Born on this day

Wednesday, March 16, 1774. :   Sea explorer and the first recorded European to circumnavigate Australia, Matthew Flinders, is born.

Matthew Flinders was born on 16 March 1774 in Lincolnshire, England. In 1789, he entered the Royal Navy. He became a sea explorer, and arrived in Australia in the 1790s. Together with George Bass, Flinders completed much sea exploration around Australia, adding to the knowledge of the coastline, and producing accurate maps. Flinders, together with Bass, was the first to prove that Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania, was an island and not connected to the mainland. Flinders was also the first to circumnavigate the continent, and between December 1801 and June 1803, he charted most of the coastline of Australia. Australia was previously known as New Holland, and Flinders first proposed the name “Terra Australis”, which became “Australia”, the name adopted in 1824.

Flinders was captured by the French on the island of Mauritius in 1803. He was kept prisoner until 1810 on the grounds that he was a spy. He was finally released to return to England, but his health began to fail and he died young, on 19 July 1814. Before his death he completed a book on his travels called ‘A Voyage to Terra Australis’, and died on the day that his book was published.

Australian History

Wednesday, March 16, 1949. :   The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is established.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, or ASIO, is the national security service of Australia. Its main role is to gather information and produce intelligence in order to safeguard national security, which the organisation defines as “the protection of Australia’s territorial and border integrity from serious threats, and the protection of Australia and its people from espionage, sabotage, politically motivated violence, the promotion of communal violence, attacks on Australia’s defence system, and acts of foreign interference.”

ASIO was originally established in response to perceived threats to Australia’s national security following World War II. During the post-war period, it was revealed that sensitive British and Australian government data was being leaked through Soviet diplomatic channels. Investigations tracked the leak to a spy ring which was operating from the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. As a result, then-Prime minister Ben Chifley issued a Directive for the “Establishment and Maintenance of a Security Service” on 16 March 1949. This later became the ‘Australian Security Intelligence Organization’, the name of which was amended in 1999 to ‘Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’ in line with Australian standard spelling.

The first Director-General of Security was South Australian Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Reed, and it was he who gave the organisation its name. ASIO was modelled on MI5, the Security Service of the UK, and an MI5 liaison team was attached to ASIO during the early 1950s to guide and advise the development of ASIO’s duties and operations. By 2008, ASIO had established liaison relationships with 311 authorities in 120 countries. It remains integral to Australia’s national security, fulfilling the role for which it was established.

World History

Saturday, March 16, 1968. :   American soldiers massacre villagers in My Lai, Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War, the Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam was suspected of being a haven for guerrillas of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces and other cadres of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (NLF), also called the “Viet Cong”. The military was determined to wipe out all NLF operatives – real or imagined.

Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, American Division arrived in Vietnam in December 1967. US military intelligence believed that the 48th battalion of the NLF had taken refuge in a nearby village, My Lai. Charlie Company was advised by US military command that any genuine civilians at My Lai would have left their homes to go to market early. They were told that they could assume that all who remained behind were either VC or active VC sympathisers. They were instructed to destroy the village.

A memorial at the site of the massacre lists 504 names of villagers who were executed on the morning of 16 March 1968, including old men, women, children, and babies. Some were tortured or raped. Dozens were herded into a ditch and executed with automatic weapons.

Not all troops agreed with the action: a US Army helicopter crew saved a group of villagers by landing between the American troops and the remaining Vietnamese hiding in a bunker. The 24-year-old pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., confronted the leaders of the troops and threatened to open fire on them if they continued their attack on civilians.

World History

Friday, March 16, 1973. :   The current London Bridge, the most recent of many, is opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

There have been a number of different London Bridges over the past 2000 years. In 46AD, the Romans built the first bridge across the Thames River; it was a simple wooden construction which was burnt down in 1014. The replacement bridge was destroyed by a storm in 1091, and the next bridge after that was destroyed again by fire in 1136.

Forty years later, a new stone bridge was constructed by Peter of Colechurch between 1176 and 1209. This bridge contained an intricate complex of houses, shops and a chapel, had 19 small arches and a drawbridge with a gatehouse at each end. It was so heavily populated that it was made a ward of the city with its own alderman. Due to the heavy population of the bridge, it suffered damage from many fires over the years, deaths from fire and deaths from drowning as the many arches produced vigorous rapids underneath. The houses were not removed from the bridge until the mid-1700s.

By the early 1800s, traffic congestion and the dangers posed by the bridge prompted the necessity for a new bridge. Engineer John Rennie started construction in 1825 and finished the bridge in 1831. The design was superior, containing only five high arches, and constructed from strong Dartmoor granite. It was opened by King William the fourth in 1831. However, a necessary widening process some 70 years later weakened the bridge’s foundations to the point where it began sinking an inch every eight years. In 1968, it was auctioned and sold for $2,460,000 to Robert McCulloch who moved it to Havasu City, Arizona, where it was rebuilt brick by brick, and finally opened and dedicated in October 1971.

The current London Bridge was constructed by contractors John Mowlem from 1967 to 1972 and officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 March 1973. It was built in conjunction with the careful dismantling of the previous bridge, so that a river crossing was maintained in use at the site at all times.

World History

Thursday, March 16, 1978. :   Former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, is kidnapped at gunpoint.

Aldo Moro, born 23 September 1916, was one of Italy’s longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers. He served as Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968, and again from 1974 to 1976. One of the most important leaders of Democrazia Cristiana, or DC (in English the Christian Democrats), Moro was considered an intellectual and an exceptional mediator, especially in the internal life of his party.

On 16 March 1978, Moro was kidnapped by militant members of the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist group formed in 1970 with the sole aim of overthrowing capitalist Italy by violent means. Moro’s five police bodyguards were killed when he was kidnapped at gunpoint from a car near a cafe in full view of rush-hour witnesses, whilst being driven to a session of the house of representatives. The Red Brigades proposed to exchange Moro’s life for the freedom of 13 Red imprisoned Red Brigades terrorists. However, the government immediately took a hardline position on terrorist requests, that the “State must not bend”. Moro was held at a secret location in Rome and permitted to send letters to his family and fellow politicians, begging the government to negotiate with his captors. There has been some conjecture since then that the letters contained cryptic messages for his family and colleagues.

Moro was executed at gunpoint around 9 May 1978, and his body found in the boot of a car in Via Caetani in central Rome. Most of their leading members of the Red Brigades were captured and imprisoned by the mid-1980s.

World History

Wednesday, March 16, 1988. :   The northern Iraq Kurdish city of Halabja is bombarded with chemical weapons, killing thousands of civilians.

The war between Iran and Iraq, also known as the First Persian Gulf War, began when Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980. The two countries had a long history of border disputes, going right back to when the countries were the kingdoms of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Persia (Iran). Catching Iranian forces by surprise, Iraq held the advantage early in the war. However, Iran mounted a successful counter-offensive in 1982, regaining lost ground.

The Halabja poison gas attack was the largest-scale chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in modern times. It began early in the evening of 16 March 1988, when a group of eight aircraft maintained a chemical bombardment all night on Halabja, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. The attack involved multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX. The final death toll was between 3,200 people and 5,000, whilst up to 10,000 more were injured. Initially the bombardment was believed to have originated from Iran. However, evidence now suggests that the attack was an Iraqi assault against Iranian forces, pro-Iranian Kurdish forces and Halabja’s citizens during a protracted battle.

The United Nations Security Council repeatedly called upon both countries to end the conflict, but it was not until August of 1988 that a ceasefire was agreed to. Ultimately, the war changed the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, and led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.