Born on this day

Wednesday, March 30, 1853. :   The great artist, Vincent van Gogh, is born.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert, in the southern Netherlands. Van Gogh was not recognised for his talent during his lifetime. However, he is posthumously considered one of the greatest and most prolific painters in European history. He produced all of his work – some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings – in a ten year period. Van Gogh had an enormous influence on neo-Impressionism, Impressionism and early abstraction, and on many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh’s work and that of his contemporaries.

Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown after only ten years working as an artist. The story goes that in December 1888, Van Gogh cut off the lower half of his left ear and took it to a brothel, where he presented it to a prostitute friend. The reason for this unusual behaviour has been theorised upon by many; the most likely cause was that it was the result of an argument with his painter friend Paul Gauguin, although that does not explain his bizarre behaviour. Regardless of the reason, shortly after this incident, van Gogh admitted himself to a mental institution. Two years after this, suffering from severe depression, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest and died two days later, on 29 July, 1890.

Born on this day

Sunday, March 30, 1930. :   Musician, painter and entertainer, Rolf Harris, is born.

Rolf Harris was born on 30 March 1930 in Bassendean, Perth, Western Australia. He moved to the United Kingdom as an art student at City and Guilds Arts School, Kennington, South London at the age of 22, and returned to Perth after art school, where he became involved in Children’s Television shows.

Harris gained fame in the 1960s for such songs as “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”, “Jake the Peg” and “Two Little Boys”. Harris also introduced his famous “wobble board”, a large piece of Masonite which was played by “wobbling” it back and forth. He parodied famous songs, boosting his career in 1993 when his cover version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” became a hit, reaching the Top 10 of the UK singles chart. The single recreated the song in the style of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”, complete with wobble board and didgeridoo solos.

As well as entertaining with his music, Harris became known for his ability to draw and paint large pictures and murals in a slap-dash yet distinctly recognisable style. This led to a string of TV series based on his artistic ability, notably Rolf Harris’s Cartoon Time in the 1980s and Rolf’s Cartoon Club in the early 1990s. He also hosted a successful variety TV series in Canada, which was a second home to Harris during the 1960s. As an accomplished artist, on 19 December 2005 he unveiled a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace as part of her 80th birthday celebrations.

In July 2004, Harris was included in the Radio Times list of the top 40 most eccentric TV presenters of all time. In September 2004, he fronted a project to recreate John Constable’s famous The Hay Wain painting on a massive scale, with 150 people contributing to a small section. Each individual canvas was assembled into the full picture live on the BBC, in the show Rolf on Art: The Big Event.

In 2014, Harris was convicted of a series of indecent assaults following allegations made by several women over a period of 33 years. He was then sentenced to almost six years’ imprisonment. However, early in 2017, he was found not guilty on four of the charges, and the jury was unable to reach a majority verdict on the other three counts. Harris was released on bail on 19 May 2017.

Australian History

Monday, March 30, 1772. :   France makes its first formal claim to Australian territory.

Over 150 years before English explorer Lieutenant James Cook ever sighted eastern Australia, the Dutch landed on the Western coast. In 1616, Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog landed at Cape Inscription, where he left a pewter plate with an inscription recording his landing. However, it was the French who made the first formal claim to Western Australian soil.

On 30 March 1772, French vessel Gros Ventre, under the command of Louis-François-Marie Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn, anchored off Turtle Bay on the northern coast of Dirk Hartog Island, Shark Bay. Mid-morning, Saint-Aloüarn sent a crew to reconnoitre the mainland. After venturing inland for some 14km without sighting any other living person, officer Mingault or Mengaud (spellings vary in documentation) took formal possession of the land, raising the flag. The occasion was documented, and the papers placed in a bottle and buried at the foot of a small tree, together with two coins (écus) of ‘six francs’ each, enclosed in lead capsules. The ship’s log refers to this Bay as the ‘Baie de Prise de Possession’ (the Bay of Taking of Possession).

The first of the coins, dated 1766, was recovered in 1998 in an expedition led by Mr Philippe Godard of Noumea, together with Max Cramer, Kim Cramer, John Eckersley, Tom Bradley and Chris Shine of Geraldton. This prompted another expedition which retrieved a bottle containing only sand, with no trace of the document, despite the contents being carefully analysed by an archaeological team.

Australian History

Wednesday, March 30, 1791. :   Convict James Ruse is given the first land grant in the colony of New South Wales.

James Ruse was born on a farm in Cornwall around 1759. At age 22, he was convicted of burglary and, due to severe over-crowding in British gaols, spent over four years on the prison hulks in Plymouth Harbour. He was one of the convicts who was transported in the First Fleet to New South Wales, sailing on the ‘Scarborough’. By the time he arrived in New South Wales, his seven-year sentence was almost over.

Governor Phillip was aware of the need to build a working, farming colony as soon as possible. Thus, in November 1788, Phillip selected Ruse to go to Rose Hill (now Parramatta), west of Sydney Town, and try his hand at farming. Ruse was allocated one and a half acres of already cleared ground and assisted in clearing a further five acres. He was given two sows and six hens and a deal was made for him to be fed and clothed from the public store for 15 months. In return, if he was successful, he was to be granted 30 acres. Ruse’s farming venture was indeed successful, and in February 1791, he declared that he was self-sufficient. Governor Phillip rewarded Ruse with thirty acres, including the area he was already occupying, on 30 March 1791. This was the first permanent land grant in the new colony.

Australian History

Saturday, March 30, 1816. :   Convict architect Francis Greenway is appointed Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer to the colonial government.

Francis Greenway was born near Bristol, England in 1777. He was already practising as an architect when he was convicted of forgery in 1812 and subsequently transported to New South Wales for fourteen years. He arrived in Sydney aboard the transport ship “General Hewitt” in February 1814. His wife and children followed five months later.

Greenway was permitted to work in his trade very soon after his arrival, opening an office in George Street and being awarded a ticket-of-leave. On 30 March 1816, Greenway was appointed Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Greenway’s first commission was to design the lighthouse on South Head, or the Macquarie Tower. Other buildings designed by Greenway include the Windsor Courthouse, the Female Factory at Parramatta, the Convict Barracks in Sydney, and various churches in Windsor and Liverpool.

Australian History

Monday, March 30, 1914. :   Norfolk Island is proclaimed a Commonwealth territory.

Norfolk Island lies approximately 1,500 km northeast of Sydney, and along with two neighbouring islands forms one of Australia’s external territories. The first European to discover Norfolk was Captain James 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. Governor Arthur Phillip, Captain of the First Fleet to New South Wales, was ordered to colonise Norfolk Island before the French could take it.

Five weeks after the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King led a small party of convicts and free men to take control of the island and prepare for its commercial development. Neither the flax nor the timber industry proved to be viable, and the island developed as a farm, becoming a vital supply of grain and vegetables during the early years of colonisation, when the people of Sydney came close to starvation. More convicts were sent, and many chose to remain after they had served their sentences. The initial Norfolk Island settlement was abandoned in 1813, but a second penal colony was re-established in 1824, as a place to send the very worst of the convicts. The convicts were treated accordingly, and the island gained a reputation as a vicious penal colony. It, too, was abandoned in 1855, after transportation to Australia ceased.

The third settlement was established by descendants of Tahitians and the HMAV Bounty mutineers, resettled from the Pitcairn Islands which had become too small for their growing population. The British government had permitted the transfer of the Pitcairners to Norfolk, which was established as a colony separate from New South Wales but under the administration of that colony’s governor. In June 1856, almost 200 Pitcairn Islanders arrived to form the first free settlement.

The colonies on the Australian continent federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Thirteen years later, on 30 March 1914, Norfolk Island was placed under the authority of the new Commonwealth government to be administered as an external territory, after having been governed as part of New South Wales since 1788. Norfolk Island was granted self-government in 1979.

World History

Monday, March 30, 1981. :   An attempt is made to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, born on 6 February 1911, was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). Before entering politics, Reagan was also a broadcaster, film actor, and head of the Screen Actors Guild. He was elected to the Presidency in 1980 in an electoral college landslide, beating incumbent President Jimmy Carter and giving the Republican Party a majority in the US Senate for the first time in 26 years. He became known for his confrontational foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and Socialist movements around the world.

On 30 March 1981, as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel after addressing a union convention in Washington, DC, Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and MPDC officer Thomas Delehanty were shot during an assassination attempt. Five or six shots were fired; a bullet missed Reagan’s heart by less than one inch. Brady was seriously wounded, and a Secret Service agent and a Washington policeman also were injured. The would-be assassin was John Hinckley Jr, the 25-year-old son of an affluent oil industry executive. Hinckley was motivated by an obsession with actress Jodie Foster and a desire to impress her. At a jury trial the following year, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to hospital. Reagan fully recovered, as did the Secret Service agent and policeman, but Brady was left paralysed and confined to a wheelchair.

Reagan died on 5 June 2004 at the age of 93, after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.