Australian History
Monday, October 14, 1889. : Australia’s first electric trams begin operating.
A tram is a rail-borne vehicle, lighter than a train, for the transport of passengers. Some of Australia’s cities ran extensive tram networks in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The city of Melbourne, the second-largest city in Australia, boasts the third largest tram network in the world, consisting of 245 kilometres of track, 500 trams, and 1770 tram stops. In 1885 the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company began operating Melbourne’s first cable tram line. The first service ran from Spencer St/Flinders St to Hawthorn Bridge. As the city grew, the technical limits of the cable tram system became apparent, and electric trams were developed and implemented.
Australia’s first electric tram began operating in Melbourne on 14 October 1889, running between the Box Hill Post Office on the corner of Whitehorse Road and Station Street, and the terminus near the intersection of Elgar and Doncaster Roads, Doncaster. It was also the first electric tram in the Southern Hemisphere. Box Hill and Doncaster were significant fruit-growing areas in Victoria at the time, so the line was well patronised. However, once the Union Electric Company’s contract to operate the line ceased, financial difficulties prevented the Tramway Company which took it over from addressing problems which had arisen with the under-powered cars which frequently broke down. The service continued to operate for several years, but was abandoned in January 1896.
It was not until October 1906 that another electric tram service opened. Trams still run extensively in Melbourne, as its wide streets and geometric street pattern make this mode of transport more practical than in other cities. In Adelaide, capital of South Australia, one tramline operates, originating from the city centre and terminating at Glenelg, and some trams still run in the old goldrush city of Bendigo in rural Victoria.
Australian History
Monday, October 14, 1968. : The Western Australian town of Meckering suffers an earthquake which registers 6.9 on the Richter scale.
Meckering is a small town in the Avon valley region of Western Australia, about 130km east of Perth and 24km west of Cunderdin. At 10:59am on 14 October 1968, the town of approximately 240 people was struck by an earthquake which registered 6.9 on the Richter scale. No deaths were reported, but the earthquake injured 17 people, and caused an estimated $2.2 million worth of damage, translating to around $5 million today. The ground ruptured along a length of 40km, up to 1.5m wide and 2.4m high, and the evidence of this can be seen in the scar that still runs along the landscape today.
World History
Wednesday, October 14, 1925. : The innermost sarcophagus of Egyptian king Tutankhamun is opened, revealing the mummy.
Egypt’s King Tutankhamun was the son of King Akhenaten, who lived from 1353 to 1337 BC. He was born around 1347 BC and died in his late teens. His tomb lay undiscovered for over 3300 years until a team of British archaeologists, led by Howard Carter, discovered a step leading to the tomb in November 1922. Twenty-two days later, Carter and his crew entered the tomb itself. The tomb also contained hundreds of objects, elaborately decorated and covered in gold, that the Egyptians believed would be needed by the king in his afterlife. The walls of the burial chamber were painted with scenes of his voyage to the afterworld.
Also within the tomb lay a stone sarcophagus – the final resting place of King Tutankhamun. When the sarcophagus itself was opened, it revealed three coffins, fitted within each other, and stuck together with black resin. Planning and preparing to open the sarcophagus was a process which took almost two years: the final, innermost sarcophagus was opened on 14 October 1925. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummified body of King Tutankhamun.
The find was considered particularly significant, not only for the remarkable preservation of the mummy and the treasures, but for the fact that most of the Egyptian kings’ tombs were believed to have already been found, and most of them ransacked. Tutankhamun’s tomb provided an extraordinary view of the elaborate burial rites and preparations for Egyptian kings.
World History
Tuesday, October 14, 1947. : Charles Yeager becomes the first human being to break through the sound barrier.
Charles Elwood “Chuck” Yeager was born on 13 February 1923 in Myra, West Virginia. After joining the army at age 16 and training as an aircraft mechanic, he was then selected for flight training. His service record during WWII was impeccable, becoming an “ace-in-a-day” after shooting down five enemy aircraft in a single mission. Yeager remained in the Air Force after the war. He became a test pilot and was ultimately selected to fly the rocket-powered Bell X-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight. On 14 October 1947 he broke the sound barrier in the technologically advanced X-1.
Yeager continued to work with experimental craft, achieving faster and faster speeds. He piloted the X1-A, a longer and more powerful version of the X-1, to a speed of Mach 2.4 on 12 December 1953. This was almost two and a half times the speed of sound and the fastest of any human being to that date.
World History
Sunday, October 14, 1962. : The Cuban Missile Crisis begins, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear warfare.
Cuba is an island between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 150 km south of Florida in the USA. In 1962, it was controlled by a socialist government under Fidel Castro. Castro had already sought support from the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, during which the country had adopted Marxist ideals. This had put the country in direct conflict with the USA, and Cuba needed a powerful ally.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as the point in the Cold War when the USA and USSR were closest to engaging in nuclear warfare. Reconnaissance photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane on 14 October 1962, revealed that Soviet missiles were under construction in Cuba. A tense standoff ensued for two weeks, during which the USA placed a naval quarantine around Cuba to prevent further weapons being conveyed to the island.
It was not until October 28 that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, and remove Soviet light bombers from Cuba. This occurred on the condition that the United States would not invade Cuba.
World History
Wednesday, October 14, 1964. : Martin Luther King becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He became a Baptist minister, and African American civil rights activist. In his fight for civil rights, he organised and led marches for desegregation, fair hiring, the right of African Americans to vote, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted later into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On 14 October 1964, at age thirty-five, King became the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He chose to hand his $54,123 award money to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King’s life was tragically cut short when he was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on 4 April 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. But while King’s life was taken from him prematurely, his legacy lives on in the equal rights now enjoyed by millions of African-Americans in the USA.
World History
Friday, October 14, 1994. : The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The Nobel Peace Prize was instigated on the request of Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. Upon Nobel’s death in 1896, he left a fund from the interest of which annual awards, called Nobel Prizes, were to be given for work in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature, and toward the promotion of international peace. In a decision that sparked much controversy, the 14 October 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Following years of territorial disputes and terrorist activities, on 13 September 1993, Arafat and Rabin had come to an agreement to give the Palestinians limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. The Peace Prize was awarded on this basis. However, the award was regarded by many to have been based on the hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, rather than a tangible, lasting peace. Acts of terrorism and fighting between the two sides has continued, and in November 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process.