Born on this day
Thursday, May 28, 1908. : Ian Fleming, author of the ‘James Bond’ spy novels, is born.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on 28 May 1908 in Mayfair, London. He was educated at Eton College and Sandhurst military academy, from which he subsequently departed prematurely to study languages on the European continent. He unsuccessfully attempted to join the Foreign Office, and instead worked as a sub-editor and journalist for the Reuters news service, including for a time in 1933 in Moscow, Russia and later as a stockbroker with Rowe and Pitman, in Bishopsgate. As World War II loomed in 1939, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, recruited Fleming as personal assistant. Initially commissioned as a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve lieutenant, he was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant commander, then as Commander. Fleming travelled to Whitby, Ontario to train at Camp X, a top-secret training school for Allied forces.
Fleming’s background in naval intelligence gave him the background and experience for writing credible spy novels. Besides writing the twelve novels and nine short stories featuring James Bond, secret agent 007, Fleming also is known for writing the children’s novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The James Bond books became very popular even before being filmed, permitting Fleming to retire comfortably to his home in Jamaica, a small cottage he called Goldeneye. Fleming died of a heart attack in Canterbury, Kent, on 12 August 1964.
Born on this day
Monday, May 28, 1934. : The Dionne quintuplets, first known quintuplets to survive infancy, are born.
The Dionne Quintuplets were born on 28 May 1934 in Ontario, Canada. The first quintuplets known to survive their infancy, they were born two months premature, each weighing no more than 0.9kg. The five identical sisters were named Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne.
The custody of the babies was withdrawn from their parents by the Ontarian government when the girls were barely a year old. They were then put under the guidance of Dr Dafoe, who had delivered them, and who subsequently exploited the girls for his own gain and fame. They were interred in Quintland, a theme park located just across from the parents’ home. The sisters could be viewed by visitors through a one-way mirror. Approximately 6,000 people per day visited the park to observe them.
The girls were also used to publicise commercial products such as corn syrup and Quaker Oats. They starred in some Hollywood films, including The Country Doctor (1936), Reunion (1936), Five of a Kind (1938) and Quintupland (1938). After a nine-year court fight between the government and their father, the quintuplets were returned to their family in 1943. Emilie, Marie and Yvonne died in 1954, 1970 and 2001 respectively.
Australian Explorers
Friday, May 28, 1813. : Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth reach Mt York, from where they sight rich grazing land on the other side of the mountains.
Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth were Australia’s first inland explorers to make a significant difference to the future of the colony. Since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the New South Wales colony had been virtually imprisoned by the impassable Blue Mountains that lay to the west. Many explorers had tried – and failed – to penetrate beyond the steep cliffs and ravines that characterised the mountain range.
Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth were all pastoralists. Like many other free settlers, they were affected by the limitations of land in New South Wales, but believed rich grasslands lay inland beyond the Blue Mountains. Setting off on 11 May 1813, they followed the ridges, unlike previous attempts which had all focused on following the rivers, invariably ending up against sheer cliff faces or mazes of impassable gorges. The men faced difficult terrain, and had to use machetes to hack their way through the thick scrub.
On 28 May 1813, the explorers climbed Mount York, at the western end of the Blue Mountains, from which they sighted the rich grasslands on the other side of the mountain barrier. Blaxland wrote in his journal that they “discovered what [they] had supposed to be sandy barren land below the mountain was forest land, covered with good grass”. The men explored the forest and grassland for several more days, and culminated their exploration with their ascent of a high hill they named Mount Blaxland. Sections of the Great Western Highway from Sydney still follow parts of the trail the men blazed back in 1813.
Australian History
Saturday, May 28, 1814. : Governor Macquarie offers a free pardon to absconded Tasmanian convicts, except for murderers.
Unlike in the penal colony of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) remained largely a convict settlement for its first fifty years. Little was done to encourage free settlers to take up land on the island. The colony faced starvation in the first few years of its existence, so Governor of Tasmania, Colonel Collins, was forced to send out the convicts to hunt. Lured by their unexpected freedom and undaunted by their isolation from the mainland, many convicts chose not to return, but undertook a life of bushranging.
Bushranging soon reached epidemic proportions, and in May 1813, Lieutenant Governor Davey demanded all absconded convicts and bushrangers return by December, or face being shot on sight after that date. Concerned by the ramifications of the subsequent outrage, on 28 May 1814 the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, offered a pardon to all convicts except for those who had been convicted of murder, if they surrendered within six months. Taking the proclamation as a licence to bushrange, many convicts continued their crimes until the last moment. True to his word, Macquarie pardoned them of all previous crimes, whereupon many of them promptly returned to bushranging.
Australian History
Sunday, May 28, 2000. : 250,000 people walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the People’s Walk for Reconciliation during Corroboree 2000.
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of Australia including its nearby islands. The term encompasses the various indigenous peoples known as Aborigines, whose traditional lands extend throughout mainland Australia, Tasmania and offshore islands, and also the Torres Strait Islanders whose lands are centred on the Torres Strait Islands which run between northernmost Australia and the island of New Guinea. Ever since European settlement in 1788, tension has existed between Indigenous peoples and the Europeans, and the path to reconciliation between the various races has been long and slow.
28 May 2000 saw The People’s Walk for Reconciliation across the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a celebration of reconciliation which had been achieved thus far, and to symbolise the fact that reconciliation involves all Australians. It was held in conjunction with Corroboree 2000, which occurred in Sydney during Reconciliation Week in May 2000 to mark the end of the ten-year official Reconciliation process. The walk began at North Sydney station and finished at Darling Harbour, and involved some 250,000 people walking across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge to show their support of the process of Reconciliation between Aboriginal Australians and white Australians.
Australian History
Friday, May 28, 2010. : ‘The Australian’ becomes Australia’s first newspaper to launch an iPad digital edition.
The first newspaper named ‘The Australian’ was a colonial newspaper established by the native-born explorer William Wentworth, one of the first three men to cross the Blue Mountains. It had no connection with the current national newspaper named ‘The Australian’.
‘The Australian’ newspaper, published by News Corp Australia, became Australia’s third national daily newspaper, after the shipping newspaper Daily Commercial News, first published in 1891, and Australian Financial Review, which commenced in 1951. ‘The Australian’ was launched on 15 July 1964, and contained a promise to deliver “the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country.” The first editor was Maxwell Newton, who lasted less than a year; he was succeeded by Walter Kommer. Initially, the headquarters for ‘The Australian’ were in the nation’s capital, Canberra, but today its head office is in Sydney.
On 28 May 2010, in conjunction with the introduction of iPads in Australia, ‘The Australian’ became the first Australian newspaper to launch an iPad digital edition. The masthead, colours and design were identical to those in the newsprint edition, and its pages ‘turned’ like those of a newspaper, a novelty at the time.
World History
Thursday, May 28, 1789. : After being cast off the ‘Bounty’, Lieutenant William Bligh’s small launch reaches Restoration Island.
William Bligh was a capable seaman who started his seagoing career at the age of 16, quickly rising through the officer ranks. He had exceptional navigational skills, and kept meticulous journals of his voyages.
Bligh captained the ‘HMS Bounty’ when it sailed from England in December 1787 on a mission to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti. The breadfruit was intended to be transplanted in the West Indies as cheap food for the slaves. The crew enjoyed many months on Tahiti where they became accustomed to the island life and the company of the Tahitian women. Bligh had promoted Fletcher Christian, orginally Master’s Mate, to Acting Lieutenant in March 1788, three months after the Bounty departed England. The Bounty was returning to England with the breadfruit plants in April 1789 when Fletcher Christian and part of the crew mutinied, taking over the ship, throwing the breadfruit plants overboard, and setting Bligh and 18 Loyalists adrift in the ship’s 23-foot launch.
Soon after the mutiny, Bligh and the Loyalists reached the island of Tofoa. Here, a confrontation with the natives led to the death of quartermaster John Norton. The hostility of the natives made Bligh shy of landing on any more of the Pacific Islands, and they continued past numerous possible harbours.
However, the men were desperate to replenish their food supplies. On 28 May 1789, soon after navigating their way through the Great Barrier Reef, they spied an island which lay some four miles west of the reef, and approximately a quarter of a mile east of the coast of ‘New Holland’. The island appeared to be uninhabited, so Bligh ordered the launch to land on the sandy shore. It was the first time in 26 days that the men had set foot on land. To their great joy, they found an abundance of shellfish, which they gorged on.
Bligh later named their location Restoration Island. According to his account “A Voyage to the South Sea”, he named it thus because they arrived on the ‘anniversary of the restoration of King Charles the Second, and the name not being inapplicable to our present situation (for we were restored to fresh life and strength)’.
World History
Thursday, May 28, 1789. : Fletcher Christian and the mutineers of the Bounty reach Tubuai, where they massacre the natives.
Fletcher Christian was just 23 years old when he sailed with Captain William Bligh on the HMS Bounty. Christian joined the crew of the Bounty as Master’s Mate, but due to his friendship with Bligh, he was quickly promoted to Acting Lieutenant. However, many months of sailing with the stern disciplinarian Bligh soured the friendship somewhat. Leaving Tahiti, with its welcoming culture and beautiful women, did nothing to improve relations between Bligh and Christian. When certain crewmen aboard the Bounty suggested mutiny, Christian found himself in command.
Bligh and around 18 men who were loyal to England rather than Tahiti were set adrift in a 7 metre launch with very little equipment, while Christian set the Bounty on a course back to Tahiti. The intention of the mutineers was to bring back the women who had become their companions many months previously. First, they needed to find an island where they would not be found by the British Navy. They knew they would be taken back to Britain where they faced certain death for mutiny.
On 28 May 1789, a month after the mutiny, the Bounty anchored at the northwest tip of Tubuai at a location which Captain Cook had earlier earmarked as the island’s only possible harbour for a ship. Christian intended to make the island the new home of the Bounty mutineers after they had returned to Tahiti to collect supplies and the women. As they approached the gap in the reef encircling the harbour, they were met by what appeared to be furious natives. The natives dispersed after Midshipman George Steward fired his pistol, allowing the crew to come in closer to shore. The respite was short-lived as, immediately after a canoe filled with attractive women was paddled to the Bounty, the native men returned in their hundreds. When, according to the journal of Bosun’s Mate James Morrison, the men began making “many threatening gestures”, Christian ordered the cannon to be fired – not once, but several times. Numerous natives were killed, and the remaining men fled to shore, followed by Christian’s crewmen brandishing muskets. The site where this massacre took place is now known as Baie Sanglant or “Bloody Bay”.
World History
Friday, May 28, 1937. : Neville Chamberlain Becomes Prime Minister of England.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician of the Conservative Party. He was born on 18 March 1868 to a middle-class family with political connections. Growing up, he showed little interest in politics. However, he entered the political field in 1911 after being elected to Birmingham council. He became Lord Mayor in 1915 and, three years later, was elected as a Member of Parliament for the Birmingham Ladywood division. He subsequently served as Postmaster General, Paymaster General of the armed forces, Minister of Health and Chancellor of the Exchequer until being elected as Prime Minister on 28 May 1937.
Chamberlain, commonly known as “pinhead”, left a legacy which is largely remembered as being the British Prime Minister who had a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This included ceding parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in 1938. The Irish Free State Navy Ports were left open to German submarines. Chamberlain resigned the premiership immediately after Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France.