
Sunday, March 6, 1994. : The second Biosphere 2 mission begins.
Biosphere 2 is an artificial, sealed ecological system in the desert outside Oracle, Arizona. It was built in the late 1980s, to test whether people could live and study in a closed, isolated environment, whilst carrying out scientific experiments. Biosphere 2 was designed as an airtight replica of Earth’s environment, and included a 3,406,000-litre ocean, rainforest, a desert, agricultural areas and a human habitat. It was called Biosphere 2, because Earth itself is considered the first biosphere. The experiment was intended to explore the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonisation.
The first mission involved four men and four women living in the Biosphere for two years from 26 September 1991 until 26 September 1993. The experiment lost some credibility when oxygen and other necessities were required to be provided.
The second Biosphere 2 mission began on 6 March 1994. Seven people from five countries were selected for this experiment, remaining in the Biosphere for six months. The experiment was fraught with problems and the project met with considerable disdain among the scientific community. Biosphere 2 is now open as a hands-on, interactive science centre.