Australian Explorers
Saturday, March 20, 1802. : English explorer Matthew Flinders names Spencer Gulf in South Australia.
Spencer Gulf is a large and prominent gulf in South Australia, approximately 322 km long and 129 km wide at its mouth. It is bordered by Yorke Peninsula to the east and Eyre Peninsula to the west.
The first English visitor to the region was Matthew Flinders, who discovered the gulf during his 1801-02 circumnavigation of the Australian continent in his ship ‘The Investigator’. Flinders did not enter the gulf, and wrote in his journal that he was uncertain whether it was a strait or an inlet. He defined its entrance as a line from Cape Catastrophe on Eyre Peninsula to Cape Spencer on Yorke Peninsula. On 20 March 1802, Flinders named the body of water Spencer’s Gulph after British politician George John Spencer, the 2nd Earl Spencer, who served as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1794 to 1801. Spencer was an ancestor of Diana, former wife of Prince Charles, and Princess of Wales.
At the time, French interest in the region was also high. French explorer Nicolas Baudin was heading west along the coast while Flinders was travelling east, and the two men met at what is now known as Encounter Bay. Flinders informed Baudin of his discovery of Spencer’s Gulph, as well as Kangaroo Island and Gulf St Vincent. When Baudin continued west, he named the inlet Golfe Bonaparte. The English name prevailed, though it was later changed to Spencer Gulf.
Australian History
Friday, March 20, 1942. : US General Douglas Macarthur first makes his famous “I shall return” speech at Terowie, South Australia.
General Douglas MacArthur was an American general and Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, MacArthur was Allied commander in the Philippines. He was a significant figure in the Pacific during World War II, receiving the Medal of Honour for his early service in the Philippines and on the Bataan Peninsula. Initially designated to command the proposed invasion of Japan in November 1945, when that became no longer necessary, he officially accepted Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945.
General MacArthur is famous for uttering the phrase “I shall return”. It is less known, however, that this phrase was first stated by MacArthur as part of an extended speech whilst visiting Australia. On 17 March 1942, he arrived at Batchelor Airfield in the Northern Territory, Australia, about 100 km south of Darwin. Following this, he flew to Alice Springs, then took the Ghan railway through the Australian outback to Adelaide. His famous speech, in which he said, “I came out of Bataan and I shall return”, was first made at Terowie, a small railway township in South Australia, on 20 March 1942, before he continued on to Adelaide.
After he arrived in Adelaide, MacArthur abbreviated this to the now-famous, “I came through and I shall return” for which he is best remembered.
World History
Wednesday, March 20, 1602. : The Dutch East India company, which was indirectly responsible for many discoveries in the Pacific, is formed.
The Dutch East India Company, also known as the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC, was established on 20 March 1602, when the Estates-General of the Netherlands granted it a monopoly to trade from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stocks. The company traded throughout Asia, exploring and establishing new routes through to the Asian countries and Pacific colonies for the sole intent of expediting trade to that region. The company operated for around 200 years, trading spices like nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and pepper, and other consumer products like tea, silk and Chinese porcelain. In the process, they touched on the coast of Australia, which became known as New Holland, drawing rough charts to indicate the western and northern coasts, though the south and east remained largely unknown.
The Australian state of Tasmania owes its discovery to the Dutch East India Company. Abel Tasman was a Dutch seafarer who joined the Company and was ordered to explore the south-east waters to find a new sea trade route to Chile in South America. In November 1642, he discovered a previously unknown island on his voyage past the “Great South Land”, or “New Holland”. He named the island “Antony Van Diemen’s Land” in honour of the High Magistrate, or Governor-General of Batavia. It was later renamed Tasmania by the English.
World History
Wednesday, March 20, 1974. : An attempt is made to kidnap Princess Anne, only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II.
Princess Anne, second child of the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973. On 20 March 1974, less than four months after their marriage, Princess Anne was the target of a failed kidnap attempt. The Princess and her husband were returning to Buckingham Palace from an engagement when their chauffeur-driven limousine was blocked in the road on Pall Mall by another car. 26-year-old Ian Ball jumped from the car and fired six shots, wounding several people, including the chauffeur.
Inspector James Beaton, the Princess’s private detective, jumped across to shield the princess, and then returned fire, injuring the kidnapper. A nearby police officer gave chase and arrested Ball, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment and placed in a mental hospital. It was later determined that Ball planned to ransom the Princess for £3 million. The incident prompted higher security levels for the Royal Family.
World History
Wednesday, March 20, 1991. : Singer Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son falls to his death from an open apartment window, 53 storeys up.
Singer Eric Clapton, born in 1945, is a Grammy Award winning British composer, singer and widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists in popular music history. His song “Tears in Heaven” is a tribute to his son Conor, who was killed in a most tragic way. On 20 March 1991, four-and-a-half-year-old Conor Clapton died when he fell from the 53rd story window in his father’s New York City apartment. The apartment block janitor had been working in the apartment where Conor’s mother was staying and had left a large glass window partially open. Although Conor was being tended by his nanny, while he was playing and running through the apartment, he fell straight out of the low-level window, and landed on the roof of an adjacent four-storey building.
At the 1993 Grammy Awards, Clapton’s recording of “Tears in Heaven” won the award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Other songs Clapton has written about Conor are “The Circus Left Town,” which recounts the day before Clapton’s son died (they attended a circus the night before Conor’s death), and “Lonely Stranger.”
World History
Monday, March 20, 1995. : Commuters in a Tokyo subway are attacked with Sarin gas.
Sarin is a poisonous liquid, used as a nerve gas in chemical warfare. On 20 March 1995, Tokyo commuters experienced first-hand the effects of the poison when members of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on several lines of the Tokyo Subway. A single drop of sarin the size of the head of a pin is potent enough to kill an adult.
The liquid sarin used in the attack was contained in plastic bags. Each of five main perpetrators carried two packets of sarin totalling approximately one litre of sarin, although one member carried three bags. The perpetrators carried their packets of sarin, and umbrellas with sharpened tips. At prearranged stations, each perpetrator dropped his package and punctured it several times with the sharpened tip of his umbrella before escaping to an accomplice’s waiting get-away car. Twelve people were killed in the attacks, whilst up to another six thousand were injured by the effects of the deadly gas. Most of the survivors recovered, but some victims suffered permanent damage to their eyes, lungs and digestive systems.
Japanese police raided the religious cult’s headquarters and arrested hundreds of members, including leader Shoko Asahara. Eventually, two hundred members of Aum Shinrikyo were arrested. Thirteen of the senior management members received the death sentence and were later executed, while dozens more were given prison sentences up to life.