Australian Explorers
Thursday, November 9, 1848. : After a gruelling five-month journey through thick rainforest, Edmund Kennedy finally reaches Weymouth Bay in North Queensland.
Edmund Kennedy was born in 1818 on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands of the English channel. As a surveyor, he arrived in Sydney in 1840 where he joined the Surveyor-General’s Department as assistant to Sir Thomas Mitchell. In 1845, he accompanied Mitchell on an expedition into the interior of Queensland (then still part of New South Wales), and two years later led another expedition through central Queensland, tracing the course of the Victoria River, later renamed the Barcoo.
In 1848 Kennedy left Rockingham Bay, north of Townsville, with 12 other men to travel to Cape York, intending to map the eastern coast of north Queensland. Dense rainforest and the barrier of the Great Dividing Range made the journey extremely difficult. By the time Kennedy’s party reached Weymouth Bay on 9 November 1848, they were starving and exhausted. Kennedy left eight sick men and two horses at Weymouth Bay before continuing on with three white men and a loyal Aborigine named Jacky-Jacky.
Australian History
Wednesday, November 9, 1960. : The Red and Green Kangaroo Paw is proclaimed the floral emblem of Western Australia.
The Kangaroo Paw is a type of low-growing shrub native to Western Australia. This unusual plant gained its name by the apparent resemblance of its cluster of unopened flowers to a kangaroo’s paw, being long and slender, like the forepaw of a kangaroo.
There are just twelve species of the genus ‘Anigozanthos’ to which the Kangaroo Paw belongs. Preferring sandy soil, in their native state they are found throughout southwest Western Australia, in the north around Geraldton and on the Swan Coastal Plain near Perth.
The Kangaroo Paw was first collected and described by French botanist Jacques-Julian Houton de Labillardiere near Esperance in 1792. On 9 November 1960, the Red and Green Kangaroo Paw, also known as Mangles’ kangaroo paw, was proclaimed as the floral emblem of Western Australia. The announcement was made by Lieutenant Governor of Western Australia, His Excellency the Honourable Sir John Dwyer.
World History
Wednesday, November 9, 1960. : John F Kennedy becomes the youngest elected president of the United States.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on 29 May 1917. After completing his schooling, and prior to enrolling in Princeton University, he attended the London School of Economics for a year, where he studied political economy. Illness forced him to leave Princeton, after which he enrolled in Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in international affairs in June 1940, then joined the US Navy, only entering politics after WWII.
After declaring his intent to run for President of the United States, Kennedy was nominated by the Democratic Party on 13 July 1960, as its candidate for president. He beat Vice-President Richard Nixon by a close margin in the general election on 9 November 1960, to become the youngest elected president in US history and the first Roman Catholic.
Kennedy’s presidential term was cut tragically short when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, 22 November 1963 while on a political trip through Texas.
World History
Tuesday, November 9, 1965. : Northeast America suffers a blackout which affects thirty million people.
Between 5:15 and 5:30pm on 9 November 1965, northeast America suffered a massive power outage. A faulty relay at the Sir Adam Beck Station No. 2 in Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, affected the electricity supply to the north-eastern states of the USA and large parts of Canada. The blackout covered 207,000 square kilometres and lasted more than 13 hours. The faulty relay was catalyst to a domino effect as a number of escalating line overloads hit the main trunk lines of the grid, separating major generation sources from load centres, and weakening the entire system as each separated. Power stations in the New York City area automatically shut themselves off to prevent the surges coming through the grid from overloading their turbines.
The 1965 power outage was largely peaceful, with people assisting each other. Subsequent major outages have resulted in looting and riots.
World History
Thursday, November 9, 1989. : The Berlin Wall is opened for the first time since 1961.
Berlin is the capital city of Germany. Following WWII, it was divided into four sectors, with sectors being controlled by the Soviet Union, USA, the UK and France. Whilst the countries initially cooperated, governing the city jointly by a commission of all four occupying armies, tensions began to increase between the Soviet Union and the western allies with the development of the Cold War. The border between East and West Germany was closed in 1952, and movement of citizens between East and West Berlin also became more restricted, particularly as people continued to defect from East Germany via West Berlin. Shoppers from East Berlin tended to make their purchases in the western sector, where goods were cheaper and more readily available. This damaged the Soviet economy, as it was subsidising East Germany’s economy.
Overnight on 13 August 1961 the Eastern and Western halves of Berlin were separated by barbed wire fences up to 1.83 metres high. Over the next few days, troops began to replace the barbed wire with permanent concrete blocks, reaching up to 3.6m high. Ultimately, the wall included over 300 watchtowers, 106km of concrete and 66.5km of wire fencing surrounding West Berlin and preventing any access from East Germany.
The wall remained as a barrier between East and West until 1989, when the collapse of communism led to its fall. On 9 November 1989, an international press conference began in East Berlin. Huge demonstrations against political repression had been continuing for months. At the conclusion of the peace conference, greater freedom of travel was announced for people of the German Democratic Republic. At midnight, the East German government allowed gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points. In the ensuing weeks, many people then took to the wall with hammers and chisels, dismantling it piece by piece.