Born on this day
Tuesday, November 22, 1898. : Wiley Post, who was the first pilot to fly solo around the world, is born.
Wiley Hardeman Post was born on 22 November 1898, in Van Zandt County, Texas. Always keen to fly, Post became a parachutist for the flying circus “Burrell Tibbs and His Texas Topnotch Fliers” when he was 26 years old. Undaunted by an oil field accident which cost him his left eye in 1926, Post became the personal pilot of wealthy Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and F C Hall. In 1930, Hall bought a single-engine Lockheed Vega and nicknamed it Winnie Mae, after his daughter. Post’s first claim to fame was flying the Winnie Mae to win the National Air Race Derby, from Los Angeles to Chicago.
On 23 June 1931, Post and navigator Harold Gatty left Long Island, New York in the Winnie Mae to fly around the world. They made fourteen stops along the way, including Newfoundland, England, Germany, the Soviet Union, Alaska, Alberta, Canada and Cleveland, Ohio before returning to Roosevelt Field on Long Island. They arrived back on July 1 after travelling nearly 25,000 kilometres in the record time of 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes.
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Australian History
Saturday, November 22, 1952. : Lang Hancock claims to have discovered the iron ore deposits which change Australia from being an importer of iron ore to an exporter.
Langley George Hancock, or “Lang” Hancock, was born on 10 June 1909 in Perth, Western Australia. A member of one of Western Australia’s oldest landowning families, he became a politician and iron ore magnate.The story goes that, on 22 November 1952, Hancock was piloting a light aircraft that was forced by bad weather to fly at a very low altitude over the Turner River gorges in Western Australia. Hancock noticed the large bands of deep ochre rock within the gorge and realised they might be iron ore. The discovery led to the development of Western Australia’s major iron ore industry in the Pilbara region, and changed Australia from being an importer of iron ore to an exporter. Following this discovery, Hancock initiated and perfected a technique which led to the further discovery in the Pilbara of more than 500 other deposits of iron ore, and which earned him the nickname of “The Flying Prospector”.
However, the veracity of this story has been questioned. There is evidence to suggest that a 25-year-old Englishman by the name of Harry Page Woodward, who had come to South Australia in 1883 to take up the post of assistant state geologist, was the one who discovered the Pilbara’s iron ore deposits. Woodward relocated to Western Australia as the new government geologist, and undertook extensive ground surveys of the state, mapping some 175,000 square kilometres of the state. Woodward recognised the iron-bearing potential of the northwest of the state, and recorded that “There is enough to supply the whole world should the present sources be worked out.” The iron ore fields of the Pilbara were already mapped by Western Australia’s Mining Department in the 1920s.
Australian History
Thursday, November 22, 1956. : The opening ceremony for the Melbourne Olympics is held.
Melbourne was announced as the host city for the Games of the XVI Olympiad on 28 April 1949, beating bids from Buenos Aires, Mexico City and six other American cities by a single vote. The Olympic Games commenced with an opening ceremony on 22 November 1956. Because Melbourne is located in the southern hemisphere, the Olympics were held later in the year than those held in the northern hemisphere. Strict quarantine laws prevented Melbourne from hosting the equestrian events, and they were instead held in Stockholm on June 10, five months before the rest of the Olympic games began.
Despite boycotts by several countries over international events unrelated to Australia, the games proceeded well, and earned the nickname of “The Friendly Games”. It was at the first Australian-held Olympics that the tradition began of the athletes mingling with one another, rather than marching in teams, for their final appearance around the stadium.
World History
Tuesday, November 22, 1718. : Notorious pirate Blackbeard is killed.
The notorious English pirate, Blackbeard, was born either Edward Teach or Edward Thatch sometime in 1680. Little is known about his early life. He first went to sea at a young age, serving on a British ship in the War of the Spanish Succession. Following Britain’s withdrawal from the war in 1713, with little other recourse for a career, he became Blackbeard the pirate.
Blackbeard was notorious for boarding merchant ships, plundering them of valuables, food, liquor, and weapons. He earned a reputation for being a vicious torturer, but no actual records exist of him having killed anyone. It is possible he gained his reputation through mere rumour alone. However, he became famous following his blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, in May-June 1718. With a fleet of five vessels, he plundered freighters, took a number of hostages, and prevented other ships from entering the harbour. The hostages were eventually released in exchange for crates of medicines.
After grounding two of his own vessels at Topsail Inlet, now known as Beaufort Inlet, Blackbeard took the treasure for himself, marooned his own crew, and went to Bath in North Carolina, where he was given a pardon under the royal Act of Grace. He did not renounce his piracy, and was targeted by Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia, despite being outside Spotswood’s jurisdiction. Spotswood commissioned Lieutenant Robert Maynard to hunt down Blackbeard and eliminate him. Maynard found the pirates anchored in a North Carolina inlet on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, on the evening of 21 November 1718. Following a pursuit, Blackbeard was hunted down and killed on 22 November 1718, ending Blackbeard’s infamous reign.
World History
Friday, November 22, 1963. : US President, John F Kennedy, is assassinated.
John Fitzgerald 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. He was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States on 20 January 1961.
Kennedy’s presidential term was cut tragically short when he was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade within Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, 22 November 1963. Three shots were fired at his open-topped car, hitting him in the head and throat. He was taken to Parkland Hospital, but died thirty-five minutes after being shot. Kennedy was the fourth US President to be assassinated, and the eighth to die while in office.
Within an hour of the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and later charged with the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald never went to trial as, two days later, he was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Both shootings have spawned conspiracy theories about who really shot JFK, and whether Oswald was merely the scapegoat in the assassination.