Australian History
Monday, May 14, 1855. : Australia’s first branch of the Royal Mint (London) commences operations in Sydney.
Australia relied on currency sent from England during the first decades of its establishment as a British colony. Both the NSW Legislative Council and Victoria’s Legislative Council petitioned Her Majesty Queen Victoria in 1851 and 1852 respectively to establish a branch of the Royal Mint (London). NSW was successful, and a branch of the Royal Mint began operations in Sydney on 14 May 1855. It was not until Victoria’s extensive growth and wealth ensuing from the goldfields that another petition was successful. The Melbourne branch of the Royal Mint commenced operations on 12 June 1872.
With the planned introduction of decimal currency in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Government decided to establish a Mint in Canberra. This new Mint would supersede the London branches of the Royal Mint in Sydney and Melbourne. As it was commissioned to produce Australia’s decimal coinage, the Royal Australian Mint was therefore the first mint in Australia not to be a branch of the Royal Mint, London. The Royal Australian Mint, Canberra, was officially opened by His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh, on 22 February 1965.
Australian History
Friday, May 14, 1943. : Australian Hospital Ship Centaur is sunk by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine.
The Centaur, an Australian Hospital Ship, had been built for the Ocean Steamship Company in Greenock, Scotland, in 1924, as a passenger ship and was converted in early 1943 for use as a hospital ship. It sailed unescorted from Sydney on 12 May 1943, well illuminated and marked as a hospital ship. Two days later, on 14 May 1943, when the Centaur was about 80km east north-east of Brisbane, it was sunk without warning by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine, an act considered to be a war crime. The ship was hit in the fuel tank, burst into flames and sank within three minutes.
The 332 people on board included 75 Merchant Navy crew, 65 ship’s Australian Army medical staff including 12 nurses, and 192 members of the Army’s 2/12th Field Ambulance that was to establish various medical units. There were 64 survivors, who clung to rafts for around 35 hours until they were rescued by the United States Navy ship USS Mugford. The survivors were initially located by an Avro Anson from 71 Squadron RAAF based at Lowood Airfield in the Brisbane Valley.
A memorial to the Centaur is situated at Point Danger, Coolangatta, Queensland. It consists of a monumental stone topped with a cairn, surrounded by a tiled moat with memorial plaques explaining the commemoration. The memorial is in turn surrounded by a park with a boardwalk, overlooking the sea, that has plaques for other ships lost during World War II, including both Merchant and Royal Australian Navy ships. The memorial was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the sinking, 14 May 1993, by Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Senator the Honourable John Faulkner. Apart from Australian survivors and local dignitaries, a contingent of the USS Mugford crew travelled from the USA for the event.
Another memorial to the Centaur is situated at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. It is one of many features along a memorial walkway, stretching from Caloundra Head to Shelly Beach, which honours all Australian men and women who served in war. The walkway contains 1500 plaque sites, many of which already contain memorial plaques for individuals who were victims of the Centaur, ex-Prisoners of War, or servicemen and women who served in Vietnam, the Middle East, Korea and other campaigns.
World History
Friday, May 14, 1948. : The State of Israel is proclaimed.
On 2 November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour submitted a declaration of intent to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This letter, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, became known as the Balfour Declaration, and stated that the British government supported Zionist plans for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. Some of the motivation for the Declaration came from Britain’s hopes to increase Jewish support for the Allied effort in World War I.
The Balfour Declaration was unpopular among Arabs in Palestine, who feared that their own rights would be subjugated with the creation of a Jewish homeland. Increased tension between Jews and Arabs during the post-war period caused delays in the enacting of the Balfour Declaration. However, after the atrocities to the Jewish people during the Holocaust in WWII, the Zionist cause gained much support from the international community, resulting in the creation of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948. The State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first Premier.
World History
Monday, May 14, 1973. : Skylab I is launched.
Skylab was the first space station the United States launched into orbit. Launched on 14 May 1973, it was designed to test various aspects of human endurance in space by having teams of astronauts living in Skylab for up to 84 days at a time. Each Skylab mission set a record for the duration of time astronauts spent in space.
In all, the space station orbited Earth 2,476 times during the 171 days and 13 hours of its occupation during the three manned Skylab missions. Astronauts performed ten spacewalks totalling 42 hours 16 minutes. Skylab logged about 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments, including eight solar experiments. Skylab had been in orbit for six years when it made its descent on 11 July 1979, with many chunks of hot debris falling across southern Western Australia. Most of the pieces were found on a 160km wide strip of land between the Perth-Adelaide highway and the Indian Pacific railway line.