Australian History
Tuesday, May 15, 1900. : Women in Western Australia win the right to vote.
Australia was one of the world’s leading countries in regard to women’s rights. Women in South Australia gained the right to vote in 1894, and voted for the first time in the election of 1896, becoming just the fourth place in the world where women gained the vote. Four years later, Western Australia became the second colony in Australia to grant women the right to vote.
The Western Australian parliament passed the Constitution Acts Amendment Act 1899, which included a bill for women’s suffrage on 15 December 1899, but the bill required Royal Assent from Queen Victoria. On 15 May 1900, assent was received through an Order-in-Council, and Western Australian women won the right to vote in state elections.
Australian History
Tuesday, May 15, 1928. : The Aerial Medical Service, later the Flying Doctor Service, is established at Cloncurry, Queensland.
Australia’s Flying Doctor Service began with the vision of Reverend John Flynn. John Flynn was born on 25 November 1880, in the gold rush town of Moliagul, about 202 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, Victoria. Flynn’s first posting as a Presbyterian minister was to Beltana, a tiny, remote settlement 500 kilometres north of Adelaide. After writing a report for his church superiors on the difficulties of ministering to such a widely scattered population, he was appointed as the first Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission, the ‘bush department’ of the Presbyterian Church, in 1912. Flynn served in the AIM at a time when only two doctors served an area of 300,000 sq kms in Western Australia and 1,500,000 sq kms in the Northern Territory. Realising the need for better medical care for the people of the outback, he established numerous bush hospitals and hostels.
Flynn’s attention was caught by the story of a young stockman, Jim Darcy, who had been seriously injured while mustering stock on a cattle station near Halls Creek, in the remote north of Western Australia. Darcy had been operated on by the Halls Creek Postmaster who had to follow instructions given via telegraph by a Perth doctor. Although the postmaster’s crude operation was successful, Darcy had died almost two months later of complications, before a doctor could attend. The story gave urgency to Flynn’s vision of delivering essential medical services to remote areas.
Flynn envisaged that new technology such as radio and the aeroplane could assist in providing a more effective medical service. His speculations attracted the attention of an Australian pilot serving in World War I, Clifford Peel, who wrote to Flynn, outlining the capabilities and costs of then-available planes. Flynn turned his considerable fund-raising talents to the task of establishing a flying medical service. Thanks to a large bequest from long-time supporter HV McKay, Flynn’s vision became a reality. On 15 May 1928, the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service was established at Cloncurry, in western Queensland. The first flight was two days later.
In order to facilitate communication for such a service, Flynn collaborated with Alfred Traeger who developed the pedal radio, a lighter, more compact radio for communication, the size and cost of which made it more readily available to residents of the outback. The pedal radio eliminated the need for electricity, which was available in very few areas of the outback in the 1920s. In this way, Flynn married the advantages of both radio and aeroplanes to provide a “Mantle of Safety” for the outback. Initially conceived as a one-year experiment, Flynn’s vision has continued successfully through the years, providing a valuable medical service to people in remote areas.
In 1942 the service was renamed the Flying Doctor Service. Queen Elizabeth II approved the prefix “Royal” in 1955 following her visit to Australia, and the service became the Royal Flying Doctor Service, or RFDS.
Australian History
Saturday, May 15, 2010. : 16 year old Jessica Watson sails into Sydney after becoming the youngest person to sail non-stop and unassisted around the world.
Jessica Watson, born on 18 May 1993 on Queensland’s Gold Coast, is an Australian sailor. She and her three siblings all took sailing lessons as children, and for five years, the entire family lived on a 16-metre cabin cruiser. During this time, the children were home-schooled, and the young Jessica was exposed to Jesse Martin’s book “Lionheart: A Journey of the Human Spirit”. Hearing the book read to her, 12-year-old Jessica developed the ambition to sail around the world.
Planning for the journey began early in 2008, and Jessica’s intention to circumnavigate the globe solo on an eight-month voyage of 23,000 nautical miles was officially announced in May 2009. In order to fulfil the criteria of sailing non-stop and unassisted, no-one else was permitted to give her anything during the journey, and she was not permitted to moor to any port or other boat. She was allowed to receive advice via radio communication.
The sailing vessel was a 10.23m Sparkman & Stephens S&S 34, named “Ella’s Pink Lady”. Jessica departed Sydney on 18 October 2009. Her circumnavigation route took her east past New Zealand, Fiji, Kiribati, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and South East Cape. Part of the definition for circumnavigation set out by the International Sailing Federation’s WSSRC stated that the equator must be crossed. Whilst Jessica did cross the equator near Kiritimati, her voyage ultimately fell short of the WSSRC requirement of an orthodromic distance of 21,600 nmi, and so her journey was thus ineligible to claim world record status for round-the-world journeys. Nonetheless, it was recognised that, when Jessica Watson sailed back into Sydney at 1:53pm on 15 May 2010, she had become the youngest person to make such a journey non-stop and unassisted, completing her voyage three days before her 17th birthday.
World History
Wednesday, May 15, 1957. : Britain drops its first Hydrogen bomb, near Malden Island in the Pacific Ocean.
Malden Island is a low, arid, uninhabited island in the central Pacific Ocean, about 39 km² in area. It is located 446 km south of the equator. The nearest inhabited place is Tongareva (Penrhyn Island), 450 km to the southwest. The nearest airport is on Kiritimati, 675 km to the northwest.
Britain’s thermo-nuclear weapons programme was started in December 1954 to develop the megaton hydrogen bomb. Operation Grapple was the name of the exercise leading to the detonation of the first British hydrogen bomb on 15 May 1957. The very first fusion device was dropped from Vickers Valiant XD818, piloted by Kenneth Hubbard, over Malden Island. The bomb weighed around 4,545 kg. Code-named Green Granite or Short Granite, it was a combination fission-fusion device with a Red Beard primary and a lithium deuteride secondary. The expected yield was around 1 megaton. It was released from a height of almost 13 km and yielded just 300 kilotons. The relatively low yield prompted a redesign of the hydrogen bomb, and to cover up the disappointing yield, a large fission bomb, code-named Orange Herald, was dropped on 31 May 1957. It yielded 700 kilotons, and its purpose was to persuade observers that the United Kingdom had an effective thermo-nuclear weapon. Later tests were more successful.